As much as Optimus postures with his "we'd have 4 million years to clean you off the walls" threat to Megatron, Megs was right: a firefight inside the Ark threatens to destabilize history. One stray shot hits Optimus or Teletraan-1 (or "Teletron-1" as this show is calling it  ) or Prowl or Soundwave or whoever and who knows what happens as a result. Optimus threatens that he's willing to risk it but deep down he knows they probably can't without serious repercussions.

The other reason that sometimes gets fanwanked into existence is that while he's carrying G1 Prime's spark in his chest, Primal is somewhat "imprinted" with aspects of Prime's personality. It's why we get the little winky G1 nod lines from Primal like "transform and roll out" or "freedom is the right of all sentient beings" and in turn why we also get the more pacifistic Primal who is trying not to scrap Megatron, because that's what OG Prime would've done with his Megatron.

Your mileage may vary on that one though because like I said it's almost entirely fan supposition and assumption and never stated to be a symptom of Primal carrying 2 sparks.


Oh, and just as a heads up: Don't expect the fact that Optimus Prime's spark was contained within a very Matrix-looking vessel in his chest to mean anything. It wasn't actually the Matrix. The story goes that the animators were given Optimus' death scene from The Movie as a guide to designing the inner workings of his CG model for this episode and they picked up on the Matrix in his chest as a cool design element around which they would base this episode's "spark holder" but were unaware of its significance to the Movie's story or broader Transformers lore. This is kinda nuts because as I mention in my rewatch of this episode in my other thread: How the hell do you get shown Optimus Prime's death scene and not pick up on the importance of the most significant MacGuffin in Transformers history even just by accident? It's arguably the most important aspect of that scene. It's passing to Ultra Magnus via Hot Roddy foreshadowing is maybe even more important than the fact that Optimus is lying there dying. And if I were to grant that they had no idea what the Matrix was and represented, then what the heck did the animators think was happening in the scene? If they decided to treat the glowy-thing-with-handles as a potential spark container, did they think that Optimus used his final breath to rip out his still-beating heart and hand it to his friend? Because holy hell that's hardcore.

The whole idea if the animators watching the movie death and getting to this point reminds me of that Simpsons gag where Lionel Hutz says he watched an episode of Matlock in a bar as preparation for a case and while the sound was turned off, he still thinks he got the gist of it.

There were some later attempts to retcon this mess into making sense but if I'm being honest the net result is that it causes more problems than it solves.

In the end, I really enjoyed the episode for its fanservicey bits and a lot of little fun moments. The grievances you had didn't really bother me, but of course everyone's different and finds different things that they like/dislike. In fact when I reviewed it the one thing I pointed out that did bother me was how much the rest of the Predacons that weren't Megatron were disconnected from the plot and in the end Megs is rather nonplussed (relatively speaking) about the failure of what was seemingly supposed to be his last, best shot at achieving total victory and was also the final collapse of the plains he had been laying since the start of the series.

Rampage heals because of his origins. His backstory from Bad Spark explains that he was an attempt to recreate the mutation that led to Starscream having an indestructible spark. They sorta succeeded, but the side effect was that it made Rampage into a psychopathic monster. I guess part of the difference in Rampage vs Starscream is that the experiment also granted his immortal spark the ability to regenerate his body (which Starscream didn't have).

As for Rampage sensing Depth Charge, that's just down to atmospheric creepy nonsense. It doesn't get explained other than "they're mortal enemies so in tune with each other that they have this sort of unsettling bond."

 

Yeah, that's the way these things go. None of the things you brought up fazed me in the least   So we all have our own pleasures and gripes.

I remember that episode with the Starscream immortal spark experiment but I felt the same thing. Starscream's spark may have been considered 'immortal' but that can mean different things and not necessarily Wolverine-style healing factor. But maybe. I think it's probably just some more confusing hand-waving to include a badass moment.

