Growing up, I was a Gen-1 Transformers fan, but I wasn’t as committed to the Transformers as I was with GI Joe. When Beast Wars came around in 1996, I was no longer the target audience and only managed to see a half dozen or so episodes over the years. While some passionate Gen-1 Transformers fans found the series appalling, due to how their favorite characters like Optimus Prime and Megatron were based off of organic Earth creatures instead of vehicles or weapons, I didn’t find anything outright wrong with Beast Wars. Well, I suppose I did find the 3D CG animation a little weird, but ultimately I just didn’t make the time to really get into it.
That said, I was happy to get a chance to revisit Beast Wars, which has not been on the air for fifteen years. I’m really happy I did, as I have learned two things: this was an excellent series, and not just a brainless cartoon for young viewers, but one that grew into something very much driven by characters and story. It developed into a solid sci-fi show that just happened to be CG animated and marketed towards kids, but this “cartoon” is very accessible to adults and moreover, has really withstood the test of time as far as I’m concerned.
The story behind Beast Wars begins with a brief space battle that has the Maximals and Predacons crashing into Earth, although this was an Earth long before humans came around. A tremendous amount of Energon existed on Earth, and to protect themselves from the radiation of the Energon, all characters took alternate forms. Optimus became a large ape, while Megatron became a T-Rex. The Predacons consisted of a scorpion (Scorponok), a wasp (Waspinator), and a spider (Tarantulas), among several others. The Maximals included a rhino (Rhinox), a rat (Rattrap), and a cheetah (Cheetor), amongst others. Each faction maintained bases separate from one another but constantly butted heads, as Megatron and his Predacons were determined to reignite an ancient war, using the Energon on Earth to do so. It was up to the Maximals to keep that from happening.
I quickly found the characters and storylines in Beast Wars to be interesting and entertaining. A lot of this goes to quality of the production that went into the show. Mainframe focused their animation efforts on the characters, bringing them to life with detailed facial expressions and a flurry of colors and largely fluid (for the time anyway) animations. The writing of Larry DiTillio and Bob Forward created a commendable sci-fi adventure within this “cartoon” that just grew better with time. Voice acting from the likes of Gary Chalk and Doug Parker, just to name a few, was also outstanding and memorable. Take all of these factors combined and you quite simply have a show that is accessible to all audiences and as enjoyable today as it was fifteen years ago, if not more.
Shout!’s complete series set includes all fifty-two episodes that aired from 1996-1999, spread out across eight discs. The packaging is great, and includes a tougher outer box that contains two booklets (I’ll detail those soon) and two standard-size DVD cases. Each case contains four discs, the first one has season one, while the second case contains seasons two and three. The boxart for each case and all of the discs is in full color and looks great. The discs snap in securely, too. The inner artwork of each DVD case gives a handy disc-by-disc breakdown of what episodes are contained.
Extra features include several goodies on discs four and eight, and also two paper booklets. Each booklet is in full color. The first booklet is a nice episode guide or contents guide. In addition to some small still images from the show, it contains a brief synopsis of each episode, as well who the Director and Writer were for each episode. The second booklet is a twenty-four page comic called “Transformers: Timelines: Dawn of the Future’s Past”, it’s the prequel to Beast Wars.
You’ll find the on disc extra features on discs four and eight in this set; here’s a breakdown:
-Maximize! Creating A New Breed of Transformers (17m41s): Reps from Hasbro and Mainframe talk about how the Transformers franchise needed a boost in the 90s to deal with declining consumer interest. This feature was quite interesting and basically talked about how not just the cartoon but the Beast Wars IP came into being.
-Art Gallery: Thirteen still images with drawings of characters, some fully colored, most in just ink, very neat.
-Original Character Models (6m34s): Over six minutes of 3D renders of characters. Most are presented in 360 degrees, i.e., the model spins around so you get to view it from all sides.
-Remembering The Spark (18m25s): A nice looking-back feature with a Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio reminiscing.
-Original Making of Feature (10m41s): Mainframe takes us through what goes into making an episode. Plenty of vintage behind the scenes footage is shown, and some brief interviews, such as with Gary Chalk, voice of Optimus.
-Original Character Models (7m): More character models, cool stuff.
-Art Gallery: Just four more images here, but neat nonetheless.
To the summary…