Grand Mal
- The Grand Mal is a space ship in the Beast Machines portion of the Generation 1/Beast Era continuity family.
The Grand Mal is the vessel that served as Megatron's body during much of the second season of Beast Machines. It could change between a rarely-seen aircraft mode and, well, a big floating head (bearing a resemblance to Megatron's own ugly mug.)
- Japanese name: Megahead
Fiction
Beast Machines cartoon
Megatron had been working at length to purge his body of its biomechanical elements. In the midst of a cataclysmic confrontation with Optimus Primal, he apparently succeeded, splitting his organic components off into a separate entity (the purely biological Noble/Savage). His Spark, however, remained with the Noble/Savage portion, while his original robot form was destroyed by the combined forces that he and Primal had been unleashing.
Shortly afterwards, the Maximals encountered the Grand Mal, a giant version of Megatron's own head drifting empty, unmanned and lifeless above Cybertron. Apparently Megatron had been constructing it for some time in secret, but was unable to reach it before the destruction of his original body. Some time later, with the unwitting help of the Maximals, "Noble" was eventually able to re-enter the Council Citadel, where he transferred his Spark into the Grand Mal.
With Megatron's spark inside, the Grand Mal became as animate as the face of a normal Transformer, its mouth moving when Megatron spoke to others outside. To speak to his generals inside the big floating head, Megatron often manifested himself as a slightly smaller floating holographic head composed of Cybertronian symbols.
At some point, Megatron had the captured Sparks of Cybertron's missing population transferred from the Council Citadel to a massive cylindrical holding vessel within the Grand Mal.
When Megatron first attempted to enact his plan of consuming all the Sparks of Cybertron, his own Spark emerged from the Grand Mal -- an act which left him vulnerable to an attack by Nightscream. Nightscream's sonic blast left Megatron's Spark "depolarized", wandering madly about Cybertron without a body for a time. The Maximals occupied the empty Grand Mal and used it as their base, defending the captured Sparks of Cybertron's population that it contained.
In a subsequent battle, Megatron's Vehicons managed to match the shield harmonics of the Grand Mal and shoot it down. The ship crashed on top of the Council Citadel and was the site of the final battle between the Vehicons and Primal's team of Maximals. After the reformatting of Cybertron, its form remained visible, though covered with technorganic greenery.
Note: The Grand Mal was not named in the Beast Machines television series. The name comes from scripts and the short story Singularity Ablyss by series writer Bob Skir.
Toys
Beast Wars Returns
- Megahead Megatron (Deluxe, 2005)
- Japanese ID number: BR-12
- Megahead Megatron transforms into the Grand Mal with scuttling spider-leg action, opening jaw for chip-eating action, and a hidden spring-loaded missile launcher in its mouth. In robot mode, the launcher swings over his head, placing a battle mask down over his face.
- If one removes the toy's spider-legs in head mode, it fits into the head socket to the Fortress Maximus main body.
- The toy was originally intended to portray Megatron in the Beast Machines toy line, but was shelved for a year till it was used as Megatron Megabolt, part of the Robots In Disguise line. It was later used for Megabolt. Not till the Japanese edition did it finally appear as the character it was originally intended to portray.
Trivia
- Grand Mal is a type of seizure.
- Megatron had the Grand Mal in the works for quite some time -- schematics of it can be seen in the episode "Forbidden Fruit", early in Season One.
- In a nod to the original series, Rattrap refers to the uninhabited Grand Mal as "...a sparkless floating tribute to Unicron."
- The ship's aircraft mode is entirely fictional, relative to the toy, and is only seen once, when the vessel transforms to destroy Botanica's crashed ship.
- The Grand Mal's vehicle mode resembled the Darksyde. Megatron's ship from Beast Wars.
