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[Skritz]

Something I've realized come up with any fandom is invariably the fanwanking and insane theories about all manners of minute details which the writers clearly never ever remotely thought about but which fans love to speculate about. The funny thing I realized, however, is that Transformers nowadays has a (Bad? Good? You decide!) habit of later canonizing even the most bizarre of things. This is a thread for odd fan theories, even absurd ones people may want to share. The kind of insane fan wank some fan fictions would even blush about using, sometimes.

Without further ado, here is a really wonky one to start off the thread:

• The strange, almost mystical powers displayed during the end of Beast Wars and into Beast Machine are related to Chōkon Power: Super God Masterforce is really not the most popular Transformers incarnation outside possibly of people liking the toys/characters, especially Ginrai/Powermaster Prime and Overlord. Lets be real, its kind of wonky anime that is closer to Super Sentai and other Henshin Heroes series than Transformers. Or, more favorably, a merging of these two ideas into a single serie. Few shows are as steeped into what the fandom (once?) unfavorably called BURNING JUSTICE! You know, japanese culture-flavored 'fighting spirit' sort of stuff you'd see more in shonen anime. So wht am I bringing up SGMF? How the hell does this relate to Beast Wars and this insane fan theory? Simple: the Godmasters and the use of Chōkon Power. Godmasters are, as most of you know, the japanese fiction counterpart to Powermasters, just with a lot more plot-and-willpower-flavored bullshit. Okay so you got half-organic, half-mechanical beings. Then you have power derived from the 'primal energy of life itself'. Now what was the big deal of Beast Machine? That they were techno-organic, neither fully machine nor fully beasts, an 'evolution' of their vaguely biomechanical selves of the Beast Wars. Amongst the forms of Chōkon power is Jūchōkon or 'Super Beast Soul'? Could the mutated transmetals and later techno-organic Maximal inadvertently began tapping into some deeper cosmic power? It would certainly explain these moments where a Transmetal (especially Transmetal 2 but this isn't unique to them, as Optimus Primal does some weird telepathic thing with Cheetor once) displayed unusual powers or all the weird energy beams used in Beast Machine.

Edit: According to Transformers Legends comic, which apparently is where the Jūchōkon term come from, this is apparently in fact the case. But extending this to Beast Machine still is, for now, within the realm of pure theory. But it would make sense, no? Beast Machine is full of mystical overtones and the maximals all display some level of energy manipulation.

Have fun posting insane theories. The weirder the better.

[Sunstar]

My than theory has to do with that Humans are distant cousins of Cybertronians. But not in the manner of earth being Unicron.

Around 4 million years ago humans started to evolve into what we became now, G1 (cartoon) had the Transformers crash on earth about 4 million years ago. So my wild fan theory is that Cybertronian nanites, bugs germs whatever, infected the planet and had an effect on a number of lifeforms, but humans the most profoundly. Humans evolved to a bipedal status, much like transformers, became tool users and developed machines and mechanisms.

By the time the Transformers awoke on earth, they found it populated with inanimate machines and highly intellegent, albeit short lived, creatures with a similar technological drive and war-like spirit. Much like the Transformers humans have a lust for energy and resources.

I also go as far as saying a human soul is a spark, that has been dispersed through the cells and cannot be found in the manner that it can be found for a transformer. That Primus is also a god on Earth because the nanites or germs that infected the humans imparted a spark that was passed on through the countless generations that followed it.

Since the well to a transformer is below ground and that is where a spark returns, similar can be said about heaven, which is considered to be in the sky for a human.

This means I have too much time on my hands.....

[Sabrblade]

This isn't really a theory on its own, but more of a big idea made up of a lot of little theories.

Awhile back, when I did some serious work overhauling and updating all of the Reaching the Omega Point articles on TFWiki, my original plan at the time was to continue on with giving the same enhancements to the Wreckers, Primeval Dawn, and Universe pages, hence the work I also did for the "Apelinq's War Journals" page and creating the "VEHICON ALERT!" page. When I gave The Wreckers a reread, I found it difficult to work on the comic series's TFWiki pages without having first given Beast Machines a fresh re-watch, since it had been years since I'd seen it. So after I re-watched that show, I had enough of a better understanding of its world for me to work with on enhancing The Wreckers pages.

However, before I could proceed, I wanted to find a place within the show for where "Departure", the first issue of The Wreckers, could take place. One thing led to another and the end result is that I have now come to create a workable timeline for all of the events of the 3H fiction that are set either around or during the Beast Machines cartoon, in relation to the cartoon, based on my own personal theories as to how they all fit together continuity-wise.

I was able to use the AU date index system of "Apelinq's War Journals" to chart the days of the timeline, as I theorize those dates to mean "year.day AU" since the "316" lines up with Blackarachnia's claim in the Beast Wars episode "Dark Designs" that "three centuries" had passed from the time of the Autobots and Decepticons to the time of the Maximals and Predacons. And, 1 Cybertronian year, a Stellar Cycle, consists of 480 Cybertronian days, Solar Cycles, based on information provided by the Beast Wars cartoon's creators that 1 Stellar Cycle = 400 Earth days and 1 Solar Cycle = 20 Earth hours. By mathematical calculation, 400 Earth days times 24 Earth hours = 9600 Earth hours; 9600 Earth hours divided by 20 Earth hours = 480 Solar Cycles. And the decimal numbers in these date indices go higher than 300, making them work well for Solar Cycles. Using all of this, and after observing and keeping track of both the color and the brightness of the sky in every Beast Machines episode, here is what I have come up with:


316.075 AU --- Journal 1: The Terror Begins

316.076 AU to 316.097 AU --- 22 days

316.098 AU --- Journal 2: Pieces of a Puzzle

316.099 AU to 316.167 AU --- 69 days

316.168 AU --- Journal 3: Crumbling Edges

316.169 AU to 316.182 AU --- 14 days

316.183 AU --- Journal 4: Chaos

316.184 AU to 316.234 AU --- 51 days

316.235 AU --- Journal 5: The Tyrant Returns

316.236 AU to 316.246 AU --- 11 days

316.247 AU --- Journal 6: Wreck and Rule

316.248 AU to 316.257 AU --- 10 days

316.258 AU --- Journal 7: Circle of Dread

316.259 AU to 316.262 AU --- 4 days

316.263 AU --- Journal 8: The Virus Revealed

316.264 AU ---

316.265 AU (BM Day 01) --- Journal 9: Back From the Past / The flashback from Episode 8: Revelations Pt. II: Descent (Optimus Primal's team arrives)

