After Hasbro brought the first phase of its Transformers toy line (now called “Generation 1“) to a close in 1990, the brand struggled for a few years to find a new direction. Generation 2, launched in 1993, mostly consisted of repainted versions of the old toys and had no original tie-in cartoon series of its own. After that faltered, the company took a beat to retool and came back strong with Beast Wars, the next evolution for the famous “Robots in Disguise.” To make sure kids got the message, a brand-new cartoon was commissioned to go with it.
Beast Wars was never my Transformers. By 1996, I was long out of playing with toys and had sold off all my original Autobots and Decepticons. I wasn’t quite an adult collector yet, either. While I was vaguely aware of their existence at the time, I never owned a Beast Wars toy or watched a single episode of the cartoon. As a result, I don’t have much attachment to the property today. However, as the latest live-action Transformers movie introduces its characters into the franchise’s cinematic universe, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge that Beast Wars was the main point of entry and core identity of the brand for an entire generation of Transformers fans that grew up after me. For them, the adventures of Optimus Primal and his friends were just as meaningful as those of the original Optimus Prime were for me.
Unfortunately, looking back on it with close to three decades of distance, the 1990s Beast Wars cartoon is a lot harder to watch today than the even-older 1980s series – not due to lack of availability, but mainly because of its painfully dated computer animation.
| Title: | Beast Wars: Transformers |
| Season: | 1 |
| Episodes: | 1.01 – Beast Wars: Part 1 1.02 – Beast Wars: Part 2 1.03 – The Web |
| Original Air Dates: | Sept. 16-18, 1996 |
| Watched On: | Tubi |
| Also Available On: | DVD PlutoTV |
I’ll be interested to see how the Rise of the Beasts movie integrates Beast Wars characters or storylines into the existing live-action franchise. Based on the first few episodes of the 1990s cartoon, the first incarnation of Beast Wars was apparently neither a sequel nor prequel to the original Transformers story, but rather a complete reboot. A good number of prior Transformers names are reused for totally different characters, and the initial plot kick-off is mostly a rehash of how the 1980s cartoon began.
The first episode opens with two spaceships from the war-torn, robotic planet of Cybertron locked in combat. Rather than Autobots and Decepticons, the two factions are identified as Maximals and Predacons, but appear to be effectively the same thing. The leader of the good robots is called Optimus and the leader of the bad robots is Megatron. As before, both ships eventually crash onto a primitive, organic world that seems to be Earth (though isn’t explicitly identified as such yet).
Where this version differs is that none of the robots sleep for millions of years or have to deal with human civilization. They’re fully active as the planet is ruled by wild animal life. Because this essentially negates any need for the robots to disguise themselves, the show concocts a new narrative contrivance for why the robots transform into alternate modes. Supposedly, the new planet is so abundant with the elemental power source called Energon that its high levels are actually toxic to them in robot form, and the only way to protect themselves is to transform into alt-modes based on the most powerful local creatures.
No, I’m not really sure how that’s supposed to make any sense. They’re still robots, just disguised as animals. Why would that make them immune to the toxic radiation? I have no idea. I’m also not sure how some of the creatures (such as rats or bugs) would qualify as “most powerful.” Nevertheless, that’s the story, so we have to go with it.
Most of the robots take the opportunity to rename themselves when choosing animal forms. Thus, Optimus becomes Optimus Primal, while others choose on-the-nose names like Cheetor, Rhinox, Rattrap, Tarantulus, or Scorponok. Megatron stays Megatron, though. He also adopts a dinosaur form, even though dinosaurs appear to be extinct by this point. One of his lieutenants does the same and straight-up calls himself “Dinobot.”
One of the more annoying gimmicks for the show is that all the robots need to announce their names and what they’re doing every time they transform to robot form. For the good guys, the command is “Maximize!” and for the bad guys “Terrorize!” (e.g. “Optimus Primal, maximize!” or “Megatron, terrorize!”). It’s a dumb and very repetitive conceit in storytelling terms, but probably worked better in the play pattern for kids who bought the toys.
Beast Wars: Transformers debuted on television with a three-episode premiere on a Monday to Wednesday in September of 1996. The first pair of episodes were a two-part pilot, while the third was a standalone story called The Web (featuring an evil spider-bot called Blackarachnia). Three more episodes ran the following week, after which the show adopted an erratic pattern of one or two new episodes premiering each week, mixed with reruns on the remaining days. The first season ran twenty-six episodes in all, followed by two additional seasons of thirteen episodes each.
I’ve only watched the first three episodes and, honestly, am comfortable leaving it there. By kids’ TV standards, the show isn’t bad, but not having grown up with them, I have no attachment to the characters, and the story isn’t as fun as the 1980s cartoon. I’ll admit that this might be generational bias. I’m sure kids who grew up in the 1990s probably feel the opposite.
What can’t be disputed, however, is that the animation is awful. Fully computer-animated in the early days of that craft on a meager TV budget, the entire series looks low-res, blocky, textureless, and extremely primitive. The syndicated Reboot cartoon from the same era is a good point of comparison, but at least that one gets by on the excuse that all its characters lived inside a computer-rendered environment created with that decade’s level of technology. Beast Wars was supposed to take place on a real planet, with characters who had real physical bodies. Suspension of disbelief for that is really hard to suspend when the animation looks this crude.
I tried to watch episodes of this show with my Transformers fanatic son, who has gone through the entire 1980s series a few times, and he couldn’t get into this one at all. I can’t say I blame him.
Video Streaming
All three seasons of Beast Wars: Transformers were last released on DVD back in 2011. I’ve never owned them. Currently, the show is available for streaming free with ads on Tubi and PlutoTV. (This Transformers cartoon is not on Roku Channel at the moment.) I checked the first episode on both streamers and found it to look comparable on either. Unlike the original Transformers series, I don’t see any notable differences in streaming quality from one service to another. Because I prefer Tubi’s user interface and menus, I defaulted to that one.
I won’t sugarcoat it – the show’s video quality looks pretty bad no matter where you watch it. That’s mostly the fault of the crude, low-res computer animation, which has aged terribly. Upconverted from standard-definition, the 4:3 image is filled with shimmery details, aliasing artifacts, dot crawl, and ugly edge halos. Characters and their environments have very poor surface texture, and any medium or wide shot will look blurry. (That no doubt explains why the episodes are directed with an excessive number of tight close-ups.) I wouldn’t be surprised if it was rendered at well less than the 480i resolution it was broadcast at back in the 1990s.
Do the physical DVDs look better than streaming? I can’t answer that. It may be possible, but I wouldn’t expect much. This series is simply a victim of the rudimentary technology used to create it.
The 2.0 soundtrack has good stereo separation and a modest amount of bleed to the surround channels. For some reason, the audio is much louder on Tubi than PlutoTV, especially during the first episode, which seems excessively boosted and harsh. That problem tames down a bit starting with the second.
Sadly, the theme song and other music in Beast Wars isn’t anywhere near as catchy as the original Transformers series, and the show also dispensed with the iconic transformation sound effect in favor of some generic whirring and clanking noises.
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