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[Ban Puncher]

There would be no damn dirty munkey if it wasn't for trukk.

 

[ash321]

There would be no damn dirty munkey if it wasn't for trukk.

Love how Megatron carefully laid that statue down, not just throw it lol

 

[Galang]

Beast machines was a damn mess. The art style alone was so questionable.. such a disappointment. Not to mention the series was just no where near as engaging as the first and the character development took a massive hit

 

[firelogic]

Fun fact, it was called "Beasties" in Canada, not Beast Wars.

 

[Lagamorph]

That's not an episode though.

 

[Deleted member 284]

Beast machines was a damn mess. The art style alone was so questionable.. such a disappointment. Not to mention the series was just no where near as engaging as the first and the character development took a massive hit

That ending was ... man ... I still can't express my words with getting upset.

 

[lamaroo]

Fun fact, it was called "Beasties" in Canada, not Beast Wars.

It changed every now and then from what I recall.

 

[Tigress]

Beast wars is easily as good as g1, it is fantastic

As some one who grew up on g1 and at first stuck her nose up at Beast Wars, Beast Wars is easily better than G1. G1 is trash and even nostalgia didn't save it . Still love the characters but I tried to watch it once and couldn't get far.

 

[JeffZero]

Beast Wars was literally the only kids show I watched. Like, literally.

I got a few episodes into Beast Machines. I remember my friends all being seriously jaded on it and I ultimately agreed with them.

 

[KojiKnight]

I remember only being half interested in Beast Wars as it was just yet-another-saturday-morning-cartoon. I was blown away when they actually tied it into the original canon a few times (like with Unicron). Beast Machines I watched all of 2 episodes of... I actively chose not to watch it even if nothing else was on.

 

[Harmen]

Wow, was a massive fan as a kid and love my toys of it till this day, but never heard of this. Interesting.

Also, as others have mentioned, what the fuck is up with that new Ratrap design?!

 

[EarlyEarly]

It changed every now and then from what I recall.

I know on YTV it was Beasties because I don't think they allowed the word "War" on cartoon TV show titles. But it also showed on WUTV which was basically Fox and and they were American so they allowed it.

 

[Harlock]

I believe they have to scale down weapons in cartoons series (even beast wars changed title to beasties) and this could been influencied the direction of Beat Machines.

I liked all the lore, but dont like when you have characters from previous series just fucked.

The energy beam transformation is not good also. And the technorganic ending...

 

[lethial]

The background of the show was cool and it was a new take on Transformers but come on man it was a kids show.

 

[Kreed]

The only thing I remember liking about Beast Machines was when Megatron turned into Optimus' last transformation from Beast Wars and Megatron showing how strong the transformation was (after being disappointed by the transformation in Beast Wars) by beating up the real Optimus with it.

 

[SapphiCine]

To me as a kid, it was a fascinating experiment in serialized storytelling. I am curious to revisit it.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

I remember liking the animation and thinking the cg was a huge step up from Beast Wars. I also liked most of the new designs (and toys), Cheetor in particular. But yeah, as a big fan of later Beast Wars (I really didn't like early Beast Wars), it was a big disappointment story wise. Didn't know the backstory of why until now though.

 

[Enforcer]

I remember being really active in some Transformer forums back in the day and people were nearly universally angry and upset at Beast Machines for pretty much all the reasons listed here. I watched the whole thing, hoping they'd turn it around, but aside from a couple of OK scenes and a somewhat decent big battle at the end, they never did. It was pretty much all trash.

I also used to follow the blog of Bob Skir back in the day and reading his thoughts on the stuff he was writing. I could appreciate where he was coming from, given the direction Hasbro gave him with stuff like "Ignore all previous TF work but somehow this is a continuation of BW", but I really didn't like the series at all.

Beast Wars was supposed to have 2 more seasons to it. Those were scrapped by Hasbro and replaced by Beast Machines because they didn't like the excellent story direction Larry DiTillo and Bob Forward had put forward. How you fire talent like that and replace it with people who seem to be specifically selected to because of their lack of knowledge of the franchise and are told not to learn about it is beyond me. It's always bothered me that the end of the G1 legacy, which BW admirably carried forward and expanded on, was ruined by BM. Just awful. I wish we could have seen the original direction of BW and how it would have ended. I think the franchise as a whole would have been in a better place and maybe (although I'm probably reaching) we would have gotten something better than the bad Japanese import shows and the Michael Bay movies.

 

[jstripes]

I know on YTV it was Beasties because I don't think they allowed the word "War" on cartoon TV show titles. But it also showed on WUTV which was basically Fox and and they were American so they allowed it.

Yup. Mainframe's other show of that era, War Planets, was known as Shadow Raiders in Canada. (One of the reasons they chose that substitute name is because their rendering engine for it had this high tech new feature: Shadows!)

