Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Acronyms and abbreviations are fun. That, or these lines don't deserve quite enough respect for full names.
Robots In Disguise, Armada, Energon, Cybertron - there, that's their names, happy now???
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Dominic
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Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by Dominic »

I recently finished reading Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel".

Short review: The premise of the book makes sense, and Diamond mostly does a good job of presenting it. One of the more interesting, (and sensible), ideas Diamond presents is the principle of "optimal fragmentation". This idea is that civilizations need to be unified enough to take advantage of economies of scale, but not be so centrally controlled that a few bad decisions by a handful of leaders end up hobbling everybody.


Rather than post a lengthy review of a book that is about 10 years old, it would be more interesting to apply some of the ideas from it to a "Transformers" sub-line that (frankly) lends itself to the ideas present in "Guns, Germs and Steel". Given that leadership is a common element in "Transformers" stories, the idea of optimal fragment (no Prime-pun intended) looks like a good connetion point, (hard-point?).
The basic premise of the "Cybertron" series was that the planet Cybertron, (and pretty much everything else), was in danger owing to a black-hole. (The US series went for a bad fanfic angle and said the black-hole was in face Unicron. But, that is less important here than what follows.) The Transformers largely evacuated the planet. It was revealed that many years before, there had been another exodus from the planet. Bands of Transformers had left the planet, (before the point where Autobot and Decepticons splintered into factions), and set up colonies elsewhere. The 4 colonies depicted on toy packages and in animation were on Earth, Veloctron, Animatros and Gigantion. (I am using the Japanese names for the non-Earth planets because I happen to like them better than the American names. Deal with it.) Saving Cybertron, (and most everything else), required the characters to recover 4 lost McGuffins, (Planet Keys), that happened to be located on the various colony worlds.

It may be assumed that there were other Transformer colonies not shown on the show. For example, Hasbro abandoned developing the concept for a war themed panet early on. Many of the character designs intended for that setting were re-purposed before being released in the "Cybertron" toy-line.) X-Planet/Unicron may or may not have been a lost colony. (I have seen so much written about this, much of contrary to other things written about it.) I am just going to treat it as another colony for the purposes of this posting.

The basic idea here is to talk about the various planets as portrayed in offical material, and attempt to determine how much optimal fragmentation one could assume in each case. There are two huge problems with this of course. The first, and most obvious, is that this posting arguably applies more intellectual capital to this idea than all of the "Unicron Trilogy". T he other problem is that Transformers are typically portrayed as being a fairly static species, which means that the benefits in context of optimal fragmentation would be hard to monetize. (Transoformers are consistently shown to be tactically adaptable. But, they change little over long spans of time. Various offical sources have offered post-hoc explanations of this. But, the real reason is, of course, rooted in TF being *very* soft sci-fi at its core.)


Earth:
There were actually two Earth-based groups of Transformers" shown in Cybertron. The first consisted of refugees who arrived with Optimus or Megatron and where nominally under their respective commands. The second groups consisted of the colonists who arrived with Evac years before.
The refugees were shown to be thinly spread out around the planet.
While there was a core team of Autobots under Optimus' direct command, there were many other Autobots depicted on the show (and in character profiles) who did not seem to be directly participating in attempts to locate the series' Planet Key McGuffins. (Downshift's and Hightail's character profiles are examples of this.) Prime was implied to have a larger number of Autobots under his command. These were occasionally shown, but rarely named. (The motorcycle who was not Highttail, the traffic light, the payphone and the submarine team from the first episode are examples of this.)
Similarly, Megatron's forces consisted of a core group of followers augmented by many (name-less) other troops.
Both refugee armies appeared to be centrally controlled and follow a set comman structure. (When Megatron was temporarily deposed, Starscream has little real difficulty commanding obedience from the troops.) Aside from adapting and using new forms, (largely for the purposes of hiding on Earth), neither army was shown doing much beyond tactical ops to recover the Mcguffins. In the case of the Autobots, there seemed to be more characters who were idling.
If anything, the Autobot refugees were too decentralized. The Decpticons, while more centralized, were more more focused. (Of course, neither faction existed in a vacuum, so it is tough to really evaluate the virtues of their different organizational styles.)
Evac's colonists are difficult to assess. The series implies that they spent varying amounts of time in hibernations. (This handily explained why none of the "they were here the whole time" characters made appearances during the earlier "Armada" and "Energon" series.) For the most part, (when they were not comatose), Evac's troops blended in with the surrounding inhabitants (humans) and technology. It might be safe to assume that they would have followed similar patterns of development to humanity. Transformers have been consistently shown, (in various series), to be able to use idea diffusion as a way to upgrade themselves. So it is safe to assume that this group had a healthy level of optimal fragmentation, though frequent sleeping breaks would diminish the value of this.

The other 3 planets were pretty much gimmick based. The toys were generally grouped by price, (listed from least to most expensive average cost here), and aesthetic.



Velocitron:
As its name implies, this was a speed themed planet. The inhabitants focused on making themselves faster.

Social and political rank was determined by speed. All told, this looks to have been the healthiest of the colony worlds. (However, that is a pretty low bar to clear.)

While most everybody as armed in some way, things were generally presented as running smoothly. Even the more ruthless characters, such as Dirtboss, played by a set of rules. (Usurping the leader was most easily done the legal way, namely by being faster than the leader.) The drive for speed presumably fostered innovation in both technology and skill, (as evidenced by the "GTS" recolors in the toys. The biggest obvious problem is that resources and innovation were completely focused on being faster. While the planet was shown to have variable terrain, all innovations that might have encouraged were applied to speed, limiting their potential uses elsewhere.

