Sentinel Prime (TFA)


 * Sentinel Prime is an Autobot in the Transformers Animated continuity family.



Sentinel Prime is a member of the Cybertron Elite Guard under the command of Ultra Magnus. Sentinel has a history of rivalry with Optimus Prime, who attended the Autobot Academy with him. In his academy days, he was somewhat of a maverick, leading the more responsible Optimus to refer to him as a "walking malfunction." Of course, he's the one that ended up on the Elite Guard while Optimus was sent off to repair space bridges, of which fact he's all too fond of reminding his former classmate. He also has a bit of a superiority complex toward non-guardsmen Autobots, not to mention that he's intensely organic-phobic.

All things considered, he's kind of a jerk.

His alt-mode is a snow plow truck. He possesses an energy lance and an arm-mounted shield which can be expanded into a force-field, as well as tossed about as a weapon. Basically, he'd be a knight in shining armor...if he wasn't such a jerk.

Don't mention his chin. He's a little touchy about it.

"But Sentinel..." "...is a glitch-head. All due respect."

- Jazz and Bumblebee sum up Sentinel Prime

Animated cartoon

 * Voice actor: Townsend Coleman (English), Peter Reinhardt (German)



Sentinel took Optimus and Elita-1 on a mission to an organic planet looking for an old Decepticon warship, hoping to get all the energon stored within. However, they ran into a pack of massive arachnids. Sentinel tried to hold them off long enough for Optimus and Elita to escape. When he came across a ship that Optimus and Elita had found, Optimus had to drag him away from the exploding energon, forcing them to leave Elita-1 behind. Optimus's radar couldn't find Elita's energy signature, and he assumed that she was dead. A furious Sentinel blamed Optimus for what happened, even though this whole disaster had been his idea. Jerk.

After graduation from the Academy, he received an official rank as Sentinel Minor, the drill officer for an Autobot training camp. Obviously compensating for being a jerk, he took out his frustrations on recruits like Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Ironhide and Wasp. Busting their transistors at every turn, he liked to conduct surprise inspections and force the recruits to chant that they were worthless grease stains. Of course, in Bumblebee's case, the extra attention was not exactly unmerited, as the little glitch-head managed to get Sentinel's feelings on whether Ultra Magnus should retire from command broadcast across the camp. In the end, he commended Bumblebee for his role in discovering a seeming Decepticon traitor. However, since he flunked Bulkhead, the little yellow Autobot didn't accept Sentinel's offer of a fast track to the Elite Guard.

Years later, he was still a jerk, but a jerk with prestige, having been promoted to Sentinel Prime. When Optimus Prime rang up the Cybertron Elite Guard to tell them of the Decepticons in pursuit, he sneered that a screw-up like Optimus wasn't worth the attention of Ultra Magnus. Piping through a visual of the AllSpark from the cargo hold of their ship shut him up quickly enough.



Later, the Elite Guard visited Earth to reclaim the AllSpark. When Jazz decided to take a closer look at the humans, Sentinel warned that organics could spew out slime that melts through armor plating, deliberately goading Optimus Prime with memories of Elita One's fate. He decontaminated Optimus Prime's crew after setting a force field around the ship. When he heard that they'd defeated Megatron and the Decepticons, he didn't believe Optimus, almost causing a fight between him and Bulkhead. Sentinel boasted to Ultra Magnus that he had taken the initiative and scanned some "typical" Earth vehicles so they would not draw undue attention. He had, in fact, scanned massive, destructive vehicles for them both.

En route to Dinobot Island, Sentinel further evidenced how subtlety obviously isn't his strong point by driving through a blockade and off an overpass still under construction. When he, Optimus and Magnus arrived, they encountered the Dinobots, and Sentinel began to attack, believing their technology was primitive. Grimlock's subsequent transformation caught him off guard. They then went back to the city to take care of malfunctioning police drones. Sentinel started to act like a jerk again, more worried about organic contamination, and vowed to see Optimus arraigned on charges of high treason, but Optimus had finally got enough of Sentinel's mouth and finally told him off, saying to his former friend that Sentinel was on his turf now and he should respect Optimus' decisions. Unsurprisingly, Sentinel was unmoved. Even when shown proof of the AllSpark not being destroyed, Sentinel's attitude did not change. He was thus rather surprised when Ultra Magnus said that Optimus had characteristics that Sentinel himself could stand to learn.

Not taking the criticism to heart at all, he continued to be a general jerk to Optimus, the local police, humans, and pretty much everyone. His comeuppance would soon come in the form of a humiliating body-jacking by the Headmaster. Putting his reputation (and his noggin) in Optimus Prime's hands, he trusted his comrade to help him get his body back without letting anybody else find out. In this state he was slightly less condescending to Optimus, but it was hard to talk down to someone when reduced to 1/10th his size. He still had choice words about Optimus' practices in the process of saving his body however, such as ripping its arm off and using his head as a soccer ball. Deep down, Optimus was enjoying himself.

