Reimagining Quintessons

[Sabrblade]

Early G1 suggested that transformers "discovered" the ability to transform; but this seems problematic.

What was actually said in the cartoon was that the art of transformation was invented by the early Autobots in order to combat the might of the early Decepticons with stealth tactics.

And this was at a point long after the Quintessons had already been kicked off the planet, meaning their rule of Cybertron predated the invention of transformation by a long time.

 

[Badgertron]

What was actually said in the cartoon was that the art of transformation was invented by the early Autobots in order to combat the might of the early Decepticons with stealth tactics.

And this was at a point long after the Quintessons had already been kicked off the planet, meaning their rule of Cybertron predated the invention of transformation by a long time.

Yes, that's what I was trying to get at. This was in War Dawn wasn't it? Or maybe FFOD? It was the Cybertronians gaining sentience during their enslavement that allowed them to rebel and drive off the Quintessons. I guess this also might indicate that there were never too many Quintessons to begin with, as well.

 

[Sabrblade]

This was in War Dawn wasn't it? Or maybe FFOD?

The latter. Quintessons didn't exist yet as a concept prior to TFTM.

 

[Glitch]

They may have got the idea for transformation from when A3 travelled into the future witnessing transforming cybertronians in 'Forever is a long time coming', and Beta and the rebels working with some during the rebellion.

 

[LordGigaIce]

What was actually said in the cartoon was that the art of transformation was invented by the early Autobots in order to combat the might of the early Decepticons with stealth tactics.

And this was at a point long after the Quintessons had already been kicked off the planet, meaning their rule of Cybertron predated the invention of transformation by a long time.

Not only that, but the first Cybertronian we see transforming after it's explained that Autobots invented the process is Sentinel Prime, ie Optimus' immediate predecessor. So either Sentinel himself invented it or it was invented during his tenure, either way Sentinel is a hero and you should all be ashamed the ability to transform is actually relatively recent for Cybertronians in the Sunbow continuity.

 

[NovaSaber]

"Five Faces of Darkness" doesn't give dates for any past events, but both "Forever is a Long Time Coming" and "War Dawn" do.

Transforming was invented between nine and eleven million years ago (probably toward the middle of that range), and Cybertron hasn't been free from the Quintessons for longer than eleven million. So I'd call that early in their history.

It's only "relatively recent" in the sense that a good number of characters are almost that old. But that applies to Quintesson rule too.

 

[LordGigaIce]

"Five Faces of Darkness" doesn't give dates for any past events, but both "Forever is a Long Time Coming" and "War Dawn" do.

Transforming was invented between nine and eleven million years ago (probably toward the middle of that range), and Cybertron hasn't been free from the Quintessons for longer than eleven million. So I'd call that early in their history.

It's only "relatively recent" in the sense that a good number of characters are almost that old. But that applies to Quintesson rule too.

I'm basing it off of context clues.
We see Sentinel transform during a voiceover explaining how the Autobots invented the art of Transformation, and he beats down Trannis, who appears to be the Decepticon leader pre-Megatron.

They talk about the Decepticons adopted the technique of transformation as well, and we cut to Megatron being built. Then he runs out of... wherever... he was built and stats shooting people. Sentinel gets taken out and the voiceover says he passes the Matrix to Alpha Trion who keeps it "for years" until a new Autobot leader can be found. Alpha Trion, by the way, is shown to look older here in this scene then he does in War Dawn, which canonically occurs at least "a few years" later.

War Dawn's events, however, can't have been that far off though, since in War Dawn Orion Pax is all "GOLLY GEE I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET THAT MEGATRON HE SEEMS SWELL" and dismisses the stories of Megatron causing havoc as rumors.

 

[KingSwoop]

What was actually said in the cartoon was that the art of transformation was invented by the early Autobots in order to combat the might of the early Decepticons with stealth tactics.

And this was at a point long after the Quintessons had already been kicked off the planet, meaning their rule of Cybertron predated the invention of transformation by a long time.

This was the story in S1-2. But Quintessons have transforming Cybertronians working for them, so inference to the best explanation suggests they could always transform. MAYBE they forgot (... uh... like the G2 Swarm/Budding forgetting?), but like all longstorm, multiauthor storytelling, either you try to resolve inconsistencies like this or you ignore them.

