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That's easy: because Purple in G1 meant "Decepticon". Especially during post-movie G1 continuity.

Well, I know that. But there's been lots of non-purple Megatrons. Before and since. Furthermore, the Decepticon purple tends to be a darker, more vibrant one generally. So there was nothing binding them to make Megatron with the most effeminate shade of purple (dare I say violet?) they could come up with. Case and point: His transmetal form was a darker shade of purple.

Purple was a common colour for Dinosaur toys in the 90's, of which there were lots because of Jurassic Park. The show followed suit, I think colour scheme wise almost everyone was toy accurate on the show.

Except Scorponok. His toy is black with blue claws. Rhinox is darker than his toy, and there's some slight differences in patterns and colors and shades (Dinobot is almost pink), but the Beast Wars show were very Show Accurate overall.

Oh, and Airazor is also very different, her toy is brown and yellow, as a robot she's mostly gold, silver and black.

Actually, Ghilz, a lot of the early Beast Wars toys were not very close to the show, outside of the names. Either minor things like color or major differences like which head characters representing Deluxe figures had on the show, or even alt mode species; the Optimus and Megatron toys were actually a bat and a crocodile at the time this episode aired.

Just a quick correction sorry if I sound nitpicky but it's Tarantulas

I adored this show as a kid, especially as along with Spider-Man The Animated Series it was my introduction to the whole concept of story arcs.

I've heard that the CGI was so primitive during the first season that a maximum of four characters could ever be onscreen at once. I'm sure that caused some headaches for the directors, but I never noticed it.

Actually you see all the predacons and most of the maximals in one shot◊ in the first episode, so I doubt that is actually true. That said, the CGI isn't that great in season 1, but as I said, it was really a precursor thing at the time, and CGI is one of these things that ages badly. Season 2 and 3 look much better, and Beast Machines still looks better than some modern CGI shows.

Quick question - will you talk about the prequel animation as well, when the time comes?

I was considering if I should or not. I was leaning towards not doing it since it would open the door to then doing the comics (and I really don't want to do those), but I guess if it is wanted, I could cover it at some point.

Ugh, the way that Terrosaur says "terroize" is one of the most annoying things ever. I get that they were going for a pterodactyl type sound, but they really should have noticed that it would get on people's nerves upon hearing it over and over and over. Really makes me glad that transmetal foreshadowing in the season 2 premiere never came to anything.

Terrosaur and Scorponok were unpopular, and on re-watching, it readily becomes apparent why both were dropped at the end of season 1. Terrosaur was a Starscream whom Megatron had successfully gelded. Scorponok is a boring yesman and boot licker.

Quickstrike and Rampage were at least more fun to watch.

Presumably, the Maximals mined the Energon under their base and broke the link.

Or anywhere in between the two bases.

Quick note: The official name of both the Maximals' repair chambers and the Predacons' equivalent repair tanks are CR Chamber or Restoration Chamber. And yes, they really did get a lot of use from those things, didn't they?

Hmm, this LB might just be incentive enough for me to put in those Beast Wars DV Ds I got months back but never got around to watching... And then I'll have to go back and add my own commentary to yours in the comments... ;-)

I know the names :) Actually, only the Maximals are called that.The Predacons' are also called CR Tanks due to their pool-like form (I always though they looked like giant deep fryer what with the metal sieve lifting the Predacons out of them.) CR is supposed to stand for Creation/Restoration.

And with Waspinator alone the Predacons' CR Tanks probably got some sort of mileage record.

More comments is always fun!

And of course, Tigatron is voiced by Blu Mankuma, who is better known to kids these days for a certain cool jazz musical number.

"She's an evil enchantress, and she does evil dances..."

That would be the case, except Blu Mankuma is uncredited for that role (as well as that of the Red Dragon), so I doubt he is "known" all that much :-P

I feel like I should point this out; this episode is one of a few where Scorponok's eye changes from red to yellow.

I really appreciate that they made an effort to explain why Megatron keeps The Starscreams around in this series, as he likes to keep his wits sharp by dealing with their betrayals. And Blackarachnia was easily my favorite character as a kid, the first time that happened with a female character.

...well, if the episode listing for the Season 1 collection is right, the 2011 DV Ds do follow this episode with A Better Mousetrap. I can't say for sure about the older discs, since I only got the first volume of those, which covered Beast Wars, Part 1 to Power Surge (by contrast, the 2011 discs are in two 4-disc volumes: The first is Season 1, the other is Seasons 2&3).

