https://www.newsfromme.com/2019/03/1...itillio-r-i-p/



Beast Wars writer Larry DiTillio has passed away.

DiTillio's contribution to Transformers cannot be understated, particularly in the way that he was so successfully able to execute the concept of World Building to a Transformers television series. World building was something that had existed before, particularly with the likes of Simon Furman in the G1 comics and even David Wise in the G1 cartoon, but Wise didn't do it as well as DiTillio did because G1 writers never really collaborated with each other.

DiTillio brought a level of world building never seen before in a Transformers cartoon. And furthermore, he was doing it retroactively because he didn't work on G1. Both DiTillio and Forward made the conscious decision to research Generation 1 and Generation 2 canon to try and build some basic knowledge of Transformers lore for Beast Wars. And we know that they even sought advice from the fandom, something that was unprecedented! Sure, they didn't get everything right, but how awesome was it that they cared enough to make that effort! They didn't have to. Beast Wars could've easily been a reboot which makes things so much easier for writers because they don't have to worry about continuity maintenance.

And this is something that's been lost today. Everything's a reboot now and nobody cares about putting in the work to maintain a long running continuity (except IDW). And there was so much more world building that DiTillio had in mind for Beast Wars that never came to light because the series was cancelled after its third season, and we know that Beast Machines (which DiTillio never worked on) wasn't nearly as good as Beast Wars.

Transformers exists today because of Beast Wars, thanks in no small part to the work of Larry DiTillio. We all know that Beast Wars saved the Transformers brand from extinction in the mid to late 1990s. And to this day I still regard Beast Wars as the best screen story ever written for Transformers. No other TF TV series can hold a candle to it.