The Beast Wars TV series came to TV screens in the US in 1996, and a little later in the UK. Produced by 3D computer animation company Mainframe, it was visually one of the most impressive cartoon shows at the time. A follow up to the 1984 Transformers series, and meant to advertise the toyline, it rose up out of the shadow of its predesecor and its original purpose to become an excellent series in its own right, even by adult standards.
Over time, things get a little more complicated, alien races get involved, revelations about the planet they exist on....time travel issues.....
Some excellent episode summaries, and in some cases, scripts for the episodes can be found at BWTF
The pilot episodes of the series saw a group of criminal 'Predacon' transformers travelling through 'transwarp space' on the search for Earth, a planet rich in energon, a powerful fuel, while pursued by an exploration party of 'Maximal' transformers. After a brief exchange of gunfire, both parties crash land on an unknown planet at an unknown time period. This planet proves to be rich in raw energon, which while a powerful fuel, in its unprocessed state, also causes their robotic systems to short out after a period of exposure to its radiation. In order to survive, the transformers take alternate forms based on indigenous wildlife that they can switch to in order to shield themselves from the effects of the energon radiation. The Maximals, aided by a Predacon traitor, strive to prevent the Predacons from gaining the energon they need to wage war against the Maximal and control the galaxy.
Beast Wars was shown up until December 1999 in the UK on GMTV (ITV's morning show) on public holidays and half term school holidays. Unfortunately, they decided to stop showing it after December, leaving the third and final series unaired. However, episodes 2-13 (that's the entire series except the first epsiode) of this series were released on video mid-2000 and are widely available. The first episode was released on special offer at Toys 'r' us, so is less widely available. As for the other two series, the two pilot episodes on videos on special offers at many toy shops, but are now largely unavailable, and the first two episodes of the second series were released with UK exclusive toys, which are also largely unavailable. If you have a reasonably fast internet connection, or are just very patient, many episodes of the first series of Beast Wars can be downloaded in Realplayer format from TFExtreme . They are somewhat large, but very high quality, and in my experience, take around 3hrs to download on a 56K modem. A large number of episodes are also available from the Transformers archives, and are of just as high quality, but the process of getting these is somewhat more complicated (and sometimes vaguely infuriating).
