Singularity Ablyss.

G1: I would somehow change things to make the Earthforce Saga canonically fit in better. I would also completely re-write Arcee's origin story. (-_-) I wish that Hasbro had given more advanced notice of the cancellation of G1 so that The Rebirth and the post US#75 story arc could've been better written.

 

G2: I wish it had lasted longer - it would've been great to actually see more of the Liege Maximo. But I understand that it was because the toys just weren't selling well. :/

 

BW: I so wish that Hasbro hadn't ordered the cancellation of BW when season 3 was already halfway written. :( I would either have Season 3 re-written so that story arcs would be tied up better, or as others have mentioned, just continued it onto Season 4 instead of Beast Machines!

 

BM: The whole "technorganic" thing, while I actually enjoy it in the story, would need to be dropped simply because it totally boxed the TF story into a corner. It seems that nobody wants to continue the G1-BW-BM story arc since Cybertron became technorganic. Even Transformers Universe takes the story on a divergent story arc. But it was Aaron Archer's decision to make the Maximals' technorganic, so it's not as if writers had that much choice - so assuming that we couldn't change that I would focus on changing the story so that it becomes a more logical sequel to Beast Wars.

e.g.:

+ Remove Megatron's messiah complex and maybe give him a more believable reason for waging a war against technorganicism.

+ Tankor =/= Rhinox - that just made no sense

+ Severely shorten Rattrap's time as a trembling coward.

+ Severely shorten Silverbolt's time as an emo.

+ Make the show models more toy-accurate!

 

Silverbolt wasn't emo, he was "Jesus christ, the shot has hit the fan and we got to stop screwing around like right now."

 

It just so happens that when he's like that, he becomes an angsty douche.

+ Tankor =/= Rhinox - that just made no sense

I'm not a BM fan, but Tankor being Rhinox did make sense, IMO.

 

You had the whole "will the Maximals fight a friend?" story, which made even more sense considering Primal had turned into the robo-Buddha.

 

You also had Rhinox siding with Megatron's vision, which wasn't all that crazy of an idea. True, Rhinox had never shown any hatred toward organic life, but that really wasn't an issue. He didn't even need to really hate organic life at all.

Maybe he just agreed with Megatron's assertion that Cybertron was a haven for machines, and should, if possible, be purely technological.

 

So yeah, BM may not be my cup of tea, but the Rhinox=Tankor story line did fit.

BM: The whole "technorganic" thing, while I actually enjoy it in the story, would need to be dropped simply because it totally boxed the TF story into a corner. It seems that nobody wants to continue the G1-BW-BM story arc since Cybertron became technorganic.

True, but I liked the TFCC story that had the G1 Predacons (presumably after they had undergone the Predacon upgrade) returning to a technorganic Cybertron and Razorclaw vowing to destroy the technorganic Maximals.

So a story like that, with Predacons returning from all over the galaxy to Cybertron, only to find their home changed beyond recognition could serve as a basis for a continuation.

Silverbolt wasn't emo, he was "Jesus christ, the shot has hit the fan and we got to stop screwing around like right now."

 

It just so happens that when he's like that, he becomes an angsty douche.

There was way too much self-loathing from Silverbolt made worse by refusing to forgive himself for his actions as Jetstorm. He spent almost all of this time in the show moaning about "I totally suck and I hate myself and everyone should hate me... how can you even stand the sight of me? Boo hoo hoo" - even Silverbolt's voice actor Scott McNeil got sick of it and said that Silverbolt really should've just built a fcuking space bridge and gotten over it. Everyone else forgave Silverbolt except for himself.

 

That's what I would change - I would spend just one ep, two at the very most - having Silverbolt blaming himself and going all emo before he just got the fcuk over it, forgave himself, and just moved the fcuk on. He actually did that... like in the second last or last episode... (-_-) The change I would make is all about timing - I would make Silverbolt forgive himself a LOT sooner rather than having himself mope around like some angsty emo kid.

 

I'm not a BM fan, but Tankor being Rhinox did make sense, IMO.

 

You had the whole "will the Maximals fight a friend?" story, which made even more sense considering Primal had turned into the robo-Buddha.

