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How Ratchet Got His Hands Back - Transformers Wiki

There's nothing left to lose as Ratchet confronts the 'bot behind the plague on Delphi.

Synopsis

MTMTE5 firstaid takes charge.jpg

At the Delphi medical facility, the furious Fortress Maximus dispatches the two Genericons threatening the remaining Autobots there, tearing one in half and decapitating the other with his shoulder compartment. As Ratchet and First Aid return to tending the inflicted, Pharma pulls a gun on Ambulon, accusing him of freeing the Decepticons and releasing the virus plaguing the facility, on the basis that he is a former Decepticon himself. First Aid, however, turns the tables on Pharma when he examines the Genericons' remains and discovers that they were not Monoformers, as Pharma had claimed. Ratchet puts the final pieces of the puzzle together, and requests that Pharma transform; when he refuses, Ratchet diagnoses the virus as being activated through transformation. First Aid and Ambulon have not succumbed to its effects because First Aid has a malfunctioning transformation cog, while Ambulon's alternate mode is completely redundant, being the leg of a prototype combiner, but Pharma will not transform because he knows this already, being responsible for the plague in the first place. Pharma shoots out a life-support system to cover his escape, rabbiting down a hidden tunnel in a CR chamber while the other medics scramble to save the lives of their patients. Backstreet fades particularly fast, forcing Ratchet to transform into ambulance mode in order to give him a full systems boost from his reboot coils. With the virus now activated within him, Ratchet sets off after Pharma.

Meanwhile, aboard the Lost Light, Tailgate meets with Ultra Magnus and requests to undergo the Rite of the Autobrand, having realized the foolishness of his earlier decision to be a Decepticon. Grudgingly impressed with Tailgate's skill set, Magnus agrees to teach him the Autobot Code, nearly driving the poor little bot out of his head with intense study of the code's ten thousand pages. Tailgate's interest is caught by clause nineteen-eighty-five; remembering the giant robots pursuing Skids, he inquires about clause nineteen-eighty-four, which Magnus informs him relates to the supposedly non-existent "thought warfare".

Red Alert listens How Ratchet Got His Hands Back.jpg

Elsewhere on the ship, Rung meets with one of his oldest patients, Red Alert, concerned that the paranoia he helped the security officer overcome is returning. Red Alert insists that he heard a noise emanating from a crack in the floor of the chamber in which the Sparkeater was found, but that should be impossible, as that chamber is at the lowest point on the ship, with only outer space beyond. Despite Rung's skepticism, Red Alert produces a recording of the sound, which Rung recognizes as a distorted voice...repeating "kill me" over and over again...

Ratchet Red Rust.jpg

Back in Delphi, Ratchet catches up to Pharma, who gleefully explains his master plan: he engineered the plague in order to shut Delphi down so that he could escape a deal he made with the Decepticon Justice Division that forced him to kill patients in order to harvest their transformation cogs for the DJD's transformation addicted-leader in return for Delphi's safety. The two Genericons—Sonic and Boom—were paid by Pharma to surrender to the facility, and once locked up together, to merge into their audio-equipment alternate mode and project a blast of weaponized sound calculated by Pharma to corrode Transformers from within: the "big bang" that contaminated all who heard it. His vigorous monologuing has blinded Pharma to one thing, however: as Ratchet slowly rusts away in front of him, his liquefied innards have pooled around Pharma's feet, infecting him. Pharma escapes to the roof of the facility with the only vaccine, but is surprised by the appearance of Ratchet's remote-projected holomatter avatar, which distracts him long enough to let Ratchet catch up and tackle him, causing the vaccine to fall off the building. Ratchet and Pharma grapple, but when Ratchet's arm breaks off, Pharma tumbles off the roof, and is left clinging onto the edge, unable to transform to jet mode and fly to safety without activating the virus. Ratchet turns to leave him to his fate, and the traitorous medic tries to shoot him in the back: luckily, the near-dead Drift appears and slices Pharma's hands off, letting him plummet to his presumed doom.

Thanks to Pharma's vaccine, saved from its fall by Ratchet's holomatter projection, the virus is cured, and everyone leaves for the Lost Light. On the return journey, Ratchet invites First Aid to succeed him as the ship's chief medical officer, recognizing both his skill, and his dedication and honor: it was he who transmitted the escalating death rates—caused by Pharma's cog harvesting—over the Wreckers: Declassified frequency. The two doctors lament the loss of both Ironfist and the old Pharma, but First Aid remarks that Ratchet will always carry part of Pharma with him. Two parts, actually: Ratchet has replaced his worn-out hands with Pharma's!

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"I have the world's worst alt mode: I turn into a leg. Ambulon: From the verb 'to ambulate,' meaning 'to walk about.' It's a stupid name..."
"...but all the best names are taken."

—Ambulon and Ratchet


"It's just—I thought it would be more of a ten-point plan...? One: Don't do bad things. Two: Don't, er, be rude... stuff like—three: don't be a Decepticon. Stuff like that."

—Tailgate on the unexpected intricacies of the Autobot Code


"Relax! A few weeks of cripplingly intense study and it'll be over! It might even be fff— It might even be fff— I can't—my mouth just won't—I can't say it."
"Fun...?"
"That's the one!"

