Beast Machine Hunters> Season Two (& article series) Finale

Last time on Beast Machine Hunters, I learned I spent way too much time on a logo that will get less use than Movies With The Guys. The Season Two guide is only seven pages long and we went through all the planned episodes for the Battle For The Spark season. So what’s left?

The section is just labeled “Requests/Desires For New Season:”, so I’m guessing it’s just a list of what they wanted to do with the second half of Beast Machines. I still haven’t had time to rewatch the final show we got, so I’ve been working from memory. Finding an outstanding moment from my memory with this show is harder than with the two shows that preceded it. We have seen changes between the various guides and what I do remember from the show, which is what I find the most interesting about going through these; seeing what differences happen between the planning stage and the final work. It’s also why I enjoy novelization and comic adaptations, knowing they’re based on the latest available script and costume designs.

So let’s go through the final few pages (I linked to the guide in last week’s post if you want to follow along) and see what else was and wasn’t changed when it hit TV.

Advancing Skill sets. Discovering new skills and mastering them. Continuing invention/innovation on the parts of our characters – finding new, creative ways to use their existing powers. Using existing weapons/abilities in interesting new ways.
Growth and change! We need more, different beats for our characters, enriching them as people.

The success of this is negotiable. The biggest example is that Blackarachnia was seen as the gadget mech and Rattrap was more of a scout. Instead, he’s the one making devices. I could see him being able to cobble something together given not only his function but what little we know about his history prior to signing up on the Axalon, but I always figured Rhinox made the actual gear he used, like the heat-sensor fooling “hot box”. Meanwhile, Blackarachnia seemed as adept to mechanical stuff as Tarantulas, so seeing her become the pining girl for her boyfriend was sort of a downgrade.

As for Nightscream, he’s the embodiment of a character who NEVER grew. Throughout the 22 of 26 episodes he was part of, Nightscream was as much the loner jerk at the start that he was at the end. He didn’t even have Wolverine’s charm, and I’m the guy who doesn’t like Wolverine. We’d see this again in Transformers: Energon with the human “ally”, Kicker. If your character arc is a straight line, there’s no character arc, and for Nightscream it’s a flatline.

Make villains more individualistic. Individualize them from each other… and from their troops. Don’t let them blend into their armies – make them stand apart as formidible characters.

Again, their typo, not mine. I make plenty of my own. (Not sure I have Tarantulas’ name spelled right.) This…didn’t work out. Remember, we’re talking season two as far as what they were trying to do. We got two more generals we’ll be discussing in a moment, a couple and soldiers who believed protecting Cybertron meant protecting Megatron. They’re hardly individuals, and Thrust lost ground once it was discovered Waspinator was in there.

Mess with the internal dyamics within the team. We need yet more conflict within our team, between our team-mates!

If anything, season one was felt to have had too many conflicts. You had to start to wonder if they were even still friends. So this is NOT what season two needed. If anything, we needed the opposite, to see our heroes get along.

Megatron was sorely missed for a bunch of episodes in Season One. We have to beef him up… building up his legend and paying him off by making him yet more formidible. To pay off # 13’s battle, we have to show that he’s back from the “dead” bigger and badder than ever. (Give him new, lethal powers, making him more menacing than ever.)

Who’s getting “formidable” wrong, them or spell check? Outside of being in a giant floating head or a lot of computer code, I don’t know that Megatron was any bigger a villain than he was in any of the Beast shows. He just lacked a regular body.

Hasbro wants more of a slice-of-life feel on Cyberton. Playfulness between each of our characters, not driven by conflict, but rather by affection. Reflections on the Cybertron that they want to restore, plus levity between our chast members to lighten up the relentless tensions from season one. The show could use a lot more joyful playfulness. Lighten them all up!

Well, Rattrap and Botanica end up in a potentially toxic relationship. Does that count? The scene where they anger-kiss happened but the “chast” really didn’t lighten up that much. That’s not DiDio’s way, and as we saw with the post-New 52 “Rebirth” over at DC he’s insistent on keeping his darker takes going. Although, if you want a slice-of-life feel, dead planet isn’t the place to do it. That’s something you do in a story set before, during the early days, on another planet, or after the Cybertronian wars.

Have an episode designed just to lighten up Optimus?
How do these people spend their off hours? (Heroes and villains alike?)
Richer B-stories. Buffy moments giving characters more dimensions!

None of that happened.

Bittersweet longing for the Cybertron they all miss. And the people they all miss. (Gives them something to be wistful for… and a reason to need the Sparks back.)
Bittersweet moments lead our characters to miss people who are now gone – leads them on The Search For The Sparks.
Who do our characters miss? Who were they before they went on their initial mission, before the first episode of Beast Wars?

This actually would have been cool. We do not get these moments, or if we did I don’t remember them. Everyone was focused on restoring Cybertron in their own way and that was it. To jump ahead slightly:

Hasbro wants simpler plots allowing for the character stories to breathe!