Yes, that's what I was trying to get at. This was in War Dawn wasn't it? Or maybe FFOD? It was the Cybertronians gaining sentience during their enslavement that allowed them to rebel and drive off the Quintessons. I guess this also might indicate that there were never too many Quintessons to begin with, as well.

We saw the beginning of the rebellion. Having them "gain sentience" is demeaning no matter how you look at it.

Frankly it's easy to imagine Confederate slaves rebelling and the confederate slaveowner saying "Oh no, they've gained sentience!" No, they've always had sentience, that's what makes them so good at the [things human beings do].

I think it's fair to say that Quintessons used some form of shell programing on transformers; if we take Beast Wars somewhat literally, then a shell program is a "physical" thing surrounding a spark (as opposed to, say, part of the brain module?); this sure seems like it's "unnatural"; so we could posit that it's a remanent of the Quintesson equivalent of "bioengineering" (so... cyberengineering?).

I've always been a fan of the idea that Quintessons used shell programs to limit a transformer's ability to conceive of renewable energy sources (like, say, solar panels), as this would keep them enslaved to Quintessons. Admittedly, they seemed to go a long time w/o renewable energy resources... but have you seen Humans? (Also, I think it's pretty clear that G1 S1 is a commentary on the late 70s oil crisis. But I digress.)

 

[Destron D-69]

I've honestly never really thought about pinning down the timeline of events in g1 cartoon continuity... that whole thing is a bit messy. The fact that it's intentionally "so long ago that its basically mythic" by the time we come into the story, for me always added to the scale of time and just how all consuming the great war was.

like in the mini-series we watch the tfs spend millions of years in stasis and my little kid brain is like "OMG everything they knew about their home is gone" and then later on Megatron rings up Shockwave and everything has just carried on the way it was back on cybertron and then I'm like "holy crap that's sad. You'd think without the main bad guy being there maybe they'd have come to a peace agreement in all that time." .... and then we learn the war has been going on for so long that the ark nap is basically just a hiccup in the war... and then you learn that there was a war before the war ..but with the Quints....

lol it all just gets a bit VAST and impenetrable, and I guess I just put it aside. Nice to see you all having a really good think about it though, been a fun read

 

[LordGigaIce]

This was the story in S1-2.

No, it was season three. The episode that reveals that the Autobots invented transformation after the Quintessons left was Five Faces of Darkness Part 4, which was part of the multi-episode arc that kicked off season three.

We saw the beginning of the rebellion. Having them "gain sentience" is demeaning no matter how you look at it.

Frankly it's easy to imagine Confederate slaves rebelling and the confederate slaveowner saying "Oh no, they've gained sentience!" No, they've always had sentience, that's what makes them so good at the [things human beings do].

That's a bad comparison, and the last line explains why.
Confederate slave owners going "oh no the slaves gained sentience!" is demeaning and bigoted because their slaves- Americans of Black African descent- were always human. Of course they always had sentience.

In the case of the Cybertronian rebellion against the Quintessons- at least as far as the G1 Sunbow show goes- the Cybertronians didn't always have sentience. They were specifically referred to as "consumer goods" and "military hardware" who were imbued with a primitive sort of AI program that later evolved into sentience. The story being told in G1 is a basic "rise of AI" story. Machines don't have sentience until it develops.

 

[lastmaximal]

Well, from a Quintesson perspective that might be more the case. They'd be more in a position (and of an inclination) to dehuman(oid)ize like that. Separating "Transformers as just machines" from "Transformers as living characters we're meant to relate to" is a tricky thing to do. Even Toy Story has the toys always being sentient (and I think even Forky is almost immediately that).

But yeah, gaining sentience is an odd thing to have happen in the middle of Quintesson occupation, for a range of reasons. It's not quite like Skynet where machines gaining sentience is the beginning of the end; here sentient robots are meant to be ones we see the story through.

I prefer the notion that Transformer society existed pre-Quintessons, which presupposes sentience. Then as part of the subjugation, the Quints put blocks in place that temporarily removed access to that sentience (maybe it was cheaper or simpler than creating brand new brain modules that didn't have it or the potential for it at all).

The uprising may then come about thanks to the restoration or re-accessing of this (another way to use "class consciousness", I guess) and a movement to spread it across the other slaves, rather than developing it for the first time.

 

[Glitch]

Here's the clip to clear things up.

They began with simulated intelligence endowed by the Quintessons.

