RID15 related thoughts because me and @sweetheart-weeb-33 were going back and forth about the decepticons who were aboard the Alchemor, and we started thinking about the prisoners who were supposedly on the Alchemor who we don't know about (no names, no designs, no suggested appearances) because on the tfwiki there's a list of names but supposedly Fixit said there were a few hundred more. Now, on one hand this is the perfect way to introduce ocs into the mix. But also it makes you wonder...

How many of the prisoners do you think were never found? Or, well, weren't found alive? After all from what I can see the Alchemor went through a pretty messy crash. It's cracked in half pretty good just like the Harbinger in TFP, and the halves are pretty far apart so we see the pods all scattered about. We see stasis pods that were damaged in the crash. It's surprisingly horrible and I think if the show had followed closer to the themes of TFP or hell even darker such (fr we saw my reaction to S4 and how casually dark it was compared to like. Season one. I had strong thoughts on season four) we would've seen some seriously harsh things.

I mean we do know at least one character dies in the show, there's the Fallen who disintegrated on screen. I remember a while ago when I first watched the show as a kid I wholeheartedly thought that Starscream just stayed in the coma forever and straight up never woke up. At first everyone thought Optimus was dead because he damn basejumped into the well of Allspark in a whole self sacrificial display and that tends to kill people Carlllll, but eventually we see that he either survived or came back to the land of the living. In season three (or well damn 2½), Starscream suggests that the three predacons were offlined.

So what's to say that some of the prisoners from the Alchemor died?

Whether it be from the initial impact, damage to the stasis pod, not being able to find enough energon and starving, getting in a fatal scrap with other decepticons from the ship, environmental hazards, and hell we can never discount the idea that the us government is capable and willing to take down a con or for there to be MECH adjacent organizations still kicking around. From what I see very few mecha know about the crash and the us gov. probably doesn't or they would've tried to come over and investigate. Plus, we know full well Steeljaw is willing to cut a bitch so I'm putting serious credence on the friendly fire idea.