Derailment
"Derailment" is the eleventh Beast Wars: Uprising story, serving as the fourth part of the series finale. It was released eight days after the previous story, "Safe Spaces", on December 27th, 2016. At 179 pages, it is the longest of the Beast Wars: Uprising stories, and indeed, the longest piece of prose fiction the Transformers Collector's Club put out, the size of a small novella. It picks up right where the previous story left off, with the new threat of the Vehicons, and describes the final days of the Great Uprising, revisiting various characters from throughout the series. Initially upon publication, it seemed to be the final part of the series overall, but an epilogue would be published one day later, finishing off the story of Beast Wars: Uprising. Being as long as it is, the story is split up into five chapters, so annotations will be formatted slightly differently here than those for the previous stories. "Derailment" is written by Jim Sorenson and David Bishop, with additional writing in chapter 1 by Jesse Wittenrich, edited by Wittenrich, copy-edited by Louis Sun, cover art by Christopher Colgin, and interior art by Guido Guidi, Wittenrich, Colgin, Josh Burcham, Matt Frank, and Gonçalo Lopes.
In psychiatry, "derailment" (borrowed from the term that describes when a train falls off its tracks), refers to speech or thought that features a sequence of loosely-related ideas that change topic from sentence to sentence; it was originally coined in German by psychiatrist Carl Schneider in 1930, as entgleisen. The term has also been used to refer to the disruption of public discourse with an outside event unrelated to the original topic. The term reflects the nature of the story; it follows up from the events of the past ten stories, checking in with various characters around Cybertron as they experience the Vehicon Apocalypse, as the course of the Great Uprising changes irrevocably due to an unforeseen threat; alliances are made, villains are revealed, and in the end, no one will ever be the same. Almost every living character who has shown up in previous installments makes at least a brief appearance, leaving us with a cast list of 213 characters, plus many more who are mentioned; I’ll try to limit annotations to new characters who show up, but many of the more minor ones do have things to go over, and even some of the major characters have changed quite a bit since we’ve last seen them. There will also likely be some repeats of concepts I’ve already gone over, but in the interest of completeness, I’ll go over those as well.
A personal note: These annotations will likely take some time, but I promise to have them completed hopefully in a year's time. Please bear with me.
The cover of the story, by Christopher Colgin, takes the form of a playing card equivalent to the French-suited playing cards used widely in the western world, specifically based on the layout of the King, Queen, Jack, and Joker cards. It depicts Resistance leader Lio Convoy and his dark opposite, Vehicon commander Galva Convoy, flipped like a mirror image of each other, with Lio Convoy’s side of the card illustrated with a capital M and the Beast Wars Maximal symbol, and Galva Convoy’s with a capital V and the Beast Machines Vehicon symbol. Lio Convoy is in his post-Beast Upgrade form, based specifically on his then-recent Legends toy; a redeco of Titans Return Alpha Trion. The toy turned into a mechanical lion, and as remnants of Alpha Trion’s features, it also had a ship mode and a Headmaster/Titan Master gimmick (with Alpha Trion’s Titan Master Sovereign being replaced with Sentinel Prime’s Infinitus, to better match Lio’s appearance); this story excludes those elements, instead depicting him as a standard Transformer with two alternate modes. Galva Convoy is depicted on the cover as a virtual redeco of Legends Lio Convoy in his Beast Wars II Galvatron-inspired colors; in the story itself, he’s still in his vehicular BotCon 2015 body, a redeco of Lio Convoy’s 2015 toy that started off this run, and which was itself a redeco and retool of the Generations Thrilling 30 Orion Pax toy.
The story is split into five sections, as denoted on the contents page. Like “Intersectionality” before it, I’ll treat part as its own little thing, with sections based on the cipher text used as section breaks, starting over at one for each part. Each part has a title incorporating a river from the underworld of Hades in Greek mythology; I believe this might be inspired by Jim Sorenson’s research into Buzz Dixon’s documents, which showed unused titles for 1987’s direct-to-video G.I. Joe: The Movie, intended for a broadcast version of the film that would turn it into a five-episode mini-series, the over-arching film itself being retitled “The Five Rivers of Hades”; these titles were “Swiftly Flows the Acheron”, “Sinking in the Cocytus”, “Swept Down the Lethe”, “Swamped by the Phlegethon”, and “Swimming the Styx”. The rivers used for the parts of “Derailment” are the same ones, but in a different order. Just for completeness’ sake: the Lethe was a river that flowed around the cave of Hypnos, and caused amnesia to anyone who drank from it; the Phlegethon, a stream of raging fire that coils around the earth, leading into Tartarus, the prison of the Titans; the Cocytus, the river of wailing that flows into the Acheron; the Styx, the most famous of the rivers, identified in Roman times as the rive on which the ferryman Charon transports the dead to Hades – it was also the name of a Titan/goddess who sided with Zeus during the war between the gods and Titans; and the Acheron, the entrance to Hades, depicted in Greek classical sources as where Charon’s ferry was located instead. That leads us to:
Part 1:
Section 1: Sorenson and Bishop note in their Afterword to the finale (published in the next and final story) that the structure of this story (featuring events from all around Cybertron) was inspired by Max Brooks’ 2006 zombie apocalypse epistolary novel, World War Z, which took the form of interviews with various characters around the world 10 years after the events of a catastrophic global outbreak of a zombie virus, which came to an end after the zombies were reduced to a manageable number and kept in remote areas; the main difference is that this story takes place in the present, and we see the events of the Vehicon Apocalypse first hand. As such, each section starts by listing the location on Cybertron where it takes place, and by noting the time until and after the events of the previous story, where the Vehicons first began assimilating Cybertronians during the Resistance’s revived gladiatorial Games in Protihex. Because so many locations show up in this, I’ll be repeating my previous annotations a bit and explaining where they are and how they figured into earlier stories, just to help make it clearer.
