Beast machines Megs doesn't act like he did in the beast wars. He hated Rhinox and yet he was willing to make him into one of his generals. He keeps his deal with Rattrap after he gives him weapons. He shouldn't have kept that one. Rattrap wouldn't have if it was other way around. He tells Silverbolt the reason he made him one of his generals was because he had honorable warrior. Since when did Megatron ever had honor or care for it, he became furious when Transmetal Dinobot mention the h word to him. Why the change of heart?

My own somewhat convoluted explanation is that Megatron wasn't entirely in control of his actions at that point.

When Megatron carried G1 Megatron's spark during the Beast Wars the two became linked, so that even when G1 Megs's spark was returned to his body what happened to it would affect BW Megatron. At first that didn't matter a whole lot, but as the Autobot shuttle made its journey back to Cybertron through Transwarp it passed through the year 2005, at which point G1 Megatron was reformatted into Galvatron by Unicron. When that happened, Unicron also gained influence over Beast Megatron and compelled him to absorb and corrupt the essence of Primus, removing the one thing preventing Unicron from consuming the universe.

Maybe it was because he made a complete re-evaluation of his priorities after he lost the Beast Wars?

Getting wiser as time goes by?

no

















just no.

he was seperated from megatron, and thus from the timestream.

Megatron had a most humiliating defeat and he knew he couldn't blame anybody but himself and dinobot.
Megatron had a sick sense of humour.



control by appealing to silverbolt's nature?

*post*

Uh,hello? it's called character development and it's what fanboys have been whining for,he started out as a street thug working for cyotek,decided he wanted more power,became predacon leader,decided he wanted HARMONY and no more war and fighting. (erasing sparks appears to be his most subtle way for that)
And the only reason he kept his promise is to try to trick rattrap into thinking megatron was "not so bad after all". Same thing for the comment to silverbolt.

SEE?

**points**

I agree with some of what Direrose has said (gasp).

The character development of Megatron between Beast Wars and Beast Machines was poorly handled as there's no logical transition between his BW to BM persona. He went from being this open megalomaniac in Beast Wars to suddenly developing a saviour complex with delusions of self grandeur for no apparent reason whatsoever! I also thought that Rhinox was poorly developed between BW and BM too - there was no apparent reason for him becoming evil. Also, both Megatron and Rhinox's disdain for organics seemed to have materialised from thin air too...

Cheetor and Blackarachnia were far better developed throughout BW and BM - in BW we saw Blackarachnia gradually evolving from a villain to hero and in BW and BM we see Cheetor gradually developing from a "kid" (BW Season 1 = child, BW S2 = pre-teen, BW S3 = teenager, BM = young adult)... I really liked Cheetor's coming of age in Beast Machines.

Now here's where I start disagreeing with Direrose...


Only after completely brainwashing - nay, mindwiping Rhinox making him into Tankor. He needed a Spark to give Tankor enough independent will and individual initiative and creativity to give the Tank Drones a better edge against the Maximals. It's the same reason why Clones are superior to droids in Star Wars. Tankor kept some of the ferocity and tenacity of Rhinox's persona, but otherwise all th major personality aspects that made Rhinox Rhinox was forcibly removed.

G1 Megatron did the same thing when he had Starscream rebuilt as a Pretender (although his plan was ultimately sabotaged by Ratchet).


He didn't. When Megatron rebuilt Silverbolt as Jetstorm he removed Silverbolt's sense of honour - and that's why Silverbolt despises him so much. Megatron removed the most integral part of his personality when he made him into Jetstorm, in effect psychologically bowwww bow bow bow bowww him. That's why he tries to seek vengeance against Megatron, which goes against his regained code of honour which is what Megatron (and Blackarachnia) question him about... i.e.: now that you have your honour again, why are you seeking vengeance? You're supposed to be above this.

Do you have difficulty paying attention to stuff when you're watching it?

Yeah, I'm siding with Goki here. The transition from BW Megs to BM Megs has potential, and had it been done right, it would have ruled.
Instead, what we got was the Megs we knew from BW suddenly changing, more or less overnight, to his BM self, with little to no explanation or exposition.
The story of how Megs underwent this character change would be an interesting and wicked tale, but we didn't get that. Instead we got a seemingly random change of character.

