Then you would know that the Golden Disc was A) in BW Megatron's possession at the beginning of the show (indeed his theft of the Golden Disc is why the Axalon gives chase and thus, why Beast Wars begins), and B) contained G1 Megatron's instructions to his successor to go back in time and kill G1 Optimus Prime before 1984 so the Decepticons would win the Great War instead.

Absolutely none of the relics from Prime, including the Star Saber, had anything to actually do with the ongoing plot. In fact, they really shouldn't have been there in the first place, since Alpha Trion was a moron and apparently forgot Earth was where he along with the other Thirteen trapped Unicron and thus really shouldn't have been a place to send the stolen Decepticon R&D crap along with the one or two actual relics.

And furthermore, the pods in Beast Wars were actual characters. None of whom died in the episode they were introduced in (Except Transmutate but that character's an exception) but they instead became relevant presences for the much of the series after their introduction. Most of the relics were random crap they slapped reference names on (I.E. Apex Bomber from G1 Powermaster Prime, Requiem Blaster from Armada, etc.) and, again, were largely disposable because from the way I remember it, the coordinates were the only significant thing since they led to the Star Saber - theoretically, nobody even would have needed to go get the relics.

You want to bring up 'treasure hunting' to a previous series? Try Armada, since the entire premise of the show was the two sides going Mini-con hunting and this was criticized as being very Pokemon like. However, this formed the backbone of that plot because it was subtly how Unicron had started the war in the first place (and his face is plastered in abstract on ALL the Armada era mini-cons) and worked in the sense it was selling a toyline because all the mini-cons existed as toys and kids actually could collect them and use them to power up the mainline figures. AFAIK, no toys of the relics exist for Prime, they were the epitome of worthless plot junk.

Because it's a been-there-done-that kind of storytelling narrative that's been done a thousand times better elsewhere. I mean, Xaolin Showdown anyone?

Plus, it isn't like they went even more pathetic by needing to get Predacon bones because there the bones didn't even have unique powers - and then all of that got rendered moot when the protoforms were destroyed anyway!

 

wtf, they couldn't just not make him a total opportunist?

This isn't related to the show itself but god damn do I hate how Hasbro and Takara handled the toys for the show.

They had a great preview line that got canned and revived a year into the mainline and by then I was burned out and finished with the Prime toyline. And then when you get into the meat and potatoes of PRID/BH you had admittedly good deluxes from Hasbro and voyagers with mostly useless gimmicks that I'd argue were worse than Mech Tech from a year before. Then across the pacific you got Takara giving everyone minicons replacing or supplementing their current accessorizes while also forcing you to apply stickers and adding hit or mess pegholes everywhere. It was so disjointed that Takara ended up making figures for two major characters and a retool for another apparently without Hasbro's input while they both somehow managed to forget about the a mainline release for Insecticons while simultaneously releasing toys for characters that either got heavily redesigned or dropped entirely. Don't get me started on the behind the scenes drama for Beast Hunters that was revealed after the fact.

I'm glad we mostly have brand unity for now.

 

To be fair, it wasn't like Unicron was somehow deliberately sealed into the Earth. The Thirteen just knocked him out and allowed Unicron to drift away into space until enough dust collected on him for him to become Earth. Severe negligence on Alpha Trion's (and the rest of the Thirteen's) part for sure, but negligence that was committed billions of years ago instead of whenever he sent those McGuffins. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

 

The origin of the disc with Megatron’s message wasn’t revealed right away. For a good time on the show both discs were “mysterious artifacts”. And the other disc didn’t really amount to much. I’m just saying both shows dealt with some kind of ancient artifacts in some way.

 

Just keep moving those goalposts why don't you, especially since Prime barely even had any true artifacts. Most of the 'relics' were nothing more than crap stolen from the Decepticon R&D locker, by the show's own admission.

 

TFP is one of the series that I hate the most about the franchise and it disgusts me a lot of its aspects

the androgynous design is ugly to me (Starscream and Arcee seem to me to have horrible designs), the characters with almost no personality and no development and being mostly unpleasant and with a plot that remains in the status quo and ends up being a pretentious series that only it's a painful waste of time and a very boring experience

and then I wonder how there are human beings who classify this garbage as the best series in the franchise or a good series

 

I don’t hate Prime.
I hate the Prime-is-the-only-TF-show-I’ve-ever-watched-and-yet-I-have-the-audacity-to-proclaim-it-the-best-tf- show-in-existence-because-it-seems-like-a-safe-thing-to-say facet of the fanbase.

It really doesn’t live up to the accolades that people dole out.

Again, I don’t think it’s bad. I’m just uncertain as to how it became the new golden standard of tf shows with its underwhelming/middling story.

 

Love. Prime had almost everything I wanted to see in a TF show or any other show.

 

I also forgot to mention prime has the best version of starscream and soundwave to date @ me

 

Now, I've never seen Prime, probably never will cause I got no patience for most shows. However I was always under the impression people loved it. Going to these boards I've noticed quite a lot of people despising this show. And as someone who doesn't want to waste time watching shows that'll just be bad, I wonder what exactly made it so bad? And then on the other hand, what made it so good to the people who liked it?