With that, we start at Resistance Headquarters in Stanix. A region of Cybertron introduced in the story “The Magnificent Six!” in the Marvel UK Transformers Annual 1991, Stanix was shown as part of Resistance territory in the map of Cybertron published “Safe Space”, and briefly mentioned as the location of Resistance headquarters by Cheetor. B’Boom has been around since “Broken Windshields” as one of the original members of Lio Convoy’s Resistance; he’s upgraded from his vehicular form into a mechanical version of his original toy, turning into a robotic mandrill. Blackarachnia, too, has upgraded, though the story never makes it super clear whether she’s in a mechanical version of her original form, or whether she’s in her Transmetal 2 body; it’s mentioned she has hands, so it’s probably the latter. The IPS (Independent Predacon States) and its ruling body, the Tripredacus Alliance, were established to have seceded from the Builders in the previous story, and potentially entering into an alliance with the Resistance; we have it confirmed here here that Lio Convoy knew they had demanded the death of Preditron and went along with it. B’Boom refers to the Alliance’s demands as “mondo uncool;” this use of mondo (the Italian word for “world”) is derived from the bizarre 1962 Italian pseudo-documentary Mondo Cane. Petrex was originally mentioned in issue #9 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye, while Uraya originally comes from the Dreamwave Productions mini-series The War Within. Kaon was established to have been partially annexed by both the Resistance and the IPS last story; it debuted in Dreamwave Productions’ The Dark Ages as a Decepticon held-city and has generally shown up in modern fiction as such. Petrohex, also seen as Resistance territory last time, is split into two parts: Lower Petrohex was originally mentioned in issue #22 of IDW Publishing’s More than Meets the Eye, while Upper Petrohex was mentioned in a post on the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime. Proximax originally appeared in the Classics prose story “The New World”; it showed up heavily in “Cultural Appropriations” as where the Ex-Bots (who we’ll see later) fought the Monster GoBots, and “Safe Spaces” established Uraya bordered the city. Burthov first appeared in Defiance, IDW Publishing’s prequel mini-series for the 2009 live-action film Revenge of the Fallen; it was established to be a Predacon town all the way back in “Broken Windshields”. Altihex was another city first seen in The War Within; we saw it back in “Burning Bridges” as contested territory, having since been taken over by the Resistance. Protihex, as mentioned, was where the majority of the last story took place; it’s another The War Within original. Corumkan, meanwhile, was first mentioned as where Shokaract centered his rule on future Cybertron in the BotCon Europe 1999 prose-story “Herald”, part of BotCon’s “Reaching the Omega Point” storyline. The Maximal Nation was established in “Cultural Appropriation”, where it cut ties with the Builders. Preditron was rescued by the Resistance from Fortress Maximus in “Head Games”; Ikard was shown to be in charge of his execution last story.
Cybershark was first seen in “Head Games” as one of Lio Convoy’s inner circle, who led the mission into Fortress Maximus, where it was established that he was willing to ignore ethics if it meant that the mission would be accomplished. Like Blackarachnia, it’s not clear if he turns into a mechanical form of his original hammerhead shark toy, or his Transmetal 2 great white shark form. Psycho-Orb was mentioned first last story, as a former aid to the Builder administrator of Protihex who organized a coup and allowed the Resistance to take over the city. Originally from the Robotmasters toyline, Psycho-Orb was a redeco of the Beast Wars Armordillo toy, a Predacon armadillo who was depicted in fiction as a reprogrammed Maximal protoform with psychokinetic abilities; this version ditches the reprogrammed protoform idea but keeps his psychokinetic abilities and gives him a Russian accent.
Most of the contested cities were previously shown as such in the map from “Safe Spaces” and mentioned as such by Blackarachnia in the story proper. Valvolux was originally mentioned in The Transformers Universe profile for 1988 Triggercon Ruckus, published in issue #66 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. Ky-Alexia was mentioned in DK Publishing’s Transformers: The Movie Guide tying in to the 2007 live-action Transformers film. Simfur, named for long-time Transformers writer Simon Furman, was first seen in IDW Publishing’s Movie Prequel miniseries for the 2007 film. Rodion first appeared in issue #22 of the 2009-2011 The Transformers ongoing, while Ibex was first seen in issue #77 of the Marvel The Transformers comic; it previously appeared as the location of one of Cybertron’s last remaining spaceports in “Not All Megatrons”. The Mithril Sea was first mentioned in the tech specs for Autobot Mini-Vehicle Rook, sold at BotCon Europe 2002. Ultrix first appeared in issue #9 of IDW Publishing’s Autocracy miniseries. These cities were all established to be around the Mithril Sea in the map from “Safe Spaces”. Kolkular was another city from The War Within, while Kalis first appeared in a storyline from issues #164-#169 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic, and was previously seen as Builder territory in “Burning Bridges”.
Direwolf, created by Simon Furman, was an early Predacon seen in Furman’s semi-canonical novel Alignment, which bridged Marvel’s Generation 2 series into Beast Wars. It was established in that story that the Predacons were initially a splinter faction created during the brief reign of the Decepticon council following Galvatron II’s defeat. Direwolf made the jump to canon in the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime; presumably, he turns into some sort of mechanical wolf. The Maxilla is a new concept introduced here, a group of fortresses which we’ll see later in the story; the maxilla is the name for the upper jawbone in humans and many vertebrate animals. Vos, which showed up as the location of heavy fighting between Builder and Resistance forces in “Trigger Warnings”, was first seen in the prose story “State Games” from the Marvel UK Transformers Annual 1986, while Tesarus (previously seen as Builder territory in “Micro-Aggressions”) was first mentioned in issue #4 of IDW’s More than Meets the Eye. Iacon is the most famous of all Transformers cities, being first mentioned in Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter’s initial treatment for The Transformers all the way back in 1984; its generally depicted as the capital of Cybertron whenever it shows up and has been held by Builders since the beginning of this series. As mentioned in “Safe Spaces”, Protihex was delivered into the Resistance by Psycho-Orb.
