All of the characters personalities were changed, Cybertron was turned into a garden, the history of the Transformers was changed, the hate plage was turned into a joke and on and on. This show really did suck. Beast wars was amazing. I would even go as far to say that it was superior to Generation 1 in many ways, but this show, ugh! What a bucket of crap!
What's so crazy about standing toe to toe with someone saying "I am"?
I respectfully disagree. In my opinion, this is a very fine show indeed, but for completely different reasons than its forerunner. Definitely not the kind of show I would have made if I had been in charge, but it's still a tight, well written piece of fiction.
Some of the character rewrites were stupid or insufficiently explained for sure, but if you look at them closer, most were actually rather logical. What makes them seem so abrupt is how sudden the characters found themselves in this new situation.
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BM definitely belongs to its own category within Transformers media.
In my opinion, it might just be the most tightly written and surefooted TF cartoon, with a great sense of continuity (within itself, that is), and on top of that, it's just so, well, focused.
It wanted to tell a mature story, and did just that. It's a quality animated series, if not an all too memorable one, only not the kind of quality most of us would have wanted to see in a TF series.
Damn. It's so difficult to describe it. I don't care much for its story, but I think it's very well crafted. I am not fond of the approach it took to the franchise, but I do commend its execution.
I don't like the "whats", but I do like the "hows", if you get what I'm saying.
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Another thing that I personally dislike (not really hate, just "not-like") about this show, and thus rank it a bit lower on my TF series list is, that it's simply not that fun. It kinda feels like the depressed cousin of BW. There are a few gags and wisecracks, and who could forget Jetstorm, but overall, it just doesn't have that liveliness.
Though this is really part of the premise and the intended mood, I guess.
But it's also part of why I place shows like Animated and even Rescue Bots higher -- now, those shows are just pure fun to watch, and to me, Transformers has always been more about fun than seriousness.
There are also shows like Prime, that attempts to be a combination of both overly serious and comical, but in my opinion, misses the mark greatly more than half the time. But you know, I still prefer Prime it over BM slightly, because even with all the faults it has, it still manages to be a little bit more fun.
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Depressing is definately the right word to describe this show! This was THE FIRST show to have a story line that was to occur only on Cybertron. From the little that I saw of Cybertron during the flashback sequences in BW there was SO much to draw from. Instead we were given a technorganic nightmare. Boring charcters, stupid looking characters, no attention was paid to Transformers or even Beast Wars History! It was like the writer (Bob Skir that dolt) didn't know ANYTHING about Transformers and didn't even attempt to learn prior to writing the show. Then as an excuse (and yes he really said this) that FOX forbid him from learning the history of the Transformers before he wrote for the show. Honestly, was it really that hard to find the information about Transformers and Beast wars on the web at the time?! No, it wasn't! Even back in 2000 there were thousands of Transformers websights that were filled with information about both Generation one and Beast Wars. So, instead of a well written, charcter rich series we got a mess with no continuity from a writer that had no idea about the Transformers, no idea about the history of the Beast Wars characters and the first (in a long line) of terrible Transformers series that were a slap in the face to anyone who grew up watching the original series and Beast Wars. Now, I will fully admit that quite a bit of Generation One was bad. As an adult I can see that and I readily admit it. My take on Generation one is that season one was great, season 2 was only about 40% great, the movie was great, season three was only around 10% great and season four (The Rebirth episodes) were just a let down. Perhaps if there were more episodes after rebirth I would be able to warn up to Rebirth, but I didn't like the little green men garbage and I didn't like Arcee becoming a headmaster and falling in love with Daniel! (for thoes reason I highly recomend the Japanese Headmasters series where they completely disguarded the Rebirth episodes) So, I am not one of these people who are blinded by the curse of believeing that GEEEEEEEEEE ONE was always the best and didn't have any bad episodes. However, I am still going to say that Beast Machines was a horrible slap in the face to everything that came before it! I can understand someone liking this mess if they had no prior knowledge of the Transformers. As a stand alone show that has no connection (which it pretty much doesnt) to Beast Wars and Transformers it might not be as bad. Unfortunatley, it is half a$$edly connected to Generation one and Beast Wars.
What's so crazy about standing toe to toe with someone saying "I am"?
Skir was telling the truth, so the blame shouldn't be put on him, or at least not all of the blame.
One of the big shots at Mainframe actually lied to the producers about Beast Wars' continuity-heavy nature, claiming it had a loose continuity and that it didn't follow G1. In keeping with this idea that the TF brand should be "revitalized", they specifically hired Bob Skir and Marty Isenberg because they had no prior affiliation with the franchise. And it is also true that they were forbidden from researching previous TF story material. All because the powers that be had this weird obsession to "reinvent" the series.
Skir did make a few questionable decisions himself, for example taking away the fire-arms from the Maximals, because he believed that it would make for a better TV show if the heroes relied on their wits instead. However what most fans tend to see as the main drawbacks of the series had little to do with him. The religious tone, the loose connection to BW and the drastic rewrite of several characters' personalities were all "forced onto" him and Marty by the higher-ups.
The duo, however, eventually did get in contact with the fans, same way Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio did for Beast Wars, and began looking up on the Transformers mythos, in spite of their instructors' insistence not to. This is clearly evidenced by the growing number of G1 and BW references as the show went on (Key to Vector Sigma, Plasma Energy Chamber, even Waspinator).
And saying Bm had no connection to BW is just messed up. Heck, the shift from G1 to BW was infinitely more drastic.