Beast Machines was horrible.

[SkyxDB]

Yeah I like Noble/Savage as well and of course I sad when he died. I liked Botanica as well. Her robot mode was meh, but her plant mode was kind of pretty though.

And yeah I agree it would have made more sense for Thurst to turn out to be Sliverbolt. Granted the scene where Thurst turned out to be Waspy was funny, but didn't make much sense. I mean come on, how the heck was he able to get back to Cybertron so fast considering he was left behind on Prehistoric Earth with out a ship.

And no, the thing with Megatron doesn't make sense. How did he get off being tied to a shuttle like a mounted deer on a redneck's truck to cybertron, AND have enough time to invent a virus that effects the entire planet? It's the most goofy plot device that series had, something a 9 year old fanfiction writer would do.

I know right? So far the only explaination I know for is because they were going through some time warp and Megs was just lucky enough to get to Cybertron probably some months or years before they got there. But still that just dumb luck for Megs to beat them back to Cybertron. I mean come on, what are the odds that he would end up on Cybertron with enough time to do what he did to the planet?

[GoktimusPrime]

And no, the thing with Megatron doesn't make sense. How did he get off being tied to a shuttle like a mounted deer on a redneck's truck to cybertron, AND have enough time to invent a virus that effects the entire planet? It's the most goofy plot device that series had, something a 9 year old fanfiction writer would do.

One could argue that when he escaped from the Autobot Shuttle he was still transitting through time, and somehow managed to get ahead of the shuttle... on his own power... umm... yeah you're right, it makes no sense. :p

Heh, well the Vehlicons were opposites of their original personalities. Tankorr was dumb or played dumb until he became evil Rhinox.. which honestly.. I kinda agreed with Rhinox.. it almost makes me question who the REAL villian is in that series considering the heroes outcome is so..horrible.

Ya know, that's one thing I really liked with Beast Machines -- it blurred the lines of morality. There's no real "good guys" or "bad guys" in the story. Both sides equally regard themselves as doing the right thing... it's just that they have opposing ideas of what the right thing to do is. The so-called "heroic" Maximals nearly destroyed Cybertron at the end of Season 1, and Optimus Primal had to concede that he was wrong. That's pretty cool - to have a good guy leader admit that he and his cause was wrong. Then when Megatron unleashed the Hate Plague, Optimus wondered if Megatron's idea of achieving peace through the absence of individual freedom might actually have some merit.

You know the one thing I absolutely love about Beast Machines Megatron? He actually enacted G1 Megatron's motto: Peace Through Tyranny. He came damn near close to perfectly achieving this goal too... if it weren't for those pesky kids and their dog! :p :p

[una]

I used to absolutely hate BM soooooooooo much because of what they did to the characters but I have watched the series several times and I don't hate it so much anymore though I do dislike it because of the character changes. I also wished that instead of this fight between the organic and technological, we saw more insight of Cybertron's politics and to see this peace between the Maximals and Predacons. I was hoping that when the Maximals returned home and locked up Megatron that us the viewers will see this tension from the two factions. We all know that this peace treaty is more like the cold war with both sides trying to gain more power. Typical politicians, huh?


But we get BM. XDDDDDD


Well, I have to say this though. I loved BM Megatron despite his quick change to despise his beast form. Love his eyes too. Why did they give the bad guy pretty eyes? XDD

[BiffyPrimal]

I've enjoyed the in-depth discussion here, so I think I'll post some of my thoughts. First off, I love Beast Machines. No, it isn't as good as Beast Wars, but I still like it a lot. I will say that I like season 2 much more than season 1 of BM, so if the entire series was like season 1, I might not like Beast Machines as much.

First Area: Animation Quality
While I do think it was technically better than Beast Wars in many ways (especially the environments), there are certain aspects of the visual look of the show that I think contribute to the fairly common opinion that the show had a lower animation quality. First off, they got rid of the "shiny" shading method used throughout Beast Wars - something I think was key in making Beast Wars look good (and also reminded everyone that these things were robots - another thing that the developers of Beast Machines somewhat forgot). Also, instead of modeling detailed circuitry on characters (ie. go look at Tigerhawk up close), they chose to slap textures on everything for detail. While this did allow them to do more detailed environments, it really hurts the characters and makes many things look very flat.

