Transformers: Age of the Primes toyline discussion || update: stock renders of upcoming Alpha Trion, Micronus, Flatline, Fireflight, Skydive, ++

[LordGigaIce]

One thing I liked from The Allspark Almanacs was the backstory they gave for the Autobots and Decepticons in the Animated universe.

The Autobots began as a subgroup of Protectobots, who began as a subgroup of Guardians.
The Decepticons, meanwhile, arose out of the Destrons.

You can speculate that the Maximals will eventually arise out of, and supplant, the Autobots and the Predacons will supplant the Decepticons.

Sabrblade mentioned a possibility where the main cast wakes up after four million years and Cybertron's populated by Maximals and Predacons... hell... why not?

Maybe with Optimus and Megatron and their inner circles just gone Cybertron descended into chaos. New factions and conflicts emerged.

I'm just spitballing but maybe borrow a bit from Beast Wars Uprising?
By the time our main Autobots and Decepticons wake up- long after the natural life cycle of Cybertronians- Cybertron is in an unrecognizable state. Maximals and Predacons have unified into a tenuous power sharing government, as a
result of them having to combine their forces to fight off the Vehicon Apocalypse.

The Autobot and Decepticon crews waking up on Earth is very dangerous because the re-appearance of the Prime, the Matrix, and the demagogue Megatron threatens to tear this tenuous peace apart just when it seemed like it was about to take.

Cybertron wouldn't be a ruin but the locales our characters know- like Iacon and Kaon- might be, or might be completely built over.
And while Cybertron wouldn't be a ruin, it may not be in the best shape with the Vehicon Apocalypse having done a number. So Cybertron is in rough shape, but it has nothing to do with the Autobot-Decepticon conflict, which would be regarded as history by this point, a war that turned to chaos that new factions emerged from.

Now some hardline Maximals, who mostly trace their lineage to the Autobots, would see the Last Prime and Matrix's reappearance as a divine sign that they're meant to rule all of Cybertron.
Meanwhile hardline Predacons, who mostly trace their lineage to the Decepticons, would see Megatron's reappearance as a sign that they should launch a new war of conquest.
You'd have reasonable sorts on each side who just wanna hold stuff together too, and try and deal with Optimus, Megs, and co reappearing.

Both Cybertron and Earth now have to deal
with the Autobots and Decepticons re-emerging, almost on equal footing.

Again just spitballing ideas...

The Matrix Flame was something that Marvel G1 introduced, a flame that was always burning as long as the Matrix bearer was alive.
Maybe have that. It goes out when Optimus goes into stasis four million years ago on prehistoric Earth. Everyone assumes the Prime is dead and the Matrix is lost.

Millions of years later the cauldron of the Matrix Flame is an important cultural site in Maximal territory on Cybertron. Maybe a shrine has been constructed around it as a heritage site.
Then one day... it erupts. A grand flame bursts out, consuming the shrine built around it. The flame has re-ignited after four million years. There's only one way that's possible. The Matrix bearer is online again.

 

[lastmaximal]

I'm not wild about that bit in the Almanacs, which like the rest of the Almanacs seemed to just want to cram name this into homage that and garnish with references. Like, it technically FITS the backstory of consumer goods/defense vs military, but eh.

But I am intrigued by the idea of using the "laying dormant on Earth" period as THE big gap between the G1 cast/era and the BW cast/era, allowing the latter to be brought in (heh) organically to interact with the former without having to start after a time gap set after the conclusion of the original series. No time travel, no other such shenanigans needed. The collapse and shutdown happen while Op and Megs and friends are on Earth, because they failed to bring Energon back to Cybertron. Maybe Shockwave and Magnus and whoever are stuck leading a low-resource war in pockets of the planet. And over the dormancy and then the Earth Years of the conflict, the Earthbound bots and cons can only get hints and signs that Cybertron is different now. Can't reach it on familiar comms, maybe an errant alien or whatever visitor to Earth is surprised to see "ancient Transformers"...

 

[LordGigaIce]

I'm not wild about that bit in the Almanacs, which like the rest of the Almanacs seemed to just want to cram name this into homage that and garnish with references. Like, it technically FITS the backstory of consumer goods/defense vs military, but eh

Of all of Sorensen's... creative... flourishes that stuff and the FFoD name drops were by far the least egregious for me. The FFoD stuff gave recognizable names to guys who should have been named all along, and this stuff? Well I appreciated how it introduced some fluidity to Cybertronian civilization. It's not just one mono culture and then BANG Great War and two sides that hate each other.
It introduced the idea that the Autobots and Decepticons came from somewhere, that their traditions weren't born of nothing but evolved through various stages of history. It was a nice bit of worldbuilding that managed to reflect real history.

