David Willis writes about BW

[BWprowl]

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 don't mind them revisiting the *universe*, hell, like I said, that's the first thing I wanted from the series. But they dropped us in that universe, then shoved us over into that same little corner of it we spent three years in. I mean, the series literally took place during reruns of Beast Wars!

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

This. Maybe then the Sourcebook's entries for those characters actually would've been accurate too.

[andersonh1]

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

Say what? "I hate that IDW wrote their comic around Beast Wars. What's my solution? Write it around the Japanese version of BW!"

You're still basing the plot around a pre-existing BW show if you do that. How is this all that different from what IDW did? And not everyone thinks the Japanese Beast Wars shows are awesome, you know.

[Dominic]

I see what Prowl and O6 are saying. Instead of a time-travelling circle-jerk, just have some random pods open. Have some guys decide to be Predacons. The first arc would be set ~season 2, with 2 or more parties trying to reach the show featured characters. They do not manage to get there until after season 3.

And/or, maybe have other guys (like Magmatron and the other Japanese characters) doing stuff 300+ years in the future.

Any of that would have been better than Furfanfic. (Oh, that sounds so much worse than I meant it to.)

Razorbeast was an idiot.

Testified.


Dom
-no, really. Why didn't he shoot Ravage?

[andersonh1]

I see what Prowl and O6 are saying. Instead of a time-travelling circle-jerk, just have some random pods open. Have some guys decide to be Predacons. The first arc would be set ~season 2, with 2 or more parties trying to reach the show featured characters. They do not manage to get there until after season 3.

And/or, maybe have other guys (like Magmatron and the other Japanese characters) doing stuff 300+ years in the future.

I'm reasonably confident in saying that the vast majority of fans weren't looking for anything like this, and wouldn't have been happy if we got it. Myself included. The majority wanted to go back and re-visit the world of the Mainframe-created Beast Wars show. And that's what we got, thank goodness. You can debate the execution of the idea, but the solution would not have been some re-creation of BW II or BW Neo.

[138 Scourge]

The majority wanted to go back and re-visit the world of the Mainframe-created Beast Wars show. And that's what we got, thank goodness.

I guess. People did get a brief glimpse of the characters from the Beast Wars cartoon, while the other toys that didn't get on the show did stuff. If that's what the people want, then I guess they sure got that.

It seems like it would have just been easier to just say "You want that story, here you go!" and do "Missing Adventures" style stories, set in between the regular episodes.

[andersonh1]

Is it time to pull a SynjoDeonecros and go off on all of you?

I guess I'm just not getting the dislike for The Gathering here. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and the "fit it in between the TV episodes" nature of the story doesn't bother me in the slightest. And I don't see that BW II or Neo are so much better than Beast Wars. Honestly, I don't think either are as good, but then that's judging from just a few episodes rather than the entirety of each series so it may not be a fair assessment.

[138 Scourge]

Is it time to pull a SynjoDeonecros and go off on all of you?

Feeling fursecuted, are we?

I guess I'm just not getting the dislike for The Gathering here. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and the "fit it in between the TV episodes" nature of the story doesn't bother me in the slightest. And I don't see that BW II or Neo are so much better than Beast Wars. Honestly, I don't think either are as good, but then that's judging from just a few episodes rather than the entirety of each series so it may not be a fair assessment.

It's not so much the "fit in between episodes of the series" that got on my nerves, it was more the "temporal displacement" bit. I've always thought that was ridiculous whenever it's turned up. And even ignoring that, one of Beast Wars' strengths was in having a smaller cast so each member of the show had some room for their character to be shown. "The Gathering", on the other hand, just dumps the whole damn toybox out, and nobody's got time to be more than "Generic thug who looks like a bug #3" or the like.

Now, if it was, in fact, stories that fit in between episodes, I could get behind that. If it was the adventures of the other guys in stasis pods that were left on Earth, again, I could get behind it. But the Gathering didn't have enough going for it to keep me interested beyond the one issue. And I pretty much only got that because of the Magmatron cover.

Now, as for the BWII/BWNeo, I don't think anyone here wants a literal transcript of either series. But take that and adapt it so it's something cool? There you may have something. Just give the writer the faintest idea of what the plot of the old shows are about, have them go to friggin' town. There could well be interesting material to work with there, and it'd be something...relatively new.

I mean, that's how I'm looking at it, anyway.

[andersonh1]

It's not so much the "fit in between episodes of the series" that got on my nerves, it was more the "temporal displacement" bit. I've always thought that was ridiculous whenever it's turned up.

That's fair enough. So why is it ridiculous? I tend to think it's an overly complicated way of keeping the characters clear of the TV episode storylines. But on the other hand, it also strains credulity to have a large cast of new characters hiding just offstage from "Changing of the Guard" onwards and never encountering the BW tv cast.

And even ignoring that, one of Beast Wars' strengths was in having a smaller cast so each member of the show had some room for their character to be shown. "The Gathering", on the other hand, just dumps the whole damn toybox out, and nobody's got time to be more than "Generic thug who looks like a bug #3" or the like.

I agree completely, and that's why I said earlier that I think the second mini should have focused on smaller stories that fleshed these guys out rather than going cosmic. I can forgive the "dumping of the toybox" for the setup mini-series, but I had hoped for more details in future outings once the factions and characters were established. I think going with Unicron turned off a lot of readers fairly quickly, judging by sales on the second mini.

[BWprowl]

That's fair enough. So why is it ridiculous? I tend to think it's an overly complicated way of keeping the characters clear of the TV episode storylines. But on the other hand, it also strains credulity to have a large cast of new characters hiding just offstage from "Changing of the Guard" onwards and never encountering the BW tv cast.

It's not ridiculous, it's just pointless. I can understand people wanting to revisit the setting and characters that Mainframe created for the show, since I would've like that too. But that's not really what we got. The show characters were technically there, but they just popped up in the background every now and then, not really doing any of the things that made me like them so much in the first place. It's not that they were just *there*, they were just *there* with an incredibly circuitous succession of plot devices being used to get them pointlessly in the background of this story. I'm with Scourge, if they wanted to write around the BW show so badly, why not just write some 'in-between' stories that actually featured the characters we cared about, instead of just using them as window dressing?

[Sparky Prime]

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?

You can't claim it didn't matter to the plot what planet they were on or when in time when it was clearly explained they had a very specific purpose for being there. Why did they center around that idea? Pure and simple, people wanted them to revisit the Beast Wars. However, I recall a lot of people also didn't want them to change events from the show. So it's a compromise, they show up while the Beast Wars are taking place, yet is set up in such a way so as not to change events from the show.

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

Say what? "I hate that IDW wrote their comic around Beast Wars. What's my solution? Write it around the Japanese version of BW!"

You're still basing the plot around a pre-existing BW show if you do that. How is this all that different from what IDW did? And not everyone thinks the Japanese Beast Wars shows are awesome, you know.

I agree, replacing one write around with another write around of a different show(s) isn't a solution. I'm sure there still would have been plenty of fans upset if they'd done that instead. I'd think the majority of fans would want to know why they did the Japanese BW shows instead of the one they knew and loved. Not to mention, I'm sure there are still plenty of people that have no idea the Japanese Beast Wars shows even exist, so if they'd done that, not everyone would know what's going on.

I guess I'm just not getting the dislike for The Gathering here. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and the "fit it in between the TV episodes" nature of the story doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Seconded.