The Ties That Bind: Connecting Non-G1 Stuff to G1

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Even when Armada first came out were there still some lingering attempts to connect it, too, back to G1, rather than just accepting the concept of it being a reboot.

I remember those "Armada is a sequel to season 4!" rumours!

I hate to be that guy, but can we stay on target about Legacy.

Sure thing. I'd love to continue this Beast Era talk, but it deserves its own thread.

Done.

I remember the Armada stuff about being a continuation of G1. I'm pretty sure there was some sort of news or announcement that painted it as such at one point, and the early commercials for the cartoon using G1 character models certainly did little to dispel the idea:

That said, something I'd love to see is a story that basically takes the Armada premise and... I don't want to say "characters," exactly, since they're distinct from their namesakes, but the players, and makes it a continuation of G1. Not that I need it to be about G1, but rather, it's just a premise that piqued my curiosity, yet was never followed up on.

Similar to how Beast Wars was originally a direct sequel to G1, with Primal and Megatron actually being their namesakes, rather than descendents. I'd love to see how that, along with original toy bios, such as Waspinator being more of a Terminator-type and Tarantulas being a ninja, would play out. I'd rather that than another remake of the cartoon concept.

Basically, a fresh take on familiar concepts using unexplored ideas from long ago.

 

[The Predaking]

Man, those G1 looking TFs looked cool in that promo.

 

[LordGigaIce]

The big rumour I remember back when Armada was announced was that it picked up after Rebirth, which explained why Megatron had seemingly Scorponok-inspired design elements. He even had a Scorponok-esque colour scheme.
The rumour being floated is that when Galvatron and Zarek fled with the Decepticons Galvatron merged with him somehow which gave him a power boost and rebooted his "Megatron" personality.

None of that makes much sense now but back then when everything aside from RiD was connected? It seemed like it made sense that Armada would pick up where (American) G1 left off.

There were even discussions that tried to tie RiD into G1 (mostly based on the Japanese continuity) to tie EVERYTHING together.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

I remember the late Neale Davidson claiming (before we got so much as the animated promos, when basically we knew of Mini-cons and that was it) that the series would be set in post-Rebirth Sunbow continuity and the primary villain would be Shockwave.... neither of which came to pass.

The studio behind Armada did reuse a lot of G1 animation models, most were randomly coloured, but seeing Crosshairs and Strafe in correct colors in the promo animation (the latter in the foreground, even) gave one a lot of hope at the time....

 

[Sabrblade]

There were even discussions that tried to tie RiD into G1 (mostly based on the Japanese continuity) to tie EVERYTHING together.

I recall reading old posts on ATT where people tried to connect RiD to G1 based on the English version instead, saying things like RiD Ultra Magnus eventually becomes G1 Ultra Magnus after maturing and getting over his grudge with Optimus, or that Side Burn becomes Hot Rod after mastering his Super Mode and keeping his new red colors permanently. RiD Optimus being G1 Optimus through a temporary body change, and the same being the case for most (but not all) other RiD characters who shared the same names with G1 season 1/2 characters.

Another fan theory from back then was that RiD was the result of history being changed by the Beast Wars having happened, and that the G1 cartoon was how history originally played out without the Beast Wars having ever happened.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

I recall reading old posts on ATT where people tried to connect RiD to G1 based on the English version instead, saying things like RiD Ultra Magnus eventually becomes G1 Ultra Magnus after maturing and getting over his grudge with Optimus, or that Side Burn becomes Hot Rod after mastering his Super Mode and keeping his new red colors permanently. RiD Optimus being G1 Optimus through a temporary body change, and the same being the case for most (but not all) other RiD characters who shared the same names with G1 season 1/2 characters.

Well, X-Brawn's Mighty Arm no doubt felt like a homage/repairing to the whole "bad shoulder" meme of the time. But as for RiD Magnus, Zobovor's fanfic "Second Chances" actually took an interesting track by having his behaviour in RiD-2001 be the culmination of a litany of perceived slights weaving through the Sunbow-G1 storyline, going all the way back to Orion Pax-and-Dion days....

