Beast Machine Hunters> The First Season Guide part 5

Last time on Beast Machine Hunters we started looking at Megatron and his Vehicons. This week’s installment will be a bit shorter as we conclude our look at the enemies of this series.

Taking the sparks of the Maximals’ friends and turning them into their enemies through the same shell program that awakened Blackarachnia on Earth as a Predacon was actually a smart move on Megatron’s part. The generals were created to open resources since he couldn’t focus on maintaining Cybertron and fighting the Maximals with the entire drone army at the same time. One thing he learned is that when you’re the manipulative type, control is a big issue. Inferno was easy because he served “the royalty” and if he hadn’t been blown up for good he might have made a better ally. Except that Inferno was messed up from his troubled awakening and would still need a shell program just to control the havoc he’d create.

When it came to Tarantulas he at best could figure out what he was planning and figure out how to use it to his advantage. Scorponok was loyal but a dope. Everyone else only followed him out of force, and both Terrorsaur and Rampage would have happily betrayed him for their own ends. Quickstrike and Waspinator were weapons in search of a target and not too bright. Dinobot’s clone was probably the closest to what Megatron envisioned for his generals, so there is some evolution there, while the original Dinobot was all about honor and was a Predacon probably out of ancestry and a desire to be a warrior.

As I noted in my commentary on Vehicon Generals, Megatron knew through these experiences how to manipulate the shell programs to his end. Silverbolt and Rhinox were both restrained by different things, so remove those restraints. Waspinator just wanted to be cool and respected, which Thrust was until his identity was revealed. Then the writers just wrote him like Waspinator, which was a detriment to the character in general and Thrust’s growth apart from Waspinator specifically. In this section we have one more general and a discussion of the drones…including everyone’s favorite drone. We’ll get to him later. Let’s get that last general first.

TANKORR

A giant power-tank Vehicon, Tankorr is a near-mindless berserker who only exists to crush everything under his treads. Everything he doesn’t blow up first, that is.

Simple-minded and single-minded, Tankorr tends to speak only in two-word sentences. He has about three emotions — Blind Rage, Pure Frustration, and Puppy Dog Excitement — and can snap back and forth between them in a nanosecond.

Tankorr is unquestionably loyal to Megatron, although his boss has no more control over the big lummox than anyone else.

Like “Black Arachnia”, Tankor seems to be spelled wrong every time. I’d blame it on early spellings still making it into the guide but Blackarachnia was in the show since late season one and part of the toyline for a few years now, with a regular and Transmetal 2 figure based on her being a fan favorite. In this toyline/cartoon she was also a main character with a regular toy for the line and one of the Happy Meal Beast Machine toys by McDonalds. The same is true for Tankor so I think someone just really goofed up. I’d be curious to see if they fixed it in the season two guide I’ll be looking at when we’re done with this one…but he doesn’t make it to season 2.

Late in Season One, the Maximals discover that Tankorr holds the Spark of Rhinox within him. Optimus succeeds in bringing Rhinox’s personality back to the surface, but Rhinox has come to believe in Megatron’s world order with all his rational being. He rejects Optimus, choosing to remain as Tankorr. His real agenda, however, is to take sole control of Cybertron from Megatron.

And this is one of the issues fans of Beast Wars: Transformers had with this show. Rhinox was very pro-nature, the type to literally stop and smell the flowers. The theory we came up with back in the alt.toys.transformers newsgroup was that Rattrap’s attempted restoration caused a damaged shell program, merging the intelligence and planning of Rhinox with the ruthlessness and nature hatred programmed into the Tankor shell program. Thus this wasn’t really Rhinox’s doing. Only Primus knows for sure, though.

For a while, Tankorr hides his intelligence from Megatron and the Vehicons, secretly playing them against one another in order to escalate the Techno-Organic war so that he can take over when the smoke clears. Unfortunately, the escalation spins further out of control than even Tankorr anticipated. He quickly realizes that when the smoke clears, there may not be any Cybertron left to take over.

Tankorr will play the ultimate price for initiating the Techno-Organic War, but there’s a good chance he’ll find a way to resurrect himself later in Season Two as a completely nihilistic wild card that wreaks havoc on both Optimus and Megatron.

He did not. Tankor does not make it to season two except to return to the All-Spark as it was depicted in the Beast Era, repentant for what he did as Tankor. This wasn’t the first time Rhinox was evil. In season one of Beast Wars, Megatron used a device to turn Rhinox evil, only for him to almost take over the Predacons until Megatron reversed the effects. We know that if Rhinox wasn’t Rhinox he would totally be a threat to everyone. Tankor trying to use the Key To Vector Sigma to completely cyberform the remaining organic parts of Cybertron and wipe everyone out in the process is certainly in line with that.

