Omega Supreme (TFA)


 * Omega Supreme is an Autobot in the Animated continuity family.

The last line of defence for the Autobots, Omega Supreme was literally built for heroic sacrifice. Grimly aware of the heavy combat toll his friends must have suffered for him to even be activated in the first place, Omega Supreme does not hesitate to unleash his colossal firepower and risk his own life and safety on their behalf.

"I am programmed to protect, and sacrifice if necessary."

- Omega Supreme

Animated cartoon

 * Voice actor: Kevin Michael Richardson (English)

Omega Supreme was a major player in the Great War between Autobots and Decepticons, helping to drive the Decepticons off Cybertron, but at the cost of his own spark, much to the distress of his friend Ratchet. Placed in a modified stasis in the hope he could one day be revived, he became simply a small ship in the Autobot space bridge repair fleet.

While piloting the ship on a standard space bridge repair mission in a remote sector of Autobot-controlled space, Optimus Prime and his crew discovered the lost, legendary AllSpark. Almost immediately, they were located by the Decepticon flagship. The Decepticons' leader, Megatron, assaulted the Autobots' ship directly, attempting to melt through its hull, but he was sabotaged with a bomb by his lieutenant, Starscream. After the bomb went off, the ship went careening through an asteroid field almost totally out of control. From within the ship's hold, the AllSpark activated a nearby space bridge portal, which exploded after the ship plunged through it.

The ship emerged out of warp in low orbit over the planet Earth, with all hands still on board—along with Megatron. Once Optimus managed to force Megatron out through the docking tube, he piloted the ship through its last stages of reentry, steering it clear of a populated area while the rest of the crew got into their emergency stasis pods. Once the ship was past the city and over water, Optimus too got into a stasis pod, and the ship crashed into Lake Erie. Fifty years later, an invading glob of nanites penetrated a crack in the hull, activating the ship's intruder alarm system, which wakened the crew. In the aftermath of investigating the glob and helping the natives it was threatening, the Autobots set up a base in an abandoned car factory in downtown Detroit. Their ship remained on the bottom of Lake Erie, should they need it. When Decepticons tracking the AllSpark's energy signature became a problem, Optimus Prime ordered the Autobots to repair their ship so that it could be moved away from Earth. Ratchet revealed to Sari Sumdac that prior to being pressed into repair service, the vessel used to be a military ship. Utilizing the Key, he was able to bring the decommissioned weapons systems back online to defeat the Decepticons that were attacking.

Ultimately, Ratchet was forced to take the vessel airborne, first to evade the Decepticons, and subsequently to try to transport the AllSpark offworld. Both of these attempts failed, resulting in the ship ultimately crashing into the caldera of the dormant volcano on Dinobot Island, whereupon the AllSpark was shattered and dispersed in the ensuing fight.

Prowl would later use the ship's sensors to track the AllSpark fragment keeping Starscream online. When he discovered it was on the moon, he used the ship's emergency shuttle to follow - which would be destroyed by a Starscream clone soon after.

Much later, when Blurr alerted Optimus Prime's crew to the fact that the Decepticons were on the verge of constructing a working space bridge to Cybertron, Optimus sent Ratchet and Sari to make one final attempt at getting "him" online.

Through "open spark surgery", using four AllSpark fragments and making heavy use of the Key, Ratchet finally managed to revive his old friend. Slow and unsure after being offline for two million stellar cycles, he needed heavy prompting from Ratchet to move.

Once airborne, however, he was swiftly attacked by Decepticons and Seekers under Megatron's command. Following further hefty prompting from Ratchet and power boosts from his magnetics and the Key, he was able to transform and strike back. He declared that he was OMEGA SUPREME and made short work of the Decepticons.

When he entered Megatron's base, he found the space bridge in overdrive, threatening to pull in "the whole state of Michigan" and transport it to some random co-ordinates. Ejecting Sari and Ratchet over Ratchet's vocal protests, he absorbed the transwarp energy and was sucked into the malfunctioning portal, saving all but Megatron and Starscream's head, but fulfilling his programming to "protect and sacrifice, if necessary" once more...

Trivia

 * Throughout most of the cartoon this ship never had a proper name. At BotCon 2007, the Hasbro representatives repeatedly named this ship the Ark.  At BotCon 2008, lead writer Marty Isenberg claimed the ship is not the Ark, but merely a repair vessel. However, lead artist Derrick Wyatt immediately responded that it very much is the Ark (a conversation that some fan sites failed to report correctly).  The model sheet for the ship even labels it the Ark.  The IDW comic treated both the ship and its semi-sentient onboard computer system as a single entity, Teletran-1.


 * This of course isn't the first Autobot ship to end up embedded in the craggy face of a dormant volcano.


 * Omega Supreme's off-line status does bear some scrutiny. He bravely sacrificed himself in the Great War, apparently being a key part of the Autobot victory. And rather than being honorably lain to rest, his remains were re-tasked for space bridge repair. So the Autobots were flying around in...the corpse of one of Cybertron's greatest heroes. Not even anything awesome or noble like "exploration" or "rescue," he has to be a freakin' utility van!  Is that a tad bit ghoulish? Maybe, maybe not. Cybertron has different societal norms when it comes to remains, though recycling the dead has traditionally been more of a Predacon virtue.
 * Also deserving some scrutiny is the obvious (though destructive to literary tension) fact that if the Autobots made a habit of activating him earlier, his whole "self-sacrifice" bit wouldn't be, y'know, necessary.
 * As with most of the characters in the show, Omega Supreme has many details similar to his G1 counterpart, specifically his clear orange facemask, his three-fingered right hand and his massive left-hand blaster.