Reflections on Beast Machines [SPOILERS, duh...]

[GoktimusPrime]

As most of us know, Ben Yee has a pretty optimistic/positive approach to all things Transformers - but I once had a conversation with him where he pointed out a few things that he didn't like so much about Beast Machines which I agree with...

1/ Way too much running. The Maximals spent a good chunk of the first season just fleeing from Vehicons. *yaaawwwwwn*

2/ "The seeds of the future lie buried in the past." Yes we get the point, do you have to keep hammering it into our skulls?! Just STFU already! It makes the number of times they said "With great power comes great responsibility." in the Spiderman movies look good!

...I still shudder every time I accidentally trigger off my Air Attack Optimus Primal's voice chip and he says that line.

But on a more positive note, I do like most of the new characters introduced in this series...

+ Nightscream - I didn't mind him. He was the new awkward kid on the block and he served that purpose fine. Better than Rattrap's awkwardness which was just out of place. Nightscream was a lost kid who was - as far as he and the other Maximals in the Beast Machines cartoon were concerned - the sole survivor of the Vehicon Holocaust (the other survivors who appeared in Universe never met up with him). And before then he was probably a civilian... so I can forgive some of his inadequacies. Rattrap on the other hand is a seasoned veteran of the Beast Wars - what's his excuse?

+ Botanica - the idea of a sentient plant Transformer was very unorthodox/unconventional, but I thought it was a very cool one and kudos for effort on originality. It just really sucks how we never got a toy.

+ Diagnostic Drone - as a non-living/sentient drone and non-main support character, I thought it was pretty cool... much cooler than previous AI drones in Beast Wars (Naviko, C-Navi, D-Navi - although they were kinda cute... but I like Diagnostic Drone's "English Butler" like demeanour).
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In Beast Wars, the Navi-class drones all sounded like Japanese schoolgirls. In Beast Machines, the Diagnostic Drones sounded like Jeeves.

+ Obsidian & Stryka - a whole new breed of Vehicon generals who made the Maximals fertilise their technorganic garden! I like how they had accents previously unused before in Anglophone Transformers animation. I also really like how Stryka wasn't overtly effeminate in any way. She didn't have buxom curvacious proportions (after all, not all male TFs have buff beefcake proportions either, why should all female TFs have to look like vixens?) - no lipstick (no lips!) and no stereotypical effeminate personality traits either... she was never a pansy and never a damsel in distress. But at the same time, she wasn't overtly macho either, they did let her touch on her feminine side (such as when she admired the beauty of the VR sim that Rattrap put her in). So she was still a 'woman' but in a very strong sense - a positive female role model! And before anyone says, "but she's an Evil Vehicon!" remember that these generals weren't really evil in terms of being immoral or amoral. They're moral characters because they're both doing what they think is the right thing to do - they're fierce patriots and they will serve and fight for Cybertron to the end. And since Megatron and the Vehicons were in charge of Cybertron, they followed the Vehicon directive as part of what they considered was their patriotic duty. Their morals may have been misguided, but they were noble nonetheless.

Noble/Savage: when Mutant Beasts first came out, I thought that they were a pretty lame concept (still do) but mostly because most of them were executed badly as toys. Poison Bite was okay, but the others were kinda lame. Noble/Savage is an example of how cool a character/toy like this can be when the concept is executed well - and extreme kudos to HasTak for actually making the toy based off the show model which I initially thought would've been absolutely impossible! He's also an interesting character (once Megatron's Spark was removed)... sure, cognitively he only functioned at the level of a dog, but as his name implies, despite being a savage wild beast, he was still very noble and honourable at heart. It's like Transformers meets the Jungle Book! ;D

Tank Drone #53: man, that drone was so cool. I loved how he looked the same as Tank Drone #12 but had the personality disposition (or lack of) of Tank Drone #38 who of course, has the same personality template (or lack of) as every other Tank Drone. Too bad these suckers never had Sparks or maybe they'd start developing individual personality traits like the Clones in Star Wars... but then again, that's also the reason why Megatron never gave them Sparks in the first place.