I blame the writers. They attempted to write BM as a stand-alone series, not only minimizing ties to G1, but even ties to BW. What we got was a show that by itself, with a little fleshing out of the backstory, could have been good, but failed to fit within the continuity that it was set.

How much [subjective] time passed between Beast Wars and Beast Machines exactly?

I'd hazard that just because you don't see something, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Of course it happened. Megatron's (and others) sudden shift of character suggests that something happened that made him re-evaluate his goals, desires, ideology, etc....
Thing is, that would be a pretty huge plot point. True, there are things that you can skip, and common sense tells that they even though we didn't see it, it did happen. Your main villain's primary goals and his political ideology suddenly shifting is not one of those instances.

The fact is, we go from BW Megs to BM Megs pretty much overnight, with little or explanation as to why he developed a hatred for organics and why he suddenly saw himself as Cybertron's saviour. That's poor story telling. You don't just gloss over a major plot point like that.
And it would seem that this was a result of the writers' intentions of writing BM as a stand-alone series, despite it's connection to two previous outings (G1 and BW).

Different writers.

and with Calcifier as well

So just because they hadn't worked on BW, that gives them free reign to just ignore it in the follow-up franchise? They pretty much gave Megs a whole new character, with little explanation as to why. That's poor story telling, regardless of who's writing what.

I'm gunna have to disagree with most of your take on megatron. Megatron has always attacked his enemies on both the physical and mental level. twisting the hearts and minds of rhinox and silverbolt was the perfect warfare against both the maximals and his new vehicon generals. Rattraps deal with megatron did seem out of character on both sides but i think you can explain it way with either honor amoung theives or maybe there was some other psychological warfare going on.

I think a lot of megatrons actions during beast machines can be chalked up to madness. I mean he was qouting from the transformers "bible" during his last stand during BW, he clearly lost it.

Like I said five posts earlier, changing everything about what your main villain believes and how he plans to achieve his new goals is a pretty big plot point. That's something you have to explain, flesh out. It isn't something you can just write off with the "we don't see everything that goes on" explanation.

It would be like if during the next Superman movie Lex and Superman start off as best buddies, with Lex aiding Superman in his quest for truth, justice, all that jazz. Of course something happened between Superman Returns and this new film that completely changed Lex's perspective, beliefs and goal, but it's still a poor story if they don't take time to explain how Lex came to have such a change of heart.

Same thing with Megs from BW to BM. He goes from a megalomaniac criminal bent on not only controlling the Predacon faction but also Predacon domination of Cybertron. Then he develops a messiah complex, does away with both factions, and strives for technological harmony with himself as the all-knowing, controlling centre. This change happens with little to no explanation as to his change in character, beliefs, goals, ambitions, etc....
At the end of one series he's the BW Megs we all know, and at the start of BM he's a completly different character with no insight given to the transition.

Seriously, this discussion is like eight years old... and I have answered it already if you want to go back and search the forum

But really, Beast Machines is very much its own story, and while people who like connecting shows have to use their imagination to connect the dots, the dots are indeed connect-able.

Like, for example, how Megatron's increased dependence upon the power of his beast mode led to him being dragged back to Cybertron on the outside of a spaceship... how he was betrayed at the last minute by TM2 Dinobot (not to mention Blackarachnia, Tarantulas...) this and other factors make it plausible that he would have rejected both the idea of organics having anything positive to offer (since it *is* made clear in BM that what Megatron really hates is himself), as well as the idea of a team made up of sentient robots who could rebel against him.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter to me, since I tend to view BM on its own anyway.

See though, I agree. On it's own, BM would make a good stand-alone show. Connected with G1 and BW though, which it technically was, it just doesn't seem to fit right.

Well, BW and BM sure as heck don't fit with G1... IMO

It fits with some version of G1, but IIRC the writers of BW were more or less going of memory of what happened in G1 when writing BW. Hence the discretion. The episode where Starscream's ghost shows up confirms that BW follows some sort of G1 story.

I guess I mean more in the sense of "this show sure doesn't ACT like a follow-up to G1". Sure they tied the story in to G1, but Beast Wars was never really (and still isn't) "Transformers" to me. That name is reserved for a show that aired between 1984 and 1987.

