Botanica (BM)

This article is about the freedom fighter from Beast Machines. For the council member from the Animated universe, see Botanica (Animated).

Botanica is a Maximal from the Beast Machines portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

The fandom somehow failed to clamor for this one.

The Transformers have taken on myriad alternate forms over the years, but Botanica remains unique: she transforms into a mobile alien plant creature. She is competent and powerful, as well as a bit mystical, and has a strong connection to the planet and an affinity for growing things. A scientist first and foremost, she can be fastidious and fussy in her dedication to her work—sometimes to the point of overlooking the things that matter most.

Fiction

Beast Machines cartoon

Voice actor: Kathleen Barr (English), Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese), Vera Miranda (Brazil), Arianne Borbach (German)

REFORMAT ME, SEYMOUR.

Botanica captained the same sort of exploration mission that the Axalon originally undertook. Landing on a planet dominated by plant life, including the mobile variety, her crew adopted forms based upon them to blend in and study them.

File:Botanica5.jpg

"Botanica, Triffid mode!"

When they received Megatron's fake distress signal, Botanica left the world and her crew behind and returned to Cybertron, where she was shot down. When Optimus Primal and his Maximals investigated her ship, they found her in a feral state. In her mobile, possibly carnivorous plant mode, she attacked them and then fled underground, spreading seeds as she went. The seeds immediately sprouted into various plants, the most insidious being rapidly-growing vines. Primal worried that, left unchecked, the plants she was producing would "destroy" the planet. She was somehow drawn to the technorganic orchard (and, Cheetor noted, its pipeline to the planet's organic core). Catching up with her there, Primal noticed that she was sparking the way the Maximals had when they were infected with Megatron's virus. This gave him the idea to reformat her, which restored her sanity. She explained, "[Megatron's] attack shorted out my ship, along with my higher reasoning protocols." She had been acting out of pure self-preservation, but once she could think clearly, she became an instant ally. This was lucky for the Maximals, who were immediately set upon by Vehicons. Botanica converted to robot mode (notably without any training from Primal) and unleashed a chain-lightning attack that reduced a phalanx of Tank Drones to dust. Home Soil

We'll let you just go and win the war for us, then.

However, she seldom used her weaponry, arguing that the more the Maximals fought Megatron, the more they became like him. She instead spent all her time and energy tending to the orchard. Although Cheetor and Blackarachnia resented this, Primal accepted her reasons, and also reminded his team that they were more than enough to fight Megatron and Thrust. However, Botanica soon received a vision from the Matrix, which showed her how much pain Cybertron was in. Botanica abandoned her pacifism and joined in the fight, saving the Maximals from a trap Obsidian and Strika had formed. Sparkwar Pt. I: The Strike

If you like to talk to tomatoes, if a squash can make you smile...

When Megatron was presumed dead, Botanica returned her focus to the orchard, with the help of a reluctant Rattrap. They began arguing over the other's respective priorities, but eventually kissed. Despite pledging to delete it from memory, they showed obvious concern for each other. Spark of Darkness When the still alive Megatron launched an attack on the Maximal-held Grand Mal, they were forced to raise the shields, which cut Botanica off from the organic core. Rattrap jettisoned her into an escape pod with a field projecting the same harmonics as the Grand Mal's shields, saving Botanica's life but also allowing Megatron to fire through the shields. Endgame Pt. I: The Downward Spiral

When Megatron was finally destroyed and Cybertron reformatted, Botanica eventually formed a romantic relationship with Rattrap. So she likes small rodents. Deal with it. Endgame Pt. III: Seeds of the Future

Transformers Legends anthology

This takes place during "Spark of Darkness"

While Botanica and Rattrap were bickering in the technorganic orchard, Megatron's spark animated a Cycle drone and attacked them. After a brief scuffle, the thing exploded, sending the pair diving for cover. Singularity Ablyss

Universe: Featuring the Wreckers

After the Spark War, Botanica was present on Cybertron for the latest Quintesson invasion. The planet spoke to her during the conflict, informing her of a greater threat coming from below. She took Rattrap and Nightscream with her to explore the planet's depths, where they ran across the Wreckers' Quintesson ally, Al-Badur. Initially suspicious, the Maximals reluctantly accepted Al-Badur at his word after he used some old Quint codes to deactivate a third of the Sharkticon forces on the surface.

They made contact with what remained of the Wreckers, and Al-Badur brought them to a Quintesson banishing chamber, which could hopefully be used against their foe Cryotek, who had mainlined some of Primus's own power through the Divine Light. Naturally, Al-Badur tried to betray them, opening the banishment portal in the hopes of sending both Cryotek AND the assembled heroes to some distant void. Arcee warned the others in time so that only Sentinel Maximus was caught with Cryotek in the force field surrounding the portal. Botanica was also suffering her own problems -- the unique nature of the Quintesson chamber was cutting her off from her symbiotic connection to Cybertron's organic side. Using her electro-blasters against Cryotek had only further depleted her reserves, and she was forced to flee the chamber. She still managed to help from a distance, however, using her techno-organic vines to carry the injured Rodimus back into the fray, where he could do the most good. Wreckers: Finale Part II

Notes

• Botanica's pre-production name was Binary.

• Botanica is a rarity, in that she was a major recurring heroic character in a Transformers television show, but was apparently never intended to have a toy.

They laughed at the idea of a "ship's gardener." Oh, how they laughed.

• Assuming the Transformer seen in silhouette at right is Botanica, she remains the only plant-based Transformer ever seen in the canon. She states the other members of her crew also took plant modes, so she's not unique within the fictional universe. However, judging by the reactions of Optimus Primal and the other Maximals, they had either never heard of "Plantformers" before, or they are extremely rare. (Saberback and Sling could each partially transform themselves into plant-like shapes for disguise purposes, but in both the toys and the fiction these were not "full-body" transformations, instead more like a cloaking mode, and they were never purported to be living plants.)

• Yet another point of rarity: In both plant and robot mode, she has no true legs (she has roots in plant mode, and a sort of "hoverskirt" in robot mode).

• Another oddity: Botanica's technorganic transformation is different from all the others; instead of being surrounded by coloured lights, a ring of technorganic plants spring up, and shrink down, revealing her robot mode.

• One more point to lengthen her unusual scorecard: when in plant mode (which is most of the time), Botanica is the only Transformer to exhibit heterochromia. While she has two yellow eyes in bot mode, her plant mode's left eye is green.

• Despite her pacifist ways, Botanica is well-armed, with several weapons at her disposal, including energy projectiles, electrical fields, and a "chain-lightning" attack that leaps from one enemy to another. Huh. Surprisingly well-armed for someone who doesn't like to fight.

• The planet that Botanica and her crew were sent to explore is apparently Planet Jungle from Mainframe Entertainment's other toyline-based cartoon Shadow Raiders. Whether this is an intentional crossover or simply due to the recycling of backgrounds and animation models for budget reasons is unclear.
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