Though reviled by many Transfans when it first hit the airwaves in 1996, the wholly-CGI Beast Wars is now considered by many to be the critical pinnacle of Transformers storytelling. The series opens at an unspecified time and place, where two warring factions of robots have crashed on a strange planet populated by animals like those on Earth. What began as a fairly unassuming adventure cartoon, though, quickly transformed into something more. By the end of the first season's 26 episodes, viewers had been treated to a number of classical Transformers references, such as Unicron and even the reapperance of Starscream, last seen as a ghost in the third season of the original cartoon. These homages, though, would not prepare viewers for the onslaught of continuity and complex, even philosophically deep science-fiction storytelling that the final two seasons of Beast Wars were to bring. So captivating was the scope and depth of this series' stories that many of those that followed paled in comparison.

Season 1

1. Beast Wars, Part 1
2. Beast Wars, Part 2
3. The Web
4. Equal Measures
5. Chain of Command
6. Power Surge
7. Fallen Comrades
8. Double Jeopardy
9. A Better Mousetrap
10. Gorilla Warfare
11. The Probe
12. Victory
13. Dark Designs
14. Double Dinobot
15. The Spark
16. The Trigger, Part 1
17. The Trigger, Part 2
18. Spider's Game
19. Call of the Wild
20. Dark Voyage
21. Possession
22. The Low Road
23. Law of the Jungle
24. Before the Storm
25. Other Voices, Part 1
26. Other Voices, Part 2

Season 2

1. Aftermath
2. Coming of the Fuzors, Part 1
3. Coming of the Fuzors, Part 2
4. Tangled Web
5. Maximal, No More
6. Other Visits, Part 1
7. Other Visits, Part 2
8. Bad Spark
9. Code of Hero
10. Transmutate
11. The Agenda, Part 1
12. The Agenda, Part 2
13. The Agenda, Part 3

Season 3

1. Optimal Situation
2. Deep Metal
3. Changing of the Guard
4. Cutting Edge
5. Feral Scream, Part 1
6. Feral Scream, Part 2
7. Proving Grounds
8. Go With the Flow
9. Crossing the Rubicon
10. Master Blaster
11. Other Victories
12. Nemesis, Part 1
13. Nemesis, Part 2

Characters

Because developing new CGI character models was, at the time, an expensive and time-consuming process, the number of on-screen characters in Beast Wars 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. (The stasis-locked Autobots and Decepticons aboard the Ark are not on this list. Nor Starscream.) Note that many characters besides these are also full-fledged Beast Wars characters, having appeared in other media.