Greetings and salutations, Maximals and Predacons! With release of Transformers: Rise of the Beast is less than 2-weeks away, I say we take a gander at the series that inspired the movie, Beast Wars. A beloved series to the kids who grew in the 90s and continuation of sorts for fans of the original G1 cartoon, Beast Wars kept the Transformers franchise alive after the popularity dwindled over the years. Without further ado, lets maximize and terrorize are way through history.
The first Transformers episode aired on television screens on September 17th, 1984 titled More than Meets the Eye Part 1, and was massive hit with children. With the success the toyline, three seasons of animation, and feature film, the transformers franchise was on top of the world. The Transformers depicted the ongoing battles of the heroic Autobots against the evil Decepticons, as they title suggested, transforming into vehicles, handheld gadgets and even dinosours. Despite all this, the franchise began to suffer fatigue and began to waned in the 90s as kids began to move on to other cooler things. For a while, the franchise seemed destined to be forgotten like many before it, but fate deemed otherwise.
In late summer of 1996, Beast Wars aired continuing the Transfomers legacy, but this time with new factions called the Maximals and Predacons, decedents of the Autobots and Decepticons respectively, and like the old saying of time being cyclical, a new war has begun on a prehistoric-jungle-like planet. This time however, instead of transforming into vehicles or machinery, these two factions take on the forms of animals and beast native to planet ranging from gorillas to dinosaurs, spiders to cheetahs, gaint ants to rats- you get the idea, animals. Beast Wars did the impossible by revitalizing the franchise and proved popular with audiences with fresh new ideas and incorporating Generation-1 lore into the series. Not only that, Beast Wars proved that fully CGI-animated cartoons becoming more feasible, being the second to be produced after the hit cartoon ReBoot.
As for the plot of Beast Wars, the series takes places many centuries after the G1 cartoon concluded, now following the exploits of Optimus Primal (yes, not to be confused with Prime) and his band Maximals as they battle against a new Megatron and his evil Predacons. After Megatron steasl a Cybertronian relic in search of energon to start a new war, Optimus Primal is tasked with stopping him. The first season of Beast Wars follows very closely to the premise of the original G1 cartoon as both factions crash landed on distant planet that is rich with energon and taking new beast forms native to the planet, this was necessary as the unrefined enegron emitted strong radiation. With the Beast Wars finally begun, more and more mysteries of the planet begin to reveal, as this war was not just for the fate of Cybertron but for history itself.
If we were to compare with the G1 cartoon was its huge cast of characters and episodic storytelling. This was done for two reasons: one, was to keep a flow of new toy designs on store shelves and the other was for fans to tune in regardless of the order of the episode. For Beast Wars however, it was the opposite approach. While a majority of the first season was episodic in nature, this was the time when tv shows started experimenting on overarching narratives. We see the factions investigating alien structures, weird devices scattered around the planet, which’ll lead into the season finale. Another notable difference is the relatively smaller cast, this worked In the show’s favor as it allowed for more character driven stories that further enrich the series as it went on. While newer characters from both sides would later be revealed into series as part of the toys, and many of the core cast getting visual upgrades, they were careful planning to incorporate to show and not just for the sake of toys.
Now in its second season, Beast Wars made full use of its serialization format with many episodes lead into the next, furthering character development, and the biggest revelation being that the planet they were stranded on was a prehistoric Earth. With an emphasis of serialization storytelling and smaller cast, this allowed for characters to have personal episodes centered around them while progressing the main story. Notable examples include Cheetor who matures from plucky teenager to Primal’s second, or when Blackarachnia and Silverbolt begin a romantic relationship and eventual defection to the Maximals. But if there was one character who stood out amongst the rest of the cast to be Dinobot, a Predacon-turned-Maximal who has his own code of honor, but who is someone that isn’t hesitant to get his hands dirty when the need calls for it.
The second season goes way further by reintroducing audiences to beloved G1 character Ravage. Soundwave’s cassette-former reformatted into a Predacon, sent by the original Megatron to inform Predacon Megatron that his mission is to rewrite history: killing Optimus Prime before the crew of Ark awakens centuries later. This small bit of fanservice by the writers perfectly ties both series in the same continuity- mind blown! Mind you, this was the 90s, and concepts of multiverses and alternate dimensions weren’t so common as they are today, so for us 90s kids this was like the best thing ever.
When the creators of Beast Wars first started the series, they were adamant of making the show its own thing, with a few episodes and callbacks to the original G1 cartoon. With partial references to Cybertron or know G1 characters in season one, but that vison change in season two Beast Wars was change to a spiritual successor to G1. A direct callback to the G1 cartoon was Strarscream’s Ghost, a reference to the actual character and G1 episode. Even the planet destrying Unicorn makes an appearance when mysterious aliens use his form to communicate with Primal.
It wasn’t just fanservice however that won the hearts of audiences, the show had great writing, well develop characters, episodes that managed to balance levity and the seriousness of war. The series wasn’t afraid to show characters dying- back in the 90s, death was big NO for children’s tv. No better episode showed this to great effect than “Code of Honor.” The episode sees Dinobot facing off against an entire Predacon force to save a tribe of prehistoric humans. Even though the episode ended with Dinobot’s death, it proved that animation aimed at kids had a message to tell.
The legacy of Beast Wars is still present to this day, from its humble beginnings at a spiritual successor, elements of the series has found its way into other aspects of Transformers media. The characters have made their way into comics, other cartoons, and very soon to live-action.
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