Shockwave is a recurring antagonist in the first two seasons of the Generation One Transformers cartoon.
History[]
Season 1[]
In More than Meets the Eye, Shockwave was appointed as Guardian of Cybertron by Megatron, he loyally remained stationed on the planet for millions of years, even while his teammates slumbered on Earth. Little changed on Cybertron during those years, although Shockwave apparently lost his left hand and replaced it with a laser cannon. He oversaw all Decepticon activity on the near-empty Cybertron. His scientific mind resulted in creating the space bridge. Although he was able to keep Cybertron functional for the extended length of time, he continued to try to contact Megatron. In Transport to Oblivion, he finally re-established contact with the Decepticon leader. The two coordinated the refinement of the space bridge, first to send energon cubes. However, in Divide and Conquer Autobots would also occasionally hijack use of the bridge, and Shockwave found himself having to repel stowaways.
In The Ultimate Doom, Megatron and Shockwave developed a space bridge powerful enough to transport Cybertron itself to Earth. The close proximity of the two worlds caused horrible weather disturbances that the Decepticons were able to utilize as sources of energy which could easily be shipped back to their homeworld. It was during this affair that Shockwave and his men had to stop an attempt by several Autobots and Spike Witwicky to rescue Spike's father, who was being held on Cybertron as a slave. The Autobots were eventually able to escape.
With Megatron presumed dead following an explosion on his star cruiser in Countdown to Extinction, Starscream assumed command on Cybertron, and rigged Dr. Arkeville's exponential generator to blow up the Earth so the Decepticons could harvest the release of energy. Despite Starscream's orders, Shockwave continued to make communications to Earth, finally reaching Megatron, who wasn’t dead after all, and warning him in time to disable the generator.
Season 2[]
When all Earthbound Transformers began malfunctioning due to the deterioration of Cybertonium in Desertion of the Dinobots, Shockwave was tasked with having more mined from Cybertron to send to the Decepticons. The Autobots sent the Dinobots to snatch some Cybertonium for them. Instead, the rebellious Dinobots used the space bridge to travel to Cybertron, where theywere captured by Shockwave’s sentinels, rewired, and put to work in the Cybertonium mines. Spike and Carly were also captured when they attempted to rescue them, but Shockwave underestimated the two humans. Once they were put in the mines, Spike and Carly were able to fix Grimlock and the others. The Dinobots broke free and were able to escape Shockwave with enough Cybertonium to repair the Autobots.
Though he'd believed them to be extinct, in The Search for Alpha Trion, Shockwave discovered a small group of Female Autobots when they attempted to raid his energon stockroom. Although they got away with some supplies, he was able to track them to their hidden hideout. He alerted Megatron, who devised the plan of kidnapping their leader, Elita One. Later, Shockwave, Starscream, and the other Decepticons had to contend with Ironhide leading a small group of Autobots who had followed Optimus Prime. With the help of the Female Autobots team, they eventually cornered the Decepticons, until Shockwave blasted them off the bridge with his gun mode. He would’ve been able to finish them off had Prime and One not intervened at the last moment to save their comrades, send Starscream and the others running off, and blast Shockwave down into the pits of Cybertron.
In The Key to Vector Sigma, Shockwave helped the Stunticons locate the key to Vector Sigma, the computer that gave life to all Transformers. He later learned and reported to Megatron that the key had other unknown properties on other worlds, which Megatron discovered meant turning organic matter into metal. The key was eventually destroyed by Silverbolt. By War Dawn, Shockwave built the Kronosphere, a time machine that was used to dispose of the Aerialbots. When the Autobots were able to drive the Decepticons out of their hideout, Shockwave helped Megatron reactivate a fallen Guardian robot to try to take back the base. In the end, the Autobots were able to bring the Aerialbots back to the present, and with their help, drove the Decepticons away for good.
Later, in Starscream's Brigade, Shockwave alerted Megatron to the theft of five personality components from the Decepticon Detention Center on Cybertron. These were stolen by Starscream to build his own force, the Combaticons. After Starscream and the Combaticons were exiled to deep space, the Combaticons made their way back to Cybertron in The Revenge of Bruticus, where they attacked Shockwave and his sentinels and succeeded in taking over Decepticon headquarters. Shockwave ran into Starscream, and the two teamed up to stop the Combaticons. However, Starscream saw an opportunity to assert power over Megatron, who was still on Earth. He turned against Shockwave, the two fought each other, and they were captured by the Combaticons. They were both eventually freed when Megatron and Optimus Prime came to Cybertron to defeat the Combaticons.
