Controverse

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I just can't believe all the things people say - Controverse
"Controverse" コントロバース
Publisher	Million Publishing
Published in	Transformers Generations 2014 Vol. 1
First published	May 16, 2014
Story & art by	Hirofumi Ichikawa
Continuity	Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity
Chronology	2011 (before the events of The Headmasters)

Transformers from across the multiverse gather to witness the trial of Primacron.

Synopsis

After much deliberation, the time has finally come for the ancient genius Primacron to be brought to trial over the terror he wrought upon the galaxy by creating Tornedron. Selecting a judge has proven difficult, but the Quintesson Judge Adveraros has been chosen to adjudicate the proceedings—a decision that sits ill with Hot Rod and Crosscut.

At the same time, the Prowl and Wheeljack of the BT World have travelled over to the OG World in order to collect some medical equipment. However, when Overdrive attempts to send the duo back to the BT World with his Quantum Dial, they find they have been locked out of their home dimension. Though concerned about the cause of this, Prowl and Wheeljack are at least relieved that they have friends and allies in this dimension, and formally request that Optimus Prime allow them to join his ranks. Prime accepts them in, and they are reconfigured into new bodies which match the appearance of the deceased Prowl and Wheeljack of the OG World timeline.

Primacron's trial is convened at the Galactic Court on the planet Millaath. Tigertrack and Stripes play security, keeping an eye on the crowd; Tigertrack detects many time-travellers and dimension-hoppers from across the multiverse, who have all gathered for the momentous event. The Autobots are on edge, fearing the crowd will riot if Adveraros—untrustworthy by his very nature as a Quintesson—does not give a fair trial, but the five-faced judge remains admirably neutral, even when Primacron freely admits to the creation of Unicron, who he identifies as the predecessor of all mechanical life in the universe. "Acts of Unicron", however, were long ago ruled to be natural disasters, so legally, Primacron cannot be held accountable for the planet-eater's actions, and thanks to Grimlock destroying Primacron's lab, there is not enough physical evidence to link him to Tornedron. Adveraros is forced to declare Primacron "not guilty", but rules that, given his mental state and the potential danger of retribution from victims of Tornedron and Unicron, the scientist will be committed to the asylum planet of Doruka III. A surprised Hot Rod considers the ruling pretty fair, but Wheeljack and Prowl recognize the true intent behind it: in the BT World timeline, the Quintessons ran an organ-harvesting operation on Doruka III, and are only sending Primacron there so they can harvest his brain!

Optimus Prime orders the Autobots to move in and stop the trial. Sideswipe pile-drives his way into the courtroom... when at the exact same moment, Rumble does the same, followed by Frenzy, Ravage, and Laserbeak! Sideswipe thinks the Decepticons are working with the Quintessons, but they have actually arrived to capture Primacron for their own ends. More Decepticons attack outside the courtroom, and as the crowd evacuates, a Quintesson bailiff moves to shove Primacron into the portal that will teleport him to Doruka III, only to discover that the scientist has removed his electronic handcuffs and converted them into a high-tech whistle. A single blow of the whistle ensorcells the minds of all the "Primitive" Transformers in earshot and puts them under Primacron's command, including Stripes, Ravage, Laserbeak... and all the Quintessons' Sharkticons!

A short time later, the Autobots burst into the courtroom to discover that Primacron has merely subdued Adveraros, and now talks with him. The little scientist considers the ease with which he has controlled the minds of the Transformers to be proof that he is their "god", progenitor of all mechanical life, but the Quintesson refuses to believe such nonsense: yes, in some universes, mechanical life is known to have been created by divine forces, but he refuses to believe that Primacron is such a force. The alien smirks, and tells the Quintesson that, after building Unicron, he created a kind of robotic life that was able to multiply on its own, which looked an awful lot like the Quintessons, but the judge furiously dismisses his words as lies. With the fighting over, the Autobots apprehend Primacron.

Back on Cybertron, the Autobots take Primacron to the ancient Quintesson teleportation chamber below the planet's surface, intending to send him to another universe. Primacron accepts this fate; having now enshrined himself as a "mythical" figure in this universe, he knows he will no longer be able to operate in peace, and is interested to see what other worlds are out there. Before the teleporter is activated, Wheeljack asks one last question of the little alien: he claims to be the originator of robotic life, but what, then, does that say about the Transformers' existence? Are they truly living beings—can a soul be artificially created? Primacron mulls the question over, and responds with an analogy: a being may know how to build a fire... but that being did not create fire, merely brought into being something that is part of nature. The teleporter activates and Primacron disappears, leaving Bumblebee baffled, but Wheeljack pleasantly satisfied.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

