As I sat and rewatched the Beast Machines DVD set at work during my free time this past week, a thought occurred to me: What if Beast Machines had been the roaring (no pun intended) success its predecessor was? What would the future of the Transformers been? Transtech may have been a reality and not just an afterthought. Maybe the AEC trilogy would've been delayed until the series' could've been done properly.....or maybe it wouldn't even had to exist. I just get the feeling that if the ball hadn't been dropped so thoroughly with Beast Machines, "Modern" Transformers may have been developed in a radically different way.
This is an intriguing possibility I don't think anyone has considered before. I definitely would have loved to have seen Transtech, and if they went with Optimus Prime being the leader instead of Primal perhaps we would have seen a continuation of the G1/BW continuity rather than a break into another timeline. They could have reintroduced G1 characters in vehicle modes without having to reboot the entire continuity. In regards to Armada, as I recall, the minicons started as an offhand sketch somebody did at Draxhall Jump of one robot punching another and a bunch of little robots falling off him like beads of sweat, then they transform and attack the first robot. TPTB at Hasbro liked this concept and spun it off into Armada. Perhaps the minicons would have been made part of Transtech or there would have been some similar relationship between large Autobots and human-sized Maximals.
I'm not sure how much different would have happened overall, though I would assume Transtech would have gone ahead if Beast Machines was more successful. For all we know, we may have ended up in more or less the same place we are now, just taking a different route to get there. Beast Machines and Transtech were a route back to vehicular TFs, after all. Either way, I have no issue with where we've ended up or the route (aside from wishing Animated had a bit longer life)
The darkness and imagery of Beast Machines was excellent. It's just too bad that the story fell short of it's predecessors. I know there's a lot of "Let it go" comments surrounding Transtech, but I can't. Transtech would have been the needed jump to any continuity Hasbro may have aimed for. It took the best elements of Beast Wars/Machines and combined it with G1 to make a totally unique universe that allowed for all possibilities. I considered the concept to be a sort of Deep Space Nine for the TF-verse, with 'guest stars', walk-ons and nods to all TF-realities. Besides, the character and toy designs are some of my absolute favorite of all time. I'm just glad RotF Megatron is basically TT Megs. The direction TF's went after Beast Machines was one I could not follow. After watching some of Armada for the first time, it was like a slap in the face. I thoroughly disliked that series, and subsequently Energon and Cybertron. The writing was poor and the story relied too much on gimmicks and annoying children. Moreso than even G1, it was nothing more than a toy-sale driven trilogy. I'm excited and nervous about what will come next, now that Animated is done.
I would have loved Transtech, they could have included the mini con concept in it. Its nice to think we could have been spared Cybertron and some of Energon. The toys were spot on, but the shows were really lacking IMO
oddly enough its a interesting "what if" but i am happy we had afew restarts to get here, otherwise we would have gone further and lost some of the newer ideas we have had.
Just think what Bay's TF movies would've been like if Transtech had followed Beast Machines and everything continued on in that same style: grossly alien bug robots with madly-proportioned bodies made of shards of scattered metal, animal aspects and probably faces like beasts, snarling bad guy monsters and dark scenes where you can't tell what's actually happening. So glad that didn't happen. Sorry, I couldn't resist.
It depends, with the rising popularity of anime at that time, who's to say Hasbro wouldn't have chosen to import over a Japanese show anyway, which would probably cost less than making a new show, in order to capitalize on this? I think sooner or later, things would have come full circle as robots and cars, maybe for the 20th anniversary.