Queen Rage first appeared in the series as a Predacon gladiatorial combatant all the way back in “Broken Windshields”; “Head Games” established that after Lio Convoy disrupted the game she was participating in, she declared herself the winner and annexed several cities, which were called “Rageland” in “Safe Spaces”. The original Rage (created by Shōji Imaki) was a jellyfish Transformer from the prose story “To Jellyfish with Love! Cry Out, Stampy Blade” published in the collected Beast Wars Neo manga. The sole inhabitant of the water-covered planet Wednesday, her name was originally Rāge (pronounced “Rah-gey”) from the Japanese word for jellyfish, “kurage”; her name has been changed to the more standard English word “rage” for these stories. We’ll touch on her a bit more later. Praxis (more properly known as Praxus, which we’ll touch on later) was another city introduced in The War Within, and was established to be Bluestreak’s destroyed home in the “Keepers Trilogy” of Dreamwave tie-in novels from ibooks. Shokaract, meanwhile, was one of the exclusive toys at BotCon 2000, a redeco of Beast Wars Rampage; originally a lowly Predacon from the future known simply as “the Hunter,” he came across Unicron’s Dark Essence on Earth, which turned him into the extremely powerful Shokaract, who went on to conquer Cybertron and wage war throughout the galaxy. Here, he’s a normal Transformer, though he still is as imperious as his cosmically-powered counterpart. Hyperious first appeared in the Wings Universe prose story “Flames of Yesterday”, and previously showed up in “Not All Megatrons” as being close to where rogue Autobot scientist Leatherhide had been experimenting. Harmonex previously appeared in issue #10 of IDW Publishing’s Monstrosity miniseries. Carpessa and Damaxus were both noted to have gone dark in “Safe Spaces”, which also mentioned that the Gung-Ho had blown up Cybertron’s satellite communications system. Carpessa was first mentioned in issue #3 of IDW Publishing’s Sins of the Wreckers mini-series, while Damaxus first showed up in one of the earliest Beast Wars: Uprising stories, the prologue for the 2014 Collectors’ Club storyline “Alone Together”, mentioned as being the location where Rattrap supposedly died. We’ll see what the radiation surge is in a bit.
The section-breaking cipher text this time around is the Book of Logos, which will be mentioned later in the story in more detail, where we’ll go over it a bit more. It’s a book from the Covenant of Primus, the Cybertronian version of the Bible first seen in the two-part finale of the Beast Wars cartoon, “Nemesis”. The section break is patterned after the interior of the Covenant seen “Nemesis”, an orange sort of case, with speakers along the side, a screen with red Maximal Cybertronix text, and a cassette tape at the bottom under which lies the standard stop, play, record, and other such buttons; in a cute touch, the cassette tape seen here is patterned after the toy version of classic Decepticon Mini-Cassette, Rumble.
Section 2: Two days later. The Rust Sea was originally mentioned in the letter’s page for issue #162 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic, where it was called the “great rust sea.” It was specifically called the Rust Sea first in issue #3 of 3H Productions’ Universe comic and has also been known as the Sea of Rust or the Rust Spot. Cybertron’s three surviving moons were first mentioned in “Not All Megatrons”; we’ll talk about them a bit more later. Buzz Saw was one of the first year Beast Wars toyline releases in 1996; a Predacon sharing a mold with Waspinator, he turned into a bee (although in practice he more resembles a yellowjacket). Often distinguished from Waspinator in his various minor appearances by drawing him with his mold’s normal head (rather than the mutant head the Beast Wars cartoon used), he was originally described as a fairly generic warrior type in his original tech specs. It was IDW Publishing’s Beast Wars Sourcebook that introduced the idea that he was secretly a coward, preferring to stay at high altitudes to avoid conflict. Of note is the fact he was one of the few non-show Beast Wars characters to return for the Beast Machines toyline, in which he was reformatted into a technorganic Maximal wasp. He’s partnered with Stormrazor, a Beast Wars version of the Predacon Skystalker from the Prime Beast Hunters toyline. An intelligent yet emotionally unstable dragon with ice powers and launching disks, he was initially known as Stormrazor in preliminary materials, and a Kre-O building block version of him that was packaged with the Battle Net Bumblebee playset was referred to at Toy Fair 2013 with this name. Since Beast Wars: Uprising tries to keep reused names to a minimum, Stormrazor presumably has his preliminary name to distinguish him from another Skystalker not otherwise seen; presumably, the Decepticon Micromaster Porsche 959 from 1989, previously depicted in Dreamwave Productions’ comics as the Decepticon Micromaster leader. (As an aside, you might think that Buzz Saw is another case of that, to distinguish him from Buzzsaw, Laserbeak’s lesser known mold partner that was sold with the original 1984 Soundwave toy, but Buzz Saw’s name was actually spelt that was on his Beast Wars packaging, though it would be reverted to Buzzsaw on his Beast Machines release).
Narrowcasting is a real-world term, and as its name suggests, it’s the opposite of a broadcast; information sent to a specific audience, rather than anyone who has the equipment to pick up the information. Buzz Saw and Stormrazor are the first Resistance members to see the Vehicons; as seen in “Safe Spaces”, they’re the standard three: heavy artillery Tank Drones, flying jet-mode Aero Drones, and the speedy Cycle Drones. PHOTINT is another real world term, an abbreviation of “photo intelligence.” Buzz Saw’s beast mode is called a pulse wasp, a new Cybertronian animal, which is in turn described as a species of insecatron, a catch-all term for all insect-type Cybertronian animals also first introduced here. Buzz Saw’s pre-Beast Upgrade vehicle mode is noted to be a twin-rotor helicopter; this marks his original form as being a repurposing of Cybertron Buzzsaw, a retool of Armada Cyclonus designed to homage the Beast Wars character. Like Prime Skystalker, Stormrazor is armed with cryodisks, which launch from his wings.
