Vok
- The Vok are aliens from the Beast Wars portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
The Vok are mysterious energy-based alien creatures who developed prehistoric Earth towards their own designs. The Vok are dedicated to "the Project", which consists of enigmatic, sometimes contradictory plans for the planet. As a result of these experiments, there are a number of anomalies on the Earth, including several floating landmasses, a mysterious stone formation, a golden disk, a hollowed-out moon, and a plot device.
They're also nice creatures.
Fiction
Beast Wars cartoon continuity
Beast Wars cartoon
- Voice actor: Blu Mankuma and Richard Newman (English), Hidetoshi Nakamura (Japanese), Carlos Campanile (Portuguese)
Tarantulas knew in advance how the Vok would respond Spider's Game, knew how quickly they'd come the second time, and said "They always come!" as if he were familiar with their activites. Other Visits (Part 1) He may have known things, or he might have been just be a really good guesser; you can never tell with him.
Early into the Beast Wars, the Vok were alerted to the Transformers' presence. They abducted and scanned Optimus Primal, then returned him a day later, their business done. Chain of Command Later, the destruction of Brigadoon, the Vok's testing ground for any sentient life, sent a warning signal to them. The Trigger, Part 2 Tarantulas immediately started to work on a way to escape the planet, darkly warning that it was "doomed". Spider's Game The discovery of an alien Golden Disk would reveal he was right: The Vok were on their way and were not happy. Before the Storm
Once they arrived, they carried out further scans and briefly faced off with Optimus, taking the form of Unicron to do so; they claimed they had no physical form he could comprehend, and so were assuming the form of a "figure of authority" in his mind. They informed him that the Beast Wars had irreversibly contaminated their experiment and, due to unspecified danger if this was allowed to continue, they were going to cut their losses. The nature of the second moon was now revealed: It was an immense cannon designed to destroy the planet! Other Voices, Part 1 Optimus Primal sacrificed himself in order to destroy the Planet Buster. Other Voices, Part 2
As a result of the Planet Buster's explosion, a quantum surge was released. The surge caused a mutation in several of the Transformers (notably, Megatron, Rattrap, Cheetor and Tarantulas) turning them into Transmetals. Aftermath The destruction of the Planet Buster also released a transwarp wave that traveled through space and time, eventually reaching Cybertron in the era from which the Axalon and Darksyde crews originated. The Agenda (Part 1)
Later, the Vok made another attempt to wipe out the Transformers. A second weapon, the Metal Hunter, appeared on the planet to knock the Transformers unconscious, and the Maximals Airazor and Tigatron were abducted. Megatron and Tarantulas, meanwhile, had both gained knowledge about the aliens from the Vok Disk. Other Visits (Part 1) Other Visits (Part 2) Megatron would go on to capture and alter an alien device he called the "Transmetal driver", which he used to create Transmetal 2's. Feral Scream Part 1 It could also raise the dead somehow! Crossing the Rubicon
Near the end of the Beast Wars, the Vok sent an emissary, Tigerhawk (a newly created fusion of Airazor and Tigatron), to Earth to deal with Megatron's disruption of the timestream. Tigerhawk was able to destroy the Predacon base, but was eventually subdued and captured by Tarantulas. Tarantulas was able to draw the Vok out of Tigerhawk's frame and into his own, but this led to his own destruction... Other Victories
Primeval Dawn
...and subsequent Vok-powered rebirth.
Established as the enlightened descendants of Swarm, the Vok's goal in guiding Earth's development was to atone for their shameful and destructive past. Knowing that Tarantulas had stolen their own power for his evil plans, the Vok turned to the Ark, creating Primal Prime (from the Matrix, a Datasphere and Quickstrike's control harness) and restoring the sparks of Airazor and Tigatron to separate Transmetal bodies, hoping they could defeat Tarantulas. Primeval Dawn Part 1
Later, when they lost the Matrix to the zombified arachnid, the Vok merged themselves with Primal Prime in order to provide a temporary substitute for the Matrix. Primal Prime gained a snazzy new Vok-shaped breastplate out of the deal. Primeval Dawn Part 3
IDW Beast Wars comics
The Vok are the enlightened evolution of the Swarm, a combination of Cybertronian, human, and mysterious lizard species life. Their aim is to find the optimal path of development for the sources of their components, especially Cybertronians.
After Tigerhawk was destroyed, the Vok granted Airazor a Transmetal body using a blank protoform. Tigatron gained a new Transmetal body as well, and his experience with the Vok expanded his awareness of Nature to the entire Universe.
Antagony was "reconstructed" by the Vok to act as a provocateur in whatever realities they toss her into, to test the upper limits of Cybertronians. Antagony, however, believes that she is from a future ruled by Shokaract, and did work for him at one point.
When Blackarachnia was close to death, a Transmetal "Vok alternate body" was created in null-space. When Blackarachnia lived, the body was sidelined.
