Beast Wars (Part 1)

Beast Wars: Transformers ep 1 » Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers ep 1 »
They carry within them the last sons of Kryp—oh, wait, never mind.
"Beast Wars" (Part 1)
Season	1
No. in season	1
Production company	Mainframe Entertainment
Airdate	April 22, 1996 (preview) September 16, 1996 (regular airing)
Written by	Bob Forward
Directed by	Ian Pearson
Animation studio	Mainframe Entertainment
Continuity	Beast Wars continuity
Packaged with	DX Convoy
Watch this episode on YouTube

A Maximal science vessel and a fugitive Predacon starship crash land on a mysterious, primitive world.

Synopsis

In space, no one can hear you transform.

In an unknown star system, a transwarp portal opens, releasing two starships, a fleeing Predacon warship and a pursuing Maximal vessel. Already carrying the scars of battle, both ships immediately open fire upon each other. On the Maximal ship, a youthful crewmember reports on their damaged condition, in response to which another crew member bitterly complains about their non-combat exploration vessel not being cut out for this mission. Their commander, Optimus Primal, states that they were the only ship in range capable of intercepting the fugitives.

On the fleeing Predacon starship, the first officer urges his leader, Megatron, to finish off the Maximals while their opponents' shields are down. Megatron arrogantly rebuffs this suggestion, preferring to toy with his opponents. A broadside attack cripples their enemies' engines and causes significant damage to their stasis hold. Optimus Primal orders the Maximals' cargo of stasis pods be released into safe orbit before firing the forward plasma cannons, strafing the Predacons' hull. With no engines, both ships are caught in the planet's gravitational pull and plummet to its surface.

And the fandom complained... for about five minutes.

Both ships are non-flightworthy after their crashes. The Maximals have landed on a cliff above a lake; the Predacon warship has landed smack in the middle of the ash-hardened opening of an active shield volcano. The Predacon computer informs Megatron that their location is unknown, as while the course settings were accurate, the readings were not consistent with what was to be expected of the location. Dismissing this for the time being, Megatron demands to know if the mysterious planet has energon, which the computer confirms to his elation. However, it warns that there is so much energon that prolonged exposure would permanently damage their robot modes. Declaring that they will take the forms of the most powerful creatures on the planet, Megatron orders his science officer to scan for local lifeforms which they could adapt as alternate modes to survive on this world. The Predacon ship launches a drone, scanning the fossils of a Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor, and Pteranodon, as well as a living spider, scorpion and wasp.

At the cliff, the Maximals have the same idea, scanning a gorilla, rat, rhino and cheetah. The Maximals check out their new forms and bicker amongst themselves, till Optimus Primal orders the crew to moderate their conflict circuits, reminding them that their new beast forms are to protect them from the long-term effects of the abundant energon fields: While they need energon for power, their robot modes will short out after a few minutes of exposure. Optimus notes that they are on a very unusual planet, wherever it is. Rhinox points out that the transwarp drive allows them to journey through space and time, so they could be in any place, any time. Optimus expresses concern about the stasis pods in orbit, as it means the Maximals are outnumbered.

We'll tumble. Rumble style!

Back at the other crash site, the Predacons are testing out their new beast modes, bar one. First officer Dinobot, studying the Golden Disk he and his cohorts had stolen, is furious, declaring that this world cannot be Earth. He accuses Megatron of failure, both in battle against the Maximals and in failing to guide them to the right planet. Megatron laughs off Dinobot's accusations, and has Scorponok blast the aggressive Dinobot over the horizon. Megatron informs the other Predacons that it doesn't matter which planet they are on, as they had come looking for energon to fuel their war with the Maximals, and this planet is rich with it. Megatron dispatches his crew to seek out and destroy their enemies.

Shouldn't they be seeking cover of some sort?

Meanwhile, the Maximals are surveying the land around them and cleaning up the wreckage on the Axalon. Rattrap complains about all the fuss over the Golden Disk, but Optimus Primal reminds him that the Disk is Cybertron's most closely guarded relic, a guide to a major source of energon, which is why Megatron stole it. Rattrap doesn't care, retorting they were supposed to be performing deep-space exploration and that it isn't his job to chase after criminals. He sarcastically speculates on Primal's readiness to handle a command position. Optimus further reminds him of the Great War, noting that if the Predacons are able to secure a massive source of energon, they wouldn't hesitate to start a new one. Rattrap isn't convinced.

Deciding to show off (and goof off), Cheetor gives chase to two cheetahs running on the plains near the ship. Optimus tries to call him back, but the energon radiation severely limits the range of their communications equipment.

