Transformers: Beast Wars
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | Beast Wars |
| Original title | Transformers: Beast Wars Beast Wars - Transformers |
 | |
| Country of production | USA , Canada |
| original language | English (AE) |
| Year (s) | 1996 to 1999 |
| Episodes | 52 in 3 seasons |
| genre | Action , adventure , science fiction |
| First broadcast | May 16, 1996 |
| German-language first broadcast |
March 28, 1998 on RTL 2 |
Beast Wars ( English Transformers: Beast Wars ) was an American CGI series based on the Transformers toy series . The series was produced by Mainframe Entertainment in Canada and the scripts were written by Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio .
The series is a continuation of the original Transformers series from the 1980s and was later continued as Transformers: Beast Machines itself.
action
The warring factions in this series are the Maximals, descendants of the Autobots, and the Predacons, descendants of the Decepticons, who crash land on a mysterious planet far from Cybertron. The factions are led by Optimus Primal, leader of the Maximals, and Megatron, leader of the Predacons. With no way to establish contact with Cybertron, the two stranded teams continued their war on the primitive planet.
The Transformers are forced to adopt alternative forms in order to avoid the damaging influence of raw energon on the planet and choose the appearance of animals, dinosaurs and insects.
season 1
The first season establishes the characters of the two factions and revolves around the constant attempt to establish contact with the home planet of the Transformers. First appearances of past transformers such as B. Starscream in his spirit form, or taking up past events, z. B. the fight against Unicron , can also be found in this season.
season 2
In the second season it becomes clear that the two teams have landed on prehistoric planet Earth and that Megatron purposely wanted to crash land to change the future of all Transformers. He wants to wipe out the still in stasis Autobot leader Optimus Prime, so that the Decepticons can win the war against the Autobots in 1984 and the Predacons of the present become the rulers of Cybertron.
season 3
In season 3, the Maximals build their base in front of the Ark, the spaceship of the Autobots, in order to protect it from the attacks of the Predacons. After several failures, Megatron travels with two of his Predacons to the bottom of the great ocean to reactivate the Nemesis, the spaceship of the Decepticons, and to blow up the entire planet with his weapons.
Megatron fails and his Predacon warriors are destroyed in the course of the final battle. The Maximals, along with a damaged Megatron, borrow one of the Ark's rescue ships to travel back to the future through a new transwarp portal ...
Development and production
Originally, the series was supposed to take place in the present and reuse many of the characters from the original Transformers series. However, since Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio hardly knew anything about the original, they decided to let the series play in a completely new continuity and only recycled a few names and placed some references to the original series. Also, at the beginning of the planning, the planet was not the earth, but should be completely different, which is why the planet was orbited by two moons in the first season. Only later was the decision taken to make the planet a prehistoric earth, with one of the moons turning out to be a camouflaged alien weapon.
The series was originally supposed to offer a much larger cast of characters, due to the very young CGI technique at the time, the members of the two factions had to be cut to five each.
Beast Wars was also the first Transformers series to deal with deaths in some episodes, among those who died were Dinobot, Dinobot 2, Skorpinok, Terrorsaurus, Tarantulus, Depth Charge, Rampage, Tigerhawk, Inferno and Quickstrike. Of the 10 warriors who made their appearance in episode 1, only 6 survived to the end of the series, and of these 6 only 3 survived the finale of the follow-up series Beast Machines . The character Waspinator deserves special mention, although he was blown up in every episode, but never officially died. He even survived the follow-up series, albeit in a new body and new personality; as a thrust.
Waspinator was one of the characters who should die at the beginning of the second season, but he was spared due to the objection of the two scriptwriters Forward and DiTillio, as he was valued by the fans as the comic relief of the series.
The third season was originally supposed to contain an episode entitled "Dark Glass" written by Christy Marx . The episode should include a meeting between Rattrap and the cloned Dinobot 2, in which Rattrap finds memories of past events of the original Dinobot in the attic of the Axalon, the ship of the Maximals and wants to plant them in the clone to revive his ally. The script was discarded because it was found to be too dark for the young viewers of the scene, so the episode was never produced. Instead, the episode "Go with the Flow" was produced and caused a gap in the storyline of the third season, as in the finale this the cloned Dinobot suddenly rediscovered memories of his adventures with the Maximals through a strong electric shock and Megatron betrayed.
Home video publishing
In the 1990s, selected episodes were released on VHS which, in contrast to the German broadcast on RTL 2, were uncut. The VHS cassettes are no longer available. On April 24, 2012, Pandastorm Pictures released the entire first season of the series on DVD.