 

You also had Rhinox siding with Megatron's vision, which wasn't all that crazy of an idea. True, Rhinox had never shown any hatred toward organic life, but that really wasn't an issue. He didn't even need to really hate organic life at all.

Maybe he just agreed with Megatron's assertion that Cybertron was a haven for machines, and should, if possible, be purely technological.

 

So yeah, BM may not be my cup of tea, but the Rhinox=Tankor story line did fit.

..that doesn't make sense.

 

Neither Rhinox nor Megatron hated organics in BW. Their hatred for organics in BM makes no sense and wasn't well explained. As I mentioned before, one thing I would change in Megatron (aside from dropping the whole Saviour complex) is to give him a better (re: more believable/plausible) rationale for his cause other than "I hate organics."

 

Megatron and Rhinox's ideology of the "racial superiority" of machines over organics is completely unfounded from Beast Wars - and Rhinox being willing to ethnically cleanse Cybertron of organic life really goes against his heroic characterisation from Beast Wars.

 

True, but I liked the TFCC story that had the G1 Predacons (presumably after they had undergone the Predacon upgrade) returning to a technorganic Cybertron and Razorclaw vowing to destroy the technorganic Maximals.

So a story like that, with Predacons returning from all over the galaxy to Cybertron, only to find their home changed beyond recognition could serve as a basis for a continuation

Yeah but presumably they would be fighting against a technorganic faction trying to defend technorganic Cybertron - presumably Maximals. This would mean that the toyline would have to go back to being at least half technorganic (which is what Beast Machines was) - I don't think that's something that Hasbro is really eager to jump back on.

 

The annoyance of the BM ending is that it's really hard to continue from that story without revisiting the whole technorganic thing. It's little wonder why Transformers continuity was rebooted after Beast Machines (re: Armadaverse).

I'm not a BM fan, but Tankor being Rhinox did make sense, IMO.

 

You had the whole "will the Maximals fight a friend?" story, which made even more sense considering Primal had turned into the robo-Buddha.

 

You also had Rhinox siding with Megatron's vision, which wasn't all that crazy of an idea. True, Rhinox had never shown any hatred toward organic life, but that really wasn't an issue. He didn't even need to really hate organic life at all.

Maybe he just agreed with Megatron's assertion that Cybertron was a haven for machines, and should, if possible, be purely technological.

 

So yeah, BM may not be my cup of tea, but the Rhinox=Tankor story line did fit.

..that doesn't make sense.

 

Neither Rhinox nor Megatron hated organics in BW. Their hatred for organics in BM makes no sense and wasn't well explained. As I mentioned before, one thing I would change in Megatron (aside from dropping the whole Saviour complex) is to give him a better (re: more believable/plausible) rationale for his cause other than "I hate organics."

 

Megatron and Rhinox's ideology of the "racial superiority" of machines over organics is completely unfounded from Beast Wars - and Rhinox being willing to ethnically cleanse Cybertron of organic life really goes against his heroic characterisation from Beast Wars.

I agree about Megatron. His hatred for organic life was a huge WTF? theme.

With Rhinox though, I don't think he really hated organics. I always interpreted his BM character as someone who, while not anti-organic, just didn't think organic life had any place on Cybertron, so he went along with Megatron's vision.

 

But yeah, I wanted to b!tchslap Silverbolt after two episodes of his angst fest.

 

True, but I liked the TFCC story that had the G1 Predacons (presumably after they had undergone the Predacon upgrade) returning to a technorganic Cybertron and Razorclaw vowing to destroy the technorganic Maximals.

So a story like that, with Predacons returning from all over the galaxy to Cybertron, only to find their home changed beyond recognition could serve as a basis for a continuation

Yeah but presumably they would be fighting against a technorganic faction trying to defend technorganic Cybertron - presumably Maximals. This would mean that the toyline would have to go back to being at least half technorganic (which is what Beast Machines was) - I don't think that's something that Hasbro is really eager to jump back on.

 

The annoyance of the BM ending is that it's really hard to continue from that story without revisiting the whole technorganic thing. It's little wonder why Transformers continuity was rebooted after Beast Machines (re: Armadaverse).

