The Aerialbots of The Transformers (2017 TV Series).
Bio[]
The Aerialbots are the first Autobot combiner/gestalt/special team. They transform into Earth-style aircraft and combine to form Superion.
Members[]
- Silverbolt (Charlie Adler) - Aerialbot Leader. He transforms into a Concorde supersonic airplane and Superion's torso
- Air Raid (Rob Paulsen) - Warrior. He transforms into a Boeing F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter jet and forms Sueprion's left leg
- Fireflight (Liam O'Brien) - Reconnaissance. He transforms into a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II interceptor and fighter-bomber jet and forms Superion's right arm
- Skydive (Laurie Faso) - Aerial Warfare Strategist. He transforms into a Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon mulirole and air superiority fighter jet and forms Superion's right leg
- Slinsghot (Rob Paulsen) - Ground Troop Support. He transforms into a Boeing AV-8B Harrier II V/STOL ground-attack jet and forms Superion's left arm
History[]
After housing the Creation Matrix in his mind, Buster Witwicky began experiencing dreams and visions of new Transformers, beginning with an etching of Superion he made subconsciously. |Devastation Derby| Optimus Prime and Buster shared a vision of these new combining robots battling their Decepticon counterparts at the Pullen Power Plant and based upon these visions Wheeljack was able to conceive of and construct the Aerialbots. |Second Generation|
Eventually, the team was finally created. Their first mission came suddenly when a crisis arose at Hoover Dam. An employee armed with a super-powerful handgun had taken over the control room and ordered that the dam be shut down. Optimus Prime suspected Megatron's involvement, but the only Autobots who could reach the dam fast enough were the newly constructed Aerialbots. Although Wheeljack had completed their bodies, Silverbolt was the only one whose personality had been fully programmed. Feeling he had no choice, Prime sent them anyway.
Arriving at the dam, they found that it had, indeed, been shut down, and where water used to fall there now hovered a Space Bridge. Sitting on the bridge was a giant drilling machine that was slowly boring through the dam. From the machine, a huge pipe led back to Cybertron. The Decepticons' plan was apparent: The water that would normally flow over the dam would be piped to Cybertron, where technologically advanced turbines would generate huge amounts of power. As the Aerialbots began to assault the drill, they were intercepted by Dirge, Ramjet, and Thrust, who had just arrived from Cybertron. During the fight, Silverbolt briefly succumbed to his fear of heights, but he recovered by putting his team's safety before his own. The battle was soon joined by the Insecticons (also new arrivals from Cybertron), but the Aerialbots still managed to win the fight. The drill, however, was impervious to individual attacks, so the Aerialbots combined into Superion and began to destroy it. Suddenly, the human who had started the whole mess (under Bombshell's mind control) appeared atop the dam and pointed Megatron's gun mode at the Autobot gestalt. As Megatron hurled threats, Superion reached over to crush him. The human, Ricky Vasquez, began to think of his daughter, and Bombshell's control weakened. At the same time, Superion was having a mental crisis of his own: Silverbolt, the only fully programmed Aerialbot, was the only one who had any respect for human life, and he tried desperately to override the other Aerialbots and stop the gestalt from crushing Ricky. Realizing that he couldn't succeed, he forced his team to disassemble. Meanwhile, Ricky managed to fight the Decepticon mind control just enough to shoot the drill instead of the Aerialbots. The Decepticons left in defeat, and the Aerialbots returned to the Ark. |Aerialbots over America|
However, the tiny Bombshell was able to sneak into the Ark with the Aerialbots, and he secretly injected a mind-controlling cerebro-shell into Optimus Prime. However, the shell malfunctioned, and the Insecticon could only read Prime's thoughts, not control them. Megatron still used this to his advantage, for when Prime used the Creation Matrix to give life to more robots, Megatron could secretly access its power and do the same. This occurred when Prime reprogrammed the Aerialbots. Because of their poor performance at Hoover Dam, Optimus was giving life to the rest of the Aerialbots, Matrix power was channeled from the cerebro-shell to Soundwave, then to Megatron (via an artificial communications hook-up), and from him into the lifeless Stunticons. This five-member Decepticon team could transform into Earthly cars, and thus humans would easily confuse them with the Autobots.
The Stunticons began to wreak havoc on a highway, and their attack was not a random one; they were targeting the Autobot Skids, who, along with the human Donny Finkleberg, was searching for a group of Cybertronian Autobots that had been accidentally transported to Earth. As the Stunticons neared Skids, Donny ran off to safety. At that moment, a RAAT team led by Circuit Breaker attacked the Decepticons but was somewhat ineffectual. The Stunticons surrounded Skids, who saw the helplessness of his situation and didn't fight back. Then the Aerialbots appeared and began firing at the Stunticons, who pretended to be protecting Skids. Circuit Breaker saw the destructive Stunticons appear to protect the supposed "good guy" Skids, and this further cemented her belief that all robots are evil. After the two Transformer teams merged into their gestalt modes, Circuit Breaker slipped into the fight and blasted Superion with all the energy her suit could provide. This stunned the giant Autobot long enough for the Stunticon gestalt, Menasor, to deal a debilitating blow with his cyclone gun. Skids and Donny used the opportunity to escape and continue their mission. |Heavy Traffic|
The Stunticons withdrew, and the deactivated Superion was taken to RAAT headquarters and disassembled for study. Several other captured Autobots (incidentally, the same ones Skids and Donny had been looking for) were in similar states of dissection when RAAT again moved into the offensive, this time against the two Decepticon Battlechargers. In the heat of the battle, Circuit Breaker unintentionally endangered the lives of civilians (and lost the fight anyway). Because of her poor judgment, she was forbidden to participate in any more assaults on the Battlechargers. Itching for revenge on the two Decepticons, she found that her only possible allies were the disassembled Autobots in her lab. It would have taken too long to repair their bodies properly and reconnect their brains, but she knew she could jury-rig them together into a form that she could control. However, she would not be able to subdue them completely, so she struck a deal: If they would obey her commands, then she would let them go after she had had her revenge on the Battlechargers. And that is just what happened. Unfortunately for her, releasing the Autobots got her fired from RAAT. |Decepticon Graffiti|
The Aerialbots and Skids guided the Autobots from Cybertron back to the Ark, but along the way Skids disappeared into thin air. It was soon revealed that he was shunt off to Limbo to make room for the return of Galvatron. The Aerialbots attempted to form Superion to crush the mad Decepticon, but the latter just shot at them while they were in the middle of the combining process. |Fallen Angel| The two Autobot teams arrived to find themselves at Optimus Prime's funeral. They warned the Autobots about Galvatron, and as it turned out: Optimus had ended up on Cybertron, arriving back on Earth via the Space Bridge. |Resurrection|
Trivia[]
Changes[]
- Originally, Optimus Prime wiped the Aerialbots' minds clean after their first mission, even Silverbolt's. You can imagine why that was replaced by Optimus using the Matrix to complete the other Aerialbots' programming.
- For somereason, the Aerialbots did not appear in the Fallen Angel comic (and thus arrive at the Ark in Resurrection!) despite being among the Autobots captured by RAAT.