User:Broadside/Sandbox:ContinuityFamilies
A continuity family is TFWiki.net's term for a group of distinct but closely-related individual continuities. It is not an official term, but it is an extremely useful organizational tool, providing the essence of how we divide one page from another.
For example, the Generation 1 franchise has always comprised multiple separate continuities, most prominently the original cartoon and comic books. Therefore, there is no single "Generation 1 continuity", but many (many many) related ones. It would be madness to make a separate page for every single incarnation, of, say, Starscream, so we group all of his portrayals across the Generation 1 franchise into the same article, considering them a united "family." And, just as a single franchise can contain multiple continuities, so can multiple franchises encompass a single continuity. For example, Beast Wars is a separate franchise from Generation 1, but its storyline draws heavily upon Generation 1 continuity, so it is considered part of the same continuity family, and Starscream's appearance in the Beast Wars cartoon is also included on the same page.
Determining where one continuity family ends and a new one begins is an inherently subjective matter and occasionally a cause of debate (see Quibbles below). One general guideline that fits most cases is that a new family is begun when a series is a) a fresh continuity, b) within a separate franchise, and c) significantly different in cast, theme, style, etc. Robots in Disguise was the first series to break from tradition in all three criteria and therefore form a new family.
Under this organisational scheme, most Transformers media falls into one of seven categories:
- Generation 1
- Robots in Disguise
- The Unicron Trilogy
- The live-action film series
- Transformers Animated
- The "Aligned" continuity family
- Cyberverse
Other series exist that do not clearly fall into one of these (such as the Go-Bots toyline, Kre-O shorts, Battle Masters and, er, Angry Birds), but the majority of Transformers stories reflect one of these "visions" of the brand. Though some fan-targeted official media has homaged TFWiki's use of continuity families in the form of universal clusters, Hasbro itself notably does not subscribe to the idea of the brand being divided into "families" — to them, Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime, no matter the differences in style and continuity.
Specific continuity families
Generation 1
The source from which all other Transformers continuities are ultimately derived, the Generation 1 continuity family was made up of multiple separate continuities from the very start; the Marvel comic, its UK-exclusive side-stories, the original cartoon and the childrens' storybooks ran side-by-side from 1984, each telling related, but incompatible takes on the same basic story ideas. This continued into the era of the Generation 2 revival in the 1990s.
While the "Beast Era" marked a significant departure in terms of visuals, cast and story, the events of the Beast Wars cartoon firmly establish it and its sequel series as part of the Generation 1 "mythos". The Generation 1 setting and characters have been revived and revisited since the 2000s with comic series from Dreamwave and IDW, new Generation 1 toys and other media. TakaraTomy, in particular, has focused on expanding its own take on the Generation 1 cartoon timeline.
The Generation 1 family is by far the most extensive in the Transformers multiverse, primarily due to being the most iconic iteration of the brand — after all, if you ask someone what Optimus Prime looks like, most people will picture the original. Perhaps as a self-perpetuating side effect of this, there's a tendency by fans to view new media or toys as "G1 by default" if it doesn't fit clearly into one of the other families.
Robots in Disguise
The first Transformers series to break from the Generation 1 family was the 2001 Robots in Disguise franchise. Curiously, it originated as Car Robots, a Japanese-exclusive series that — while not clearly placed in any existing continuity — was not treated as any different from previous Japanese-exclusive series that fit loosely into the Generation 1/Beast Era timeline. However, when Hasbro imported the series to fill time during the production of Armada, the series was treated as a full reboot, with faction leaders Fire Convoy and Gigatron reimagined as new versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Thanks to the lack of any overt ties to the Generation 1 series in Car Robots, western fans initially assumed that it had also been intended as a full reboot, and thus there was much uproar when a timeline from the Japanese Kiss Players franchise explained how the events of the series fit into the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon timeline.
The scope of the Robots in Disguise continuity family is limited, including only a television series, a short comic story from the 20th Anniversary Transformers Summer Special and many characters who only exist as toys. Perhaps as a result of its confusing origins or its relatively low profile, most revisiting of Robots in Disguise concepts and characters since the series ended have come in Generation 1 series, such as the IDW Generation 1 continuity and the Transformers Legends manga.
