Talk:Rewind (G1)/2005 IDW continuity

Two Lost Lights

I propose separating the writeups for the two alternate Rewinds prior to "The Road Not Taken". The way it's currently set up, it's incredibly confusing to switch back and forth between the two, especially when there's sometimes no clear indicator which Lost Light the Rewind of the respective paragraph in question hails from.--Nevermore (talk) 07:13, 5 March 2020 (EST)

James's answer about Rewind I

Putting here for archival purposes. Saix (talk) 16:36, 12 October 2022 (EDT)

Were there ever any plans to bring back Rewind 1, or was Overlords hand obscured in MTMTE 16 just to keep us guessing?

Well, okay, let me have a little drink. =)

So let's tie together various questions here. So originally - there's a lot of disclosure you're about to hear - originally Rewind 1 *was* going to come back. Eventually. Rewind 1, we would've learned, would have - because if you remember Rewind 1 couldn't shrink and right back in the first issue we established that he turns into a giant USB stick, essentially. We would've learned that thanks to the intense trauma or panic or fear of being trapped in a slow cell with Overlord, his deep seated defense mechanism/reflex would've meant that he did rediscover the ability to transform and shrink. So he would've shrunk to that size and Overlord would've grabbed him as the ship exploded. So definitely, when the issue was drawn - 16 - the fist was clenched/obscured.

And this is where it gets more complicated.

So, we would have discovered that Overlord and Rewind were discovered by the Galactic Council. So some of that happened - Overlord was discovered by the Council. Originally the Council would find Overlord *and* Rewind, and they would have used Rewind in an experiment that they'd been working on for years - and there are shades of this in a sense, in the finale - a weapon that would punch its way into parallel universes. And they would've fixed Rewind, and given him a suit of armor necessary to jump from universe to universe. And to do that after the first successful jump to another universe, he would've discovered that it would be very difficult to find the power sources necessary to jump again...a bit like Back to the Future. He wanted to get home, a bit like Quantum Leap - just stealing from all these other sources. So the Council wanted to use Rewind as a weapon - it wouldn't be to jump to universes, it would be a super powerful directed teleportation weapon, but it would've malfunctioned and he would've been pushed in space and time, in the distant distant past in a different universe.

So the reason why Rewind 2 survived Slaughterhouse and didn't get cancelled out is because by that point Rewind 1 wasn't in our universe anymore. And so Rewind 1 would've been off-stage having these adventures, fighting his way back to our universe to be reunited with Chromedome, and encountering all sorts of different iterations of Transformers and I guess different Chromedomes, but he wanted the original. Had we had a series 4 or had I enough space in S3 to do the Chromedome/Rewind story I wanted to do, it would've been the return of Rewind 1. The bollocked thing about this and Chromedome and the 2 Rewinds, as you've picked up already, is that if Rewind 1 comes back...then one of the two of them would have to go. One of them is gonna be cancelled out. I had in mind an entire issue just with the three of them - and believe me, it would have worked out scientifically, there would have been a reason for this - they would have been aware of their situation and they could exercise choice over which one of the two Rewinds is gonna go. By this point, you would've hopefully taken Rewind 2 to your hearts and poor Rewind 1 - yes, we all love Rewind 1 - but Rewind 1 would've spent literally millions of years jumping and jumping to get back to Chromedome.

But, here's the other thing - back when Rewind is in a coma in issue 12, and Chromedome speaks to him, we don't know what Chromedome says. But what Chromedome does, is he confesses something. And this ties in with Rewind's alleged allergy to ultraviolet light, and so storyline right back at the beginning...before I wrote issue 1, was that Chromedome was involved in Dominus Ambus' disappearance, and Chromedome was tasked by Prowl with removing from Rewind 1's memories the fate of Dominus Ambus and then removing the precise details of his disappearance from his own memory. When Chromedome and Rewind met at the relinquishment chamber, it was after Chromedome had done that. And Chromedome would have been burdened with this guilt, and he would have confessed this to Rewind when Rewind was in a coma in issue 12.

And if you go back to issue 12, you will see that in that panel, Rewind's recording. So even though he's in a coma, he's recording everything...including Chromedome's confession. So while Rewind 1 is universe hopping, at some point he would have accessed this memory - this recording - and discover what Chromedome did, and his motivation for returning to our universe would have gone from a desire to be reunited with his love to a desire to have a reckoning or to take revenge or...it became more complicated than love.

And the idea would be that Chromedome, when Rewind 1 came back into our universe, this three way conversation with the two Rewinds and Chromedome would've been very interesting; because what Chromedome did to Rewind 1 he would have also done to Rewind 2, but Rewind 2 would only just be finding out about it. And so, and...what I haven't said about it...the Galactic Council [James says "Functionists" here, but I think he meant GC based on earlier] fashioned this armor to look like Primus, because they reckoned that many Transformers were superstitious, and figured if they could teleport "Primus" into the middle of a battlefield, it would sow discord and confusion, etc. so Rewind 1 looked like Primus. And everything I've just told you was more or less going to happen - I'll come back to that - and when I absolutely definitively had to ditch that storyline was when I came to write the last part of the Mutineer's Trilogy, and that scene in issue 12 where we have the Scavengers interlude, that was originally an interlude set in the Marvel UK Transformers universe - and I wrote this scene - and it was set in the Target: 2006 story. In Target : 2006 for those who don't know, Galvatron travels back in time, fights Megatron, tries to build a weapon to blow up Unicron in 2006. Within that story Omega Supreme is brought up but never shows up and his disappearance is never accounted for. So this 5 page flashback would have utilized original Furman dialogue, and it would appear to be Primus arriving from nowhere, fighting Omega Supreme for "reasons", defeating Omega Supreme, and then hopping out of there, basically using Omega's power to hop him closer - very close, because 1986, although in a parallel universe is getting closer to "our" time. So that would've been that.

And it was written, and two things: by this point I was thinking, "I've already got a lot of stuff compressed into the last 12 issues and I don't think I can find room to have Rewind come back and have that special conversation and to give that the attention it deserves". That was one reason. The other reason was that I'd gone really cold on the idea of Chromedome doing that to Rewind. At the beginning - way back, before issue 1 came out, and you're mapping all these stories - it seemed like an interesting thing. It was a memory, it was using Chromedome's abilities against him, and it was high drama. But I didn't like - as those characters came to life and that relationship came to life - I didn't like that to be part of their relationship. And so we've got references in Dark Cybertron, in issue 14, to Prowl knowing something and using it to blackmail him. And I put those things in there thinking "Well, I can pick up on that or I don't have to." And so yeah...in the end I E-mailed my editor and said, "I don't know how I feel about this anymore" and we decided that, yeah, don't go there.

So hopefully that's explained the UV thing, the Prowl blackmail angle, the lost scene from the Mutineer's Trilogy...oh yeah! And at the end of the Functionist Universe, the end of Dissolution, you would have had an epilogue where Rewind 1 [as Primus] attacks the Functionist Council, and is responsible for them merging with Vector Sigma, which would have led to the Crucible events. And it was all tied together, and I sort of loosened some of those ties, but still would've been able to pursue the story if I wanted to.

So here we are. Canonically, Chromedome didn't do that to Rewind. Prowl's blackmail is of a different nature - to be determined, that original storyline went. And...yeah. So that's...yeah. So that's a lot of answer.