 

[Toxi]

There would be no damn dirty munkey if it wasn't for trukk.

That's a gun though, not a trukk.

 

[Deleted member 12837]

Beast Wars was supposed to have 2 more seasons to it. Those were scrapped by Hasbro and replaced by Beast Machines because they didn't like the excellent story direction Larry DiTillo and Bob Forward had put forward. How you fire talent like that and replace it with people who seem to be specifically selected to because of their lack of knowledge of the franchise and are told not to learn about it is beyond me. It's always bothered me that the end of the G1 legacy, which BW admirably carried forward and expanded on, was ruined by BM. Just awful. I wish we could have seen the original direction of BW and how it would have ended. I think the franchise as a whole would have been in a better place and maybe (although I'm probably reaching) we would have gotten something better than the bad Japanese import shows and the Michael Bay movies.

Is there any info on what those final 2 seasons would've looked like, or the direction things were heading? Interviews with the original writers, etc?

 

[Tookay]

Everything felt like it came out of nowhere in BM.

Characterization completely changed (to the point where some characters were completely unrecognizable, like Rhinox), the plot direction was bizarre (wait, so we're watching this franchise about ROBOTS but techno matter is bad and needs to be reformed into organic?), the character designs were mostly horrible for the main protagonists (the bad guys were mostly okay though) and it had a really unappealing tone (very bleak).

The first episode alone was enough to cause whiplash to any BW fan.

The whole appeal of a follow-up/sequel is to see beloved characters and story arcs continue, and they threw all of that out for some weird mystical mumbo jumbo with the BW characters-in-name-only. What a strange mess.

 

[ash321]

Is there any info on what those final 2 seasons would've looked like, or the direction things were heading? Interviews with the original writers, etc?

Maybe dub version of BW2 and BW Neo ?

 

[CloudyTuba]

The idea of "what would Megatron do after winning" is a fine enough idea, but as it was presented in Beast Machines, it throws away everything that was building

On that note, it drove me crazy that I spent three seasons watching the characters evolve into special new forms unlike anything on Cybertron that blurred the lines between robot and animal, then the first episode of Beast Machines reset them back to square one into standard forms that anyone on Cybertron could achieve, but then continued forward on the exact same technorganic path anyway.
Like, on the below image, it would make sense plot-wise for them to go 1>2>3>4, right? The whole big idea of Beast Machines was merging organic and machine, which is what Beast Wars was already well on its way to doing. All they had to do was keep going.

Instead they went 1>2>3>1>4.

To put it in simpler terms it's like saying man's evolution went something like Fish>Land Mammal>Primate>Fish>Human.

 

[The Sum of Zero]

Armada >>> Beast Wars >>> Original

I like Armada but even I have to admit this is wrong.

 

[Ban Puncher]

That's a gun though, not a trukk.

How To Determine if a Transformers Series is Good or Bad

Question One - Does Megatron turn into a gun?

YES - Flawless Masterpiece

NO - Complete and Utter Shit


End of Test

 

[CloudyTuba]

Is there any info on what those final 2 seasons would've looked like, or the direction things were heading? Interviews with the original writers, etc?

Not much, really. They hadn't gotten that far ahead yet. They did talk about getting the beasties back into space heading for Cybertron, but then their involvement ended and the new guys picked up that thread. The Vok and Tarantulas are threads Larry wanted to pursue further.

Larry DiTillio:

We always worked on Beast Wars with the idea that it was going to be over after each season. It is the nature of toy-driven shows. Bob and I worked like hell against that attitude but the writing was always on the wall. The minute Hasbro wanted to sell a new line of TF toys (which they always plan to do, well in advance) Beast Wars would be gone. And it was. So we tried to fix it so we had these trapdoors to handle the situation and never thought much about where we would be going next season.
Small example - at the end of Season One, I blew up Optimus Primal. Dead, dead, dead. I of course knew Hasbro wouldn't let him stay that way, but I figured we would make it seem like he was gone for several early episodes and then we'd resurrect him in some cunning manner. Likewise we'd planned to introduce the Transmetals slowly, bringing them in over the course of the show. Hasbro wanted no part of that. No matter what we else we did, the mandate was to bring Optimus back and have everybody go Transmetal, except of course for characters they weren't planning to change yet and all in the first 2 shows. Thus came the Quantum surge and thanks to the brilliant animator's little inside joke (if you watch the sequence when Optimus is blown up, in slo-mo or frame by frame, you'll see Optimus's head suddenly looming in camera, so quickly, you cannot see it at regular speed) we actually had a reasonable way to bring Optimus back.
As for season 3, there was no staving off the inevitable. Bob and I had talked casually about getting the Beast Warriors out in space in the Ark, with Megatron pursuing and them all eventually getting back to Cybertron. When we knew this was not to be well, we just stopped thinking about it, so I can't say what more we would have done. Bob's goal was to wrap up everything we had done with the series and he did it against really awful odds. I had hoped to explore a lot more about the Vok and Tarantulas and give the fans some pay-off on a lot of the threads I had started, but that too was not meant to be, since Bob and I were only allowed to actually write 2 each and I got saddled with the introduction of another character (TigerHawk.) Bob went off to another job, I did the same and Beast Wars was over for us.

Based on those morsels of information, it seems that the future of Beast Wars would indeed have left earth and gone to Cybertron like BM did, however it would have built upon all those ideas Cheerilee elaborated upon above rather than discarding them. Basically, what everyone wanted.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

How To Determine if a Transformers Series is Good or Bad

Question One - Does Megatron turn into a gun?

YES - Flawless Masterpiece

NO - Complete and Utter Shit


End of Test

Y'know... why would Megatron turn into a gun anyway? Everyone else got cool vehicles, but the leader of the bad guys, I'll turn into a gun even though I have a big cannon on my arm.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

Not much, really. They hadn't gotten that far ahead yet. They did talk about getting the beasties back into space heading for Cybertron, but then their involvement ended and the new guys picked up that thread. The Vok and Tarantulas are threads Larry wanted to pursue further.

Larry DiTillio:



Based on those morsels of information, it seems that the future of Beast Wars would indeed have left earth and gone to Cybertron like BM did, however it would have built upon all those ideas Cheerilee elaborated upon above rather than discarding them. Basically, what everyone wanted.

Yeah... it's a shame they really shouldn't have changed the creative team.

 

[Tookay]

Y'know... why would Megatron turn into a gun anyway? Everyone else got cool vehicles, but the leader of the bad guys, I'll turn into a gun even though I have a big cannon on my arm.

Yep.

Plus, his transformation has to be used by other people, which makes it even stupider.

 

[Ban Puncher]

Y'know... why would Megatron turn into a gun anyway? Everyone else got cool vehicles, but the leader of the bad guys, I'll turn into a gun even though I have a big cannon on my arm.

Yep.

Plus, his transformation has to be used by other people, which makes it even stupider.

 

[StayDead]

Armada Megatron was cool. He turned into a tank iirc.

 

[Cheerilee]

Y'know... why would Megatron turn into a gun anyway? Everyone else got cool vehicles, but the leader of the bad guys, I'll turn into a gun even though I have a big cannon on my arm.

Yep.

Plus, his transformation has to be used by other people, which makes it even stupider.

In my G1 headcanon, the old generation of Autobots (Alpha Trion and such) were built by the Quintessons to be slaves.

After they overthrew the Quintessons, a younger generation of Autobots was born into peacetime (like Orion Pax and Elita One), while at the same time a new species was created by the elder Autobots... Decepticons. The Decepticons were the latest tech, able to fly by default, and all of them were designed to be warriors, meant to protect the Autobots from external threats like the Quintessons.

Megatron was purpose-built to be the leader of the Decepticons, but his alt-mode is his leash. A system of control, to ensure that (through him) the Decepticons remain under control. Megatron needs a handler to reach his full destructive potential. Megatron surrenders his autonomy, his entire free will to his handler, who directs Megatron towards a target and then that target ceases to be. Megatron was designed to lead the Decepticons, while at the same time being a puppet of the Autobot leadership.

Megatron broke that chain, killed his handler, and the Decepticons turned against the Autobots.

 

[CryptiK]

No, no, fuck no. It was utter trash.

 

[Shaanyboi]

Hey remember when Seaspray turned into a mermaid? That sure was a good episode.

 

[exmachina64]

In my G1 headcanon, the old generation of Autobots (Alpha Trion and such) were built by the Quintessons to be slaves.

After they overthrew the Quintessons, a younger generation of Autobots was born into peacetime (like Orion Pax and Elita One), while at the same time a new species was created by the elder Autobots... Decepticons. The Decepticons were the latest tech, able to fly by default, and all of them were designed to be warriors, meant to protect the Autobots from external threats like the Quintessons.

Megatron was purpose-built to be the leader of the Decepticons, but his alt-mode is his leash. A system of control, to ensure that (through him) the Decepticons remain under control. Megatron needs a handler to reach his full destructive potential. Megatron surrenders his autonomy, his entire free will to his handler, who directs Megatron towards a target and then that target ceases to be. Megatron was designed to lead the Decepticons, while at the same time being a puppet of the Autobot leadership.

Megatron broke that chain, killed his handler, and the Decepticons turned against the Autobots.

I like how you think.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

In my G1 headcanon, the old generation of Autobots (Alpha Trion and such) were built by the Quintessons to be slaves.

After they overthrew the Quintessons, a younger generation of Autobots was born into peacetime (like Orion Pax and Elita One), while at the same time a new species was created by the elder Autobots... Decepticons. The Decepticons were the latest tech, able to fly by default, and all of them were designed to be warriors, meant to protect the Autobots from external threats like the Quintessons.

Megatron was purpose-built to be the leader of the Decepticons, but his alt-mode is his leash. A system of control, to ensure that (through him) the Decepticons remain under control. Megatron needs a handler to reach his full destructive potential. Megatron surrenders his autonomy, his entire free will to his handler, who directs Megatron towards a target and then that target ceases to be. Megatron was designed to lead the Decepticons, while at the same time being a puppet of the Autobot leadership.

Megatron broke that chain, killed his handler, and the Decepticons turned against the Autobots.

Y'know I wonder how people try to recouncil that origin with the more popular Primus origin from the comics. Beast Wars contained references to both the G1 cartoon and comic.

 

[Savitar]

I wish we had gotten Larry DiTillo and Bob Forwards plan for Beast Machines that would have involved the Vok (the aliens that were shaping Earth in it's primitive state and showed up as Unicrons head etc.) and would have had a Machine vs Nature conflict but the machines would be good and the nature would have been the Vok trying to take over. In Beast Wars a lot of their constructs were natural base instead of pure tech.

A neat fact is the Vok themselves would have been the evolved form of the swarm, another G1 connection trying to do what was right to amend for it's own life consuming past.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

I wish we had gotten Larry DiTillo and Bob Forwards plan for Beast Machines that would have involved the Vok (the aliens that were shaping Earth in it's primitive state and showed up as Unicrons head etc.) and would have had a Machine vs Nature conflict but the machines would be good and the nature would have been the Vok trying to take over. In Beast Wars a lot of their constructs were natural base instead of pure tech.

A neat fact is the Vok themselves would have been the evolved form of the swarm, another G1 connection trying to do what was right to amend for it's own life consuming past.

If I remember... both of them had different ideas as to what the Vok were, but neither origin made it into the show.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

trying to figure out how anyone who's seen Beast Wars and G1 could say that Beast Wars isn't the better of the two and I just can't

 

[Frozenprince]

Never saw Beast Wars or Beast Machines, but I can understand the sentiment of loving the first series, being excited for the sequel, then finding it to be utter trash because of this right here.

Only good thing from this shit was Megatron's new design, made for an awesome figure.

"Let's take every single thing from Armada and remove it or make it as stupid as fucking possible". Including MAKING ALL THE ROBOTS CG FOR NO REAL REASON SINCE EVERYTHING ELSE WAS 2D

We don't even talk about that weird as shit third series.

 

[Savitar]

If I remember... both of them had different ideas as to what the Vok were, but neither origin made it into the show.

Probably, but if I recall right the show took influences from all sorts of G1 sources in the day, be it the cartoon, comic etc.

 

[Toxi]

If I remember... both of them had different ideas as to what the Vok were, but neither origin made it into the show.

The Vok are one of the few big missteps of Beast Wars. The show tried to present this whole mystery about them, but it's never really answered just what they are and what their motivations are.

You can tell they really had to rush the end of that storyline in Other Victories.

 

[Ban Puncher]

Hey remember when Seaspray turned into a mermaid? That sure was a good episode.

Sure was!

 

[Savitar]

"Let's take every single thing from Armada and remove it or make it as stupid as fucking possible". Including MAKING ALL THE ROBOTS CG FOR NO REAL REASON SINCE EVERYTHING ELSE WAS 2D

We don't even talk about that weird as shit third series.

I can't imagine what you are talking about.

The Vok are one of the few big missteps of Beast Wars. The show tried to present this whole mystery about them, but it's never really answered just what they are and what their motivations are.

You can tell they really had to rush the end of that storyline in Other Victories.

Sadly they didn't have choice in various matters and were pushed for time, they were quite under the thumb of Hasbro by the third season, Hasbro was quite hands off at first but when the show became a hit and the toys started to sell more and more Hasbro started to give a damn again and bestow commands that had to be obeyed.

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

Sure was!

I liked the Golden Lagoon.

 

[Ban Puncher]

I liked the Golden Lagoon.

 

[caliph95]

I can't imagine what you are talking about.

Sadly they didn't have choice in various matters and were pushed for time, they were quite under the thumb of Hasbro by the third season, Hasbro was quite hands off at first but when the show became a hit and the toys started to sell more and more Hasbro started to give a damn again and bestow commands that had to be obeyed.

Why does a robot have underboobs

 

[Uzumaki Goku]

Well, it had a good message particularly at the destroyed lagooned all he can say is "We won..."

 

[Frozenprince]

Why does a robot have underboobs

We don't talk about it.