Beast Machine Hunters> Bible For The Spark (aka season 2 development notes) part 1

You know, I put a lot of work into this one, trying as best I can to match the original title screen. I could have done better but I learned a few things about my software in the process. Still took a few hours so it would have been nice if the season two guide had been worth more than a single article. As I write this, I’m not sure I can get two out of this guide.

I was expecting another detailed guide, like with the “Beast Hunters” treatment and the season one guide. If I knew it was this short, and that’s on me for not looking, I wouldn’t have bothers, fun as it was to get the “bible” title gimmick in there like with the previous writer’s bibles I’ve reviewed. Download it yourself. It’s only seven pages with a revised version of the season two plans from the season one guide.

As mentioned before, while YTV in Canada took the whole show in one shot, Fox Kids wanted two seasons, Hasbro unleashed the “Battle For The Spark” subline for “Beast Machines”. The gimmick was that the spark crystal, originally a replacement for the now easier to duplicate rub signs, doubled as a button to activate certain action features on the figures. Some of the original characters got new figures, some new figures got to be in the cartoon, and there were still figures without a show version and one show character without a toy version. Also for some reason Rattrap was finally released without the Battle For The Spark logo as an exclusive to Kay-Bee, which as a Rattrap fan I was happy to get my hands on.

With all that compare what we’re about to go over with last time on Beast Machine Hunters, and see how much article I get out of this one.

Skir/Isenberg
9/9/1999
BEAST MACHINES SEASON TWO ARC
14 – Optimus restores Cybertron, and discovers the true nature of his mission: to restore the balance between nature and technology. Grand Mal Megatron appears!

I’ve heard TJ Omega talk about this ship, the giant Megatron head, but I thought it was spelled “Grand Mall”. I’m going to assume this isn’t another typo because that’s the spelling we see again. Then again, they can’t spell Blackarachnia and Tankor correctly.

15 – Seeking out the two Vehicon Generals, the Maximals discover Noble/Savage. Optimus discovers that there is no spark inside Grand Mal Megatron.
16 – Our guys infiltrate the Citadel looking for some clue where to find the Sparks. Noble tags along with them… and restores his Spark into Grand Mal Megatron… revealing himself to actually be Megatron!

To clarify, “Noble” is the werewolf like form and “Savage” a quadruped dragon. (I think he had four legs.) Noble had a personality and Savage lived up to his name by being the Hulk to Noble’s Bruce Banner.

17 – Silverbolt returns, as a dark shadow of his formerly chivalrous self; Black Arachnia dedicates herself to reforming him. Meanwhile, Nightscream learns that Noble/Savage does have a Spark, of sorts, and is still his friend!

“His friend” is stretching things a bit. Without Megatron inside it, and how a Spark operates a fully organic body is a question that won’t be answered…it’s not even technorganic, Noble is basically a puppy with no intelligence. He still goes Savage when he gets angry. Silverbolt’s character arc is one of the few interesting things in season two, which I thought was kind of rushed to restore his Beast Wars personality at the end.

18 – Optimus versus Megatron, with their respective teams as seesaws.

Optimus is faithful to his vision, while Grand Mal Megatron is faithful to his.

Tired of being betrayed, Grand Mal Megatron grants Thrust dominion over all of the drones. He goes power-mad… and proves himself incapable/unworthy.

Optimus goes through the same dynamic on his team?

Deal with Silverbolt and Savage as team-mates.

One team has too many people/dynamics… the other doesn’t have enough!

It’s not that Thrust is power mad. It’s that everyone just ignores him simply because he has Waspinator’s Spark, or that’s the impression I got. Thrust had respect (or so he thought) and just lost the closest thing to a friend he had when Blackarachnia restored Silverbolt’s Spark. He seemed to lose all of that just as whose Spark he had was revealed. It’s still a really lame thing. Savage wasn’t really much of a teammate and we see a lot of Nightscream trying to find Noble, not realizing that what he made friends with was Megatron in a skin suit and what’s left is just an animal that morphs into a dangerous creature. I didn’t like Nightscream before, but the way he acted didn’t make me feel sorry for the idiot.

19 – Alien Transformer arrives. (Megatron dealing with the fact that he only has one General now. Thrust’s reaction to losing Jetstorm, learning to command three different kinds of Drones. Compelling reason why Megatron has not replaced Tankorr and Jetstorm and will not do so until 20.)

Megatron’s planetary defense grid disables a ship. When our Maximals go to check it out, they find a ship like the Axillon, an exploratory/colonizing ship like their own. Their investigation is cut off by Thrust, whom they have to fend off… and then find themselves dealing with some strange, new threat. An alien creature that stowed away on the ship? It emerges from the ground, crazed, lashing out at them.

Turns out that this creature is a living tree Maximal, which is crazed by Megatron’s Transformation-inhibiting virus.

Following it underground, they are astonished when it is mutated by the organic core… into a technorganic tree Maximal! She introduces herself as ARBORITA; she was part of a crew that colonized a far-off planet, where the only form of sentient beings were trees, and thus that’s the form of life they adapted (rather than the animals of Earth which the Maximals adapted into).

She’s let-down by Optimus’s lack of progress — all he’s accomplished by way of fulfilling the Matrix’s sacred mission is a small orchard, which he hasn’t even been able to keep from withering. “Why don’t you do any better,” Rattrap snidely asserts. Arborita complies by producing tubors which she hurls against the ceiling, which produce blazing light. “Haven’t you ever heard of photosynthesis,” she smiles, “Or were you too busy finding new ways to blow each other up.” “B,” B.A. answers.

As the trees begin growing before our eyes, Arborita puts a chum-like arm around Optimus and declares, “Let’s take back this planet!”

