Duobot

The Duobots are anAutobotsubgroup from the2005 IDW portionof theGeneration 1 continuity family.

Shock and Ore. Or Ore and Shock. Whatever.

TheDuobots,ShockandOre,look pretty indistinguishable. Even though nobody can tell them apart and theyseemlike throwaway guys, they've done a lot of stuff!

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

The two Duobots made it through the war together, surviving theBattle for Hell's Point,"the day it rained" onBabu Yar,and theSimanzi Massacre,where they braved theCrucible.They also had a prankster streak, having once weldedProwl'shands together for a gag.The Chaos of Warm ThingsThe Gloaming

The Duobots were members ofSpecial Operationsand reported directly to Prowl. One of their regular jobs was handling field agents likeSkidsandGetaway.Arm the LonelyAlong withDrift,the Duobots were Prowl's agents aboard theLost Light,charged with attaching aslow cellcontainingOverlordto the ship's hull and planting a tracer on its engines.How to Say Goodbye and Mean ItRemembrance DayOre went down into the engine room to carry out their second task as the ship was taking off fromCybertron,which unfortunately led him to be standing too close to the ship'squantum generatorswhen they activated. The resultant suspension of the local laws of space-time caused Ore to be fused with the engine, killing him and causing an explosion that crippled the ship. Hurled to some bleak corner of the galaxy, theLost Lightwas able to put down on a small planet, where what was left of Ore's body was found byBrainstormwho remarked that, on the bright side, at least now they'd know which Duobot was which.Hangers OnMeanwhile, an amnesiac Skids crashed near theLost Light:his homing device had locked onto the Duobots, his nearest handlers.Arm the Lonely

Ore's passing was observed byShock,who then set about removing all incriminating evidence of their connection to Prowl, deleting the communication from him and heading down to the engine room to recover the discarded tracer. Unfortunately for Shock, he was set upon and killed by aSparkeaterthat had been hidden in the bowels of the ship.The Chaos of Warm Things

Some time later, Ore came back to life thanks to the "psychic scream" of aTitan.Still fused to the engine and unaware of what had happened to him, he had a brief chat withSwervebefore disappearing together with the Titan when it teleported away.You, Me, and Other Revelations

The Duobots would be rather ignomiously remembered when Whirl described a batch of fallen attackers as being "deader than a Duobot".Finis Temporis

Notes

• The Duobots were presumably created as an Autobot counterpart to theDuocons,though with wheels on their legs and treads on their upper backs they don't appear to share that team's "air vehicle upper body combines with ground vehicle lower body" design scheme. Indeed, Shock's lament in "The Chaos of Warm Things"that he is now a" walking misnomer "might even suggest that instead of being two vehicles who form one robot, the Duobots are tworobotswho form onevehicle,possibly making them the definition of the "duocombiners" mentioned in passing in "Patternism".And, in the artist's version of" authorial intent "Alex Milneconfirmed on DeviantArt that he designed a combined alt mode for the two, but was keeping it private for possible later publication.
• Conversely, when asked about the Duobots' combined mode in aQ&A on the IDW forumswriterJames Robertsreplied: "In my head, the Duobots don’t combine – they’re more like clones. Sorry!" (That said, Roberts had previously used the term 'Duobot' in his fan novelEugenesisto refer to cassette combinerSlamdance.)
• As a product of the mind of English writer James Roberts, the fun double-meaning of Shock and Ore's names may not be immediately apparent to American readers. Try saying them out loud in an English accent.

Foreign names

• Japanese:Duobot(デュオボットDyuobotto)