 

And I can't really reason with this explanation as an excuse for inaction because the Maximals have now made this critical spot ground zero for countless potential disruptions to the timeline. I get why they chose to base there. It's smart to stay close and try to protect this precious cargo. But if the Ark has the capability to rebuild Prime's head, it has the ability to fix any damage to other bots. After what Megatron proved he was capable of, I would have taken the risk to ensure he could never disrupt things like this ever again. And after Megatron was out of the picture, they could use that spare 4 million years to fix any incidental disruptions to the timeline.

 

It had the capability to repair damage, but not instantly fatal wounds. A stray shot goes through someone's chest and destroys their spark and that's it. Or Teletraan-1 gets destroyed and the Maximals are boned because they likely don't have the right parts or technical knowhow to repair a computer system that's multiple generations out of date compared to their systems any more than a person now can easily sit down and repair an Apple II from the 70s with parts on hand for a modern computer. At that point they also would lose the ability to repair anyone else who gets struck.

I think there were just far too many things that could go wrong if they continued to fight inside the Ark. Letting Megatron live another day presents challenges, but at least the Maximals would be prepared for them.

 

It's entirely possible that the regenerative powers were an accident. The Maximals were experimenting without actually having Starscream's spark to analyze and work from. So all they'd have to go on were reports that his spark persisted, visual evidence, and maybe some scans that they got from a distance or brief moments. That would mean a lot of experimentation and guesswork to the extent that it wouldn't be surprising if their end result achieved "immortality" in a totally different way. So instead of the spark persisting after the death of the superstructure, it persists by rebuilding the body around itself so it can't perish. And also is crazy.

Of course there's no evidence to support any theories, so it's all speculative. and is probably less important than the general intent to make Rampage a creepy horror movie serial killer type, for which the fact that he's unkillable would be an integral component.

 

A thoughtful argument but I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

Not a new fan, but something just hit me and it's bugging me.

Spoiler

Why are we calling Dragon Megatron and Optimal Optimus Transmetal 2? As far as I can tell, in order to be Transmetal 2, you need to come in contact with the alien device. Neither Primal nor Megatron were in contact with it with they got their final forms. Or just TM2 just a quick way for fans to differentiate the new form with their Transmetal forms?

 

Unfortunately that doesn't really work. The timestream doesn't alter based on what "could possibly" happen, it alters based on what happens following direct action. After all the Maximals manage to save Prime, so it was always a possibility he would not have died, but at the moment Megatron shot him he was and that was enough to start unraveling history.

Dude, spoilers. He just started season 3.

 

Oh yeah, sorry. I edited it.

 

One thing- Autobots / Maximals aren't killers. They're the "good guys". The objective is subdue and apprehend.

Second thing- While it checks all the boxes for a great story it's not hard sci-fi. Most of the stuff that seems contradictory, bothersome, or just plain weird smoothes out with repeated viewings and familiarity.
Back when you asked how long time fans view things like the "fart episode" I thought of how the nonstop insanity and pace of these later episodes makes me view the simpler, happier times of those standalone, status-quo episodes. Not that I prefer one over the other but you see the difference.

Last thing- You're obviously free to do whatever the hell you want, but you really should go straight into Beast Machines. It's streaming on the Tubi app if you're TV gets that.

 

Of course. Time doesn't change based on hypothetical's but the point I was making was that the Maximals would have plenty of time to take what actions were needed to affect the future. Millions of years in this case to set right any deviations caused by their intrusion. Even if there wasn't a firefight inside the Ark, just their constant presence there now is risking creating complications to the timeline. So they're already taking risks that could hypothetically alter the future and would need to be corrected through action.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that the only option was to kill Megatron. Subdue? Sure. Apprehend? Fantastic. Just don't let him leave completely unhindered to unleash his next maniacal plans. I mean, they didn't even try to follow him. What did they think he was going to do? Go lick his wounds and reconsider his life? Nope. He's going to regroup, fortify and come back stronger and meaner. Letting him go was madness.

