No.
The Aerialbots did exactly what they "should" have done, what they've ALWAYS done, in War Dawn.

 

A predestination paradox? To quote Chief O'Brien from DS9 "I hate temporal mechanics."

 

One can [must ?] only assume so; Optimus remembers them being there plus they exist in the first place.

 

Maybe an official time travel thread should be started to discuss the issue.

 

thats pretty much a special case.They were part of a time loop, so it can be said that their being there and the actions they took were destined to happen.

but while their actions helped to create Optimus Prime, its just as likely their interference might have killed him or prevented him from ever becoming Prime.

What if Alpha Prime wasnt in his shop when they stumbled upon it?

thats the risk of changing history.

 

Isn't THIS an official time-travel thread?

 

Its is now lol

 

Indeed. Considering the Aerialbots didn't even know if they'd ever get back home to their own time, I think it was best to just go with the flow and let events unfold and hope that it was how things were supposed to play out.
I suppose the other option would've been to remove themselves from events entirely from fear of altering the timeline. Maybe just wait it out for millions of years so they could just step out from the shadows in present day the moment their other selves got sent into the past and essentially close the loop. But then sitting back and not doing something when they know they could help wasn't their style.
Plus it would probably drive them insane trying to second-guess every little action they took in case it wrecked the future as they know it.

Besides, if they did change events then I imagine their memories of the future would change too and that would just become the new timeline. Or they'd cease to exist because they changed their likelihood of being created in the future. Of course then if they didn't exist they'd not end up back in time to alter anything and that's where the headaches of temporal mechanics lie.

I think it all boils down to if you can actually change history.

Even in Beast Wars it seems everything had to happen. For one thing the primitive humans might not have spread out of their valley and went on to populate the earth if it wasn't for the Predacons going there to try and destroy them.
Personally I mostly like to go with the notion that you either end up doing what you're supposed to and so nothing in the future changes no matter how hard you try, or you do something and it 'breaks' time and everything gets destroyed.

But then there was that test where BW Megaton blew the top off that mountain to check if he could alter future events. By rights though that top being destroyed should've altered his memories in the same way it altered that image and he wouldn't have even known to test time by choosing that mountain.

Of course there's always that other thing where you think you've changed time but all you've actually done is split the timeline off into a new branch and the original timeline still exists and continues into the future unchanged. In which case trying to change the future is pointless. Unless you're planning on giving up on your own timeline and going to live in the newly created timeline instead.

Going back in time and actually changing the future just throws up too many problems, uncertainties and risk of self-destruction.

 

If we leave out the "divergent yet co-existing timelines" thing for a second it boils down to the freewill question.

The Aerialbots being in their own past, there's literally an unimaginable number of things that can "go wrong".
If events are eventually going to lead to the circumstances of the Aerialbots getting zapped into the past there [and they DO, we see this] it doesn't matter WHAT they do.
Events will still follow the dictates of fate as opposed to an individual's choices and actions.

I'm thinking when the Aerialbots get back, and Optimus is all "Ohh, that was YOU GUYS!!!...." is that a memory that's ALWAYS been there?
Or is it a memory that's all of a sudden "always" been there? [Now that the events have occurred.]



Dinobot too.
DID Dinobot have a will of his own?
Or was he just acting out a script dictated to him by fate as he feared?