Raymond T. wrote:I didn't say the term Laser core was used in the entire cartoon, I said the combination of Lasercore, CPU and Databanks were used to establish the mythology. And although the term lasercore was only named in 'Divide and Conquer', you actually get to see the lasercore, even if it is simply called the brain, actively sending laser impuses to command the body inside Megatron's head in 'Microbots'!
If it's called the brain, how do you know it's the laser core?
As I understood the line in 'Divide and Conquer', when Megatron tells Laserbeak to confirm that Prime's laser core has been extinguished, he uses it in the same way that a human might say 'his heart has stopped beating' - in other words, it's a bit of meaningless technobabble used once and once only in the series to make a human-Transformer analogy. This is hardly uncommon in G1. A laser core may be vital to a Transformer's continued existence, in the same way that a beating heart is necessary for a human to survive, but later episodes confirm that it does not
define that existence. A Transformer whose laser core failed would die; but it does not logically follow that putting a laser core into a Transformer body would make it alive.
Raymond T. wrote:While Vector Sigma had not been dreamed up during the creation of the Dinobots, the series definately kept this fact in mind. On several ocassions the differences between Autobots and Dinobots were explained. The more obvious one of course being in 'Desertion Of The Dinobots' where all the Transformers were suffering from Cybertonium depletion, except for the Dinobots who were still working at full strength because they were created on Earth through other means which is why they had no Cybertonium in them.
The Dinobots' lack of Cybertonium dependence has nothing to do with what makes them 'alive'. Or are you suggesting that a Transformer only needs to be given life by Vector Sigma if its body contains Cybertonium (a questionable and entirely unsupported assumption which is clearly contradicted by canon material; compare, for example, the Stunticons)? This is exactly what I was talking about when I pointed out that Vector Sigma itself is a bigger and more destructive retcon than the introduction of sparks.
In other words, if you're prepared to rewrite or reinterpret Season 1 to incorporate the introduction of Vector Sigma in Season 2, you'd better have a damn good reason why you're not prepared to incorporate the introduction of sparks in the next series.
Raymond T. wrote:It is not the "G1 purists" that are ignoring the existance of Sparks in G1, it is the Spark supporters that ignore the facts that there were no sparks in G1 and ignore the facts that were grounded before Beast Wars tried to rewrite history 10 years later. If Larry DiTillio did his homework on the series, we wouldn't have this conversation to begin with.
I think you're missing something in my posts, Raymond - namely, the fact that I have repeatedly said that G1 never named or depicted sparks. However, the series also repeatedly made clear that there was something more to Transformer life than the mere sum of the components - something that had to be provided by an external source, whether that source be the Matrix or Vector Sigma. Beast Wars ran with that concept and called the 'extra bit' a spark. Heck, if anything, making the spark a tangible object means that the Beast Wars TFs are
more mechanistic than their G1 counterparts!
As I've also pointed out, Beast Wars did not need to rewrite history: the introduction of sparks was a non-destructive retcon. Given the amount of G1 reference in Beast Wars, it can hardly be said that the writers didn't do their homework.
As to which side is more trenchant in their arguments... You're misrepresenting me by suggesting that I said G1 purists are ignoring the existence of sparks in G1 - clearly, they had not been introduced at that point and there's nothing to ignore. But I
am suggesting that only the 'purists' see this as any point of debate at all - everyone else seems to understand that Beast Wars retconned sparks into G1, in the same way that it retconned CR chambers and the idea of stasis lock, and in the same way that G1 itself retconned ideas into its prior mythology innumerable times: Primus, the Matrix, Vector Sigma, the special status of 'Primes', the various origins of the Constructicons...
--EDIT--
While I remember:
Weren't they just called 'regeneration chambers' or something like that? I'll have to check the episode... I also don't remember them ever appearing again in the series, for either faction, but I could easily be wrong on that.
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