Section 3: The Cortex, Eject’s base of operations as Administrator of the Games, was introduced in “Broken Windshields”. That story noted that its proper name was the Cyclonus Memorial Tower, and that it was located in Thetacon, a city first seen in IDW Publishing’s Dark of the Moon prequel comic, Foundation. Eject’s office was full of the tickers mentioned here, which provided the cipher text for “Broken Windshields” in the form of sports updates from around Cybertron. The bio-attack on the last Game was Grimlock’s attempt to use the G-Virus on the Tesarus Arena in “Micro-Aggressions”. The Galva Contingency was first mentioned in “Broken Windshields” teasing BotCon 2015’s Customization Class Galva Convoy figure, and Galva Convoy himself first appeared proper in “Not All Megatrons”, brought online via the process described there. In that story, he was shown to be initially attempting to create a new proto-race called the Terrorcons (based on the Energon sub-group), but was persuaded to change course by a mysterious presence, which we will see later. CNA is one term for Cybertronian genetic material, introduced in IDW Publishing’s Spotlight: Arcee, standing for Cyber/Nano Algorithms. The Beast Wars: Uprising version of the Grand Mal (Megatron’s large floating fortress form from Beast Machines) was first seen in “Not All Megatrons”, having been a creation of Thunderwing in this universe during his attempt to conquer Cybertron, and turned into Builder military command after his defeat. It’s revealed here that this universe’s version of Vehicons are powered by anti-sparks, a term previously used to describe Unicron’s life force in the Prime cartoon.
“Macromaster” is a term from previous Beast Wars: Uprising stories, and describes all normal-sized Transformers, in the same vein as Micromasters, with an additional term, Megamaster, describing the large city-sized “Titan” Transformers. Hexima was a city first mentioned in the RISK board game tying into the 2007 Transformers movie; seen as where the Darksyder crime organization held a decent chunk of power, it was noted to be one of the few non-contested Builder cities outside of the north pole of Cybertron in the map published in “Safe Spaces”. The order to allow the Vehicons to enter Builder territory, Vehicon General Order 66, is obviously named for Order 66 from the 2005 film Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine’s secret orders for the Clone Trooper army to execute the Jedi, hinting at what it would actually mean for the story later. We saw the Micromasters infected with the Vehicon nano-plague under the pretense of it being a combat upgrade and being taken as prisoners of war in “Safe Spaces”. Ky-Alexia was first mentioned in DK Publishing’s Transformers: The Movie Guide, tying into the 2007 Transformers movie. Lio Convoy’s Solipsistic Staff was established to have a dampening field all the way back in “Broken Windshields”; it becomes important later. Zoom Out was previously seen in “Broken Windshields”, a full-sized version of the 2007 Transformers movie toyline’s Real Gear Robot camcorder Zoom Out 25X. ER28-0652 was the Allsafe Cybersecurity employee number of Elliot Alderson from the 2015 drama thriller television series Mr. Robot. The final line in this section is an inverted version of the phrase “the revolution will not be televised”; originating from the Black Power movement in 1960’s America, it is most famously remembered as a 1970 song by America jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron.
Section 4: The following two sections were guest written by Jesse Wittenrich, an employee of Fun Publications who had written and drawn several other stories for the company and who had also served as an editor on both Beast Wars: Uprising and the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime. The main characters of these two sections, Magna Stampede and Stockade, are a bit complicated. Magna Stampede was an Autobot unicorn from the Universe toyline (though in practice the term Autobot was used on both Autobot and Maximal characters), redecoed from Beast Machines Battle Unicorn. With an unreleased bio that described him as the latest in a long line of guardians protecting the High Council pavilion states (seemingly termed the “Magna Heritage” here, see later for more on that), he released in a two-pack with his partner Stockade and the Mini-Cons Prowl and Terradive (redecoes of their original Armada toys). Universe Stockade was an Autobot tank, redecoed from the Beast Machines Tank Drone toy, an aggressive bot who was hard to get along with, and one of the few fully-robotic Transformers left on post-reformatting technorganic Cybertron. A male robot in his previous Universe appearance (and in the Wings Universe Facebook page Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur), this version of the character is female, and is implied to be in a somewhat romantic relationship with Magna Stampede. This version of Stockade actually appeared before in “Identity Politics”, a petty criminal as described here, and is a Maximal version of the “Unicron Trilogy” Autobot-aligned Mini-Con Stockade sold in the 2008 Universe toyline as part of the Mini-Con Class 10 Pack sold at Kmart and Meijer, among other locations. Redecoed from the Classics Mini-Con Knockdown, she transforms into a Triceratops.
