To me, Beast Machines was such a departure from Beast Wars. So many things were established in the past 3 seasons of Beast Wars, and most of it was changed or dropped in BM.

When I watched the first episode of BM, we run into most of the Maximal clan running from the Vehicons. The characters are still acting the way they were in BW. Right up to the reformatting by the Oracle, the characters were changed (not just physically).

Primal goes from fallible commander to a preaching, religious zealot spouting off, "the seeds of future are buried in the past," or something to that effect. This went on for a number of episodes. I remember reading about Gary Chalk not being too thrilled about the portrayal of Primal in BM.

Rattrap, like most said, became a self pitying coward for the majority of the series. Only toward the end, did he start becoming like his old self. His techno-organic design really was distracting though.

BA was still a decent character but got hung up a few times obsessing about the missing Silverbolt. She had such a great personality in BW, it really didn't show as much in BM.

I hated what they did to Silverbolt. From the honorable shining knight to the rescue, he was changed to a brooding, depressed, samurai looking character. His figure was pretty mediocre too.

Probably my biggest issue was the changes with Rhinox (Tankor). Forcing him to fight the Maximals under Megatron's influence was not a bad idea. But once we find he's no longer under that influence,he still has a less than honorable agenda similar to Megatron due to his time trapped as Tankor.

I'm sorry, but Rhinox was too well established a character in BW to give him such a drastic change. The character was in tune with everything from fighting a Pred, farting on Megatron, to the spirituality of a spark. I would have expected him to have been more a zealot than Primal once he came back.

I can't complain about Cheetor too much. His character evolved and went in the direction that I expected. He grew up. I did like him questioning Primal when he went into preacher mode. Cheetor had the best development out of anybody in the show, IMO.

I won't go into too much more about the other characters, because other members have already made the same points I would make, especially Megatron.

I understand that the show had new writers, and had some free reign to make the changes they wanted. I felt that a lot of things were forced into the story, especially some of the G1 references. It almost felt like some story elements were thrown in to appease the G1 fans with appearances of Vector Sigma, the key to it, the plasma energy chamber, and the hate plague to name a few.

I felt BW utilized and expanded G1 canon without disrespecting it. The G1 elements in BM felt like they were thrown in just to be thrown.

I'm not going to criticize everything on it. I thought the animation was a huge improvment compared to BW. Finally, the characters had shadows, and the detailing on them looked pretty amazing for the time.

I guess I wanted something different from BM. After three seasons of BW, I wanted to see Megatron start the war back up on Cybertron when they returned, only on a grander scale. Instead, we get the fight for the freedom of Sparks, and a techno organic Cybertron. Not my favorite conclusion for warring robots.

 

I both agree and disagree with a lot of the things said here so far.

Personally, I love Beast Machines. It's not as good as Beast Wars IMO (I don't think anything is) but it should get a lot of credit for daring to be different and incredibly creative with a lot of the aspects of the show.
Of course, when you are going out on a limb like that with visual style, character designs and plot threads, not everything is going to work. And it didn't.

I'm no fan of Nightscream (are there any?) or Savage/Noble and the endless explosions, running, chasing and thumping techno music can be a little grating after a while, HOWEVER...

...I can appreciate so many of the good qualities in the show, like the character development, crazy dark tone, philosophical/adult nature and coherent story arc. I love what they did with Megatron and it's almost tragic to see what happens to characters like Rattrap and Silverbolt who are a long way from their BW-selves, but with good reason.

Overall, it made me miss Beast Wars, but by the end of BM, I was gald I had watched it and had truly gained something from it being a Transformers fan. Not everyone will like it, but as a send off for the official G1 canon, I would recommend it to anyone who wants a resolution to the series, regardless of the taste in leaves in their mouth.

 

Heh, very similar fanwanklyness to the Botcon Wreckers comic. I think this may become a trend: "Anything in the canon you don't like? Say a Quintesson did it!"  

 

When the show first aired, I caught the first few episodes and I hated it.....back then.

Then when I heard that the DVD set was coming out, I waited and caught it on sale for $25, I sat down with the wife and we watched it together, cause she's a BW nut....she loves Waspinator and Silverbolt, I then appreciated the series and it is now one of my favorite series.

Just the other night, me and my 9yo nephew watched BM together, now granted my nephew is 2 points from a genius, he picked up on shit that I still didn't get as an adult, he loves the series....now I have to go and pick up Season 1 and 3 of BW so he can watch them.

 

Words cannot express how grateful I was when the final part of that story, published a while back for the Fan Club, retconned that bit of ghastly retconning by revealing that Primus had actually been playing the Quintessons and just letting them *think* they were in charge, when it had always been his grand plan all along, just as the BM cartoon had presented it.

 

It was all a dream!

In another dream!

I'll just stick to the show thanks, or else my head will start to spin wildly.

