Beast Wars - The Ascending trade paperback

[Mako Crab]

I always had this idea for a BW story that would take place during the actual timeframe of the Pax Cybertronia. So like, 300 years into our future? Anyway, bunch of Preds and Maxis come to Earth, but all the major cities are rubble and such. The planet has been reduced to a pre-industrial state as the human race attempts to rebuild after the Transformers' war nearly wiped them all out (this is based more on the G2 comics in which Jhiaxus nuked North America). Nature is reclaiming the planet, and the human population is much smaller. The Maxis and Preds take on beast modes to avoid detection by the human settlements. Considering what a threat the cavemen of BW posed to the Predacons, it would be in the interest of our guys to avoid these humans, whose tech is evolved beyond spears and clubs. Oh yeah, and since it was the TFs that pretty much wrecked the whole world, humans wouldn't be on good terms with either Maximals or Predacons.

The humans themselves wouldn't be wearing rags like a bunch of peasants from an episode of Xena or anything. Since this is 300 years after the TFs left Earth, they've had time to rebuild their civilization, and while it wouldn't be close to on par with our current world, they'd have good clothes and basic technology. I wouldn't want it to be all doom and gloom.

I have this idea for a scene in which K-9 infiltrates a human camp disguised as a dog, and I like it.

There'd still be wreckage of all sorts of vehicles littered about, so if you wanted to include some G2 bots like BW2 did, it'd be easy enough to work them in by scanning a junked tank or jet.

I imagine areas where the vegetation is lush and green and dominating the land, and other areas where cities are still veiled in a fog of invisible cybertronian radiation from the fallout of TF weapons 300 years prior. Easy way to work in some fuzors with the radiation possibly screwing with scanning a beast mode.

The basic theme of the story/show would be about having to deal with the consequences and the aftermath of your actions. I figured it'd be a nice theme since BW was sort of about the past and pre-destiny and setting things in motion, my story would be set at the other end of the spectrum. Anyway, that's all I got.

[andersonh1]

This is what I'm talking about by doing something new with the Beast Wars concept. There's a logical reason for the beast diguises, and we don't have a rehash of the "two groups stranded on a primitive planet" storyline.

[Sparky Prime]

Yeah, I have to say, I like that idea Mako. It'd be kinda nice to go back and see things around the time of the Pax Cybertronia, maybe cover the end of the war and the Maximal Upgrade, why Earth would be declared offlimits by the time of Beast Wars... Plenty of things they could do there.

[Mako Crab]

Absolutely. And seeing what harm their conflict brought to Earth in the near extinction of all life on the planet, the Maximal Elders (or their Autobot precursors) would declare the planet off-limits. I was thinking about this a bit more, and I've always had trouble with establishing why the Predacons and Maximals go to Earth in the first place. Are they on 2 separate ships, chasing each other through space again and crash *again*? What's the conflict? Where's the problem? But I think I've been going about it all wrong. Been too conditioned by TF fiction to just expect a fight from the outset.

I got to thinking that maybe the Maximals and Predacons come to Earth in a joint operation to survey the planet, gauge the recovery of the flora and fauna and indigenous life, and to see if there's something they can do to remove the pockets of cybertronian radiation that are still harming the Earth to that day. Somewhere down the road something would happen to cause the Predacons to flare up, but I'm not totally sure what.

I'd be importing Lio Convoy and Galvatron as leaders of the 2 separate groups, since no one among the leftover toy-only guys seems really leader-ish. Don't want to use any of the characters that were on the BW cartoon. I kind of think that I'd like to bring in MegaStorm and maintain the brotherly relationship between he and Galvatron, but I don't know about the rest of the G2 guys that appeared in BW2. I do want this to be BEAST Wars and not Beasts vs. Tanks and Jets. Other than that, all characters would be based on their western bios.

Some random scenes in my mind:

* A hunting party or father & son are out stalking their prey. They're following animal tracks when the lead hunter notices that the animal footprints suddenly stop, go from being 4-legged to 2-legged and become robotic looking. This would be the first big tip-off to the humans that TFs were back on their planet.

Galvatron would scan his dragon alt-mode from. . . a theme park ride, mistaking it for the fossilized remains of a powerful animal. At first he'd look like a living dragon with scales. Might not even be purple. But he wouldn't keep the flesh-and-bone look for long.

At some point the humans organize a pre-emptive strike against the Preds/Maxis and the idea is to cut the head off the snake. They go after the biggest, baddest one they can find first. The attack could come in any form, really, but I always pictured them dumping boiling oil on Galvatron and then lighting him on fire. The roaring flames would burn off his syntho-flesh and reveal the robotic dragon form that we're familiar with underneath. This could be the moment that sparks hostilities again, as Galvatron certainly wouldn't put up with that, while Lio Convoy tries to settles things down, but it just doesn't seem like enough.

Prowl and Ironhide from the Magnaboss combiner would be severely damaged at one point, to the point that they could go offline permanently. A risky operation combines them into one being to form Windrazor. Yeah, the origin's a little different, but I thought it was a nice way to consolidate a few characters into one.

Razorclaw becomes Shokaract somehow, but not because he got the Dark Matrix of pulsating Unicron energy. I'd change it into something more tangible in this story. I just don't know what. He spends a lot of time in the ocean, right? Maybe he found the old, abandoned Decepticon ship from the G1 toon down there. It's feasible, but I'll admit it sounds too much like the plot to "The Agenda" or "Nemesis".

And that's all for now

[Onslaught Six]

I skimmed your idea summary, but I'll tell you something: BWII did it. Gaea is Future Earth after humankind destroys itself in a nuclear war. The Destrons scan their altmodes from old military vehicles in the rubble.

Seriously; I can't recall exactly but I distinctly remember LioConvoy finding a busted-to-shit Tokyo Tower in a real "YOU BLEW IT UP, DIDN'T YOU!" moment.

[Sparky Prime]

I skimmed your idea summary, but I'll tell you something: BWII did it. Gaea is Future Earth after humankind destroys itself in a nuclear war. The Destrons scan their altmodes from old military vehicles in the rubble.

Sounds to me like you need to read Mako's idea's beyond just skimming it if your impression is simply that BWII did it... He's talking about a story setting before humanity is destroyed, and mentioned having beasts on both sides.

Seriously; I can't recall exactly but I distinctly remember LioConvoy finding a busted-to-shit Tokyo Tower in a real "YOU BLEW IT UP, DIDN'T YOU!" moment.

I remember the ruins of Tokyo Tower briefly being shown in the second episode, where the Destron's find a computer that allows them to scan vehicle forms, but that was it. No LioConvoy reenacting "Planet of the Apes" moments...

[Onslaught Six]

Alright maybe I'm embellishing. And I'm lazy lately! I don't have time during my home life to obsessively read arguments about a series I don't even like that much.

[Dominic]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think BWII assumed that Earth was abandoned. Humanity had simply moved on.

Either way, minus the specifics of "these guys have this happen, and then.....", it is not bad.

Dom
-will BW every be good again?

[Sparky Prime]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think BWII assumed that Earth was abandoned. Humanity had simply moved on.

The cartoon never covered what happened to Earth. The series never even called the planet Earth, it was always referred to as "Gaea". It was only confirmed in LioConvoy's Robot Master's bio to be Earth.

-will BW every be good again?

When did it stop being good?

[andersonh1]

-will BW every be good again?

When did it stop being good?

That's what I was wondering.