Just how many Autobots were there on the Ark?
and other questions
At first glance, it might seem that the Ark's crew is a straightforward part of continuity. The crew destroying the Asteroids consisted of only a couple of dozen Autobots, who were enough to destroy the Asteroids before being overwhelmed by Decepticon attack. If this is the case, then all of the Autobots were revived at some point - either immediately on crashing (the Dinobots) or 4 million years later. However, there is plenty of evidence to say otherwise.
- How Big is the Ark?
- How many Autobots on the Ark?
- What happened to them?
- What about the other Decepticons?
- Grapple, Hoist, Skids, Smokescreen, Tracks
- The nature of the Ark's crew
How Big is the Ark?
In general, we don't get much sense of how big the Ark actually is (other than just "huge"), but in Totalled (US #41/UK #175-176), we see the Ark next to Fortress Maximus' ship Steelhaven with Transformers outside the two ships to provide a sense of scale. Going by the relative sizes of the two ships, the Ark is four or five times larger than Steelhaven (at the time, Steelhaven had a crew compliment of 29, and if the scenes of the Autobots arriving on Nebulos in the Headmasters miniseries are anything to go by, there were an absolute minimum of a dozen Autobots who died on Nebulos.) So Steelhaven probably had a crew of around 50 Autobots. This means that you would expect the Ark to have originally had a crew of a couple of hundred. This would explain, for example, why it needs half a dozen different medical bays.
The Ark is 4 times bigger than Steelhaven
How many Autobots do we actually see on the Ark?
There are something like 30 Autobots who we see on the Ark in issue one who are never seen again (though, admittedly, some of these could be miscolourings or suchlike). These glimpses of Autobots seem to be concentrated in a few very small areas of the Ark (there are half a dozen in just a short space of corridor), so presumably there are many more elsewhere on the craft.
Some of the unidentified Autobots.
What happened to these other Autobots?
That's a very good question. Presumably they were too badly damaged for the Ark to repair, or possibly would have taken too much energy to repair. However, Red Alert must have been intact enough for Ratchet to repair between issue one and his brief appearance in The Enemy Within (UK #13-17). Presumably these bodies could have been used for spare parts. However, this doesn't explain why Ratchet is short of spare parts in Rock and Roll Out (UK #53/US #14) - and pretty much every time we see him after this point. It is possible (but very unlikely) that some of them are the never seen before (or after) background characters that keep on popping up (good examples of this are the final page of The Wrath of Grimlock (UK #32) and the first part of Crisis of Command (UK #42). It is also possible that some of their parts were used to build bodies for Grapple, Hoist, Skids, Smokescreen, and Tracks in Rock and Roll Out (US #14/UK #53). The final possibility is that the Autobots spent lots of time and effort on making capsules to blast them into space (like we see them do with Prime's body in Funeral for a Friend US #26/UK #109-110).
What happened to all these Transformers?
What about other Decepticons popping up?
There are a lot fewer examples of Decepticons who pop up inexplicably - there are three robots looking a lot like Reflector (from the cartoon) who appear in The Last Stand (US #4/UK#7-8), Shockwave appears prematurely in Prisoner of War (US #3/UK #5-6), and finally there are all those humanoid Decepticons in Decepticon Dam Busters (UK #29-30) - though it is very likely that Ratchet is making the story up, embellishing the details, or just misremembering an awful lot of details. These Decepticons are most likely to be explained as artists errors. Certainly the Decepticons had no opportunity before these stories to pick up any of their fallen comrades - and we see plenty of otherwise unknown Decepticons on the Ark in issue one. The only plausible explanation for their presence is that they are extra Spy Cassettes hidden inside Soundwave, and that they get permanently killed in either Raiders of the Last Ark (UK #18-21) or The Last Stand (US #4/UK #7-8), explaining why we never see them again.
Where did these Decepticons come from?
What about Grapple, Hoist, Skids, Smokescreen, and Tracks?
These five Autobots (and perhaps others who didn't make it) stored their brains (or possibly just copies of them) on crystals in case Prime needed extra warriors on the trip. This bit of exposition from Rock and Roll Out (US #14/UK #53) makes no sense whatsoever. If Prime wanted some spare warriors, he should have just taken more warriors with bodies to actually do useful stuff rather than just minds without bodies. Furthermore, however you look at it, Grapple, Hoist, and Skids are not in the warrior mould. So just what was the point of bringing them along? My best guess is that Prime was planning for the possibility of being revived after the crash, and realised that he would have a spacecraft full of spare parts belonging to Transformers who are permanently dead.
Why were these Autobots' minds on the Ark?
Didn't the Ark's crew had a strange makeup for its mission?
If the Autobots who were revived were representative of the whole crew, then they were probably mismatched with their mission. In a mission to destroy thousands of asteroids, the crew should have consisted primarily of warriors with good gun skills. Obviously, Prime was leading the mission. Bluestreak, Cliffjumper, Ironhide, Jazz, Mirage, Prowl, Red Alert, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, and Windcharger all make sense in the context of the mission. Wheeljack and Huffer also fit - if something goes wrong with the Ark or its weaponry then somebody needs to be able to repair it. Ratchet is also a fairly sensible choice - it's always worth having at least one medic around in case of accidents (or to repair any Autobots who survived a possible Decepticon attack), and the Ark was clearly designed with at least half a dozen different medical bays. However, scouts like Bumblebee and Hound, a transport specialist like Gears, and close-up fighters like Brawn or the Dinobots aren't going to be much use when trying to blast asteroids. Presumably there were other tasks that needed doing during the mission. Furthermore, it is possible that the crew were recruited on a volunteer basis - so Prime took whoever he could get.
Would you choose this crew?
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