Beast Machine Hunters> The First Season Guide part 6

Last time on Beast Machine Hunters we concluded our look at the Vehicons, but there’s more season one guide left.

There is a section of the guide set aside for the lore of Transformers: Beast Machines. It’s probably my favorite part of worldbuilding…which reminds me, I really do need to finish the Captain Yuletide story bible. The interesting part here will be seeing what parts of the lore being established here matches what we saw in Beast Machines: Transformers, what made it into this show, what we can see only in how the writers’ approached the characters based on what we see…and what was tossed out completely.

In previous story bible examinations we’ve seen times where the writers went in different directions. For example in the Batman: The Animated Series story bible we saw they intended to keep to Mr. Freeze’s original comic book origins only to come up with a brand new one that has now become his comic origin. Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season guide didn’t include Worf and had Picard talking about how great France is, like Chekov does for Russia. Worf was added in the first episode and Picard’s believe of French superiority (not Francian superiority–sorry, Fizzbin) never really materialized.

With that, let’s see what was in the show, what wasn’t, what should have been, and what we were better off without.

GETTING COSMIC/MYTHOLOGICAL: 101
THE MATRIX

The Matrix describes itself as the AllSpark that links everyone and everything that ever lived or ever will lived. If the Transformers’ individual Sparks can be thought of as their souls, then the Matrix is the equivalent of the Universal Soul. Every Transformer Spark contains a piece of the Matrix. Thus, every Transformer is linked not only to the Matrix, but to every other Transformer.

The Matrix does what now? The Matrix isn’t a conscious being. It shouldn’t be describing itself as anything. That said, Mainframe never understood what the Matrix in G1 was supposed to be. Introduced as a McGuffin in The Transformers: The Movie and used through season three, the season four miniseries, and the Headmasters anime for a brief period, the Autobot Matrix Of Leadership contained the combined wisdom of every Autobot leader that came before. It’s not supposed to be the origin place of Cybertronian souls.

Vector Sigma brought Cybertronians to life but there wasn’t any kind of Cybertron religion until Simon Furman. Beast Wars showrunners Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio seemed to forget which G1 series they were working from and took notes from the comic. This included one of them wanting to tie the Vok, the alien head things, to the Swarm from Transformers: Generation Two. Thankfully they didn’t go through with that plan. However, they did merge the Autobot Matrix Of Leadership with Simon Furman’s retcon of the Creation Matrix from the comic, making it a solid object Optimus carried because in the UK comics he kept the comic adaptation canon as the future of the Transformers comic universe, and brought those elements into his US run. It’s one of my issues with his US run.

Apparently they actually thought of that…and expected fans to gain access to this guide eventually.

The Matrix is as close as we get to a concept of God in the Transformer universe. The key difference is that Spark/souls and the Matrix/God are actual physical beings. Although just exactly where in time and space the Matrix exists is unclear.

NOTE TO TRANSFORMERS FANS: The Matrix is not to be confused with the MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP from the old Transformers series and movie. That Matrix of Leadership was not a God equivalent, but an object that was passed from one Autobot leader to the next. As such, it will play no part in our continuity.

Okay, so what was the Matrix in Beast Wars? I never thought of it as a sentient entity. Primus got mentioned, who also came from Furman and thus from the UK and brought into the US, and that was the stand-in for God as in “what in Primus’ name are you doing”. The Matrix as the show seemed to use it was Heaven, a sort of Transformers afterlife where all Transformers’ sparks go. There’s even a Hell equivalent, the Pit, but they really didn’t talk about that very much. Still, points for noting the difference between their Matrix and the Matrix Of Leadership.

THE ORACLE

The Oracle is an ancient computer that serves as a direct link to the Matrix. The Oracle called out to Optimus Primal and downloaded itself into him, causing a Reformatting that resulted in the Technorganic bodies that the Maximals now possess.

By contacting the Oracle download buried deep within his internal programming, Optimus is able to contact other Sparks, commune with the Matrix and even, in extreme cases, Reformat another Transformer. However, since Optimus is only beginning to understand the power of the Oracle download, the Reformatting process leaves him very weak.

I’m not a fan of the more mystical and quasi-mystical elements seeping into Transformers lore. That includes the two episodes using magic in G1, and the Oracle and reformatting stuff in this series. I’ve only begrudgingly accepted Primus and Unicron (deity version versus the mechanical creation of Primacron in the show) due to repetition. Sparks can be waved off scientifically so that’s never bothered me.

Legend has it that the Oracle is another name for VECTOR SIGMA, a supercomputer that was buried deep within Cybertron in the Autobot/Decepticon days and was apparently capable of granting inanimate robots both life and intelligence. Vector Sigma was also believed to control a massive PLASMA ENERGY CHAMBER with seemingly limitless power to destroy all things mechanical, yet completely harmless to organic beings. Also rumored to have existed was a KEY TO VECTOR SIGMA that could emit a beam of energy which transformed organic matter into metal.

While we can neither confirm nor deny these rumors, we suspect they may play some role in the upcoming Techno-Organic War.

This is the only bit of proper G1 homework they managed to sneak past DiDio. It was mostly accurate, with minor nitpicks to get the story going forward.

This is actually a good place to stop. As this goes live some of you are still sleeping off Thanksgiving anyway, but the next section is all about Cybertron and locations on Cybertron. That means the next installment may actually run long. Or my commentary may make up the difference. We’ll find out next time.