I sure am. I already picked up the entire series on dvd so that's next up for me.

 

A little added background.

When this series was made in the 1990's the common theory was that an important step in the evolution of humanity had been the introduction of tools. The earliest evidence of this tool making at the time was found at the Olduvai Gorge (a sort of valley) and was attributed to Homo Habilas. This was around 1.9 million years ago with the idea that here the first tools were made and humanity took a leap forwards in its evolution, and then spread out.

This means that Megatron's plan to eradicate the humans in the valley would've indeed most likely done the trick. It would've prevented this development of tool use/making and thus interrupted the evolutionary parth as we knew it at the time. Doesn't matter if there were proto-humans elsewhere, because the key was the development of tools and that happened here and now. At best it would've happened later, elsewhere, but if would've meant a change and sometimes the smallest nudge could be enough.


And here's the thing. I don't think Dinobot had freedom of choice afterall. In my view, these events were always meant to happen. These Transformers were always meant to travel to Earth's past and they were always meant to have this influence. Megatron wants to change the past so the Decepticons win. His first step was to eradicate humanity before it rose. But it had the opposite effect: exactly because Megatron made this attempt did humanity evolve. Megatron did the attack, Dinobot protected the proto-humans, a proto-human saw Dinobot use a stone tool and then the proto-human then took this tool and it lead him to being able to beat a snake. First step: tool use, next step: tool making. (Thus if Megatron had done nothing...humanity wouldn't learn to use tools.)

Also...

Not if I'm right and the Beast Wars were always meant to happen.

Think back to the Grandfather Paradox. You travel back in time, kill your grandfather and as a result you're wiped from history. But if you're wiped from history you cannot travel back in time and thus you don't kill your grandfather meaning you continue to live. But if you live you can travel back in time.....

Megatron is unhappy with the Decepticons having lost. He thus travels back in time with the intent to alter the timeline ensuring a Decepticon victory. But if he succeeds then the Decepticons will win and he will thereby erase his reason for time travelling. And without this reason, he won't time travel thus not altering the time line....

To me, these events were always meant to happen. They were always meant to travel in time. Because thanks to their time travelling we get the Earth/future we had seen in G1:
- a single moon
- stable, rich energon
- humanity evolving into a technological society

If the BW cast hadn't time travelled, none of these things (likely) would've happened.

It's time travel/interfering with the past done right. The very time travelling/interfering itself creates the timeline they want to prevent.

 

The thing is, without showing us in detail what future the Maximals and Predacons came from, we'll never really know if things were always meant to happen, or if the changes in this show produced the "real" timeline we all know and the future they came from was subtly different. There's evidence both ways, namely the mountain. It can't exist in a loop because if it is destroyed in the past it can't be recorded in the future. Unless the mountain somehow "regrows" but then why would the image change? A closed loop can't be possible because not only is the change part of history, the change being observed is part of history. The time storm also more or less proves that alterations can be made and that history can be altered.

But then there's things like the moon where obviously the planet buster's destruction is what caused all that. (and this is what both Waspinator and Dinobot use to deduce their time-travelling in the first place) But an argument could be made that in four million years the planet buster may have been removed for any number of reasons. (which I won't speculate on here just yet) Beast Wars keeps it all very vague, and deliberately. (originally BW did not adhere to either G1 as an origin, though it has mostly landed on being a follow-up to Sunbow G1 what with the Ark and both armies being dormant inside of it)

As for Optimus Primal "letting Megatron go," I think that's a few things: for starters, at that point Primal had Prime's spark. If he got injured, or even died, that's history well and truly destroyed, no last-minute saves from medical tools. Secondly, there's the obvious issue of not wanting to fight inside the Ark. In Primal's defense he literally just witnessed time nearly unravel, I'd be paranoid too.