But I am intrigued by the idea of using the "laying dormant on Earth" period as THE big gap between the G1 cast/era and the BW cast/era, allowing the latter to be brought in (heh) organically to interact with the former without having to start after a time gap set after the conclusion of the original series.

It's funny. G1 fans get the reputation for being unwilling to accept change, but G1 has been remixed more times than any other continuity.
Meanwhile Beast Wars always relies on the 1996 cartoon. Any attempt to revisit it is either a re-imagining of that story, or time travel to take place during that story.

But Beast Wars as an idea is really ripe to be played with, perhaps even more than G1. And since G1 and Beast Wars are linked, I think playing with both in this way could be really fun.

 

[lastmaximal]

G1 being remixed and G1 fans' reactions to the remixing are two different things, heh. Or really just fans in general...

I get why BW has been hard to retool, because the original narrative shines partly because of the separation from G1. Either the fact that the cast are so removed from what came before (and thus ripe for fresh development and attachment), or that they're interesting in light of what came before (comparison and contrast), or both (comparison/contrast, but also the "never the two shall meet" because G1 is firmly in the past, mostly thanks to the limited CGI animation budget). That last is kind of hard to shake, and you give up a lot of it when you make the casts contemporaries. It's a bit like Marty McFly staying in 1955 and living alongside his parents. (Not that there isn't a potentially interesting, reflective tale in that!)

BUT that's not to say there's nothing to gain from mining the Beast Era for stuff that can work. Transformers fiction has gotten so much from it -- CR chambers, protoforms, transwarp, etc -- and the characters are recognizable and beloved independent of the story. Just be new characters who've always been part of the narrative world is totally fine. These are interesting and fun characters, they can hang.

T30 Rattrap being a conflicted Starscream lackey with his own self-serving scheming was interesting. Animated Cheetor reframing the overeager ultra gear teenbot as a rookie cop was fun. And then there's Mesothulas. (And Earthspark Tarantulas, a take I REALLY dig.)

In general I like the idea of, if we're going to have G1 as the default or at least the backdrop, weaving everything else in there in various ways. Beast Era cast included.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

Beast Wars has also a lot less major entries, none of which were as big as the initial one(s). (BW, BW Japan, Uprising, the IDW minis and then the IDW ongoing) Oh and I guess War for Cybertron is in there as well, and Rise of the Beasts if you really want.

G1 has Sunbow, Marvel, Marvel UK, Japan G1, G2, Dreamwave, Funpub, IDW1, IDW2, Regeneration One, Prime Wars, War for Cybertron, Bumblebee/RotB, Skybound, probably some I'm forgetting.

Oh and Beast Wars/Machines is a remixed G1 too, now that I think about it.

And that's not including heavily G1 inspired stuff like Cyberverse and Earthspark, nor stuff that lifts heavily from G1, like Animated, Aligned and One.

Beast Wars just kind of has Beast Wars, and a bunch of pale imitations.

 

[Exatron]

I got a shipping notice from Pulse for Star Convoy yesterday. I don't remember seeing any notification, but I also noticed that Silverbolt from the same order is expected to ship at the end of the month. I'd been tracking him as coming in November.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Beast Wars just kind of has Beast Wars, and a bunch of pale imitations.

That's my problem with it. IDW, near the end of their time with the licence, made a big deal about rolling out a new Beast Wars story. And it was just... the Mainframe show with some OCs added.
There was nothing it had to tie into. It could have been its own thing, and given how it was a foregone conclusion IDW's time was coming to an end, it probably should have been something inventive and experimental but it wasn't.

I get why BW has been hard to retool, because the original narrative shines partly because of the separation from G1. Either the fact that the cast are so removed from what came before (and thus ripe for fresh development and attachment), or that they're interesting in light of what came before (comparison and contrast), or both (comparison/contrast, but also the "never the two shall meet" because G1 is firmly in the past, mostly thanks to the limited CGI animation budget). That last is kind of hard to shake, and you give up a lot of it when you make the casts contemporaries. It's a bit like Marty McFly staying in 1955 and living alongside his parents. (Not that there isn't a potentially interesting, reflective tale in that!)

I don't think I agree with the premise that it's hard to do Beast Wars that's not tied to the original show.

The original pack-in comic and wave one bios all heavily hinted that Beast Wars was an immediate post-G1/2 story, and that the Autobots and Decepticons had become the Maximals and Predacons through genetic experimentation.
While some people may decry this because it's tied further into G1, it is an angle that's never been explored and I think there's something fun to be had there.