316.266 AU (BM Day 02) ---

316.267 AU (BM Day 03) --- Episodes 1–2: The Reformatting / Master of the House

316.268 AU (BM Day 04) ---

316.269 AU (BM Day 05) --- Episode 3: Fires of the Past

316.270 AU (BM Day 06) --- Journal 10: The Wait is Over / Journal 11: Two Against a World

316.271 AU (BM Day 07) ---

316.272 AU (BM Day 08) --- Episode 4: Mercenary Pursuits

316.273 AU (BM Day 09) ---

316.274 AU (BM Day 10) ---

316.275 AU (BM Day 11) ---

316.276 AU (BM Day 12) ---

316.277 AU (BM Day 13) --- Episode 5: Forbidden Fruit

316.278 AU (BM Day 14) ---

316.279 AU (BM Day 15) --- Journal 12: A Cure is Found / Episode 6: The Weak Component (before the ending)

316.280 AU (BM Day 16) --- Episode 6: The Weak Component (just the ending)

316.281 AU (BM Day 17) ---

316.282 AU (BM Day 18) ---

316.283 AU (BM Day 19) --- Episode 7: Revelations Part I: Discovery

316.284 AU (BM Day 20) --- Episodes 8–9: Revelations Part II: Descent / Revelations Part III: Apocalypse

316.285 AU (BM Day 21) --- Episode 10: Survivor

316.286 AU (BM Day 22) --- Journal 13: Call From the Heavens / VEHICON ALERT!

316.287 AU (BM Day 23) ---

316.288 AU (BM Day 24) ---

316.289 AU (BM Day 25) --- Episode 11: The Key

316.290 AU (BM Day 26) --- Episode 12: The Catalyst

316.291 AU (BM Day 27) --- Episodes 13–14: End of the Line / Fallout (before the ending)

316.292 AU (BM Day 28) --- Episodes 14–15: Fallout (ending) / Savage Noble / Journal 14: (Primal Prime) Assuming Command

316.293 AU (BM Day 29) ---

316.294 AU (BM Day 30) ---

316.295 AU (BM Day 31) ---

316.296 AU (BM Day 32) ---

316.297 AU (BM Day 33) --- Episode 16: Prometheus Unbound

316.298 AU (BM Day 34) ---

316.299 AU (BM Day 35) --- Episode 17: In Darkest Knight (first half)

316.300 AU (BM Day 36) --- Episodes 17–18: In Darkest Knight (second half) / A Wolf in the Fold

316.301 AU (BM Day 37) ---

316.302 AU (BM Day 38) ---

316.303 AU (BM Day 39) ---

316.304 AU (BM Day 40) --- Episode 19: Home Soil

316.305 AU (BM Day 41) --- Episode 20: Sparkwar Pt. I: The Strike

316.306 AU (BM Day 42) ---

316.307 AU (BM Day 43) --- The Wreckers #1: Departure / Episodes 21–23: Sparkwar Pt. II: The Search / Sparkwar Pt. III: The Siege / Spark of Darkness / The Wreckers #2: Betrayal (journey to Akalo)

316.308 AU (BM Day 44) --- The Wreckers #2: Betrayal (from the arrival on Akalo, to the ending and epilogue) / Episodes 24–26: Endgame Pt. I: The Downward Spiral / Endgame Pt. II: When Legends Fall / Endgame Pt. III: Seeds of the Future (before the ending)

316.309 AU (BM Day 45) --- Episode 26: Endgame Pt. III: Seeds of the Future (ending) / The Wreckers #3: Disclosure (up to Wreckers' departure from Akalo and the scene on New Quintessa)

316.310 AU ---

316.311 AU ---

316.312 AU --- The Wreckers #3: Disclosure (arrival on the ice planet to the end)

316.313 AU ---

316.314 AU ---

316.315 AU ---

316.316 AU --- Wreckers: Finale Part 1 and II


A year after the reformatting of Cybertron --- Universe #1–3 plus script readings: Abduction / OTFCC 2003 script reading / Escape / Homecoming / OTFCC 2004 script reading



Here is how I worked out all of this with all of the gaps between episodes.

First off, I had to work backwards from "Departure" to figure out where "VEHICON ALERT!" took place. I knew it took place between Journals 13 and 14 of "Apelinq's War Journals", but Journal 13 took place 21 days after Journal 9, which is when Optimus Primal's team of Maximals arrived back on Cybertron. While the cartoon is so tightly knit, putting "VEHICON ALERT!" around Episode 21 doesn't work because "Departure" (which takes place a decent amount of time after both "VEHICON ALERT!" and Journal 14) must come before that point.

So, first I had to find a placement for "Departure". Based on Megatron's being in control of Cybertron from his big floating head body, "Departure" has to fit somewhere between Episodes 16 and 22. The Predacon Wrecker Rotorbolt being in a Copter Drone body would suggest "Departure" to take place at some point close to Episode 20, when Obsidian and his drones first debuted. At first, I thought this was undoable since the series becomes so heavily serialized by that point; it didn't look like there was any workable amount of room for Optimus and Nightscream to have had the time that they would have needed to first travel away from Cybertropolis to recover the Deployers, and then make it back after having had their memories of those events erased by the Oracle. Thus, I looked for an earlier placement and thought I found the perfect spot between episodes 18 and 19.

Of all the Season 2 episodes, those two are the least serialized, so there can be a long enough gap placed between the two of them for the events of "Departure" to occur. What's more is that there is something in both of these episodes that not only illustrates a passage of time between the two but also creates a coincidental consistency with "Departure". In Episode 18, the technorganic orchard in the Oracle's chamber is tall and healthy, with its trees still reaching above the height of the chamber's elevated walkway. But by the start of Episode 19, the orchard is dying, with its trees having shrunk way down in size far below the walkway's height. This depiction of the orchard in Episode 19 actually lines up with how the chamber looked in "Departure", as the orchard was not visible from any angles in the comic's view of the chamber. If the orchard had been in the process of dying by the comic's point in time, that would place it a bit before Episode 19, as the orchard was rejuvenated to its original height by the end of Episode 19.

HOWEVER, the events of "Departure" are hyper-serialized with those of "Betrayal", which are then closely followed by the events of "Disclosure". During the latter, the technorganic reformatting of Cybertron occurs off-panel, meaning the whole Wreckers comic series must begin as close to the final episode of Beast Machines as possible. Plus, at the end of Episode 19, Megatron says to Thrust, "As we remain static, the organics grow yet stronger," in reference to the Maximals having recently added both Silverbolt and Botanica to their ranks. His claim of "As we remain static" means that he has not added any new members to his forces up during all the time prior to that point, and foreshadows his creating Obsidian and Strika in the next episode. If he hasn't added any new Vehicons yet, then "Departure" has to come later since he creates Spy Streak, Quake, and Blastcharge as new generals in that story.

And since Megatron loses his big floating head body in Episode 22, the only place that "Departure" can go is somewhere between 20 and 22, right in the middle of the "Sparkwars" three-parter. Since 21 ends on a cliffhanger that leads almost immediately into 22, the only place left for "Departure" to go was between 20 and 21, as 20 does not end on a cliffhanger but rather a more finite conclusion. This isn't a pretty fit, but there is literally no other option left. "Departure" has to come as close to the end of the series as it can in order for "Disclosure" to occur during the time of the Great Transformation. At the very least, the end of Episode 20 does show a view of the technorganic orchard from the height of the walkway in the Oracle's chamber, which shows the orchard's plants to still be below the walkway, fitting with its depiction in "Departure".

Getting back to "VEHICON ALERT!", once I had the placement of "Departure" figured out, I could start looking for where "VEHICON ALERT!" could fit. It had to come a fair amount of time before "Departure" since Apelinq's return to Cybertron also occurred before "Departure", but well after Journal 14 since Primal Prime had formalized his assuming command of the Wreckers by that point, and Apelinq's return came at a point well after Primal Prime had set himself into his leadership role. Ergo, with again how tightly knit Beast Machines is, that forced me to look for a placement in Season 1. But since Journal 13 (around the time "VEHICON ALERT!" happened) took place 21 days after Primal's team arrived on Cybertron (circa Journal 9), I was forced to see which episodes could be spaced out from each other to reach 21 days.

I placed Journal 9 and Optimus Primal's team's return to Cybertron two days before Episode 1 because of something Optimus mentioned in Episode 3. He mentioned that he and the other Maximals went offline at a point after they got back to Cybertron, which means Episode 1 didn't necessarily take place on the same night that their ship crash-landed. This is supported by how the flashback in Episode 8 showed the beginning of nightfall in the first part of the flashback, with the sky colored dark purple with a horizon glowing white from a recently ended sunset, while later in the flashback, the sky is shown to be a dark pink color; this same phenomenon of the sky starting off dark purple with a glowing white horizon then becoming solid dark pink with no glowing horizon is replicated across Episodes 1 and 2, which tells me that the flashback isn't the same night as Episodes 1 and 2 since there wouldn't be two separate sunsets during the same single night.