"I'm a rocket man, rocket man, burnin' out his fuse up here alone."

Some distance away, Cheetor's two cheetah buddies are freaked out by a rather large wasp. Realizing it's a Robot in Disguise, Cheetor transforms and fires unprovoked. The Predacon Waspinator transforms and retaliates. Back at the Axalon, the other Maximals move out to give Cheetor backup, with Rhinox ramming his way through a pile of boulders to speed their progress. Waspinator manages to get the better of Cheetor when the Maximal's rifle jams, but fortunately, the other Maximals have arrived by then. Unfortunately, Megatron and the Predacons have arrived as well.

"I'll activate my Hero Shield!"

Optimus Primal tries to convince Megatron to not engage in hostilities, as the Maximals and Predacons have been at peace for centuries. Megatron spits back that while the Maximals may have been at peace, the Predacons, like all enemies who appear "peaceful," were merely biding their time. The Predacons have never forgotten their goal of galactic conquest, but were merely waiting for the right time to strike.

Both sides transform, and the battle is joined. As the Maximals seek cover, Cheetor is blasted by one of Scorponok's missiles and ends up with his leg trapped under a boulder. Optimus Primal orders Rattrap to assist Cheetor while he provides cover fire, but Rattrap flatly refuses to risk his life for anybody else, to Optimus' anger. The Maximal leader flies to Cheetor's position himself but is hit by Predacon fire, much to Rattrap's smug delight. Nonetheless, Optimus manages to free Cheetor while Rhinox "persuades" Rattrap to help provide the pair with cover fire. With the Predacons now seeking cover of their own, the Maximals make their escape. Megatron orders pursuit, but he and his Predacons succumb to the effects of the energon buildup and are forced to revert to beast mode.

You shall not pass!

On the way back to base, Optimus Primal chews out Rattrap for disobeying a direct order, explaining to the petulant Maximal that he could have given better cover fire, an explanation which Rattrap accepts rather grudgingly. Cheetor notes that they seem to have escaped the Predacons. Primal isn't sure, as the Golden Disk theft reports indicated there were six Predacons, but they only encountered five in the previous battle.

They don't have to wait long. Dinobot appears, barring their way across a stone bridge to the Axalon. Dinobot states that he has left the Predacons to join the Maximals... as leader. He challenges Optimus Primal to a one-on-one battle, with the winner to lead the Maximals, the loser to be destroyed!

To be continued...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Maximals	Predacons
Cheetor (1) Rattrap (2) Optimus Primal (3) Rhinox (6)	Dinobot (4) Megatron (5) Tarantulas (7) Waspinator (8) Terrorsaur (9) Scorponok (10)

Quotes

"Damage report?"
"Believe me, you don't wanna know."
[sighs] "That's what I thought."

—Optimus Primal and Cheetor on the "damage" of their ship.

"Whoa! Hey! I'm a cheetah! No... No... I'm Cheetor!"

—Cheetor is most imaginative.

"Ah-hahaha... there's more to being a leader than simple courage. Well, there's cleverness and cunning as well. Isn't that right, Scorponok?"
[Scorponok fires a missile, blasting Dinobot away]
"Loser."

—Megatron deals swiftly with Dinobot's belligerence.

"You wanted exploration, and here we are on an unknown planet. What more do you want?"
"Well, uh, call me picky but a working spacecraft might be nice."
[sighs] "Just no pleasing some people."

—Optimus Primal and Rattrap

"The energon fields mess up the comm links. Anything over 100 meters, they ain't worth scrap."
"Well, that's just prime."
"So, er, this your first day on the job, or what?"
"Shut up, Rattrap."
"Oh yes sir! Y'know, I feel just heaps better knowing that our lives are in your capable hands. [sighs] We're all gonna die."

—Rhinox, Optimus Primal and Rattrap demonstrate Maximal camaraderie AND coin three catchphrases in a row.

"Mzzzzz! Waszzzpinator under attack! Waszzzpinator engage enemy! Waszzpinator, TERRORIZEZZZZZZZZ!!!"

—Waspinator engages Cheetor.

"Ahh, a treacherous, under-handed sneak attack. Oh-ho-ho, I like you, pussycat, yesss."

—Megatron's response to Cheetor's unprovoked attack

"This guy's got bearings of chrome steel."