—Ultra Magnus and Tailgate


"I'm not convinced you're paying attention."
"...what? Oh. Sorry—I, er, I thought I saw some graffiti on your desk. Yeah, some—some really tiny graffiti. 'Ultra Magnus is an O.C.D. control freak who uses learning to hurt people.' But it was just a speck of dirt."
"DIRT?!"
"It's okay, sir—it's gone. It can't hurt you now."

—Magnus and Tailgate quickly become this book's next great double-act.


"Pharma, I've been held at gunpoint by the best—Megatron, Starscream, Killmaster—remember Killmaster? With the wand?—and I've never known anyone take so long to explain their grand plan."

—With a dry cool wit like that, Ratchet could be an action hero.


"You died a long time ago, Pharma. And as for me... my hands don't work, I'm miles from anyone I truly care about, and I'm still coming to terms with the fact that after a four-million year build-up, peace has turned out to be a massive anticlimax. Bottom line? I've got nothing else to lose."

—Ratchet

Notes

Continuity notes

  • The absence of Cybertron's first moon is mentioned again, previously noted in issue #1 and an important plot point over in Robots in Disguise #3. Tailgate claims (falsely) to have coordinated the first search for it, meaning it's been missing since the early days of Nova Prime.
  • Speaking of Nova Prime, Tailgate claims (false) responsibility for persuading him to look beyond Cybertron. (He probably didn't know how that turned out.)
  • Ultra Magnus tells Tailgate to relax, a word he later denies the existence of due to never having heard of it.
  • Ratchet's holomatter avatar returns, a concept only seen once since Simon Furman's time on the series ended. A quick explanation is offered for why the tech was phased out in universe: it's energy-intensive, it demands total concentration, and the hair never looks real.
  • While talking about Red Alert's history, Rung mentions the security officer's belief in "the Institute", a mysterious facility previously mentioned in "Chaos Theory Part 2". This scene has a very sneaky payoff in #10.
  • Likewise, Drift mentions Ratchet having once saved his life long ago in Rodion, a story that will be shown to us in #9.

Transformers references

  • The opening moments of the issue, as Fortress Maximus tears one of the Genericons in half and slams the pieces together, is an homage to Last Stand of the Wreckers #5, in which Overlord did the same thing to Guzzle.
  • A patient named Tracer is listed among those at Delphi. Whether this is supposed to be a new character or one of the existing Tracers is unknown; as the Micromaster Tracer was an Autobot in Japanese fiction, we'd guess it's him.
  • Rung and Red Alert's session numbers are clearly evocative of issues of the Marvel UK comic: #97 was Roberts's first issue; #113 was the issue that hooked him; #288 was the issue in which he got a letter printed; and issue #332 was the final installment of the series. The significance of #7 is not apparent.
  • On the subject of numbers, Rung's patient number for Red Alert is the numbers used for Red Alert's Japanese toy releases (his original toy ID, Smallest Transforming Transformers, and Binaltech Asterisk numbers respectively).

Real-world references

  • Ironically, clause Nineteen Eighty-Four is not a direct reference to what you might be thinking. Rather, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "thought warfare" homage the novel of the same name by George Orwell, in which a totalitarian state controls the populace through "thought crime" and "double think," both forms of thought control, though "thought warfare" in the IDW continuity is often taken more literally.

Crew Manifest

  • Fortress Maximus, Ambulon, and First Aid return to the Lost Light with Ratchet.
  • Red Alert admits finding 207 of his fellow crew suspicious.
  • 5 deaths, 5 new arrivals since the launch.

Errors

  • First Aid's hands are inconsistently colored. In some panels they are red with white fingers, while in other panels these colors are switched.

Soundtrack

When a thread was compiled for the soundtrack on the IDW boards, the second of these songs had been lost, so Roberts suggested the following as a replacement:

Foreign localization

Japanese

  • Title: ""Meii" Ratchet no Fukkatsu" ("名医"ラチェットの復活, "The Resurrection of "Legendary Doctor" Ratchet")

Swedish

  • Title: "Hur Ratchet fick händerna tillbaka" ("How Ratchet Got His Hands Back")

Covers (3)

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  • (thumbnail)

    You will deal with this now!

  • (thumbnail)

    I am cooler than you.

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Reprints

  • The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye Volume 2 (October 17, 2012) ISBN 1613774982 / ISBN 978-1613774984
    • Collects More than Meets the Eye issues #4–8.
    • Bonus material includes art from most covers, "Meet the Crew" and "Meet the 'Cons" pages.
    • Trade paperback format.
  • Transformers: Mer än ögat kan se (June 15, 2019)
    • Collects More than Meets the Eye issues #1–8 & Annual 2012, Spotlight: Trailcutter & Hoist, and a special illustrated edition of "Bullets".
    • Swedish reprint. Hardcover format.

  • (thumbnail)

    The IDW Collection Phase Two: Volume 1 – cover art by Saren Stone

  • (thumbnail)

    The Definitive G1 Collection: Volume 53: Liars, A to D – cover art by Don Figueroa (Whirl) and Alex Milne (retro)