So, I put the flashback at two days earlier to give time for the crash-landing to occur on the night of one day, then to have the next day be when the Maximals went offline (most likely after their having first split up and gone into hiding), and then the third day would be when they all reactivated and started being hunted again by the Vehicons, leading into Episode 1's events.

Episode 2 obviously takes place immediately after the first on the same night, given the hyper-serialization of those two episodes.

Episode 3 is not as serialized as the first two, but still comes pretty close after Episode 2. However, in this episode, Megatron expresses frustration over how his Vehicons are "continually defeated" by the Maximals, which sounds to me like the Vehicons have suffered more than just the two defeats by the Maximals that were had in Episodes 1–2. Thus, I felt that placing Episode 3 two days after Episode 2 would suffice.

Episode 4 at first seems like it comes immediately after Episode 3, with Megatron berating his Generals over their failure to defeat the Maximals, but I offer two counterarguments for placing it a little after. First, Megatron had previously fought against this very same team of Maximals for 52 episodes of Beast Wars, so he ought to have understood the possibility that the Vehicon Generals could lose in their first battle against the Maximals. It would make more sense for Megatron to be this agitated not simply after the Generals' very first defeat but after a fair number of defeats.

Secondly, Rattrap's demeanor at the start of this episode clashes with how he was at the end of the last episode. At the end of Episode 3, Rattrap was excitedly eager to let Optimus know about how he and Blackarachnia learned about Rhinox and Silverbolt being their missing two fellow Maximals. But at the start of this episode, Rattrap is annoyed about Optimus having found out about those two. To reconcile this, I'd imagine that Optimus was told about the two the next day after Episode 3, and then after about three days of the Maximals searching for the two, only to come up short each time, Rattrap had grown weary of their fruitless searching and became annoyed by the time of Episode 4. So, about three days after Episode 3 seems to work for Episode 4.

Episode 5 coming five days later came about as a necessity to get to the 21 days later needed for Journal 13 and "VEHICON ALERT!" to take place at a workable point in Season 1. I knew I'd need such a big gap at some point in the season to make it to 21 days at a good spot, and it just so happened that Episodes 4 and 5 are the least serialized of all of the Season 1 episodes. Plus, Jetstorm's two encounters with the Maximals in this episode have everyone behaving like Jetstorm and the Maximals have been fighting each other for quite a while on a regular, routine basis, rather than the two fights in this episode being only their third and fourth encounters with each other.

Episode 6 feels about as serialized with Episode 5 as Episode 3 felt with Episode 2, so two days later worked. Though, this episode is also the first of a very scant few episodes to take place across more than one day, as the very end of the episode features the sunrise of the next day, so that gave me an additional day in the timeline. Also, Journal 12's date means that it just so happens to be same date as the pre-ending scenes of this episode, making it fall on that same day.

Episode 7 feels like it comes a few days after Episode 6 since, at the end of that episode, Optimus could barely move. He was struggling and straining to operate his limbs and keep himself upright at the end of last episode, when he is back to full strength by the start of this episode, up and running around at top speed with the other Maximals. As such, three days later seemed like a good length of time for episode to come after Episode 6.

Episode 8 is the first one that definitely feels like it comes on the very next night after its preceding episode. It's more serialized that the ones I put two days after, but isn't the same night as Episode 7 due to Optimus Primal having tried to make contact with the Oracle for a good amount of time between episodes. Plus, the sky in this episode has a glowing pink horizon in it while the sky of the previous episode had no glow to its horizon, suggesting that the nighttime of this episode is earlier in the evening than that of the previous episode's night.

Episode 9 is unquestionably the same night as Episode 8, starting immediately from where the previous episode's cliffhanger left off.

Episode 10 is another that feels serialized enough to be the very next night, which by this point mathematically brings us to 20 days after Primal's team first arrived on Cybertron, allowing the very next day after this episode to be where Journal 13 and "VEHICON ALERT!" take place!

Now, this placement between episodes 10 and 11 is, admittedly, an unusual fit. The end of Episode 10 and the beginning of Episode 11 strongly imply that the two are directly linked to one another. However, I offer another counterproposal to this. Near the end of Episode 10, the Maximals had only just discovered the fossil chamber, while by Episode 11's beginning, they've already moved in, set up a base camp, and are underway on an excavation to drill down to the planet's organic core in hopes of unearthing a reservoir of water (instead unearthing organic goop). During all this, Cheetor also notes that "Megatron has been awfully quiet, lately," when the Maximals had previously had a run-in with Megatron's activities (via his Generals) in the previous episode.

Placing some time between these episodes (say, about four days or so) allows room for not only "VEHICON ALERT!" to take place (with Megatron sending all of his Vehicon units from Cybertropolis to Polyhex to deal with the newcomers who had turned up there), but also for the Maximals to have the time they would have needed to A) scrounge up the materials they needed for their drilling machine, B) build said drilling machine, and C) start using it without interruption from Megatron, enabling Cheetor's observation to make more sense. Further support for this can even be found in the episode itself: After Tankor destroys the drill, Rattrap says it'll take him "three solar cycles" to get it back up and running, suggesting that it took that long for the drill to have been built in the first place. One day of finding the materials needed to build the drill, plus three days to build it and start using it, equals four days after Episodes 10 for Episode 11.

Plus, if Tankor had been among the Vehicons sent to Polyhex, his unscheduled return to the Oracle's chamber would be in direct defiance of Megatron's orders, adding further meaning to the Diagnostic Drone's comment of "Megatron will be very suspicious of your absence," in Episode 11. And finally, there surprisingly aren't a whole lot of Vehicons seen in Cybertropolis in Episode 11, with the bulk of them being just a few Cycle Drones, several Mole Drones (which were not sent to Polyhex in "VEHICON ALERT!"), and Megatron himself controlling some buildings. Were most of the Vehicons off in Polyhex (or still on their way back) at this time, that would further explain why there are so few of them seen in this episode. Therefore, I placed Episode 11 four days after 10.

Also, it is during this gap between Episodes 10 and 11, but after "VEHICON ALERT!" that Apelinq gets sent back in time to partake in the events leading up to Point Omega. As for the Vehicon General Mirage (who attacked Apelinq when he disappeared), it is my theory that Megatron would have created him around this time as well, probably right before he sent the Vehicons to Polyhex. As for why Megatron felt the need to create him, we know from the Season 1 finale of the cartoon that Megatron was onto Tankor's personal agenda from the start, so perhaps Megatron felt the need of another general after he could no longer fully trust Tankor to be loyal. And, well, a race car would be helpful in getting the Vehicons from Cybertropolis to Polyhex quickly.

Anyway, Episode 12 is serialized with Episode 11, but not hyper-serialized, so it's the next day. While Rattrap said before in Episode 11 that he would need three days to repair the drill, he didn't need to since he and the others stole one of Megatron's Mole Drone to drill down to more organic goop for them. In this episode, the drill has not been repaired, but was apparently reconfigured into a garden sprinkler instead (used to water the cave's orchard with organic core goop), which probably took less time than it would to simply repair the drill.

Episode 13 is the same case, one day later.

Episode 14 is hyper-serialized with Episode 13, so it's the same day. But by the episode's end, the next morning has begun, so the ending is the next day after Episode 13 and the pre-ending parts of 14.

