The Official Beast Wars Thread

[Spidey-Bat]

I believe the Predacons were the ones trying to go back in time to alter history and the Maximals followed them.

[DarknessOfDeath]

I get that part but...

What I don't understand is how did the Arc crash land ...grrr. this is confusing.... Whats with the prehistoric Earth?

[Spidey-Bat]

Originally Posted by Dr. Indiana Jones

I get that part but...

What I don't understand is how did the Arc crash land ...grrr. this is confusing.... Whats with the prehistoric Earth?

That's in the original Transformers cartoon.

From Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_(Transformers)

The Ark left Cybertron when constant battles between the Autobots and Decepticons had left the planet in an energy crisis, with Optimus Prime and a contingent of Autobots 4 million years ago in search of the fuel Energon. Shortly after launch, it was attacked by the Decepticons on the Nemesis (another spaceship that was not named as such in the original series). The Nemesis attached itself to the Ark using tractor beams. The Decepticons, including their leader Megatron, boarded the Ark and attacked. During the battle, the Ark was damaged and crash landed on Earth, into the side of a volcano in what one day would be called Oregon (according to the Marvel comic book).

[DCnightwing23]

Beast Wars is amazing. The way in ties in some things from the Original Series. It was an amazing series. I just watched Endgame the other day, wow.

[epc11223]

Originally Posted by DCnightwing23

Beast Wars is amazing. The way in ties in some things from the Original Series. It was an amazing series. I just watched Endgame the other day, wow.

while its not technically the same series, i think endgame is from beast machines. while i enjoyed both, i think i prefer beast wars over beast machines.

[Lunar_Wolf]

I just finished Beast Wars-Awesome, awesome show.
Start Beast Machines. First ep was pretty good.

[TheCorpulent1]

So I'm watching Beast Machines again, which I'm always ambivalent about. There are some really great bits and some really terrible bits and a whole lot of everything in-between. So I decided to sit down and make a list of pros and cons:

PROS

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

- Fantastic animation, even by today's standards

- Good music (although they constantly loop the "action theme" music for virtually everything, which gets annoying)

- Premise and first episode up until Optimus' 'transformation' are excellent and up the ante in the conflict between Megatron and the Maximals

- Interesting switch from two equal warring factions in BW to more of a Maximal guerilla resistance vs. a vastly more powerful Megatron in BM

- Several of the characters' beast modes and/or robot modes look great, especially Cheetor's robot mode

- Great character arc for Optimus Primal--between him and Megatron, we got interesting looks at fanaticism on both sides of one conflict, which broke down barriers between usually simple concepts of "good" and "evil" in the Transformers mythos

- Good character arc for Rattrap--the quintessential soldier being forced to adapt to a new body devoid of weaponry and finding some peace and relief from his cynicism via his romance with Botanica

- Botanica is cool

- Good character arc for Waspinator/Thrust--the guy who used to be a joke regains his identity but rejects it because, frankly, his old life sucked and his new one is pretty sweet by comparison

- Good struggle for Blackarachnia to reclaim her lost love; role-reversal of character arc from Beast Wars between her and Silverbolt

- Megatron's genuinely f***ing scary at a lot of points in the series

- Brings a (kind of) logical conclusion to the G1 era of Transformers

CONS

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

- Maximals morph rather than transform

- Once the Maximals learn to morph, we find that their robot modes have funky energy redirection or tasers or swords instead of any kind of traditional Transformer weaponry, which further distances the techno-organic characters from the Transformers legacy

- Transformation being equated to spirituality kind of sucked

- Terrible character arc for Rhinox--resurrected as an enemy, regains memories, STAYS an enemy for completely uncharacteristic reasons, and ultimately dies a psychotic moron (I still attribute it to his Vehicon shell program corrupting his mind, regardless of what Bob Skir or the other writers claim)

- Badly executed character arc for Cheetor--instead of showing him maturing and becoming a logically challenging voice to Optimus' leadership as intended, he's portrayed as whinier than ever

- Terrible, angsty character arc for the previously fun Silverbolt--his answer to enjoying being free of his code of honor as Jetstorm is to continue to ignore his code of honor once his mind is clear, drive Blackarachnia away, and occasionally endanger his supposed friends

- Rattrap has no legs and generally looks stupid in robot mode

- Nightscream... I'll just leave it at that

- Savage/Noble beast-to-beast transformation (and the character in general) was lame

- Megatron becomes a bit of a joke in the second season, jumping from body to body and generally being kind of useless

- Strika and Obsidian were boring non-characters with very little personality or charisma, unlike the unique, varied, and, most importantly, fun villains of Beast Wars like Inferno, Rampage, Quickstrike, et al.

- Automatically portraying techno-organic as better than purely cybernetic for no real reason was a bit stupid

[DCnightwing23]

Wow the only thing a disagree with you TC1 is the Rhinox arc. I felt it was had a really dark and powerful undertone to it. I mean in BW's he was pretty much a brother to Optimus and like a Uncle or Father figure to all the maximals. And what Megatron did what pretty dark. He turned Rhinox against them. And i thought the episodes with the Rhinox character reemerging were fantastic. It was really dark and sad. He became what he fought against for so many years. He was then corrupted and believed Megatron was right. Once he died, the Matrix forgave him. It was great episodes, so i have to strongly disagree with you

[TheCorpulent1]

The writing for the stories that make up the arc was good, and I can enjoy them if I consider Rhinox's core personality to be somehow corrupted by the Tankor shell program, but the writers insisted at the time that Rhinox was fully clear-headed and in control of his actions. That, to me, is total bulls***. There's nothing in Rhinox, based on what we see of him in Beast Wars, that would ever lead him to willingly do the things he does as Tankor in Beast Machines.