Continuity notes

• Officially, this story transpires in the gap between season 3 of the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon and The Headmasters. Years later, "The Road to Legends' Revival Chapter 2" would clarify that it took place in early 2011. Unofficially, writer-artist Hirofumi Ichikawa, who famously prefers Western Transformers storytelling, wrote the strip with the intent that it could fit into US cartoon continuity, where he would instead place it in late 2008.^[1]
• Primacron previously appeared in the Generation 1 cartoon episode "Call of the Primitives", in which he created Tornedron and had his lab destroyed by Grimlock. This was also the episode in which it was revealed that he built Unicron, and created "primitives" "near the beginning of the galaxy." This story expands on the implication of that line, interpreting it to mean that Primacron was consequently the distant progenitor of all mechanical life in the galaxy, including the Quintessons, and through them, the Transformers. As creators themselves, it's logical that the proud Quintessons would reject the idea that they were someone else's science project.
• The story does not go into any detail, but the reason that Overdrive, Prowl, and Wheeljack are locked out of the BT World must surely be because of the quadrant lock that the Quintessons of their reality placed on Earth's solar system in 2010, as we learned in the final chapter of the Alternity storyline.
• Binaltech Prowl and Wheeljack take the places of their "OG World" counterparts, who died during The Transformers: The Movie. Nearly ten years after an abortive attempt by the Binaltech storyline to offer resolution, this move fffffffffffffinally plugs the famous Japanese continuity errors that saw Prowl and Wheeljack appear alive and well in The Headmasters and Victory.
  • A year later, Ichikawa would utilize this story as the jumping-off point of a post in the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime to explain the continuity mysteries of Prowl II and Prowl 2, further fulfilling what he would have done if Binaltech had run longer.
• The time-travellers attending the trial include Heinrad (revealed in the Beast Wars Neo comic to be an agent of the god-like Ruler of Time and Space), Optimus Primal (agent of the Alternity, as seen in Story of Binaltech), and Elita-5 (an earlier incarnation of Elita-7, another of the Alternity's operatives, seen in the Alternity storyline).
• The interdimensional Quintesson teleportation chamber appeared in the Generation 1 episode "Madman's Paradise". Rewind helped find it and deduce its function in that episode, so it would make sense for him to pop up on the final page here; less explicable is the appearance of Hubcap, who wasn't in the Generation 1 cartoon at all, and has literally appeared in only one piece of Japanese G1 continuity fiction before now.

Transformers references

• Almost every character who appears in this story is a Masterpiece toy, and appear drawn to those toy's specifications. Some small pieces of past fiction have depicted Masterpiece bodies as upgrades or new bodies taken on by characters, but here, it is apparent that they are supposed to simply represent the cartoon characters as they have always looked.
• Bumblebee is seen carrying his Pretender helmet, with Ichikawa's unofficial intent being that the helmet is an early experiment preceding his full adoption of a Pretender shell, hence the theoretical "late 2008" setting: Pretender Bumblebee's toy was released in 1989, and adding the 20-year time jump from The Transformers: The Movie gives us a date of 2009 for Bumblebee becoming a Pretender in universe.^[1] Subsequent Japanese media would instead take the helmet as evidence Bumblebee is already a Pretender by the events of "Controverse", which would be established in a flashback taking place before this story in the Generations Selects Special Comic. While there had been previous precedent of Classic Pretender battles taking place in the Japanese cartoon continuity, they would not occur until several decades past this point in the timeline, and Bumblebee had other things to do first (see Errors, below).
• When Elita-7 appeared in the Alternity storyline, she had a Synthoid body, which implied she had gone through seven upgrades from her original Transformer body (she was originally the Japanese incarnation of Energon Arcee). This story offers us a look at her fifth form, Elita-5, which is that of a Kreon styled after her Dark of the Moon toy.
• Adveraros talks about how the idea of there being a "god" who creates mechanical life is known in other universes, but not this one. He is, of course, referring to Primus, and the multiverse-wide origin story that identifies him as the creator-god of the Transformer race. The Generation 1 cartoon continuity has always stood apart from most other Transformers fiction in this regard, having been written before the idea of Primus even existed; the show's decision to have the Quintessons be the Transformers' creators has subsequently been subject to revision and re-writing to make it fit with the Primus origin story in other continuities, but this story instead leans into it, crediting everything to Primacron. But, of course, in the final panels of the story, Primacron's response to Wheeljack's question leaves the matter open: Primacron may have known how to bring a spark into being in his lab, but whence did that spark come...? This is not the first time Primacron's works have been linked to Primus; the Kiss Players series established that it was his assistant who was the Japanese cartoon universe's incarnation of Primus, and whose power it was that brought Primacron's creations to life.

Errors

• Goldbug showing up as Bumblebee and a Pretender at this point in the timeline, despite only just becoming Goldbug in the season 3 finale, creates a bit of a continuity headache, especially when his next chronological appearances in the Kiss Players radio drama and The Headmasters cartoon have him reappear as Goldbug again. As mentioned further up on this page, he does eventually get rebuilt into Bumblebee again, but it's not until much later. The only logical explanation for this is that he switches back and forth between bodies. Why he does this, is yet to be explained.
• Sticking with Bumblebee, he's got yellow shoulders on page 6, instead of black.
• The Quintesson Bailiffs in this comic use the incorrect color scheme previously shown on this wiki.

References

External links

• Translation of "Controverse" at Soundwave's Oblivion