A Critique of Beast Wars and Megatron
(Spoilers for Beast Wars: Transformers)
Deaths Don't Matter
One of my criticisms of G1 Transformers is every episode is about the Decepticons trying to extract resources from Earth. In Beast Wars, the show seemingly has the opposite problem. Every time there's damage or a death, characters are immediately repaired with no regards for resources.
CR Chambers essentially turns major damage into a minor inconvenience. It turns Beast Wars into a Halo-style respawn loop where no one really stays dead.
Megatron's disposable treatment of troops makes strategic sense but it robs the show of stakes, why care when everyone respawns?
Protoforms arrive conveniently to bolster numbers.
I like in Skybound Transformers that they show it takes energon to repair bots and they have limited energon.
Dinobot and Blackarachnia have ‘sacrifices’ that are kinda undone by this. Dinobot sacrifices himself for humanity, but he’s brought back (albeit as a clone Dinobot II) and Blackarachnia sacrifices herself, Silverbolt mourns and while he‘s mourning, it's mentioned they can repair her in the CR Chamber. If the characters don’t care about death, why should the viewer?
Take No Prisoners
If the impermanence of death is intentional, the fact that nobody takes prisoners feels like a missed opportunity to heighten stakes. You think with the number of times Waspinator is scrapped, the Maximals would collect his scraps so he can't be repaired. If repairs are so easy, why not prevent them?
Megatron is too slapstick
While slapstick is okay for Predacon henchmen, especially the comic ones like Waspinator, Inferno, and Quickstrike, Megatron is involved in slapstick way too often.
In "The Low Road" (Season 1, Episode 22), Megatron and the Predacons are defeated by an energon fart. With 2 and 1/4th seasons of the show to go, the main villain getting defeated by a fart early in the series undercuts his menace permanently going forward. Henchmen like Waspinator, Inferno, and Quickstrike thrive on comedy, but it makes Megatron a joke. If Megatron is a joke, why should the viewers take the heroes' struggles seriously?
Megatron is a fraud
Beast Wars Megatron takes his name from G1 Megatron but is not related to him at all and he’s totally unworthy of the name.
In "Go with the Flow", the Predacons need help to build their disruptor cannon because the energon source to the disruptor cannon was installed before the shielding so the Predacons can't get near the machine they have built. Megatron gets a primitive human girl named Una to help install the shielding and the stabilizer crystal. Megatron gets tricked by Una who kept the stabilizer crystal for a hairpin, exploding all the Predacons in the disruptor cannon’s explosion.
This stunning incompetence and mismanagement underscores how little the Predacons' chances of victory were under Megatron's leadership.
This pattern of short-sightedness extends to his obsession with the future. When he has the Covenant of Primus, which is a prophecy, he reads "only the good parts" or the parts he agrees with because he’s winning in them. This approach defeats the whole point of being obsessed with knowing the future to alter timelines, by refusing to read the parts predicting his downfall, he misses opportunities to avert them, it’s idiotically short-sighted.
Another plot of Megatron is to destroy Optimus Prime's helm in the Ark, aiming to prevent his awakening and alter the G1 timeline—a concept later executed more effectively by Shockwave in the IDW comics.
So he destroys Optimus Prime’s helm, which should prevent him from defeating the G1 Decepticons. The Maximals, still active and unopposed, simply repair the damage immediately with no apparent resource cost. The timeline is restored and that plot doesn’t really go anywhere. What did he expect? A timeline shift without opposition?
In "Nemesis Part 2", Megatron blows up his own men while trying to destroy the primitive human settlement, Megatron fires anyway, killing ultra-loyal Inferno and useful (if treacherous) Quickstrike in the process. This disregard for henchmen is clichéd villainy. While villains often sacrifice henchmen in fits of rage or desperation, here it comes across as another impulsive, idiotically short-sighted decision by Megatron.
So Beast Wars Megatron blows up his own men, gets betrayed by Dinobot II, and is flown stuck to the hull of the Maximal’s shuttle to Cybertron.
The biggest fraud of all Transformers villains.