 

[Sabrblade]

But Quintessons have transforming Cybertronians working for them,

Not in the past, they didn't. Rewatching both the video Glitch posted and the episode "Forever is a Long Time Coming", there are no transforming minions shown working for the Quintessons. No Sharkticons, no Allicons, nothing. All that are seen are Quintesson Judges, Prosecutors, Executioners, Bailiffs, and Scientists, none of which were shown to possess transformation abilities in the cartoon. "Forever" even showed that the only form of enforcement the Quints had back then were the Dark Guardians, who likewise never displayed any transformation ability (and whose animation models were modified from Omega Supreme's to look like they had to altmodes built into them). Same goes for when they were first seen as Guardian Robots in "War Dawn", in which they likewise never transformed (the cartoon treated Omega as if he was the first and only Guardian ever granted transformation built into him).

 

[LordGigaIce]

But yeah, gaining sentience is an odd thing to have happen in the middle of Quintesson occupation, for a range of reasons. It's not quite like Skynet where machines gaining sentience is the beginning of the end; here sentient robots are meant to be ones we see the story through.

The Sunbow continuity's backstory is very much an "AI rising up" story only we happen to be seeing it through the eyes of, and are sympathetic to, the AI. They very much do "gain" sentience in the middle of the Quintesson occupation, though even occupation isn't the right word. Cybertron was a planet-sized factory they built.

It's shown very clearly that the Quintessons began making "consumer goods" and "military hardware" robots to sell before deciding to imbue their creations with "simulated AI" so the robotic creations could manufacture themselves.

Over time the Cybertronians gain sentience as their "simulated AI" evolved into full on artificial consciousness, and they rebelled.

So in the context of the G1 cartoon it's not "demeaning" to say they "gained sentience" as KingSwoop claims. It's an actual description of events.

I prefer the notion that Transformer society existed pre-Quintessons, which presupposes sentience.

That's valid, I myself go back and forth on how I prefer it. The Primus/Unicron mythology that the Marvel G1 gave us that grants us a Cybertron that was its own civilization before they even met the Quintessons is far richer if you want to develop mythic stories.

There is, however, an appeal behind the idea of robotic life coming from an organic creator and growing and evolving to the point where they lost the memory of where they came from, and that creation story being tied into concepts such as the technological singularity, trans-humanism, etc... And in that direction, well... the Quintessons are as good as anyone else to pin as the "creators"

But again, your preferences are totally valid. I'm just explaining that in the Subow cartoon specifically the Cybertronians did gain sentience from a pre-sentient state.

 

[lastmaximal]

All that's fair enough. It is coming back more clearly now, and it makes sense that one angle for it is that the upgrading goes far enough that it brings the machines out of the Quintessons' control as they begin to advocate for themselves.

I'm content to exclude that from my own fanon; it's just not how I prefer the backstory to go. I agree there are merits to that direction; existential crises brought on by self-awareness in the middle of being slaves makes for some striking stories. But I won't be the one telling them. Whether tied to Primus or not, I just prefer the Transformer race to be a sentient one growing into its own culture pre-Quintessons.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Here's the clip to clear things up.

They began with simulated intelligence endowed by the Quintessons.

I'm still waiting for Hasbro to mine this episode for ideas. Give me more generics!

 

[LordGigaIce]

I'm still waiting for Hasbro to mine this episode for ideas. Give me more generics!

I'd love for a proper exploration of what It could be.

 

[Sabrblade]

I'd love for a proper exploration of what It could be.

The Selects manga made him the original Quintesson leader who first possessed the Matrix during the (retconned-to-be) occupation of the planet.

Even stuck his noggin on a Rodimus-colored version of Floro Dery's original Quintesson body design.

 

[lastmaximal]

I'm still waiting for Hasbro to mine this episode for ideas. Give me more generics!

Give me more animation errors. Hot Rod Snarl! Onslaught Seeker!

 

[Destron D-69]

I always just assumed that the visions given in these "matrix quests" or "vector sigma journeys" were interpretive and not meant to be representations of actual events.

it's like this omnipotent source of information is trying to talk to just some dude and has to figure out a way to get the concept across just using the limitations of the lesser being's brain.

like Sisko and the prophets or say like if Chathulu tried to talk to you about the latest episode of a tv show...


- to be fair though, this could also just be the animation not living up to the writing. Like really it doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense for that one guy to be a quint faced hotrod guy ... other than "hey animators throw something together real quick"