Episode 15 is hyper-serialized with the ending of Episode 14, so it's the same day. Also, this episode is the only one in the whole series to take place completely during the daytime. And, Journal 14 also happens to fall on this date, which would make sense given how Primal Prime's team would have been fighting Vehicons ever since they arrived on Cybertron, so Journal 14 falling on the same day as Episode 15—the first day of the cartoon in which Megatron's legions of Vehicon drones are completely offline—works out very well since it gives Primal Prime's team a moment of rest and time for him to make his sole War Journal entry. And said entry notes that the Wreckers have moved themselves to a new location, which would also fit coming on the day where no Vehicons would interfere with the Wreckers' moving day.

Episode 16 is the only one in the whole show that actually gives an official in-universe timeframe in relation to its preceding episode. The episode is said to take place five nights after the previous one, so there it goes five days later.

Episode 17 is another one that I put two days after the previous one. This is because Megatron in the episode behaves like his last encounter with Optimus was very recent. But, at the start of this episode, all of the Maximals are aware of Noble being alive as a mindless animal, when the ending of the previous episode had them all thinking he was dead, a lifeless puppet that Megatron discarded like trash. That tells me that they had another encounter with the fully animalistic Noble in between episodes, so two days later it goes. Also, the second half of the episode takes place during the daytime of the next day, so that's another day for the timeline.

Episode 18 follows up almost immediately from the ending of Episode 17, with Cheetor still welcoming Silverbolt back to the team, as though Silverbolt had only just then arrived at the Maximal base for the first time. Since the end of Episode 17 took place during the day, Episode 18 would be later that very night.

Episode 19 needs enough time after 18 for the technorganic orchard to wilt up and shrink down to its near-dead state seen in this episode, when it was tall and healthy back in 18. As 18 and 19 are the least serialized season 2 episodes, I put 19 four days after 18. Another reason for this gap is to space out Episodes 17 and 21 further apart from each other. In Episode 17, Megatron downloads a portion of the Oracle from Optimus Primal. In Episode 21, a mere four episodes later, Megatron reveals that he'd since "spent a great deal of time" studying the Oracle from that download. The more time there is between 17 and 21, the better that Megatron's claim of "a great deal of time" having passed between those two episodes makes sense.

Episode 20 is when the show becomes very serialized from here on out. I put this episode one day after 19.

However, we now come to where "Departure" would fit, which I've already explained the reasons for its placement here. I have put it two days after Episode 20 because there needed to be at least one day before it to let Optimus and Nightscream travel to the far side of Cybertron. What's more, the sky is a dark and cloudy night sky on the far side of Cybertron at the beginning of the story, a bright orange-red morning/daytime sky in Cybertropolis, and then dark again in Cybertropolis at the end of the story. This would mean that the majority of the story takes place when it is daytime in Cybertropolis, with night having only just fallen by the end. As such, I am placing it on the same day as Episode 21, just a few hours before the episode starts.

As a result, this puts Episode 21 two days after Episode 20, despite the fact that 21 really feels like the very next night after 20. This one-day gap between 20 and 21 is also when Megatron would have created Spy Streak right before "Departure", since he is already active as a Vehicon General before Quake and Blastcharge are created.

Though, Apelinq's return would have come a fair amount of after Episode 15/Journal 14 but before "Departure". For ease of giving more time between Primal Prime's assuming command and Apelinq's return, let's just say that Apelinq returned at some point around the time of Episode 16, since "Departure" also said that he and Primal Prime found an old Autobot shuttle "some time ago", placing more time between that story and Apelinq's return before it.

Moving on, Episode 22 is hyper-serialized with 21, so it's the same day.

Episode 23 is also hyper-serialized, so it too is the same day as 21, 22, and "Departure".

Episode 24's serialization is ambiguous enough that it could either be, once again, the same night as 21–23, or the very next night. It really all depends on how much time Megatron would have needed to mass produce his final Vehicon army that he creates in this episode. I chose to be generous and give Megatron a whole day to rebuild his forces, and so put it on the next day, but it could still just as well be the same day.

Episode 25 is hyper-serialized, so it's the same day as 24.

And finally, Episode 26 is also the same day as 24 and 25. All except for its ending, which features the dawn of a new day.

Back to the 3H material. The present-day events of "Betrayal" begin immediately where "Departure" left off, starting on the same night as both it and Episodes 21-23. It continues throughout that night until the Wreckers arrive on Akalo, a journey that seems to span just that night on Cybertron, but when they arrive it is not morning but sundown on Akalo. This reads to me as Akalo having a day/night cycle opposite to that of Cybertron. Going by this logic, the first sundown and night on Akalo would be the dawn and daytime of the next day on Cybertron, which is when Episodes 24-26 occur. Dawn soon comes on Akalo at the end, followed by morning in the epilogue, which would likewise be the same night on Cybertron as 24-26.

"Disclosure" then begins later during the evening of the same day that the end and epilogue of "Betrayal' took place, meaning it occurs on the morning of the next day on Cybertron, the same day as the ending of Episode 26, this being the dawn of the Great Transformation. When the dawn of the next day on Akalo comes, the Wreckers depart from Akalo and Cryotek tells the Quintessons about Cybertron's new technorganic appearance. This would be later in the evening of the same day as Episode 26's ending. Thankfully, after this, Akalo is no longer part of the story, so tracking the inverted day/night cycle between it and Cybertron is necessary no longer.

Anyway, the Wreckers travel through space to a distant ice planet located ten star systems away. That trip had to have taken some time to make, since the planet was that far away. Part II of the Wreckers Finale contains a statement that says it (and, by extension, Part 1 of the finale) takes place barely a Cybertronian week after the planet's reformatting, so it would be seven days after the ending of Episode 26 and the Wreckers' departure from Akalo in "Disclosure". Thus, I put the rest of "Disclosure", from the Wreckers' arrival on the ice world to the end, three days after the Wreckers left Akalo on the same day as Episode 26's ending. This is because it took them about one day to first travel to Akalo from Cybertron, so the Wreckers' journey back to Cybertron from the ice planet would be four days by combining the total travel time from Cybertron to Akalo to the ice world, albeit flown in reverse.

This also adds up to match with the Wreckers Finale being about seven days after the Great Transformation. Since that event happened during "Disclosure" on the same day as the Wreckers prepared to leave Akalo, their flight to the ice world being three days, plus their return flight back to Cybertron being four days, equals seven days total. While it is not known if a Cybertronian week is exactly seven days like an Earth week is, I'm considering it as such for simplicity's sake, since there is no unit of time for a Cybertronian week in either Beast Wars or Beast Machines.

However, there is one other things to note about this "barely a week" claim. According a War Journal entry written by Apelinq at the start of "Disclosure", it has been "deca-cycles" (meaning "months") since he gave command of the Wreckers to Primal Prime. The events of Beast Machines Season 2 most assuredly do not transpire over the course of "months" (a month and a half, at most), nor does the Wreckers' journey from Cybertron to Archa Nine take that long. Also, the Director's Cut version of "Betrayal" features an extended prologue that declared the original voyage to Archa Nine from Cybertron (made by Glyph's team) had taken "weeks" to accomplish. While enough weeks can equate to a small number of months (let's say two months or so), the Wreckers' journey certainly doesn't take anywhere near that long.

At the start of "Wreckers: Finale Part 1" (at least, its officially published first few pages), the Autobot news reporter Rook states that the Quintesson invasion has begun "less than three deca-cycles" since the reformatting of Cybertron." This is also stated in the unpublished script for that issue, its prologue claiming it has been "months" since Optimus Primal's sacrifice. Again that is ludicrous. The journey from Cybertron, to Archa Nine, to Al-Badur's ice world, and back to Cybertron couldn't have possibly taken place that long. The Great Transformation even occurs during "Disclosure" a mere two days after "Departure".

