Death's Head (Animated)

The Death's Head is a starship from the Animated continuity family.

It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

The Death's Head is the personal vessel of the neutral bounty hunter, Lockdown. It is a heavily modified IG-2000 class vessel equipped with two Deckard cannons and three Samus-blasters, along with Vandarian holographic technology purchased from Swindle^[1].

Fiction

Animated cartoon

When Lockdown captured Ratchet and Arcee many years in the past, he brought them aboard the Death's Head in order to take them to Megatron, but they managed to escape.

Some four million stellar cycles later, Lockdown was hired to bring in Optimus Prime and tracked him to Earth. The Thrill of the Hunt After a brief scuffle with Blackarachnia on the Moon, he continued to the planet's surface, not knowing that the female Decepticon had stowed aboard his ship. A Few Loose Strands Landing in Detroit, Lockdown disguised the Death's Head as an inconspicuous warehouse before capturing Optimus and tying him down inside the ship. When the other Autobots came to save their leader, Lockdown activated a number of defensive turrets, but Prowl destroyed them. Lockdown eventually defeated the Autobots and took off in the Death's Head, only to find Ratchet had infiltrated the ship. In the ensuing fight, Ratchet blasted its controls with his EMP generator. With its engines shut off, the Death's Head crashed into a river and exploded violently. The Thrill of the Hunt

The damage to Lockdown's ship was apparently not all that it seemed, however, as he used it later on to track down his next _target, Starscream. He cloaked the Death's Head near the wreckage of the Nemesis on the Moon, but soon had to move it when it seemed Starscream was escaping to Earth. The ship had a stowaway this time as well: Prowl, who wanted to use the ship's sensors to track Starscream. The Death's Head was again disguised as a building in Detroit during Lockdown and Prowl's temporary partnership. A Fistful of Energon

During Lockdown's third visit to Earth, he captured Prowl and summoned the Death's Head to Tigatron Stadium via remote control. The ninja fought back, however, and Lockdown escaped on his ship. Five Servos of Doom

Web of Deception

Lockdown had a Trobulum cage fitted into his ship when Blackarachnia hired him to capture one of the giant spiders which had contaminated her. Lockdown flew his ship to Earth and parked it on the bottom of Lake Erie while he abducted Optimus Prime and secured the Autobot to a bomb. While it was there, a trio of Autobots may have broken in accompanied by a couple of small humans and promptly been caught, either by the ship's many automated defenses, or by Lockdown himself. Web of Deception

Notes

• The Death's Head's class and armament names are taken from other science fiction franchises. IG-2000 is the name of the ship belonging to IG-88, a droid bounty hunter from the Star Wars franchise. The "Deckard cannons" take their names from bounty hunter Rick Deckard, the protagonist from Blade Runner, while the "Samus blasters" take their names from bounty hunter (are you sensing a pattern here?) Samus Aran, the heroine of the Metroid franchise. Not to mention that the ship itself is named after Marvel Comics' bounty hunter Freelance Peacekeeping Agent Death's Head, who has previously been featured in the Transformers universe, and served as the inspiration for Lockdown,^[2] yes? It's also stated Lockdown scavenged parts from Taxxon sources; Taxxons were alien creatures from the Animorphs series, which once had a Transformers-related subline; one of the figures was a Taxxon, but was unreleased in the US.

References