There's two version of the DV Ds. Those by Rhinomation (Which came in two forms, the volume format, and the entire season format, which are those I have), and those by Madman Entertainment. There were also VHS releases.

The VHS and the Rhino DV Ds (Both in Volume and in Seasons) have the order messed up. Madman, the latest release (with commentaries with some of the worst sound capture) have the good order. All the others have it wrong, switching A Better Mousetrap and The Probe.

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I think the reason Megatron keeps Terrosaur around isn't just for the fun - it's an added bonus, but it's also because he literally can't afford to dispose of him. Losing Terrosaur means losing one of his fliers, and with Optimus being severely more powerful than Waspinator, this would put him at a disadvantage. On top of that, losing Terrosaur puts him at a numerical disadvantage. And there's always the risk of Terrosaur pulling a Dinobot and switching sides. Megatron has no choice but put up with Terrosaur, so he uses the entertainment as an excuse.

But at least he does do something to stop his attempts to undermine his leadership, unlike his namesake who put up with Starscream despite Starscream not being critical to the balance of power AND being a constant threat.

Actually, the 2011 DV Ds I'm talking about are from Shout Factory. The TF wiki doesn't list them, but you can find them on Amazon (I, however, managed to find them at the local Walmart).

Huh. Cool. I got the old fashion Rhino ones.

Poor Waspinator, ever given the shaft in-universe...

Less shaft. More like a stick of dynamite!

The "Stealth Mode" transformation is simply a quieter version of the normal transformation.

I think this the first time Scorponok has shown a tiny semblelance of inteligence as well. He may have botched it but he did create the Cyberbee and the virus.

Heck, I think it's the ONLY time he's shown to be the science type. At least off memory. He's shown repairing a computer in "Dark Design", otherwise I can't think of anything.

The voice over at the beginning confirms the idea raised by Rhinox in the pilot: They've traveled in time.

And yet, we won't get confirmation on where they are until season 2...

And as for the next episode... There's stupidity, but not as much (I mean, it's a Hasbro cartoon, there's generally at least one stupid moment an episode).

Scoponok not using the cyberbee is understandable. Guy's stupid as hell.

as for the next episode... There's stupidity, but not as much (I mean, it's a Hasbro cartoon, there's generally at least one stupid moment an episode).

True. This episode has only one stupid moment. It just happens to be as long at the episode itself. The next one is admittedly better. But it's still a Failure Is The Only Option which makes it far from good.

Scoponok not using the cyberbee is understandable. Guy's stupid as hell.

Hehehe. But then again, so is everyone in this episode. Except maybe Tigatron and Dinobot. I like to imagine Dinobot was thinking of using the laser the whole episode, but kept his mouth shut so the others wouldn't get back to Cybertron.

This was pretty successful to me as far as Failure Is The Only Option episodes go. The whole fun of it is knowing full well that this isn't the ending, so there has to be some kind of twist to the situation, but you're not sure what it could be. See also, Eye of the Needle from Voyager.

Actually, there are two moments of major stupidity in this episode:

First, the Maximals assumed that Megatron wouldn't be willing to play dead to get what he wanted. This was the big one, since without it the rest of the episode get changed.

Second, Dinobot went and forgot what he learned from playing Crysis (or he's never played it in the first place, either works). A decent Crysis player will tell you that cloaking and going around an enemy is often more effective than using armor and shooting the hell out of them. You pointed out the result of avoiding this screwup in the blog.

I am probably not gonna cover the prequel short "Theft of the Golden Disk". For one, it would require covering a fair amount of comic-only / Botcon-exclusive material (like Cryotek) which I don't want to do, because I don't really care for it (and I dislike Cryotek). For two, it really doesn't bring anything to one's understanding of the show. For three... It's not even that good.

I love when Optimus mocks Megatron's Verbal Tic. "This time Megatron might have bitten off more than he can chew. Yessss."

Rhinox does it too.

On a real life note, it's interesting that Hasbro never did release a Rhinox toy with his Predacon color scheme; maybe they thought they couldn't get away with such a minor redec so quickly (and by the time they thought they could, there would have been no real point except nostalgia for this episode)?

Also, this episode really shows it's age, and not in a good way. There's a reason they mentioned a two gig drive at the end: Under Winindows 95's VFAT file system system, that was as large as a single drive partition could be; it wasn't until 98 that everybody got FAT 32 and could break that limit (although, with XP's switch to an NT-based kernel, NTFS is actually used for hard drives now). Mac users didn't have as many issues; HFS could handle drives larger than 2 GB, but one of it's quirks meant that it got more impractical the larger the drive got (which was not fixed in HFS Plus, but the effect of it was simply reduced).