There's also the idea that, mayhaps, the Maximals and Predacons are offshoots rather than descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, existing alongside them.

Or what we've been discussing here... having them arise while the main 'bot and 'con casts nap for four million years on Earth.

Or anything else. The idea of "Transfomers but they're organic animals" isn't inherently tied to the Mainframe cartoon's story or setting.

I'd like to see it get a remix like G1 did with IDW.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

IDW at least seemed to have dropped the "It's prehistoric Earth" portion, but they just didn't have enough time to actually do anything with it before they lost the license.

 

[LordGigaIce]

IDW at least seemed to have dropped the "It's prehistoric Earth" portion, but they just didn't have enough time to actually do anything with it before they lost the license.

On one hand good on 'em for that, because "it's the Mainframe show but they don't find the Ark because it isn't Earth" is a fun twist, but the problem is... well... apparent with how it played out.

You've basically got to retread season one and most of season two. You're asking your audience to revisit a lot of known ground before you get to the fireworks factory... which is a tall ask under normal circumstances. Much less when you're not really guaranteed to have the time to actually see your changes out to the end.

Ultimately I think they should have just gone all out with a total reinvention. Keep the big character names/designs/dynamics but tell a whole new story based off of the idea of organic animal Transformers.

I love the Mainframe show too, but Beast Wars doesn't always have to be just that.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

The other issue is that, well, they kind of nailed it in their first go.

G1 was fractured from the start (four separate cotinuities by the end) so it never had a definitive version, really. Some people like the cartoon over the comic, or vice versa. Some people read the UK comic and not the US one, and some people liked the Japanese exclusive shows over what we got in the US (3 episodes of Rebirth and then bupkis). There's no "one" G1 for everything to spring forth from, it was always a multiple continuity franchise, and thus always had spac

Beast Wars, on the other hand, was a solidified premise from the get-go. In a lot of ways there isn't a need for another Beast Wars because we got our defacto one already. The definitive article and everything after that is measured against.

Also, like, Beast Wars is a pretty damn good show for any era (aside from maybe the CG aging poorly), while the G1 comic and cartoon are very much products of their time. I have a lot of nostalgia for them, but I probably wouldn't recommend them unless the person was already a TF fan.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

IDW had time to do more than they did. They chose to have the story move slower than continental drift.

 

[Rhinox]

Got confirmation that Pulse shipped Star Convoy. I'm actually glad I'm able to now cancel the amazon order as I'm getting emails almost daily about an update to the expected delivery date. I don't know what is going on with that system, but it is intensely annoying right now.

Oh, and Micronus is the most original, coolest thing I've seen in Transformers in the past couple of years. I will have to get several of him.

 

[lastmaximal]

I don't think I agree with the premise that it's hard to do Beast Wars that's not tied to the original show.

I agree that there are a lot of non-Mainframe directions that can be taken. I did say "hard" but maybe that's not the word I should've used.

I think what I was trying to say is that it's clearly taken time to get onto the idea that this can just be called Beast Wars and have the "cast of organic beast altmoded characters" element and, crucially, a narrative justification that's distinct from the original "timeskip/later later generation" one. I don't know why exactly. Did writers and audiences need time to stop being so married to the idea that BW comes with the "the reason they're different is a distant future" element? Did some just need time to get perspective and not instinctively go, "that's not Beast Wars enough" in response? Was all the energy going to writing fanfic that filled in the G1-BW gap? Was there just generally not a felt need for a new take?

You're right that there's a lot of ways they could check those three boxes. Colony planet, forgotten front, a phase of the larger great war that required/requires an upgrade, parallel-to-G1 development on Cybertron, season 1 without the G1 allusions and no The Agenda, etc. Even just going from Pretenders/Micromasters to compact organic bodies in the present rather than offscreen as a history element.

 

[LordGigaIce]

The other issue is that, well, they kind of nailed it in their first go.

G1 was fractured from the start (four separate cotinuities by the end) so it never had a definitive version, really. Some people like the cartoon over the comic, or vice versa. Some people read the UK comic and not the US one, and some people liked the Japanese exclusive shows over what we got in the US (3 episodes of Rebirth and then bupkis). There's no "one" G1 for everything to spring forth from, it was always a multiple continuity franchise, and thus always had spac

Beast Wars, on the other hand, was a solidified premise from the get-go. In a lot of ways there isn't a need for another Beast Wars because we got our defacto one already. The definitive article and everything after that is measured against.

