Beast Wars/Headscratchers

Beast Wars

 * How did the term "Transmetal" catch on? Rattrap sort of made up the name when trying to explain what they'd become "We're like these... trans...metals." and suddenly everyone, on both sides, is calling it that. Mid-battle was Rattrap like "Hey Megatron, by the way, these new forms? We're going to be calling them Transmetal. So, y'know, pass it on." Also, Rampage. His name was originally Protoform X and that's how all the Maximals originally referred to him. Then Megatron decides to rename him Rampage for some reason, and the Maximals, who missed the random renaming and already have a name they associate with him, start referring to him by that name too? Why?
 * Names in general are strange on this show. In the first episode, everyone who arrived on Earth besides Optimus and Megatron renamed themselves based on their animal (this diminished in later seasons with names being a bit less obvious) with lame dialogue like "Hey, I'm a cheetah! No, wait... I'm CHEETOR!" So, what were their names before they came to Earth? And why did they all rename each other? Who accidentally crashes on a deserted planet and is like "Well, first things first, better rename myself based on the local wildlife."
 * Names for transformers are a bit odd in general. They've always been willing to abruptly change their names whenever they get a new toy...er, body, so it's not too odd here. It was just really clumsily handled in the first episodes because the writers were still finding their groove.
 * The EU states that names are a really big deal for Transformers, and part of what defines them... it's why they like to take a new name when their body changes significantly enough, sort of to commemorate the start of a new phase of their life. It's also why you know the Fallen is such a shit, because the Primes stripped him of any right to a name whatsoever, he can only be referred to by that derogatory title.
 * I assumed with Rampage there were a few off-screen engagements where they were introduced to him. IIRC, Depth Charge calls him X throughout the entire series (and when they first meet, I think Rampage says "I have a new name! Rampage!")
 * Both the Predacons and Maximals have been seen eavesdropping on the other side's base. Or it could be a simple coincidence that Megatron also came up with the word, ala Godfried Liebnitz and Isaac Newton both coming up with calculus.
 * Why couldn't Megatron come back to the valley to finish what he started after the disk was destroyed? He'd found the place already, and I don't recall the Maximals setting up any security measures.
 * It's mentioned in the episode itself; Megatron's attack forced the protohumans to leave the valley and spread out, meaning he was unable to exterminate them anymore.
 * Actually, I think it's mentioned in the next episode. But yeah, definitely addressed. Megatron and Inferno discuss it. The fact that he can no longer just destroy humanity is what leads him to go for broke and try destroy the Autobots.
 * To complete the thought, with the destruction of the disk Megatron could never again check if the future had changed to his intended specifications; thus, he would never know if he'd killed enough humans even if he did get back to hunting them.
 * Did they ever extract the original Megatron's Spark from Dragon Megatron? Just imagine how different History might have turned out if G1's megatron had no spark in need of protecting, meaning until he was blown up, he could have fought indefinately. Wouldn't such a small shift cause another minor time storm? Would the Maximals have taken the time to extract the double spark from Beast Wars Megatron?
 * They did, in a deleted scene that would've fit towards the end of the final episode of Beast Wars, almost immediately before they took off from Earth.
 * Here it is.
 * Why is the Great War and the crash of the Ark and Nemesis treated as a sort of (somewhat-inaccurate) Arthurian lore by time of the Beast Wars? It's been established that there's still Autobots and Decepticons still around, some (like Ravage) old enough to have been in those events. Surely any one of them could've set the record straight, right?
 * It's pretty explicit that transwarp drive = now we have time travel. Given how important Earth was, if the exact details were too well known, it would have been pitifully easy to go back in time and screw things up if one felt so inclined. Thus, the people who know try not to spread it around.
 * Maybe the Great Upgrade included memory modification to make Transformers forget important details.
 * Well, let me elaborate: we know that the Maximal Elders kept any and all information regarding Earth and the events that transpired therein under wraps (for some stupid reason)...yet the Predacons aren't keeping to this practice, and again, the aforementioned survivors from before the Transformers even came to Earth would have a better account of what happened; Ravage's comment to Megatron upon his capture ("I served under the original Megatron; you may have his name, but not his army") seems to indicate that his memories weren't tampered with during his upgrade. Also, both Blackarachnia and Dinobot were shown to be avid scholars when it came to their peoples' pasts, enough to recognize Starscream for what he really was (and that he was killed by Galvatron instead of protecting him from Unicron as he said he was) when he returned, so obviously there's still "The Truth" out there that needs to be discovered, and no shortage of 'bots and 'cons looking to uncover it.
