Red Alert

Red Alert is the Autobots' Security Director and the clearest case in Generation 1 of a virtue running past its useful limit. His sensory suite is genuinely extraordinary, and paranoia is what makes him good at the job, but it is not reliably governed by reason or common sense. His ratio of false alarms to real emergencies is poor enough that the other Autobots stop listening, which is exactly how Hoist answers him in "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1": "You always say there's trouble, Red."

The defining story is "Auto Berserk". Ordered with Inferno to guard the bunker holding the Negavator superweapon while the others fight outside, Red Alert pleads with Inferno to stay, is left alone, and takes a blow to the head when the bunker burns and collapses. The damage to his logic circuits tips his ordinary paranoia into full delusion. Convinced the Autobots mean to strip him for parts and that Inferno is angling for his job, he flees, and the abandoned Starscream picks him up, flatters the delusion, and walks him into stealing the Negavator for the Decepticons. Untreated, his circuits would have exploded. Inferno is the one who pulls him back.

The rest of his screen time is smaller but consistent. In "The God Gambit" he openly overrules Optimus Prime, arguing that transmitting Cosmos's data risks Decepticon interception, and Prime concedes the point. In "Blaster Blues" he cuts a fire break beside Inferno and his sensors catch the incoming Seekers first. He also fronted a road-safety PSA lecturing children about bike reflectors while driving at night with his own headlights off.

His sensory perception is the best on the Autobot roster: visual acuity fine enough to pinpoint a 2 cm microchip at 1200 feet, hearing that can catch a pin drop at 1.4 miles, and an olfactory module sensitive to two parts per million. He can trigger an electronic alarm in every other Autobot, making him the network's early-warning system. In robot mode he carries a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher with a 25-mile range and a high-energy particle beam rifle, and in vehicle mode he is among the fastest Autobots. Against that, his strength, endurance and raw speed stats are low, his comrades find his edgy manner unwelcome, and his own paranoia is written into the tech spec as the weakness that makes his actions dangerous to himself and to the Autobots around him.

• Inferno: closest friend and opposite temperament, each keeping the other out of trouble; Inferno both causes his breakdown by abandoning his post and is the one who talks him down.
• Optimus Prime: Prime tolerates and occasionally defers to his caution, as in "The God Gambit", but also assigns him guard duty rather than front-line work.
• Sideswipe: not related in the cartoon, but a 1985 Japanese TV Magazine story page declared the two mould-mates brothers, with Sideswipe the elder.

The cartoon makes him a named, speaking member of the Ark crew with a whole episode built on his psychology, whereas Marvel never introduced him at all: his handful of appearances are UK-originated, including an unexplained one-punch cameo in "The Enemy Within!", and a letters-page reply from Soundwave papered over his disappearance by claiming he was critically injured off-panel during "The Last Stand".

He survives the G1 cartoon but stops appearing after season two, escaping The Transformers: The Movie only because his scripted death was cut; Marvel UK's 2009 future timeline keeps him active, fighting alongside Kup and Arcee and taking a hit from Galvatron's particle cannon during "Time Wars".

• His toy is a redeco of the Diaclone New Countach LP500S Police Car, itself a light-bar retool of the mould that became Sideswipe; the police deco was repainted into a white fire chief's car with Fire Chief lettering.
• Voice actor Michael Chain has said he based the performance on Richard Nixon, on the grounds that Nixon was paranoid enough to secretly tape himself.
• Japan released him alongside Sideswipe in the first wave rather than with the rest of the 1985 assortment, and early TV Magazine art groups him with the 1984 cast.
• Storyboards for The Transformers: The Movie included a death scene in which the Constructicons shoot him in the back after he helps Ultra Magnus, Tracks and Sideswipe attack Devastator; it was cut from the finished film.
• He starred in one of the five original G1 public service announcements, lecturing two children about riding bikes at night without reflectors while he himself drove with his headlights off.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• Marvel UK explained his absence by having Soundwave claim he was critically injured during "The Last Stand", which sits after the story in which he had already appeared.
• The Japanese TV Magazine story page making Red Alert and Sideswipe brothers has no counterpart in the US fiction or in the Japanese dub of the cartoon, which kept Sideswipe and Sunstreaker as the brothers.
• His tech spec lists him among the fastest Autobots in vehicle mode, yet gives him a speed rating of only 3.