As to BW, G1, RiD and Time Travel, well Raksha kept telling anyone who would listen that BW could never have come from the G1 present no matter how many times Bob and Larry wrote otherwise in character dialogue. But given her impressions of the show, are we surprised? All we can be certain of is that within Mainframe-Beasties, we only get glimpses of its G1 backstory, and while both Dreamwave-G1 and Wings Universe built some continuity bridges showing how things could conceivably lead from their G1 continuities to the show we saw, they both had the benefit of hindsight, as Marvel and Sunbow could not.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

the result of history being changed by the Beast Wars having happened

I'm a little surprised that we haven't gotten that story. It's not obvious what to do with it, but that's why it could be fun.

 

[Sabrblade]

I'm a little surprised that we haven't gotten that story. It's not obvious what to do with it, but that's why it could be fun.

The impression that I got from Beast Wars was that the Maximals made sure that nothing that happened during that series had any perceptible changes on the future whatsoever, since preserving the timeline became their main objective by the third season.

As if to say that the Beast Wars did always happen in the proper course of history, and that Cybertronian history records from before the Golden Disk theft simply never recorded it.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

I'm a little surprised that we haven't gotten that story. It's not obvious what to do with it, but that's why it could be fun.

Beast Wars: Uprising delves into that possibility a little....

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

Yeah, for RiD-2001 to be the result of Beast Wars having mucked with time, we would have to assume that the Maximals failed in ways we didn't even begin to see.

(And keep in mind that the most pivotal event of the G1 timeline, the launch of the Ark from Cybertron to crash-land on Earth, would STILL be unaffected!)

 

[LordGigaIce]

But given her impressions of the show, are we surprised?

Raksha... that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. A long time.

Thing is... funnily enough... she kind of got what she wanted? Her whole thing was that the Decepticons were put-upon good guys forced into war by oppression from the Autobots, who were secretly bad guys.

Well IDW1 basically turned the Decepticons into a socialist uprising that, while clearly having gone off the rails, had sympathetic beginnings as they were struggling for freedom from the tyranny of the Primes and the rest of the Cybertronian (soon to be Autobot) government.

Kinda funny how that worked out.

 

[The Phazer]

Yeah, for RiD-2001 to be the result of Beast Wars having mucked with time, we would have to assume that the Maximals failed in ways we didn't even begin to see.

(And keep in mind that the most pivotal event of the G1 timeline, the launch of the Ark from Cybertron to crash-land on Earth, would STILL be unaffected!)

Would we?

I mean you could literally just say the volcano errupted in a different way because of all the lava flows changes from gunfire/taking a shuttle, so subsequently the Autobots were able to defeat Megatron in short order after waking up (heck, maybe the Ark never even revived Megatron), return to Cybertron, and then a small patrol came back to Earth to protect it later on.

If anything the story itself isn't actually very exciting because it's such an easy explanation.

 

[Sabrblade]

Some of the fan theories about how RiD was the result of the Beast Wars changing history that I remember reading speculated and made claims about things like the sparks of Optimus Prime and Megatron being influenced by those of their Beast Wars counterparts when each was briefly in their possession. Said influence resulted in both of them waking up aboard the Ark with knowledge of the future, which led Megatron to leave Earth early and reconfigure himself into a Predacon body, and Optimus to take on a more advanced body than the one he had before, thus explaining how RiD Optimus and Megatron were just G1 Optimus and Megatron in new bodies.

Another related fan theory suggested that Sky-Byte was a reformatted and promoted Skywarp, after Megatron had used his knowledge of the future to demote Starscream before he could even begin any of his later betrayals, with Starscream then getting reformatted into Dark Scream.

...

And now that I think about it, on a completely unrelated note, if Hasbro ever wanted to make a new Hellscream toy, "Dark Scream" would be a pretty safe alternate name for them to use to get around any complaints from parents.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I remember reading speculated and made claims about things like the sparks of Optimus Prime and Megatron being influenced by those of their Beast Wars counterparts when each was briefly in their possession.

I was a fan of this. I could see pre Ark crash Optimus Prime being more doubtful (as comics like to have him be) but post Beast Wars interference, post contact with Primal's spark, he doesn't know the details but he knows that somehow the Autobots will win.

