Upon Further Review: Beast Machines Megatron
If you haven’t noticed it, I’d have to question whether or not you’re watching the same show. The characters in Beast Machines act differently than they did in Beast Wars. Shocking deduction, isn’t it? Now whether or not you like the change, that’s where the difference in opinion lies. Personally, I like a lot of the new directions they took with the characters in this latest installment of the Transformers. I have little doubt that these characters will get essays of their own eventually. Personally, I can see, without much strain or “reaching,” where the new and different characterizations come from. Some still baffle me, like nursemaid Blackarachnia. In Beast Wars, and the first three episodes of Beast Machines, she was either an interesting femme fatale or an interesting unconventional “good guy.” Beast Machines displays her as far more sappy and far less interesting, in my opinion. From time to time, the interesting Blackarachnia peeks out again (such as in “In Darkest Knight”), but she usually retreats back into nursemaid mode.
Another one that baffled me was Megatron. Suddenly, the megalomaniac with the ego the size of Jupiter has, to paraphrase Thy2K, became “the grand poobah of all the stuffed animals in attendance.” While I did, and still do, think this new attitude of Megatron’s was interesting, I had no idea where it came from or why he acted so differently. In Beast Wars, he seemed to bask in attention. He enjoyed giving the orders and enjoyed having others act those orders out. Now, he seems happy to rule a dead world. He basks in nothing. Nobody is around to follow his orders and quip “mighty Megatron” to him. He proclaims that he will actually honor an agreement for crying out loud, something he would never do in Beast Wars even when his back was against the wall. Or more to the point, he’d strike a deal and keep it until it was no longer useful to him (see “Other Voices”). Because of all of this, his nickname, Horace, started to get used more and more frequently. Fans just didn’t get the change. And neither did I. At least until I saw “Spark War, Part 3: The Siege.” That’s when I finally saw that he hasn’t changed at all.
Okay, that’s not quite true. He has. He’s going about a different mission that will, as in Beast Wars, leave him the master of Cybertron. And I really doubt that that is where he is going to leave it, not with the entire universe supposedly so close to his grasp several time in Beast Wars. He was way too close to way too much power to not have bigger things on his mind than one measly planet. Something, in that unknown amount of time that he spent on Cybertron waiting for the Maximals’ arrival, happened to change his stance on dealing with the others around him. That scar came from somewhere after all. One thing remains true, however: The other Transformers are still pawns for his ultimate rise to whatever the heck he’s trying to get. This time, though, most of them are pawns that can’t move and don’t have bodies. The rest just play into his hand.
In Beast Wars, it was sometimes hard to grasp exactly how Megatron was going to achieve his ultimate goal only because he moved so fluidly from one to the next. In the pilot, he shrugs off the general belief that he is on the wrong planet, noting there is plenty of energon to gather. Path number one to glory: harvest energon, return to Cybertron, take over. This remains the basic status quo throughout the first season. Alien encounters seemed to pique his interest, however. In “Chain of Command,” “The Trigger,” and “Other Voices,” he is obviously interested in these aliens, or perhaps more to the point, their power. After all, the aliens are little more than pawns in Megatron’s eyes as well (as hinted to in “Other Visits”). The only real hint that Megatron had something planned with the alien weapons other than the destruction of the Maximals in the first season is when Megatron seemed mildly disappointed at the turn of events in the first part of “Other Voices.” In the second season, things got more interesting. The beginning of the second season is basically Megatron getting ready for second half of the season. Since they find out they are on Earth, Megatron’s attention turned less to energon and more two different grand plans: killing the early humans and killing Optimus Prime. However, the alien visit in “Other Visits” gave him a new possibility and one that didn’t require messing with changing time. Path number two to glory: hijack alien device, take it to Cybertron, take over. This doesn’t work, but that doesn’t seem to bother Megatron. Instead, he goes right to the next plan. Path number three to glory: make early humans extinct, change history, take over. Dinobot takes care of this. Not matter, because Megatron’s not done. Path number four to glory: kill Optimus Prime, change history, take over. When this doesn’t work, Megatron continues to try to take the Ark, until a return of the aliens forces him to rethink his strategy. Plan number five to glory: hijack refurbished Decepticon battle ship, kill the inhabitants of the Ark, change history, take over.