 

^ Pretty much. I didn't really like it as a whole, but there were parts of it that I thought were very good. But yeah, it dared to do something different and really blew a lot of people out of their comfort zone. Again, I'm one of the people who wasn't a fan, but it was cool that they did something different. Beast Machines and RID are the two most polarizing TF series. People either really like them or really hate them.

 

I still see Beast Machines as a continuity error. I really hated the way Cybertron ended up. Primal as a Hippie didn't make sense to me either. The BM toys didn't seem too inspired , and I still consider them as a whole to be the least show accurate. BM as a whole was dark, brooding and I got tired of the mulitiple scenes of Maximals just running away. It was the first TF series where I sided with the bad guys. I wanted Cybertron kept inorganic.

 

I first caught Beast Machines as it was on, while Beast Wars was in reruns at the same time. I thought it was some weird Ghostbusters vs. The Real Ghostbusters thing, where two shows that had nothing to do with each other were both on. (i of course, preferred the one that was like the movie.)

Once I realized BMac was the sequel to BW, i quickly ran through the eps of BW and then began BMac fresh.

I loved it. Yes, people changed, quite a bit. I would imagine the things they were going through would do that. we take it for granted, it's just a show, but imagine finally getting back to your home world and seeing what has become of it. And to think if you had performed better, or differently, you could have prevented it?

I'm not trying to convince anybody, but i could watch that show again and again. It took chances and wasn't afraid.

as for the toys? some gems and some absolute duds. Never was scale so much a problem, as it was with Beast Machines. it took them forever to get Cheetor nearly right (Universe's repaint of NS Cheetor, and then 6"titanium Cheetor). Nightscream should've been a basic. Silverbolt a mega. (lol remember these old size terms??)

I do enjoy the toys, well some of them. I loved the fancombiner Overkill, and Quickstrike the wolf was one of my favorite Maximals.

 

i love beast mahciens all around as a animated series
for me its the toyline that sucked at the time at least at first anyway

only thing about the show that really creeped me out at the time was megatron going all genocidal on his fellow cybertronians

history wise that last dark bit touched just a little too close to home for me when it comes to the fact that i happen to be german on my fathers side of the family

 

I liked BM as a whole.

Although there were aspects like Nightscream, overuse of drones, repetitive running away, that drag it down a little bit.

I though it looked great, and the music as well gave it a very very different feel to any other TF cartoon before or since.

 

None that I haven't expressed countless times over in threads about Beast Machines.  

I'll just add that it's delightful to see yet another convert. It seems like every few months someone pops up to say, "hey, I gave Beast Machines another chance and now I really enjoy it". It's always refreshing to see some positive feedback these days, so thanks for sharing!

 

At least there the Wreckers comics to make the BM story more tolerable... Brought back characters like Tigertron, technology like the transmetal, things that were great and were almost dropped from Beast Machines (aside of Megatron use of Primal´s body). Fanwank it may be, but screw it, at least it helped diggest the storyline to me.

 

Oy... here we go again with Beast Machines. With me, anyway.

Well, first off, as others have said, it mindwipes the established characters we'd known and loved in Beast Wars. Megatron's no longer a hilarious, brilliant, cunning ham... now just a world domination type who suddenly has a sense of honor.

Primal isn't Primal anymore. At least for most of the first season. Now he's a religious nutjob jerk who goes, "Oh, I hafta talk wit da Oracle cuz imma munkky!!" And he's also "Cars and trucks bad! Nature good!" But he realizes it and gets a slap in the face for what a dick he's been, and it's all good for the second season.

Rattrap was a gun nut, and always crackin' jokes, but now... he's a wimpy, weapon-less tech geek. Though I know it's not his fault he has no weapons... sucks.

Blackarachnia's becoming the token female as Mako Crab once described her doesn't sit well with me either. I really preferred her as a bad girl she was for most of Beast Wars.

Silverbolt's just being a big baby IMO with his emo attitude. Nightscream is the same. Utter bitchy bat. Would've glady killed him if I was a Vehicon. Botanica I have no real grudge against, besides my slight resent towards pacifiscism - she displayed it only for a short time, thankfully.

I had no problem whatsoever with the techno-organic Cybertron and stuff. The designs were fine, though I wasn't a big fan of Blackarachnia and Rattrap's new designs, or Botanica's robot mode, but I'll live. The Beast modes were cool, especially with Primal, Cheetor, and Silverbolt.

Only design problem I had was with Nightscream, but I loathed him anyway, so whatever.

Please take into account that as a whole, I liked Beast Machines. These listed above are complaints I had with the series.

Positives include the Vehicon Generals - They were the most memorable characters on the show. The scripting, voice acting, and CGI were absolutely fantastic. The deep, philosophizing speeches between Primal and Megatron were very interesting. And the final battle between millions of Vehicons Vs the several Maximals was epic.

