I've already addressed this in my last post. Not going to repeat myself, just read my previous comment. HER being called "it" in the show is deliberate. YOU calling her "it" completely misses the entire point of the episode. Yes it does and again, saying this means you missed the whole point of the episode. Horrible fate robber HER of HER future but that doesn't mean she didn't matter. That's what you think the message was? No, the message of the episode was that All Lives Matter, even if they're seemingly useless and short, no one deserves to be treated like an "it" simply due to something entirely out of their control. A life was lost without even getting a chance, that's not a message, that's just literally what happens. The message is never something so basic and surface level as that. BULL SHIT! Of course she's a real Cybertronian in the context of the show. Just because someone is malformed doesn't make them any less a real person. Is my son not a real person because of his Cerebral Palsy? Once again you've missed the gawd damn point of the episode and considering the message is so personal you saying shit like that is actually pissing me off. This isn't just about a cartoon, there are people in real life who are born like Transmutate and they are not any less "real" than someone who doesn't have those problems. The whole point of the episode was to make you feel sympathy for this actual Character, if you can't even address her as a legitimate character in the show you've missed the point. That's not really a moral dilemma at all. Of course she counts. It doesn't matter what state a person is born in they're still a person regardless. The only moral dilemma is if you're intelligent enough to recognize a clearly sentient life form when you see one of you're an ass hole who's too stupid to recognize another member of your own species when they're standing right in front of you. Are you going to side with Silverbolt and Rampage or my kid's biological father that abandoned him the second he got diagnosed with a disability. Again wrong... There is a direct human allegory for Transmutate. I've literally already given you an example. I could give you hundreds and thousands of other examples as well... cause that's about how many birth defects exists in real life that could be equated to Transmutate. You failing to recognize HER as anything other than an "it" completely misses the point of the episode. She doesn't lack anything. Everything you claim she lacks she actually has. Gender, female. Characteristics, peaceful. Name, Transmutate... you've literally called her that while claiming she doesn't have a name... That is her name. And she did have a life, a short one but that's still a life. I'd actually argue that her short life is more of a life than characters who lived longer. What if they could keep alive longer? What if they actually tried to save her. Would that be a life? Cause in my opinion quality matters more than quantity. I've "lived" for over 30 years in constant pain... I don't call that living
This thread makes me think how tragic every single bot that entered a pod was, memory erased, got reprogrammed by Tarantulas or died. Blackarachnia and Silverbolt got a happy ending though Rampage is kind of proof they could retain their memories from Cybertron, every other pod had pretty serious problems or was tampered with. Chiils! Their sacrifice was unknowingly dying and not altering history.
What always puzzled me was why Blackarachnia was treated differently to the other 'Once Maximal protoforms' Inferno & Quickstrike'. Why did the Maximals strive to convert her back/see the good in her etc. but not them? Obviously I know the answer, but it seemed somewhat gender biased.
She was the only one with a brain processor, inferno and quickstrike were extremely loyal to the preds.
But she came across as the most evil - she was just out for herself. Inferno at least showed loyalty to what he perceived as his queen - what if the Maximals had convinced him they were the colony? But yeah, Quickstrike was just a little git.
The topic isn’t if Transmutate was female. The topic is what happened to all the stasis pods. Someone said that they all fell back to Earth after the quantum surge. I don’t remember if that was actually mentioned or shown in the show, though. I’ll have to watch the beginning of season two again. I’m also curious as to exactly how many pods were shown in the first episode. Also, it’s possible that if some pods landed relatively undamaged, some of the protoforms could have awakened after Primal and his crew left Earth, but they probably would have been Transmetalized.
I think you're misremembering. She wasn't treated any differently, Primal even emphatically stated she was "Predacon to the core." Nobody but Silverbolt was interested in reprogramming her until after she'd already switched sides and was basically a Maximal anyway. Her reprogramming was more a "seal the deal" type of proposition by Optimus and the others. You're also forgetting that Quickstrike wasn't reprogrammed to be a Predacon, he's just a naturally aggressive individual, and Inferno quite literally lacks the capacity to see reason. It was, you see a shot of them losing orbit, and a few shots of wastelands littered with destroyed pods (which leads up to Silverbolt and Quickstrike) as well as the Maximals retrieving some. (which is mostly just to get the blank that would be used to bring back Primal) Hell, stasis pods are still being found in season 3, though it's also a blank. Given the lack of surprise at this fact and the lack of efforts to recover any more, the pods were either lost, destroyed, or all the ones they did find were more blanks. It's never explained explicitly, but it's pretty clear from what we see of the stasis pods after season 1 what happened to them.
It was actually before the quantum surge. At the end of part 1 of "Other Voices" in season 1, the energy that activated the planet buster is also shown affecting the stasis pods in orbit, causing them to fall to Earth.