Why go through a bunch of stuff that will eventually make it’s way into a “Prisoner of War” essay by yours-truly? It shows a basic pattern of Megatron’s. It shows that he rolls with the punches and he always has more than one path to achieve his goals. Personally, I wish I could plan like this, though maybe without the time rending and hurting people. We never know exactly what he knows or how his mind works. But he moves with such a confidence that we just know that he knows what he’s doing. Does Megatron know that Blackarachnia had the codes to the Ark in “The Agenda?” It’s hard to tell. Does Megatron know that Tarantulus is a double agent the whole time? It’s hard to tell. If Megatron didn’t know little things like this, then he’s absolutely incredible at adapting to new surprises along the way. Also, Megatron doesn’t shy away from new opportunities to get to his ultimate goal faster. One other less flattering trait of Megatron’s is his overconfidence. So many of his plans are so close to completion and probably would have worked if not for his need to go that one step too far.
Thanks to the third part of “Spark War,” I finally started to see this same pattern in Beast Machines Megatron as seen in Beast Wars. Did he know that Tankor would start to exhibit Rhinox-under-Pred-influence (as in “Dark Designs”) type actions? From his dialogue at the end of season 1, one might think so. But with Megatron, it can be hard to tell. Did he know that Primal would access Megatron in the second part of “Spark War” to find out where the sparks were? Again, it seems that way, from Megatron’s greeting in the third part. Also related to this is his ability to adapt to many different bodies fluidly. He starts in his TM2 form, changes into Noble’s form, then becomes the Big Floating Head, then a disembodied spark, then a Diagnotic Drone’s body, and finally Optimus Primal’s old body. That’s a lot of change and he completely rolls with the punches.
But this ability to adapt to the unexpected or his use of this allies and enemies as pawns isn’t the only thing that Megatron carried over from Beast Wars. Megatron’s goal is to be the single guiding entity of Cybertron. I doubt it ends there, knowing Megatron. At any rate, that’s his stated goal. And, like we saw in Beast Wars, Megatron always seems to have a contingency plan when the best available plan is unworkable. The first season mostly involved ridding himself of the Maximals. Plan number one for glory: kill Maximals, take sparks, win. In the second season, we see Megatron changing his plans dependent upon his opportunities. Plan number two to glory: access the Oracle, absorb all sparks, win.
Okay, so two is far less than five, but Megatron is hardly the star of Beast Machines. His air time is, unfortunately, quite a bit less than in Beast Wars. Cripes, the entire “Revelations” three-parter went by without a peep from him. However, after the ending of “Spark War,” I found myself wondering something else. In Beast Wars, it seems that Megatron’s best chance of achieving his goals, and certainly his favorite based on his speech in “The Agenda,” was exterminating the humans. However, opportunities presented themselves earlier, so Megatron tried to take advantage of them.
What if Megatron, after “The Reformatting,” decided that the plan that is developed during season two, the use of the Oracle to absorb the sparks, was the way to go to achieve his goals? The cycle drones were in the Oracle chamber during “The Reformatting.” No doubt this would be the first place Megatron would look for clues to the Maximals whereabouts between this episode and “Master of the House.” If the Oracle was visible to Tankor later in season one, no doubt Megatron would see it through the “eyes” of his drones as well. So the ultimate plan, his best chance, was learning the secrets of the Oracle to absorb the sparks and grow all-powerful. However, along the way, he had opportunities to eliminate the only threat he had to reaching that goal. Megatron, considering the ego he has, no doubt believed that he’d master the Oracle even without Primal around, something he thinks better of during “Spark War.”
Still, there are questions that never get answered. While Megatron still approaches his goals in the same manner as he did in Beast Wars, there still remains the unexplained change. I never get a clear idea of just why Megatron wants to absorb the sparks. (One interesting idea I have is that Vector Sigma, aka the Oracle, wanted Megatron to do this. We see in “The Rebirth” that Vector Sigma allowed Galvatron to find the key to the Plasma Energy Chamber in order to triggered the new Golden Age. Perhaps, Megatron had to be in possession of the sparks in order for the reformatting of Cybertron to work and therefore Vector Sigma allowed this to happen. It’s a theory in progress; don’t rip it apart too bad :) Something else that I’m uncomfortable with is that just about everything I stated in this essay is supposition. Unlike in Beast Wars, where I firmly believe that Megatron was the “star” of the show, we don’t get a peek into Megatron’s head. Rare are the musings to himself, where we might be able to see where the plan is going and how he ultimately feels about it. He’s even more of a mystery in Beast Machines than he is in Beast Wars. Perhaps this fact, that we never really know why Megatron does what he does, will keep Megatron’s nickname in tact. Horace almost seems to be a shadow of the deep and interesting character, Megatron. Maybe, though, there’s just enough of the old Megatron in Beast Machines you can start to see a little of Megatron in Horace.
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