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Story editor Bob Skir describes the Beast Machine television series as a "religious epic novel for television.".
Controversial even by the standards of other Transformers reinventions (!), Beast Machines is remembered by some as the series which tried to tackle a heavy philosophical concepts--such as what it meant to live in an increasingly technological society and the dichotomy between the desires of the individual and the needs of society and the paradox of a living technological world. The series' detractors complained about an alleged "hippie" agenda of this follow-up to Beast Wars, and a few went so far as to send Skir death threats, causing him to cancel a convention appearance in 2000. Beast Machines followed the adventures of the core Beast Wars cast upon their return home to Cybertron; there, Optimus Primal and his crew find that the whole planet has been made mindless slaves of Megatron, who somehow escaped his captivity (seen at the close of Beast Wars). Throughout Beast Machines' two seasons, Primal and his fellow Maximals learn to balance their technological side with a newly-retconned biological aspect, eventually turning Cybertron into an technorganic paradise. Like Beast Wars, Beast Machines was fully CGI; unlike Beast Wars, the show did not go over well. Hasbro's next foray into animation, perhaps as an effort to recover, would be to bring over a year-old Japanese show for consumption in the US, until a new story could be concocted.
...And another....
...And another...
Episodes
Season 1
1. The Reformatting
2. Master of the House
3. Fires of the Past
4. Mercenary Pursuits
5. Forbidden Fruit
6. The Weak Component
7. Revelations Part I: Discovery
8. Revelations Part II: Descent
9. Revelations Part III: Apocalypse
10. Survivor
11. The Key
12. The Catalyst
13. End of the Line
Season 2: Battle for the Spark
1. Fallout
2. Savage Noble
3. Prometheus Unbound
4. In Darkest Knight
5. A Wolf in the Fold
6. Native Soil
7. Sparkwar Part 1: The Strike
8. Sparkwar Part 2: The Search
9. Sparkwar Part 3: The Siege
10. Spark of Darkness
11. Endgame Part 1: The Downward Spiral
12. Endgame Part 2: When Legends Fall
13. Endgame Part 3: The Seeds of the Future
Characters
Because developing new CGI character models was, at the time, an expensive and time-consuming process, the number of named on-screen characters in Beast Machines was relatively small compared to most other Transformers shows. It is thus practical to list all the Transformers who appeared in the cartoon. They are listed in order of appearance. (Most drones are not listed, and neither are incidental flashback characters.) Note that many characters besides these are also full-fledged Beast Machines characters, having appeared in other media.
Maximals
Vehicons
- Megatron
- Diagnostic Drone (sparkless, hence not a Transformer, but had a speaking role and a personality)
- Jetstorm
- Tankor
- Thrust
- Rhinox (nominally the same character as Tankor)
- Waspinator (nominally the same character as Thrust)
- Obsidian
- Strika
Other
- The Oracle (not much of a personality, but definitely a major speaking role)
Trivia
Mainframe Entertainment executive Dan DiDio explicitly told Bob Skir and Marty Isenberg to ignore all previous Transformers cartoons when writing Beast Machines, because "Beast Wars was too continuity-heavy". It clearly did not work out that way.
The theme tune for the show was Leftfield's Phat Planet. This was also used for a famous Guiness advert. The latter proved a more popular TV slot. It was also used in an episode of C.S.I. during a scene involving parasailing.