What ruined the beast wars/ beast machines?

starlord · Post by **starlord** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:11 am

What ruined the series in your opinion?How would you have improved it?

Ackula · Post by **Ackula** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 6:41 am

Who said it was ruined? I for one think Beast Wars was the best series we've had as far as writing, acting, and continuity goes. I never really had a huge disdain for Beast Machines myself, but I do tend to consider them as unrelated when watching Beast Wars, I think it works better on its own.

Halfshell · Post by **Halfshell** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:44 am

starlord wrote:What ruined the series in your opinion?

Nothing.

What ruined it in yours?

Catalyst Dragon · Post by **Catalyst Dragon** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:23 am

Beast Wars was Great!

I can't think of anything wrong with it of the top of my head.

Beast Machines was decent, although I thought their coloration sucked.
(Cheetor with purple spots?!?)

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:01 pm

Objectively, the ending still wasn't violent enough. Should've had at least one child decapitation, a lot more missiles and a ginger afro for Primal.

Clogs · Post by **Clogs** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:57 pm

Cliffjumper wrote:...and a ginger afro for Primal.

I agree.

And with the other respondents.

starlord: Just wondering? Do you start these threads like a trouble-maker in a pub starts an argument, just so s/he can watch the fallout? Um?

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:37 pm

Dunno, I can't see what's particularly controversial about people listing what they didn't like (if anything) about Beast Wars. It's always possible to stop a debate turning into a fight, and a few people not totally agreeing isn't the end of the world. We're all grown-ups here*, after all.

* now Garzett's on ice, anyway.

Detective Barricade · Post by **Detective Barricade** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:53 pm

Beast Wars? Ruined? Nothing ruined one of the best Transformers series to date, IMO. Beast Machines, IMO, simply couldn't live up to its predecessor. I really liked all five of the Vehicon generals.

BackTrax · Post by **BackTrax** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:26 am

starlord wrote:What ruined the series in your opinion?How would you have improved it?

More nudity!

Jaynz · Post by **Jaynz** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:48 pm

From a very old alt.toys.transformers post of mine...

The Worst Part of Beast Machines

I'll talk a moment of reflection in the old looking glass to go over Beast
Machines. Of course, I've panned this show time and time again, but I
sometimes do get asked what, of the many flaws that I see in the show, what I felt the really worst part of the show actually was.

Most of the individual criticisms of the show are actually not that bad.
Artwork is forgivable. The drastic changes in characters can be somewhat
argued about their new situations on Cybertron. Even the reformatting of
Cybertron itself at the end can provide a new series with an interesting
jump-point, if the writers wish to use that. All these things may take the
show down a few pegs, but not into the cellar that I've placed it.

The failure, then, is that the Maximals and Vehicons seem to spend a lot of
time doing just about nothing. The Vehicons chase the Maximals as part of
the status quo, but, after the second time we've seen it, it's obvious that
tension isn't coming from those chase scenes.

The truth is, the entire plot of season one, in particular, and with some of
the first half of season two, happens regardless of what the Maximals and
Vehicons do. The show seems more about what the Oracle is going to do next, rather than how the Maximals and Vehicons are dealing with their situation.

In other words, many times, the characters are all but completely incidental
to the story. It doesn't matter what Cheetor, Rattrap, Primal, Tankor, and
Megatron do, because the plot's going to unfold in a certain direction
without them - and often did.

This is a problem with writing an 'event' piece, which Beast Machines really
was. The 'event' of the story sometimes can supercede anything else going
on. This comes at a cost of the characters, their motivations, and their
interactions. The focus on the event makes everything else incidental.

The Maximals, in particular, in Beast Machines seem to spend most of their
time waiting for the plot to happen to them, when the Oracle's good and
ready to unleash it. They're not very pro-active and it's very hard to get
interested in them and what they're doing - when they're largely doing
nothing.

That's the worst criticism, then. Beast Machines had a fairly decent sized
cast of characters. But, in the end, none of them mattered. None of them
made a difference to the story, because the events of the plot unfolded
largely independent of them. Worse, when the Maximals did do the rare thing
to get something moving, it was because the Oracle - the plot device - told
them to do so.