After recovering his body, Sentinel had to face the embarrassing prospect of reporting to Ultra Magnus, but surprisingly enough, Optimus covered for him. It took every ounce of effort for the big guy to utter a "thank you" to his comrade later.

While in the Headmaster's possession, Sentinel's body's weapons were upgraded into more powerful forms. At the moment it's not clear whether Sentinel got to keep the upgrades when the Headmaster Unit was separated or not.

Unfortunately, the whole Headmaster debacle still failed to purge Sentinel of even a dram of his jerk quotient. When Optimus protested Ultra Magnus's decision to have his crew join the rest of the Autobots off-Earth, Sentinel was quick to jump on Optimus, saying that no sign of Decepticon activity had been detected (failing to consider that the Decepticons had been dampening their signals). He even went so far as to bribe Optimus with an offer of reinstatement in the Elite Guard if he went along with the official story. Through all this, he was more than slightly keen to slap stasis cuffs on Optimus in order to get him to comply with Magnus's orders.

When the Elite Guard's ship detected an AllSpark fragment in a runaway passenger train (actually a trap set by Starscream), Sentinel was irritated to find that he had to stay behind and nursemaid "Maintenance Prime" while Ultra Magnus and Jazz set off to investigate. The situation got worse when, discovering Decepticon presence, Optimus goaded Sentinel into a blind attack and took the opportunity to slap the stasis cuffs on him. Poor sap...{snicker}

Sentinel eventually worked his way out of the cuffs and pursued Optimus to where the AllSparked train had stopped, threatening to have him tried and blacklisted for assaulting an Elite Guard, dismissing out of hand Optimus's justification of Decepticon involvement. Fortunately for Optimus, Megatron and Blitzwing chose that moment to blast Starscream to the ground in front of the Autobots.

Sentinel had to take more time than the other Elite Guards to rally; unlike Magnus and Optimus, he had never seen a Decepticon before. Initial dismay aside, Sentinel did manage to last longer than the other Autobots against Starscream's onslaught, but the only reason he didn't fall was that Optimus took the stasis cuffs Sentinel had brought with him (anticipating Optimus's formal arrest as he was) and slapped them onto Starscream. Sentinel still thought Optimus drew out that battle on purpose.

Afterwards, Magnus expressed admiration over Optimus's willingness to disregard what were clearly ill-informed orders—praise to which Sentinel, predictably, objected. This just earned him another chastisement from Magnus about how sometimes the right thing was to trust one's gut over the book. Shortly afterwards, the Elite Guard departed for Cybertron. Sentinel could probably sigh in relief—no more looking worse than the "washout".

Unfortunately, while in deep space, Starscream managed to escape his stasis cuffs and get out of the Elite Guard's ship. Odds are Sentinel thinks Optimus is responsible for that happening.

Things only got worse for Sentinel, as his former student and convicted "traitor" Wasp escaped from prison. Pursuing the former Autobot across an asteroid field, Sentinel had a standoff with Wasp at a space bridge relay point. The escapee activated the space bridge, and blinded by its energies, Sentinel assumed he went through it to parts unknown. In reality, Wasp had mustered what little cunning his shattered mind had left and faked out the Elite Guard member by hiding behind the archway. As usual, Sentinel's deductive skills left something to be desired, so he returned to base.

Animated

 * Sentinel Prime (Deluxe, 2008)
 * Sentinel Prime transforms into a monster-truck snowplow, and is armed in robot mode with his trademark shield and lance. Unfortunately, due to the size it will be incompatible with the Headmaster accessory (which only works with Leader class toys).

Trivia

 * Sentinel Prime's blue coloration and especially pronounced chin (even by normal Animated standards!) really make him look like the Tick. He's even voiced by Townsend Coleman, who provided the voice of the Tick in his 1990s animated series. At the Cartoon Network panel at BotCon 2008, it was confirmed that Sentinel's design was created after Coleman was cast for the role. It's pretty evident that the writers are running with it, having him utter silly, Tick-esque lines like "Energon-y goodness!"
 * At Botcon 2008's Cartoon Network panel, Derrick J. Wyatt confirmed that originally the character of Sentinel Prime was going to be Rodimus Prime, but the idea of casting Rodimus as a big jerk didn't sit well with some people.
 * Sentinel Prime's shield-tossing fighting style is a fairly direct reference to Captain America. Far more coincidentally, one of Captain America's many sobriquets is the "Sentinel of Liberty".
 * In "The Elite Guard", it is revealed that the "Prime" in his and Optimus's name is a designation of rank, so despite Optimus being an academy washout, he's still Sentinel's equal. This no doubt irritates Sentinel quite a bit.
 * Though characters named "Sentinel Prime" have been used or shown in two comics continuities and mentioned on the back of toy packaging, this is the first time a character named "Sentinel Prime" has been used in a cartoon and been produced as a toy.