The Movie[]
In the twenty years that followed, the Decepticons conquered Cybertron. By 2005, Unicron attacked Cybertron, and Shockwave commanded the Decepticon forces against him. He may or may not have been killed during the events of the Movie, though either way he was never seen again afterward.
Trivia[]
- Corey Burton modelled his Shockwave on David Warner as Sark in Tron.
- Burton would not only voice Shockwave again in Transformers Animated, he would also voice Megatron. Ironically, Frank Welker, the original voice for Megatron, would voice the Films incarnation of Shockwave.
- In The Autobot Run, Shockwave is seen on Earth twice. While it isn't impossible for Shockwave to have come to Earth, it would contradict the idea of him guarding Cybertron. This is more likely a animation error.
- Shockwave's model would be recycled in season 3 for several generic Decepticons, specifically, in Five Faces of Darkness.
Shockwave was one of the main antagonists of Marvel's the Transformers comics.
History[]
Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.
Backstory[]
According to State Games, millions of years ago, Shockwave was the ruler of the city-state Tarn. After a war between Tarn and Vos, both cities were destroyed by photon missiles. The survivors of both cities united under Megatron over their bitterness at Iacon, which had let the war occur.
An adherent of his twisted version of logic, Shockwave was Military Commander of the Decepticons, conceiving the original plan to assault the Ark. As revealed in The Last Stand, while the rest of the Decepticons attacked the Ark, Shockwave remained behind on their ship to pilot it, and act as backup. When the Ark crashed on Earth, Shockwave followed the ship down, but the planet's magnetic fields caused a malfunction in his guidance systems, resulting in him landing in the Antarctic jungle, the Savage Land.
The Ark's computer detected Shockwave's presence on the planet and reactivated five Autobots to combat him, rebuilding them in the shapes of the Savage Land's dinosaurs. As revealed in Repeat Performance, the Dinobots battled Shockwave, a battle that ended in a tar pit that held them in stasis for millions of years.
Marvel's the Transformers[]
The New Order[]
In 1984, in The Last Stand, the Autobots attempted to track down the Dinobots, and a sensor drone inadvertently wound up reactivating Shockwave. He arrived just as the Autobots had claimed victory over the Decepticons and his explosive entry saw all the weakened combatants knocked off-line.
Rounding up the bodies, in The New Order, Shockwave took control of the Ark, stringing up the Autobots for spare parts, decapitating Optimus Prime and repaired his fellow Decepticons. Shockwave had decided it was logical for him to take over leadership of the Decepticons in light of Megatron's failure. After declaring his leadership and the superiority of Decepticons over humans, he flew off to begin his conquests. As recounted in The Wrath of Grimlock, Shockwave bested the drone Guardian, and had Soundwave booby-trap it with a in case Megatron or the Autobots attempted to usurp him.
In The Worse of Two Evils, Shockwave's attacked the offshore oil-drilling platform of tycoon G.B. Blackrock. Tearing his way through the rig's defenses, he secured it for use as a secondary base of operations. When Shockwave returned to the Ark, a weakened Megatron battled him for leadership, and Shockwave defeated him, even denying his request to killed, to deny him the satisfaction. Shockwave dumped Megatron's broken body before the troops he had once commanded and demanded that they vow to serve Shockwave alone, to which they, including Megatron, agreed to.
After Soundwave took control of Blackrock Aerospace Assembly Plant Number One, in Repeat Perfomance, Shockwave travelled to the Ark, checking in with Megatron and reminding him again of where he stood. From the Ark, he transported Optimus Prime's head to the Aerospace Plant. Shockwave blasted past the Army cordon surrounding the plant, while lecturing the humans about his armour's strength.
In The Wrath of Guardian, Shockwave prepared six brain modules and used the Creation Matrix within Prime's head to give them life. In Disintergrated Circuits, Shockwave began setting up the Aerospace Plant's facilities to carry out his plans; however, the Decepticons became with this work, leading to some diminished morale; Shockwave had to sic Buzzsaw on Frenzy when the latter threw a tantrum over Blackrock's threats from G.B. Accepting Starscream's argument that morale could use a boost, Shockwave granted permission for Starscream and Frenzy to destroy Blackrock's weapon.