As I understood it no one except Rampage had any memories from Cybertron because Rampage was never actually a Protoform. He was put in a stasis pod and referred to a Protoform but they were hiding his true indentity the entire time he was on board the Axalon. Everyone else was essentially born on Earth and only existed as protoforms before that. We've seen other characters enter Stasis Pods without turning into shapeless protoforms and it was stated that Cybertronians begin life as a protoform. So it wouldn't make sense for any of them to have lives back on Cybertron. That's why I never understood why they made pre-BW versions of Tigatron and Airazor since neither of them should have Cybertronian modes. If you know the answer then why are you asking the question? Saying it seemed somewhat gender biased sounds very unsure like you're just taking a guess which is no where near correct. Anyway the main reason is because of Silverbolt... Though now that I think about it might actually be a little bit gender bias because it all kind of started when Silverbolt refused to attack a female... even to defend himself... and things just kind of grew from there... Another reason seems to be that the Maximals aren't in the habit of forcing anyone to do anything against their will... even if they've been reprogrammed that way and there for are technically already being forced to act against their will... Quickstrike was reprogrammed though. Both him and Silverbolt were activated as Predacons however Silverbolt switched back to the Maximals not long after coming online. Silverbolt's pod also seemed to be more damaged than Quickstrike's which might be why the reprogramming did nothing but change his insignia. Normally the pods have to actually be sealed for the protoform to be reprogrammed but Silverbolt's pod was already cracked open before they were reprogrammed.
@SaberPrime Yeah you are right about Rampage. He was not a proform, just put in stasis lock and put inside a pod. I was wrong, Rampage doesn't prove anything about protoforms. There's actually a moment in an interview, on one of the DVDs extra features I think, one of the writers are asked if proforms like Tigatron had a life before the Beast Wars but unfortunately it's like they don't understand the question cause they don't give an answer and talk about something else. It makes sense that the axalon would transport fresh new life to colonize but it's just strange that new lifeforms would emerge more mature than say Cheetor seemingly? It could be wrong to attribute human standards of maturity to Cybertronians because all the protoforms could have come with standard programming to better equip them with the skills to start life on a new world. Then why not spare Cheetor the learning curve of "growing up"? Perhaps allowing him to go through that is what made him capable of going on to true greatness. I'm pretty sure it was just the activation codes (maximize to terrorize) that Megatron changed remotely on Silverbolt and Quickstrike. It was a special circumstance allowing Megatron to do that but it wasn't the same as a Predacon shell program.
I like Beast Wars but it has a lot of holes because the writers were making shit up as they went along.
In series, it's an omision. It was never touched upon and as is it really looks as though the Maximals just left them on the planet when they departed at the end of the series. (I don't think Primal referred to them when talking about the fallen comrade in the end.) Maybe they were all dead at that time. Maybe not. With Silverbolt and Quickstrike the pod could've been damaged or maybe their scanners interfered. The two with the blank protoforms were fine. I think what played a part was that due to the changed nature of the planet after the planet buster worked its magic, was that they were harder to find. Sometimes even buried. With both Rampage and Transmutate it was very much an accidental find: they were just travelling on Earth and then spotted them. (Also, a planet is pretty big and they didn't have the resourced to scout the entire planet for a small protoform.) In other media they did do something with them, like in the IDW comic "The Gathering" in which Magmatron travelled to prehistoric Earth and had them all acticated and many were reprogrammed, but not all resulting in another Beast Wars. (Initially, I though RiD01 would be a sequel to BW/BM with BM Megatron again travelling in the past and using some remaining protoforms to create some new Predacons (Skybyte & co). But that wasn't what happened.) No, Silverbolt and Quickstrike were not reprogrammed to become Predacons. They were already formed and awake by the time the Predacons arrived. In season 1 it's made clear that you can't reprogram them anymore after they've already formed: you can apparently only do so while they're still in protoform status. Furthermore, it was implied Tarantulas is the only one with that know how, and he wasn't there. All that happened, as made clear in the episode, is that Megatron changed their transformation command. It would've been Maximize (because they were Maximals), but he changed into Terrorize. Because his claim that they were Predacons wouldn't work if they had to say Maximize when transforming. That's not reprogramming. Dinobot did it to himself three times in the series.
Agreed. I never understood why Tigatron is so much more mature than Cheetor despite technically being younger. True, there was no shell program like with Blackarachnia but I think that was something Tarantulas put in place to insure the reprogramming couldn't be undone. Doesn't mean it's not possible to reprogram them without that. What holes? Other than the loose connections to G1 that often don't make sense... mainly the fact that the writers didn't know what the Matrix was... the Beast Era on it's own is pretty solid. The writing doesn't have any holes, it's the main reason why Beast Wars and Beast Machines are my favorite shows. And G1 was never that consistent to begin with so I can't really fault it too much for the G1 era plot holes when G1 essentially is a giant plot hole.
I'm just saying BW's narrative isn't as airtight as, say, Animated (really wish it had a season 4 to wrap things up).