This is why I am going by the "barely a Cybertronian week since the planet's reformatting" statement in Part II of the finale, as that is a much more workable timeframe for the Wreckers comics to span, making all of the previous "deca-cycle" and "month" uses in error.

And at last comes all of the Universe issues and script readings. "Abduction", the 2003 script reading, "Escape", and "Homecoming" all take place roughly within close proximity of each other, with the 2004 script reading happening just about any amount of time afterward. As for when these all take place in relation to Beast Machines, the inside cover of "Abduction" states that it has been one year since Optimus Primal's death, with Rook reiterating this in the comic itself. Though, Rook incorrectly uses the term "mega-cycle" instead of "stellar cycle", as a mega-cycle is more like an hour, while a stellar cycle is a year.


Before I finish, let me close with a few more things.

Because "VEHICON ALERT!" gets placed in Season 1, that creates a bit of a continuity error with both Rotorbolt (who was among the new arrivals sighted in Polyhex) already being in the body of a Copter Drone, and Copter Drones themselves being among the Vehicon units assigned by Megatron to go to Polyhex, long before they and Obsidian would appear in the show. To fix this, I theorize that Megatron had already been working on the Copter Drone design long before their first appearance in the show. As "Departure" would establish all of the toy-only Vehicon drone types that appeared in that comic to have been early-model designs that Megatron created during the earliest terrorist attacks he launched way back before he unleashed his virus on the planet, I could buy that the Copter Drone type was also one of these early design models, and that when Megatron brought forth Obsidian to be his new air-based general, he simply pulled out a preexisting drone type design rather than having just made up a new one altogether. The same would apply for when he created Spy Streak, Quake, and Blastcharge.

As such, this opens the door to the possibility of Strika's Artillery Drone type having also been a preexisting model, but I could see her drone type going either way since there were no Artillery Drones featured in either "VEHICON ALERT!" or "Departure".

I think that's everything.

[ScottyP]

^ Dude, that's, wow. A lot of work and love went into that and even if that story isn't my cup of tea I still appreciate and respect the hell out of that level of effort

[Nacelle]

I know these are a bit late and pretty much head-cannon, but still:

1. Galvatron in Headmasters actually dies on Cybertron when it explodes. The one appearing later and comically dying from a combination of ice and a lazer from the headmasters. This one I didn't wanna make up but it just makes zero sense how he can survive an explosion blowing up a whole planet but not a comparitively tiny explosion while buried in ice.

2. Unicron changed his mind about Cyclonus' armada and changeed the Bombshell Cyclonus to another Sweep, making there be three Sweeps, who were previously insecticons, who retain their ability to clone. The sweeps who have died were just clones and not the original three.

3. The jets Unicron destroys in the movie were not the coneheads but actually the rainmakers. This one I purely made up as the coneheads are referred to by name (not just animation errors, unlike, say, green shockwave in five faces of darkness). The rainmakers, on the other hand, aren't featured outside of tha tone episode in season 2 so i prefer to see them as dying as it still means three jets got blown up but not the same three seen later. Also, the reflector trio were piloting them for some reason. This one I just got the idea for because one of the comic adaptations of the film has Reflector as one of shockwave's troops counterattacking against unicron and, probably, dying in the process. Plus they never show up in season 3, not even as errors in ffod.

4. Black Zarak in TF Zone is actually Liokaiser in disguise. I got this idea as his face in Zone looked a bit like leozack and leozack was once acting as impostor fake star saber. Both Black Zarak and Liokaiser were seen dying but BZ was completely blown t a bunch of tiny pieces, so it would make more sense for liokaiser to be there. Plus, liokaiser was in a zone prequel story, so he survived canonically, but did not feature in the main zone story.

5. The Insecticons in TF Prime are modified insecticons by shockwave meant for the purpose of countering wreckers and the like on a major battlefield (unlike the insecticons in FoC who were mostly underground). The majority of these were sent away as cybertron died. A few (such as the one in orion pax part 3) stayed behind, but their numbers generally decreased. The others eventually landed on earth and the story picks up from there in the show.

[Sabrblade]

Bumping this old thread with a new theory of mine that's quite a doozy.

It pertains to the existence and history of Cybertron, as depicted across the sprawling Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity (or "JG1" for short).


Introduction

In the beginning, Planet Cybertron (or セイバートロン星 Seibātoron-sei "Planet Seibertron" in Japan) was presented in the G1 cartoon as a metallic planet, which would become its traditional iconic appearance.



But then, in the tenth episode of The Headmasters, "Planet Cybertron in Grave Danger, Part 2" (which was set in the year 2011), Cybertron was blown up and destroyed, leaving behind only a ruined husk of its outer shell.



For the remainder of the 1980s-early 1990s Japanese Generation 1 fiction (Super-God Masterforce, Victory, Zone, The Battlestars, and Operation Combination), Cybertron was never seen again, nor mentioned in the context of the planet ever existing again.

That is, until the Japanese version of Generation 2. In "G-2" (as it was known in Japan), a political body known as the Cybertron Alliance (セイバートロン連合 Seibātoron Rengō) was introduced as a peaceful union between the Autobots and Decepticons, having finally ended the eons-old conflict between the two (only for war to soon break out again, but I digress).



While the term contained the same name as the planet, there wasn't yet any evidence that the planet had returned to the story.

Then Beast Wars rolled around.

For the first time since its destruction in The Headmasters, Cybertron was back, shown infrequently but fully intact in the Beast Wars cartoon, with no explanation.




Now, of course, this was because the Beast Wars creators weren't going off of any knowledge of the previous Japanese Transformers fiction, as they obviously weren't aware of anything that happened in it.

The same was true of the creators of the Beast Wars sequel series Beast Machines, which likewise depicted Cybertron in one piece with its traditional outward look.



And, from the perspective of the English version, both Beast Wars and Beast Machines didn't actually take place in the exact same continuity as the original G1 cartoon, but in a world up made of elements taken from both it and the G1 Marvel comics, which were merged together to create a new universe that was similar to both but still different enough in its own right.

But, that was not the case in the Japanese dubs. In Japan, both Beast Wars and Beast Machines—renamed "Beast Wars" (season 1), "Beast Wars Metals" (seasons 2–3), and "Beast Wars Returns" (Beast Machines)—were part of the same universe as the G1 cartoon and its various Japanese-original sequel series (The Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, Victory, Zone, The Battlestars, Operation Combination, and G-2). This meant that Cybertron was somehow restored back to its original form at some point in the distant future long after it had been blown up in the year 2011. Yet, no explanation for this was ever given at the time.

Some guesses and speculation did exist, though. But before we get into those, I feel it would be best to first explore some of the history of Cybertron's physiology.


Physiological history

In the G1 cartoon episode "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1", we were introduced to Vector Sigma, which Megatron described as "The megacomputer deep in the core of Cybertron... which gave us all life!"



While the episode didn't give us a full view of the Vector Sigma Chamber which housed said computer, interior shots showed the chamber's walls and floors to be just as metallic as the rest of the planet.



The only real look we got of the chamber's exterior was this shot:



It wouldn't be until The Headmasters that we'd finally get a complete look at the exterior of Vector Sigma's chamber, providing us a full view of the very core of the planet.



By the show's third season, the episode "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4" revealed Cybertron to have originally been "a factory, built by the Quintessons to manufacture…" the "lineal ancestors of the Decepticons and the Autobots." The episode also showed that, even back then, the planet looked like this:



So for all those millions of years, it was a world made of metal.