Megatron would also know that the Autobots will win, and unlike Prime he would be determined to see that history does not play out as ordained. But, not knowing the details either, he'd never know if his plans are altering history or fulfilling it. I could see that Megatron being paranoid and much less tolerant of traitors than Megatrons typically are. He'd be driving himself crazy long before becoming Galvatron (if that still ended up happening). He wouldn't know whether to be more cautious or more aggressive. So he'd be the mirror image of Prime's change. Prime would go from doubtful to unshakably hopeful, and Megatron would go from confident to doubtful and increasingly crazy.

 

[Sabrblade]

However, I don't recall what these fan theorists thought about RiD Fortress Maximus being buried on Earth for a long time and how that could be reconciled with G1 Fortress Maximus not being created until later in the future, and on either Nebulos or Master depending on which timeline branch said theorists preferred.

I bet it certainly didn't help that all of the RiD characters (well, most of them, anyway) knew exactly who and what Fortress Maximus was and thought his existence was only a legend, when he rightfully shouldn't have even existed yet at all if these theorists believed him to be the same as G1 Fort Max.

 

[SHIELD Agent 47]

Another fan theory from back then was that RiD was the result of history being changed by the Beast Wars having happened, and that the G1 cartoon was how history originally played out without the Beast Wars having ever happened.

I'm a little surprised that we haven't gotten that story. It's not obvious what to do with it, but that's why it could be fun.

Beast Wars: Uprising delves into that possibility a little....

Some of the fan theories about how RiD was the result of the Beast Wars changing history that I remember reading speculated and made claims about things like the sparks of Optimus Prime and Megatron being influenced by those of their Beast Wars counterparts when each was briefly in their possession. Said influence resulted in both of them waking up aboard the Ark with knowledge of the future, which led Megatron to leave Earth early and reconfigure himself into a Predacon body, and Optimus to take on a more advanced body than the one he had before, thus explaining how RiD Optimus and Megatron were just G1 Optimus and Megatron in new bodies.

Interestingly, just weeks ago, Star Trek used a comparable storytelling maneuver vis-à-vis the Eugenics Wars. Their justification for showing a 1996 to 2024 in VOY, ENT, PIC, and SNW that looks almost identical to real-life is because the Temporal (Cold) War caused relatively-minor adjustments to history, so Khan Noonien Singh was not an adult in the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s as originally envisioned in TOS but rather some decades later.

Taken perhaps a step too far, it could be argued all the actor changes from TOS to SNW are because of time war aftereffects.

 

[LordGigaIce]

with Starscream then getting reformatted into Dark Scream

That actually works if you view RiD, G1, and Armada as connected. 'cause Dark Scream had a sword made from his tail. And once he gets his Starscream body back... he's got a sword.

 

[G.B.Blackrock]

Would we?

I mean you could literally just say the volcano errupted in a different way because of all the lava flows changes from gunfire/taking a shuttle, so subsequently the Autobots were able to defeat Megatron in short order after waking up (heck, maybe the Ark never even revived Megatron), return to Cybertron, and then a small patrol came back to Earth to protect it later on.

If anything the story itself isn't actually very exciting because it's such an easy explanation.

You misunderstood me. The ship still was sent to Earth millions of years before the Beast Wars. No changes caused by the Beast Wars reaches back before the ship left Cybertron.

Sure, everything AFTER that could be different, but the canon that has the Ark-crash would have to remain.

 

[Sabrblade]

And then there was the time people thought Animated was connected to G1 just because of the recycled G1 footage used in a war history reel, with people certain that Animated Ratchet was G1 Ratchet.

Heck, it's even happened as recently as EarthSpark, with people thinking the same due to the G1-based animation used in the first episode's fantasy sequence. The later episode "Warzone" shows a true flashback to those events and confirms that none of what happened in Episode 1's fantasy sequence was meant to be taken literally.

Both cases were just fanservice and nothing more.

 

[Princess Viola]

Yes but have you considered that people who write articles and whatnot about how 'The newest Transformers cartoon is set in the G1 universe!' don't pay any attention to any of that because they just want to get clicks and shares from nostalgic 40-50 somethings who only have their decades old memory of the G1 cartoon to go on?