I got interested in this after seeing a couple of threads on it last week, and decided to give this a go.
I was really enjoying it, but there's this really weird tonal shift like 2/3's into the first season, where the action goes from pretty cool and serious to extremely out of place slapstick/cartoony, with silly noises, bulging eyes, bodies getting flattened and etc, like some goofy Tom & Jerry violence instead of the actual battle damage and serious action sequences of earlier episodes.
Did something happened during production? Were they told to tone down the violence or something halfway through airing the show? And most importantly, does it get any better during Season 2?
Julian Stewart
Season 2 is where things get REALLY interesting and you see where Beast Wars fits in the main canon
David Lee
Isn't it also where the you know what episode is?
Jack Gomez
But does the action/tone of the series reverts to its early season 1 levels or do they maintain the cartoony violence? It's pretty jarring to see these silly BOING-OING-OING moments after having watched episodes with great serious scenes like Dark Designs and Double Jeopardy.
Jordan Sullivan
After the first season finale there's a pretty hard shift into a darker tone. Wuzbinator will still comically blow up now and then, but that's only because they need some levity because an autistic robot just killed himself to stop everyone from killing each other.
Dominic Hughes
Its half and half really. One of the most real fights is between Depth Charge and Rampage. And when people do die, they die HARD
William Gonzalez
Alright, I'll keep on watching then.
Wyatt Watson
This is like the 4th or 5th Beast Wars thread this week. Really cool to see people watching it for the first time. This was my shit when I was a kid. >tfw when I'm listening to the intro music right now
Liam Adams
So who was their "Starscream"? Because early on it was Terrorsaur, and then it magically became Tarantulas
Jonathan Hughes
Terrorsaur obviously. Tarantulas was actually competent and not a bumbling moron who announced his plans to usurp their leader right in front of him.
Michael Butler
All of them. Literally the only truly loyal subordinates Megatron has are Scorponoks and Inferno.
Samuel Reed
So was it ever explained why Tarantulas had such a raging hateboner for the Vok? Last time I checked they never tied that plot thread despite it being very crucial to the plot.
Christian Sullivan
Starscream is their Starscream, G1 Starscream exists within the show
Tarantulas is a bit too competent/has his own thing going on that's above even BW Megatrons head, Starscream was treacherous but he was still a sniveling little fucker who got beat up by his boss at every turn, Terrorsaur is a bit closer to him out of the two
David Murphy
Airazor>Blackarachnia
Xavier Cook
She needed more screen time
Daniel Thomas
Thats cheating though, but yeah looking back, Terrorsaur fit that role. And now he and Scorpinok are melted scrap She was cute
William Foster
Lava didn't do shit to pic related and his pals
Dominic King
Didn't do shit to Beast Megs either. Terrorsaur and Scorponok were just losers.
Leo Cruz
>OP says they're only 2/3s of the way through season 1 >thread immediately starts spoiling details of episodes past that You know Sup Forums, i expected you to have better spoiler-keeping skills then the tfw2005 boards, but here you've gone and disappointed me.
Sebastian Allen
two words: canada you see this in a lot of canadian and british shit, they have no sense of shame about boingy cartooniness. in any case yes it gets much better, but every so often (mostly involving waspinator) it happens again
Chase Bell
There's a lot of "sure, why not" in beast wars canon among it, megatron once referred to tarantulas derisively as "unicron spawn" it wasnt meant to be taken literally, just an insult, but it became basically canon because it's interesting, and you notice he has no compunctions about actions that would wipe out the autobots and decepticons, because his ancestry comes from elsewhere obviously the vok have some history with unicron
Jaxson Baker
whoops
Luis Phillips
Sorry for this but i didn't think making a thread was the best idea since my question is similar to OP, i have been watching G1 for the first time and i am up to season 2 with the episode where Astrotrain pretend he's a god or take over a planet/moon and i was wondering if there are episodes where the stories is self contained and don't add to the seies plot? If so any that are still worth watching, any that it doesn't hurt fun in anyway to skip?
Landon Diaz
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Alexander Morris
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Gavin Jackson
I always get a big kick out of watching series like Beast Wars and Reboot now. An entire season of Reboot had to be delayed because they needed to use all their computing power to render Beast Wars.
Now I could render an entire episode at Beast Wars quality in Daz Studio in real time on my laptop. If I could travel back in time with my laptop I could have made some good money rendering their shows for them.