After some time, in The Next Best Thing to Being There, Shockwave used the Aerospace Plant to create the Constructicon's bodies, whose brain modules had already been brought to life with the Creation Matrix. Shockwave then began work on his next project, Jetfire, but could not bring him to life.
In Brainstorm, Shockwave had the plant's captive workers begin working on a hundred jet warriors, and tried yet again to bring Jetfire to life. When the process failed, he deduced that Optimus must have hidden the Matrix somewhere. Scanning Rumble's memories, he discovered that Optimus had transferred the Matrix into Buster Witwicky's mind. Shockwave programmed Jetfire to capture Buster, but the boy was able to use the power of the Matrix to bring the robot under his own control.
Buster used Jetfire to travel to the Aerospace Plant in Prime Time, but Jetfire's pre-programmed response to an Air Force attack meant that Buster was delivered to Shockwave as a captive. The Autobots' attempts to keep Buster away from the Decepticons led Shockwave to suspect that his headquarters was bugged. Soundwave discovered a telephone link that was allowing the Autobots to listen in. Shockwave used the link to manipulate the Autobots into bringing their leader's body with them to a nearby swamp, and dropped off a fake head which attacked the Autobots once it was joined with Optimus Prime's body.
Howevern as Jetfire was about to take Optimus Prime's real head and pitch it into the swamp, Buster used his Matrix powers to take control of Jetfire and knock out Shockwave. Shockwave awoke to find both Optimus Prime and the human workers gone; he realised what had happened and flew to the battle site. There he engaged the newly-whole Optimus in a duel which ended when Shockwave was tossed into a swamp.
Return[]
Finally escaping from the swamp after being trapped for several months, in Rock and Roll-Out Shockwave returned to leading the Decepticons at their oil-drilling platform base with a power siphon he had designed, capable of converting the oil into energon cubes, freeing them from their reliance on static fuel sources. This led to an attempt to steal sonic energy from a Brick Springstern concert that was thwarted by the Autobots. In Plight of the Bumblebee, Shockwave attempted to exploit Bumblebee as a weak link, and assembled a squad to pursue, abduct, and brainwash him. Though Shockwave managed to isolate Bumblebee and wound Jetfire in his chase, he was rescued by his team-mates. Calculating a low chance of his plan to succeed at this juncture, Shockwave ordered a retreat.
When Wheeljack and Ratchet built Buster a mechanical battlesuit, in Robot Buster, Shockwave ended up battling him, only to be briefly blinded when Buster flung a handful of sand into his eye. The darkness revived mis memories of his four-million-year burial and his submergence in the swamp. Thus the enraged, barely-sane Shockwave disregarded logic and vengefully pursued Buster throughout the night. At the next day, Buster made one final attack with all the suit's power, which destroyed it but injured Shockwave. Seizing the boy in his hand, Shockwave was about to crushhim when the Autobot forces arrived to rescue him.
Compromising with Megatron[]
His rationality returning in Devastation Derby, Shockwave realized that Buster could be a powerful tool to use against the Autobots and had the Constructicons try and abduct him, but during the battle Soundwave discovered that the Matrix had planted in Buster's mind a vision of the future for their race. In Second Generation, Shockwave watched Buster's dreams and witnessed a vision of combiner Transformers battling. However, Soundwave also beamed the vision to the independently operating Megatron, who decided that it was time for him to retake Decepticon leadership. Shockwave and Megatron battled once more, but with Megatron at full health, the fight was much more evenly matched and was even televised. To prevent the Decepticons from being made to look like fools, Soundwave demanded they consent to a joint leadership, to which the two reluctantly agreed.
In The Bridge to Nowhere, arguing after Shockwave insulted Megatron, Shockwave and Megatron agreed to put their differences aside when they were contacted by Lord Straxus on Cybertron with news of a plan to transport energon cubes back across the space bridge. During this period of joint leadership, in To a Power Unknown, the Decepticons rampaged through a human town when they were struck by a burst of energy. This temporarily reversed their personalities, making them compassionate. While the other Decepticons repaired the damage they caused, Shockwave and Megatron complimented each other and insisting that the other 'bot was the best choice for leader. The personality-reversal wore off in short order, and the Decepticons swore revenge for what they assumed to be an Autobot trick.
Leaving Shockwave in charge of the Decepticons' Wyoming base, in Command Performances, Megatron led a team of Decepticons to attack the Autobot base, only for the majority to be defeated and captured by Omega Supreme. At the same time, the Autobots attacked the Decepticon base to draw out Devastator. After the Autobots success, Megatron argued that Shockwave had been ineffective enough to have allowed a trap to spring up around him. Bowing to the logic of this argument, Shockwave stepped down and allowed Megatron to resume sole command.