The Pit is the Cybertronian version of hell, first mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon. The Redox River is a new location, and is named after a real-life chemical reaction (redox standing short for “reduction-oxidation”). Soundbite originally appeared as a transcriptionist in the BotCon 2016 script reading, “The Hot Rod”, created by Wittenrich and John-Paul Bove. She didn’t have any lines in the story, nor did she really do much beyond having her name dropped, so she’s established to be a female Predacon with a carnosaur alternate mode (carnosaurs are a type of theropod dinosaur, to which species like Giganotosaurus belong). In the original script reading, her name was spelt as “Soundbyte,” which was one of the preliminary names for Frenzy in the 2007 Transformers live-action movie. Longhorn, the commander of Magna Stampede’s unit, was a Maximal bull from Beast Machines; he was seen back in “Broken Windshields” as one of the earliest recruits for the Resistance. Magna Stampede’s great aunt Pyra is Pyra Magna, the leader of the Rust Renegades from the Combiner Wars toyline. A retool of Combiner Wars Hot Spot, she transformed into a fire truck, and combined with her teammates to form Victorion. Both Victorion’s packaging bio and IDW Publishing’s comics (where the team were depicted as having formerly been part of the Torchbearers from the Cybertronian colony planet Caminus) linked them to the Rust Sea. Magna Stampede and Pyra Magna’s relationship, meanwhile, calls to mind Rattrap and Arcee; in the Beast Wars episode “Transmutate”, Rattrap invoked Arcee’s name and called her his great-aunt. This line was written as a shout out to Susan Blu, the voice of Arcee in The Transformers: The Movie and the following seasons of the Sunbow The Transformers cartoon, who served as the voice director for Beast Wars and voiced the titular character of that episode; later fiction like the Universe comic and the Legends manga would reintroduce the idea. Triceradon was one of the Dinobots from Beast Machines, a sub-group of Maximals with their own dedicated branding. A redeco of the Beast Wars Neo Predacon Guiledart, Triceradon turned into a Triceratops, and was a male Transformer who served as the team’s second-in-command. This version of the character, however, is female.
Section 5: Stockade’s transformation into a Tank Drone notably include her Universe toy’s colors, a unique element in all those turned into Vehicons. Magna Stampede’s unpublished bio called his axe weapon a vibro-scythe. Hics are a unit of measurement first mentioned in the prose story “The Magnificent Six!” from the Marvel UK Transformers Annual 1991, with microhics being a smaller length ala micrometers. CatSCAN was a BotCon 2002 exclusive, an Autobot tiger redecoed from the Beast Machines Night Slash Cheetor. The original CatSCAN was not a living Transformer, but instead an artificial being that was created by Apelinq giving, an old Autobot medical computer’s artificial intelligence a body via his Transfer Interlink. This version of the character reflects that by being detached and emotionless, despite being a full-blown Cybertronian. He previously showed up in “Broken Windshields” as one of the participants of the final Game before the Grand Uprising, as he mentions. He’s accompanied by two Predacons. The first, recognizable from his description as “burgundy, yellow, and lime green,” is Beetle, one of the 1996 Beast Wars McDonald’s promotion, a simple figure who turned into a stag beetle. The other, as confirmed by Wittenrich, is fellow stag beetle Insecticon, from the first year of the Beast Wars toyline. Like CatSCAN, he was one of the contestants in the final Game from “Broken Windshields”. Notably, Beetle was given the name “Insecticon” in Japan in the guidebook Beast Wars Perfect Book. Spark extraction is generally fatal if not performed properly, as seen in the Beast Wars cartoon.
Section 6: The Hydrax Plateau was an area of Cybertron first mentioned in the DK Publishing guidebook Transformers: The Ultimate Guide; it has appeared a few times before now, most notably in “Not All Megatrons”. Polyhex was a Decepticon-held city first seen in issue #17 of the Marvel The Transformers comic. The Gung-Ho, first mentioned in “Intersectionality”, was mentioned as having destroyed Cybertron’s satellite network in “Safe Spaces”; the Gung-Ho itself was the ship of the Maximals from Beast Wars Neo, as lead by the gruff Maxmial wooly mammoth Big Convoy. Notably, Big Convoy isn’t actually named that in the Beast Wars: Uprising universe, presumably to distance him from Lio Convoy. Instead, he’s named Slammoth, one of the options for a name from the 2015 Combiner Wars Fan Built Combiner poll, which lost to Victorion. The Iacon Communication Service was introduced in IDW Publishing’s Robots in Disguise mini-series, and was mentioned in “Not All Megatrons”. Radio Free Cybertron, meanwhile, was first mentioned in “Broken Windshields”, and was named both for Radio Free Europe, a Cold War to modern day American propaganda program, and the real-life podcast Radio Free Cybertron, a Transformers fan podcast and one of the earliest podcasts in the world. Maximal Nation’s propaganda channel, Voice of Maximals, is named for Voice of America, a federally-owned news network established by the United States during World War II, which still exists to this day. Optimal, the director of VoM, is seemingly a version of Beast Wars Optimus Primal’s Optimal Optimus form, the large figure that turned from gorilla to jet to armored vehicle, separate from Optimus himself. Optimus Primal was mentioned as having been killed by Blackarachnia and Nightscream in the former’s bio in issue #25 of the Transformers Collector’s Club magazine all the way back in 2009; the mystery surrounding Optimal might suggest that he actually is Optimus Primal, with a new name and Beast Upgrade form.
Section 7: As mentioned, the Ex-Bots (a group of Maximals, Predacons, and Micromasters who banded together to protect civilians during the war, loosely based on Marvel’s X-Men), set up their base of operations in Proximax back in “Cultural Appropriation”. Several of the beast modes mentioned here, including chelonoids (Cybertronian turtles, from the Greek work chelonian), DeathEagles (Cybertronian versions of eagles) and Jurassanoids (Cybertronian animals analogous to dinosaurs, derived from the time period known as the Jurassic era) were also first mentioned in that story. Tarantulas last appeared in Beast Wars: Uprising in “Trigger Warnings” as a member of the Predacon Secret Police, a scientist who used their resources for subversive purposes; he’s since gone rogue, adopting a spiderbot beast mode (presumably, his Transmetal body). Spiderbots were the Japanese name for Tarantulas’ small Arachnoid drones in the Beast Wars cartoon, though it was also used in pre-production material to refer to pest animals encountered in the War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video games. The D.E.D. plant mentioned is the Dynamic Energon Distilleries plant that Megatron and Scorponok once worked at, as seen in “Identity Politics”, having been abandoned 25 years ago after the pair engineered a meltdown to cover up their crimes. Hightower was shown to have initially led the Constructicons in “Cultural Appropriation”; “square-chip-in-round-socket” is obviously equivalent to “square-peg-in-round-hole.” Buckethead uses a lot of fairly generic British slang, so I won’t get too bogged down in the details unless it’s something really specific. Lord Imperious Delirious was seen back in “Alone Together” and “Intersectionality”, which is where Bazooka and Crazybolt encountered him; keep a pin on his name… Metascan Omega (or LGC-8803 was the planet on which Delirious had set up operations, obviously named in counter to Metascan Alpha, the home of the Logicons from issue #3 of Blackthorne Publishing’s The Transformers in 3-D. In “Intersectionality”, Delirious killed Hard Head, Bazooka and Crazybolt’s comrade, and used his body to bring his Destructon minion Bruton back online.