All very true. Even with improved production and design techniques, I think BM's failure in the toy aisles is enough to convince Hasbro the concept isn't worth revisiting. It's a shame though. I really want a decent Razorclaw toy :tfsad

 

Although I think the reboot after BM should have happened, regardless. The whole Beast Era was fun, but by that time it was time to get back to basics.

the whole purpose and concept of 'transforming' was stealth.. to be undetected.. to blend in. How did this make sense pre-earth arrival in life back on cybertron? The early writing was for kids, and it shows (and i enjoyed it as a kid). It's almost painful to go back and watch as an adult. The #1 mistake they did was killing off prime. Hence the whole reason for G1 death and G2. I "LOVE" the dinobots, but they were never written well within the context of purpose. I mean, seeing a giant mechanical dinosaur - i'm sure it didn't raise an eyebrow. I also didn't care for the gestalts. I don't see a lot of benefit outside of the 'this would make a neat toy' (which it does). I can't speak for beast wars because i've NEVER been a fan - not of the toys, not of the story, none of it. I didn't care for Transformers going planet of the apes -- outside of the NAMES, the show should/could have been called something entirely different. The BW's perpetuated and solidified my dislike for TFers after G1 (as a young teen). I never got back into TFers again until Binaltech. FINALLY, it got back to purpose and the toys showed that also. But if we are talking pure storyline... I think the current MOVIE has done the best writing. Of course they would have to do a lot more to cover seasons, instead of simply a few movies.

 

I have to say I absolutely 'hate' the Jay Leno TFers.

I'm more or less miffed they killed rhinox outright in BM then him being Tankor.. heck, having him as Tankor screwin around behind meg's back was a lot more fun anyway.. he should of rallied a posse of his own, maybe a small group of vehicons against megatron's control.. unfortunitly it really wasn't to be though. Rhinox was one of many of my favorite BW characters .. and given that, I wouldn't mind him being an evil mastermind for awhile.

 

I actually liked the darker silverbolt in a certain sense.. because I thought it was justified for his chaarcter to be somewhat self loathing. SIlverbolt was honor striken in BW, it was his code.. ehh, maybe more chivalry. Kind of think of it as a samurai's honor.. if its taken away, no matter who you were at the time, its a little hard to live down after the fact.. it's like, how could you claim to be strong of will, and yet be so easily swayed.. and ENJOYED being that other indentity. It made the character less poetic and silly, and more interesting imho.

 

The only characters I have no great love for was BM's telling of Rattrap and Black Aracnia. Both of them seemed to be totally pussed out. Well, atleast BA was actually capable of couping a bit better than Rattrap.. Botanica was also a lil wtfish. Might as well throw a rocklord in there someplace ..

 

Seriously though... another season of BW would of been fantastic.. atleast in a story sense.. I can understand hasbro's decision to pull the line.. I mean, they probably ran out of ideas after Transmetal IIs to keep the line fresh.. no new toys, no new seasons more or less.. I would of loved to see Tigerhawk in action more.. as well as Tarantulus's continuated back story.. but, its not to be.

I think they could have made some good spin-off series from Beast Machines involving some of the survivors exploring the galaxy and beyond looking for other Transformers who had earlier fled Cybertron...

That's pretty much what Universe/OTFCC did - e.g.: Glyph, Rook etc. But again, you're looking at stories which are departing from Beast Machines' technorganic thing with the whole "meanwhile somewhere else..." (-_-) But Cybertron itself is pretty hard to follow up without revisiting technorganicism, which as you guys have noticed, isn't something which Hasbro would be willing to do anytime soon.

 

With Rhinox though, I don't think he really hated organics. I always interpreted his BM character as someone who, while not anti-organic, just didn't think organic life had any place on Cybertron, so he went along with Megatron's vision.

That's kinda like someone saying that s/he's not racist, but s/he doesn't like people of a different ethnicity living in their neighbourhood and will actively do something aggressive and/or violent to drive those people out of their neighbourhood. It is at best an act of aggressive, hostile and violent intolerance.

 

 

I don't think that BW Rhinox ever had anything like that in him.

 

Although I think the reboot after BM should have happened, regardless. The whole Beast Era was fun, but by that time it was time to get back to basics.