After Rhinox's death as Tankor, the Vok took his spark from the Matrix, gave him a new body, and dropped him into different realities, supposedly to combat Unicron's chaos, but really to manipulate Cybertronian history. Rhinox realizes this and does not trust the Vok, but, out of guilt for his actions as Tankor, still helps any Cybertronian he comes across. Beast Wars Sourcebook
Animated cartoon
The Vok are an alien race which hails from Nexus Zero. Little is known about them save that they've developed negatronic force field emitters. According to a certain arms dealer, they're "nice creatures". If you're ever in the Nexus Zero area, look them up—you won't be sorry. SUV: Society of Ultimate Villainy
Origin controversy
In the course of writing the Beast Wars television show, the co-story editors had conflicting ideas on who the Vok were. Bob Forward liked to imagine the Vok as the evolutionary endpoint of all sentient life in the universe, shaping the development of other races in order to guide them eventually into becoming Vok themselves. Larry DiTillio wanted to link the Vok to the Swarm, who, in his version of the events of the Generation Two comic book, had completely wiped out Humanity and wished to atone for their crimes. Neither origin made it into the television show before it completed.
Note that a Swarm-based origin raises continuity questions, as the Swarm were shown to have become enlightened only after an intervention of sorts from Optimus Prime A Rage in Heaven!...whom the Vok would have preemptively killed 4 million years earlier when their Planet-Buster weapon destroyed prehistoric Earth (but see below).
Ultimately, the Vok origin was published as backstory for OTFCC's "Primeval Dawn" storyline and IDW's Beast Wars Sourcebook.
Motivations
The Beast Wars Universe book, working off interviews and notes from the series writers, says that the Vok's experiments on Earth were part of an attempt to further evolve Humanity, as the Vok had destroyed the human race while existing as the Swarm, and they wished to rebuild all the races they'd destroyed. It states that the energon crystals were seeded so that they would become energon cubes by the time Humanity came about. This would give them a reliable fuel source which wouldn't harm the environment, as energon actually provided nutrients to the soil of the planet and didn't harm its animals. The Vok also attempted to play the role of God for humans, intending to guide their development and reveal their true nature once the Vok felt the humans were ready. It also states that the Vok had been forced to destroy Earth several times before the events of Other Voices, Part 2, all the while subtly manipulating the timestream after they did. Only contact with Tigatron made them unsure if this was a good idea.
One of their other motivations was to turn the Transformers into a smaller race that could better interact with organics, and therefore become the friends and protectors of the galaxy. To do this, they created protoforms and dumped them on Cybertron, forcing the evolution into Maximal and Predacon. Only high-ranking figures like the High Council and Optimus Prime know that protoforms have an alien origin. [1]
The canonicity of these claims is dubious at best, as they are basically all wish-lists of authorial intent published years after the fact in obscure, non-English media, they never appeared in any actual story material, and some items (such as the notion that the Vok created sparks too) were rendered flatly impossible by later in-fiction revelations. But one thing is for sure: Old habits die hard.
Symbols
The golden disk that the Vok left on prehistoric Earth displayed ten symbols at a time, five on each side. Symbols spontaneously changed from one to another; there were 15 unique symbols. The first four symbols on the upper left row each represented an alien artifact.
- The first symbol represented Brigadoon from "The Trigger, Part 1" and "Part 2".
- The second symbol represented the Standing Stones from "Chain of Command".
- The third symbol represented the Planet Buster from "Other Voices, Part 1" and "Part 2".
- The fourth symbol represented the Metal Hunter from "Other Visits (Part 1)" and " Part 2".
The fifth symbol on the top row was used to mark traps on Brigadoon. The meaning of the other ten symbols was not explained.
File
Notes
- Most of the Beast Wars episodes involving the Vok begin with the word "Other", followed by a word starting with the letter V. See: "Other Voices" Parts 1 and 2, "Other Visits" (Parts 1 and 2), and "Other Victories"; with Chain of Command and The Trigger, Part 1 and Part 2 being the exceptions.
- Again according to Beast Wars Universe, Larry DiTillio's ideas were that sparks were pieces of Vok! The idea was the composite bits of the Vok want to be individuals, so they separate into good and evil sparks, entering newly built Transformers. Once the Transformer dies, their spark rejoins the Matrix...AKA the Vok Nebula, and becomes a new, changed Vok. Obviously, this idea has been totally nullified by later Hasbro published canon, though the Allspark has some similarity to the Vok Nebula idea.
- The Vok claimed to possess a physical form no one could comprehend. This idea appears to have been dropped, as floating skulls aren't that incomprehensible. The idea of a greater danger coming from a contaminated experiment would also go unmentioned in later appearances.
References
- ↑ http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/tf/tidbits/vok.txt Translated section from Beast Wars universe]
