Transformation 210: Ratbat Attack

20/5/2016

It's time to say goodbye to a dearly loved member of the cast today as Ratbat shuffles off this mortal coil thanks to a cowardly attack from a fiendish foe. We will not forget you Ratbat!

Meanwhile, everyone else dies as well. But who cares?

Plus, is Optimus Prime a coward?

SPOLIER: No.

It's all in my look at Dark Star Part 3!

9 Comments

Tim Roll-Pickering link

20/5/2016 07:53:08 pm

Is it me or has the mutated Starscream grown a second ear?

"Optimus will start merging with HiQ, something that he assumes to be the end result of the Powermaster process but which doesn’t seem to affect any of the others"

Do any of the other partners even appear after this? Furman's especially prone to putting the actual gimmick to one side.

But the big moment has to be Ratbat. I often think people who slag his leadership off are just doing so because of his "Laserbeak the Next Generation" portrayal on the cartoon and not actually looking at how he's done here - showing deviousness, shifting inefficiency out of the Decepticons, making the best of the Autobots' absence, coming closer to victory on Earth than just about any other leader and aiming for the highest. And being totally brought down by his own arrogance and blindness. Truly a fully rounded character who goes out in style.

Otherwise the general problem with a lot of the deaths is how little the comic's actually done with the characters, especially recently. It's hard to get sad when they're frankly a bunch of random names, in some cases looking very little like when they were last fully portrayed way back when the toys were followed more, and the general lack of strategy doesn't help.

snowkatt

23/5/2016 03:45:30 am

The Nebulans get some lipservice later on near the end when Prime surrenders to Scorponok
but thats about it.
the gimmicks are ( thankfully) mostly forgotten except the pretenders ones with the classic pretenders.

And even those are integrated in the story logically for once.

Ralph Burns

20/5/2016 08:59:41 pm

He's not dead so long as we remember him.

RATBAT GHOST JOINS THE...SPECIAL TEAMS!

Snowkatt link

11/4/2017 02:58:47 pm

To be honest, untill I reread this review, it never really connected with me that the light of the Underbase had such a profound impact on prime and scorponok.
But now that I think about it, it is only logical.

Zarak taking over and the pain spasms for Prime always came a bit out of left field for me. But the Underbase exposure seems to explain it perfectly.

Felicity link

18/11/2019 06:55:39 am

I wonder if the Underbase could have destroyed Unicron.

I’m glad Soundwave wasn’t permanently killed.

Maybe Buster didn’t fall as hard because they were in space so there wasn’t as much gravity? Just the artificial gravity on the Ark. I’m grasping at straws here :-)

If Optimus Prime, Scorponok, and Starscream had all been in the path of the Underbase, would they all have been destroyed by taking in 100% of it or would they each have gotten 1/3 and survived?

Great point though about an Underbase micro-dose having an effect on Optimus and Scorponok.

Ian Rimmer, the writer/editor of the comic, is only 17?!

I liked the part of “GI Joe” where the boy soldier (named Rashid IIRC?) learns that the technical guy is important. I guess it wasn’t a cliché to me when I saw it--maybe this was the first time.

And enjoyably this comes back a few years later when the characters meet up with that same boy soldier, now a young man, and his encounter with Mainframe has changed his life.

LiamKav

7/10/2020 03:02:10 am

I'm also confused about the Ian Rimmer thing? Was it a made up letter where they just picked the name of an old work colleague?

I never read the beginning of the Underbase saga, so was it ever explained why Prime could be exposed to it back in the Flames of Boltax, but after being in space for a few years it suddenly gives people an enormous power boost? It's not like reading the Encyclopedia Britannica gives most people the power to throw around space ships.

Felicity link

7/10/2020 04:36:09 am

If I had to come up with something, I would say it was because in the past Optimus was only standing in the specially-designed chamber that limited him to a few light beams at a time, but Starscream was floating right in front of the whole undiluted Underbase.

It does make you wonder if there’s a Goldilocks zone of amount of time to be exposed to the Underbase—just enough to become the greatest and wisest warrior ever but not enough to become a gnarly megalomaniacal mutant!

Tim Roll-Pickering link

7/10/2020 12:46:24 pm

ISTR there's a later letter about this and Dreadwind suggests that Prime was only standing in it for a few minutes whereas Starscream was in it long enough to absorb a load of power.

LiamKav

7/10/2020 02:38:30 pm

That might be bad visual story telling. It certainly seems that Starscream's initial exposure is just for a few seconds, but I guess it could have been a lot longer. Maybe he was delivering that speech extremely slowly?

Transformation 210: Ratbat Attack

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