#ray fromme

STARSCREAM: Wanna bet?

Beast Wars.  I think for me, it’s the series that sort of kept the Transformer spark in me alive.  However, it’s also kind of a weird series, as I keep it segregated in my mind from the rest of my Transformers.  Allow me to explain: Being born in ‘85, by the time I was old enough to remember, Transformers was off the air.  But there was the semi-local video store, hand-me-down and a few new Transformer toys, some G1 episodes of my own, various “Action Cards”, and a very cool big brother to help fill in my imagination.  So even though I didn’t get to see G1 firsthand, I can honestly say that Transformers was definitely a part of my early childhood. But, in hindsight, I’d say Beast Wars played a very integral part in keeping me with Transformers.  Ya see, I didn’t have cable/satellite until I was 12.  Therefore, my knowledge of G2 was sketchy at best, and I only got a whole nine figures from the line when I was a kid, all Decepticons oddly enough.  However, my awesome big brother was in college at this time, and he came home on the weekends, and he usually brought me home a tape of cartoons I couldn’t see otherwise.  It was through this method that I saw that unforgettable commercial... “In the beginning, there was the beast.  But it’s more than meets the eye, it’s a robot in disguise!”  I saw it, and said to myself “Hey, Transformers, cool!”  So I watched the commercial a few times, and immediately wanted Dinobot.  However, he wasn’t first Beastformer, that honor goes to McDonald’s Manta Ray.  It took a little while for my brother to find out when Beast Wars was airing and start taping me episodes, but in the meantime I again took up renting G1 episodes from the library and getting a few Beast Wars figures in the process.  Because of this, I was mystified the first time I laid eyes on Gorilla Optimus Primal and T-Rex Megatron.  “That doesn’t make sense, they’re supposed to be a bat and a crocodile!” When I finally did get to see some select, mostly first season episodes of Beast Wars, I immediately recognized it as a good show.  As I learned the characters, I collected a few more figures, though not too many.  Years later I realized that, barring Snapper and the McBeasts, all the characters I got when I was “a  kid” were from the show!  Of course, oddly enough, I always kept my Beast Wars in a box by themselves.  Once in awhile they’d have adventures with my other Transformers, Super Heroes, G.I. Joes, etc., but for the most part they stayed separate. Anyway, even though I got satellite in ‘97, it wasn’t until around ‘99 that I finally got to see Beast Wars in it’s entirety when FOX re-aired the series.  If I recall correctly, I watched it every day it was on, and loved every episode. Time went by.  I watched the first season of Beast Machines, but wasn’t really impressed at the time.  The DreamWave comics came out, Rhino released certain episodes of G1.  This, and a very cool bootleg lot containing all G1 and CG Beast Wars/Machines episodes my brother bought, firmly cemented me into the realm of the Transformers.  I was here to stay. But what does that have to do with Beast Wars?  Well, in that lot there was a “commercial” tape that had various commercials and U.S./Japanese intros to nearly every Transformers series at the time (up to Car Robots).  It was through this that I learned about Beast Wars II and Neo.  I was intrigued.  Suddenly I wanted to know more about those characters and that Universe.  Well, for a long time that was my only knowledge.  When I finally got the Internet, I looked into Beast Wars II and Neo, though I’ve yet to see either of those series with the exception of a couple fan-dubbed episodes and the BWII Movie on YouTube.  But I did learn about all these cool non-show Beast Wars characters, and I wanted more. So for the longest time, I kinda ignored the Beast Wars CG series.  In my mind, it was done, and everything about those characters had been told.  I eagerly awaited the DreamWave Beast Wars series once I saw it would star non-show characters (though we all know what happened there), and I loved IDW’s “The Gathering”.  But I still had little interest in the original Mainframe Beast Wars cast.  I’d seen the show through a few times by this time, and the show had lost some of it’s original luster.  The Beast Era was over, it was all about G1 homages.  Therefore, when new Beast Wars material surfaced, I was more interested in new Beast Wars exploits, with new non-show characters. Then I received the invite to join what would become BEAST WARS: Second Chances.  I, of course, wanted in on writing the story because, heck, Mosaic is a really fun project and I’d been itching to co-write something.  So I took another look at the series.  When we got into the nuts and bolts of things, I started to realize again why I liked those characters to begin with and I looked at the Beast Wars show in a new light.  It was still good, but I started to see things I hadn’t seen before.  There were aspects of characters that could still be explored and stories yet to be told.  The magic is back and now I look forward to hunting down figures from the show I never got.  Surprisingly, Dinobot II is among them (you’ll all find out why soon enough). So all in all, I’d say Beast Wars is kind of a weird area for me.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be as enamored with it as much as G1 or Animated, but Second Chances has certainly rekindled my love for the series as a whole. -- Curt Lunsford