Beast Machines

Episode 3: Fires of the Past

SPOILERS AHEAD

SYNOPSIS:

A Horde of tanks gather around the Cybertron Archives and destroy
a statue of Prime holding two Golden Disks.  Then they attack the
Maximals.  RatTrap is inside trying to access any data but all the
records were deleted (backups of the information that should have been
with the council).  BlackArachnia is hit and goes into a vision.
Prime chews the Maximals out as BA goes into another vision.  She sees
a shadowy figure that all BW fans know as Silverbolt.  She slips away,
with RatTrap tailing (heh), to the Aerospace Port where she finds
records intact (another fact BA is aware of yet the other Maximals
don't seem to know about).

Megatron realizes that Vehicons (while superior physique) need to
catch up with the Maximals in terms of intelligence.
He reveals what seems to be a whole vast store of Sparks.
Bringing 3 sparks up, he embues 3 Vehicons with life.
The trio is sent to attack Black Arachnia.

At this point, we are given three key pieces of information:
1) The Autobot shuttle was shot down by Cybertronian Defenses
2) They discover the two missing Maximals (they couldn't remember before)
3) Vehicons can track Maximal old beast forms and Maximal new 
robot forms; but not Maximal new beast forms.  (The Cycles in Ep 1
were no doubt dispatched before the Maximals were reformatted.  At the
start of Ep 2, the scout homed in on them while they practiced their
transformation.)

RECAP: The other Maximals try to bail out Rattrap and Black Arachnia but the
shuttle explodes sending everyone fleeing.  BA doesn't tell Primal her
discovery until next episode.

DESIGN NOTE:

I really enjoyed the sequence were the tanks are shooting at Primal
climbimg up the side of buildings.  Very well correographed.

RECAP: I really love the 3D holographic projections from the data node
in the spaceport.  The light and zooming was very well done.
Star Trek should take a tip from this and integrate their "holodeck"
with "astrometrics" to allow characters to zoom inside of the spacial
grids they are examining.
Well, maybe BA was just leaning into the holographic projector...


IMPRESSIONS:

It seems to me that Megatron lied to Primal about the end of the
Beast Wars.  I theorize that a Virus infected Cybertron and either the
populace fled or stored themselves across Cybertron simply as sparks!
The Cybertronians designed an automated defense network to defend
Cybertron until a cure was found for the Virus.
The returing Autobot shuttle was marked with a clear Predacon hood
ornament and was shot down as a hostile.

Perhaps the nature of the Virus is a sort of Spark Reversion
disease where they revert to earlier forms and attacks the Spark.
Perhaps the Virus was Megatron's attempt to "cure" or purge the Transmetal
technology?  Perhaps the Virus came from the Autobot Shuttle itself.
When BA infected the Ark to stop Tarantulas's countdown, the Shuttle
too was infected?

Anyway, the Oracle, finding a cure, formatted the first receptive sparks
that it could draw to it.  However, Megatron found a way to commendeer
the Cybertronian Defense system.

I believe that Megatron too is contaminated with this Virus to a
certain extent but the constant machinery is not only purging his
organic elements but keeping the Virus at bay -- in essence, his own
method of re-formatting.  Where the Oracle found that a blend of
machine and organism was the answer, Megatron believes the solution
is pure machine.


QUESTIONS:

What is the Virus?
What is the full purpose of the Reformatting?
Where are the missing Maximals?
Where is the population of Cybertron?
How did Megatron rise to power?  What's with his condition?


ANSWERS:

Still plenty of latitude for our answer to the main plot questions.
We have some clues and some clarifications as to what the questions
should be.  We know that the Beast Machines writers did not ignore
the final forms of Maximals and lone Predacon in Beast Wars.
We further know BM writers are fully aware of the missing Maximals.
We know they plan to introduce more Maximals.

I am glad to see the bow to G1.  Also, I did catch the reference
to "Mainframe" and "Beasties".  Sometimes, tho, we fans make connections
where none may be intended.  However, this is mere icing on the cake
to the writers I'm sure.

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