Grimlock, after his attempt to use the G-Virus in Tesarus back in “Micro-Aggressions”, was captured and taken in by the Builders, where Tarantulas has stolen him from; he’s gotten a Beast Upgrade from his triple-changing Maximal body to one that’s described as a mechanical version of his Beast Wars toy, and while he’s seemingly under the control of the Robo-Smasher, he’s using the caveman-esque speech patterns that the character was depicted with in the original The Transformers cartoon. The Robo-Smasher (or robosmasher as spelt in the script) was a device used by Megatron to reprogram Transformers into Decepticons loyal to him, as seen in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “The Secret of Omega Supreme”. Bastion-three, meanwhile, is presumably part of the Bastion penal facility series; Bastion-five lock-up was where Grimlock was imprisoned after returning to Cybertron in issue #87 of IDW Publishing’s Regeneration One series. Snapper’s reaction to Grimlock is because he was originally a member of the Autobot-turn-Maximal’s unit in the Resistance, who had looked up to him until he had attempted to use the G-Virus on civilians, which caused him to abandon the Resistance and turn himself in to the Builders.
Section 8: I figure you probably know what the Oracle is by now, since it’s shown up so much; it gathered the Ex-Bots together back in “Cultural Appropriation”. We’ll find out eventually what Rampage was up to while this was going down. Decacycles are a unit of measurement dating back to the Beast Wars cartoon; it’s been a bit ill-defined how long it is, but it’s roughly around 10 days generally. Equilibrium circuits were first mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1”. Webhead is an insult commonly used by the foes of Marvel superhero Spider-Man against him. Since “Cultural Appropriation”, Stilletto has gone from gaining impressions from the ghost of Overshoot to being able to full-on communicate with him. Tarantulas mentions having recovered the Robo-Smasher from Iacon’s abandoned Maximal Command Security Force station, presumably meaning that it is the same Robo-Smasher used by Overrun back in “Trigger Warnings”. Grimlock simply shrugging off the effects of the Robo-Smasher and quipping about obfuscation seems like a loving homage to the way Simon Furman writes the character (one of his self-admitted favorites), particularly in the era of Dreamwave Productions and The War Within. Mech-fluid is the Transformer equivalent of blood, first mentioned in the Beast Wars cartoon. Stasis-cuffs are restraining devices first seen in the Animated cartoon. “Mad as a turbo-hatter” is equivalent to the phrase “mad as a hatter” (first recorded in an 1829 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine). Nova Cronum was first seen in Dreamwave Productions’ The Dark Ages mini-series; it was shown to be where the Grand Mal was located in “Not All Megatrons”.
Section 9: We’re back right where “Safe Spaces” ends now, with Preditron, Cheetor, and Ser-Ket escaping from Protihex and the Vehicon attack there. The Sonic Canyons were a location first mentioned in the tech specs of 1988 Autobot Headmaster Siren. Star Dasher and Autojetter were introduced in “Safe Spaces”, and so I won’t go into them. Star Dasher’s Resistance transport number, ZN-4720, is one of the very few alphanumerical strings I haven’t been able to find while I’ve been researching for these annotations. If you have any ideas, please let me know!
Section 10: Movor and his comrades (Jeepers, Dangar, Ro-Tor, and Mega-Dolrailer) are the Commandos from the 2001 Robots in Disguise series. There, they were originally a group of Autobots sent to Earth to find Fortress Maximus, but their stasis pods were found by Megatron, and they, along with Scourge, were reprogrammed into Decepticons. Here, they’re depicted as Maximals; in the original Japanese cartoon that Robots in Disguise was adapted from, Car Robots, the Autobots in that series were from the future era seen in the Japanese original series Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, on the Maximal-controlled Cybertron, and so, they’re made to be proto-race Transformers here, rather than Builders. The Commandos (known as the Combatrons in Car Robots) were redecos of the original Combaticon toys and combined to form Ruination; while Movor and Ro-Tor both use their English names, Jeepers, Dangar, and Mega-Dolrailer either use their Japanese names or modified versions of them, which I’ll go into. Movor was a redeco of Blast Off, turning into a space shuttle. Jeepers was known as Rollbar in Robots in Disguise and as Greejeeber in Car Robots, and is probably named as such to distinguish him from the Throttlebot jeep of the same name; he’s a redeco of Swindle, and turns into a jeep. Dangar (known in Robots in Disguise as Armorhide; perhaps the Armada Mini-Con or the Cybertron Autobot has that name in this universe) was a redeco of Brawl and turned into a tank. Ro-Tor was an attack helicopter redecoed from Vortex. And finally, Mega-Dolrailer (only mentioned in the story rather than physically appearing, he was known as Mega-Octane in Robots in Disguise and Dolrailer in Car Robots; it seems to serve to distance him a bit more from the Generation 1 Decepticon triple-changer) was a redeco of Onslaught, who turned into a flatbed army truck. The four smaller members of the team (the arms and legs of Ruination) are depicted here as having volunteered to be upgraded into K-bomb forms. As such, the Commandoes are some of the few proto-race Transformers left who do not have a beast mode. The K-Class were Decepticon weapons introduced in IDW Publishing’s More than Meet the Eye series; they were Decepticons who were modified to transform into extremely powerful bombs, being launched from high in the air. In the comics, many K-Class Decepticons were involuntary ones, taken from penal colonies for crimes like deserting the war effort, and so they were conditioned to turn into bombs the second they jumped from the bomber that carried them, overriding any self-preservation instinct. Movor and the others are depicted as virtual retools of Combiner Wars Shockwave, with his laser gun mode repurposed as a bomb. This also serves as a reference to an early plan for a BotCon 2016 exclusive set, using the alternate Reflector head of the mold to create a multi-pack of generic K-Class troopers, with stickers that could turn them into two of the known K-Class Decepticons, Fulcrum and Torque. That plan didn’t work out, however, and instead the three-pack was simply Reflector himself.
