Shockwave
Affiliation: Decepticon
Sub-Group: Originally none, later Action Masters and Alternators.
Function; Military Operations Commander
Motto: "Clarity of thought before rashness of action."
Alternate Modes: Cybertronian laser gun
Series: Transformers: Generation 1, Transformers: Alternators, Transtech
Shockwave has been referred to as "a computer on legs." This is not far from the truth. Logic rules Shockwave's thought processes and is the source of his every inspiration. He sees emotion as a weakness and a distraction. His cold and calculating modus operandi is supported by his frightening and exceptionally powerful form.
Shockwave is possibly even more powerful than Megatron, who he appears to be loyal to. Perhaps logic may one day dictate that the time to replace Megatron's flawed, emotion-fueled rule is at hand.
Shockwave was a highly ranked Decepticon. Fanatically loyal to Megatron, Shockwave was entrusted stewardship of Cybertron by Megatron when the latter left to intercept an Autobot mission surveying for new forms of energy. Neither Decepticon suspected that Megatron's absence (and Shockwave's command) would last four million years. Little changed on Cybertron during those years, although Shockwave apparently lost his left hand and replaced it with a laser cannon.
He oversaw all the Decepticon activity on Cybertron, rarely leaving the planet. His keen scientific mind resulted in several incredible devices, including the space bridge and a time machine.
Shockwave commanded the Decepticon forces during the Unicron's attack on Cybertron, and may have been killed in the ensuing battle.
(Though Shockwave's death was written into the movie's script, it did not make it into the released film. However, IDW's 20th Anniversary comic adaptation did include Shockwave's death. Shockwave's model did show up in season 3 episodes as possible animation errors.)
His actions are carried out with the cold, brutal clarity and perfection one would expect of a purely mechanical being — his way is not that of blood lust, like so many other Decepticons, but rather that of a scientist attempting to solve a problem. And that problem is: how can he use his abilities to most effectively eliminate the greatest number of enemies? Unfortunately for the Autobots, it is rare that Shockwave will not find a suitable answer.
Having not been aboard the Ark, Shockwave was not modified into an Earthly form, and retains his Cybertron alternate mode — a 35-foot-long ray gun. He possesses the power of flight in both modes, and commands the totality of the electromagnetic spectrum allowing him to emit beams of energy in a wide variety of forms. His high energy output makes him particularly fuel inefficient, but radioactive fuel sources stored in the reactor in his chest can help Shockwave to overcome this problem. Although his logical brain center is usually an advantage, human adversaries often pose more of a difficulty to Shockwave, as more intuitive and emotional thought processes often confound him.
While the animated series established Shockwave as loyal to Megatron, Shockwave's original bio and most fiction since have described him as coldly and patiently looking for ways to overthrow Megatron, not for personal power but simply because it was logical for him to do so. Shockwave concluded that he should rule so no emotion should prevent the Decepticons from conquering the universe.
Unusually for a 1985 (second year) toy, Shockwave was present in Transformers fiction from the first year, appearing in both the original 3-episode cartoon pilot, and 4-issue comic book miniseries.
Animated Series:
When Megatron prepared to lead his troops in pursuit of Optimus Prime and the Ark, Shockwave was instructed to stay behind and guard Cybertron in Megatron's absence. Swearing that Cybertron would remain as Megatron left it, Shockwave performed his duty to the letter for four million years, after Megatron and the other Transformers were entombed in stasis on Earth.
So accurately did Shockwave carry out his task, however, that no advances were achieved in the war, and the deadlock slowly caused what little supplies of energy the planet had to dwindle. In the Earth year 1984, Shockwave again attempted to make contact with the lost Megatron - only this time, he got a reply. The Transformers on Earth had been awakened, and immediately, Shockwave and Megatron co-created the spacebridge, an inter-galactic transport system, with which to send Energon Cubes made from Earth's energy to the depleted planet. In the first tests of the spacebridge, Megatron was transported to Cybertron himself, but Shockwave soon returned him so that further transport runs could be conducted. Spacebridge technology was taken to its ultimate extreme when Shockwave and Megatron co-ordinated the transportation of Cybertron itself into the Solar System via the use of a colossal spacebridge.
In 1985, Shockwave contended with the power of the Dinobots when they splintered off from the Autobots and came to Cybertron. With the aid of his guards, Shockwave was able to overpower them and put them to work in the Cybertronian pits, but failed to prevent the escape of Spike Witwicky and his girlfriend, Carly, when they pursued the Dinobots to the planet and were able to effect their release.
Soon after, Shockwave discovered that a guerrilla team of Female Autobots had been raiding his Energon stores for years, and successfully tracked them back to their hidden base, arranging the capture of Elita One. Optimus Prime and several of his warriors came to Cybertron to aid their female allies, and Elita One herself blasted Shockwave out of the battle. Subsequently, Shockwave located the key to Vector Sigma for Megatron (and in a cut scene, battled and seriously damaged Omega Supreme). Spying on the Autobots, he then discovered the key's hidden power to transform organics into technomatter.
Gun Mode
When the Combaticons invaded Cybertron, Shockwave attempted to fend them off, but was turned against his sentinel drones when Bruticus seized him in gun mode and opened fire on them with him, before launching him off into space, where he crashed into Starscream. Shockwave and Starscream returned to the planet, but were captured and imprisoned when Megatron and Optimus Prime's forces arrived to stop Bruticus' rampage.
Over the next twenty years, Megatron turned his attention away from Earth, and succeeded in fully conquering Cybertron. In 2005, however, the planet came under attack by Unicron, and Shockwave attempted to mobilize the Decepticons against the threat. The script for The Transformers: The Movie explicitly details Shockwave's death as Unicron crushes his command tower with him in it, rips it off the planet, and tears it to shreds, and although this was not shown in the finished film, Shockwave was not seen again following the movie (although several incorrectly-colored versions of Shockwave — presumably intended to be generic Decepticons — were seen in some third-season episodes of the TV series, most notably Five Faces of Darkness Parts 1-5). The IDW Publishing adaptation of the movie has Shockwave lead the Decepticons against Unicron, only to be blown in half by the Chaos-Bringer's eye beams.
Here is part of the movie script describing his actual demise in the animated continuity:
Unicron enters shot and grasps at Cybertron with a hideous claw...
ANGLE ON A TOWER ON CYBERTRON
Shockwave talks into a communications device, as alarms sound and troopers run everywhere.
SHOCKWAVE
Decepticons...we're under attack...Scramble - Then his voice is cut off as...
SHOCKWAVE'S POV - OUT HIS WINDOW Unicron's hand reaches towards the window, squeezes, and the walls crash in.
In Shockwave's first appearance, in "More Than Meets the Eye", Part One, he has two hands. By his next appearance, in the first episode of the ongoing series, "Transport to Oblivion", his left hand has been replaced with a gun barrel, matching his toy appearance (although notably the toy's box art itself incorrectly presented the gun barrel as being on his right arm).
For more info go to wikipedia.org
Post by: MAC-X
