Beast Wars Transformers - The Complete First Season

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Customer Reviews:

Beast Wars  [Posted on 2007-11-27]
My daughter got me to buy this DVD. She was about 5 years old when B.W. came out. After we watched it she wasn't as thrilled as she thought she would be. On the other hand I liked it. For the time it came out the graphics are very good. I love rat trap. The DVD is worth buying and watching.

A new beginning for a new kind of Transformers [Posted on 2007-12-04]
From the creators of the computer animated series Reboot, Beast Wars premiered in the mid-90's with a different spin on the Transformers lore. The series begins with the heroic Maximals (the descendants of the Autobots) and the villainous Predicons (the descendents of the Decepticons) crash landing on what appears to be Earth after the dinosaurs became extinct and brief signs of civilization began to stir. Instead of transforming into vehicles, the bots transform into various animals and beasts (hence the title), as they do battle over this first season. Though there were decidedly two camps when Beast Wars premiered (fans of the classic Transformers series either enjoyed it or hated it, with myself originally being one of the haters), there is something about the show that just grows on you. The characterizations offer all sorts of odes to the classic series, as the Maximals consist of leader Optimus Primal, young Cheetor, motormouth Rattrap, former Predicon-turned Maximal Dinobot, scientific officer Rhinox, and eventually newer members Tigertron and Air Razor. The Predicons offer leader Megatron, the treacherous Tarantulas, Black Arachnia (who would go on to play a vital role in the series' development), Scorpinok, the crazy and annoying Waspinator, and Terasaur. The show only gets better with each progressing episode, and the season ending cliffhanger will have you begging for more as a heroic sacrifice leads to the question: just who is behind all this? All in all, if you're a Transformers fan in the least bit, Beast Wars is certainly worth a look, as it expands the Transformers mythos, and is an important chapter as well.

RE: D. C. Eberhart [Posted on 2008-03-21]
So, if you're reading this review you're probably obsessively going through every single bloody review on this page in hopes of finding something new and illuminating to help you decide whether or not to buy this thing, I probably can't provide it. The main reason is that, unlike you, I do not have the stamina to read all fifty-something reviews before my eyes pop out of my head in search of someone willing to water them. As such, anything in my review may well be in another review already, better stated and with less of a preamble. So, rather than drum up some original praise for the series, I'm going to attempt to offer some original and in-depth criticism, despite the fact that I would have been the biggest Beast Wars fanboy on the planet had my lower-class-white-anglo-saxon-protestant upbringing not taught me better than to spend my limited allowance money on action figures and swag. Besides, I liked the show, not the toys.

Anyway, on to the review.

As others have mentioned, the first season of Beast Wars, while good, is far outshined by the second, and even perhaps by the prematurely aborted third. It is not as dark, witty, or free of Saturday-morning cartoon cliches as the other two seasons. For this I blame the writers. My guess is that Larry Datillo et al were going for volume, not quality, trying to get a new episode out every day in order to establish a regular watching crowd (something that's hard to do when some syndicates air your show at 6am). By the time second season rolled around, my guess is that Bob Forward had rolled up his sleeves, gave everyone a good slap on the face and demanded that everyone not get too sidetracked from the main story arc.

What's more, the plot takes so long to develop that a really picky viewer might begin to wonder whether the series is really going anywhere. First season doesn't accomplish in 26 episodes what the other seasons do with 12. Don't get me wrong, I like episodic storytelling as much as the next guy, and not every episode has to move the arc forward. "Equal Measures," for instance, had some decent character development, adding complexity to Dinobot's character, something it's Datillo-written atrophied twin "The Web" didn't manage. Datillo must have been insanely jealous about this and arranged a brain transplant with Greg Johnson (the writer of Equal Measures), because Johnson's next episode "Gorilla Warfare," despite some redeeming moments, came straight out of the tradition of "Power Surge" (another Datillo episode): pump up one of the characters with robo-hormones and turn him loose to wreak destruction on his own side (if he's a good guy, he gets to blow up the other side eventually as well). Datillo's episodes, by contrast, get a lot better, though that could just be because he gets to write all the cool episodes, like "The Spark" and the two-part season finale, "Other Voices."

Contrary to what at least one reviewer said, death never really comes up in this series until-
SPOILER WARNING
-the very last episode of the first season, and even that's obviously going to be a resurrection job which you can spot from a mile away if you:
A) were a fan of the original series and know intuitively that characters with "Optimus Prim-" as part of their names can never be truly killed
B) have ever watched kids programming where this sort of thing happens all the time
and/or C) are not a complete retard.

The same reviewer who promised you death also promised that good characters would occasionally do evil things, and this is true approximately three times: two in the case of Dinobot, and once in the case of Rhinox, when he gets reprogrammed to be a bad guy. That's right- these instances of "good guys bein' bad" are nothing more than the bad guys (who happen to be allied with the good guys) being bad. I call shenanigans. What's more, the "evil" acts are more like, "semi-questionable acts, if you're a really self-righteous legalistic butt-munch." So Dinobot eats his clone. Whoop-dee-frickin-doo. It would have made a bad recurring character, and we got to see a Transformer burp. Also, he puts Cheetor's life at risk by persuading Optimus to put a bomb in the Predacon base, where Cheetor is. This would be halfway bad, but it seems that Dinobot is really just grinding his axe about wanting to kill Megatron, which is just a reflection of the fact that he's still a Predacon at heart. See? Only the bad guys are bad.

In short, buy this season (you'll like it, and so will your kids), so that you can watch the second and third season (which you will love).

what can i say , my kids love it. [Posted on 2008-05-30]
my kids 10 and 4 love it. we have almost all transformers CD - from all they adore this series the most. I didn't watch all with them but what ever i got to see was pretty good - excellent writing - I think the animation was a turn off for me. but non the less good one .

Beast Wars- Season One [Posted on 2008-08-12]
Beast Wars was an awesome series for adults and teens. I watched it as a kid and to this day I still like Beast Wars. The characters, the stroylines, and the action sequences are as great as I remember them.

Here is a list of all the episodes of season one:

Episode One- Beast Wars, Part One
Episode Two- Beast Wars, Part Two
Episode Three- The Web
Episode Four- Equal Measures
Episode Five- Chain of Command
Episode Six- Power surge

Episode Seven- Fallen Comrades
Episode Eight- Double Jeopardy
Episode Nine- A Better Mousetrap
Episode Ten- Gorilla Warfare
Episode Eleven- The Probe
Episode Twelve- Victory

Episode Thirteen- Dark Designs
Episode Fourteen- Double Dinobot
Episode Fifteen- The Spark
Episode Sixteen- The Trigger, Part One
Episode Seventeen- The Trigger Part Two
Episode Eighteen- Spider's Game

Episode Nineteen- Call of the Wild
Episode Twenty- Dark Voyage
Episode Twenty One- Possesion
Episode Twenty Two- The Low Road
Episode Twenty Three- Law of the Jungle
Episode Twenty Four- Before the Storm

Episode Twenty Five- Other Voices, Part One
Episode Twenty Six- Other Voices, Part Two

This is the complete first season. This series includes many popular Transformer characters like Optimus Primal, Rhinox, RatTrap, MegaTron, and many more fan favorites. So if you are looking for a great series to watch, then Beast Wars, Season One would be a wise choice.

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