Blowing up Arborita’s ship, Megatron is fully aware of the presence of new Maximals on the planet; clearly the time has come to take drastic measures to eliminate them!

Arborita? This is the character that would become Botanica. She wouldn’t get a toy. Now I’m curious if they planned a certain romance.

20 – The Search For The Sparks Part 1. The new Generals are introduced… and we end up seeing the need to search for the Sparks. (This episode serves as the invocation to action.) (Silverbolt becomes a key player in the search, being the only one on our team who actually spent some time in the Spark Containment Chamber.)

21 – The Search For The Sparks Part 2 We split up our heroes into teams, each on different missions.

We’ll meet the generals after the synopses. Thus far it seems accurate to their episodes.

22 – The Search For The Sparks Part 3. Our guys find the Spark Chamber in/as Megatron’s brain. There’s a one-two punch… we can’t destroy Megatron without destroying all of the Sparks… plus we learn that the Sparks actually agreed to allow Megatron to take over! They feel that Cybertron indeed needed order! Far from being victorious, we are again forced to flee! And this time Optimus is left very troubled (the darkest fadeout of our entire series).

(We gotta put Optimus INSIDE the Spark Containment Chamber ala Slimer’s Sacrifice — lotsa ticking clock jeopardy — will Optimus make it out in time?)

However we do win by destroying Megatron’s central core processor… forcing him to vacate Grand Mal and escape inside a small, humanoid, robotic body.

(What happens to the Sparks? Are they still up in the Megatron head? Does anybody have free access to them now or are they protected somehow?)

That body would turn out to be the Diagnostic Drone. Kind of surprised they didn’t call it out by name. Then again, the Drone didn’t have a humanoid body. Maybe they were thinking more like Rumble from G1 or the Mini-Cons? The odd thing is the reference to “Slimer’s Sacrifice”, which isn’t Transformers related. It’s an episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, the 90s sequel to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. I checked IMDB and both Skir and Isenberg did work as story editors on the episode, possibly the series. Slimer accidentally gets caught in the Ghost Trap and the others have to figure out how to let him out without letting out the nasty spook he’s trapped with. I’m guessing Primal’s Spark gets in there somehow? Or Primal ends up physically in the chamber holding the Sparks? Either way, it never happens. They’re all hiding in the now dormant Grand Mal. And again, the idea that Primal learns the Sparks are happy being in there and let themselves get sucked out is not there. Thankfully.

23 – (Flora uncovers a vital clue that will lead to the technorganic re-terraforming of Cybertron. The bad news is that it could destroy all the Sparks if they are not released in time.)

Don’t remember if that revelation happens.

24 – We battle the 2-Megatrons… the Robotic body and its Vehicon counterpart. Just when we think we’ve won… it rejoins with its Grand Mal head, reuniting Megs with the Sparks! Now all is lost!

I don’t remember that happening, either. Interesting that there’s no mention of the Generals.

25 – The grand finale two-parter. We learn the truth about Transformers! Just as Noble/Savage uploaded his engrams into a cybernetic body… so did the ancestors of the Transformers… human beings! Our audience learns that the Transformers are actually us! The episode cliffhangers out into the grand finale!

Oh, sweet Primus no. Earth being Unicron was bad enough, but this would have just been rock stupid. I’m not even sure how you’d pull that off given that the Transformers fought with and alongside humans (depending on the faction) in the original cartoon and we met the proto-humans in Beast Wars. I know DiDio didn’t want them watching the original show but this is way too far beyond the limits of continuity and a dumb idea on top of it.

26 – The final battle between Optimus and Megatron… in which Megatron plays his part in the Technorganicizing of Cybertron… and Optimus pays the ultimate price.

This is actually how it ends. Optimus forces Megatron into the planet during a planet wide reformat sacrifice.

(Where to the liberated Sparks physically go? Into the empty bodies of the fallen Transformers, which are instantly reformatted by whatever process Optimus and Megatron trigger? Or does Flora grow a whole population of Technorganic Plants that can become sentient when they receive Sparks? Or do the new bodies rise up out of some Technorganic primordial ooze that our guys have been cooking up within Cybertron’s Organic Core — which is now a Technorganic Core?) Silverbolt and Black Arachnia reign as King and Queen. And Cheetor goes off into space in search of his destiny.

I think they went with the “empty body” theory, or it isn’t quite explained. We don’t get to see any of them. They just reuse whatever robot looking assets they had from before. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they snagged a few robot like forms from Reboot but honestly I never really paid attention to that.

(Any thoughts on where Nightscream and Rattrap should end up?)

No idea. Cheetor does become the new connection to the Oracle, Rattrap and Botanica end up together with a romance that only makes slightly more sense than my Beast Machines season one parody where Blackarachnia decides to go for a reluctant Rattrap, forcing Cheetor in his remaining lovesickness to become the Vehicon Mirage.

(What happened to the Diagnostic Drone? Do we want to use him at all in Season Two? Would be a shame to lose the DD, since the Hasbro guys seem to really like him. Perhaps Megatron gives him a Spark — can you say evil Wizard of Oz? — and the DD becomes the Helicopter Spy General. His character is such a good foil for Megatron and Thrust and potentially for our Amazon Humvee.)

As mentioned, they ultimately killed off Diagnostic Drone and Megatron was stuck in his body for a while. And if Hasbro liked him so much, why did we never get an official toy released of him? Fans loved the little guy.

What follows is a list of what they wanted to do in the show. We’re at over 2000 words and I’d have for all that article banner work to go to one article, so this seems like a good place to stop for what I guess is now the penultimate article in this series. Join me next time for the finale of Beast Machine Hunters!