David Willis writes about BW

[Dominic]

They could have done the "two stranded groups" thing without the time-displacement or the fannish use of Magmatron being yet another guy who went back in time....

And, the as bad as the core ideas were, the execution did not help either.

Furman had no ideas for this series, so he went with his old stand-by of "write a faux-epic and let name recognition carry the day". The IDW "Beast Wars" comics just happened to be the point where his laziness out-weighed fan habits.


Dom
-all but avoids Furman now.

[Onslaught Six]

At least Furman's on the mostly-cruddy Movie comics now; which I almost by default have zero interest in. So it's like, I don't have interest in Movie comics, I don't have interest in reading anything Furman's writing...and now I only have to avoid one book! Awesome!

[Sparky Prime]

But, if life is precious, there is arguably a moral case for killing the big (if not malicious) monster. The episode does not really address this decisively. (Granted, it is not reasonable to expect a 20-odd minute cartoon to do so. But, I am not going to argue that said cartoon is instructive.)

No, Transmutate sacrificed itself, not wanting to see its friends, Rampage and Silverbolt, fighting each other. Self sacrifice is a much different thing than if Transmutate had been killed outright. And the act in itself can be interpreted as an allegory against war as we see the innocent is hurt/killed between the crossfire, while asking for them to stop. As I said, this episode has several themes in it.

I thought "The Gathering" did a nice job of setting up a new status quo and putting all the non-show Beast Wars characters on Earth in a way that could work around the TV series and tell some new stories with the new characters. I think "The Ascending", while not as bad as it's often made out to be, took a wrong turn by jumping back into a big, epic, Unicron-gobbling-Cybertron-up type of story. IDW should have continued by sticking with the two groups still stranded on Earth and worked on small plots while developing the various characters.

In short, I think IDW and Furman should have stuck with the new status quo and gone small rather than shooting for the cosmic storyline and missing the mark.

I completely agree. "The Gathering" felt like a nice set up to tell future stories with the two groups now stuck on Earth. But like you say, "The Ascending" quickly took a wrong turn with the story.

[BWprowl]

I completely agree. "The Gathering" felt like a nice set up to tell future stories with the two groups now stuck on Earth.

Because that is the most original idea for a Transformers story in the history of ever.

Seriously, why the hell did 'The Gathering' have to be set on Earth, circa the BW tv show? The way the plot went, they really could have put it on *any* planet that had Earth-ish creatures, or some *other* period in time when the BW show guys weren't there so they wouldn't have to write stupid crap about 'time displacement' or whatever. Really, *why* did the BW show guys have to be in the background of this clusterfuck? It'd be like watching an episode of 'Frasier', and in the background there's a TV showing old episodes of 'Cheers'. It's distracting, it accomplishes nothing, and if the fans want to relive 'Cheers', they can just go watch some old episodes of 'Cheers'. Did IDW really think a BW fanboy like me is devoted to the point that I won't criticize Furman's shoddy Beast Wars fanfic just because it has Cheetor and Silverbolt in it?

Sorry for the go-off, but 'The Gathering' really gets to me. For years, I wanted more Beast-era fiction to come in and expand the universe a bit, and what do we get? More shit set on the same goddamn planet, in the same goddamn time period. Way to completely miss the point of Beast Wars, Furman.

[Sparky Prime]

Because that is the most original idea for a Transformers story in the history of ever.

I never said it was an original idea... Just that it was a nice set up to allow new stories with new characters spinning out of events from Beast Wars.

Seriously, why the hell did 'The Gathering' have to be set on Earth, circa the BW tv show? The way the plot went, they really could have put it on *any* planet that had Earth-ish creatures, or some *other* period in time when the BW show guys weren't there so they wouldn't have to write stupid crap about 'time displacement' or whatever.

This was all explained in the first issue... Remember how in the show, the Tripredacus Council sent Ravage to Earth in order to apprehend Megatron? Well, then they sent Magmatron (and his team) when it became clear Ravage had failed. That's why they *had* to go to Earth during that *specific* period in time. And this suited Magmatron's ulterior motive to raise his own personal army with all those defenseless stasis pods left scattered and forgotten. The whole chronal displacement thing was because Magmatron's plan was essentially to just grab the stasis pods and return to Cybertron. He didn't want the Transformers already there to notice them because it would have slowed them down/foiled his plan. But then Razorbeast did that anyway.

[BWprowl]

This was all explained in the first issue... Remember how in the show, the Tripredacus Council sent Ravage to Earth in order to apprehend Megatron? Well, then they sent Magmatron (and his team) when it became clear Ravage had failed. That's why they *had* to go to Earth during that *specific* period in time. And this suited Magmatron's ulterior motive to raise his own personal army with all those defenseless stasis pods left scattered and forgotten. The whole chronal displacement thing was because Magmatron's plan was essentially to just grab the stasis pods and return to Cybertron. He didn't want the Transformers already there to notice them because it would have slowed them down/foiled his plan. But then Razorbeast did that anyway.

Look, I know that that was the 'reason' they gave in the story for it, but why did they have to write the story around that idea anyway? Why not make it easier on themselves with something like "Magmatron takes his crew to some other kickass planet/time period and Razorbeast and his crew of Maximals fight him without having to dance around show BW characters that contribute nothing to the story whatsoever"?

Or, I dunno, a story that *doesn't* involve two factions fighting on Earth? Is that type of Transformers story even legal?

Razorbeast was an idiot.

[andersonh1]

It's clear that the mini-series was written to allow Beast Wars fans to revisit the universe we saw on the TV show, and there's nothing wrong with that. Can you imagine the complaints if IDW had started from scratch or done something else entirely?

I thought the reason Magmatron and his crew went to Earth when they did made perfect sense. They were given the mission that Ravage failed to accomplish. It was good to see more of the political situation back on Cybertron, something barely touched on during Beast Wars. The time displacement was perhaps over-complicating things. Why not just have Magmatron's crew simply avoid the Maximals and Predacons already on Earth? But overall I really enjoyed what "The Gathering" tried to do.

[Onslaught Six]

The reasons for it were bad, and the in-story explanations were even worse. The end.

[andersonh1]

So what would you have done differently?

[Onslaught Six]

Adapt BWII and Neo's rough plots and make them 'even more awesome.' And not involve those damned show characters.