| Beast Wars: Transformers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | |
| Based on | Transformers byHasbro |
| Developed by | |
| Voices of | |
| Opening theme | "Beast Wars Theme Song" |
| Composer | Robert Buckley |
| Country of origin |
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| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 52(list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
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| Producers |
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| Running time | 22–23 minutes |
| Production companies |
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| Original release | |
| Network | |
| Release | September 16, 1996 (1996-9-16) – May 7, 1999 (1999-5-7) |
| Related | |
Beast Wars: Transformers (titledBeasties: Transformers in Canada)[1] is an animated television series that debuted on September 16, 1996 and ended on May 7, 1999, serving as theflagship of theTransformers: Beast Wars franchise. It was one of the earliest fullyCGI television shows.[2] The series is set in the future of the"original"Transformers franchise, 300 years after the events ofThe Transformers, and features the Maximals and Predacons, descendants of theAutobots andDecepticons respectively.[3] While engaged in battle, small teams from each faction crash land on an unknown planet, and must find a way to return home while continuing their war.
TheBeast WarsTV series was the first Transformers series to feature computer-animated characters, and was produced byMainframe Entertainment ofVancouver,British Columbia; its story editors wereBob Forward andLarry DiTillio. The production designer for the show,Clyde Klotz, won aDaytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation in 1997 for his work onBeast Wars.[4]
A sequel television series,Beast Machines: Transformers, aired from 1999 to 2000. AdditionalBeast Warslimited comic book series have been released byDreamwave Productions andIDW Publishing.[5]
The two main factions of "Transformers" in Beast Wars are descendants of the two main factions in the original cartoon: theMaximals are the descendants of theAutobots and thePredacons are the descendants of theDecepticons. (In the sequel seriesBeast Machines, the process during which Autobots and Decepticons became Maximals and Predacons is referred to as "The Great Upgrade".)
The leader of the Predacon team isMegatron, a namesake of the original Decepticon commander. He and his forces are a splinter group on the hunt for powerful crystals known as energon. They do this with the aid of an artifact known as theGolden Disk and Megatron's stolen ship, theDarksyde, which is equipped with a transwarp drive. A Maximal exploration ship, theAxalon, led byOptimus Primal, is sent to stop them. Together the ships plunge through a time/space phenomenon created by the transwarp device during their battle in space, andcrash-land on a mysterious planet.
The planet is found to be rich in deposits of raw energon, in such extreme amounts that it proves to be poisonous to both factions' robot forms, forcing them to take on alternate organic forms for protection until their robot forms are needed. Thus the robots take on the beast forms of recognizable animals including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, dinosaurs, and invertebrates.
Before crashing, theAxalon deploys its cargo of "stasis pods" containing Maximal protoforms — Transformer robots with vulnerable and undeveloped physical forms, which are left to orbit the planet as an alternative to possible destruction in the initial crash landing. This plays a larger part in the IDW series,The Gathering. Throughout the series, stasis pods lose altitude and crash-land on the planet, and the Maximals and Predacons race and fight to acquire them, as protoforms acquired by Megatron's forces can be reprogrammed to become Predacons. The stasis pods are used as aplot device to introduce new characters.
The teams are divided between the "good" Maximals and the "evil" Predacons, equivalent to the traditional Autobots and Decepticons. Most of the Maximals are based on mammals, birds or fish, while the Predacons are based on arthropods and dinosaurs.Dinobot changes sides, starting as a Predacon and becoming a Maximal, and was later recreated as an artificial Predacon clone by Megatron in season 3. Additionally certain "Predacons" like Inferno andBlackarachnia were created from Maximal protoforms, but were fitted with Predacon shell programs, fighting instead for the Predacons. For the Maximals, the emphasis is on team spirit and good-natured arguing, especially fromRattrap, but the Predacons argue and battle for leadership, which impairs their effectiveness against the Maximals.
| Season | Episodes | Originally released | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | |||
| 1 | 26 | September 16, 1996 (1996-9-16) | April 1, 1997 (1997-4-1) | |
| 2 | 13 | October 26, 1997 (1997-10-26) | March 13, 1998 (1998-3-13) | |
| 3 | 13 | October 25, 1998 (1998-10-25) | May 7, 1999 (1999-5-7) | |
There have been twoBeast Wars video games. The first game,Beast Wars: Transformers, was released for thePlayStation andPC. It is athird-person shooter, based on the first season of the show, in which players control either the Maximals or the Predacons in a series of missions to undermine the other faction's attempts at gaining enough resources to win the war between them and escape the planet. The PC conversion added a multiplayer feature that allowed up to 8 players to play overLAN, with its own playrooms in the MS Gaming Zone. The playrooms were shut down in 2006.