Water looks terrible in BM

That I definitely agree with that though. I cringed when I first saw that scene.

Second Area: Characters Development/Personalities
Overall, I don't really mind the character development in Beast Machines like many people do. For the most part, I thought they were reasonable (not necessarily the most obvious) character changes, and when things got a little wonky, I generally liked them. However, the one character I think Beast Machines ruined was Rattrap. He has my least favorite design in the series (robot mode, at least), and they essentially gave him no weapons. While I normally could get over these two "obstacles," they made Rattrap way too weak and whiny in Beast Machines. He was "second-in-command" during the Beast Wars for awhile, and even though he often proclaimed "we're all gonna die" in Beast Wars, he was able to step up to the plate at times where his "Beast Machines" version would have backed down. Given my thoughts on Rattrap, it is no coincidence that "The Weak Component" is my least favorite Beast Wars/Beast Machines episode.

Two characters whose "changes" I liked in Beast Machines were Cheetor and Silverbolt. Honestly, I found both characters fairly boring in Beast Wars. Compared to other Beast Machines characters, I might just like Cheetor more because other characters (at least on the Maximal side) were more dislikeable. However, I love Silverbolt so much more in BM than BW - precisely for the "drastic" changes that came upon him. When Silverbolt starts spinning around in Beast Machines and throwing his "razor feathers," I think he just looks way too cool.

Next...Rhinox/Tankor. Honestly, I loved the "evil Rhinox" idea for Tankor in Beast Machines. I thought it was one of the most enjoyable parts of season 1, and Rhinox can make a clever villain. While I do think the extermination of organic life is far for Rhinox, after the kind of stuff he had to put up with in the Beast Wars, I can see him moving toward eliminating individual freedom so that the "wars" won't "only continue."

Optimus I liked a little less throughout most of BM, but I understand his grieving over the loss of Cybertron. Blackarachnia is an interesting case for me. Until recently, I thought her character was fine in BM, but lately I've been thinking she isn't quite as "dark" as she should have been (although this isn't a big deal). I hadn't thought about Megatron before the way he has been discussed in this thread, but you bring up some interesting points. I can see him not being to keen on "individual minds," given the foolish mistakes some of his BW team made, but the hatred of organic stuff is a little harder to swallow (maybe he just thinks stuff like tanks from G1 are more powerful). His dynamic as trying to bring about a "single elegant machine" versus obtaining "ultimate power" seems to go back and forth a little bit throughout the series (or at least in the finale), so I'm not sure the writers had fully figured out Megatron's motivations either.

[GoktimusPrime]

Two characters whose "changes" I liked in Beast Machines were Cheetor and Silverbolt. Honestly, I found both characters fairly boring in Beast Wars. Compared to other Beast Machines characters, I might just like Cheetor more because other characters (at least on the Maximal side) were more dislikeable. However, I love Silverbolt so much more in BM than BW - precisely for the "drastic" changes that came upon him. When Silverbolt starts spinning around in Beast Machines and throwing his "razor feathers," I think he just looks way too cool.

The razor feather attack is an ability and isn't really part of the character. If you gave Jar Jar Binks a lightsabre, as cool as lightsabres are as weapons, the character would still suck as bad.

I think Silverbolt's voice actor Scott McNeil summed up the problem with BM Silverbolt the best -- he just took too long to get over himself. There's nothing wrong with him going all sad emo panda after changing back from Jetstorm... after all, Megatron had psychologically broken him by removing his sense of honour, a quintessential part of his character (it would be like removing Optimus Prime's overbearing sense of compassion, while it would make a him a better military commander, he just wouldn't be Optimus Prime). But to spend almost the entire second season moping about it? It was basically seeing his character development stall for a really long time. You'd spend one episode, two tops... then get him to move on from it. But he never got over it until the last or second last episode. Remember that it's character development that drives a story... a lack of development = lack of story drive (it's like coasting in neutral).