 * Blackarachnia was a Maximal protoform that was "born" on Earth--she would only have access to the records that the Predacon ship happened to have in its computer. Megatron being that type of person, he probably had as much information on hand about his predecessor as was available, but not a lot about the war in general. Anyway, it's safe to assume that Transformer memories work more like human memories than computers, which is to say, they fog and change with time. Things would stand out for Ravage: Megatron, certain battles, the basic gist of what happened, but Ravage has fought a lot of battles over the years--why would that information stand out? The Maximal leadership wouldn't have to edit the records relating to the war all at once. They could go slowly, leave in the parts that everyone remembered as having happened, but fog up the rest.
 * They're robots; they've been long established to hold a complete and pristine record of the events of their lives, unless some trauma or glitch futzes it up. Which leads to another goof: it's long been established that, had the plan to kill Optimus succeeded, all of Cybertron was slagged, due to the events of the movie (namely Unicron). This accounts for why BW Megs refused to go through with it until he had no choice...but why would Ravage agree to it? I'm sorry, but I simply cannot see his undying loyalty to G1 Megs blind him enough to go through with it when he was a first-hand eye witness to the destructive power of Unicron. In fact, his story in the "Binaltech" series has him purposely keeping Optimus alive to fight off Unicron, even using his knowledge of the Chaos God's onslaught to tempt the Autobots into helping him.
 * "Some stupid reason?" Transwarp technology allows for time travel. They wouldn't just have to deal with Megatron, every vainglorious Predacon with a brain would be trying to scrap Optimus Prime.
 * I don't understand Dinobot's death at all. I mean, Waspinator has taken ten times that amount of damage before, and Megatron got blasted to pieces. How did Dinobot die from that fight? Granted it was just him against every single Predacon, but still, others have survived worse.
 * He fought past the point when he should have gone into stasis lock. Stasis lock prevents the spark from dying disengaging from the body, even through massive bodily trauma.
 * So, when Megatron and Waspinator get blasted to pieces, they go into stasis lock?
 * They should, yes. It's the robotic equivalent of getting knocked out. As long as they didn't talk during the 'being in pieces' phase, it's not a continuity error. Also, Waspinator is... a special case.
 * Waspinator was temporarily possessed by Starscream, it's possible he inherited some of the immortality.
 * Rule of Cool and Emotional Torque. Waspinators Butt Monkey status was always played for laughs, one time he was literally shredded into confetti. The writers/producers expect you to assume that so long as the spark chamber is undamaged, a transformer lives. What made Dinobots Heroic Sacrifice was that he overruled the stasis lock protocol, despite knowing what that means.
 * Thats basically it. When Waspinator gets blown up he just goes into stasis lock. Dinobot kept on fighting after he should have gone into stasis lock, and he used up the last of the energy that he had to destroy the Golden Disc. But, that entire episode was a mixture of Crowning Moment of Awesome and Tear Jerker so why should we bother complaining about the little details? It was probably the best Transformers cartoon ever made.
 * Transformers can recover from any physical injury, their bodies are repairable, replacable and simply complex machinery. What kills a Transformer is damage to their spark. Dinobot died because he put too much strain on his spark and it extinguished. He'd takena lot of damage, a strain but not fatal, forced himself to keep going despite being told flat out by his systems that doing so would cause permenent damge to his spark and then proceded to drain his power reserves. Dinobot damaged the one part of him that could not be repaired so he died. It's also worth mentioning that aparently Waspinator's spark is somewhere in his head so massive body damage affects him even less than it does other transformers.
 * The only way Dinobot's death makes sense is that Quickstrike used poison on him near the beginning of the fight, and apparently it's helluva potent. Pure physical damage worse than Dinobot took is repeatedly shown to be fixable with a few minutes in a CR chamber, but maybe poison's different.
 * It's not the physical damage. Physical damage, once again, will not kill a Transformer. Nor is it the poison, which may have contributed but wasn't the root cause. It's Dinobot pushing himself far past his limits, literally draining himself dry of everything he had. He died of overexertion, not physical trauma.
 * His systems kept telling him to enter Stasis Lock, which he said to override.
 * Which is odd in itself, because in most other cases, the Transformer is not given the choice to override or not. It just happens.
 * Knowing Dinobot's warrior mentality, he might have installed an override so he could keep fighting, while the others were all either scientists (the Maximals) or self-serving bent on survival fighters (the Predacons).
