Skywatch
| This article is about the often ineffectual human organisation. For Andrew Schmidt and those who've read his book, see Machination. |
- Skywatch is a human organization from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Skywatch is a covert government organization seemingly bent on collecting Transformers on Earth... in the national interest. Unlike their fellow conspiracy theory wet dream, they do not currently appear to be manipulated by any Cybertronians.
They seem to be under the impression that they can also control said Cybertronians to their advantage.
Stupid, stupid fleshlings.
Known members
Skywatch units
Fiction
IDW comics continuity
In 1985, at Mount St. Helens in Oregon, Skywatch excavated a giant condor robot and a giant jaguar robot from a volcanic eruption the year prior. Group leader Joshua Red believed this discovery would finally give them the funding they required. Spotlight: Soundwave
In the following years, Skywatch gained a base in Washington, D.C.. From the outside, it appears to be a derelict building. They possess a secondary base in Carson City, Nevada, which appears to be a disused warehouse, and appears to be a new base. Yet another base exists in Salt Lake City, Utah, which appears to just be for storage.
In 2007, in Eureka, Nevada, Skywatch took over the excavation of a giant purple robot and several giant dinosaur robots. Escalation #5
In Washington, D.C., the active condor and jaguar robots were being held in a Skywatch facility. Escalation #6 Following the Brasnya conflict, Skywatch deployed to the battlefield with intention to use the jaguar and condor robots (which had undergone "conditioning") to find the other Transformers. There was no possibility of this blowing-up in their faces. Devastation #1 And then it blew up in their faces when their robots went AWOL, responding to an alien signal from a blue, secondhand microcassette recorder, right as giant robots starting trashing American soil. Devastation #4
Due to the Reapers' attack on Decepticon headquarters, Skywatch decided to activate the most advanced of the "Eureka-6": Thunder Lizard-1. Devastation issue 5 When their scientist, Weston protested he couldn't "process" TL-1 this quickly, Joshua Red explained they had no choice — they were at war, it was going to get worse, and "we can't rely on anyone coming to our aid!" Thunder Lizard-1 was transferred to the Carson City base, which was a dark, bare warehouse at the time. Devastation #6
Soon after, the base was now a high-tech hanger-cum-control center, designed solely for processing and activating the Thunder-Lizards. This appears to have been hurriedly put together, as Skywatch did not have time to make proper signs for all their doors and had to scribble the names of several rooms down in pencil, with a reminder to make a better sign.
Weston was worried that the techniques used to program the robot, knocked out in a few days, would blow up in their faces; Red ignored his concerns, focusing on the need for Earth to have an asset against the enemy robots. So, inevitably, this experiment blew up in their faces as well. A mole secretly working with the Machination interfered with the re-activation process and Grimlock (or Thunder Lizard-1) regained control of his functions and broke out of the base. Agent Red ordered the scientists to figure out what went wrong and to begin preparations for the other "Thunder Lizards" to be deployed. Even though Grimlock's reactivation was sabotaged, Agent Red still learned nothing. Idiot. Spotlight: Grimlock
In a shocking development, when the "Thunder Lizards" were quite easily reprogrammed and worked perfectly, Red began to show suspicion that something was up. When the lost Thunder Lizard-1 appeared in Fallon, Skywatch mobilized to isolate the town, cut communications, and send in their robot teams... Maximum Dinobots #1 who caused greater damage and had their neural nets go wonky. In a further example of his new-found brain cells, Red realized this meant enemy action was going on, and so went to have a chat with the sixth Eureka robot. Maximum Dinobots #2 Rather than try and usurp his will, Agent Red had placed a bomb in Shockwave's head which would explode in 24 hours if a signal was not transmitted. This was how much time Shockwave has to hunt down the seekers and the Thunder-Lizards. Shockwave seemed compliant, until he chillingly stated that he could lay waste to a substantial portion of the planet in 24 hours, leaving Agent Red and his team to worry. Maximum Dinobots #3
Agent Red later got word from one of his field units that they have reacquired Seekers One and Two from the coordinates Shockwave provided them with. He also learned that Shockwave was currently battling an "unidentified mecha" in another location. He told his tech to hold off transmitting the disarm code for the bomb in Shockwave's head, as he wanted all of their stray robots recovered first. If Shockwave recovered them all before the time was up, she should have let the bomb detonate instead. Shockwave later lets Scorponok go and the Dynobots go after him, casing Agent Red to board a helicopter, wanting to see the battle first-hand, and told the tech to transmit the disarm code. As she does so, Soundwave intercepted the code and cloned it for Shockwave, who in turn told Soundwave how to free himself. As Soundwave did, he reactivated Ravage and Laserbeak, who easily dispatched the Skywatch agents and escaped. Intending to blow him and Shockwave up, Grimlock activated a grenade that blew the building they were in sky-high, the blast narrowly missing Agent Red's helicopter. An unhappy looking Agent Red later walked away from the debris left behind by the day's carnage, with all of his captured robots having escaped. Maximum Dinobots #5
Joshua Red was apparently fired from his position as head of Skywatch, no doubt because of his repeated failures, and replaced by Colonel Daniel Witwicky. The Man Of Steel
Witwicky's son, Spike was given a unit within Skywatch, and tasked with hunting down Transformers remaining on Earth. When Breakdown attacked a power station, Spike's team incapacitated him and threatened to use lethal force, in a plan that brought Prowl out of hiding. Prowl was captured and used as bait for the other Autobots. When Hot Rod led a rescue team, Ironhide was killed in the process. In response, a depressed Optimus Prime resigned as Autobot leader and surrendered to Skywatch. ...For All Mankind