—Rhinox on Dinobot's bid for Maximal group leader

Notes

Script timeline

• First draft: 14th December 1995
• Finalised: 12th January 1996
• Revised: 17th January 1996
• As Air: 8th April 1996

Animation and technical errors

• When Waspinator fights Cheetor, the stripes on his thighs are mapped on the wrong axis, and in one shot, he is missing his crotch.
• As Optimus, Rhinox and Rattrap ride out to give Cheetor support, Rhinox breaks through a "roadblock" of boulders. However, in the previous shot of this location, the boulders were not present.
• When Rhinox picks up Rattrap and swings him around to face the Predacons, Rattrap's gun clips right through the boulder in front of them.
• It looks as if the animators have yet to create a gun for Rhinox (possibly because they were trying to figure out a way to make the spinning blade/mace thingie that his toy comes with not look terrible). When the Maximals are under attack he just sits hiding behind a rock, before eventually picking up Cheetor's discarded weapon. He won't get his signature weapon for a few episodes yet.
• Scorponok is among the Predacons milling about outside the ship in their beast modes, yet he appears from within the ship to blast Dinobot only a few moments later.
• As Rattrap is trying to get Optimus's spirits back up after being called out for his insubordination, his rat ear clips through Optimus's head.
• Throughout the episode, Scorponok has a Maximal insignia on his robot mode torso, most clearly visible in the close-up shot of him firing his weapon in the first skirmish between the full Maximal and Predacon forces.

Continuity errors

• If the Beast Warriors are on an "unknown planet", presumably containing animals they've never seen before... how does everybody manage to think up such fitting new beast mode-based names? (Presumably, not all information about Earth was off-limits.) A major example is Cheetor, who recognizes that he has become a cheetah, despite (presumably) having not seen one before.
• Cheetor and Waspinator spend a longer period of time in the open while in their respective robot modes, but don't suffer the effects of energon overload until about the same time the others do.

Continuity notes

• Judging by the ambient wildlife, it would appear the Transformers crashed in what would become Africa (er, spoilers). The dinosaur fossils that the Predacons scan don't quite gel with this theory, as neither Velociraptors or tyrannosaurs were known to live in Africa. Presumably, they represent some unknown genus of related dinosaurs... or modern paleontologists just haven't been looking hard enough.
• Rattrap is a serious asshole this early in the series.
• Waspinator's characterization here looks very off in light of what he would later be depicted as; he acquits himself decently against Cheetor in combat, a far cry from his disastrous battle performance at any other point in the series, and his speech is noticeably robotic and formal, fitting the "-inator" part of his name.

Transformers references

• Optimus Primal mentions the Great War, which is what the Transformers of the Beast era called the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons. The significance of the Great War isn't explained in the episode itself, although later episodes would reinforce the notion that the Maximals and Predacons are descendants of the original Generation 1 factions.

Trivia

• Before they gain their beast modes, Rattrap, Cheetor, Rhinox, Megatron, and Tarantulas are shown with different robot modes, mostly in shadows and closeups, saving animators the trouble of creating unique models. They all reuse the Giant Robot model from Mainframe's other show, Reboot, modified to remove the fins on the upper arms and match the bots' colors and heads (Cheetor is also missing the whisker follicles on his face). This would be the basis for most Cybertronian-body models, albeit with a new chest, including Blackarachnia's protoform ("Double Jeopardy"), the generic Maximals ("Bad Spark") and Predacons ("The Agenda (Part 1)"), Depth Charge ("Deep Metal"), and Beast Machines Botanica ("Home Soil").
• When Rhinox is fixing something outside, the "Gas Bottle" looks like the model sub seen later on in other episodes.
• Rattrap's gun has 3 spider kill-marks on it. Has he killed spider-bots before?
• As this was the first episode, the transformation/catchphrase sequences are rather overbearing by comparison to later episodes of the series.
• During the scene in which the Maximals reveal their new beast modes, it is not clear why they (bar Optimus Primal) had to rename themselves. Maximal military or exploration tradition?
• Throughout this episode and "Beast Wars (Part 2)", Scorponok's missiles have a Maximal insignia on them, meant to indicate Maximal kills. This confused viewers into thinking that they were mistakenly "Maximal missiles", so the symbols were changed in "Chain of Command".
• Cheetor is the first character to speak in Beast Wars ("Aaa! Hull breach in Sector Seven!" ...but that last bit's probably a coincidence), the first character to appear once the characters reformat with beast modes, as well as the first character to fire a shot (unprovoked) at the enemy. Cheetor also has the honour of speaking the final words of the Beast Era in the final episode of the Beast Wars sequel, Beast Machines.
• Dinobot has the distinction of being the first Beast Wars character to transform into robot mode.
• Waspinator fires pink eye lasers in robot mode.
• This episode marks the only instance in the entire series in which Dinobot uses the "Terrorize!" activation code, despite nominally being a Predacon. He would later reprogram himself with the Maximal activation code.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "Animutants - 1^re partie" ("Animutants - 1st Part")
• Original airdate: 7 April 1999

• Title: "Pilote 1" (Canada, "Pilot 1")
• Original airdate: ???