So, like I said, I don't care what the writers intended anymore; Tankor's personality somehow crept into Rhinox's core programming and corrupted his normal personality. The Matrix "forgiving" him was just Rhinox's spark being freed of the conflicting Tankor programming upon his death. Call it my personal canon, but that's the only way the Rhinox/Tankor arc works at all for me.

[Lunar_Wolf]

I set up a Beast Machines thread. I started watching it the other day.

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm bored. Favorite characters, anyone? Mine were:

Maximals
Dinobot (Best character arc in the show.)
Rattrap (The Maximals would've seriously lost like 3 or 4 times without him, yet he's the butt of all their jokes. No respect. )
Rhinox (He didn't get developed much, but he's basically the Beast Wars' version of the X-Men's Beast, and I love that archetype of the pacifistic scientist who can still be a total badass when he's pushed.)

Predacons
Inferno (How can you not love him?)
Terrorsaur (Poor guy gets shortchanged a lot since he died so quickly, but he was basically the Beast Wars equivalent of Starscream, which was fun.)
Waspinator (Again, how can you not love him?)

[Lunar_Wolf]

Dinobot-Loved this guy. Didn't expect him to die so sudden.

Rattap-Loved his personality. Also he was only shot twice, making the Maximal with the least about of damage.

Scott McNeil did fantastic voice acting with these two.

Cheetor-Too bad he was only in his puberty mode for a few episodes.

Waspinator-Again, Scott McNeil brought this guy to life with the voice acting.

Megatron-Yeeeeeeeees!

[Spidey-Bat]

I agree with your pics Corpy. Especially Inferno. How can you not love a guy who got away with calling Megatron a queen? I liked how they made the Predacons entertaining but not complete buffoons.

[CELTICPRED]

Depth Charge

Rampage - Sheer badass
Inferno and Waspinator for pretty much the same reasons as stated above.
And Tarantulus. His voice actor was fantastic. DIEEEEEEEE MAXIMALS!!! OH NO!!!!

[DCnightwing23]

Tigatron- a genius, really showed a completely different side to a transformer, i loved the fact that he loved the wild and wanted to protect his "brothers and sisters" in the wild. And that he was in the wild most of the time
Dinobot- He was just a badass warrior
Rhinox- Like a uncle and fatherly figure to the maximals

[Lunar_Wolf]

I really started to like Depth Charge near the end, too bad he when BOOOOOOOM!

[Lunar_Wolf]

For anyone that has not seen this.

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:

[TheCorpulent1]

Originally Posted by Spidey-Bat

I agree with your pics Corpy. Especially Inferno. How can you not love a guy who got away with calling Megatron a queen? I liked how they made the Predacons entertaining but not complete buffoons.

Yeah, I'm watching the G1 cartoons now and it's made me realize that the Predacons were really far superior to the Decepticons in terms of not being idiots. I mean, the Preds screw up a lot, but Megatron could've probably taken down most of the Maximals by himself and Inferno was a stone-cold badass until the transmetals came along.

Somewhat along that same line, I liked that Primal's Maximals were totally the wrong people for the job they wound up with. Unlike Optimus Prime and his honed, hardened military forces, they were completely out of their depth. I look at Primal's crew like the Army Core of Engineers to Prime's Marines--they've been to boot camp and they've had some training, but they're really not the guys you want on the front lines. Primal himself was a fairly smart commander, but he was absolute s*** in a fight. If not for Dinobot defecting and the Axalon lucking out by getting a tough but seemingly retired demolitions and infiltration expert on its crew, they would've gotten spanked in no time.

[DCnightwing23]

Yeah i liked the fact that the BW megatron was so cunning and always a strategist and always ahead of everyone. They werent stupid which i loved

[Lunar_Wolf]

I loved when Ravage came back. Man, he was one of my favs from Beast Wars.
When he transformed, he had the classic sound-Music to my ears.

[TheCorpulent1]

Haha, yeah, that was awesome. Too bad he got owned by Rattrap.

[Spidey-Bat]

I wish they released a fig of him to stores. I know he had a convention exclusive a few years ago.

[deathshead2]

Most likely people ignored it when it came out, but years ago there were some Transformers books written by Simon Furman. One was a trilogy, and the other was a book of short storys which is the one I'm going to talk about.

In the short storys it contained two shorts that involved OP and Megatron from Beast Wars. One was about OP and Megatron meeting G1 prime and G1 Megatron, and the other story explained why Megatron speaks in the third person as G1 Megatron is in his head giving suggestions to his plans.

Anyone remember those books?

[TheCorpulent1]

Never heard of them. I've been a little underwhelmed with Furman's Beast Wars stuff, though. The Gathering and The Ascension were both kind of meh-tastic. It didn't help that he chose to focus on all the random other characters who were left out of the show, either.

[Lunar_Wolf]

Look who I met..CHEETOR!!!