^HISTORY!

Yeah. I avoided mentioning the hard drive thing on purpose, but it it is so true it shows the show's age. ReBoot has similar moments too.

You know just saying I've read at least two fanfics that explore the idea that Waspinator was Shrapnel. One is called "He Lives In You" by Shini02 and is on fanfiction.net. The other is an entire series called "The Waspinator Chronicles" by Dru (that builds up around this discovery, though it stopped just short of the reveal and is now a dead fic) and you'll have to use google to find it.

IIRC, Transformers do have DNA though its called CNA and was introduced in the Marvel Generation 2 comics.

"Airazor is a dude in the Japanese dub."

That should make a certain scene in season 2 quite interesting.

This is one of the episodes that's stuck with me the most. As a kid I was on the edge of my seat with worry for the dying Maximal, and even now it holds up very well.

It does! I'll get to it soon :)

Ah, Airazor. One of my favorite season 1 characters, thanks in large part to getting some really good lines.

What, I was a preteen boy when Beast Wars was first running. I have fond memories of watching it in the morning before going to school... And some not-so-fond memories of getting in trouble for getting to school late, because I really should have left the house halfway through the episode, if not when the episode started.

(And in case you're wondering if a preteen me found Airazor "interesting", I didn't. I'm pretty sure the dub!Sailor Senshi had that honor, since the Sailor Moon dub was also on in the mornings, if you tuned to the right channel at way-too-early in the morning...)

Personally, I think the TF wiki has the best response to the "hollow moon" thing: Call in Lucy Suzuki, from Cybertron.

.... The cloud was BLACK. all the others were white. Way of drawing our attention to it, also in universe how it was found so easily.

Actually both clouds are dark grey. The only difference is this one happens to fly really low (which, as the beginning of the episode shows, isn't a constant). So it's still amazing luck that by the time those two have walked all the way to the arctic they happen on the cloud just as it's flying at almost ground level, when it's been shown to sometimes be above the mountain peaks. See here◊

Re-wrote part 1, it's up again.

I kind of love that there's a Japanese singer/band named Banana Ice. It's like they tried to rip off a regrettably successful American singer and ended up making it even more pathetic.

Boy, did Tigatron get on my nerves in this one. Even as a kid, I wanted to throw something at him at the end, when he's preaching over how the Maximals were given a paradise but couldn't help destroying it. You want to save some of your anger for the Predacons who forced you to shoot back, Birdemic wannabe guy?

Why would they do that to Beast Wars.

Why would Japan purposefully choose to fuck up part of its own.

Why.

nomuru2d: Revenge for all the times us westerners did it to an anime?

It's time for THE ROYALTY'S! Greatest servent to show up.

^^ I agree with Hunter XD

FILLER GLORIOUS FILLER

This was actually the first episode I ever saw. It's amazing in retrospect that I wanted to keep watching.

This episode explains why the maximals can fight well in there alt modes.

I had a big fear about suddenly going blind as a kid, so this one really got to me. Especially the part with the snake; I found it all too easy to imagine myself dealing with one of those, not being able to see, and not having Rhinox around to deal with it.

Did they ever explain why Starscream's head colors were fucked up when showing his body? XD

I don't have any firm answer. My best guest? They went for a comic colorscheme (as per his white legs and feet) and made the head a mix of the g1 head (which was blue or grey depending on the page) and g2 head (which was white◊).

Or they based it off some of Marvel's promo art, that made it kinda look like this◊

Ahh, one of the most infamous episodes in the whole series. Even today I still get a chuckle out of Megatron's overblown scream as he's farted to near-death. It's like David Kaye was fully aware that this was a comedic episode from the first script read and just decided to make Megatron sound as outrageously hammy as he could.

I would go as far as saying this is the quintessential Beast Wars episode.

I'd disagree, no other episode really sacrifice their plot to this extent for the purpose of jokes.

Perhaps not quintessential, but it is among my all-time favorite episodes of Beast Wars.

Ugh, this episode. Though for some reason it didn't permanently sour me on Tigatron, maybe because I was just able to file it under discontinuity. Tigerhawk, on the other hand...

Oh, and Blu Mankuma is now playing Astrid's father on Fringe. Pretty cool to finally see him in the flesh after loving his voice for so long.

I get the feeling Waspinator was only acting stupid just to piss off Terrorsaur.

