Ask Vector Prime A Question Archives
  July 28th, 2006  

Vector Prime

The official page hasn't updated. But who will I have to complain about and make fun of if the official page doesn't update?

Oh, yes. You lot.

Q: Dear Vector Prime,
I feel compelled to ask you two utterly unimportant questions, you seem to have that effect on people.
1. Collectively, which voice actor has voiced more roles: Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, or Scott McNeil?
2. Most of the Predacons in Beast Wars seemed to be suffering from serious mental disorders which at least on occasion cost them victories over the Maximals. Why didn't Megatron slip them some vicadin ( especially Inferno )?

A: 1) Welker. By a vast margin. He's been additional voices and animal noises in pretty much everything since the 60's, as well as more major roles. Welker is everywhere, much like Yog-Sothoth, but unlikely to devour your soul.

2) Your Earth medications wouldn't work on a Cybertronian, even a vaguely organic one. Megatron generally seemed to like the loopiness of his troops, possibly because he thought they were easier to control that way.

Q: Dear Vector Prime,
My name is Pursuit, and I am from one possible alternate future. I work as a law enforcement officer in Neo Crystral City, millions of years after The Great War ( the Terran War, so named for the battles fought on Earth ) has ended. In my city, there are a group of six hooligans called the Buildbots. They are the chief engineers and self-proclaimed protectors of the city. Along with Omnicron, the guardian robot of this city, and Catseye, a cat-like femme, they cause all sorts of mayhem. For example, a cold front caused massive frost one winter, and the roads froze over. This bunch decided to fix this problem by drilling away all the ice. In trying to stop them, I was hit with the drill, pushed off a bridge, and frozen in an ice cube. When they drilled away all the ice, they set fire to the frozen debris to clean up. I was caught in the fire, but thankfully, no one else was. When I returned to my office, I found billions of damage reports on my desk. What would you do in a situation like this? What would Safeguard do? Could you help me punish these troublemakers? ( Legally, of course. )
Thank you,
Pursuit

A: I would teleport them all to the moon, but not everyone can do such a thing. Safeguard says that, given the way things seem to be named in your universe, you might have some luck if you track down the 'Robo-Squisher' and use it to reprogram the perpetrators. Sometimes Safeguard is best left ignored.

Q: Y'know, how come one of you Autobots haven't come over here and helped me with these supervillians I face? I mean, fair's fair, right? I helped your people against Megatron. Not to mention the other superheros up here don't believe me when I tell them what happened. You'd think they'd have seen enough to at least give me the benefit of the doubt.
~Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man

A: We're a bit too busy with people like Megatron and Thunderwing to deal with people with names like Vulture or Rhino. Though if you see the Insecticon Venom down there, you can tell him that your Venom isn't trying to steal his job.

Q: Dear Vector Prime,
I have a couple questions for you:
1: Whatever happened to Robots in Disguise? No, I don't mean the toy series, I mean the concept of Robots in Disguise. As in: Robots who are disguised as every-day Earth vehicles. The Alternators line aside, it seems to me that many of the newer Transformers, while clearly supposed to be Earth vehicles of various kinds, do not look like anything I have ever seen on Earth. Maybe I'm missing some fundamental element, since I haven't kept up on the cartoons since G1 ( always been more interested in the toys, ) but the RiD concept was what attracted me most to the Transformers in the first place. Now I just find myself looking at them and going "Whaa?" Especially with the various Optimus Primes they come up with.
2: I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick of hearing people complain about the upcoming Transformers movie. It's been almost twenty years since the last movie, you'd think they'd be happy for anything, let alone perfection ( as defined by how much fan-service the movie includes. ) Isn't there something you could do about them? You are the master of all time and a great deal of space.. maybe you could, like, I dunno ... time-shift them into a brick wall or something? Or maybe just send them back to the G1 cartoon ... maybe that will make them realize exactly why Mr. Bay is making those changes.
This last one is less angsty:
What do you do to amuse yourself? Surely, with all of time at your fingertips, you must have some pretty cool hobbies. I mean, if you wanted, you could go back millions of years, build pyramids on Mars, then come back in time to answer your E-Mail questions, and have a good laugh at the conspiracy nuts trying to make a cosmic link between the Mars pyramids and George Bush's hair!

A: 1) You are looking to the wrong person if you want concurrence to your opinions on 'robots in disguise' versus 'more than meets the eye' - I am not here to blend, after all. As to your question, most likely a good chunk of why even the more Earthen-seeming Transformers have made-up vehicle modes is licensing. Volkswagon wouldn't allow HasTak to create a Beetle Alternator, for instance.

Storywise, Robots In Disguise, Armada, and Cybertron involved being on Earth in secret. In G1 and Energon, humans knew about the Transformers. In Beast Wars and Beast Machines, there were no humans to be disguised from. As well in Cybertron, there are various colony planets where disguise is unneeded, so the denizens of such have alien modes.

2) Can I do anything about them? Not really. I tend to use their own methods and complain about them whenever I encounter them. It doesn't help, of course.

Remember the last time the fandom got buckets of fanservice? It was called 'DreamWave'. Remember what happened to it? A little bit of fanservice is good, but when used to the excess it gets rather dull and alienates new viewers. Most of the sales need to come from casual viewers who just want to be entertained. The fandom just isn't big enough to support the new movie by itself, despite what the fandom likes to think.

At this point, there is no way to tell how good or bad the new movie will be. This will remain unknown until it can actually be watched. ( And, yes, I have been forbidden by my housemates to use my powers to check. The most polite one informed me that he would remove my internals through my optics if I spoiled the movie for him. Not that I would let him, but I've decided to bow to general concensus in the interests of peace. )

3) I write an answer column and find new ways to annoy Insecticons. And why would I want to build pyramids on Mars? The Martians seem quite able to build them on their own.

Q: Do Cryo-Scourge and Cryotek have anything to do with each other?
A: Aside from vaguely similar names and appearances, no.

Q: Nobody finds anything wrong with the "Shadow Recon Team." Your world shall end soon.
A: True, I haven't seen anyone complain about the Shadow Recon Team in specific, except for Safeguard who doesn't count in this matter. However, they fall under both the categories of those who hate repaints and those who hate Minicons.

Q: Why hasn't Starscream returned any of my calls?
- Skyfire

A: More importantly, why are you calling him? He's a jerk. You'd be better off starting again with, I don't know, Pipes.

Q: What happened to Megatron ( BW ) that caused him to go crazy after crash-landing back on Cybertron? He didn't have any indication of disliking his organic alt-mode, in fact, he seemed to enjoy it. So was it the exposure to the transwarp field that made him go nuts, or was it something that happened on Cybertron?
A: It was the magic of Beast Machines, that somehow made everyone the opposite of what they were in Beast Wars.

Q: I have read that there was a Transformers manga that revealed the Destron's reasons for thier actions was to free their families. Is this true? Is it possible that, somewhere out there, there exists an "evil" faction that ISN'T motivated by purely selfish interests?
A: It's still selfish - it's to free their families rather than free everyone, and their families were probably also evil. I'm less worried by that than by the whole 'robots with families' thing. Isn't fanfiction bad enough?

Q: CHILD OF PRIMUS,
DIRECT ME TOWARDS UNICRON. I NEED TO HAVE A DISCUSSION WITH HIM REGARDING TABLE MANNERS AND THE DEVOURATION OF PLANETS.
- Galactus

A: He went that way.

 

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