Beast Wars continuity

Beast Wars continuity is, like every other continuity in Transformers, a fractured, multi-directional mess.

Most Beast Wars storylines begin with the Beast Wars cartoon, holding it as sacrosanct and building on its universe. But right from the start, there were contradictory storylines, as the cartoon went in a completely different direction than the bios given on toy packages. Later storylines built on the cartoon's story, but in mutually-exclusive fashions.

Beast Wars storylines are, in general, a subsection of the Generation 1 continuity family. But the Beast Wars cartoon does not adhere to any particular version of Generation 1 continuity that has been seen; instead it borrows facets from many and composites them into a sort of vague "mythology" that forms the Beast Wars characters' past.

Beast Wars continuity is made up of the following facets:

• A micro-continuity consisting of the early toy bios and one pack-in comic.
• The Beast Wars cartoon, which most subsequent storylines have held as sacrosanct.
• Various later toy bios that do not jibe with that cartoon and may constitute their own micro-continuities.
• The Japanese dubbing of that cartoon and two original Japanese sequels (Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo)
• The Shōji Imaki-penned manga series (Beast Wars II, Beast Wars Neo, and Beast Wars Metals) that seem to be based on a version of the first season of the cartoon, but form their own distinct continuity.
• The Beast Machines cartoon
• One Dreamwave story, "Ain't No Rat".
• Several IDW Beast Wars publications:
  • The Gathering
  • The Ascending
  • Beast Wars Sourcebook profile book series
  • "Dawn of the Predacus"
• Various 3H storylines:
  • "Ground Zero"
  • "Reaching the Omega Point"
  • The Primeval Dawn comic series
  • The Wreckers comic series
  • The Universe comic series
• Various Fun Publications stories:
  • "Dawn of Future's Past"
  • "Theft of the Golden Disk"
  • "The Razor's Edge"
• A simple storyline contained within a video game based off the first season of the original cartoon.
• A simple storyline with multiple alternate endings contained within another video game, this one based off the original cartoon's second season.
• A completely obscure micro-continuity within the Devil's Due G.I. Joe crossover continuity.

Toyline

Early waves of the Beast Wars toyline featured bios that placed the characters on modern-day Earth. In this purple prose-laden "storyline", Optimus Primal and Megatron are the original characters from Generation 1, Tarantulas is a ninja who kidnaps humans, Blackarachnia pretends to be a double agent, tusks of unknown ownership gleam in the night, Optimus Primal vs Megatron! and turbo-charged tires scream across the desert.

All of this "continuity", such as it was, would be swept under the carpet with the coming of the highly successful Beast Wars cartoon.

English Beast Wars cartoon

The Beast Wars cartoon told the story of two small groups of Transformers, a team of Maximals and a team of Predacons, who become stranded on prehistoric Earth. What begins as a war over energon eventually becomes a desperate battle to preserve the continuity of time itself, as the Predacons attempt to change the future by destroying the Maximals' ancestors.

Though the entire show takes place millions of years ago, the characters originated from a point 300 years into the future of Generation 1. Which Generation 1 is never made clear; the cartoon draws elements from both the original G1 comics and cartoons, and the writers stated that in the context of the cartoon, the events of the various Generation 1 stories should be regarded as something akin to Arthurian legend, rather than an exact history.

The cartoon (especially in conjunction with various comments by the story editors) hinted at a complex universe beyond the limited scope of what was shown on the cartoon, but little of this was actually fleshed out within the cartoon itself. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps due to the show's enduring popularity and high production values, most subsequent Beast Wars stories have used the cartoon as a springboard. Unlike the pick-and-choose approach common to many Generation 1 reinventions, the cartoon has generally been regarded as "what actually happened" in the past of various other stories, with no less than four separate publishers building stories around it. Even some of the aforementioned Generation 1 reinventions hint at having the Beast Wars as part of their back story.

There is no ironclad consensus on which of these successive stories is the "real" story, though all either include or do not contradict the events of the Beast Machines cartoon. Each storyline essentially forms its own microcontinuity, with all of them sharing the Beast Wars cartoon as their back story.

Beast Machines

The Beast Machines cartoon is a direct sequel to the Beast Wars cartoon, carrying over all of the surviving characters and referencing many specific events from the prior show. A radical shift in tone and storytelling focus caused many fans to find Beast Machines difficult to accept as a sequel; however, the only notable contradictions between the series are debatable matters of characterization.

The cartoon follows the core Beast Wars cast after they have returned to Cybertron and to their own time, only to find the planet overrun with mindless drones controlled by their old foe Megatron. After a protracted war against these "Vehicons", they succeed in reformatting Cybertron into a techo-organic sphere, a balance of the organic and mechanical.

Like its predecessor, Beast Machines continued to play fast and loose with Generation 1 history, although it eschewed any explicit comic-based elements, using only cartoon-specific concepts like the Key to Vector Sigma, the Plasma Energy Chamber, and a variant of the Hate Plague. Its depiction of Cybertron differed in appearance from any prior continuity.

The Universe comic series built directly on the story of Beast Machines, while The Ascending provides some lead-in to Megatron's planetary conquest.