Beast Wars - The Agenda

[TGLS]

For Ravage, it's been ... what? centuries since the "Great War"? And he's upgraded his robot form into completely different, much more practical design. But he still transforms into a cassette tape.

And I can't help but love it.

Even better, his high-tech stealth ship has a cassette player.

Well if you could turn into a cassette, wouldn't you have a cassette player handy all the time?

[RobbyB1982]

Apparently that was originally going to lead into a gag of him playing the original series opening theme.

But they couldn't get the rights so he just sort of... turns into a tape for no reason.

You'd think they would have done SOMETHING with the soundtrack there.

[Ghilz]

For Ravage, it's been ... what? centuries since the "Great War"? And he's upgraded his robot form into completely different, much more practical design. But he still transforms into a cassette tape.

And I can't help but love it.

Even better, his high-tech stealth ship has a cassette player.

Even better, his high tech ship is shaped like a black bird, with an air intake on top of it.

IE: It's shaped like Laserbeak.

[aceina]

what is this transformers thing

[RobbyB1982]

what is this transformers thing

I don't know, never heard of it. Looks like a Go-bots ripoff.

[Archanubis]

For Ravage, it's been ... what? centuries since the "Great War"? And he's upgraded his robot form into completely different, much more practical design. But he still transforms into a cassette tape.

And I can't help but love it.

Another little wink and nod to the fans.

[chaos42]

they actually brought him back in the beast wars comics-using the transmetal 2 repaint of cheetor they did called tripredicus agent -they made that ravage

[Sojourna]

Beast Wars was my first exposure to the Transformers franchise, so "Decepticon" and the Ravage character were subjects that I didn't understand at the time. (It wouldn't be until Transformers: Armada that I finally brushed up on Generation One history. Thanks, world-wide web!)

"The Agenda" parts one through three was all-around good storytelling... with one notable exception. As I stated earlier, it was my first rodeo with Transformers so I only appreciated long after Beast Wars had concluded that Ravage was done rather dirty at the end. Loved the voice acting, the models for both Ravage and his ship, and he felt and acted like a competent agent of the Tripredacus Council.

But for all that, it still feels that Ravage went out too soon and too easily. (And yes, I'm aware of a much later comic tie-in that brought him back. This is about the show first and foremost, however.)

That all being said: "The Agenda" was greatly entertaining and I will always recommend it to others. Looking forward to sfdebris' upcoming review of "Optimal Situation"!

[Archanubis]

But for all that, it still feels that Ravage went out too soon and too easily. (And yes, I'm aware of a much later comic tie-in that brought him back. This is about the show first and foremost, however.)

I, too, was a little disappointed when Optimal Situation revealed Ravage was the only one out of the Predacons to die.

That was back before I was truly aware of the merchandise-driven nature that is Transformers (at the "tender age" of 17-18, mind you) and that Hasbro was probably like, "We don't have a toy for this character, so why keep him around?"

Doesn't entirely explain Inferno's survival - despite basically being vaporized at the end of Part 2 - but I don't recall if Inferno's toy was still on shelves at the time. I do remember his toy lingering on shelves for awhile - not as bad as Injector's, but he was around awhile.

[RobbyB1982]

Hasbro was absolutely adamant about the fact that Mainframe NOT waste resources on characters they weren't promoting. It's why Scorponok and Terrorsaur got so suddenly scrapped at the start of season 2, and Tigertron and Airrazor got written off. Hasbro was apparently upset they were spending any time at all making models for the likes of Optimus Prime and original Megatron, thats why their models were so overall simple and didn't move any, they were only static heads.

It was also *Mainframe's* insistence that SOMEONE had to look consistent throughout the series so something was grounded for viewers that missed some episodes, which is why Rhinox and Waspinator never got upgrades despite having upgrade toys.

There are also rumors that Tigerhawk was an invention of the show, and thats why he got estroyed so quickly... but given the complexity of his character model and that they DID have a figure for him a few months later, it's hard to tell what's true. But season 3 was clearly much more "sell the toy" oriented since they spent entire episodes upgrading characters one by one, instead of doing them all in a big burst at the start.

This same sort of logic carried over to War Planets/Shadow Raiders, where for the first season Mainframe was allowed to tell a compelling character story, but in the second season the heads INSISTED they do more to tie in with the action figures, which were after all... planets with rocket engines on them and not actually any of characters. The second season kind of sucked as a result.