Re: Last Stand of the Wreckers
Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 7:04 pm
James Roberts commented on my comments about LSOTW over on the IDW boards.
Andersonh1 wrote:
I'm not sure the ending of this series carried enough weight for me. And what I mean by that is that after sitting through five issues of death and torture, I expected the Wreckers who died to have done so for some good, solid reason. But we don't get that. Instead we get undisclosed secrets that Prowl thinks would tear the Autobots apart, but which Ultra Magnus isn't so sure about.
As readers, we're not given the opportunity to make that judgment call ourselves, because we don't know what information is contained on that chip that Prowl's holding, apart from the truth about Impactor.
Sorry the ending didn't work for you, Andersonh1, but I'm pleased you liked the rest of the series.
I just want to clarify that the undisclosed secrets relate to a series of war crimes perpetrated by a variety of Autobots. From the flashback to the Aequitas Trials you can see one Autobot, Flame, being accused of some pretty specific stuff, including desecrating corpses and torture. And in his narrative, Prowl alludes to there being lots of Autobots and lots of 'atrocities'. He makes reference to civilian executions, among other things...
These were heinous, concrete crimes that, until Tyrest ordered the trials, were being covered up or swept under the carpet, even if some of the alleged perpetrators had been locked up and High Command had put out bland cover stories to explain their incarceration.
Prowl sent the Wreckers into battle to stop evidence of horrific war crimes falling into Decepticon hands. He was worried they would use it to destabilize the Autobot ranks, who were already reeling from a recent betrayal. He was also worried - although this isn't made explicit - that the information would threaten various treaties and pacts High Command have made with other races over the years (of which the Non-Intervention Treaty agreed with the Povians is one example).
I'm not saying all this because I think you missed it, but to put it on record. I have read comments on other forums which suggested that some readers did not pick up on the point that in the epilogue Prowl was describing his horror ("...it nearly killed me") not at the fact that bad things happen in war, but at sitting through a lengthy series of trials involving exclusively Autobot war criminals.
The Wreckers thought that their primary objective was to rescue Fort Max and the others. Securing the data on Aequitas was secondary. Not to Prowl, who didn't even ask Magnus how many Autobot guards had been rescued...
Was the ending supposed to be a downer? Well, it certainly wasn't intended to be triumphalist. The Wreckers are shown to be pawns, used by Prowl and by High Command as a means to an end. Theirs is not to reason why... etc. As it happens, as well as preventing the Aequitas evidence from falling into enemy hands, they saved Fort Max and they brought down a phenomenally powerful Decepticon who wouldn't have been content to sit it out on G-9 forever. A real downer ending would have seen Fort Max burn out on the operating table and Prowl crush the data slug, thus rendering the entire mission pointless. Not that I'm saying those two things can't/won't/didn't happen...