Earth (Transformers)

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The planet Earth, third from its sun in the Sol System in the Milky Way galaxy, as featured in the various Transformers series, is similar yet notably different from its real life counterpart.

[edit] Generation 1/Beast Wars

The incarnation of the Earth, upon which the Ark crashed, is similar to our own Earth, with several additional, unusual features that, by and large, do not affect the day-to-day life of its human population. This Earth is the shared setting for many other Sunbow Productions series.

Prior to the Ice Age, the majority of Earth was dominated by the kingdom of Cobra-La, ruled by the serpentine Golobulous. However, since Cobra-La's technology was based around living, organic matter, it could not survive the Ice Age, which destroyed the empire, forcing the Cobra-Lavians to retreat into caverns within the Himalayas.

Around nine million years BC, the Earth was visited by the Transformers Starscream and Skyfire, but Skyfire was caught in a polar wind storm and separated from Starscream, buried in ice. Then, four million years BC, the Transformers' spacecraft, the Ark, crash-landed in what would become the north-western United States, entombing the robots within in stasis. Apparently following this, the mysterious aliens known as the Vok chose prehistoric Earth as the site of an experiment, and seeded the planet with vast amounts of raw Energon, installing a second, artificial moon into the planet's orbit and placing several devices at strategic points on the planet. Around the time of the emergence of proto-hominids, a group of Maximals and Predacons from Cybertron's future travelled back in time to prehistoric Earth, where they waged a war they dubbed the "Beast Wars", and encountered the Vok, interfering in their plans. Deciding that the Beast Warriors had contaminated their experiment, the Vok activated the second moon, transforming it into a giant laser weapon with which they planned to detonate the Energon seeded throughout the planet, wiping it clean of life. This plan was foiled by the Maximal leader, Optimus Primal, but the vast majority of the raw Energon on the planet was transformed into stable, cube form. Eventually, the Maximals returned to Cybertron with the Predacon leader, Megatron their prisoner. The only surviving Predacon, Waspinator, was left on the planet as the leader of a tribe of proto-humans. Although they eventually rejected him (finding him to annoying) and he too, by unknown means returned to Cybertron, it is unclear precisely how much influence Waspinator may have had on the evolution of humanity and their culture.

Earth is home to many unusual creatures and "hidden civilisations". Records of the existence of the subterranean monsters known as the Inhumanoids and their opponents, the elemental Mutores, go back to the Roman Empire, and the temple of Angkor Wat was built as a prison for one of their number. With the successful imprisonment of the Inhumanoids, the Mutores turned to hiding themselves, and went unnoticed by humanity until the late 20th century. The underwater city of Sub-Atlantica, populated by water-breathing fish-like humanoids, gave rise to the legends of Atlantis and other sunken cities. Also, fire-breathing dragons exist naturally as late as the medieval era, though by the 20th century, they appeared to have died out. A possible descendant was the unique, reptilian creature known as the "beast of Borneo" captured by big game hunter Lord Cholmondeley.

The magma energy of the Earth's core is channeled by a series of green crystalline structures, which the Decepticons attempted to exploit in 1984, exposing a crystal shaft in the North Pole and tapping the core's energy (while, at the same time, happening upon and reactivating the body of Skyfire). Another unusual aspect of the planet is the natural existence of electrum, a metallic alloy that renders Transformers invulnerable when coated in it.

By the year 2005, human interaction with the Transformers had resulted in an advanced level of technology worldwide, and the foundation of the Earth Defense Command, which operates a series of space stations. Saturn's moon, Titan, was colonised, and an EDC base was established on Mars, while travel between star systems was hugely enhanced by the creation of warp-gates. Earthling Spike Witwicky became Earth's ambassador, first to Cybertron, and then to other alien worlds as, through the Transformers, humanity came into contact with other races.

[edit] Japanese series

In the expanded fiction of the additional Japanese-exclusive animated series, the existence of the sunken continents Atlantis and Lemuria was confirmed. Later, it was revealed that a small group of Autobot and Decepticon Pretenders crash-landed on the planet in the Stone Age. While the Autobots used their Pretender abilities to adopt the form of humans, the Decepticons assumed monstrous forms and were mistaken by early man as "demons." Finally defeating the Decepticons and sealing them away - within the pyramids of Giza, the ruins of Atlantis and beneath the Nazca Lines of Peru - the Autobots then integrated themselves into human society, serving as secret protectors who quietly and subtly guided the evolution of human society.

A future version of Earth was later visited by Maximals and Predacons under the command of Lio Convoy and Galvatron, respectively. At first known only as "Gaia", the world was known to have two sentient inhabitants, a girl named Artemis and her companion Moon. Although the prescene of what seemed to be a decimated Tokyo Tower suggested that Gaia was Earth, it was not fully confirmed until release of the Robot Masters toyline's version of Lio Convoy, the bio to which revealed that Earth had been devastated by mankind's tampering with the power source known as Angolmois energy.

[edit] Transformers: Cybertron

When the Transformers decided to abandon their homeworld and hide among the populace on Earth, they had no idea of the true extent that Earth had played in the Transformers' history. Not only was it one of the four worlds that the Cyber Planet Keys had been sent to, it also had an ancient population of Transformers. Lost on Earth was the starship Atlantis, which carried the Omega Lock and inspired legends of a floating city among Earth's populace. Among the Transformers on the planet were Evac, who had possession of the Cyber Planet Key, and Crosswise, a "monster hunter". Unfortunately, this planet was no stranger to the distinction of Autobots and Decepticons. The Decepticons also influenced Earth culture by inspiring legends of monsters and mythological beings, until they were sealed away. Unfortunately, this was all undone centuries later when Starscream freed these Ancient Decepticons to serve as his personal army. Fortunately, most of them were defeated, with only Lugnutz and Thunderblast remaining amongst their numbers.

It is possible that the ships that carried the Cyber Planet Keys to the other worlds temporarily visited Earth at one point, inspiring legends of other lost continents like Atlantis.