 * The above is pretty much confirmed by the fact that he seemed to be tiring and going faint before his override was triggered, but was able to focus properly once he did, despite still having systems pack in on him without warning. Clearly the tiredness was simply his systems shutting down to avoid endangering his life, which the override stopped, causing him to work normally until they finally packed up. His laser eyes also did this; they shut down when he tried to balst Quickstrike, but after the override he could use them for the one last shot.
 * Why was Inferno so insane? His pod was the only one we saw touch down without problems (Tigatron and Airrazor both crashed with severe problems, dunno what happened with Black Arachnia, everyone else crashed and suffered severe Transmetal mutations).
 * Blackarachnia was turned into a Predacon by Tarantulas, which is what he was doing to Inferno before his activation. As for why Inferno acts how he does, it's mentioned that his beast mode has overridden most of his personality, leaving him with heavy ant-like tics (such as calling Megatron his "queen", and his insane loyalty to the "colony"); why that is is unknown, but as Tarantulas was trying to reprogram Inferno in the middle of his alt-mode scanning session (and didn't get time to finish before the session completed and Inferno was reformatted), it's possible that that caused some damage in Inferno's robot/beast personality block protocols that caused the ant mode to take over.
 * His beast mode was dominating his logic circuits. Whether it was a glitch, missing data, or the mentality of ants being powerful enough to override a robot's programming isn't mentioned. It might have been a combination. Remember that the protoforms were basically "baby" Transformers, the Axalon's mission was to go to a planet, wake them up and give them alternate modes, and explore and observe.
 * Another possibility: Inferno's circumstances have nothing to do with him being crazy. He was built that way, but since he wasn't up and walking around until the pod fell to earth, got fiddled with by Tarantulas, etcetera, nobody knew that he was defective.
 * It's very similar to Animorphs: when the Animorphs turn into animals, they still have their own minds, but acquire many personality traits of the animal they morph to. In BW, Cheetor gained a love of running, Rhinox gained the natural instinct to just ram things, etc. Hell, if I recall correctly, the ant morph gave the Animorphs issues as well in terms of going insane. So there's precedent for people going insane when turning into an ant.
 * My take would be the whole mid scan reformat issue. he took out the Maximal chip, The ant form got downloaded, and then he put in the Predacon one. Making assumptions about programming, the loyalty code was missing when it was supposed to be installed, and by the time the Predacon replacement was put in, it had given up and improvised something from the rather assertive ant hive mind. All that actually got in from Tarantulas's work was the idea of being a predacon and "Terrorize!" Megatron clearly fixed some of it later, but as we saw with Rhinox's brief flipside, this will have had some bad side effects of it's own...
 * Furthermore, why didn't Waspinator go insane? Wasps are just as hive-minded as ants are.
 * Many species of wasp are solitary.
 * I find it annoying that Silverbolt only tries to redeem Blackarachnia, using the claim she was built out of Maximal parts as one of the lines he tries to do so with. That's true, but so are Inferno, Quickstrike, and, God forbid, Rampage. Yet, he doesn't do anything to try and redeem any of those (granted Rampage is a Complete Monster, but I get the idea that Inferno is redeemable after a thorough defragging of his hard drive.) Granted, those guys are much too aggressive to even let him.
 * Blackarachnia was the only one of those who was actually brainwashed. Quickstrike and Silverbolt were activated before anyone could even get there, and were simply told they were Predacons; Q.S. was clearly mean by inclination. Inferno's insanity is still open to question though.
 * Inferno was also brainwashed.
 * He was also missing so much programming that his animal instincts had more control than the brainwashing. Had he not thought he was an ant, he could have been redeemed. With his madness, warrior therapy would likely have proven insufficient.
 * Also, Silverbolt does not have romantic intentions towards Inferno, Quickstrike, or Rampage.
 * Having only seen first season, I'd have to say that Inferno would be pretty hard to redeem (as in, "pushing shit uphill" hard to redeem) because he frankly doesn't seem to listen to anyone besides Megatron. If nothing else, wasn't it a Maximal who blew up "The Colony"?
 * Well, Silverbolt didn't try to make Blackarachnia change sides til he became convinced there was SOME goodness in her. He knew she was Predacon (if unreasonably hot). He saved her life, then she rescued him, and that convinced him there was something worth saving.
 * I'd say Inferno would have been redeemable if they got rid of Tarantulus' shell programming, but not before.
 * Maximal or Predacon, the robots all have free will. Blackarchnia was already working with the Maximals by choice and voluntarily submitted to the procedure (to undo the damage she did to herself, but still). The maximals probably aren't willing to kidnap and brainwash enemies for a dangerous procedure with no guarantee that they won't just go back to Megatron when they feel like it.
 * Also, Blackarachnia's the only one who could be fixed. Quickstrike and Inferno have no interest in being fixed, and in the former's case, is just naturally mean. Rampage is of course, insane. Blackarachnia was the only one who might listen long enough to be fixable.


