MovieChat Forums > Beast Wars: Transformers (1996) Discussion > Anyone else feel there was afew.....

Anyone else feel there was afew.....

posted 12 years ago by yarmen12
12 replies | jump to latest

....Missed oppurtunitys with the series ?

Okay don't get me wrong, it was brilliantly, tirelessly and creatively made, and I liked how the story works out (although the thing with the Vok ended up being rushed short, because the big THING was really the Raising of the Nemesis at the series end, which was great really).

I would have preffered they based some of the characters on better toys ?
(for instance, the toys of pre-transmetal Terrorsaur and Blackarachnia were aweful and nothing like the real characters in the show, who were VASTLY better).

The character models in the show were great, but some of them were based on REALLY bad toys. Inferno was a great villain-character, but he's in Series 3, and not even a transmetal. I would have preffered he got killed off and replaced with a transmetal character for that 3rd Series, such as Scourge or Scavenger (Scavenger is a bit too similar to Rampage).

Having many of the regulars turned to Transmetals was great, but Rhinox and waspinator never changed (Waspinator I can take, he always gets killed, he's a scrap-bot) but Rhinox being normal was kindof a waste. Surely they would have had the time to show a transmetal Rhinox, actually now that I think about it no they wouldn't. Never mind then.

The other thing was how the series ended, I love the thing with Waspinator, but for such a big , entertaining series that I had loved watching and followed for three whole seasons:

I would have preffered it to show waspinator, and then after that, it's the maximals leaving in the ship, and Megatron lashed onto the roof of that ship, THEN as the ship flies off and vanishes into space, we hear the title music start (but it's not the credits just yet) the shot then FADES to the end credits sequence. That would have been ideal and a fitting end for that series.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] yarmen12 12 years ago

- Yeah, many viewers/fans have felt the same way about Series 3. I think the problem was there were so many characters, and trying to balance them all was difficult.

The show was getting harder to produce (for whatever reason, I just heard it was getting harder to make, probably for the amount that was being done in the series, ?), and as you know there was studio pressure on the creators to make the show a bit more suitable for young viewers, countering all the scary stuff with humour, which is one of the reasons we see waspinator do so much in that series.

I like the finale though, and what say you about the ending ? XD

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] Glozone 12 years ago

I'll be honest, I don't agree with too many of your points.

The character models in the show were great, but some of them were based on REALLY bad toys. Inferno was a great villain-character, but he's in Series 3, and not even a transmetal. I would have preffered he got killed off and replaced with a transmetal character for that 3rd Series, such as Scourge or Scavenger (Scavenger is a bit too similar to Rampage).

Having many of the regulars turned to Transmetals was great, but Rhinox and waspinator never changed (Waspinator I can take, he always gets killed, he's a scrap-bot) but Rhinox being normal was kindof a waste. Surely they would have had the time to show a transmetal Rhinox, actually now that I think about it no they wouldn't. Never mind then.

I personally liked that a handful of characters remained in their original forms and I think they chose the right people. Rhinox was sort of a steady constant in the face of all these changes going on, so him staying the same old Rhinox is fine. Likewise the fact that Waspinator never gets to upgrade goes along with the theme of "Why universe hate Wazzzpinator?" Meanwhile Inferno only showed up near the end of Season 1, too recently for it to have made sense to give him a new body already. Also there's a theme who became Transmetals when that quantum surge happened - it was only the transformers who hadn't been born on Earth and weren't in the CR Chamber. Why it didn't effect the others I don't know.

But in general I liked how only about half the cast turned into Transmetals and then only about half of them went on to become Transmetal 2s or Optimal or whatever. As is there were a few too many episodes, especially in Season 3, devoted to people getting new bodies.

[–] spooie-1 12 years ago

You know, originally Inferno was supposed to be a new body for Megatron, and Scavenger was supposed to be the transmittal version of Inferno, but both were scrapped before they were released!

At one point, there were story ideas to have a fourth season that was to prominently feature Tigerhawk as the main villain, with Megatron being forced to work alongside the Maximals on Cybertron with the Vok having arrived there and taking over after learning of it's existence from the mind-scans of Optimus, Tigatron and Airrazor. It never came to pass due to a variety of reasons.

[–] yarmen12 12 years ago

"Scavenger was supposed to be a transmetal version of Inferno" Yes I knew that, but they decided to rename the character because Inferno had been a real shelf stacker (the beast mode looked quite bad on the toy).

So instead of a T-rex, Megatron would have been a big Fire ant ? Cool, no wonder he looked so badass, and they had that joke in Series 2 where their heads get swapped, it was an intentional joke, right ?

Awk that's so lame that there was never a fourth series and only a handful of the creative team stayed on and that dreadful abomination that is Beastmachines got made, like Scott Mcneil once said, "It looked great, but, you know...."

Where'd you find this out ? One of the DVDs ? I can't watch the boxsets because I live in the UK and they aren't available in my region, and aparently they will not work on my Xbox 360 which I still haven't tested yet. :(

"What the Slaggin ?!"

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] spooie-1 12 years ago

Megatron was always supposed to be a T-Rex, but he was to have been killed and would receive a new body in the form of Inferno, not unlike Optimus' transmittal body.

Back in the mid/late 90s, Larry Ditillio and Bob Forward used to be very open with the transformers newsgroups of the day, and granted a lot of interviews to places like Ben Yee's forum, Radio Free Cybertron and so on. If you knew where to find it, you could locate a boatload of behind the scenes information.

As for Beast Machines, I also happen to be friends with someone who worked on developing the Beast Machines at Fox in the late 90s during the transition from Beast Wars to Beast Machines, along with shows like Action Man, Digimon, Power Rangers, etc... and am friends with another guy who had input on getting more G1 references into Beast Machines (and getting everyone to stop saying "I am transformed!" in season 2!). I also have some 1st drafts of scripts of Beast Machines that I acquired in 2003 from one of the writers... so I've gotten to see what some of the original ideas were before the episodes were finalized. Cool stuff.

Naturally, this makes me biased... but I for one liked Beast Machines. I still feel today as I did then that it was a great addition to the transformers mythos. I think people expected going in that it was supposed to be Beast Wars on Cybertron, when that was never the intention... no more than Beast Wars was supposed to be G1 on prehistoric earth.

I've always thought it was funny that people complained how it "destroyed" everything established by G1, even though it had a ton of people who worked on G1 involved in it. Hell, Marv Wolfman developed the entire series, and he was the story editor for the third season of G1 and co-writer of The Probe on Beast Wars!

Anyhoo... Bob Forward mentions the Megatron/Inferno thing briefly here, for example...

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.toys.transformers/msg/bc8e54e9165e0823?hl=en&&q=bob+forward+interview+inferno+megatron

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] Cold_In_Space 12 years ago

They could've had more characters dying and replaced with others from the stasis pods, but fewer characters dying made the impact all more powerful. I feel that Rhinox was one of the most underused especially during season 2 and 3. S3 also wasn't that great compared to the other two overall.

I like your idea for the ending, it would've been better indeed.

- Gothamite #4

I've learned that it's OK to be flawed - Winona Ryder

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] DarthBill 8 years ago

I always felt the Maximals should have come down on Silverbolt more for his part in helping Black Arachnia dig up the Ark in season 2, but I guess they were too busy adjusting to the new situation to be bothered with punishing him for being that stupid.

Also thought it was a shame we never got to see Silverbolt, the naive knight in shining armor, interact with Dinobot, the resident samurai.