Beast Wars

Story

The two main factions of "Transformers" in Beast Wars are descendants of the two main factions in the original cartoon: the Maximals are the descendants of the Autobots and the Predacons are the descendants of the Decepticons. The names were intended to stem from the terms Mammal and Predator but were not necessarily consistent with the alternate forms of the Transformers. (In Beast Machines, the process during which Autobots and Decepticons became Maximals and Predacons is referred to as "The Great Upgrade".)

The leader of the Predacon team is Megatron. He and his forces are a splinter group on the hunt for powerful crystals known as Energon, (Though in The Agenda (Part 1) it's revealed Megatron got the location of energon as a bonus) to be used in a ploy for power and dominance. They do this with the aid of an artifact known as the Golden Disk and Megatron's stolen ship, the Darksyde, which is equipped with a transwarp drive. A Maximal exploration ship, the Axalon, led by Optimus Primal, is sent to stop them. Together the ships plunge through a time/space phenomenon created by the transwarp device during their battle in space, and crash-land on a mysterious planet.

The planet is found to be rich in deposits of raw Energon, to the point that it proves to be poisonous to both factions' robot forms, forcing them to take on alternate organic forms for protection until their robot forms are needed. Thus the robots take on the beast forms of recognizable animals including mammals, birds, dinosaurs, arachnids, and insects.

Before crashing, the Axalon deploys its cargo of “stasis pods” containing Maximal protoforms — Transformer robots with vulnerable and undeveloped physical forms, which are left to orbit the planet as an alternative to possible destruction in the initial crash landing. This plays a larger part in the IDW series, The Gathering. Throughout the series, stasis pods lose altitude and crash-land on the planet, and the Maximals and Predacons race and fight to acquire them, as protoforms acquired by Megatron's forces can be reprogrammed to become Predacons, as is the case with Blackarachnia andInferno. The stasis pods are used as a plot device to introduce new characters.

The teams are divided between the "good" Maximals and the "evil" Predacons. Dinobot changes sides, starting as a Predacon and becoming a Maximal. Additionally certain "Predacons" likeQuickstrike and Blackarachnia were created from Maximal protoforms, but were fitted with Predacon shell programs, fighting instead for the Predacons. For the Maximals, the emphasis is on team spirit and good-natured arguing, especially from Rattrap, but the Predacons argue and battle for leadership, which impairs their effectiveness against the Maximals.

Many of the plots involve interaction with artifacts from an alien race known as the Vok. These artifacts become a great source of power, especially for Megatron. Activating an alien beacon signals what is originally thought to be the planet's second moon but is really a massive alien transmitter. When the aliens decide that the Transformers have contaminated their experiment they decide to destroy the planet. Using the second moon they fire a giant laser at the planet intending to blow up the remaining Energon deposits. Through the combined efforts of the Predacons and Maximals, Optimus is able to fly a retrofitted stasis pod into the second moon. However, Megatron backstabs the Maximals by trapping Optimus in the pod causing him to be killed when the second moon is destroyed. The alien moon destroys half of the planet's raw Energon and damages several stasis pods resulting in the creation of the Fuzors: Transformers with two animals combined into one. The laser also crystallizes the majority of the Energon on the planet into Energon cubes thereby making it safe for Transformer use. After the transwarp explosion of the second moon, a radiation wave leads to the re-configuration of some of the Transformers into Transmetals. Optimus himself is soon revived as a Transmetal, thanks to the help of Rhinox.

The Transformers discover that they have traveled back in time and landed on prehistoric Earth. Megatron decides to wipe out human civilization (currently a small group of proto-humans living in a single ravine), take control of the previously-crashed Autobot spaceship, the Ark, and kill the dormant Optimus Prime, legendary leader of the Autobots. This would win the Beast Wars for the Predacons, alter the timeline, prevent the Autobots from being awakened by humanity in 1984, and leave Megatron the undisputed ruler of the universe.

The new plot develops following the discovery of a message made by the original Megatron for any Decepticons who might uncover it within the Golden Disk. The Predacon Megatron infiltrates the Arkand destroys Optimus Prime, but Optimus Primal takes the spark of his ancestor into his own body in order to protect it while the other Maximals perform vital repairs on Prime's body. When the repairs are complete, and Prime's spark is returned to him, the timeline is restored to its original state. The battle continues with the Maximals gradually gaining the upper hand until Megatron discovers the Decepticon flagship, the Nemesis and uses it to make his final stand. Around the Beast Wars finale, both Maximals and Predacons suffer several deaths within their respective crews. The survivors finally abandon the prehistoric Earth in an Autobot space shuttle and Megatron is taken under arrest.