If his dialogue is anything to go by, Wheatley does not like turrets. When you first meet the Oracle Turret he’s anxious to keep going and to get away from it, not caring to hear anything it has to say let alone help it escape the tube.
“Yes, hello! No, we’re not stopping!”
“Don’t make eye contact whatever you do…”
“No thanks! We’re good! Appreciate it!”
“Keep moving, keep moving…”
Now he is being rather polite about it here, but there’s no real danger nor any true reason to hurry here. They haven’t woken GLaDOS yet so there’s nothing to really be worried about at this exact moment. And his body language here is very telling. He looks disconcerted and uncomfortable. He is having an averse reaction to the turret.
(This picture -if you can call it that- was drawn up as a joking response to those quotes above.)
Now this is where is I might have left things. But my own mind got the better of me.
More evidence of Wheatley’s prejudice: Upon passing functional turrets falling into disposal grinder: “[laugh] There’s our handiwork. Shouldn’t laugh, really. They do feel pain. Of a sort. All simulated. But real enough for them I suppose.”
This is rich coming from a robot, who likewise experiences simulated pain. It’s definitely real for him, but…he’s trying to justify what they’ve just done to make himself feel better. He’s putting his own feelings above theirs, as if he’s better than they are or as if his simulated pain is more real than theirs.
And I just tend to stop at the fence futilely trying to save them from their grizzly fate as if the incinerator isn’t bad enough.
But what is interesting is that the turrets don’t seem to like Wheatley much either.
After rescuing Chell from GLaDOS’ tests he’s sporting what is either a very interesting rock dent or a bullet hole.
The argument could either way here, but that looks like a bullet hole to me.
So…between waking up GLaDOS and finding Chell he manages to run afoul of a turret. And I don’t really have a fixed idea of how this went down.
Turrets are on the lowest rungs of Aperture’s hierarchical ladder, with defective turrets right beneath them. Aperture is not kind to them, treating them collectively as objects rather than sentient robots, but it is possible that while GLaDOS was out of it, they were being treated marginally better. Or rather without her presiding over thing, their little underground society was perhaps a bit more open, and there was less of a need to be cloistered in secret alcoves. Just out and about flexing their wings.
Likely having little care for someone who dint care all that much for them, they were peeved about losing what marginal autonomy they had on top of it and the turret he came across had no problems letting its feelings known.
This is just speculation on my part as we never see this interaction take place, so there’s a lot of room for interpretation here.
But they certainly have no qualms shooting at his monitors later.
All I can think here is that the turrets now see Wheatley as a threat to Aperture as a whole. They probably didn’t think highly of him to start off with, given how little he disliked them. Aperture probably became more hostile toward them after GLaDOS woke up although they don’t seem to have qualms with her personally. It’s more along the lines that they lost some measure freedom once the system was fully restored.
And of course by this point he’s sent perfectly good turrets to die.
He’s made Frankenturrets which I think the turrets didn’t like. (I’ll go into that more later.)
And now the whole of Aperture is about to explode on his watch.
So yeah, there’s plenty here for them to be up in arms about. And they shooting at his monitor either in the hopes of actually killing him or as sign of utter disregard, since it’s against their programming to be anything other than verbally polite.
But really all this just feeds back into Whealtey’s own low opinions of them. And it says something about Aperture when the kindest guy in the whole facility thinks they’re worthless.
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