Paul Gates

Paul Gates is a human from the cartoon portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Close to dull surprise but a little off.

Doctor Paul Gates is an American scientist working for Quantum Laboratories, where TORQ III was built. He was worried that TORQ III was built too smart for humans to control. You see, the wrong people could get control of him.

Fiction

The Transformers cartoon

Voice actor: Ken Sansom (English), Tōru Furusawa (Japanese), Albert Augier (European French), Júlio Chaves (Brazilian Portuguese)

Gates confessed his worries about TORQ III to Dr. Andrews, who reassured him that their pursuit of knowledge was absolutely justification for creating a computer capable of taking over the world. Unfortunately Megatron was at that very moment reprogramming TORQ III to take over the world, and the computer began by taking control of the facility and locking Gates in his office. Gates and Andrews rebuilt a visi-phone and used it to contact the Autobots. Optimus Prime led his Autobots in an assault on the laboratories, and he personally rescued Gates and Andrews from the locked office.

After Optimus broke the bad news about TORQ's new programming, Gates professed confusion over how TORQ was controlling machines not designed to be remote controlled, and Sparkplug showed him the Remote Control Circuit Linkers Megatron was using. Following the disabling of TORQ, Gate lent the Autobots the use of a prototype hydrofoil so they could reach the Decepticon's oil platform. Later, Dr. Gates told Prime he probably wouldn't reactivate TORQ III until he could be made absolutely tamper-proof, machines being inherently unreliable unless properly monitored. Then he hastily made a few exceptions to his statement. Day of the Machines

Notes

• It's probably no coincidence that this computer scientist's name is a mashup of Paul Allen and Bill Gates, cofounders of Microsoft who were beginning to get a lot of media coverage at the time.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Gates-hakase (ゲイツ博士 Geitsu-hakase, "Doctor Gates")