Beast Machines

"Beast Machine? WTF is a Beast Machine?" You may be asking yourself that question.

Well, let me tell you the answer. Beast Machines are the newest incarnations of the long running Transformers toys/cartoons. If you're asking yourself, "What's a Transformer?" then you should be smacked repeatedly, but for the hell of it I'll summarize that, too.

Transformers, since 1986, have been some of the most popular toys. These are toys with two or more modes and kids have hours of fun transforming them from one form to another. If you didn't know that, like I said, you should be smacked. TFs have had couple of highly successful TV series (cartoons) and a feature length movie(cartoon again).

Back to my original subject Beast Machines, well not really. The last incarnation of TFs was the Beast Wars series, since the car vs. jet toys weren't selling. The guys and Hasbro came up with the plan of the TFs going from robot to animal modes. Well, it didn't make much sense to old TF fans till the computer generated TV series came out. It made the whole thing makes sense, so here goes another stupid summary... The Beast Wars!

OK 300 years after the first transformer TV series, everything's supposed to be peaceful, till a rogue group of Predicons (descendants of the Decepticons, the bad guys) stole a gold disk and a ship and headed out to Earth to do some not nice stuff. Anyway, the only ship that could give chase was a survey ship of Maximals (descendants of the Autobots, the good guys) After going through a time warp worm hole thing, they crash landed on a strange, primitive world. This world was rich with energon (a substance, that is basically energy crystals, that TFs feed on), but the energon was in such an amount with so much power, that if they were exposed to it too long their systems would lock up. They adopted beast forms to protect them from the energon fields. They went around bashing each others brains in for awhile like that. Hence, the Beast Wars.

Other stuff happened during that time, they found out it was prehistoric Earth they were on, some aliens tried to blow up the planet, they found the deactivated Autobots and Decepticons from the "great war" (the original TV series) which caused some very big chances for time paradoxes. Well, the Maximals tried to preserve the time stream and the Predicons wanted to alter it and after a really big battle, the Maximals won, destroying all but the Predicon leader. They strapped him to the side of their ship and headed back through the time rift to go home, signaling the end of the Beast Wars.

Ok, NOW it's time to answer WTF is a Beast Machine? Beast Machines is the title of the new series on Fox Saturday mornings, and the title of the toys. This series takes place immediately after the Beast Wars series. They get back to Cybertron (TFs home planet,) but all is not well. They are trapped in their beast forms, unable to transform with big mean mindless transformers called Vehicons after `em. Not transforming is not their only problems, they're infected with a virus that's threatening to destroy them. They run from the Vehicons deep into Cybertron where they find an ancient computer (supposedly Cybertronian legend) the Oracle, that reformats them into transformers that are not truly robots or beasts in either mode. Truly a melding of technology and organics, though one form is distinctly more beast then robot and vice versa, in either mode you see parts of the other. Because of the virus they have memory gaps, none of them remember how they got back to Cybertron or what happened.

They don't even remember that parts of their group are missing (not till episode 3 anyway). They also find out that Megatron is running the planet (OK here's a point I forgot to mention even though many Beast-whatever characters names are the same as the originals, they are not the same, it's like naming a kid after someone. It's the Beast Wars Megatron not the Original Megatron). He has, through the virus, taken over and stolen all the TFs sparks (a TFs spark is it's soul, what makes it alive). So know the Beast Machines are fighting a war against a mindless army of killing machines trying to stop Megatron, because they are the only ones left.

Side notes to Beast Machines, they had to learn how to transform on a spiritual level because of their technorganic natures. Megatron has given three Vechicons sparks (Tankor, Thrust, Jetstorm) to be "generals" to the mindless drones, Optimus Primal (Not Prime, this is the one from Beast Wars) has some new funky spiritual powers, Tankor seems to have the spark of one of the missing Maximals (I know who if you want to know go find your spoilers somewhere else), if they get angry in their robot fighting modes, they revert back to their beast type modes.

Nice little summary I give there, huh? Now from my rambling summary to my rambling comments. I like this series for the most part, deeply embedded in the TF mythos and a good story line to back it up. The computer animation is FANTASTIC! so much better then Beast Wars. There are only a couple things I have problems with: for the most part, I like the new forms, I got no problems with either Cheetor or Optimus, but some of the others don't look right. Rattrap's robot form has wheels instead of legs, what's with that? Nightscream's bat wings come out his ankles in robot mode just does not look right, I expect that toy to be awkward. This isn't a problem, in fact it's just a question, what's with Black Aracnia's 8 eye look in robot form? It just looks weird. Other then that, I like it, You got the new Beast Machine forms for the Beast Wars fans and the Vehicons will please the people who want the more classic robot/vehical TFs.

The thing is, I don't see how far this toy line can go before the TV shows seemed toy driven, but now it seems the show is driving the toys. Either way LONG LIVE TRANSFORMERS!