 * In the final episode, the characters start quoting passages from the Transformers Bible, (the Code of Primus) realizing that . However,
 * The Code of Primus was supposed to have predicted the beast wars, not catalog it, and was on the Ark and a copy on the Nemesis long before the beast wars take place. Clearly whoever wrote the code of primus just happened to write passages that vaguely fit the end of the beast wars.
 * Magmatron.
 * Waspinator?
 * Check the Wikia. The Code Of Primus is written by Primus, who transcends time and space. He's basically God to Unicron's Satan. Anyway, each part of the text is written in the language of the time, so while it all exists at any point in time, it's intelligible unless you can translate that language. That's why you can't predict too far into the future: the language it's written in doesn't exist yet.


 * The idea of the transwarp wave moving into the future as it spreads. Not only does it conveniently reach Predacon / Maximal Era Cybertron (or would have if the Tripredacus Council hadn't taken steps), but no explanation is given for why anyone picking it up wouldn't just travel back to immediately after the explosion, rather than weeks / months after it.
 * Maybe transwarp drive can only go X units of time per distance traveled? So the same trip made 1 month later would arrive 1 month after the first trip.
 * In Call of the Wild, the beast mode glitch is repeatedly referred to as an issue specifically pertaining to Maximal programming... so why is Dinobot affected?
 * Maybe Predacons have a similar glitch and Megatron's research was into whether or not the Maximal glitch was similar to theirs. Inferno believed he was an ant and Tarantulus seemed to enjoy his beast mode instincts a little too much, which supports this.
 * Dinobot reprogrammed his transformation code to be that of a Maximal, so that explains why his transformation was affected.
 * Really, it could just be that Megatron worded it poorly. There's no reason whatsoever to think it wasn't a glitch Maximals and Predacons shared. After all, Megatron never made any disparaging remarks about their glitchy programming, despite his ideas of Predacon superiority, so he probably just was referring to a glitch they all had, just using "Maximals" because they were the only ones affected in this situation.


 * Since you can just toss a damaged bot - no matter how damaged, just ask Waspy - into a CR chamber, that means a lot of knowledge of the future is on Earth circa G1 in the form of everyone who appeared to die during the series (except of course for Dinobot.) and even the existence of those whose data was lost and so have no memories should have been quite the clue that something was up. Then you have to consider the ships that weren't completely destroyed. Nothing seems to have been written about this, ever, in the decade-plus since BW.
 * Theoretically, there are traces of the Beast Wars still on earth. Unfortunately, these traces have been exposed to around two million years worth of environmental factors and are scattered around what could be generously described as "the middle of nowhere". Even if a human or cybertronian of the G1 era were to dig up, say, a chunk of the Axalon, they'd likely have no idea what the thing was and would certainly have no method of extracting any useful data from it (seeing as it's based on technology that doesn't exist yet).
 * If Rhinox, genius that he was, couldn't hook up relatively intact Maximal technology to Autobot tech to any useful effect, there's no way that G1 Wheeljack could tell what a chunk of two-million-year-weathered Maximal computer even is let alone pull any pardox-worthy information from it. It'd be like sending a laptop back to the Elizabethan era after hitting it with a sledgehammer and burying it in the mud.


 * Whose hand shoots up out of the ground at the very end of "Aftermath"? It shows Quickstrike and Silverbolt's stasis pods and the next episode starts at that same scene, but that hand is never seen again. I assumed it was Terrorsaur's and that that the lava he fell into was some kind of river that carried his damaged body downstream, but since they already had a death fake-out with Optimus it seemed clear that Terrorsaur wasn't coming back. So who was buried there?
 * It actually comes out of a crashed stasis pod. In the next episode, you can see various pieces of a Protoform lying around, so the hand either belonged to it, or that's how Silverbolt's or Quickstrike's hand looked like before they obtained their beast modes.
 * When Optimus was in the Vok pod, why did he choose Rattrap to lead, instead of Rhinox?
 * Rattrap makes a good 'underground' leader. He's more into sabotage and demolition than head-on battles. He's not above using dirty tricks, and you need to know a few when fighting Predacons. He's not likely to drag the team into head-on battles for nothing more than glory, or force them to fight to the death just for honour. And while he has a tendency to refuse dangerous orders, he really doesn't like Predacons so he was unlikely to sell the team out to Megatron. A touch of cowardice can be a very good survival trait. In the circumstances that Optimus was leaving his team in, he wanted them to survive, even if they had to take the battle into an 'underground' phase. It's just tough to see Rattrap as a leader because he's so coarse and abrasive, and also the rat alt-mode and Brooklyn accent.
 * Aside from that, Rhinox, being the ship's science officer, needed to stay behind and figure out something that could analyze the pod (preferably recovering Optimus in the process). Besides, Rhinox made it clear that he doesn't really like leading or being in the spotlight, preferring to do the vital behind-the-scenes work instead.


 * How did Rampage decimate Colony Omicron? He's powerful, but he was never shown to be that powerful. A Colony with presumably hundreds or thousands of Cybertronians should have been able to defend themselves against one crazy science project!
 * According to Word of God, Omicron was a human colony. The Cybertronian presence was somewhat limited. Naturally, they couldn't say that on a kid's show, so they left the population vague.
 * Link, please.
 * Speaking of Rampage, what episode did he quote Hannibal Lector in?