Fast forward to Beast Machines cartoon, wherein some new revelations about Cybertron were given. While the planet's exterior was its traditional look, what lay beneath the surface was something else entirely.

Vector Sigma was brought back into the series, but in a totally new form.



By this series's time, Vector Sigma had evolved into the Oracle, which was now found within a brand new chamber no longer located at the planet's core.



Why? Well, because this is what the core now looked like:



That's a pretty stark contrast from how the very metallic, very-much-not-organic Vector Sigma Chamber was the planetary core in both the G1 cartoon and The Headmasters.

Yet, Beast Machines remained adamantly certain that the Cybertron in that show was the very same planet it had always been since the time of Cybertron's initial creation so many eons in the past. And the show's Japanese dub would have likely reflect that stance.

Beast Machines also stated that Cybertron had originally been an organic planet with a lush green ecosystem and animal wildlife, before the first Transformers came about on the planet.



The planet was later transformed into the traditional metallic world it was known to be.



With JG1 placing all of these shows in the same continuity, it is fortunate, then, that certain episodes of the G1 cartoon actually seemed to show hints and traces of a past organic nature for the planet.

In the episode "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2", we see that the floor of the Cybertonium salvage pit appears to be made of rock.



Later, in "The Dweller in the Depths", Galvatron leads the Decepticons down to what he refers to as "the lowest level of Cybertron," whose walls very much resemble rock or petrified mud, and some with organic patches embedded in them:








Granted, these were all total coincidences that just happened to align with what Beast Machines would later establish, since the very idea of that show was still several years away from when the G1 cartoon was still in development, and the creators of Beast Machines likely didn't review every single episode of the G1 cartoon. But it's coincidences like these that the Japanese took advantage of and used as puzzle pieces to make everything fit together into the vast tapestry that is JG1.

Consequently, we are left with an expanded narrative in which the very same Cybertron…

• was originally an organic planet with plants and animals (according to Beast Machines),
• was later turned into a metallic world with Vector Sigma's chamber at its core (in the G1 cartoon),
• was then blown up (in The Headmasters),
• and was finally somehow rebuilt back into a metallic world, but also with brand a new organic core (by the time of Beast Machines).

So then, in addition to the question of how the planet got rebuilt, we also have to wonder how this new organic core came about, too. And, if Beast Machines (or rather "Beast Wars Returns") wants us to believe that the planet also originally had an organic core in the past before it was turned metal, we are left to wonder what happened to that first organic core and how it was replaced by the Vector Sigma Chamber.

In order to figure that out, let's first examine the current official origin of this particular version of Cybertron, as knowing how Cybertron was originally built in the first place may offer some further insight as to how it was rebuilt.


Cybertron's JG1 origin

In 2006-2007, around the time Takara began to finally assemble and organize the massive JG1 timeline, a decision was made to bring the character of Primus into this Japanese continuity. Why this decision was made is a story for another day, but regardless, the decision was made.

How this was done was by a series of retcons that brought together the various appearances of Vector Sigma across the G1 cartoon, The Headmasters, Beast Wars Neo, and Beast Wars Returns, along with the Matrix of Leadership and the assistant of Primacron from the G1 cartoon episode "Call of the Primitives" (said assistant was given the designation of "Oracle" in the episode's dialogue script). Through these retcons, an elaborate backstory was crafted for this new Japanese version of Primus.

The relevant parts of this backstory begin with the creation of Unicron by Primacron and his assistant, Oracle, who possessed life-giving abilities.



When Unicron lashed out against his creators, Oracle's body was destroyed.



Oracle's essence within the Matrix then escaped from Primacron and fled into space.



He eventually found and arrived on the barren planet seen in "Call of the Primitives" and emptied his essence within the Matrix into this planet.




He then used his life-giving essence to create a lush organic world filled with greenery and animal life (aligning with what was given in Beast Wars Returns).



But this peaceful paradise was eventually discovered by the Quintessons, who used a mechanization ray (which would later come to be known as the Key to Vector Sigma) to terraform the planet into the metallic world of Cybertron.




The Quints imprisoned Oracle's essence within the Vector Sigma computer, and used the empty shell of the Matrix to control his power and create the Cybertronians.

This backstory was finally actually illustrated in full across two sources in 2018 and 2021. The first was the Legends pack-in manga included with the Grand Maximus toy:

<<<<Reads right-to-left<<<<


The second was the finale chapter of the Generations Selects manga.

>>>>Reads left-to-right>>>>




In the Legends one seen above, notice something in the leftmost panel of the second row. That sphere of glowing energy being released from the Matrix into the core of the planet? That's Oracle's essence.



Now, the planet he came to reside within already existed on its own, so it would have most likely had its own normal, molten core made of magma before Oracle came along and merged with the planet. So then, Oracle's arrival to the planet likely changed the core into an orb of magical life-giving energy.

Sound familiar?



In both Legends and Selects, we also see the Quintessons change the Oracle's planet into Cybertron, completely overhauling the planetary core into the Vector Sigma Chamber, meaning it isn't a mystical energy orb anymore. That, at least, explains what happened to the original core of Oracle's essence; the Quints encased it within Vector Sigma and mechanized its surroundings into a hollow chamber.

So, now we know that JG1 Cybertron…

• was originally a barren rock of a planet with likely a molten core,
• became a lush organic planet upon the fusion of Oracle's essence with said molten core, which changed it into a magical glowing orb of life-giving energy,
• and was transformed by Quintessons into a metallic planet whose core was completely altered into a metal chamber housing a spheroid life-giving computer that, itself, contained the aforementioned magical life-giving energy.

With all of that preamble finally out of the way, let's discuss some of the suggestions that have been raised over the years as to how Cybertron was possibly restored following its destruction in The Headmasters.


First suggestion: Nucleon

In 2001, a black redeco of the 1988 Powermaster Optimus Prime toy was released as a Toys R Us exclusive in Japan. Dubbed "Nucleon Quest Super Convoy", this figure represented G1 Optimus Prime (or "Convoy" in Japan) in a new Powermaster body form now named "Super Convoy", and his accompanying toy bio stated the following:



Background: Once there was era in which the planet Seibertron had been struck by a fatal energy shortage. At this time, Convoy and Hi-Q, a scientist from the planet Nebulos, undertook a perilous journey in search of a new energy to replace Energon.
Abilities: In order for him to extract the super-energy "Nucleon" that exists in black holes, his entire structure is now protected by a phase modulation shield. He can now carry out activity in super-gravitic environments.

The black hole mission for Nucleon was a reference to the backstory of the Action Masters given in a packaging blurb found on the back of their toys' packaging.



Because of this, the Nucleon Quest was placed as an event that was set prior to the events of G-2, to coincide with the Japanese story pages for G-2 that featured illustrations of Optimus Prime and Megatron as co-leaders of the Cybertron Alliance, in which they (and Blaster) were drawn with designs based on their Action Master toys.



So, for a time, the energy crisis described in the Super Convoy bio could have been in reference to the state of lifelessness that Cybertron had been left in following its destruction in The Headmasters, with the Nucleon retrieved by Super Convoy potentially having been the power source used to restore the planet to its proper form.

But then, Unite Warriors came along in 2016 and debunked that theory.

The second chapter of the Unite Warriors manga opened with a direct follow-up to the destruction of Cybertron in The Headmasters, in which the Autobots Sky Lynx, Hound, Wheeljack, Ratchet, and Trailbreaker surveyed the damage of the ruined planet and discovered that Vector Sigma had miraculously survived the ordeal. The divine computer then instructed them to begin rebuilding Cybertron. And by the year 2021, Cybertron was fully restored to the way it was before.

