Beast Machines

[charlesrocketboy]

The final episode is brilliant, and not just because I have "and then everyone died in a pointless genocide that claimed the planet itself" in the back of my mind thanks to Graham's fics.

[KnightBeat]

I've disliked Beast Machines for many years, but feel a strong urge to revisit it after watching this video.

[Toph]

A lot of the faults of Beast Machines were things out of Bob Skir's control.

Rhinox is evil- Skir has said that this was never his intent. Rhinox was to come to believe that Optimus' way of forcing reformatting on everyone was fundamentally wrong, and the two would part ways after a civilized talk. But the VA played it as though Rhinox had flipped his rocker and gone completely evil (Unknown if Richard Newman, or the Director was responsible). So from there on, he basically had to write the character that way.

I'd always thought Rattrap was consistently out of character through the whole series, until I sat down and watched all of BW and BM back to back. And I realized, he really wasn't. When BW started, Rattrap only looked out for himself. He was resourceful, and pretty strong. By the time BW ended, he'd learned to care about and look after others, working together, and letting others depend on him.
BM stripped him of all of his agency. He was incapable of even transforming, at first. And when he finally could, he was now disabled. (It's a pretty good analogy of a vet returning from war)
He had to learn how to rely on others. The people he struggled hard to learn to allow them to lean on him, he now had to learn to lean on them. He's used to taking care of himself, and then taking care of others. Learning to to trust others to help you is really hard when all you know is how to help yourself.
In that scope, Rattrap's choices make a lot more sense.

Nightscream, I'm convinced people wouldn't hate him nearly as much if he had a less dopey design, and had a basic or deluxe toy. But according to Skir, he wanted to create a character based on Newt from ALIENS, but Hasbro wouldn't go for it. "Too many girls" or something. He ended up basing the new character on John Conner from Terminator 2, instead, with varying degrees of success.

I think the biggest problem BM had back in the day though, was it was ill suited for the "one a week" episodic style. The entire store plays so much better, and the pace is so much more improved when you can watch multiple episodes back to back.

All said and done, BM has aged better than any TF series

[blueshift]

Oct 12, 2018 21:07:12 GMT Toph said:

I think the biggest problem BM had back in the day though, was it was ill suited for the "one a week" episodic style. The entire store plays so much better, and the pace is so much more improved when you can watch multiple episodes back to back.

All said and done, BM has aged better than any TF series

I'd agree with a lot of that, but I feel the biggest problem BM had was a very fundamental one - it was a Transformers show whose central conceit was basically "robots and mechanical life are bad" which like, you'll never convince the audience who likes TFs of that. If it was an original show with the same basic conceit it would have gone down far better.

[Toph]

That wasn't my take away from BM at all.
That was Primal's stance, but he'd become a fanatic, and from what I remember, he was shown to be just as wrong as Megatron and Rhinox were.

The maximals (and cybertron by the end) weren't organic creatures. They were still robotic. But the whole point was the balance. Only when Cybertron was in balance with it's organic half, could transformer life begin anew.

That was my take away.

[blueshift]

Oct 12, 2018 22:36:22 GMT Toph said:

That wasn't my take away from BM at all.
That was Primal's stance, but he'd become a fanatic, and from what I remember, he was shown to be just as wrong as Megatron and Rhinox were.

The maximals (and cybertron by the end) weren't organic creatures. They were still robotic. But the whole point was the balance. Only when Cybertron was in balance with it's organic half, could transformer life begin anew.

That was my take away.

Well in hindsight maybe yes, but for half the series at least the good guys were totally YEAH ORGANIC IS GREAT ROBOTS ARE AWFUL

And then sure they switched to 'YEAH TECHNOORGANIC IS GREAT ROBOTS ARE AWFUL' but no-one really knows exactly what technoorganic means so...

[Toph]

I felt they explained technorganic, compared to original (seems to be a bit more complex than robots with a coating of organic material on their alt mode), transmetal (reverses the formula) and transmetal 2 (seems to mix it pretty badly) pretty well.
Technorganic is a mix of cybernetic and organic down to the cellular level. Cheetor is half organic, half cybernetic down to his very core.

I will say that my biggest nitpick, to this day is Megatron's sudden hatred for organics, and his own beast mode. All through BW, he was never once shown to have contempt for organic life (at least, not because it was organic), and he was never shown to have any particular disdain for having it as part of his beast mode.
The only thing I can think of, is that once on Cybertron, he could not scan a new alt mode. That somehow he'd become locked as a Transmetal 2 (perhaps due to changing in lava?)

On a side note, the lead in to Beast Machines has always fascinated me, and it sucks that no one's ever done anything with it.
I'd like to see a story (or several) that sets up Cybertron before the fall, that helps to explain why the Oracle felt reformatting was the solution.
My headcanon:
Even before Megatron arrived, Cybertron was dying. The Maximal Council knew this, and was their biggest secret. Thus Cybertron's push into colonizing planets. Before, or around Megatron's arrival at the end of the Beast Wars, a virus emerged, that began shutting down cybertronians. Megatron either took credit for it (very plausible), or else he was blamed for it (also plausible). Either way, he took advantage.
But the Oracle had decided that what was wrong, was Cybertron was too out of balance. The only way to restore Cybertron, was to bring balance between it's organic half, and technological half.

[KnightBeat]

Whenever I think we've seen the last of this series... My local-ish Poundland have put several Beast Machines Revelations DVDs on their shelves. They also seem to have received a batch of Christmas bauble Bluetooth speakers, just in time for the holiday season.

However, the biggest surprise is that they're now selling second-hand books. Is this a new thing?

[Fortmax2020]

What's on the dvd?

Nope, they've been doing that for a while with books.

[KnightBeat]

It's episode 7-13 of season 1:

- Revelations Pt 1-3
- Survivor
- The Key
- The Catalyst
- End of the Line

Edit: No extras as far as I can see.

[The Doctor]

I do not have any BM on DVD so must check the local Land of Pound before, er, all the nonessential shops shut.

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3BmCfwmCvPe6ziVso1Upw/playlists

A handy YT channel has that has Beast Machines upscaled to 1080p - has Beast Wars in 1080p and 4k and a whole host of other 90's toons.