It took so much guts to end the season this way, with no idea if they'd get renewed. Maybe a little gambit to get the fans in torches and pitchforks mode if the studio dithered on renewal.

Ending in cliffhangers even if you don't know you will be renewed isn't new. In fact, it is pretty common (Doubly so nowadays, look at how many shows end on a cliffhanger).

That said, what impressed me the most is putting debris of Optimus clearly visible. Guess they didn't want us to spend the summer wondering.

I am actually not even sure if they did not know they'd be renewed for season 2. I know this was true for season 2 to 3, and 3 on (they weren't renewed), but for season 1 I do not know for sure, so I didn't comment on it. Not that it'd surprise me. The reduced episode length for season 2 probably hints that Hasbro wasn't crazy about the show.

Megatron had gotten so used to having traitors and idiots under him that he failed to take into account what a competent, loyal minion like Inferno might do. It says something when the loyal minion is the one nearly screwing up Megatron's plans by preventing the traitors from getting as far as he needs them to.

Optimus died, although even the first time through everybody knew that wasn't going to last.

So ends the first season. It had some really good episodes and some not so good ones. Season 2 is where it really starts picking up, I rewatch a lot more of seasons 2 and 3 than season 1.

Anyway, good job so far, I've really enjoyed your liveblog.

Thanks!

...I'm tempted to make a reference to the TF wiki's The Many Deaths of Optimus Prime here. And how Primal didn't see it coming, when by all rights he should have...

Richard Newman was on Friendship is Magic today. With him and Blu Mankuma down, who'll be the next Beast Wars actor?

Oh man, season 2... the finale for this STILL rings in my head. That shit was mindblowing when I was a kid, and I can't wait for you to cover it. : D

Another thing is that Terrorsaur was not supposed to fall in the lava at all. As you said Waspinator was supposed to die but along with that Terrorsaur was supposed to live. They still kept their options open.

Never heard that (Though it is possible). Seeing as by the later half of season 1 they seemed to have run out of uses for Terrorsaur (besides being "one of the dudes that flies") killing him was the good move either way.

And no one will miss Scorponok. I think his death must've bump the average IQ of the Predacons up.

The fatal flaw of the Predacons is that they are all stupid, insane, treacherous or some combanation of the three.

And the fatal flaw of Scorponok is that he's just boring compared to Waspinator, Inferno, and later Quickstrike (The stupid members of the 'cons).

But yeah, After the Storm always felt weaker to me than the Coming of the Fuzors two-parter, which were the episodes that really felt like they started the season.

And of course, somehow Scorponok was the one Beast Wars character who actually made it into the Michael Bay films. Though everyone would probably agree the others are better off.

^^ I think you mean Aftermath not After the Storm.

^^There is a non beast wars Transfomer named Scorponok. It was bassed on him

There are Several. The comic version of Scorponok (G1) became rather legendary in the fandom as a Magnificent Bastard and an Anti Hero, where he gave his life to stop Unicron (the cartoon one has like 5 min of screentime in a goddawful episode). Which is why there's almost always one Scorponok in every continuity.

It's kind of a shame that this one was boring. As he had a pretty cool disign

Quickstrike is the only Predacon to have all three of their traits. He is Insane, treacherous and stupid.

Silverbolt really gets on my nerves, even more than Tigatron. Especially when he starts dating Blackarachnia and is completely hypocritical about her.

I adore the ending of this episode. They go completely for the old timey western feel just for the hell of it, and somehow it really works.

An alternate possibility for Quickstrike is that he was actually a Predacon taken prisoner by the Maximals and kept in a stasis pod. For storage, much like Rampage.

I wrote this about Quickstrick on IMDB's Beast Wars forum, and now that I actually look at it, I was really channeling Roger Ebert here:

"I HATED, HATED, HATED, HATED Quickstrike so much. He would always go "I'll beat you up real bad" every episode, and never, EVER, won. When Waspinator lost, I laughed and felt pity for him all at the same time. With Quickstrike, I don't get any of that. He was, hands down, the most one-dimensional character on Beast Wars. He wasn't much of a fuzor, either. Silverbolt was a fair balance between eagle and wolf mannerisms, but Quickstrike was all scorpion with not even a trace of cobra in his mannerisms"

Yeah, Quickstrike is pretty terrible. Also he suffers from "I have no real hands" syndrome which I always disliked.

Quickstrike is pretty much that iconic Brute personality that started back with Rumble and Frenzy in G1 (much like how Terrorsaur was the Starscream or Thrust expy). Let's see Hair-Trigger Temper? Check! Blood Knight? Check! Serves little more as Dumb Muscle to throw at the heroes and does so in a very Leeroy Jenkins like fashion? Check!