This transition seems pretty natural to me...

We never saw the transition.
He goes from reviling in his beast mode's power to hating everything organic, even himself (which begs the question.... couldn't he just scan something non-organic, therefore ridding himself of his beast mode?).
He goes from wanting to seize control of the Predacons and restoring them to prominence on Cybertron to taking out both factions and installing himself as a saviour, G-d-like entity. In one case he wants political and militaristic dominance, in the other he has no need for armies of loyal Predacons, he wants to *be* Cybertron.

There are similarities between BW Megs and BM Megs (both are villains after all), but the way they do business, their overall goals, and their political and philosophical ideology are too different for the transition to have been glossed over, IMO.

I guess it all depends on how much you care...

Beast Machines has its own story agenda, which starts from the opening shot of the show. One reason I'm biased toward it is because it didn't spend any time trying to figure out what it was going to be about. If they have to squeeze BW characters a bit to fit into the BM molds, then so be it.

Although I do think that you missed what I was saying. "Armies of loyal Predacons?" Megatron had three of them turn against him during Beast Wars (four if you count Quickstrike), one of whom betrayed him right at the moment where he was about to win the whole shebang. I imagine that Megatron had plenty of time to mull that one over during his trip back to Cybertron, as a prisoner. (Also let's not forget that Megatron himself started off as a Tripredacus Council-betraying Predacon, intent upon his own agenda. Surely he would have learned the lesson that Predacons betray their leaders.)

Despite what he claims in BM, it was Megatron who lost the Beast Wars. Decisively. But notice that he claims to have *won* the Beast Wars... so basically after having lost with a team of Predacons, he subsequently used his own mind (and no one else's) to seize an opportunity and perform an end run around the Maximals. All of Megatron's Pred buddies didn't amount to crap; it was he alone who was able to accomplish anything in the end.

Bottom line: it makes perfect sense IMO that Megatron would have repudiated everything he was counting on during Beast Wars, since he ended up with nothing at the end of it all.

See, I can buy that. If they had spent one episode in BM to cover that I would have been "ok, so that's why Megs is acting like a totally different person."
I'm not someone who needs every little thing explained, I just think that BM did a poor job covering a radical change of heart of a primary character.

There really isn't much in the show to indicate what exactly is motivating Megatron... the only thing I know for sure is that Megatron's organic purge stems from his own self-hatred. Which is interesting.

We're left to answer the question "why does he hate his organic side so much?" And I think you could come up with lots of reasons. But clearly it is a repudiation of everything that happened during Beast Wars, whereas Primal's perspective (eventually) is that the Beast Wars happened to bring balance back to Cybertron.

I guess Megatron turned into a GeeWun fan.

That explains a lot, in an almost scary sort of way

My biggest gripe about BM, though, was the whole "balance" deal. I'm not completely sold on the BW idea that TFers could simply scan an animal and have their alt modes replicate fur, flesh, feathers, etc.... I'm able to put that aside though.
The techno-organic aspect of BM, honestly, reached a level of "weird" for me.

So blame G1 Megs Spark that never got removed because it wasn't in the episode itself

I don't like repeating myself


Also, I just realized I spelled "microcosm" incorrectly in that post.

In terms of a story about Transformers, you may be right. But given the fact that the "beasty" aspect had already been introduced in BW... I just liked the whole allegory about religious fanaticism and how it often cuts both ways. I like how Primal's ultimate answer to Megatron's craziness wasn't craziness on the other side of the spectrum, but balance. There's a lot to think about in that show, and I tend to be drawn to stuff like that.

And I also think that nanotech-ish robots/creatures are a lot less WTF-ish than robots in animal shells. At least the BM dudes weren't rending flesh every time they "maximized." "OPTIMUS PRIMAL -- MAXIMIZE!!" *rip* *tear* GAAAHHHH THE BLOOD, THE PAIN

This is probably because the show wasn't written that far in advance. Megatron didn't have an aim until after the toys ended up selling well. We know that Hasbro doesn't make decisions based on TV ratings otherwise their shows wouldn't be on at 6am.