 

I thought it was really good. Definitely my favorite Transformers show to date. (I haven't seen Siege yet.)
I thought the Transformers themselves were awesome. I consider every Prime character to be the best incarnation. Aside from Wheeljack and Soundwave. The humans are pretty...meh. I thought the story was great. Season two was the best of the seasons in my opinion.

 

The very questions I ask myself, fellow fan.
My first experience with the show was, as I repeatedly pointed out, an episode that failed to capture my attention by the dubious virtue of looking "bland". Now, being a somewhat educated Transformers-fan, I can point out that it's, basically, that. Too bland to capture attention, my attention, for example, no matter how pretty the image is.
There are many instances and anecdotal examples of villains being the most interesting characters of the media. Prime is a, pardon the pun, prime example of such. And while I'm all for villains being engaging and cool, they don't have to suffer back-pains from carrying the show. Prime Optimus is, I believe, infamous for being one of the most boring Optimuses across the multiverse. I, personally, love him as Orion Pax. It's a shame Orion didn't stick for long. And that's another point against the show - it takes too little risk and, as such, no matter the "dark tone" they try to establish, lack of significant character deaths (aside from Breakdown, alas, the victim of poor budgeting who dragged numerous interesting plotline to his early grave) invalidates that tone.
...on the bright side, it is, at times, one rather gorgeous show and battle are often a pleasure to watch. Villains do suffer back-pains from carrying the show, there's a reason that after the iconic G1 versions people will likely tell you about "the silent menace Soundwave", Steve Blum's Starscream or gay boys Knockout and Breakdown, all of them rooted in Prime. Also, while the show takes little risks, it's tighter on continuity than one might expect. Ratchet's experiments in Season 1 and Breakdown's death in Season 2, for example, together trigger a series of events that leads to Decepticons losing a major part of their forces in Season 3. A notable example, in my opinion.

In some part, I presume resentment to the show comes from its meta-status, being the show that blew a lot of money and lots of potential, ended up costing the franchise so much that Hasbro are now unwilling to experiment with the tone or plot, basing most post-aligned media on the original G1 more strict than Prime or, say, Animated did. Not to mention that it led to shows after Prime, starting with its own sequel, Robots in Disguise 2015, to work on a smaller budget and, as such, being forced to make many more stylistic and narrative compromises. Cyberverse is especially notorious in my eyes, being full of great ideas, but being restricted by simplistic animation and the short episode length.

So, there you have my amateurish analysis.
Personally, I like the show. Not as much as Cyberverse or RiD2015, but it is fairly entertaining. Not 10 out of 10, but would recommend.

 

Not really. The pods only became relevant when one came down. The entire plot of Airrazor's debut episode was centered more on saving her life than finding the pod itself, and Blackarachnia's debut opens with the location (and subsequent loss of) her pod. With Tigatron and Inferno, that makes a total of four pods in the first season, and they were largely irrelevant for the remainder of the series (those exceptions being Quickstrike, Silverbolt, Rampage and Transmutate - the rest were blanks, and served the plot in some way, such as Primal's resurrection and the creation of Dinobot II). The majority of episodes did not focus on stasis pod retrieval.

 

I love 1/3 of TFPrime

I liked the first season of TFPrime, it's everyday slice of life stories after the opening parter was a great way to get to know the characters and set up interesting ideas.

I didn't like the following seasons because of how some characters were handled and how they keep introducing things less interesting than what the first season set up.

 

TFP was the third thing that got me into the franchise, and I've loved it ever since. The show was well written, had wonderful CG, and memorable moments ("I NEEDED THAT!"). Characters like Optimus needed more development, though.

I haven't watched RiD 2015, and I'm not looking up to watching it, as I hear it's not a good Prime successor.

But I don't think it's like Energon.

 

EDIT: whoops wrong thread, so I'll instead say the Beast Wars pods are not comparable to Prime's artifacts. Especially when the pods got phased out lol

 

It’s not good, it had it’s moments here and there, the finales ( not including s3’s ) are pretty good, the cast is great, and some of the characters are good, but it’s still terrible imo

 

Just a waste of a lot good and interesting things like Breakdown, Arachnid (if she ever got to do anything relevant), M.E.C.H and the Predacon clones. A lot of things felt unachieved or inconsequential and by the end the show all just underwhelming. And the mostly bland cast in terms of design and personality didn't help either. There were enjoyable episodes in season 1 but I don't recall enjoying anything afterwards.

There were things I didn't like about RID2015, like the animalization of the Cons (Skunticons, seriously?) and the lack of character development - as far as I went into it, the characters really didn't feel any different from their first appearances. But at least it did not really take itself seriously and you could have fun watching it ; I prefer that over a show that sets the bar high by being all dark and gritty but ends up dropping the ball on everything interesting. Not to mention I got some cool Warrior toys from the toyline, I just bought Soundwave.

 

I really love that show, especially both Bumblebee and Wheeljack!  

 

Transformers Prime was what got me back into transformers after getting fatigued with the Unicorn trilogy. It definitely wasn't perfect, but what transformers series is (especially any of the anime ones *coughs*). It also got me into Animated!

Transformers RID 2015 started off ok, but if someone needed an example of lack of growth ruining the show, this would be it. Oh, and then other writing problems in that they chose gimmicks over characterization, consistency, and plot. Basically, Transformers: Pokemon edition.