I personally would've liked to see the mainstream G1/G2/BW/BM continuity go further.

 

But either way, the ending of BM has boxed itself into a corner so that the option of continuing on has become really hard (arguably impossible).

 

the whole purpose and concept of 'transforming' was stealth.. to be undetected.. to blend in. How did this make sense pre-earth arrival in life back on cybertron?

 

Still disguises...

 

 

Disguise isn't the sole reason for transformation...

 

"Why do you transform into cars and things?"

"Simple - disguise! Besides, it sure beats walking!"

 

When you play the Transformers games (e.g.: Prelude to Energon, movie game) then you can see that transforming between modes gives your character different attributes which you need to shift between depending on what you're doing.

 

The early writing was for kids, and it shows (and i enjoyed it as a kid). It's almost painful to go back and watch as an adult.

Um... the cartoon was, but the comics hold out better.

 

The #1 mistake they did was killing off prime. Hence the whole reason for G1 death and G2.

While killing off Prime in the movie was received quite badly by the public, it was NOT the reason for the death of G1. Transformers The Movie came out in 1986 and G1 ended in 1993, so I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

 

G1 ended because interest in the toyline was dwindling. Why was the toyline dwindling? IMO it was because there was an increasing departure from realistic looking alt modes and a shift towards more "fantasy" scifi "Cybertronian" alt modes. For example, Sideswipe transforms into what is clearly a Lamborghini Countach. Splashdown on the other hand... wtf is that? It's meant to be a submarine, but you gotta be kidding me. And then there's Gunrunner... complete fail as a Transformer action figure. Action Masters were pretty much the last straw that broke the camel's back.

 

After the fall of G1, what Transformers really needed was something new and fresh. G2 failed to give us that. The toys started off with mostly repaints of old G1 moulds. The cartoon was just a joke. The comics were good, but a faltering toyline just couldn't sustain it. We saw some really good toys in the later G2 years, but by then it was already too late - Transformers was in need of a desperate save.

 

And we got that with Transformers. To Hasbro's credit, they did their homework. Market research at the time showed that animals were more popular amongst kids than vehicles, and so Beast Wars was born, breathing new life into the Transformers franchise.

 

I "LOVE" the dinobots, but they were never written well within the context of purpose. I mean, seeing a giant mechanical dinosaur - i'm sure it didn't raise an eyebrow.

The G1 Marvel explanation was plausible.

 

I also didn't care for the gestalts. I don't see a lot of benefit outside of the 'this would make a neat toy' (which it does).

And Transformers is first and foremost a toyline. :P HasTak makes the toys, and Marvel, Sunbow etc have to write stories around them. You think Furman wanted to write Action Masters into G1?! :P :P

 

I can't speak for beast wars because i've NEVER been a fan - not of the toys, not of the story, none of it. I didn't care for Transformers going planet of the apes -- outside of the NAMES, the show should/could have been called something entirely different. The BW's perpetuated and solidified my dislike for TFers after G1 (as a young teen).

 

Beast Wars is the best Transformers story _ever_ written for television. IMO it is the second best story ever written for Transformers, second only to the Marvel comics.

 

And the toys were just fantastic - carrying on from innovative designs we saw in late G2.

 

I never got back into TFers again until Binaltech. FINALLY, it got back to purpose and the toys showed that also.

And Binaltech would never have existed if not for Beast Wars. (-_-)

 

I recommend that you reserve judgment on Beast Wars until you've watched the (Emmy Award winning) show and played with the toys. They're pure win IMHO. :)

But if we are talking pure storyline... I think the current MOVIE has done the best writing. Of course they would have to do a lot more to cover seasons, instead of simply a few movies.

 

The movie was good, but I would rank it third under G1/G2 (Marvel) and BW/BM. But the movie is better than those two in some ways - also, it's a difficult comparison because it is just a relatively short story compared to long running serials so it's arguably an unfair comparison.

