Project Bodyshop

« Story of Binaltech Chapter 11 »
"Project: Bodyshop" プロジェクト：ボディショップ
First published	May 26, 2005
Story	Hirofumi Ichikawa
Continuity	Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity
Chronology	2005 (Binaltech timeline)
Packaged with	BT-14 Wheeljack

With the threat of the future hanging over his head, Wheeljack vows to find a way to safeguard both the lives of his friends and the security of the timeline.

Synopsis

When Wheeljack's shuttle is hijacked by Battle Ravage on its return trip to Cybertron, Battle Ravage delights in taunting the Autobot engineer by showing him a glimpse of the future, including the death of Wheeljack and many of his comrades during the Battle of Autobot City. Barely escaping Battle Ravage's clutches, Wheeljack is rescued by the Autobots, and then bears witness to Battle Ravage's use of the Kronosphere to alter the flow of time. This leaves Wheeljack facing a terrible dilemma: should the Autobots attempt to restore history to its correct state, even if it will mean the deaths of many of his comrades?

Seeking a way to circumvent this apparent Catch-22, Wheeljack dives into his work, and begins experimenting with the Genetronic Translink System with the aid of Chip Chase. Using the system, Wheeljack reasons that when history is corrected, his comrades can be saved from death: the bodies he saw die in the vision shown to him by Battle Ravage can indeed still meet their end, but thanks to the GT System, his friends' lifeforces can live on in subspace. Using himself as a guinea pig for the process, Wheeljack successfully develops two new bodies that the GT System allows him to control: his original body is labelled his "Alpha Unit", while a Binaltech body modelled after Grimlock's becomes his "Beta Unit", and the third "Omega Unit" is left shrouded in secrecy.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Wheeljack (1) Brawn (3) (memory) Prowl (4) (memory) Windcharger (5) (memory)	Battle Ravage (2)	Chip Chase (6)

Notes

• This chapter of the Binaltech story was printed in the pack-in booklet included with the Wheeljack Binaltech toy. The story of his transformation into a Binaltech warrior is covered in the bio and Tech Specs also published in the booklet, rather than in the story chapter itself.
• The visions shown to Wheeljack by Battle Ravage are of the events of The Transformers: The Movie. Due to the fact that the movie did not make it to Japan until 1989, Japanese production staff were not aware of precisely which characters met their end during its events, and as a consequence, Wheeljack appeared alive and well in the Victory cartoon that same year. The plot introduced in this chapter involving the GT System is Hirofumi Ichikawa's attempted explanation for how Wheeljack could both appear to die and yet still show up alive later. However, the whole "parallel universe" thing, coupled with the even more convoluted time-and space-bending events that will occur later in the Binaltech storyline, make it hard to know if the explanation actually applies to the mainstream cartoon universe.
  • Years later via "Controverse" and the Facebook version of Ask Vector Prime, Ichikawa would finally be able to give a full explanation: Japanese Generation 1 cartoon Wheeljack did indeed die, but he was later replaced by his dimension-hopping counterpart from the alternate universe debuted in the Binaltech storyline.
• Wheeljack's Binaltech weapons include a "laser-strafer rifle" (wielded by Wheeljack's Action Master toy) and a sword with an Immobilizer field (referencing the titular invention of Wheeljack's from the Generation 1 cartoon episode "The Immobilizer").

References

• Complete text of "Project: Bodyshop"
• Author-endorsed translation of "Project: Bodyshop" at Ben's World of Transformers (archived)