The second game,Beast Wars Transmetals, is afighting game based on the second season released for the PlayStation andNintendo 64 byBAM! Entertainment. Most of the cast-members from the show reprised their voice-roles.
A third game was in the works for thePlayStation 2, but was scrapped inpre-production, without any official word as to why, or how far the project was before the plug was pulled.[6]
The series was originally released on DVD in Region 1 byKid Rhino Entertainment (under itsRhinomation classic animation entertainment brand) in 2003/2004.[7][8][9]
On February 8, 2011,Shout! Factory announced that they had acquired the rights to the series and planned to rerelease it.[10] They rereleased season 1 on DVD on June 7, 2011[11] as well as a complete series set on the same day.[12] Both releases contain extensive bonus features including interviews, featurettes and special 24 page comic book, "Transformers Timelines: Dawn of Future's Past." Season 2 & 3 were rereleased on October 4, 2011.[13]
In Region 4,Madman Entertainment released all three seasons on DVD, in its original PAL format in Australia in 2006.[14] On June 24, 2009, they releasedTransformers: Beast Wars – Complete Collection.[15] The 10-disc box-set features all 52 episodes of the series as well as many bonus features.
| DVD Name | Episodes | Release dates | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Region 1 | Region 4 | ||
| Season 1 | 26 | August 12, 2003 June 7, 2011(Rerelease) | March 17, 2006 |
| Season 2 | 13 | March 23, 2004 | July 25, 2006 |
| Season 3 | 13 | March 23, 2004 | November 10, 2006 |
| Seasons 2 & 3 | 26 | October 4, 2011(Rerelease) | N/A |
| Complete Series | 52 | June 7, 2011 | June 24, 2009 |
Beast Wars won aDaytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation in 1997.[16]
In a 2011 retrospective of theTransformers franchise,IGN commented that whileBeast Wars used the same basic story template as previous series in the franchise, it "featured some of the best writing and story development in aTransformers series".[16] Reviewing the season 2 DVD release,DVD Talk similarly remarked thatBeast Wars used the same basic story as the 1984Transformers series, but stood out from other series of its time by delivering messages to children without becoming preachy and utilizing considerable continuity, both from episode-to-episode and eventually with the 1984Transformers series. The reviewer said the animation was dated by modern standards but the interesting and fun story content outweighed it.[17] In a review of the season 3 DVD, the same critic praised the season's more rapid pace and darker tone, and said it was arguably the best season of the series. He concluded, "Beast Wars may have been a marketing tool for Hasbro, but it also told some good stories without pandering to the lowest common denominator."[18]
The show was succeeded byBeast Machines: Transformers, with a new creative team in charge of production. The traditionally animated Japanese seriesBeast Wars II andBeast Wars Neo were created to fill the gap while the second and third seasons ofBeast Wars were being translated into Japanese (calledBeast Wars: Metals).[16] Severalcomic books andvideo games were also produced. The show's production companies,Mainframe Entertainment andAlliance Atlantis, are also the same creators of the world'sfirst ever computer-animated TV series,ReBoot, which ran from 1994 to 2001.
In June 2017, producerLorenzo di Bonaventura stated that a film adaptation ofBeast Wars was not in plans, as he explained: "I'm probably not the one to be asking that question to because I don't getBeast Wars, but you know, thankfully I'm not the only vote on it. I've never quite understood, they kind of feel like incompatible to me, you have animals, robots, we're used to cars."[19] Both a follow-up toBumblebee, and an adaptation ofBeast Wars were reported to be in development, written separately byJoby Harold andJames Vanderbilt, respectively.[20][21] It was later reworked as a hybrid adaptation namedTransformers: Rise of the Beasts, which is a sequel toBumblebee and featured the Maximals, the Predacons, and the Terrorcons.[22] The film was released on June 9, 2023.
The third and final chapter ofTransformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy titled "Kingdom" features the Autobots and the Maximals teaming up against the Decepticons and the Predacons.[23]
Beast Wars has always been a bit of an odd outlier for the Transformers franchise, being both the first CGI series and focused on animals, not vehicles
Quotations related toBeast Wars: Transformers at Wikiquote| Generation 1 | |
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| Beast era | |
| Unicron Trilogy | |
| Aligned Universe | |
| Prime Wars Trilogy | |
| Other | |
| Animated films | |
