Nostalgia is lying to you: the original Transformers television series was awful. Every episode was the same: Megatron identifies an energy source, he leads the Decepticons on a raiding party, and Optimus Prime foils their attempt with the Autobots. The show clung to that formula save for one or two episodes, and consequently the show stands as one of those shows that has an undeservedly high amount of nostalgic loyalty from its fans. The Transformers only became popular because Hasbro had the good sense to go all out with the toy line. However, the spin-off series Beast Wars remedied the original series’ shallowness and created something that is, at least in some ways, more deserving of cult favorite status.
Crash landing on a planet overflowing with energy, the Maximals (Autobots) and Predacons (Decepticons) must take on the forms of indigenous animals to shield them from the radiation. Led by Optimus Primal, in gorilla form, the Maximals (originally) consist of Rattrap, Dinobot, Rhinox, and Cheetor, whereas the Predacons are led by Megatron who has Waspinator, Scorponok, Terrorsaur, and Tarantulas to start. Characters are introduced throughout the show’s three seasons as pods land on the planet and the two sides race to retrieve them and bring whoever’s inside into their fold. As the two sides battle back and forth over control of the pods, resources, and ships, characters come and go, with Beast Wars being the first television incarnation of Transformers to kill characters onscreen. The deaths aren’t necessarily meaningful, but it does lend a bit more gravity to the stories which are already much more character intensive than anything the original series offered up.
While Beast Wars receives praise for being the series that spawns the popular Transformers “spark” concept, it has a lot of issues which it just resolves by ignoring the problem. For one, the show makes it very clear early on that the planet they crash on isn’t Earth, as evidence by the double moons visible in the sky and a few choice bits of dialogue in the series’ opening episodes saying it isn’t Earth. However, the show goes on to introduce humans as part of the stakes in the battle for the planet’s future, and that just messes up the whole idea of what planet it actually is. Another issue is the arbitrary nature of flight. It seems that almost all of the characters can fly when need be, yet more than once two characters will be doing battle while taking special care not to fall into a chasm, which obviously doesn’t matter since they could just start flying mid-fall.
Why criticize the show so harshly? Because if you’re going to kill off characters, the show needs to follow the rules it sets for itself. Nevermind that the writers invent “Transmetal” forms when they need to revive characters they killed off for the sake of dramatic heft, but going about and changing where the series is set or whether or not characters can fly just for the sake of a single scene which wouldn’t make sense with the pre-established rules in effect is just bad writing. It’s bad writing, plain and simple.
Beast Wars was created in computer-generated animation, and sometimes it looks quite brilliant, as if an actual director was involved and specified a very cinematic shot they wanted to see. Otherwise though, the staging of characters in the environs around them is just sloppy. Every step forward the show makes with its great looking animation, it takes one step back in the direction of episodes. Beast Wars is a mixed blessing within the Transformers animated world: it’s a huge step forward in the series’ ability to create fleshed out characters, but it’s still inept in how it uses those characters and the animation is a wash for poor execution beyond the character design.
The set will offer lots of nostalgic fun for fans, but the horrid one-liners and dated animation will sour the experience slightly.
DVD Bonus Features
Featurettes take a look at the advent of the “spark” concept, the creation of the series’ characters and aesthetic, and a new twist on the Transformers mythos. Art Galleries and character models round out each of the season cases in the boxed set.
"Beast Wars: Transformers - The Complete Series" is on sale June 7, 2011 and is not rated. Animation, Sci-Fi. Directed by Steve Sacks, Colin Davies. Written by Bob Forward, Lawrence G. DiTillio. Starring Scott McNeil, David Kaye, Garry Chalk.
