Copter Drone

This article is about the Beast Machines Vehicon drones. For the Animated drones, see Copterdrone.

Copter Drones are Vehicons from the Beast Machines cartoon portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Copter Drones are the sparkless air support of the Vehicons, designed by Megatron to replace the Aero Drones after their general Jetstorm suffered a little accident with some organic goo. They are led by their general, the great strategist Obsidian.

Fiction

Beast Machines cartoon

The Copter Drones made their first appearance after Megatron put Obsidian's spark into a new body to create their general. Obsidian and Strika lured the Maximals into a trap consisting of hordes of Copter and Heavy Artillery Drones. The drones were used to lure the Maximals to the Council Citadel, where they were cornered by the two fleets of drones. It might have ended there, but the interference of the newest Maximal, Botanica, caused the destruction of the drones and the escape of the rest of the Maximals. The Strike The new drones were put to work patrolling the city in search of the Maximals. Cheetor, Blackarachnia and Silverbolt, searching for the lost sparks, found themselves tangling with Obsidian and his Copter Drones. The three Maximals were pinned down, until Cheetor used a power core to blow up the drones. The Search

While the two generals were coordinating troop movements, Savage creature gave away the position of a small team of Maximals. The Artillery and Copter Drones immediately attacked, but the Maximals were able to destroy a fair few of them before being forced underground. As part of a distraction, Cheetor, Silverbolt and Nightscream led the drone forces on a wild goose chase, while the rest of the Maximals infiltrated the Grand Mal. The Siege

Following Megatron's apparent demise, Obsidian retained control of his drones. A group of them were destroyed by a reanimated Aero Drone as it opened fire on the two generals after they decided to join the Maximals. Megatron, as it turned out, wasn't as dead as it had appeared, and when he came back on the scene, the two generals and their drones rejoined him. Spark of Darkness

The drones resumed patrolling the city, with production stepped up, as Megatron intended to assault the Grand Mal, which the Maximals were occupying. As the combined forces moved into position, a Maximal team caused more chaos on the ground, using scrambled field generators to make the drones appear to each other as Maximals. The drones began the assault anyway, bombarding the ship's shields, until a clue found by Megatron enabled them to modulate their fire to pass through the shields and bring down the ship. The Downward Spiral The drones initiated field repairs before the final attack, giving the Maximals time to get the shield back up. To drain the shields, the Copter Drones and Aero Drones slammed into it, eventually breaching it. The combined drone army engaged the Maximals in combat. Presumably the Copter Drones were all deactivated when Obsidian was shot into space by Cheetor. When Legends Fall

Name Origin

The Copter Drones were never named in the Beast Machines cartoon, toyline, or related media. Behind-the-scenes of the cartoon, they were referred to by the production staff as just "Obsidian-drones". We of TFWiki must confess that the name "Copter Drone" originates from, well, this Wiki.

In our early days (before the move from Wikia), the name came about from those who were putting together the Vehicon general and Vehicon (BM) articles, possibly meant as a placeholder until the drones' official name could be determined. Unfortunately, this never happened. Then a few months later, an anonymous user created this article using the name "Copter Drone" taken from those two pages, most likely unaware that the name wasn't (yet) official. Since then, the name remained untouched thanks to an unintended oversight and lack of fact-checking on the Wiki's part, which remained in effect for the longest time. As this Wiki is usually quite diligent in it adherence to official terms and designations, and not in the habit of making things up, it was assumed that the name "Copter Drone" had to have come from somewhere official, even an obscure source. Simply put, none of us were aware that the name wasn't official during all that time.

Years later, the name was finally made official when it appeared in the Swindle's Spiel segment of the Ask Vector Prime Facebook, and again later in the Beast Wars: Uprising prose story "Derailment", albeit parsed as "copter-drones" in the former and as "copter drones" (all lowercase) in the latter. Though, the author involved in both has confirmed that he got the term from this article's title, so now these drones have an official, in-fiction name thanks to this Wiki's little slip-up. Yay?