Jeepers love of rainy days was mentioned in his Car Robots tech specs. Dreadrock, the lobotomized Autobot jet carrying Jeepers and Movor, is a Generation 1 version of Cybertron Jetfire, who was known in the Japanese version of the series, Galaxy Force, as Dreadrock; he transformed into a large cargo jet. We saw that the Resistance was using Builders locked in vehicle mode and lobotomized as transport with Star Dasher in “Safe Spaces”. Eagle Killer, the Maximal pilot of Dreadrock, is another Maximal version of a Car Robots/Robots in Disguise Autobot: in his case, he's a version of the Autobot Spychanger Lamborghini Diablo R.E.V. (short for “Race Exertion Vehicle”), a redeco of Generation 2 Go-Bot Firecracker who was known as Eagle Killer in Japan. He appears to have taken a bird beast mode, judging by his description. The Forever Vaults were originally mentioned in the Wings Universe Facebook page Tornado – Decepticon Saboteur and was previously seen as where the G-Virus was stored in “Micro-Aggressions”. Operation Amputation, the codename for the Resistance’s initial attempt to bomb the Vehicon threat, doesn’t appear to be a reference to anything as far as I can tell. Movor’s belief that he might have become a combiner obviously refers back to Ruination; Pretender technology (the gimmick from the 1988 and 1989 range of the original toyline, Transformers who hid their mechanical bodies inside organic shells) were mentioned as having been developed by Galvatron in an attempt to destroy the rapidly advancing Human Confederacy; having nearly succeeded, it indicated that the technology was extremely dangerous. Wing Saber, the transport that carried Dangar to Carpessa, was another Autobot jet from Cybertron, an A-10 Thunderbolt II anti-tank aircraft.
On page 25, we have an illustration from Guido Guidi, showing Movor launching into Protihex from Dreadrock. I think the grey-green Transformer Movor sees being converted into a Vehicon is just a generic.
Section 11: Cyber-venom originates from Beast Wars, most notably with Tarantulas and Blackarachnia both using it. The tech speaking in hashtags here is Break, the Maximal penguin from Beast Wars Neo, who previously showed up with this odd speech pattern in “Broken Windshields” as one of Lio Convoy’s earliest recruits. His beast-mode is called an arcti-avianoid; avianoids are a term for Cybertronian birds, derived from “avian”, while “arcti” is obviously derived from Antarctica, the continent where the majority of penguin species live. Boron compressors are a part of Cybertronian anatomy mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “War of the Dinobots”; while there it was used in a manner that equated it to the butt (“Brilliant, my boron compressor!”), here it seems more equivalent to the gut. Bump is another Beast Wars Neo character, a Maximal armadillo scientist redecoed from the first year Beast Wars Maximal Armordillo, much like Psycho-Orb. His beast mode (and Psycho-Orb plus several others like Overshoot) is called an armodrillo, a species first mentioned in “Cultural Appropriation” and named after the character Armodrillo, one of cartoon superhero Ben 10’s new alien forms in his third cartoon series, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Nuon (aka Nuon City) was first mentioned in the pilot episode of the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon, having supposedly been eaten by the Decepticon Underbite. Movor’s sarcastic nature comes from the Robots in Disguise episode “Attack from Outer Space”. Rodimus’ Folly was first mentioned in “Safe Spaces”, a massive crater that is implied to be the reason why Beast Wars: Uprising Hot Rod is no longer a Prime. The Xithricite Intrusion is presumably a geological formation; Xithricite is a mineral from the 2004 MMO Vendetta Online. The Floron tributary is named for Floron, one of the Decepticon leaders seen in the Hall of Heroes in The Transformers: The Movie, named for his creator Floro Dery; he’s been mentioned several times before, most notably as a statue in Double Punch’s possession in “Identity Politics”. The Timonium River, meanwhile, is named for a river that comes from the Liaden universe, made up of a series of science-fiction novels by American written by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Grimwing was another of the Predacons from the Prime: Beast Hunters toyline, a warrior with a highly developed sense of honor and chivalry, who turned into an “ursagryph” (a cross between a bear and a hawk that is supposedly Hasbro designer Lenny Panzica, although records of it existing prior to Grimwing are extremely hard to find).
Section 12: Back to Preditron and the others. Tyrest was a city first seen in issue #164 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic; it noted to be part of the Tagon Heights annexed by the Maximals for the Maximal Nation in “Safe Spaces”. Transformers: The Ultimate Guide established that the Sonic Canyons’ actual purpose was for gathering information across the galaxy, scanning and collected it for Vector Sigma which processed it for Primus, the god of the Transformers (who I’ve gone over plenty by this point, but just one more time I’ll note he was created by Simon Furman and Jeff Anderson, first appearing issue #150 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic). Cybercats are a term referring to various Cybertronian felines, first mentioned in the Cybertron cartoon episode “Challenge”. Nightglider was a Transmetal 2 Maximal flying squirrel, released in 1999 as part of the fourth year of the Beast Wars toyline. His alternate mode is called a sciuridon, taken from Sciuridae, the taxonomic family of animals to which all squirrels belong to. His partner, Wedge Shape, was a Maximal hawk (her tech specs labelled her as a Predacon, which the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime addressed, though it’s ignored here) sold as a promotional figure at BIC Camera stores in Japan in 2007; she’s a redeco of the Decepticon-aligned Mini-Con Dreadwing from the Classics toyline. Her alt-mode is described as a techno-hawk, a species first mentioned in “Burning Bridges”.