German

• Title: "Der fremde Planet, Teil 1" ("The unknown Planet, Part 1")
• Original airdate: 28 March 1998

Italian

• Title: "L'atterraggio" ("The Landing")
• Original airdate: 27 August 1997

• Despite tha fact that the Maximals (except Optimus) chose their names only after the landing, in the Italian dub of the first scene Rattrap is actually called by name by both Optimus and Cheetor.
• The Italian dub adds a narrator that speaks during moments of silence in the original version, but sometimes what he says is... weird. This episode has two good examples:

• once, he says, enigmatically: «But what is energon?», which... is pretty odd to say when there's an entire TV series that explains it well. Possibly a sentence for beginners.
• after Cheetor shoots Megatron, the narrator says: «Cheetor, very naively, gave Megatron a hand»... erm, not exactly...

Japanese

• Title: "Chō Seimeitai Transformer Tōjō!!" (超生命体トランスフォーマー登場!!, "Enter the Super Lifeform Transformers!!")
• Original airdate: 1 October 1997

Dun dun dun DUN! DAN! Dan dan dan DAAAN!
DAN! Dan dan dan DAAAN! DAN! Dun dun dun DUN!

• The Japanese version of this episode begins with a Star Wars-style scrolling description of the Beast Wars premise, taking most of its text from the first Japanese Beast Wars toy catalog, and narrated by both the Maximal and Predacon computer voices talking simultaneously. This worked out fairly well, since the episode begins with a placid pan of an outer-space backdrop, followed by a running battle between spaceships, as if it was tailor-made for this kind of parody.
• The scroll ends with a variation of the catchphrase "And now the battle begins", which has been used in Japanese Transformers productions since the beginning and continues to this day.
• Unique to the Japanese dub, the Predacon computer was given her own name (NAVI-ko) and personality (or multiple personality). Rather than talk at the computer, the Predacons now have conversations with her as she assigns them cute nicknames ("Mega-chan"). Most instances where the Predacons were shown talking to themselves in the English version are rewritten into conversations with NAVI-ko for this dub.
• Optimus's mentioning the Great War is genericized to be less about a specific historic event and more just about past conflicts in general. Likewise, his fear of the Predacons starting the Great War back up again is changed to a much more dramatic fear of the Predacons destroying the whole universe.

Polish

• Title: "Wojna bestii" ("Beast War")
• Original airdate: ???

Portuguese

• Title: "Beast Wars parte 1" ("Beast Wars part 1")
• Original airdate: ???

Spanish

• Title: "La guerra de las bestias [Parte 1]" ("The War of the Beasts [Part 1]")
• Original airdate: ???

• Title: Guerra de Bestias Primera Parte" (America, "Beast War First Part")
• Original airdate: ???

Mandarin

• Title: "太空遭遇" ("The Encounter in the Space")
• Original airdate: ???

Home video releases

All releases listed are in English audio unless otherwise noted.

VHS

1996 — Beast Wars — A Feature Length Beasties Adventure (Alliance Video)
1996 — Robots-Bêtes — Une Adventure Cybernetique (Alliance Video) — French audio only.
1997 — Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers — Enter the Super Lifeform Transformers (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
1998 — Beast Wars / Robots-Bêtes Three pack (Alliance Video) — Available in English or French audio.
2001 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Beginning: Vol. 1 (Universal)
2002 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 1 (Rhinomation)

LaserDisc

1998 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Maximal Edition (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.

DVD

2000 — Beast Wars: Transformers — DVD Box (Pioneer LDC) — English and Japanese audio.
2002 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Volume 1 (Rhinomation)
2003 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete First Season (Rhinomation)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Shout! Factory)
2011 — Beast Wars: Transformers — The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Chain of Command (Shout! Factory)
2005 — Beast Wars — Classic Episodes — Where the Beasties Began! (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2005 — Beast Wars — The Complete First Season (Alliance Atlantis) — English and French audio.
2006 — Beast Wars: Transformers — Season 1 (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers: Beast Wars — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
2012 — Transformers: Beast Wars Staffel 1 (5DVDs) (Pandavision)

External links

Official uploads (Japanese)

• Beast Wars Again re-airings:
  • "Enter the Super Lifeform Transformers (Part 1)" on YouTube
  • "Enter the Super Lifeform Transformers (Part 2)" on YouTube