 

Out of all the theatrical movies I would rank them as:

1/ Transformers

2/ Transformers The Movie

3/ Beast Wars: Lio Convoy's Crisis

 

I'm more or less miffed they killed rhinox outright in BM then him being Tankor.. heck, having him as Tankor screwin around behind meg's back was a lot more fun anyway.. he should of rallied a posse of his own, maybe a small group of vehicons against megatron's control.. unfortunitly it really wasn't to be though. Rhinox was one of many of my favorite BW characters .. and given that, I wouldn't mind him being an evil mastermind for awhile.

It's not that Rhinox/Tankor and BM Megatron are inherently bad characters - it's just that they are bad evolutions of their BW counterparts. If you utterly ignore Beast Wars, then sure, these are pretty good characters. In that regard I think that BM Megatron is the best Megatron ever because he was the only Megatron who actually carried out G1 Megatron's motto of "peace through tyranny." But he simply was not the same character as BW Megatron, and likewise BM Rhinox/Tankor was just not the same character as BW Rhinox.

 

And that is something that I would change in the BM story.

 

I actually liked the darker silverbolt in a certain sense.. because I thought it was justified for his chaarcter to be somewhat self loathing. SIlverbolt was honor striken in BW, it was his code.. ehh, maybe more chivalry. Kind of think of it as a samurai's honor.. if its taken away, no matter who you were at the time, its a little hard to live down after the fact.. it's like, how could you claim to be strong of will, and yet be so easily swayed.. and ENJOYED being that other indentity. It made the character less poetic and silly, and more interesting imho.

Being being the dorky boy-scout was part of who Silverbolt was!! And the whole dark/fallen Silverbolt wasn't a bad thing - as I said before, it was the timing. It was just overdone and dragged on too long. Did we really need to see Silverbolt hating himself for almost the entire second season?!? We get the freakin' point, he messed up and he feels bad for it - GET OVER IT!

 

And that's another thing I would change about the writing in Beast Machines - I would get the story to stop drumming the same sh!t into our skulls over and over again! I swear, by the end of that show if I heard "the seeds of the future lied buried in the past" one more bloody time I would've done to Bob Skir what Stewie Griffin did to Will Farrell by tracking him down, visiting his home and giving him a royal b!tch slap!

 

The only characters I have no great love for was BM's telling of Rattrap and Black Aracnia. Both of them seemed to be totally pussed out. Well, atleast BA was actually capable of couping a bit better than Rattrap.. Botanica was also a lil wtfish. Might as well throw a rocklord in there someplace ..

I agree on Rattrap.

 

I thought Blackarachnia was done well. She was finally realised as a heroic character, which we saw her evolving into during Beast Wars. So being a full heroic Maximal was the next logical step.

 

In Botanica's defence:

+ She doesn't just transform into a plant, she transforms into a sentient plant. That's a lot better than Rock Lords who transformed into blockish rocks that were never living, but they still rolled and flew around in their rock modes anyway - oh yeah, and they ate rocks. Freakin' cannibals.

+ From a science fiction POV it's a neat concept. She was aboard an expeditionary team like the Axalon and her crew landed on a world full of sentient plants instead of animals, so they adapted in order to become robots in disguise.

+ She's unique, there's only one of her. There were two whole factions of Rock Lords!

+ She's hot :P ;) :D

 

But I agree that she shouldn't have been introduced as a mainstream character simply because there was NEVER A FCUKING TOY AND NOW I FCUKING WANT ONE BAD BUT I KNOW THAT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE WOULDN'T BUY A FCUKING TRANSFORMING BONSAI!!

 

*ahem*

 

As far as the mainstream characters are concern, they should just stick to the toys.

 

Seriously though... another season of BW would of been fantastic.. atleast in a story sense.. I can understand hasbro's decision to pull the line.. I mean, they probably ran out of ideas after Transmetal IIs to keep the line fresh.. no new toys, no new seasons more or less.. I would of loved to see Tigerhawk

I don't understand Hasbro's decision at all. Beast Wars was at the height of its success and they decided to pull the plug.

 

As much as I disliked the cancellation of G1 and G2, I could understand why they did it - the toys just weren't selling. BW on the other hand was still selling like hotcakes. IMO the only reason why Transformers didn't completely die on its arse during Beast Machines was because Transformers was still riding along the coat-tails of Beast Wars' success.