When Machines Attack!—The Danger Room and Cerebro Running Amok

Like most superhero teams, the X-Men have a lot more than just superpowers; they’ve also got all kinds of fun toys and gadgets, like at the brothels in Amsterdam only, you know, less kinky.

I hope.

Because I shudder at the thought of Professor Xavier getting freaky.

The two most notable pieces of technological wonderment we got to see at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters were undoubtedly the Danger Room and Cerebro.

Sure, the eventual addition of the Blackbird and holographic image inducers and the like were pretty sweet, but it was these two devices that really made the X-Men the envy of their peers.

That is if those peers weren’t fearing and hating them and stuff.

The Danger Room was basically an institutionalized torture chamber where Xavier would test all of his X-Men with one deathtrap after another while he sat safely behind ballistic glass in a control room, most likely munching Cheetos and giggling like a schoolgirl when one of his students dipped when he should have dove…and got slammed into a wall by a swinging pendulum of doom.

Seriously, how in the hell did this school ever get accredited?

These were minors being put through the equivalent of the Navy SEAL Hell Week.

Every.

Single.

 Day.


Over the years, the Danger Room received many upgrades going from random obstacles that needed to be set up to hard light holograms able to create any environment or threat imaginable.

Pictured: Wolverine’s “training session.”

Cerebro, on the other hand, was a lot more benign, a machine to amplify Xavier’s telepathic abilities that allowed him to pinpoint the location of other mutants, apparently because being a creepy old man in love with one of his students just wasn’t creepy enough.

Still, privacy violations notwithstanding, Cerebro was instrumental in tracking missing X-Men or new mutants who may be in need of assistance.

So now you know what these machines are, but you’ve likely noticed the title of this piece is “When Machines Attack!,” so you’ve just as likely surmised that things didn’t always go exactly as planned.

Don’t do it, dude, it’s totally a trap.

Like any sci-fi story worth its salt can tell you, the creation of semi-autonomous machines is like asking to be enslaved one day by your robotic superiors.  It just is.  One minute you’re using Cerebro to track down some mutant in Crazypantsistan, the next minute it’s coming back from the future to kill John Conner.  It happens.

Cerebro gained sentience and decided the best way to go about its business was to create a new team of X-Men based on preexisting archetypes and hunt out and kill Xavier.  Reasonable enough, I suppose.

After its rogue X-Men tangled with the real deals in Uncanny X-Men #360 and X-Men #80, Cerebro confronted Xavier in The Hunt For Xavier running through Uncanny X-Men #362-364 and X-Men #82-84.

I don’t know about humanity, but for machines to stop

getting pissed, I’d say, yeah, probably…

A powerless Xavier had been missing since disappearing from the facility he was being held in after Onslaught but he had his abilities reignited to fight off Cerebro, although it nearly killed him and all of his students.

So the lesson was learned—keep an eye on your toys or else they get cranky and try and kill you.  It’s just that simple.  I’ve even tried imparting that wisdom to my three year old daughter.  She’s never been nicer to Mr. Potato Head.

Now, I should say the lesson should have been learned, because as we found out in Astonishing X-Men #7-12, Dangerous, the Danger Room also gained sentience, only Xavier knew about it and basically kept it enslaved for his crosstraining amusement.

So, naturally, it went a little nuts, tried to kill everyone (anyone seeing the pattern here?) and everyone had to come to grips with the fact that their beloved mentor—same guy who wound up becoming Onslaught, mind you—was complicit in the slavery of another being.

Not your best work, buddy.  Not your best work.

Again, I ask you, how the hell did that place stay open?

Between home appliances going homicidal and the place blowing up every few months, not to mention frequent intrusions from any number of villains, it was like going to some public schools in the Bronx.

I suppose the silver lining is that the Danger Room, now going by the unimaginable moniker of Danger, is a valued member of the X-Men.  However, that silver lined cloud also has a storm brewing within it because Danger is currently under the control of Unit, a machine entity with nothing but bad planned for everyone.

You know what that means, don’t you?

Yup.  Sooner or later, the X-Men are going to have to deal with another of their machines trying to kill them.

Do yourselves a favor, folks.  Go Amish.  It’ll save you a ton of headaches…

I’ve yet to see Jeremiah leading his people against the butter churner

although that would be absolutely awesome.