User talk:Locoman/Sandbox:Maximals

If I may venture an opinion, I think the sort of "here's what all happened in the cartoon" summary that you've added today is exactly the sort of thing this article should avoid. It should really only talk about Maximals as a race, not the specifics of what Optimus Primal's five guys got up to. - Chris McFeely (talk) 18:10, 15 January 2018 (EST)

Exactly, and in the exact same way the Human article shouldn't be about what every single human did ever in any fiction ever. These play-by-plays are absolutely not what these kinds of articles are for. --ItsWalky (talk) 21:17, 15 January 2018 (EST)

Yeah, y'know, I was starting to wonder if it looked wrong as I was finishing it up, but I figured that someone would tell me if I was starting to go overboard....`

Bicameral government

I mentioned this before on The Allspark, but I'm not convinced that the Maximal Elders and the High Council are two separate coexisting entities. To me, the "bicameral democracy" statement from the original Maximal article always struck me as more like headcanon than not. I just gave "Deep Metal" (the episode that mentioned the High Council) a re-watch and, from what we'd already known about the Elders prior to that episode (in which the Elders are also mentioned, and in no different light from the High Council, no less), there doesn't seem to be much reason to assume that the two are separate from one another.

The Beast Machines episode "Master of the House" would even go on to declare that the Council Citadel was occupied by "the Council of Elders", a term never before used to refer to the Elders in the Beast Wars cartoon, and never again used in Beast Machines after that point. Neither cartoon ever gave the impression of Cybertron as having been governed by more than one ruling body, with all instances in both cartoons referring to either "the Maximal Elders", "the High Council", and "the Council of Elders" in such a way that each label referred to felt as though they were the single most important authority unit to the Maximals in each case, without ever stating outright if all three were the same authority unit. To me, the Beast Machines reference to "the Council of Elders" even felt like it may have been an attempt to reconcile the "High Council" uses from "Deep Metal" with all the "Maximal Elders" uses from everywhere else in the BW cartoon.

What's more is that certain pieces of external Beast Era media from 3H, Fun Pub, and IDW that were written specifically to be within the same base continuity as the cartoons (even if all not with each other) made similar references to single Cybertronian ruling bodies as though they too were the only ones in charge of the cartoons' Cybertron. IDW's Beast Wars comics and Sourcebook spoke only of the Maximal Elders and never of the High Council, with the Magnaboss trio confirmed to be those Elders and were presented as the Maximal counterpart of the Predacons' Tripredacus Council in terms of governmental rule. And interestingly enough, while Simon Furman authored these comics and Sourcebook, so too did he author the 3H Universe comics, in which Magnaboss himself was shown to be a prominent member of the "High Council" of those comics.

Speaking of 3H, "Apelinq's War Journals" made use of both the "Council of Elders" and the "High Council" labels, but also simply referred to just "the Council", as though there was only one single council in charge of the planet. And the recap of "Apelinq's War Journals" found at the beginning of "Departure" made the first ever reference to "the Maximal High Council", with additional references made to this group in the profiles for Devcon, Apelinq, and Snarl in the issues of "Betrayal", "Disclosure", and "Abduction", respectively; with each case speaking as though this "Maximal High Council" was the ruling authority of the Maximals despite all the more numerous references made to the "Maximal Elders" in Beast Wars, and despite the lone "Council of Elders" reference made in Beast Machines; the very two cartoons that these 3H works were written to tie in with.

Even more noteworthy is what was said of the Maximal High Council and the Elders in "Dawn of Future's Past". While the High Council got the lion's share of references in that comic (and was said--in both this comic and the BW cartoon--to be the group who gave Protoform X to the Axalon crew), there was also this particular exchange given over the comms between Optimus Primal and the Maximal Defense Command on Page 14 of the comic:

Maximal Command: "As authorized by the High Council, you must intercept the Predacon ship and retrieve the Golden Disk at all costs."

Optimus Primal: "Command, we've got some pretty sensitive cargo on board - "

Maximal Command: "The Elders are aware of your cargo, Primal. This takes priority. We cannot lose the Golden Disk."

In that very exchange, Maximal Command used both terms ("the High Council" and "The Elders") to refer to the same authority unit who first issued Protoform X to the Axalon and who later ordered the ship's crew to retrieve the Golden Disk.

Now, as of this typing, I haven't yet given a complete reread to the "The Razor's Edge" (it's on the to-do list), but I have skimmed over it recently and have found that, while no mention is made of the Maximal High Council, the Maximal Elders are referred to as (much like in the IDW comics and Sourcebook) being the Maximal equivalent of the Tripredacus Council.

Of all these piece of media, the only thing that really feels contradictory to this idea of a single council of Maximal government is how the Maximal Elders of IDW's comics are shown in "The Ascending" to seemingly reside within a Maximal insignia-shaped building that really doesn't look like the Citadel from Beast Machines, but since the Citadel was only ever called the "Council Citadel" but once in the whole of Beast Machines (by Optimus Primal in "Master of the House"), with it being called just "the Citadel" (or sometimes "Megatron's Citadel") all other times in that show, this is very probably a case where Furman--who has gone on record saying that he wasn't the biggest fan of Beast Machines--simply forgot/didn't know/easily overlooked the fact that the Citadel from that cartoon was supposed to have been occupied by Cybertron's ruling council prior to Megatron's takeover, thereby making the weird Maximal symbol-shaped building from "The Ascending" an accidental continuity goof.

To conclude, after weighing all of this, I see little reason to think that there are two separate governing bodies in charge of the Maximals on Cybertron in the Beast Wars cartoon and its related media (thereby omitting the alternate universe of Beast Wars: Uprising from all this), instead of there simply being one Maximal High Council consisting of the Maximal Elders as its primary (if not only) members. Anyone else have any other thoughts on this? --Sabrblade (talk) 20:07, 15 January 2018 (EST)

-shrug- I figured that they used the word "bicameral" in some obscure Japanese fiction or something and just ran with it. I guess not? Grum (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2018 (EST)

I'm fairly certain Japan hasn't done anything with the American cartoon's Maximal government on Cybertron that was unique to any Japanese fiction. --Sabrblade (talk) 22:42, 15 January 2018 (EST)

It did always seem fairly unnecessary to me to split them. BW using "the high council" and "the Maximal Elders," and BM using "the council of elders" is enough evidence for me to consider them the same thing. I honestly didn't even read your post past that, just beacuse I don't need to hear anything from IDW as evidence for or against this, 'cause those stories have a proven record of the writers misinterpreting, not understanding, and actively working against the intent and spirit of the show. I'm behind a merge. - Chris McFeely (talk) 08:06, 16 January 2018 (EST)