Unicron Trilogy
The "Unicron Trilogy" is the first Transformers continuity designed from the ground up as a full reboot, with Transformers: Armada marking the first time Hasbro and TakaraTomy worked together to create a new Transformers franchise from the start; as such, it includes reimagined versions of classic Generation 1 characters like Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Starscream.
The Unicron Trilogy, so named by Aaron Archer for the key role Unicron plays in each series, includes the Armada, Energon, and Cybertron toylines and all related media. While both Armada and Energon were supported by both cartoons and comic books, the collapse of Dreamwave Productions meant that the only tie-in comics for Cybertron were exclusive to the Transformers Collectors' Club.
Though Armada, Energon and Cybertron were all conceived as being part of the same universe by the Hasbro and Takara teams, the Japanese animation studio responsible for the Japanese version of Cybertron (known as Galaxy Force) ignored this, with Galaxy Force thus having no ties to the previous Unicron Trilogy cartoons. The English dub of the series tried to smooth over continuity and retroactively fit Cybertron into the timeline of the other two cartoons, and in 2007, Takara used a timeline on their website to retcon Galaxy Force into being a sequel to Micron Legend and Super Link as initially intended.
Live-action film series
This family features the Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction, and The Last Knight franchises. This includes the showcase films Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction, The Last Knight and their associated toylines. There is also a large array of supporting fiction in the form of books, comics, video games, and online games.
Animated
In late 2007, a new continuity family was born with the premiere of the Animated cartoon and soon grew to also include comics and other ancillary fiction.
TransTech
TransTech is a single continuity separate from all other families, another continuity-family-of-one. It has been featured in several Fun Publications comics and text stories which, like the 2003 Universe franchise, openly acknowledge the concept of the multiverse. A key feature of TransTech stories is that characters from different continuity families interact within the TransTech world. In fact, TransTech is the source of the "universal stream" system mentioned above, which is essentially an in-fiction codification of the idea of continuity families.
Aligned
This continuity family conspicuously includes characteristics from many of its predecessors, attempting to create a detailed prehistory and quasi-religious structure for the Transformers based upon elements introduced throughout Generation 1, the Unicron Trilogy, the live-action movies, and Animated. It shares too much in common with all of these others to be considered to be an offshoot of any one of them, so its "blended" nature must be treated as unique. New Aligned fiction features the most in-depth and definitive examination of the thirteen original Transformers yet attempted. Its central media takes the form of the Prime, Rescue Bots and Robots in Disguise cartoons (along with supportive comics, toy bios, and ancillary merchandise). Backstory is provided in the form of the fiction of the War for Cybertron franchise, Transformers: Exodus and its sequels, and The Covenant of Primus.
Quibbles
The concept of a continuity family is not an official one; it was generated by editors of this wiki as an organizational tool. While the "universal stream" concept lends an air of canonicity to the idea, so far only a small handful of continuities have been officially categorized according to that schema. So for the bulk of Transformers fiction, deciding where the lines between families are drawn is a subjective business, balancing both abstract guidelines and practical considerations.
Universe (2003)
The 2003 Universe franchise features a cross-dimensional storyline that touches upon every continuity family that existed up to that point (with even a character imported from the Go-Bots franchise). However, because the "home base" of the Universe stories is post-Beast Machines Cybertron, it is considered here to be part of the Generation 1 family.
IDW Generation 1 continuity
IDW Publishing's ongoing Generation 1 comics are included within the Generation 1 continuity family by virtue of being part of the Generation 1 franchise. However, looking beyond the fact that the Transformers in the cast are almost entirely Generation 1 characters, the continuity is nevertheless a full reboot. The backstory has little to do with any pre-existing history, and many of the characters are portrayed in unique ways. The question of whether or not, for example, the IDW version of Galvatron should be considered the "same character" as previous incarnations has been a contentious one, and it cuts to the core of where we consider an old family to end and a new one to begin.
Live-action film series
Where the IDW examples demonstrate this wiki's willingness to include diverse and fairly dissimilar continuities in the same family, the live-action film series shows the opposite. Several members of the main cast are clearly based on Generation 1 archetypes, but the aesthetic, backstory, and tone are different enough that many consider the films to be a new family. This was a focus of no small disagreement when the first movie franchise appeared, as some people considered the movie to be analogous to the IDW comics. Had the franchise never grown beyond the movies, it's entirely possible that the wiki would have ended up including it under the Generation 1 umbrella; however, the staggering breadth of movie-related media has made that option wildly impractical.