Also, like, Beast Wars is a pretty damn good show for any era (aside from maybe the CG aging poorly), while the G1 comic and cartoon are very much products of their time. I have a lot of nostalgia for them, but I probably wouldn't recommend them unless the person was already a TF fan.

I wouldn't say "from the get go."
Again, the pack-in material and wave one bios definitely tell a story that's not what Mainframe gave us. The franchise course corrected very quickly after that, but still. There's an abandoned continuity there, a "Beast Wars that never was."

Also, like, Beast Wars is a pretty damn good show for any era...

Sure, but that show's been done. How often are we going to return to that premise? Because neither IDW BW attempt improved on it. The WfC Kingdom show... existed.

The most interesting thing done with Beast Wars since the Beast Era ended was RotB. "The Maximals have been on Earth for a long time guarding ancient secrets" is a really cool idea.

But outside of that... it's just been various attempts to retread or glom onto the Mainframe show.

I'm hankering for something different. If G1 can get turned into IDW, then BW can be more than a thirty year old cartoon.

I think what I was trying to say is that it's clearly taken time to get onto the idea that this can just be called Beast Wars and have the "cast of organic beast altmoded characters" element and, crucially, a narrative justification that's distinct from the original "timeskip/later later generation" one. I don't know why exactly. Did writers and audiences need time to stop being so married to the idea that BW comes with the "the reason they're different is a distant future" element? Did some just need time to get perspective and not instinctively go, "that's not Beast Wars enough" in response? Was all the energy going to writing fanfic that filled in the G1-BW gap?

Honestly? I think it's a confluence of factors. I'm gonna take us on a journey, but I promise the destination is on point.

Hockey sweaters. The materials and cuts changed a lot from the start of the sport in the 19th century to the 1980s, but the general design principals didn't change all that much.
Then the 90s came. Sublimation tech emerged and colours like teal and purple became very popular. Todd McFarlane of all people designs an Edmonton Oilers jersey.
This stuff broke with tradition, did its own thing... but it was trendy. Trends fade.

Fast forward to today. Today a lot of teams have returned to their classic looks. Retro is in. And yet you have people who won't pipe down about how awesome these 90s looks were and how we need to embrace modernity again and go back to them.

Modernity... thirty year old designs are modern now...
We're as far away from those 90s designs as the 90s were from the 1960s.

The people who champion these aesthetics have become the very people they complain about- clinging to decades old trends and wanting everything to "go back."

So how is this related to Beast Wars? Well Beast Wars is the Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey sweater of Transformers. Bold, broke with the norms, did its own thing in the 90s.

To the people who grew up with it... THAT is the Beast Wars they want. Not the general idea of Beast Wars, not the broad strokes notion. They want THAT cartoon. Those characters EXACTLY how they were.
And because that show defied tradition, because those characters broke from the last when they were new, those people don't realize that it's a thirty year old cartoon whose story has been successfully told to its logical conclusion.

The people who were quite right to tell G1ers to get over the past in 1997 are now the people clinging to the past. At least in 1996 G1 was only twelve years old. We're more than twice that far away from Beast Wars' debut.

None of this is to say that I think people are wrong for liking the Mainframe BW show. @Undead Scottsman is right, it's an excellent show. I like it! A lot!

I'm just saying that show had its time. It had its conclusion.

The ideas of Beast Wars, however, don't have to be tied to that status quo, or that story.

I'd like to see it played with.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

If I had the chance to do a Beast Wars story, it would absolutely be early 1996 everybody is orange continuity or they would have to fire me.

 

[Superomegaprime]

I would personally keep the 4 million year thing but on Cybertron, only a few large bots would remain active with others downsizing to Micromasters to conserve energon and that techonlgy results in the Headmasters and Brainmasters when a group of Autobots having amassed enough energon, flee Cybertron to escape the endless chaos as many of those who not been seriously involved in the war have been hiding underground in hopes of escaping the confict! For the Maximals & Predacons, they are the peek result of the advancement of the downsizing of both factions as after the main confict is resolved and a uneasy truce established with the Decepticons firmly establishing a base on Char, the two sides enter in a cold war state and to limit energon consumion, the Maximals and Predacons are created, likely results from Shockwave experiements, I mean, he had four million years to develop the Space Bridge, who knows what else he hascome up with during the time outside of keeping the general status quo until Megatron's return

 

[Sabrblade]

I've already given my pitch for how I would make a new version of Beast Wars right here.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I was working on a pitch before my life went all Chernobyl. I should get back to it sometime. It was nutty.