That is the true failure of the show, in my opinion of course.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:55 pm

The cave kids. For all the flaws in ...Machines the third season of the parent show is where things start to go tits up for me.

blastoff · Post by **blastoff** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:34 pm

beast machines
i hated that show

Vin Ghostal · Post by **Vin Ghostal** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:46 pm

It's a valid question - not "what was wrong" with BW/BM per se, but rather why the show(s) didn't continue on longer.

Ultimately, I always come back to the fact that virtually all the characters, particularly the Maximals, in BM were extremely...insufferably...unbelievably annoying. It's difficult to enjoy a show that lacks a single protagonist for whom you can root. Plus, Megatron (one of the many strong aspects of BW) became a much less interesting character as a 'god' of sorts rather than an actual character.

Starfield · Post by **Starfield** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:39 pm

BM started out great. I like the setting, pace, and even the music. But after the first couple episodes (after one in particular about a tree or something), I just lost all interest in the characters. I couldn't relate to thier motivations for doing the stuff they were doing. They just weren't acting like I'd expect Transformers to act. I never did watch the 2nd season.

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:04 pm

Totally agree about the Maximals (especially) in BW - the Vehicons also weren't good (but largely because they were meant to be older characters - would much rather have had a "while you were pissing around on prehistoric Earth, look what happened" thing). But the Maximals... Every single one of them was deeply, deeply irritating. I have no problem with the big stuff they 'changed', it was the little things that ruined it.

If they'd tweaked the start and done it as some sort of new continuity, I think it would have gone down a lot better. I still prefer it to most TF cartoons since, but it could have been a lot more enjoyable if it hadn't been so at odds with a very good predecessor. Telling us these are the characters we'd followed for three years, and then making them totally different characters largely without explanation was not so good.

angloconvoy · Post by **angloconvoy** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:56 pm

Yeah, I found the changes in characterisation to be really jarring, especially Rattrap. In beast wars he was ballsy and bawdy. In BM he wasn't the same character at all. As cliffy said, if they were presented as a separate cast of characters I might have enjoyed it a lot more.

Post by **zigzagger** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:39 am

Hmm. Honestly, I enjoyed Beast Machines and always have. Yes, it certainly is not as fun as its' predecessor of course, but I enjoyed it. I liked the perilous state of affairs, I even liked Megatron as a sort of god-like super-villain (though he could've been a bit more, umm, charming as he was prior to Machines). Even the pseudo-philosophical psychobabble didn't bother me too much, and managed to find it interesting during a few episodes. I like....what I like. Yeah, I did have some quibbles with Machines – such as the premise of Blackarchnia's character being solely based on her relationship to/with Silverbolt – but annoyances such as this haven't prevented me from enjoying it overall.

So, yeah, nothing ruined the Beast Wars series for me.

Post by **Blackjack** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:32 am

Maybe, just maybe, because I'm just getting started watching the Beast Wars (maybe I'll write up their reviews after I finish G1), but watching the beast modes of the Maximals talk irk me for some reason.

The series, however, lived up to my expectations as one of the best TV shows. Love tarantulas, terrorsaur, dinobot, cheetor, megatron and especially WASPINATOR!

Beast Machines, on the other hand, did not focus too much on characterization, but some grandstanding Oracle plot. The toys' scale didn't help much either.

CounterPunch · Post by **CounterPunch** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:06 pm

Beast Wars was imho brilliant, it started off ok in the first season, then it seemed like the writers were given much more creative freedom and aside from some dubious character designs (eg Cheetors transmetal form) was pretty sweet, it continued in to Season 3 which was very cool but had some missteps.

I've rewatched Beast Machines over the last month, the animation difference can be a little bit jarring if you jump straight in to BM from BW, and also, as said elsewhere, the character personalities are completely different (for instance, Blackarachnia losing ALL the venomous nature she had in BM, even when she was fully a maximal at the shows end)

My biggest issue is the way they "morph" rather than transform, I know thats a kinda shallow issue, because in the end it does the same thing as transforming, but I enjoy seeing and thinking about how a character would transform (for instance, Primal in BW, you could look at him in bot mode and go "yeah I see him being able to transform in to a gorilla) morphing takes that away because there isnt really any feasible reason why a rat would end up having wheels in robot mode, etc.

The Reverend · Post by **The Reverend** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:40 pm

Thought BM was heavy-handed in characterization, for sure. Annoyingly so. (Yes, Primal is frikkin emo, we got that clearly by the fourth episode.) But it wasn't bad.