Rubber ducky, you're the one~ : D

I don't think that Quickstrike even won a slingle fight in the show.

He did knock out Rattrap this episode! Otherwise I do think you are right.

You know, I always did like the story arcs involving Dinobot, even in the third season. The concept of fate versus free will is always an intriguing one for a children's show to handle, if done properly, and I'm still glad that Beast Wars managed just fine.

Y'know, it would've been nice if we'd gotten more scenes overall with interaction and backstory between Tigatron and Airazor. After all, according to the canon comics, they were partners back on Cybertron before Megatron critically damaged them, forcing Rhinox to move their sparks into blank protoforms.

Not really partners, so much as Tigatron commandeered Airazor's ship and she let him coz she found him hot.

of course, that comic was written by other people over a decade after the show, so it's not like the creators of Beast Wars knew about it (unless they are Time Lords). And it's canonicity is questionable at best (since no one ever mentions another ship pursuing the Darksyde beside the Axalon).

And that's that. I don't know why, but I've never really dug this two-parter. In fact, I think these are the only episodes in season two that I haven't rewatched half a dozen times.

Ah, well, things are going to get real in a hurry. Up next is Bad Spark, followed by one of my all-time favorite episodes, Code of Hero.

Looking forward to your take on them.

Hell, I'd go so far as saying Code of Hero is one of the high points of the entire franchise.

Regarding if Rattrap knew or not about X, wasn't that Rattrap and Rhinox in Optimus's flashback restraining X?

The greatest moment of the entire franchise, hands down. There's a reason it's the number one listing for the Western Animation section of Dying Moment Of Awesome.

It only goes uphill from here. Hope you're doing alright, and hope to see another entry soon.

Been a busy week, next update is either tonight or tomorow, with the season finale done by sunday.

Okay, I know Megatron has to deal with a lot of treachery with his own units, but it's supposed to be Dinobot vs 6 Predacons :p.

Wow. That is a trolling gone near-horribly wrong right there. Glad that it eventually got sorted out.

Trolling?

The April Fool's joke.

I think the script mentions her spark was unstable, which could explain why they don't transfer her to a new body. She probably couldn't survive the transplant, at least with the field medic level technology they have (maybe back on Cybertron, but that's a long ways away).

Oh, the confusion in that last bullet point.

BEEP BOOP WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON

I tweaked that last bullet, hopefully it's less confusing...

Sides?

Substitute "factions" with "sides," and you'll get the point.

A shame about Inferno. He was such a delightful nutcase. But yes... the last 2 parts of this season were two of the best episodes ever in my opinion.

Memorable, yessssssss... Cannot wait for the recap on season 3 to start. : )

I think Beast Machines is worth it for just one scene:

"Does that means spiderbot not want to go steady with Waspinator?"

Oh lord, that video. I haven't laughed like that in a while. XDDDD

New work schedule means updates will be less regular. I do plan to continue this.

Welcome back after all this time. : )

Thanks

Just read through your whole blog, glad you're picking it back up. Look forward to the rest of the series.

Yeah, all 12 remaining episodes, and likely one or two afterwords posts.

^^ Thanks! Yeah, shouldn't leave it unfinished.

^ Prolly two. A final post on the season/series and likely one sort of giving an overlook at Beast Machines. (AKA that thing we don't speak about that isn't that other thing we don't speak about)

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Maximals losing Sentinel to the Preds meant that they were forced into a defensive footing for pretty much the rest of the series.

Its the case on paper, but really, look at season 1 and 2 and think, were the Maximals ever not on the defensive except for absolute necessity? The only time they'd attack the Preds was when Megatron was dicking with them (IE: Need Cure for Rhinox. Must Rescue Rhinox from Predacon Reprogramming, Need Mac Guffin that blocks energon from the ship that Megatron Stole, Optimus gone bonkers on Steroids, need to go rescue him). The only two times I can think of them ever being aggressive and attacking without Provocation is during the truce when they sent Tigatron to the Darksyde to figure out Megatron's plans and with Ravage's help. That and Dinobot's stealing of the Golden Disk, but Dinobot always was the token aggressive teammate.

Plus they aren't so much on the defensive that later this season Cheetor and Rattrap can't spend time teaching the cavemen...

lol Left The Background Music On

I loved infected Optimus. That was hilarious to watch.

Are you gonna finish up the rest of the season?