Character profiles mentioned illegal races. It is a safe bet that these would have led to more innovations. But, there is no way to know how accepted such advances would have been by the larger population. Based on the character profiles that mention the illegal racing, it looks like there was no meaningful enforcement of rules against those races, which would allow for freedom to innovate.

While Velocitron was apparently not hindered by over-regulating and centralized authority, everybody seemed to focus enough on one thing, (speed), which would likely have hindered growth over time. The "Cybertron" comic shows that it is not illegal, (if not common), for Velocitron residents to travel off-planet, indicating freedom of movement that might be restricted with centralized power.



Animatros:
The idea here is that everybody turns into an animal of some kind, with the strongest ruling. The cartoon depicts 2 tribes of robots living in varying degrees of conflict with each other. Character profiles with the toys explicitly mention one other tribe. More tribes can be reasonably inferred.

Most of the Transformers on Animatros seemed to rely primarily on skirmish weapons. (Scourge had a ranged fire attack, but even he had a beating-stick type weapon one would use for clubbing things up close and personal like.) A question here is what the Transformers would have had for available resources. Perhaps the skirmish weapons were more economical based on that they could harvest for resources. (What did they have for fuel on Animatros, beyond solar power?)

Sources of authority may actually be the least of the problem on this planet.



Gigantion:
The themes of Gigantion were size and industrialization. There was a bit too much in the way of "using the McGiffin" stupidity incorporated into the series at this point. But, the basic premise is that the Gigantions like to build, and they like to build big.

Based on episodes of the show and character profiles, everybody has a role. The larger robots do the heavy work, while Minicons do the precision work. (I recall reading somewhere that Minicons also did adminstrative tasks, though that may have been a newboard posting. Maybe a fan-club character entry?) Some characters, such as Menasor, were unhappy with their roles, which opens the question about how solid the planet's political foundation was. Addionally, the character profile for a Minicon set indicates that there is crime on Gigantion.

Dialogue from the cartoon and character information for the Recon Team indicates that is it is not unheard for residents of Gigantion to travel off-planet. As with Velocitron, this probably shows a fair amount of political freedom.

On balance however, Gigantion was likely too focused on building, and assigning tasks to its residents, to really expand and change.


X-Planet: While not necessarily a Cybertronian colony, X-Planet warrants inclusion on this list if only for being a meaningful part of the line. The two living natives of X-Planet shown on the cartoon, (Sideways and Soundwave), seem extremely devoted to a civilization that was destroyed before the "Cybertron" series itself began. Unicron's appearance in the comics would go a long way towards explaining this devotion, (as dark gods of wankery tend to make dominationg strong-men). Either way, X-Planet seemed to be a pretty one-track civilization.


At the end of the "Cybertron" cartoon the main threat is dealt with, and the Transformers begin to venture out into space to explore it further. Residents from all of the colony worlds are shown participating in the Spacebrige Project. Faction does not seem to play a meaningful role in this as both Autobot and Decepticon alligned Transformers are shown working together.

(Aside: That scene with the traffic light and pay phone in the last episode is actually really good.)

While the colony worlds seem willing to work with Cybertron, they also seem to be maintaining their autonomy from each-other. Hotshot and Leobreaker get no help from Optimus or the others when they challenge Overdrive and Scourge for leadership of Velocitron and Animatros.

The fact that the former refugees and residents of the colonies are show working together but maintaining their autonomy indicates that the groups are close enough to allow for the exchange of technology and ideas, while being independent enough so that bad decisions by one leader will not hobble the entire venture.


Dom
-thinks something would have been lost in simply calling this post "Thoughts on 'Guns, Germs and Steel'".
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Re: Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by Sparky Prime »

Dominic wrote:The US series went for a bad fanfic angle and said the black-hole was in face Unicron.
It is important to point out here, that was actually the original intent for the series when the "Unicron Trilogy" was first conceived. And that later Japanese materials have since retconned "Galaxy Force" back into that continuity as well.
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Re: Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by Dominic »

Good catch.

Either way, Unicron needs to be thrown into a black hole.

Dom
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Re: Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by 138 Scourge »

I still say that Unicron and Primus could be awesome if pictured as bigass Kirby-esque "New Gods" type of weapons. Who built 'em? No idea, the civilizations involved are long-since wiped out. When you use weapons that destroy planets, that kinda thing can happen. That's at least as good as the origin from the G1 Marvel comics.
Dominic wrote: too many people likely would have enjoyed it as....well a house-elf gang-bang.
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Re: Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by Dominic »

That is not too far off from the G1 cartoon's origin for Unicron actually.


Dom
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Re: Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by Onslaught Six »

Still like the first telling of the origin, where Unicron and Primus were a part of a much larger pantheon of gods, and always wished we'd see more from that. Why do these two get to be the only ones left around? Why can't we have some kickass and interesting Transformer gods? Hell, that's why I loved Ethereal--we turned Overlord into one of them.
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Re: Guns, Germs and Cybertron

Post by Dominic »

Unicron and Primus are plenty of holy-rollin' goodness.

I do not know if there are enough days in the week to allow for other gods to show up as often as Unicron and Primus were for a while.

Dom
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