Episode list
| episode | German title | First broadcast (DE) | Original title | First broadcast (USA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 (1-01) | The alien planet, part 1 | March 28, 1998 | Beast Wars - Part 1 | September 16, 1996 |
| 02 (1-02) | The alien planet, part 2 | April 4, 1998 | Beast Wars - Part 2 | 17th September 1996 |
| 03 (1-03) | The network | April 18, 1998 | The Web | September 18, 1996 |
| 04 (1-04) | In the same boat | April 25, 1998 | Equal Measures | September 23, 1996 |
| 05 (1-05) | Hierarchy | May 3, 1998 | Chain of Command | September 24, 1996 |
| 06 (1-06) | Deadly energy | May 9, 1998 | Power surge | September 25, 1996 |
| 07 (1-07) | The fallen comrade | May 16, 1998 | Fall Comrades | September 30, 1996 |
| 08 (1-08) | Double the risk | May 23, 1998 | Double jeopardy | October 7, 1996 |
| 09 (1-09) | The rat trap | June 13, 1998 | A Better Mousetrap | October 8, 1996 |
| 10 (1-10) | The fighting machine | June 6, 1998 | Gorilla Warfare | October 14, 1996 |
| 11 (1-11) | The probe | May 30, 1998 | The sample | October 15, 1996 |
| 12 (1-12) | The victory | June 20, 1998 | Victory | November 1, 1996 |
| 13 (1-13) | Sinister intentions | June 28, 1998 | Dark designs | November 4, 1996 |
| 14 (1-14) | The cloned Dinobot | 4th July 1998 | Double Dinobot | 5th November 1996 |
| 15 (1-15) | The spark | July 11, 1998 | The Spark | November 11, 1996 |
| 16 (1-16) | The flying island, part 1 | July 18, 1998 | The Trigger - Part 1 | November 18, 1996 |
| 17 (1-17) | The flying island, part 2 | July 26, 1998 | The Trigger - Part 2 | November 19, 1996 |
| 18 (1-18) | The game of the spider | August 1, 1998 | Spider's Game | January 6, 1997 |
| 19 (1-19) | The call of the wild | August 8, 1998 | Call of the Wild | January 7, 1997 |
| 20 (1-20) | Dark journey | August 15, 1998 | Dark Voyage | January 27, 1997 |
| 21 (1-21) | obsession | August 22, 1998 | Possession | February 3, 1997 |
| 22 (1-22) | Whoever digs a pit for another ... | August 29, 1998 | The Low Road | February 10, 1997 |
| 23 (1-23) | The law of the jungle | 5th September 1998 | Law of the Jungle | February 17, 1997 |
| 24 (1-24) | Before the storm | September 12, 1998 | Before the storm | February 21, 1997 |
| 25 (1-25) | Other voices, part 1 | September 19, 1998 | Other Voices - Part 1 | March 31, 1997 |
| 26 (1-26) | Other voices, part 2 | September 26, 1998 | Other Voices - Part 2 | April 1, 1997 |
| episode | German title | First broadcast (DE) | Original title | First broadcast (USA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 (2-01) | - | - | Aftermath | October 26, 1997 |
| 28 (2-02) | - | - | Coming of the Fuzors - Part 1 | November 2, 1997 |
| 29 (2-03) | - | - | Coming of the Fuzors - Part 2 | November 9, 1997 |
| 30 (2-04) | - | - | Tangled Web | November 16, 1997 |
| 31 (2-05) | - | - | Maximum, no more | November 23, 1997 |
| 32 (2-06) | - | - | Other Visits - Part 1 | February 8, 1998 |
| 33 (2-07) | - | - | Other Visits - Part 2 | February 15, 1998 |
| 34 (2-08) | - | - | Bad Spark | February 22, 1998 |
| 35 (2-09) | - | - | Code of Hero | March 9, 1998 |
| 36 (2-10) | - | - | Transmutate | March 10, 1998 |
| 37 (2-11) | - | - | The Agenda - Part 1 | March 11, 1998 |
| 38 (2-12) | - | - | The Agenda - Part 2 | March 12, 1998 |
| 39 (2-13) | - | - | The Agenda - Part 3 | March 12, 1998 |
| episode | German title | First broadcast (DE) | Original title | First broadcast (USA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 (3-01) | - | - | Optimal situation | October 24, 1998 |
| 41 (3-02) | - | - | Deep metal | November 1, 1998 |
| 42 (3-03) | - | - | Changing of the Guard | November 8, 1998 |
| 43 (3-04) | - | - | Cutting Edge | November 15, 1998 |
| 44 (3-05) | - | - | Feral Scream - Part 1 | January 31, 1999 |
| 45 (3-06) | - | - | Feral Scream - Part 2 | February 7, 1999 |
| 46 (3-07) | - | - | Proving Grounds | February 14, 1999 |
| 47 (3-08) | - | - | Go with the flow | February 18, 1999 |
| 48 (3-09) | - | - | Crossing the Rubicon | February 22, 1999 |
| 49 (3-10) | - | - | Master Blaster | March 1, 1999 |
| 50 (3-11) | - | - | Other victories | May 5, 1999 |
| 51 (3-12) | - | - | Nemesis - Part 1 | May 6, 1999 |
| 52 (3-13) | - | - | Nemesis - Part 2 | May 7, 1999 |
synchronization
The synchronization of the first season of the series took place in Hamburg at Planet Wave.
| role | English speaker | German speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Optimus Primal | Gary Chalk | Ben Hecker |
| Megatron | David Kaye | Hans Sievers |
| Airazor | Pauline Newstone | |
| Cheetor | Ian James Corlett | Eberhard Haar |
| Dinobot | Scott McNeil | Uli Plessmann |
| inferno | Jim Byrnes | Thomas student |
| Rattrap | Scott McNeil | Robert Missler |
| Rhinox | Richard Newman | Gerhard Marcel |
| Black arachnia (Blackarachnia) | Venus Terzo | Uta Dahlbridge |
| Scorpinok (Scorponok) | Don Brown | Mario Grete |
| Starscream | Doug Parker | |
| Tarantulas | Alec Willows | Lutz Harder |
| Terrorsaurus (Terrorsaur) | Doug Parker | Holger Potzern |
| Tigatron | Blu Mankuma | Henry King |
| Waspinator | Scott McNeil | Holger Potzern |
Web links
- Transformers: Beast Wars in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Fernsehserien.de information about the series