BW narrative is better than Animated. Animated is OK but there are some minor issues like the rushed ending which still left some dangling plot threads... like Blackarachnia and Waspinator were never caught. Neither one of them is seen again after Predacons Rising which means they're still running loose some where. Sari being an Autobot doesn't actually make any sense. She is shown aging like a normal human in one episode, she sets off the organic life form alarm on the Steelhaven. And most characters when they scan an alt mode they turn into a perfect copy of whatever it is they scanned. Sari scanned Issac Sumdac and is some how a different gender, has a different hair color, different eye color, and a slightly lighter skin tone... She does look as if she could be his daughter, there are some similarities but the differences are enough to suggest she would of actually had a biological mother with those features. Maybe they're features that are recessive in Issac but then why are they active for Sari? Why does the Elite Guard continue to hunt down the escaped criminal Wasp after they find out about Shockwave? Wasp should of been immediately released when it became known that Longarm who was actually Shockwave framed Wasp during boot camp. There's also the animation mistakes mainly involving the EMP device. The EMP takes the form of the engine block in Lockdown's vehicle mode and he's still animated with that engine block even after Ratchet removes it from him. The hole in Ratchet's arm is a battle would from when Lockdown removed the EMP from him and after Ratchet gets it reinstalled it's fixed... for the rest of that episode then the hole in his arm returns for the rest of the series even though he still has the EMP device. There's also a huge plot hole surrounding Lockdown's personal history. When he's first introduced Ratchet is the only one who knows him. Every appearance after that his past history with Ratchet is never mentioned again and suddenly Prowl becomes his rival and they have a history which was some how never mentioned before. Prowl's side care armor includes the helmet of Master Yoketron but this is never brought up till the second time we see it. The first time it's never mentioned and the second time Prowl acts like he's never worn it before. Nanosec some how comes back and is young again despite rapidly aging to an old man the first episode he appeared in. Even if they had made season 4 I don't think it'd really address all these issues... except for Blackarachnia cause she was intended to return and make a clone of Optimus at some point. The clone was going to be Optimus Primal.
Yeah, BW was a good example of knowing what they wanted to do, but not how or how far they were going to take it. It's to the credit of the writers that it really doesn't bring the show down, but stuff like not being explicitly a sequel to G1 comics or G1 cartoon... only to become definitively G1 cartoon later on are a clear indication of concepts evolving over time. Doesn't help that BW was written season-to-season, with no idea whether they'd be continuing once the previous season concluded. (hence the relatively quick revival of Primal and the hasty recovery from the time storm) It does once you remember she's a techno-organic. She's not just a normal robot with fake human skin, she's half Autobot, half human, and the human half is still very much alive. No, she's shown suffering the life-draining effects of the Allspark key. That's not normal aging at all, it was accelerated, very abnormal aging. Because she is organic. Blackarachnia would set off the alarm, too. Because they scan a vehicle. Sari scanned a human. They're not exactly equal. Blackarachnia was an imperfect copy of the spiders she "downloaded." Did you not watch the episode? Wasp escaped long before the Elite Guard ever learned about Shockwave. That was the whole plot with Wasp on Earth, Optimus and his team knew the truth but Sentinel wouldn't listen until it was too late and Magnus was attacked. Only then did Sentinel accept their story, and by that point they were trying to catch Wasp to explain to him what had happened. (and for his own good, at that point he was dangerously unstable and needed help) Neither of these are plot holes. Lockdown would obviously replace his engine block to have a complete vehicle mode (his whole character is body modding) And aside from the odd animation error, it was explained that Ratchet didn't keep his EMP on him. You even see it in a display case at the Autobot base. Again, I don't know if you're just misremembering or didn't actually watch certain episodes. Prowl and Lockdown never met before the series, they shared the same teacher, but had no idea they were both Yoketron's students. They never had a history or a rivalry until Fistful of Energon. The only thing you're partially right about is Yoketron's helmet, as that was due to the fact that the side car was never intended to be produced as a toy, until Hasbro made one, so they put it back in the series. However the helmet from the first side car and Yoketron's helmet aren't the same... though it's still a massive leap of logic that Prowl wouldn't recognize a very similar helmet the first time either. (IMO the bigger plot hole was why was Lockdown randomly wearing the helmet all of a sudden, out of nowhere, for seemingly no reason) They literally explain that Slow-mo de-aged him with her time powers. Can I get a citation on that? Because while Blackarachnia was set to return, I've never heard of the Optimus Primal thing.
Primal was never intended to be a clone of Optimus. He was a separate character entirely. He was Primal Major in the Allspark Almanac, who defeated General Sideways(The multiverse traveling one) with his Omega Sentinel, Alpha Supreme. Sideways got stuck in a black hole that slingshotted him to the Bayverse(ultimately leading to him being sliced in half and rebuilt in the RotF comics) and Primal and his crew got stuck in a time warp.
