In a World Where Fire Chiefs Drive Lamborghinis...

When quintessential movie trailer voice Don LaFontaine passed away a few years ago, perhaps the single most common thing that was said about him was his penchant for beginning his narratives with the phrase "in a world...". Especially in the science fiction genre, such a phrase helps to set up the important differences between the world of the story and the world in which we all live.

One of the blogs I follow regularly is Disciples of Boltax, headed up by Transformers fan-turned-published Transformers writer Jim Sorenson. One of the blog's regular features spins out of Sorenson's "Almanac" series of books, whereby he publishes bits of behind-the-scenes Transformers art related to (usually) the original "Generation One" cartoon series.

In today's entry, Sorenson shares a bit from the episode "Auto Berserk," whereby lesser-known character Red Alert becomes damaged and, as a result, extremely paranoid about everything around him (oddly enough, this paranoia is Red Alert's most well-established character trait. I find myself wondering what he'd be like without the damage, which is supposedly fixed at the end of the episode). Fearing his fellow Autobots, Red Alert runs off on his own, and his friends try to find him so they can get him the help he needs. Sorenson points out the following oddity:

The Autobots go looking for Red Alert and find a Lamborghini fire-chief car... but it's not him.  Really, how likely is that?

Especially back in the '80s, the idea that the Autobots turned into vehicles that could blend in with regular earth vehicles was an important point. "Robots in disguise," and all that. Since Red Alert does in fact turn into a Lamborghini with fire-chief markings, I can thus only assume that, in the world in which he exists, Lamborghini fire-chief cars must be commonplace, which in turn implies that fire departments (and/or their chiefs) are very well-funded.

While I might wonder at how the money was being spent if all the local fire-chiefs had fabulously expensive sports cars, I would certainly say that a fire department that got such funding would be a nice improvement over the situation we have in the real world...