Introducing A New Story Bible Review Series

First, there was…

Then I found…

Now thanks to TJOmega on YouTube I learned about not one but two entries from the world of the Transformers I get to do. Tonight I bring you the first of those. I’ve been wanting to do another story bible review article series since I finished Star Trek: The Next Generation season one, and now I’m happy to go over…

From the TF Wiki:

The working name for the line was “Beast Hunters” before it became “Beast Machines.” Marv Wolfman created the original treatment. A Fox Kids press release said the following about it:

BEAST HUNTERS, the next evolution of the popular Beast Wars franchise, continue their fight against the evil dragon Megatron and his hordes of Predacons in 13 all-new episodes with cutting edge computer animation, action, adventure and humor, produced by Mainframe Entertainment.
(“Fox Kids Fall Press Release” from alt.toys.transformers on February 10, 1999)

Ultimately, Mainframe dropped the Predacons. The Vehicons in place of Predacons was the idea of Mainframe’s writers, the spiritual and mystical parts of the plot were a request from Hasbro, and the basic arc was Bob Skir’s idea following suggestions from Hasbro, Mainframe, and Fox Kids.

The TFWiki believes that the change was last-minute as the press release was only five months away from a debut screening at that year’s Botcon, the former annual Transformers fan convention.

Since the first episode was aired five months after the press release, in an advance screening at BotCon 1999, the name change to Beast Machines seems to have been a late decision. Ironically, at that very same con, the story “Paradox” seems to place its dystopian future after this presumed Beast Hunters story, with Windrazor recognising Megatron’s dragon form and Shokaract having been one of his ‘hunters’ back in the day; this would’ve been a nice thrill for fans if Beast Machines hadn’t changed radically since the press release!

The name “Beast Hunters” would end up being used as a subline refresh for Transformers Prime and the tie-in cartoon and comic.

If you know Beast Machines: Transformers you may have already noted a small difference. Megatron’s new army would be the Vehicons, drones led by a general, the only ones with the Transformers “soul” known as a spark. This was the treatment by Marv Wolfman, I think. Bob Skir & Marty Isenberg, who already had a history with other Fox Kids shows, would see the transition from syndication (which Fox is partly responsible for killing first-run syndication) to Fox Kids, which came with a few restrictions. While Fox Kids took a few more risks, especially in their afternoon shows, they still had more no-nos than the syndicated run. It didn’t help that a certain executive decided Beast Wars, the previous show, was too continuity heavy and wanted the new show to both ignore previous continuity, which he considered a bad thing despite the show taking on a fan as continuity expert and talking to fans on the alt.toys.transformers newsgroup, and wanted the show to take on a darker tone.

That executive was Dan DiDio. DC Comics readers should not be surprised. Yes, I’m still salty because too many of his acolytes are still writing and editing DC books.

DiDio has also said that Steve Gerber, creator of Howard The Duck, had his own idea for the series but as of this writing what that pitch was hasn’t been released and Gerber passed away before he could tell us. It’s interesting to see two comic creators involved in this project, and a future destroyer publisher in the higher offices. It doesn’t surprise me that Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment would put a TV guy on the comics given the media pecking order though. The showrunners however are cartoon people. Skir and Isenberg worked together on numerous projects, as did Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio before them and before Beast Wars. Skir would try to defend what they were doing on the now defunct fan website Bigbot. (It appears to be some comic review site or something now, very bare bones, after leading to a new url.) That didn’t really work out.

So why is the logo, and thus the review, called Beast Machine Hunters? Well, I haven’t decided how long this is going to go. The link above takes you to the original Beast Hunters bible, but it’s only 12 pages long with no images and a lot of spacing. I haven’t decided yet if the other two parts, for Beast Machines, will be in this series or its own spinoff series. This features…

…plus…

The second one itself is around 40+ pages while the third is a 7 page treatment for season 2. I may make this its own series or just toss it in here and save myself the trouble of making a new logo and title. We’ll see how I feel when I get to the end of the first treatment. Join me next time for the first official installment of Beast Machine Hunters and we’ll start to see what might have been.