<<<<Reads right-to-left<<<<


So if Cybertron was restored by 2021, the Nucleon acquired by Super Convoy couldn't have been what restored the planet since that quest took place right before G-2, which means it also took place after Operation Combination, after The Battlestars, after Zone, and after Victory. Of those other series, Victory was set in the year 2025, so the Nucleon Quest didn't occur until after 2025, while Cybertron was already back to normal by 2021, four years before Victory and many more years before the Nucleon Quest.


Second suggestion: Zodiac

Another guess as to how Cybertron was restored is that Zodiac was possibly involved. According to the single-episode of Transformers: Zone, Zodiac is a supermineral that possesses a mysterious energy capable of creating stars, planets, and other celestial bodies. In other words, it's the power that created the whole universe, from the time of the Big Bang itself.



A fragment of Zodiac was located in a cavern deep within the Earth, which was fought over by the characters of Zone. Afterward, this same piece was later given to characters of The Battlestars to let them use it to resurrect the deceased Optimus Prime as Star Convoy (this was before the aforementioned Nucleon Quest in which he became Super Convoy).



However, like Nucleon, I don't believe Zodiac was used to restore Cybertron, either. While it can create entire planets (meaning the ruined husk of Cybertron ought to be no sweat for either one or multiple Zodiac pieces to fix), Unite Warriors has once again thrown a wrench into the works.

The final chapter of Unite Warriors ended with some foreshadowing to the events of Zone, and which hinted that none of the characters are supposed to know about the existence of Zodiac just yet, not until the time of Zone, which is set at some point after the year 2025 (when Victory is set).

<<<<Reads right-to-left<<<<


The same is also implied in the Legends pack-in manga that came with Scourge (linking to it instead of embedding since the embed would make the text too small to read), in which he only first learns about the existence and power of Zodiac from the Matrix after he briefly steals it in that comic. And the time period Scourge hailed from within the G1 World before he came to the Legends World was 2021, the same year that the aforementioned Unite Warriors story took place in. So, Zodiac was still a relatively unknown thing by the time Cybertron was repaired.


Third suggestion: A new colonized world

In the same episode of The Headmasters that saw Cybertron destroyed, Rodimus Prime decided to leave the Autobots and depart on a journey into space. Accompanied by Kup and Blurr, the three would venture out to search for "a planet without war for the Transformers to settle on." In their absence, Rodimus left Fortress in charge, appointing him the new Commander of the Autobots.



A new planet for the Transformers to settle on, hmm? Well, that certainly seems to be implying something.

At the time this episode was written, the Autobots were primarily based on a neighboring planet called Athenia (as well as still on Earth), while the Decepticons continued to reside on Chaar. With Cybertron now out of the picture, it seemed Athenia and Chaar had, respectively, become the dominant planets for the Autobot and Decepticon forces for the foreseeable future.

But then, Victory rolled around and introduced a few new planets under the Autobots' jurisdiction: Planet Victory and Planet Micro. The former became the headquarters for the Universal Peace Alliance held between the Autobots, Earth, and many other allied worlds, while the latter was the homeworld of the Micro Transformers (better known outside of Japan as "Micromasters"). Between these two, Planet Micro sure did look Cybertron-esque:



By the time of Zone, Micro was further fortified by the Autobot Powered Masters and renamed Planet Zone, complete with a new headquarters called the Zone Base:



Surely a planet such as this could have become a new Cybertron altogether, right? Following a mass immigration by the Autobots? Well, as it turns out, there actually is some merit to this idea.

In 2015, there was an online chapter of the Legends manga (early into its run when the online chapters were still short, jokey, and in black-and-white) that actually revealed that Rodimus had indeed found a new planet for the Transformers, andconfirmed a longstanding fan theory that that planet was none other than Micro. Rodimus was even drawn in the body-design of his Micromaster toy, which came with the original Star Convoy toy in 1991.



However, both the planets Micro (later Zone) and Victory already appeared in the Victory and Zone fictions, which means neither of them could have become the new Cybertron since Victory and Zone took place in 2025 and after, whereas Cybertron (say it with me) was shown by Unite Warriors to have already been restored in the year 2021, meaning both Micro/Zone and Victory coexisted with Cybertron as three separate planets during 2025 and onward.

So if not Planet Victory or Planet Micro/Zone, what about any other planet? Could another planet have become the new Cybertron? Well, the thing is, that same Unite Warriors story that shows Cybertron to be back to normal by 2021 really seems to be insinuating that that ruin planetary husk left in the wake of Cybertron's destruction really was turned back into a full planet, that the restored Cybertron we see from 2021 onward is the very same Cybertron that was blown up in 2011. So it's probably not very likely that a completely different planet fully replaced the original.


My suggestion:

So if it wasn't Nucleon or Zodiac that restored Cybertron, and if it wasn't replaced by a totally separate planet that just took the name of Cybertron for itself, how then do I think Cybertron was restored?

Well, what if another planet was involved, but in a way that didn't entirely replace Cybertron? What if the ruined husk of Cybertron left behind after its destruction was grafted onto another planet that was used to fill in what was lost in the explosion, serving as a new body for the remains of that outer shell? Yep, I think it was rebuilt by integrating another planet with that shell

In Beast Machines, so much of the innermost interior of Cybertron was shown to be filled with soil and rock. If Cybertron really had been rebuilt to be exactly the way it was before it was blown up, then it's very weird that there would be so much soil inside the planet.

While I did mention before that the G1 cartoon had some episodes that showed there to be soil within the lowest level of Cybertron, they were far outnumbered by other episodes that showed the majority of the planet's interior to instead be metallic and mechanical, such as the aforementioned "Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2" and "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1", in which characters traveled all throughout Cybertron's underground depths, which were shown to be fully metallic.




Some of Cybertron's interior was also metallic in Beast Machines (mainly its upper layers), but not to the same extent as in the G1 cartoon. In other words, the G1 cartoon showed the planet's interior to be more metallic than organic, while Beast Machines showed it to be more organic than metallic. It's an inverted ratio.

Taking a completely separate planet and merging it with the ruined shell of Cybertron could thus account for all that new soil found inside the planet following its destruction and subsequent restoration.

What's more, I have an idea as to which other planet in particular might have been used for this restoration.

In the first episode of the G1 cartoon's third season ("Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1"), the Autobots hosted the first Galactic Olympics on this strange-looking planet:



The episode's script reveals that this cheese-wedge-of-a-planet is named Athenia, and the episode's Japanese dub even referred to it by that name.

The script also reveals that the scene where Perceptor first examines some Sharkticon remains and then suggests Rodimus take Grimlock with him to investigate the Decepticons on Chaar near the end of the episode... was also set on Athenia. Said scene was also set within an Autobot base, which means the Autobots had enough good relations with (or perhaps even some sort of claim of ownership of) the planet to have been able to establish a headquarters there.

Fast forward to The Headmasters where even more was revealed about Athenia. Not only did the Autobots still have a base there (which even became their main base after Cybertron got destroyed), but a prologue in the first episode that recapped the events of the G1 cartoon (from 1:20 to 3:12 in the following video) even gave a rather bold declaration about what the Autobots' true plans for Athenia were:



サイバトロンは第二のセイバートロンも建設する平和の星アセニア

Which translates to into English as "The Cybertrons (Autobots) also build a second Seibertron (Cybertron) on the peaceful planet Athenia." (The subtitle text in the above video words this phrase a little differently, but the gist of it is the same.)

So, the Autobots weren't simply living on Athenia, they were building "a second Cybertron" there.



While I'm sure that, at the time, that was meant more metaphorically than literally, the idea of using another planet to rebuild Cybertron doesn't make the literal approach seem entirely out of the question, especially since it seems that the Autobots had done some MAJOR terraforming to the planet off-screen.