You got first half. Not so much the second.

Steve wants to see Black Arachnia dance!
Kevin likes the frame-in-frame splitscreen graphics. Call for more of them?

Well, sucks to be Steve, whether it was director Steve Sacks or writer Steven Melching I don’t know. The split screen graphics? Not a fan. It has to be done right, as Generation Two failed to understand past the pilot miniseries.

Kevin Mowrer has requests for the next 13:

Had to look this up. Mowrer was the Hasbro executive they were working with at the time, or at least one of them. So did he have better luck than Steve?

Looser story structures. Stand alone stories, less serialized.
Megatron – now stripped of his Beast-self, the giant head from Zardoz, all-gigantic, all-powerful. But also more vulnerable? Demi-God.

I know kids weren’t going to see this, but seeing Zardoz, a movie I only know from a review by The Spoony One back in the day, is weird to see here. Why not Unicron? A bit smaller, but I thought if there was any homage here, it was something actually related to the franchise.

Find new pairings for our Maximals! New combinations of heroes for an interesting mix.
Rattrap, Cheetor, and Nightscream as the Three Musketeers! (A fun one-shot story.)
We need more character-y stories!
We need character arcs for each of our characters, and relationship arcs for all of them!

I refer you back to the rat boy and plant lady. Otherwise, none of this really happened.

Need clues to lead us to where the Sparks are being held!
Amp-back on intensity. Base the stories more on character and humor! Now that we’ve shown how diverse/divisive our characters are, highlight what unites/delights them. Play up the bonds, have more bonding moments!
Comeraderie! A little joy. Sweetness to temper all of the bitterness.
How about a two-parter not built on a galactic war – but rather on a fun place? Like at Cybertron’s Six-Flags. At a theme park?
Instead of playing nostalgia for Cybertron’s robotic culture, play their joy at the Technorganic?

Oooh, they so missed a chance to do a call back to Beast Wars and have an episode take place at Six Lasers Over Cybertron. Cheetor’s reaction alone would have been worth it.

THREE PART EPIC: the search for the Sparks! (7, 8, and 9). We split up teams, each on different missions.
New Transformer – Alien-Plant gal. What does she add to the show, and our team? Thematically, what richness and perspective does she bring from her life experiences away from Cybertron?

Well, she knows plants, and turned Rattrap into a tree-hugger (his words, not mine). That’s pretty much it.

Each Transformer adds a piece to the puzzle of how to create balance on Cybertron – thus creating the Cybertronian Paradise. (Cheetor, Rattrap, Black Arachnia, and especially our new Alien treemale “Flora”?)
Flora battles in new ways – different than we’ve ever seen before.

Again, “Flora” appears to be the early name for Botanica, and I’m not sure which works better. Neither are that bad.

The final section on the final page is about the two new Vehicon Generals, the helicopter Obsidian (recolored from the green of the toy to darker colors) and the tank, Strika. Today we’d call her “body positive” but…she’s a tank. She ain’t getting an Arcee body if she wants to be an effective tank. She was tough and looked it. I liked her design. Besides…maybe Obsidian has a type.

NEW VEHICON GENERALS
HELICOPTER! He sends off small helicopters – military-style containing two props. The General sends off spies, like the Humunculi in Golden Voyage. Transmitting images back to The General and Megatron.

VEHICON BADGIRL – sharp and nasty and clever. Somebody to make Black Arachnia look soft by contrast. She’s the best, smartest, most vicious. She’s a segmented Humvee, sprouting retractible weaponry. Different turrets, as varied as Hawkeye’s arrows.
Fast and nimble.
Female personality in contrast to her weaponry.

Kind of true. Obsidian and Strika were master strategists, and that made them more of a threat. As mentioned, they originally followed Megatron because Megatron was Cybertron at the time, but when Megatron was disconnected from the system and lost, it was Thrust who talked them into going exclusive with the Vehicon cause and rescue Megatron. It’s Thrust’s only real contribution in season two, sadly. Both bios are surface level accurate, though “female personality” makes Strika sound like a girly type, and she wasn’t. She was a warrior, more Red Sonja than Sailor Moon. That was reflected in her personality and makes sense given her role in the story.

Tank Drones are still around. They are infantry when we need it.

I just looked up a clip and Strika had her own drones like all the other generals. Maybe the other drones were used, but far as I recall, it was just Thrust and his usual cycle drones, Obsidian and his copter drones, and Strika and her own drones. I don’t know if I’d call it a humvee given the extra wheels and the design of the guns, but I don’t know vehicles that well.

And that’s pretty much it, all three guides that went into making Beast Machines: Transformers happen. The original concept, Beast Hunters, a full guide of the first season, and notes from the second. Now we just wait until I can find another show bible to go over, but it will be nice to talk about something else for a while.