Section 13: Back to the Resistance, as they prepare to make a stand at Lower Petrohex. This section’s main character, Twinstrike, was one of the Predacons released in the Prime: Beast Hunters Cyberverse range of smaller figures. He was a new version of the Generation 1 Terrorcon Sinnertwin, renamed for trademark reasons at the time, and turned into a two-headed dragon, and could also combine with the new Predacon versions of his old Terrorcon teammates to form Abominus. Here, he’s a distinct character from the Decepticon Sinnertwin. Legend Marjora is a version of Legend Convoy, a high-ranking Maximal first seen in the aforementioned BotCon 2016 script reading “The Hot Rod”; she was created by Jesse Wittenrich and John-Paul Bove, voiced by Venus Terzo, and implied to turn into a reindeer, as she had antlers. Like Big Convoy/Slammoth before her, she’s been renamed to distance herself from Lio Convoy; however, the antlers are instead interpreted as being those seen on some depictions of European dragons, as Majora is an evil entity inhabiting a mask from the 2000 video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, depicted in some tie-in material as having originally had a dragon-like form. Dragoyell was a promotional Mini-Con dragon tying into the Takara Beast Wars Telemocha Series of reissued Beast Wars toys, sold as a prize in the September 2007 issue of TV Magazine, redecoed from Classics Autobot Mini-Con Nightscream. The term Tri-Torus was first used in issue #4 of Dreamwave Productions The War Within, with the Tri-Torus Loop road in Iacon, Uraya, and an unknown third city; The AllSpark Almanac II later used the term as analogous to “tri-state area”. The one here is made up of Petrohex, Polyhex, and Dodecahex, a city first seen in issue #1 of 3H Productions’ The Wreckers comic series at BotCon 2001, and was previously seen in “Broken Windshields” as the location of the final pre-Grand Uprising game. Twinstrike’s Piston Hammer comes from the original Beast Hunters Twinstrike toy. Spittor was a Predacon poison arrow frog from the second year of the Beast Wars toyline in 1997; the description of him as being “crimson” rather than the classic blue suggests that his Beast Upgrade body is that of the “Transmetal” redeco of his original toy sold exclusively in Europe in 1998, packaged with a Beast Wars episode on VHS. Judora was one of the Predacon Four Oni from the Japanese Go! series, a sequel to Prime that ignored the events of the third season, instead telling a story about a battle between Autobots and Predacons who had secretly hid in Japan for centuries. A Predacon with a gentleman demeanor that hid boiling rage, he was retool of the Beast Hunters Skystalker toy and turned into a dragon. Snow Cat was another Universe 2008 Mini-Con sold in the Mini-Con 10-Pack, a Decepticon-aligned white tiger redecoed from Classics Snarl. Helex was a Decepticon-held city first seen in issue #213 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. Evac, the lobotomized builder transporting Twinstrike and his comrades, is a version of the Autobot from the 2007 Transformers movie toyline, a retool and redeco of Blackout who turned into a rescue helicopter-colored Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low (not the Cybertron version he was loosely inspired by, as that Evac was orangish-yellow and navy blue, rather than orange and white). Coelagon was one of the Seacons from Beast Wars II, an older Predacon with a habit for making up tall tales and falling asleep, he turned into a mechanical coelacanth and was a redeco of the 1988 Seacon Skalor. Tungsten-turkeys were mentioned in the Facebook incarnation of Ask Vector Prime.
The big gimmick with this section is that when Twinstrike turns into his two-headed beast mode, the story splits into two columns running simultaneously, one for the perspective of the left head and one for the right. Rather than trying to do both at the same time, I’m going to go down the left column first, and then the right. Starting with the left column: ro-simians are Cybertronian primates. The name might be a reference to Ro-Man, the bizarre robot with a gorilla body from the infamous 1953 science fiction B-movie Robot Monster. I think the Maximal ro-simian and the teal-grey Predacon with an autocannon are just generics. Cybertanium is a material mentioned in various ancillary media for 2009’s Revenge of the Fallen, such as the Cyber Missions web cartoon. Phlogiston, meanwhile, was originally a real-world term from the seventeenth century that described an element that caused combustion, eventually superseded by later chemists and other scientists with modern understanding of thermodynamics. In the world of the Transformers, however, it’s been used to describe an extremely flammable and explosive substance, starting with the tech specs of BotCon 2011 Animated Wildrider. CCCXIX is the Roman numeral form of 319. Bantor was a Fuzor Maximal from the third year of the Beast Wars toyline in 1998, who transformed into a tiger/mandrill hybrid. Hadean is the sun of Cybertron, first mentioned in the semi-canonical novella Alignment, and later incorporated in The AllSpark Almanac II. Amphiboids were frog-like Transformers introduced in the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon. Mechanometers were a unit of measurement first mentioned in the Sunbow The Transformers episode “City of Steel”.
Section 14: Characters have been depicted as storing items in subspace in several stories before now, so I won’t get too deep into it. Engex was a beverage first mentioned in “Bullets”, a prose story included in the trade paperback collection of IDW Publishing’s Last Stand of the Wreckers mini-series. Hellhounds were canine creatures first seen in issue #237 of the Marvel UK The Transformers comic. And so, we conclude part one.
Part 2: