Rewatching Beast Wars for the first time in years...

[Skyquake87]

After the third movie has taken it's toll on us, I can safely say that fans watching Beast Machines now are much, much easier on the designs. With the writing, animation, character designs and all, it's definitely the "not appreciated on it's time" TF show.

Still think that BW, especially during the mid to late season 3 dropped the ball too much. It's one of those cases where toy designing and hasbro played a very strong role on the script.

While it's still a kid's show where the main characters are supposed to be brave and bold, the Maximals are way, way overpowered for what is a scientific expedition crew. Guys who whine about Rattrap not being himself probably have the same memory of him as I do: the guy who more or less, single handedly, took down Ravage's ship. And killed him.

Rhinox. Practically pulped down anybody in his way, without even being a transmetal. Cheetor--young and brash, but still a warrior. Dinobot was arguably already a warrior.

Optimus Primal, the chief scientific expeditor, actually had more weapons in person than Optimus Prime! Wrist shotguns, two swords and shoulder missles, and that's even before he became a transmetal!

It's hinted at as the show goes on that Rattrap has a past as an espionage agent/ saboteur so his abilities and general unlikeable nature come over as quite natural to me. It explains why he's prone to back talking Primal so much, anyway. His ability to take down ravage's ship is a plan any of the Maximals could have hit on, really.

Rhinox being a powerhouse seems fair enough. He's a big guy! He works in engineering and maintenance/ medicine so I feel his strength and capabilities are logical - no doubt he found himself part of the Axalon crew for this very reason (as well as that business with Protoform X).

Optimus Primal is a tougher one to square. He is lightly experienced, has clearly had little in the way of field command experience and has had to learn to be all leaderly whilst trapped on Earth. As with the plentiful weaponary, well, i'll lay that charge at the Autobots too - there are a suprising amount of characters that pack more firepower than some Decepticons whom we are repeatedly told are the agressors...

Cheetor isn't combat ready and treats war as a game, in much the same way Hot Rod did. He is the one character whom grows and matures the most over the course of the three seasons.

I would agree that for most of the BW, the Maximals are forever on the backfoot to Megatron's plots and plans, even with Dinobot giving Optimus the intel on what Megatron is up to, Primal keeps this to himself (and possibly Rhinox) and chooses not to inform his troops of what Megatron is up to or to affect and effective counterstrike. But then, we don't know what information Dinobot had - certainly the Maximals don't seem aware of the Ark's location until Megatron makes his move, which makes it very difficult for them to form an effective strategy. i'd guess Primal chose to wait on Megatron before deciding on a course of action, much to Dinobot's frustration.

And yes, Megatron recruited whomever he could lay his hands on to facilitate the theft of the Golden Disk and commandeer a Predacon shuttle on the pretence of searching for Energon. As Dinobot pointed out, Energon mining (and no doubt its search) was relegated to the lower echelons of Cybertronian society. This explains both the types of crew Megatron ended up with and the type of equipment the Predacons had at their disposal (girders, jamming towers ets) in comparrrison to the sort of gear the Maximals had (survey posts and relay stations). There's nothing really that strikes me as out and out goofy about the characters and circumstances of Beast Wars - these robots in disguise have been at peace since the formation of the Pax Cybertronia and the ceasation of hostilities at the end of the Autobot/ Decepticon war - and we don't know how long that has been (certainly long enough for the Transformers to reformat their world and downsize to more economic forms, suggesting the war came to an end more due to depleted resources than an absolute victory for either party, although the Predacons clearly came off worse - in much the smae way Germany did after WWII).

Just some musings.

[inflatable dalek]

Dear God, Tigatron's password is Tigatron. An anal probing from the Vok was too good a fate for him.

And isn't it odd of the show to do an "embrace your beast mode" episode when not only have all the characters seemed well adjusted to them up till now but for the first few episodes they spent nearly all their time in them, including sitting around and opperating the controls in their base that prove such a problem here? I've got a feeling there's another show with basically the same theme very soon after as well (where they all go blind?).

[Knightdramon]

Might be your imagination, or I haven't watched the series for a long time, but the only one actually capable of doing anything keyboard-related in beast mode is Primal and Dinobot. Rhinox can't do anything due to his hooves\legs being the way they are.

Other stupid moments? The whole morale of the episode you mentioned is that "hey we can attack the predacons while in beast mode".

For many, many opportunities, any Maximal inside the Predacon base never sabotages ANYTHING. Basically every Maximal in season 1 has at least one episode inside the enemy base. Primal busted a few walls, Cheetor did nothing, Rattrap's espionage and sabotage ended with one maximal communications chip off, Rhinox actually beat the preds up, tigatron downloaded some info and run, air razor just retrieved a piece from the maximal base and Dinobot, in the beginning of S2, just stole the disks.

--Okay, that might be the redeeming part of their entire parade.

[inflatable dalek]

Might be your imagination, or I haven't watched the series for a long time, but the only one actually capable of doing anything keyboard-related in beast mode is Primal and Dinobot. Rhinox can't do anything due to his hooves\legs being the way they are.

Nah, Rhinox at least has a few weird looking moments of waving gadgets about with his hooves, which with them tending to have meetings round the table in animal form tends to stick in the mind through sheer silliness. I can see why they stopped doing it, but it does make this episode completely pointless.

[inflatable dalek]

I've got a feeling there's another show with basically the same theme very soon after as well (where they all go blind?).

Holy crap, it was the very next episode. Someone was taking the piss with that surely?

Starscream's showing was surprisingly good considering it was just fanwank. Though it just emphasises how useless most of the Predacons are that within minutes of his showing up he's taken over the Maximal base. By using the amazing tactic of attacking them hard.

in contrast, Black Arachnia passes up a chance to kill Primal as well at the very end by not just shooting the Energon straight away but instead posing and quiping about it giving him time to go "Hasta La Vista Starscream" (!) and fly off.

[inflatable dalek]

You know, the run of episodes from Maximal, No More! through The Agenda is probably the strogest consecutive bunch of shows across all the series (or at least the ones I've seen), all great, thoughtful yet action packed romps that display an extreme confidence. The Agenda is especially extraordinary coming off the back of watching all the previous shows, it's like the cumulation of everything that's gone before.

It's also fairly amazing it got made at all, this wasn't some comic aimed squarely at fanboys, but a cartoon that had to court a wider audience of children who wouldn't have any real idea about the original cartoon. Doing a season final that's basically a big crossover that could (and very possibly did, even little things like what's blatantly a cat turning into a cassette aren't going to make sense unless you're really up on your stuff) alienate that crowd was a very bold thing to do.

Shame season 3 kind of suck, optimal Situation shows why doing big "end of everything" cliffhanger when you don't know how you're going to resolve them is a bad thing, Optimal Optimus is easily the most rubbish looking character design in the entire show (would it really have hurt them to just fudge the badly designed toy a bit like they did with the earlier character models? So that's he doesn't have a comedy giant pair of hands hanging off him in both alt modes) and the new set up just makes the Maximals too reactive, they're basically just sitting there to see whatever Megatron next throws at them with no plans or goals whatsoever.

Megatron himself also seems rather off, becoming a bit more dim witted and G1ish, even twice forgetting he doesn't actually want to destroy the Ark (it was actually a surprise when they wrote in a explanation for Tarantulas wanting to do that when in the very next story Megatron gets no such reasoning).

Thankfully the final does pull things together for a decent send off, even if some of it is just a little bit too neat (Megatron deciding to kill Inferno and Quickstrike to remove those lose ends being especially blatant). You can see why someone thought SimoN Furman was a surefire winner for the Beast Wars comic, "He's our guy and he wrote for the show! What can go wrong?".

Just finished season 1 of Beast Machines, and the biggest crime is it's very dull. Visually it's all grey and brown, and every battle sequence is pretty much exactly the same, thousands of drones miss the Maximals at point blank range despite firing for what feels like hours whilst the odd General pops up to be a bit sarky whilst a angst ridden Maximal appeals to their spark. It makes you appreciate how much the silliness that would often be thrown into the fights in BW stopped them getting dull.

And Megatron... is just dull. All the fire, passion and personality has been replaced by a clichéd villain who doesn't feel very much like the same character at all bar the odd token "Yes". Hugely disappointing and means there's not much to cover the fact most of his plans don't make any sense and contradict themselves all over the place. The Drone is miles better, though its telling the shows most succesful villain is Tankor/Rhinox, for whom the actor and the animators apparently went against the intentions of the scripts (where Rhinox would be reasonable and sane and have come to his choice dispassionate rather than "MWAHAHAHAH I'm nuts me").

And nope, I don't buy Rattrap's stint as a traitor at all. However desperate he is to improve himself, there's no way he even remotely consider trusting Megatron in any way shape or form considering how untrustworthy he is in every single episode except this one. Completely random character derailment on both sides.

[Heinrad]

Part of the problem with S3 of Beast Wars is the fact that they wound up having to wrap everything up in 13 episodes and went from syndication to being a network show(hence the reason Dark Glass got shelved, too deep for widdle kiddies), which meant an unfortunate dumbing down.

That being said, doing a 13 episode season means they have to focus a lot more on the overall story. S1 is 26 episodes, and easily half of them are disposable(including, as much as I love the comedy in it, The Low Road).

I also got the impression, from some of Rattrap's remarks during The Agenda, that he may well be a veteran of the Great War. He's got no love for the Preds, but he seems to have a special place in his spark core full of hatred for the Decepticons.

Beast Machines....... I just had a hard time getting into it, mainly because of Rattrap. And the sense of fun wasn't there. On top of that, my work schedule made me miss a lot of it.

[inflatable dalek]

Right, the "Nobel/Savage" thing is officially the stupidest moment of any Transformers cartoon ever. Even New York Times Best Selling Author Don Glutt would have said "This is a bit stupid guys". Who thought an episode where the big twist that left all the other transformers in awe of the fact that the new guy can well... transform was a good idea? And the line of sight as the episode ends makes it looks as if Nobel does his EVIL face whilst Optimus is staring right at it as well.

[Warcry]

So, I've just finished watching Season 2. It turns out that I'd seen much less of it that I initially thought.

Things I liked:

• I'm surprised that it took so long to get Optimus back. If I'd been watching the show at the time and didn't know about the Transmetal toy, I might have assumed that he was never coming back. The other four 'core' Maximals (Cheetor, Rattrap, Rhinox and Dinobot) really shone while he was gone.
• Silverbolt is just awesome. At first you think he's just a noble dope, but as his thing with Black Arachnia plays out he becomes one of the more complex characters in the series. And he helps to make her a much more interesting character as well, considering how utterly boring she was in the first season. By this point she's probably become the most interesting Predacon. Of course, that's mainly because Tarantulas just doesn't get that much screen time.
• Dinobot was very well handled. His moral dilemma played out very believably, and so did the eventual conclusion. I'm actually a bit surprised that Hasbro let them kill off a character who they obviously had plans to make another toy for, though. And equally surprised that the writing staff decided to kill off the character that they had spent the most time developing. I'm left to wonder if they hadn't painted themselves into a corner after they decided the direction that Black Arachnia would go in, only to realize they didn't have room for two ex-Predacons on the team.
• Megatron has really shed all the trappings of cartoon villainy by now, hasn't he? No more getting defeated by rhino flatulence. He's playing for keeps now, actively trying to kill the Maximals at every chance he gets while he pursues a campaign of genocide against the protohumans and gets ready to destroy the timeline as a last resort. And in between all that scheming he still has time to slice out Rampage's soul and turn him into a slave. Now that's what I call time management!
• I'm amazed by both how tight the plotting was for the season as a whole. The only episode that doesn't directly tie into the plot in some way was 'Transmutate', and even then it's important -- the character development we saw in Silverbolt makes his actions in the finale feel much more natural. I expected to be complaining that thirteen episodes wasn't enough time to introduce the new characters and move the plot along, but they definitely made the most of what they had. There's not a minute of wasted screen time or filler to be found, and that makes the few places where they did fall short much more forgivable.
• Optimus Primal. In the first season he was Generic Cartoon Optimus #4, but now he's definitely become his own character. He has moments where he's far more thoughtful than the typical Optimus, even philosophical. The conversation he had with Silverbolt about his feelings for Black Arachnia, in particular, is something that I just can't imagine coming from a red and blue semi truck. He's a much more 'human' leader in general, a person instead of a paragon.
• And as for the story itself...well, I'm amazed that they were allowed to make an entire season of a children's cartoon so relentlessly dark. First Optimus is dead for three episodes while Megatron does his level best to murder all the Maximals, with Tarantulas in the background mind-raping Black Arachnia. Then Tarantulas makes fools of everyone and sets off to pursue his own nefarious plans, while Dinobot betrays the Maximals in a bout of weakness. Then the aliens show up and abduct Tigatron and Airazor, who aren't seen again for the rest of the season. Then a serial killer shows up and tries to kill everyone until Megatron enslaves him, Dinobot dies in a heroic last stand and the Maximals and Predacons discover the one thing they can both agree on: mentally handicapped people need to be killed because they're inconvenient! And then Ravage shows up, virtually all of the Predacons (seemingly) get killed off and Megatron puts an exclamation point on the whole thing by shooting Optimus Prime in the face. Wow. It's hard to find too many rays of sunshine in any of that.

Things I didn't like:

• The 'Transmutate' episode was very hamhanded. The Maximals (minus Silverbolt) ended up looking like heartless assholes in spite of the fact that they were absolutely right -- a war zone is no place for a mentally-challenged person, and there was absolutely no way for the Maximals to protect it other than to put it in stasis until they could return to Cybertron and turn it over specialists trained for that sort of thing. But the writers didn't give nearly enough time to explaining that so it came off as them wanting to get rid of the thing because it would be an inconvenience.
• Everyone reacts to Silverbolt's attempts to 'save' Black Arachnia with scorn and outright dismissal in spite of the fact that she was a brainwashed member of their own crew, and by all rights they should be enraged over what happened to her. Combined with the Transmutate thing, the Maximals come across as a callous bunch and considering this same group extended the hand of friendship to notorious Predacon war criminal Dinobot, it's very jarring. With Tigatron gone and Silverbolt getting no respect, it really feels like the team has lost their moral centre a bit. Lucky for them that Megatron has graduated from regular, everyday energon-hoarding villainy into universe-overwriting supervillainy so they're still clearly the good guys.
• Tarantulas is cool but horribly underused. He sets off on his own, but he only ever shows up when it effects the main plot via Megatron or the Vok. I loved him by the end of season one -- having the braying mad scientist be the only one sane enough to realize the need to get the hell off-world was a nice touch -- but he seems to have faded into the background a lot now. We really only see him when he's working with Megatron, too, which really makes you wonder why he bothered striking off on his own and exactly what he's up to all alone in that cave of his. And who exactly repaired him after he got shredded by Rampage, anyway?
• The rest of the Predacons are crap. Waspinator as a joke character I can just about get behind, although to be honest I barely even notice when he's there so it's just not that funny anymore. But Inferno and Quickstrike are just as bad, one-note joke characters who never develop past single-sentence summaries like "thinks he's an ant" or "evil cowboy". None of them are adding anything to the show at this point, aside from evening up the numbers. Rampage is a little bit better, but not much. His little dance with Megatron got old very fast since we know that he's never going to get the better of Megs and his morose serial killer shtick doesn't exactly make him a fun bad guy to cheer for.
• Sending Tigatron and Airazor off on a do-nothing mission for the first half of the season and then killing them off felt like a complete waste. I didn't care for Airazor but Tigatron was a great character, and it's a shame to lose him so ignominiously. Like Dinobot, I think he was a victim of having a new character arrive who fills the same role in the group (in this case, Silverbolt). It's also a tad disappointing that we never got to see what they were doing on their mission, since they apparently grew very close in the time they spent together. Like I said, a waste.
• Having never seen all of The Agenda before in one sitting, I found myself really surprised by how unimpressed I was by Ravage. I expect random G1 guys to show up and effortlessly kick the shit out of the entire BW cast in a TRUKK NOT MUNKY fanfic, not the actual show. He got so little character development that he never felt like anything more than a plot device, which is a shame. The fact that there are two of him on the planet and he's personally lived through all of the history Megatron wants to erase should have given him a unique perspective and maybe a unique agenda of his own, but we never got a chance to see any of that. Since half of the existing Predacon cast were useless, it's really a shame that he couldn't stick around instead of someone like Inferno for season three.

Overall I'm very impressed, and I'm looking forward to the third season.

[inflatable dalek]

I'd agree with all of that, except of course that Inferno was brilliant.

My final thoughts on Beast Machines were that the show wasn't as bad as it was received at the time by fans, but it's no where near as good as the reassessment it's undergone in more recent years would have you think. There's lots of interesting, brave ideas in there but frequently the execution is bobbins.

What really hit me when Silverbolt came back and was now yet another depressed brooding emo added to the cast is how All Hail Megatron it all was. Like that the heroes spend most of the time sitting about on Cybertron feeling sorry for themselves (though at least in BM this actually becomes a plot point as it's one of the things that Cheetor is worried about at the end of season 1, though in practice this boils down to even the characters admiting the show has been a bit dull thus far) and they only seem to have one personality to share out amongst them. Other than the tokenistic attempts at speech quirks Botanica is pretty much the only Maximal who couldn't have her dialogue swapped with anyone elses.

It's especially galling with Silverbolt joined the depressed crew after his brief season 1 cameo had him in previous form and showed he didn't remember what Jetstorm was doing. Making him suddenly being consumed with guilt over his actions in the second year a retcon that must have been the result of someone going "Hey, you know what we need? Another angst filled tormented at their own failings Maximal".

It was nice to see Megatron being written more in the BW style by the shows end, and being stuck in a drone body was a nice idea. But the grand final was even more underwhelming than I remembered it, all that "Find your inner zen" stuff Primal went through and all he needed to do in the end was push Megatron down a hole? And Megatron only dies because he forgot he can fly (like he had been for most of the preceding 22 minutes)?. Bleh.

[Warcry]

I'd agree with all of that, except of course that Inferno was brilliant.

I dunno. I can see why people like him, for sure. But I can also see why Jim Byrnes is the only one of the Beast Wars voice cast who's public attitude toward the whole thing was "m'eh, it's just another job". He really doesn't get much to work with.

Just finished the final season, and I didn't enjoy it quite as much. It's not without bright spots, though.

• Depth Charge is great. His backstory with Rampage instantly made him more interesting and relateable than most of the established cast, and the fact that he sounds like a really pissed-off Clint Eastwood doesn't hurt one bit. Just by being there he makes Rampage twice as interesting as he was before, which doesn't hurt either.
• Dinobot. Not only was he sorely missed while he was dead, but seeing the sort of person that he could be if he gave in to his evil side was very interesting. Not only that, but he was a great foil for almost everyone. Waspinator's reaction was priceless ("Waspinator not like new lizard bot!", indeed...) and it's a shame his disdain for the TM2s wasn't played up a bit more in later episodes. Rampage's fury at having his spark given away was great, too.
  
  On a side-note, Megatron's obsession with Dinobot goes far beyond the creepy, doesn't it? He could just as easily have used his TM2 tech to make Scarem or Spittor or Iguanus or Scourge, but he just had to bring Dinobot back so he could have the last word... He obviously doesn't feel that way about all his traitors, considering he went to a great deal of trouble to murder Black Arachnia and was about half a second away from having Quickstrike's head blown off.
• With Black Arachnia changing sides, there was more Predacon screen time available and that translated into the mooks being used a bit better this time around. Waspinator and Quickstrike were both genuinely funny, instead of just being those two guys who get shot all the time and aren't Inferno.
• Changing of the Guard was a great idea for an episode. Sentinel was such a big part of the first two seasons that I'd almost classify it as a character, and it was great that it wasn't entirely forgotten about when the Axalon was sunk. But the fact that it was of absolutely zero use to the Predacons -- since no one actually attacks their base after this except for the nigh-invincible Tigerhawk -- kind of retroactively takes the wind out of it's sails a bit.
• Feral Scream was probably the best episode(s) of the season. It's full of great little character moments for almost everyone.

Unfortunately, this season had a lot more problems than the last one.

• First off, the Transmetal 2s are the ugliest ****ing things in the world. Dinobot actually looks pretty cool, but Cheetor is a definite step down from his previous body. Black Arachnia was just in poor taste all around -- yes, we get that she's a femme fatale but there is absolutely no reason she needs to be wearing a bikini and hooker boots -- and didn't look a thing her original body. Tigerhawk is incredibly bland and Megatron just looks horrible, and I'm almost inclined to wonder if the animators deliberately did a half-assed job on them because they knew they'd only be using the models for a couple episodes. If this is the best they could do to refresh the line it's no wonder that toy sales were down enough that the series got the axe.
  
  It's especially galling in Megatron's case, because Transmetal Megatron was a thing of beauty and far and away the nicest character model on the show.
• Dinobot. Even though I was glad to see him and enjoyed pretty much every second he was on screen, he just didn't make any sense. He's treated as just a clone of the original, but he acts just like him and somehow has all of his memories. The Maximals don't seem to be particularly bothered by his existence or the fact that he's their enemy, either. They should have shone some more light on this, either by actually producing Dark Glass or simply tweaking the new Dinobot's creation a bit (just using the original's corpse instead of a blank protoform would have been an easy out).
• Tarantulas. So, first of all he's now working for Megatron again for no good reason. He cackles through most of the season until his inevitable betrayal falls apart, then somehow escapes scott-free only to die like a bitch at the hands of the Vok. It feels like such a waste of a great character. He probably had more potential than the whole rest of the cast and it's a shame that nothing ever came of it. Why did he know so much about the aliens? Who are he and the Tripredacus Council descended from? What agenda did he spend so much time working on away from prying eyes? We'll never know.
• Black Arachnia. She was great the first half of the season, and was doing a great job of showing that you can be a good guy without changing your activation code. And in a "show for kids" sense, she was a good role model who proved that you don't need to change who you are to fit in. She liked who she was and she didn't want or need to change that to do the right thing. But then the new toy came along, they threw all that away and we got "Black Arachnia, Maximize!" instead.
• New toy introductions. Season two handled this much better. Within the first few episodes everyone was introduced and then they just went about their business, eventually introducing Rampage a few episodes later. But for season three it seemed like every episode we got a new toy brought in. In fact, seven of the thirteen episodes were devoted to introducing new toys. In theory I like that they took the time to give Optimus, Dinobot, Cheetor, Black Arachnia and Megatron their own stories leading up to their new bodies, and of course Depth Charge was awesome and Tigerhawk was an important plot device. But they didn't leave much room for anything else, and the overall quality of the season suffered for it. They were also a lot more blatant with the "new toy syndrome" than they were in season two. Depth Charge aside, every new toy that showed up was invincible for an episode or two until they got overshadowed by the next one. The constant "Transmetals are so powerful!" dialogue got old after a while, and I was especially thrown by Megatron constantly calling Primal "Optimal Optimus" all the time for no reason.
• Tigerhawk. What a mess that was. I know that there's a whole story of Hasbro meddling that led to him showing up, being pushed as invincible and then dying all within the span of about 50 minutes of screen time, but that doesn't make it any less jarring. The fact that this is the final fate of Tigatron and Airazor after spending a season and a half floating in Vok space is more than a little bit galling.
• Furman. I appreciate his 80s work as much as the next guy, but his writing really doesn't suit Beast Wars. The entire finale, and especially the out of nowhere religious angle, just felt a bit 'off' in tone and I think we can put that down to him. Considering how wildly he missed the point when he wrote the Beast Wars comic for IDW, I'm glad they only let him work on one very plot-heavy episode.
• There was just too much G1 for my tastes. I loved the Agenda at the end of season two. I thought it was a brilliant twist and a great way to raise the stakes. But that's where it should have ended. Having the Maximals move into the Ark was understandable, I guess. But having the Predacons spend the whole season trying to kill the Autobots was a bit much. Having Optimus and Megatron get powered up by the sparks of the original was silly. Ending the season and the series with exactly the same plot that ended season three (Megatron finds a crashed G1 starship and tries to destroy the timeline) was beyond the pale. I watch Beast Wars because I like Beast Wars, and I don't want the show constantly telling me how awesome and important G1 is. Which leads me to the big complaint...
• The Vok. Piss on the Nemesis, if anyone was going to close out the Beast Wars it needed to be these guys. The mystery of the strange alien presence was introduced in the pilot, and weaved throughout the whole first season and the first half of the second before it was dropped in favour of Megatron's attempts to destroy the timeline. They should have been picked up again in season three and ramped up for a big final confrontation, but all we got was a single halfhearted coda episode. They were the most integral plot of the entire series, and at the end of the day we don't know who they were, what they wanted or what they were doing. Like Tarantulas, whose story was interwoven so tightly with them, in the final tally they amounted to nothing.
  
  Ignoring the main plot thread of the whole show in favour of turning the series finale into another throwback episode just isn't acceptable in my books. I understand that they didn't have many episodes to work with and that the news of the cancellation came pretty late in the day, but that doesn't make the final product any better. I expect this sort of nonsense from the folks who made Enterprise, but from the creative team that made Beast Wars so much fun for three seasons I really expected better.

With it all said and done, I loved the series but I'm sad that it ended on such a sour note.

[inflatable dalek]

Again, I think you're mostly on the money with that, except I really like Nemesis, and think it's pretty much a final rally round of quality to cap off a disappointing year. Such flaws as there are (the lack of foreshadowing with the Covenant stuff, Tigerhawk's pointless inclusion) are more flaws with previous episodes for me.

I do think they'd have been better off finishing off the alien story at the climax of season one, leaving their full motivations and origins something of a mystery. Amongst the flaws you mention not only is the final reveal of their true form deeply silly (floating Rasta heads? That's what's so mindblowing they had to take the form of Unicron because Primal couldn't deal with their true appearance?) their motives in season 3 don't make any sense in terms of the first year. Now they're really worried about people messing with the timeline and have knowledge of the future? Isn't that at odds with the whole "Destroy Earth with a fake moon" plan they put into effect two years earlier?

I wonder if they ever meet up with the Vorlon's to have a talking bollocks competition?

[Warcry]

You're right. The first season finale would have wrapped up the alien story nicely if they'd let it rest with that. But with the aliens trying to kill everyone and abducting two Maximals in season two, and Megatron using stolen alien technology to create a monstrous new type of Transformer in season three, combined with the bigging up of Tarantulas's mysterious knowledge of them...if there was never any resolution in mind, they never should have done any of that.

My problem with Nemesis wasn't really with the story itself (standing on it's own merits it was good) but with the circumstances. The plot was so similar to the previous season finale, and using this as the ending of the series left so many other loose ends unaddressed. If season three had been longer, or if Nemesis had happened in a hypothetical season four, I don't think it would throw me as as much. But these thirteen episode seasons are so short that everything needs to come together perfectly for the season as a whole to 'work', and unlike season two, season three just didn't manage it. As a whole I think season three would have been better if it had been longer. The breakneck pace really worked wonderfully for the story they told in the second season, but season three reminded me a lot more of the first season and I think it would have been better if they'd been able to tell the story at the more relaxed pace that twenty-six episodes would have offered.

Do we know why the second and third seasons were so much shorter than the first? Thirteen episodes is a very short season for an animated kids' show, especially when you consider that they never got to the magical sixty-five episode mark that most cartoons aim for to make US syndication work easier. I know that CGI is a lot more expensive than traditional animation, but still. The Beast Wars line was obviously a commercial success, since it pulled the franchise out of the late G1/G2 tailspin, and I'm surprised Hasbro (well, Kenner I guess) didn't want more new episodes pushing the product on TV.

[inflatable dalek]

I know a feature in the dear departed Cult TV mag on the show around the end of series 2 claimed shorter "top up" seasons after a lengthy first year are/was at that time standard practice for (syndicated?) cartoons.

I would have assumed that Beast Machines would be included in the Wars syndication/overseas package to bring the episode number up (in a similar way to how, if Star Trek: The Next Generation had bombed after one season it would have made its costs back by being added to the still popular original series package whether TV stations wanted it or not). Mind, the Channel 5 broadcasts over here only showed Wars, so this might not be the case (though that would have been just after Machines finished, so it might not have been added yet).

Reading between the lines, Beast Wars seems to have been ultimately regarded a failure at the time by the powers that be for whatever reason. One thing that gets repeated by the various people involved in the commentaries and interviews on the American BM DVD's is that Hasbro/Mainframe/Fox wanted something completely different that wouldn't reference the previous shows at all (though this isn't what wound up happening).

As to why... Perhaps ratings had fallen off badly as it became more continuity focused? Or the toyline after an initial success was begining to die a death due to the increasingly ugly toys?

With the aliens, they could still have had Megatron using left over remnants of their technology whilst having wrapped up their storyline at the end of year one.

[Cliffjumper]

52 eps means a weekly annual run, which might not be the most attractive but is still a syndication package of single weekend episodes (though, IIRC, in the UK it's not bundled with BM usually - ITV either dropped or buried BW after poor ratings; BM went to Fox Kids, while BW made its' way to C5 when ITV's licence expired). But then I think syndication is a secondary concern for modern TF shows - by 1999, to make the series up to 65 episodes (3 months of weekday episodes) would mean paying out for 13 episodes advertising discontinued toys. Whatever money Hasbro were still getting from the BW series after cancellation via repeat packages and VHS/DVDs is a bonus.

I think Kenner saw the line's commercial limits quite smartly when figures started to seriously shelf-warm. BM then proved that was no fluke, so Hasbro then switched to the one-year/six-month lines. That both lines have important figures out late in the day that were hard to find suggest numbers were scaled back quite drastically. I do think it's been exaggerated just how popular BW was, both on screen and in the stores - a big return to form after G2, but it doesn't seem to have made a huge long-term expression. BW came out 16 years ago - the same sort of gap there was between the start of G1 and the 2000/1 nostalgia boom that got real people buying Transformers comics for the last time.

It's clearly just the way the toy industry works now - even loosely linked lines (Arm/En/Cyb; Mov/RotF/DotM; Classics/Universe/2010) seem to have diminishing returns.

[Warcry]

I know a feature in the dear departed Cult TV mag on the show around the end of series 2 claimed shorter "top up" seasons after a lengthy first year are/was at that time standard practice for (syndicated?) cartoons.

That's true, in a lot of cases. The new episodes get tacked onto the end of the previous season(s) as the networks run through the show so they don't need to produce as much content to keep things rolling. But in a toy-advertising cartoon I'm not sure how much sense that makes. After all, by the time season three rolled around there's no way kids would be able to find any of the season one toys on the shelf so those reruns are a lot less effective than episodes that show Cheetor, Dinobot and Black Arachnia running around in their new bodies.

As to why... Perhaps ratings had fallen off badly as it became more continuity focused? Or the toyline after an initial success was begining to die a death due to the increasingly ugly toys?

I do think that they toys had drifted pretty far away from what made them popular, by then. Fuzors, Transmetals and TM2s all sort of missed the point when it comes to highly-realistic beast modes, and of course it didn't help either that so many of them were just flat-out bad toys. Maybe half of the Transmetals are any good, but Siliverbolt is the only Fuzor that isn't an abortion. And the only decent TM2s were a bunch of non-show guys, Prowl, Ramulus, Nightglider and Stinkbomb. In that sense it's a shame that the toyline let down the show.

Honestly I'm not sure what else they could have done, though. The Japanese BW stuff makes it pretty clear that there just isn't that much ore to mine when it comes to making realistic animal alt-modes.

With the aliens, they could still have had Megatron using left over remnants of their technology whilst having wrapped up their storyline at the end of year one.

Hmmm...I'm not sure they'd be interested in even mentioning the aliens, honestly, if they considered their story finished. All that'd do is build up the expectation that they'd be back.

I do think it's been exaggerated just how popular BW was, both on screen and in the stores - a big return to form after G2, but it doesn't seem to have made a huge long-term expression. BW came out 16 years ago - the same sort of gap there was between the start of G1 and the 2000/1 nostalgia boom that got real people buying Transformers comics for the last time.

Good point. How popular was Beast Wars at the time, really? I've always had the impression that it was a moderate success, one of those things that most of the boys on the playground would have known about but not something that generated a lot of hype. Not the insane, roaring success that G1 or G.I. Joe or He-Man had in the early to mid 80s, but maybe more on par with something like Thundercats.

I was already a teen by then, though, so I really can't comment on any kid-hype it might have had first-hand.

[Cliffjumper]

But in a toy-advertising cartoon I'm not sure how much sense that makes. After all, by the time season three rolled around there's no way kids would be able to find any of the season one toys on the shelf so those reruns are a lot less effective than episodes that show Cheetor, Dinobot and Black Arachnia running around in their new bodies.

Well, there was generally some version out - when you were a nipper in 1985 did it bother you that Bumblebee had the wrong face and wheels on his arms? It's also simple brand placement for kids - they ask mum and dad for a Transformer. If there's no Tarantulas on the shelf they'll settle for, I dunno, Spittor or something rather than go home empty-handed.

I'm personally very skeptical as to how much change strong media exposure makes that much of a difference to your average child - collectors trying to complete their IDW Wreckers line-up or Classic-style Autobot cars, for sure. Kids? Nah, not buying it. There are exceptions - live-action Bumblebee seems to be insanely popular, as was the original and Optimus Prime - but beyond a few it doesn't seem to translate that much. Wasn't Inferno (BW) a massive shelf-warmer despite being a show regular?

Putting a character in a show probably helps a little, but not as much as an eye-catching toy in itself. Reverse is true - kids won't want to spend $15 or whatever on a giant ant however many episodes he turns up in (see also: BM Nightscream, Energon Ironhide, Armada Laserbeak). And something like Injector wouldn't have sold if the model had been used for Dinobot.

Good point. How popular was Beast Wars at the time, really? I've always had the impression that it was a moderate success, one of those things that most of the boys on the playground would have known about but not something that generated a lot of hype. Not the insane, roaring success that G1 or G.I. Joe or He-Man had in the early to mid 80s, but maybe more on par with something like Thundercats.

Yeh, that's about my reading (I'd love to see hard data on this sort of thing rather than anecdotal evidence). A nice steady hit rather than a runaway smash, sensibly handled (whereas G2 and late-stage G1 just seemed to throw out as much product with as many crazy gimmicks as possible in a vague hope that one of them would work). It seems to have been exaggerated by the "Here first!" brigade somewhat

[Warcry]

Well, there was generally some version out - when you were a nipper in 1985 did it bother you that Bumblebee had the wrong face and wheels on his arms? It's also simple brand placement for kids - they ask mum and dad for a Transformer. If there's no Tarantulas on the shelf they'll settle for, I dunno, Spittor or something rather than go home empty-handed.

I was one in 1985, so if I'd been given a Bumblebee my primary concern probably would have been how he tasted.

But to answer the spirit of your question...yes, actually. He eventually grew on me, but I distinctly remember turning my nose up at Pretender Grimlock when I first got him because he wasn't the 'real' Grimlock. The purple G2 Megatron got the same reaction from me since he was 'supposed' to be green like I saw in the G.I. Joe crossover comics I'd read, to the point where I never even bought him. And the Gobots versions of guys like Bumblebee and Sideswipe earned nothing but scorn in my preteen eyes.

That didn't happen all the time, though. I loved Pretender Bumblebee since the actual robot was so close to the animation model and the Transformer part of the toy was bigger than the original, and Powermaster Prime was a big hit even though I had no idea what a Powermaster was until I read the comics a year or so later. And, of course, G2.

I'm personally very skeptical as to how much change strong media exposure makes that much of a difference to your average child - collectors trying to complete their IDW Wreckers line-up or Classic-style Autobot cars, for sure. Kids? Nah, not buying it. There are exceptions - live-action Bumblebee seems to be insanely popular, as was the original and Optimus Prime - but beyond a few it doesn't seem to translate that much.

I actually have to disagree here, too. I'm sure kids will take the characters they know nothing about if they're the only choice, but they'll still look for their favourites first. Speaking from personal experience, my friends and I were getting Transformers in the late G1/G2 era but our collections were always heavily weighted toward guys who were a big deal in the cartoon or comics. Guys like Scoop or Rapido were strictly consolation prizes when we couldn't find the guys we recognized.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but those of you who were a part of the target demographic from the beginning might not have faced that since practically everyone in the 84-86 cast was a somebody. Blitzwing or Grapple may not have been your favourite, but you'd still know who he was when you were looking at him in the store. There never would have been that clear divide between 'real' characters and guys who you've never seen before, like there was in the years I was buying toys as a kid.

With Beast Wars having a much smaller cast, I would be really surprised if that effect wasn't even greater than it was for me. All things being equal I imagine it was a lot harder to find a Cheetor or a Waspinator than it would have been a Wolfang or a Buzz Saw.

Wasn't Inferno (BW) a massive shelf-warmer despite being a show regular?

That he was. He also shipped in a solid case, and probably served as an object lesson that taught Hasbro that they should continue to ship older toys and not oversaturate shelves with 500 of the same guy.

Yeh, that's about my reading (I'd love to see hard data on this sort of thing rather than anecdotal evidence). A nice steady hit rather than a runaway smash, sensibly handled (whereas G2 and late-stage G1 just seemed to throw out as much product with as many crazy gimmicks as possible in a vague hope that one of them would work). It seems to have been exaggerated by the "Here first!" brigade somewhat

I agree that it would be nice to see a sales comparison. We can be pretty confident that Beast Wars' sales were nowhere near the peaks that TF hit during G1 and the movie glut, but how does it compare to BM, RiD and the Unicron Trilogy? None of those really seemed to catch on even with the moderate gusto that Beast Wars managed, but by then I was so far out of the target demographic that I'm really just guessing based on my younger cousins' interests.

Come to think of it, what was the big think in the years that Beast Wars was running? The Power Rangers craze seemed to line up more closely with G2 if I remember right. Was it Pokemon, or was that a few years down the pipe yet?

[Skyquake87]

Some thoughts off of me. I think you're both right in terms of character appeal. A cool toy will attract kids no matter what it is, if there's an identifiable character toy - a 'favourite' of the child's then that will have appeal too. Which is probably why its so diffiicult to make toylines a success - its like bottling lightning, I suppose...

Some anecdotal evidence: when the Beast Wars toyline rolled out in the UK, it wasn't given much shelf space until the TV show rolled out. I distinctly remember being in Woolworths when they had a big push on BW toys, with end caps and in store POS (including some cute animal 'footprints' from the entrance to the toy section) . As I trundled down to see what I could pick up (as Cliffjumper says : anything really, I wasn't fussy ) i noticed two boys picking through the pegs and showing each other figures and saying stuff like "Look at this one!" and "This guy looks tough" and it didn't matter whom the characters were. Some months into the show being aired over here and I couldn't lay my hands on a deluxe Cheetor figure anywhere near where I lived (i did eventually when Woolies had a promotion on red packed beast wars figures shortly after the Transmetal / Fuzor era was in full swing). So I suppose what I am saying is that from a child's perspective its possibly a combination of recognition and desirability. I think Beast Wars success was down to there being some sort of rationale and story behind the toys, unlike G2 where it was just slung out with the hope kids would just buy the same old product.

Despite the fortunes of the TV show, Beast Wars remainded a strong seller as far as I could see (a good barometer is how much space Argos devote to a given toyline in their Catalogue - Beast Wars for most of its life got a full page, declining to a half page with the Transmetal 2 and follow on Beast Machines line. Not bad going for a line that didn't really have much support from its accompanying media, which was just shown during holidays). I think you're both bang on - there was awareness of the toys and the show, but it wasn't a 'smash hit'. Just significantly better performing than Generation 2. Beast Machines really did tank though. Assortments were limited to the first wave, with only TRU getting later series (and even then their pegs were swamped with those awful 'Beast Riders' things) and it was all done by halfway through 2000.

Also in its favour was that there wasn't anything else around dominating the action figure market. Power Rangers, for all its success in the early 1990s had basically been the same year in year out (series of 5 action figures + Transforming Zords) and there wasn't much else in the way of competition. Batman, Batman Beyond, smaller lines like Kenner's mental looking Aliens toyline, Animorphs (given the Transfomers brand for the toyline to pick up sales from parents no doubt going for Beast Wars toys...), Star Wars (again as with G2, rehashing old product for a new generation - as mocked by Adam & Joe at the time for needlessly muscling up all the figures). Pokemon and its ilk became a massive deal in about 1999 (the cartoon aired in double bills with Beast Wars for a time on GMTV here in the UK, before BW was dropped entirely in favour of more Pokemon). The only other thing I can recall dominating toyshelves at the time was the revived Action Man line which was a big deal in the UK (so much so that equivalent US line Max Steel was imported and died a quick death). The rest of our shelves were filled with smaller and now forgotten lines like Mummies Alive (remember that?).

[inflatable dalek]

Max Steel's a porn star isn't he?

In terms of annecdotal evidence, I think the fact that after Beast Machines (or indeed instead of BM is Takara's case) they went back to cell animation for the next few shows, and thus were able to have larger casts and thus more toy promotion, is suggestive of how well the non-show Beast toys did in previous years.