Nathaniel Russell
YTV threatened to pull their funding if they didn't tone down the violence. But once they saw the ratings were higher with the darker storylines they changed their tone.
Jacob Thompson
Season 1 was basically just the crew winging it until they figured out what they wanted to do. Hell the writers admitted they basically knew nothing about Transformers when they got the job
Juan Jones
Season 2 is mostly serious but it has its share of screwiness. It's for the most part well placed, though. Season 3 on the other hand goes ass-deep into Looney Tunes slapstick. It's a tonal mess, cause it has some of the darkest stuff in the entire show, but often it's followed immediately by something that's overly cartoony and obnoxious with little sense of self-restraint.
I believe that after S2, the writers were actually asked to tone down the serious stuff, and you can really feel that S3 had very little coherent vision behind it. One of the most serious planned episodes even got scrapped and replaced with a cheesy, pointless filler episode that comes off as something of a self-parody. Basically, if the zany stuff from the first season threw you off, there's a good chance you'll have a difficult relationship with season 3.
Brody Nelson
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Samuel Peterson
Recently watched all of G1. Honestly, there's really no reason to watch most of the episodes: it's literally just a silly toy commercial from the 80s. The only episodes I'd recommend watching if you're really interested in G1 are, in order:
The 16 episodes in the first season The Key to Vector Sigma Part 1 and 2 War Dawn The Movie Five Faces of Darkness Part 1 through 5.
That's it. If you want to watch the rest, go for it, but there's really no overarching plot, it's just a silly episodic 80s Saturday morning cartoon.
Noah Walker
That's not very encouraging. Are there any episodes from Season 3 you'd recommend outright skipping?
Ayden Perez
>Literally the only truly loyal subordinates Megatron has are Scorponoks and Inferno Poor forgotten Waspinator.
Isaiah Watson
>And now he and Scorpinok are melted scrap Who says they're not just encased in rock like Han Solo?
Ryan Sullivan
Best Megatron, only redeemable factor of Beast Machines
Camden Reed
Shame they never came back as Terrornok to fight Tigerhawk
Adam Sanchez
>An entire season of Reboot had to be delayed because they needed to use all their computing power to render Beast Wars. Any source on that?
>After severing ties with ABC following the second season, the show actually reached a greater number of households through syndication It was ABC that nearly doomed the show. Its syndication on Cartoon Network's Toonami block is how they were able to secure funding for Seasons 3 and 4. BW could've reached a greater audience had it been picked up by CN as well.
Caleb Sullivan
Where are you watching it?
Grayson Harris
>Are there any episodes from Season 3 you'd recommend outright skipping? You'll regret it once you finish the show.
Carter Lee
This is worse than when people ask for Star Trek episode guides. Just watch the show. If you like it, keep watching it. If you don't, stop or skip an episode.
OP's question is reasonable, asking if the tone continues based on what they've seen. Asking about specific episodes in specific seasons to skip is like trying to discuss a movie but only having seen a fan edit.
Is your time so valuable you can't spend 18 minutes of time you've already committed to watching a children's cartoon on an episode that may not be up to your standards?
Jackson Myers
Yeah it was really weird at least here. We didn't have CN until about 2001 where I live so Beats Wars was always on Saturdays at 9 and randomly 2:30 weekdays on FOX. Seemingly on a school break out of nowhere and after a long hiatus of the last season FOX aired the final five episodes in that 2:30 weekday slot.
Ryder Foster
Most of them add to the loose plot, but Go with the Flow is perhaps skippable. That's the aforementioned replacement ep, and it feels like a more self-aware but still silly 80s cartoon episode. It's fun at least and has some memorable lines.
My main problem with S3 was actually how bad the pacing got. Some episodes have only a couple minutes' worth of plot stretched to 20 mins, and certain subplots are too drawn out and end too abruptly. There's lots of character buildup, and then the show realizes it needs to wrap up some older subplots and then end.
Gabriel Davis
Being played for laughs doesn't change the fact he tried a You and I can rule together
Tyler Reyes
>My main problem with S3 was actually how bad the pacing got. Some episodes have only a couple minutes' worth of plot stretched to 20 mins, and certain subplots are too drawn out and end too abruptly. There's lots of character buildup, and then the show realizes it needs to wrap up some older subplots and then end. This wouldn't have been an issue if CN picked up BW too. An additional season to flesh out some characters would've helped their personal arcs tremendously. S3 is still pretty good but the creative team felt rushed by the producers.