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Autobot City
Autobot City is the Transformer-scale fortress city the Autobots built on Earth after losing Cybertron, and it transforms because a Transformer named Metroplex is built into it.
The record
What it is
By 2005 the Decepticons hold all of Cybertron and the Autobots have been pushed off their own planet. Autobot City is the answer: a purpose-built, Transformer-scale city in North America, outfitted so a large force can live and work there, and capable of converting into a fortress with shields raised and weapon emplacements deployed across every surface. The transformation is not automatic. It has to be triggered through a series of heavy manual operations, which is exactly why the 1986 film's opening battle is so desperate. Its computer is Teletraan II and its commander is Ultra Magnus.
The battle in The Transformers: The Movie is the most consequential sequence in G1. Hot Rod and Kup arrive to find the shuttle massacred, the city is caught mid-conversion, Blaster's transmission for help is jammed, and by the time reinforcements arrive Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, Brawn, Wheeljack and Windcharger are dead. Optimus Prime arrives, breaks the Decepticon line almost single-handedly, fights Megatron and dies of his wounds, passing the Matrix to Ultra Magnus. The city survives, damaged but repairable, and continues in use through the third season.
The city's relationship to Metroplex is the thing everyone gets slightly wrong. Metroplex is not the city; he is a Transformer who forms a section of it and can detach and walk away when needed. The show colours his components white and the rest of the city gold to keep them distinguishable. Marvel UK goes further and makes Metroplex the sentient core without which the city cannot transform at all, which Hot Rod discovers the hard way during the Quintesson attack in Space Pirates!.
History
What happened here
| Event | Episode |
|---|---|
| Megatron's forces assault Autobot City and kill Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, Brawn, Wheeljack and Windcharger | The Transformers: The Movie |
| Optimus Prime arrives, defeats Megatron and dies of his wounds, passing the Matrix to Ultra Magnus | The Transformers: The Movie |
| The city continues as the Autobots' Earth headquarters under Ultra Magnus's command | Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1 |
| Quintessons attack the city and Hot Rod activates Metroplex, its sentient core, to drive them off | Space Pirates! (Marvel UK) |
Continuity
Comics versus cartoon
Marvel UK builds Autobot City as a collaboration between the Autobots and Earth's governments and makes Metroplex an inert sentient core that must be woken for the city to transform at all, whereas the cartoon's Metroplex is an active character who simply happens to dock with the city.
Detail
Trivia
- Autobot City's Japanese name is Scramble City, which is also the name of a 1986 direct-to-video Japanese special built around it.
- No toy of Autobot City itself was ever made. Metroplex was marketed as Autobot City on his packaging, which is the root of the persistent confusion between the two.
- Marvel UK dates the city's plans to 2003, construction as a joint Autobot and human government project, and its opening to 2004, likely on the Oregon site where Galvatron built his anti-Unicron cannon.
- In the cartoon Metroplex's portions of the city are drawn white and the rest gold, a deliberate production convention to keep the character and the architecture separate.
- Ultra Magnus's original tech spec function is City Commander, which is why every continuity puts him in charge here.
Handle with care
Contested
Where the sources disagree, or where a name that everyone treats as original G1 actually arrived much later. We record it rather than smoothing it over.
- Whether Autobot City and Metroplex are the same entity. Some fiction uses the names interchangeably; the cartoon does not.
- The city's location is unstated in the film; Marvel UK places it in or near Oregon.
- The Madman comic dates construction to 2001, Marvel UK to 2003 to 2004, and Dreamwave to 2004.
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