Shockwave was absent from the Decepticons' base when the time travelling Galvatron deposed Megatron in Target 2006. After returning, he met Thundercracker and Frenzy, who had escaped their imprisonment in the Autobot base, but all three were displaced into limbo when three future Autobots traveled back in time to thwart Galvatron's plans. While in limbo in Distant Thunder, Shockwave and his two companions battled alongside Optimus Prime, Prowl and Ratchet against the illusions created by the dimension's native lifeforms, before returning to their natural place when the time-travellers returned to their own time.
In Prey, Shockwave began scheming to return to the position of leader and when Megatron summoned the hunters the Predacons to Earth to stalk Optimus, he saw his opportunity. Conspiring with them, Shockwave arranged for the team to turn on Megatron during the hunt, depriving him of his weapons, expecting that he would have no chance against Prime one-on-one.
When Megatron did not return, Shockwave believed him dead, and became leader in his absence again. It was not long after this. in Fallen Angel, that Galvatron returned from the future once more and now mentally unstable. Fearing the threat Galvatron might pose to him, Shockwave had the Decepticons aid the Dinobots in battling him, and Galvatron departed rather than fight his own future troops. Megatron would eventually return with amnesia, preventing any punishment for Shockwave.
Retaking Command[]
After Optimus Prime perished in a video game duel with Megatron but in Power Struggle, Megatron became unresponsive. Shockwave figured he would have to take Megatron out of the equation. In Gone But Not Forgotten, Megatron progressively grew more paranoid that Optimus had survived. Shockwave had the Predacons come to Earth and force him into a combat situation, implanting a copy of his personality program in the team so that he could "be part" of the battle from a safe distance. Eventually, Megatron became completely insane, apparently killing himself in a space bridge explosion. With his rival completely out of the way, Shockwave took command.
By King of the Hill, Shockwave established contact with Cybertron Decepticon commander Ratbat, who threatened to cut off the Earth Decepticons' access to the space bridge should their war efforts continue inefficiently using fuel. Shockwave convinced Ratbat to send over their greatest warrior over from Cybertron before any further decisions were made, but Trypticon, was defeated by the Dinobots and returned to Cybertron after his assault.
In Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom, Shockwave captured an oil tanker to demonstrate his leadership to Ratbat, but discovered that the tanker had already offloaded its cargo. Berating him for his inefficiency, Ratbat implemented his own plan to hypnotize humans into gathering fuel for them. In Ladies Night, Shockwave learned that Galvatron was trapped beneath Mount Verona, and dispatched Soundwave and the Combaticons to destroy him.
In Enemy Action, he had the Seacons sent from Cybertron so that they could use their aquatic abilities fortify the Decepticons' new artificial mobile island base. While they were performing this task, Galvatron returned. Shockwave ordered the Seacons to attack, but Galvatron soundly defeated them. Galvatron claimed to have come in peace, but Shockwave's attack had made an enemy of him, turning the Decepticons against Shockwave.
In The Desert island of Space, the interfering Buster was captured by the Decepticons and Shockwave requested he be brought to their island. Despite Ratbat's annoyance, Shockwave pointed out that so long as they had a hostage, the human military would hesitate to launch an offensive. Upon discovering the island's location, the Autobots were ready to rush its shores. To rid himself of them, Shockwave transformed the landmass into its spaceship mode and took to the fringes of Earth's atmosphere. Autobot Headmaster leader Fortress Maximus pursued the craft and battled Shockwave in the void of space, where he defeated him and sent him tumbling back through Earth's atmosphere in free-fall.
Time Wars[]
Although thought dead, as revealed in Salvage, Shockwave survived and returned to the Decepticons' original fortress base, where he concentrated on defeating Galvatron. Seeking to use the missing Megatron as a weapon against him, Shockwave had the small number of Decepticons still under his control recover what he believed to be Megatron from the River Thames, which he and Snaptrap repaired and brainwashed.
Around the same time, Galvatron's fellow time-travellers Cyclonus and Scourge had joined up with Shockwave's Decepticons. but, in Dry Run, chafing in his service, Cyclonus accidentally revealed that they would be responsible for killing him in 2008. Seeking to save himself, Shockwave unleashed "Megatron" upon them, killing Cyclonus. Satisfied with "Megatron'"s performance, he dispatched him against Galvatron. However, "Megatron" found a kindred spirit in Galvatron and joined forces with him.