POWERS/ABILITIES

Vehicle Mode – Sheer size and brute force; gattling gun turret (a subtle clue to his origins as Rhinox); flame thrower; treads can maneuver over debris and wildly uneven surfaces.

That gatling gun (according to spellcheck it’s only one “t”) refers to the chain guns Rhinox used, a reinterpretation of the weird mace spinner the original toy had. He never got to be Transmetal in the show despite a Transmetal figure of Rhinox being released, and frankly it’s cooler than his normal one.

Robot Mode – Head-mounted blasters; shoots flame out of his mouth (smoke is always seeping from his mouth); arms and legs allow for added maneuverability; buzzsaws protrude from arms; claws for close range combat.

I don’t remember the fire breathing part. The toy has buzzsaws in the arm but I don’t remember his character model having them, nor the other Vehicon tank drones.

THE DRONES

Drones are mindless automatons controlled either by Megatron or one of the three Generals. They mainly come in three varieties: AERO-DRONES, CYCLE-DRONES and TANK DRONES, although a tunneler/skirmisher known as a MOLE has been introduced as well. The Drones appear as smaller, grayer and slightly de-powered versions of their corresponding Generals. Jetstorm commands the Aero-Drones, Thrust commands the Cycle-Drones and Tankorr commands the Tank Drones. At any time, Megatron can jump in and take control of any or all of the Drones, but since he created the Generals, he does this less and less. If a General is taken out in battle, the Drones have an automatic evacuation command to take their leader to safety. Any remaining Drones battle in an automatic pilot mode that makes them fairly easy for the Maximals to take down.

The drones were essentially “troop builder” figures for the toys, but they weren’t really introduced until later in the toyline. Jetstorm’s Aero-Drones were just recolored Jetstorm while the others would get new toys based on the later character models. Tankor and Thrust’s toys were different from the show, though there’s some question if that’s on Hasbro or Mainframe, Hasbro seeming the most likely culprit. The drones weren’t given their own personalities like the Battle Droids of the Star Wars prequels. It was just a faceless threat they could get away with using as cannon fodder. Other generals were made for the toyline but with two exceptions wouldn’t show up in the show. They never got their own drones. I wonder what Mirage’s race-drones would have been like and if he and Thrust would have gotten along?

POWERS/ABILITIES

AERO-DRONES – same as Jetstorm, except no plasma bombs in Vehicle Mode; not as maneuverable in Vehicle Mode; largely used to circle and overpower the enemy through sheer numbers; reduced firepower in Robot Mode.

CYCLE-DRONES – same as Thrust, except no weaponry in Vehicle Mode; they act as a “Harley Davidson pack”,  surrounding their target, revving their engines for intimidation; no grapple hook in Robot Mode.

TANK DRONES – same as Tankorr, except regular turret as opposed to spinning gattling gun turret in Vehicle Mode; only one head-mounted blaster and no buzzsaw arms in Robot Mode.

MOLES – robotic tunneler/skirmishers (picture those big-ass driller things from Total Recall, only with weapons). Non-Transforming as far as we can tell.

Guess you can get away with cursing in a kids story guide. Kids won’t be reading those and probably hadn’t seen Total Recall. They could not transform and has never had an official toy. I don’t even know if the Moles had a third-party toy because I don’t follow third-party toys as much. The drones were practically the same character model as the generals since all Megatron did was stick sparks into three existing drones.

THE DIAGNOSTIC DRONE

Here he is, most everybody’s favorite drone, and some fans’ favorite character.

Megatron filtered the collective scientific knowledge of the Transformers’ greatest minds into a single Diagnostic Drone, whom he set to work on achieving his ultimate goal: the complete purge of all vestiges of the organic from the machine-world of Cybertron. The Diagnostic Drone periodically subjects Megatron to radical organic purge treatments, all of which have failed so far. Thus, the Diagnostic serves as both a confidante/advisor for Megatron’s plans and the object of his rage.

Personality-wise, the Diagnostic Drone plays obsequious and servile, but with a dry, sarcastic edge — like John Gielgud in Arthur (or Alfred in “The Dark Knight Returns”).

Why mention the comic when you’re on Fox Kids? Just mention the Batman: The Animated Series version, aka the best Alfred? That’s basically what the Diagnostic Drone is, evil Alfred. It’s that personality that people really liked about him. Christopher Gaze and Paul Dobson are both credited by the TF Wiki but IMDB only credits Gaze, with Dobson only credited for Tankor.

As shown in the clip (if it hasn’t been @#$%#$%$#% taken down, which is getting on my nerves again), Tankor/Rhinox did mess with the Drone’s loyalty circuits. Despite lacking a spark (until his destruction in season two, when Megatron took over his remains for a time) he was just a fun character to watch and could actually comment on Megatron’s failures like a court jester. He might be the best part of the show.

Join us next time as we dig further into the lore of the Beast Machines version of Cybertron.