The previous picture of Athenia as viewed from outer space shows what it looked like in 2010 (the year the Japanese dub of G1 season 3 took place in, in contrast to how it took place in 2005-2006 in the original English version).



But by the year 2011, only a single year later, it suddenly looked like this instead:



Talk about a major overhaul.

And if they didn't have some degree of jurisdiction over the planet, I doubt they could have even altered its appearance so radically. They must be its main owners, which would mean Athenia isn't just a Cybertronian ally, but a full-blown colony.

What's more, the same prologue that said the Autobots were building a second Cybertron on Athenia even showed it to actually be right next-door to Cybertron, so it's even in a very convenient location were it to have been used for Cybertron's reconstruction.



Something else to consider is another point from Unite Warriors. The same comic that showed Cybertron to have been restored by the year 2021 also showed its interior to have become identical to how it would chronologically later look in Beast Wars Returns, complete with Vector Sigma residing inside the very same chamber that would house the Oracle (in fact, it even looks like Vector Sigma is in a transitional state between its Vector Sigma and Oracle forms).




This would suggest that the planet's core had become as it was in Beast Machines, a magical orb of organic life-giving energy.

Recall that I said above that the original organic planet that became Cybertron have originally had a molten core made of magma, and that it was likely converted into a magical energy core when Oracle's essence merged with it.



If Oracle could do that to the original molten core of the pre-Cybertron planet, and with Vector Sigma both being that very same being and being still around, what's to prevent Vector Sigma/Oracle from merging again with another planet's molten core and changing it into another magical energy core?



Of course, we know that Vector Sigma/Oracle was not actually at the planet's core anymore during Beast Machines but instead within a new chamber situated away from the core, since it had by then evolved into a new computer form also named "the Oracle". But, that organic core in Beast Machines was very much still related to the Oracle since it lay at the heart of the whole technorganic prophecy that the Oracle was trying to bring about in that series.

So, Vector Sigma/the Oracle could have simply poured some of its power into Athenia's core in order to convert it into a new magica energyl core, while Vector Sigma/the Oracle proper remained within its own chamber physically separate from the core.

But is there anything that could actually link the version of Cybertron seen in Beast Machines to the planet Athenia? Like something from Athenia's past history left over on Cybertron? Well... possibly yes!

In a few episodes of Beast Machines, we were shown several layers of ruins that Optimus Primal deduces (in the English version) must be "what's left of the earlier Cybertronian civilizations."




In the English version, we're given no reason to think otherwise. But because the Japanese version is part of the larger JG1 continuity that saw Cybertron destroyed in The Headmasters, we have to question if these ruins really were from early Cybertronian civilizations (as Optimus assumes) or from whatever planet was used to repair Cybertron after it was destroyed.

Of particular importance are the specific ruins that the Maximals used as their main headquarters in the first season of Beast Machines, from Episode 3 ("Fires of the Past") to Episode 10 ("Survivor"), and which Tankor later used as his own base after the Maximals relocated to set up a new base in a cave of organic fossils, from Episode 10 ("The Key") to Episode 13 ("End of the Line").

Said ruins were the ruins of an underground amphitheater that looked to have been primarily made of stone and brick in addition to metal. Most notably, this amphitheater bore a striking resemblance to the architectural designs of real-world amphitheaters originating from ancient Greece.




It's the mother of all coincidences, yes, but it would make a whole world of sense that ruins of an ancient Greek-styled amphitheater found deep within the ancient levels of Cybertron had actually originally been a structure from the Greece-influenced planet of Athenia (a planet the Autobots were already building "a second Cybertron" on), and that the amphitheater was lost buried beneath the planet's surface when Athenia got integrated with Cybertron's husk to become one with Cybertron as its new body, with the husk covering over most of Athenia's surface. It's like one big puzzle all fitting together.

Now, for this theory to work, we must also check to see if Athenia is ever shown to exist in the future of the JG1cartoon timeline. Because, if it does, then that tosses this whole theory out the window since it would mean that Athenia continues to coexist separately from Cybertron after 2021 just like Planet Victory and Micro. Well, looking over things from other JG1 cartoon media, it seems that Athenia has only made two other appearances after The Headmasters, and both are work-around-able.

I'll start with its second post-Headmasters appearance since that's the easiest one to work around. In 2016, the Legends pack-in manga included with the Leader class Blaster toy featured a brief scene on Athenia in a flashback, set "several years" before 2021. It was also set not long after the last episode of The Headmasters, so it's in that little gap between that series and Super-God Masterforce, but a little closer to the time of The Headmasters. For an estimation, let's say it's around 2013 at the latest.

This scene is brief and mostly inconsequential, and only serves to show that (in regards to this specific topic) Athenia continued to exist as its own planet for a little while longer after 2011. It could have been that the integration started at some point after this scene and still finished by 2021.

For Athenia's other appearance, however, we'll need to think a little more creatively. In 1988, it was mentioned in a printed text story released in Japan prior to Masterforce as a bridge between it and The Headmasters. Titled "Master File No. 1", this summary of events is set in the early episodes of Masterforce, right around the time of the debut of the Headmaster Juniors' transtectors.

While it mentioned that the Autobots were still headquartered on Athenia at that point, this was obviously written with early ideas for Masterforce in mind, as it also mentions the Trainbots keeping tabs on Earth, the Autobot Pretenders, and the growing threat of Devil Z. Yet, the Trainbots were never seen in Masterforce outside of a brief cameo in the theme song's first opening sequence.



Clearly there were supposed to be more ties between The Headmasters and Masterforce in the earlier stages of the latter's development, but those didn't pan out in the final version. Thus, if we wanted to imagine that Athenia was the planet that was used to restore Cybertron, we could say that Master File No. 1 is still technically correct (the best kind of correct) about the Autobots being based on Athenia during that time, as Athenia would have been integrated into Cybertron, making the two planets become one and the same.

Oh, and if I don't mention it here, someone might point it out: Athenia was also featured in the sixth chapter of the 1988 Masterforce manga published in TV Magazine. But while manga series shares some conceptual DNA with its counterpart animated series, it is not in the same JG1 cartoon continuity as the Masterforce cartoon. So its relevance to this topic is null and void.


Conclusion

So, yeah. I theorize that Cybertron was rebuilt by having had another planet integrated with its remains following its destruction in The Headmasters (explaining how the planet's interior was primarily soil-based in Beast Machines when it was primarily metallic in the G1 cartoon), with the specific planet used for said integration being Athenia, the Autobots' main colony headquarters from The Headmasters and a close neighbor of Cybertron.

Athenia's molten core would have been changed into the orb of magical organic energy from Beast Machines by having Vector Sigma/the Oracle pour some of its energy into said core, and the ancient ruins seen in Beast Machines (including the underground Greek-styled amphitheater) would have actually been from Athenia's early civilizations unbeknownst to the Maximals of Beast Machines (who instead think they're ancient Cybertronian civilizations, not knowing about Athenia or its role in Cybertron's history).

But hey, that's just a theory!

A TOON THEORY!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand cut!

[Rodimus Prime]

1. Well, that's just crazy timing. I'm about to start watching the Japanese headmasters series. So I'll be keeping this in mind for sure. And even though I remember it being terrible 15 years ago, I'll probably rewatch Beast Machines in the near future as well.

2. So how do you think Cybertron's remains were attached to Athenia? Piece by piece, like Jetfire on Optimus in RoTF, or like a complete suit of armor, all at once? (Even though some suits of armor do go on 1 piece at a time as well.)

3. Primus is the answer. Always.

4. You have too much time on your hands.