In Time Wars, this led to Shockwave losing his grip on sanity. Unable to logically fathom the situation, he became despondent, stringing up Cyclonus's remains on the walls of his castle as a trophy. However, the abuse of time travel, and Cyclonus's death, had caused a rift in space-time that threatened reality. Hoping to restore the balance by returning all time-travellers to their own time, Scourge attempted to reclaim Cyclonus's body, but was shot down by Shockwave for his trouble. At Scourge's urging, Ravage was able to present events logically enough to Shockwave to become somewhat coherent, and Shockwave deposited Cyclonus's remains in the rift, sealing it with an x-ray blast.
Alliance with Starscream[]
Rivalry with Scorponok[]
Shockwave eventually resurfaced in Dark Creation, emerging from the sea on the coast of Blackpool, England, and killing a human who had seen him. Seeking to establish his own Decepticon faction, in All Fall Down Shockwave spied on Scorponok's base, and saw Starscream leaving it for his own reasons. In The Human Factor, Shockwave witnessed Starscream attempt to abduct the superhuman Dynamo, to use as his Powermaster. Starscream was interrupted by Circuit Breaker, but Shockwave, standing out-of-sight saved Starscream from being torn apart. After the battle, Shockwave approached the defeated Starscream, and offered a partnership to dispose of Scorponok.
Shockwave, Starscream and Ravage recruited those who had grown unhappy with Scorponok's leadership. In Surrender, the group's latest recruits, Triggerhappy and Mindwipe, were hesitant at first to fully betray Scorponok, the pair persuaded them by threatening them. The small group staged an attack on Scorponok's New Jersey base, collapsing it from above. Starscream was ready to call it an easy victory, in All This and Civil War 2, but Shockwave cautioned his partner, and the vengeful Scorponok emerged from the debris. With Shockwave's allies proving themselves to be no match for Scorponok, Shockwave personally battled his rival. Their duel took them to the waters around Manhattan, where it was interrupted first by Optimus Prime, eager to minimize collateral damage, and then by the Neo-Knights. In Out of Time, Shockwave used the confusion to implicate the Autobots in an attack on the human team, but was later recognized by Circuit Breaker as the robot responsible for crippling her years ago, and was blasted out of the sky by the full extent of her powers.
In The Void, the battle ended when the Transformers were all teleported to Cybertron, where Primus spoke to his children, pleading with them to put their differences aside to face Unicron together. Despite this, Shockwave still threatened Scorponok, telling him not to expect a reprieve from their feud. However, Unicron suddenly and unexpectedly appeared in Cybertron's orbit. In On the Edge of Extinction, Shockwave's data grid could not compute Unicron's vast threat. Unable to cope with the situation, he and Starscream fled rather then aid in the battle against Unicron.
The Ark[]
After Unicron was destroyed, as seen in Still Life, Shockwave and Starscream worked together to find the remains of the Ark, which had crashed during the battle. Though Starscream reckoned they should find a ship in better condition, Shockwave assured him that the Ark was the best ship on Cybertron, and urged him to help repair it. As seen in Exodus the pair succeeded in getting the craft airborne again, but were unaware that numerous damaged Transformers in the ship's stasis pods had been reactivated with nucleon, including Megatron, and that a version of Galvatron was also on board.
After Shockwave and Starscream encountered Megatron in A Savage Circle, Starscream immediately began groveling and the disgusted Shockwave ordered him away so he could deal with Megatron himself. However, his assassination attempt was interrupted by Galvatron, who Megatron had allied with, and Shockwave was beaten by the two Decepticons. Eventually, Ratchet sent the Ark crashing to Earth, and Shockwave was lost in the ship's detonation.
Original future (UK)[]
Originally, the UK comics depicted the events of the Movie as the definitive future of the comics storyline, however the events of Time Wars would rewrite the timeline.
to be added
Earthforce[]
Earthforce occurs in a slightly different version of the Marvel UK comics.
Regeneration One[]
In one timeline, Shockwave again joined forces with Starscream after being jury-rigged into the Ark to serve as its operating system. Once restored, Shockwave was witness to a great upheaval in Cybertron's population that left Transformers an endangered species. With the Decepticon faction functionally extinct, Shockwave converted to the ways of peace, serving as emissaries along with Starscream and Ravage.
Gallery[]