Next...Rhinox/Tankor. Honestly, I loved the "evil Rhinox" idea for Tankor in Beast Machines. I thought it was one of the most enjoyable parts of season 1, and Rhinox can make a clever villain. While I do think the extermination of organic life is far for Rhinox, after the kind of stuff he had to put up with in the Beast Wars, I can see him moving toward eliminating individual freedom so that the "wars" won't "only continue."

In Beast Wars Rhinox was a deontological altruist. Beast Machines Rhinox was more of a utilitarian consequentialist, thus for BM Rhinox the ends justified the means, whereas for BW Rhinox the ends never justified the means. So I don't see how BM Rhinox can be a logical progression from his BW character when he holds such a diametrically opposite code of ethics and morality. As I've said before, I don't think BM Rhinox is necessarily a bad character, but he's clearly NOT the same character as BW Rhinox and there's no logical basis to show that he could have even evolved into becoming that character.

Optimus I liked a little less throughout most of BM, but I understand his grieving over the loss of Cybertron. Blackarachnia is an interesting case for me. Until recently, I thought her character was fine in BM, but lately I've been thinking she isn't quite as "dark" as she should have been (although this isn't a big deal).

Yeah but again, you need to look at the evolution of the character. In Beast Wars she was already progressing to becoming a heroic character - because Silverbolt brought out the best in her. Or as he would put it, helped her to become the Maximal she was always meant to be.

I like how the roles were reversed in Beast Machines with Blackarachnia now becoming Silverbolt's saviour and needing to bring out the inner goodness in him amidst the darkness. The problem was that it just took too bloody long. Blackarachnia's evolution to a heroic character was gradual and spanned over the entire BW series - but it didn't drag the sub-plot for that character. In BW Season 1 Blackarachnia was a completely selfish character. In Season 2 she was still self-serving, but started developing early inklings of being considerate toward Silverbolt. She _could_ have let Megatron chop his head off and kept Teletraan I's access codes to herself -- the only reason she didn't was to save Silverbolt. Arguably her first completely selfless act. Then by time she became a Transmetal II she was basically a heroic Maximal character. Even the toy itself has a rotating Spark Crystal (you can change it from Predacon or Maximal) showing her shift in ethical morality/allegiance.

So to see her become a full good guy was the next logical step IMO. It certainly makes a lot more sense than seeing Rhinox make a sudden and complete ethical switch for no apparent reason. :/

I hadn't thought about Megatron before the way he has been discussed in this thread, but you bring up some interesting points. I can see him not being to keen on "individual minds," given the foolish mistakes some of his BW team made, but the hatred of organic stuff is a little harder to swallow (maybe he just thinks stuff like tanks from G1 are more powerful). His dynamic as trying to bring about a "single elegant machine" versus obtaining "ultimate power" seems to go back and forth a little bit throughout the series (or at least in the finale), so I'm not sure the writers had fully figured out Megatron's motivations either.

Megatron was skillful in manipulating individuals against each other. In Beast Wars he played off both his comrades and enemies against each other alike to serve his own purposes -- something he could only do if there were individual free will. If he was always against individuality, then there's no way he would've let say Tarantulas set up his own separate base. In fact, he probably would never have let Tarantulas join his team in the first place. And you'd think he would've programmed the Predacon Shell Program to supress independent thought in the new protoforms - but again this didn't happen. For example, in Star Wars the Clone Troopers were all genetically modified to have their independent wills reduced so that they would follow orders without question... thus when Order 66 was enacted they willingly executed their Jedi friends without a second thought. And the Clones and Jedi were friends - which is why the Jedi never sense their betrayal because they executed their instructions without any malicious thoughts (thus there was no disturbance in the Force for them to detect).

Megatron never had delusions of grandeur of being a Messiah for Cybertron in Beast Wars. At most, Megatron was serving the Predacon cause because he felt the Tripredacus Council was inept. BM Megatron on their other hand saw himself as a Saviour for _all_ Cybertronians - Maximals, Predacons, Autobots, Decepticons etc. Again - BM Megatron was a great character, but just not the same character as BW Megatron.