Thirdly, and most crucially, this is Megatron's final play. He's out of ways to alter history in measurable, beneficial ways. Sure he could randomly go out and start killing animals and deliberately cause a butterfly effect, but destroying Prime is the only thing that could potentially benefit him. The Maximals know this, they know he'll be back, but they also can't move the Ark or its passengers, and with only a handful of them to guard it, they can't split forces and still be effective. Look how easily Megatron was able to destroy the Axalon just because no one was home? Setting up shop inside the Ark is foolish because if Megatron attacks it directly any number of history-altering events may occur. Better to set up their base as a stopgap so he never makes it that far in the first place.

 

Interesting idea, but it has some issues:

1) most importantly, Code of Hero explicitly shows us that predestination is not in play through Megatron and Rampage's mountain demonstration. The timeline can be changed. The mountain was there in an intact form in the future historical records, Rampage blows it up, and then the records shift so that it now always has been destroyed. If everything were predestined then the records should show that mountain was always gone because Rampage was always fated to blow it up before they moved on to torching the valley so that Dinobot could intervene and stop them as was preordained to occur.

This also jibes with the authors' intent for Dinobot's thematic arc: His sacrifice is important because he chose to undertake it. It did not occur because destiny said so and gave him phony freedom of choice that only served to steer him in the direction required while letting him believe his choices were his own.

2) We have no idea what the pre-tampering Beast Wars timeline looked like or how the post-tampering timeline was changed. Because it is explicitly and by Word of God not identical to either Marvel Comics or Sunbow Cartoon G1 events. We don't know how events were supposed to play out without the impact of this series' story and we don't know how events will have played out after they relentlessly futzed with history throughout the series. Perhaps without the appearance of the Maximals & Predacons on earth eventually the aliens would've wrapped up whatever experiment they were conducting, eradicated the energon they seeded the planet with, removed the Planet Buster from orbit and all the inventions and doodads they had floating about on Earth, and been on their merry way with no traces left behind. Without Dinobot's stone axe the proto-humans would've discovered tools eventually on their own (for real world context consider that the events of Beast Wars are occurring about 4 million years in the past and the current best guess for the emergence of stone tools among hominids is roughly 3.3m years ago. So... whoopsie-doodles, Dinobot's little bit of temporal tampering possibly jump-started the evolution of proto-humanoid society/development by nearly a million years. That's likely gonna have some ramifications.) We have no baseline to assume normalcy from except that the Maximals and Predacons aren't radically altered in any permanent way from all the timestream-altering chicanery.

Just for example, we can't assume that the presence of stable energon on Earth as a result of the events of the season 1 finale are a sign that things are as they should be. Because what's the evidence? From a meta perspective, the idea of naturally occurring energon didn't even exist before Beast Wars. For as much as we can infer from either prior G1 canon Energon was a wholly artificial fuel source created by Cybertronians (mostly the Decepticons if you pay attention to the early portion of the cartoon. The Autobots rarely if ever make energon cubes themselves) by processing energy sources that do exist either naturally or through other creative endeavors. Everything from hydroelectric power to oil to ruby crystals to geothermal vents to giant green crystal deposits that apparently exist within the Earth's crust everywhere from the Arctic to South America all serve as inputs into the creation of energon as a processed fuel product. So now after all the Maximals/Predacons tampering with the timeline we have natural stable energon on Earth. Is that supposed to be there? Who knows! Existing examples of G1 say "no", but Beast Wars isn't sorted into either G1 example's box so maybe in their universe it is. We have no frame of reference to make any conclusion on the matter.