Overall, I like Beast Machines, but there were definetly some glaring things in there I didn't enjoy. Mostly with characters.

 

Well, at least you admit to enjoying vacuous fanwank.

 

beast machines= reason transtech series was shit canned...hasbro imported RID series from takara / japan as filler until they could revamp the "entire story" of transformers again...the toys sold like crap.

i loved beast wars and beast machines...however i blame hasbro for making shit toys in this era of transformers...the transmetals were decent..the first couple lines of beast wars transformers were just horrid in design and QC...plus the beast machines toys were not much better...if you got a basic or scout sized transformer...you were wasting your money mainly.

 

Beast Wars had a lot of great toys. And it wasn't the actual line itself that had the toys fail, it was the shitty distribution.

 

ok, now I haven't gone through the 8 pages here, BUT the reason I didn't like Beast Machines, is this: The maximals.... They MORPHED, not TRANSFORMED. Now, I totally agree with the fact that there was a great amount of character development, but the fact that they maximals were now morphing took away what I feel is part of the essence of transformers. Reason #2: This whole bible feel to it... Primal being linked to the oracle computer, acting like a prophet of sorts, it just was way to strange at first. Now I will say that when I bought the set, and watched the whole thing over, I did appreciate it better, in that just because there were things about the show I didn't like doesn't mean it couldn't work. I now feel very strongly about how much I like the BM series, and think they had done a great job with it.... Now if only they had done transtech instead, and they would have made a lot of people happier... we simply won't go there..

 

Please forgive me for nercotizing an old thread but I just finished rewatching Beast Machine and wanted to discuss it again.

I have once again come to the conclusion that I hate the show. Not only do I dislike it as a show on its own but as a continuation to Beast Wars it's just awful. This is a different opinion than I had from merely remembering the show. I used to think the show was alright on its own merits just a bad Beast Wars 2. Nope. Now I completely dislike the show, 100%. I even went into watching it thinking that it had been better than I remembered.

But I hate the art style, the high concept, the end result, the characters, the philosophy, just about everything.

Again, they didn't transformed. They morphed. And they weren't robots. So for a show about transforming robots that is a very bad thing.

The characters were completely changed.

Megatron NEVER showed a hint of disliking beast modes during the war. He was scheming and threatening but never showed a dislike of free will. I also CANNOT buy that he could take control of the entire planet. Oh and also he happened to be a fiercely loyal Pradacon. But in Machines he didn't even mention the Predatcons and they "injustices" they suffered; which was a huge thing for his character.

Primal was an explorer and a soldier. I liked giving him a little spiritual side in the last couple episodes of Wars but in Machines they completely blew the metaphysical into overdrive.

Rhinox's treatment was just criminal.

Ratrap went from being a demolitions expert and super spy to being a useless tech head.

Black Arachnia was the bad girl with a tech savvy streak. She should have been the tech head and she should not have been that nice. I extremely dissatisfied with her portrayal in Machines. And I didn't even like her all that much in Wars.

Silverbolt... I can understand knocking him down a peg but the point of his type of character is that he should bounce back from it. He should have regained his honor and nobility very quickly.

Cheetor. About the only evolution of a character I actually thought they did a good job with. It was good to see him grow into a leader. This is how they should have Rodimus take over for Optimus. You build it up and show them becoming a good leader.

Nightscrea. The new young kid. I disliked him. His design annoyed me. His personality was annoying. Gah, I just disliked him.

Botanica. I like the concept of a plant based beast mode but she needs to die... Painfully.. In fire... I hate her character in every respect (other than the aforementioned beast mode concept). Her designs sucked. Her personality was horrible. Just every time she was on screen I wanted her to go away.

Obsidian and Striker. Oh they pull out the big guns with the best generals in Cybertronian history.... that we've never heard of. Nor have we heard of any of their 1,000 undefeated wars. The concept of bringing in awesome generals was great. I liked the idea. But they dropped the ball big time. It's not that the characters themselves were bad (other than their look, which everyone suffered from). It's that they were shoehorned into they fiction. They should have brought some old Decepticons like Soundwave and Shockwave as the great generals.

Which brings me again to the point that the series seems to forget the history it had. Yes they had the Key to Vector Sigma and a a couple references but they felt hollow. The world they showed felt like it only existed for the Maximals to run away from while being shot at. In Wars you got a sense of history from the factions. You couldn't have a character like Dinobot in Machines.

They had the chance to flesh out Cybertron and continue telling the story of the Maximals vs the Predacons. What they should have done is have Megatron take control of the Predacon faction and start Great War 2 (or is it 3?) continuing the feel of Beast Wars.

THAT would have been awesome.

Again sorry for the necro post. Lock this is my rant was uncalled for.