3) we have no idea how close to its intended path the Maximals and Predacons interference (and clean-up) put the timeline to its intended path. We know from #1 that history can change. So humans are supposed to emerge from that valley, Megatron swoops in and lays waste to it so that they won't, but Dinobot saves the day at the cost of his live and ensures that they do. Thing is how much of a restoration did his interference in Megatron's plan cause? It can't be total because they burned a bunch of trees down, possibly killed some proto-humans, and scattered the rest to the winds in the panic that resulted, but what percentage are we talking in terms of how much events of the pre-series timeline align identically with the post-series one? 80%? 90%? 99%? 50% where the big stuff stayed the same by a whole ton of tiny details differed? How much did their non-timeline-shaping actions (ie any of the stuff they were doing when they weren't concerned with setting right what once went wrong) shift things? Optimus Prime gets his head blown off for a few hours. Does that change things? Does he wake up in 4 million years and tell Jazz he had a strange dream of a tiny monkey man that kinda looked like him putting his spark back into his body after carrying it around while he fought a purple robot t-rex named Megatron? Does Jazz now think "oh man, Optimus has lost it. We can't leave him in command like this."

Again hypothetically granting that some amount of Sunbow G1 is canon to Beast Wars past just for the purpose of illustration, for all we know that antelope Tarantulas intended to eat during Code of Hero was supposed to get caught by a lion somewhere else. But its run-in with the Maximals diverted its course and it never did. So that lion doesn't secure food for its pride and their course is altered, shaping the lives of other animals around them in turn and eventually it all butterfly-effects out into the future to the point where Daniel Witwicky isn't born because Spike marries Elise Presser instead of Carly. Without him the events of the Japanese Headmasters series unfold differently and maybe Chromedome gets shot in the head in an early battle and dies on the battlefield. And from there the war ends earlier than it was supposed to and we enter a new golden age of peace and prosperity where Autobots and Decepticons are united in the bonds of brotherhood as one race of Cybertronians, spreading their message of unity throughout the universe and ending all conflict everywhere forever.

Or maybe the timeline that Beast Wars takes place in really did have Spike marry Elise. We don't know because we see nothing that gives us any real sense of the minutiae of its version of G1 beyond a few very specific instances.


It's a valiant effort to explain things, for sure. But there are just too many issues to be making that concrete of an assumption. All we know is what the show tells us, and that's that a) history can change and b) however it was changed it was also mostly changed back, but the degree to which it remained different was never disclosed. That's all we've got to work with.

 

Does anyone else just love that it's been 25 years and there's still in-depth, thoughtful discussion on the cartoon and its philosophical implications on free will and time?

 

It's fun and a testament to how well written this series was.

Also apologies for the content duplication between your previous post and mine.It wasn't my intent to just mirror your points and restate them. Your post wasn't there when I started writing and it took me over an hour to finish because I kept stopping along the way to do things like eat breakfast or take care of some chores and stuff that needed doing before recollecting my thoughts and continuing. So we ended up both having very similar ideas at almost the same time and they just ended up separated by a half hour or so because of my procrastination  

 

Story of my life. My favourite is when I write a post, get distracted, then come back twenty minutes later and post it only to find the entire discussion has wrapped up in that time span.  

 

I want to say---because that's what it said on the toy's boxes. Remember the #1 rule of all TF-dom: To sell toys - Transformers Wiki

 

"A proto-human saw Dinobot use a stone tool and then the proto-human then took this tool and it lead him to being able to beat a snake."
I saw that hammer-thingie as more of a weapon than a tool. Up to this point the humans have been defenseless, at the mercy of predators. That snake killed that guy's wife. Now he's got a defense against predators, not to mention the understanding that such a thing was possible in the first place.
So now I'm thE MAN!! Who else wants some?!? RRRAAAAARRRRGGGHH!!!!!
This effectively makes Ol' Chopperface the God Of War.

 

It was definitely a weapon, but then what is a weapon if not a tool used for killing? The ramifications ring far outside the seemingly narrow scope of a stick with a rock in it. It helped the caveman get food, and helped him kill. Weapons and tools are advancements of our own intellect. Dinobot didn't just gift humanity a tool, he gifted them a knowledge to create it, and that will echo throughout humanity's entire evolution. The triumphant cry at the end is the human, albeit simply, realizing just what kind of power he really has.

Spoiler

Except Optimal Optimus was not sold as a Transmetal 2. Also, did you really need to link to the TF Wiki article?