Beast Wars & Beast Machines

[Mortal Envelope]

Beast Wars was a pretty good cartoon if not sometimes a bit speechy (Megs could go on for a long time).  Sure they had a lot of upgrades to sell new toys, but it was still a good story.  It paid homage to the original Transformers and even had a few of them show up.  It was way better than Transformers Armada or any of that silliness.

Favorite Episode: Possession - Starscream's spark takes over Waspinator's body and is up to his usual betrayal tricks.  Another episode has a  rebuilt Ravage show up.  Not bad.

Favorite Character: Megatron ...named after the original but a much different personality -very devious and manipulative.  He doesn't have the army that the original Megatron had but he ends up winning the Beast Wars.  Other good characters: Rat Trap, Primal, Black Arachnia, and Dinobot

Beast Machines

This I did not like at all.  I did give it a chance but they changed everything that was good and it got boring and nonsensical.  Megatron won the beast wars, landed on Cybertron first, took it over, extracted everyone's spark (soul) via virus and rules the planet with a bunch of brainless drones.  Meanwhile, the remaining Maximals (not many) act like completely different characters (Rat Trap goes from vet to newb) and Cheetor "grows up" into a dick.  Primal talks to himself claiming it's the oracle while everyone else fights Megatron's drones to find out the drone leaders are the other formal maximals. 

Yeah it sounds more exciting than it was.  Beast Wars > Beast Machines

[Inferno]

I don't think anyone really liked Beast Machines. Not anybody I know anyway.
Personally, I love Beast Wars. Great actors, good plot/storylines (except for a few jump the sharks in the 3rd season like Blackarachnia going Transmetal 2 and TigerHawk) and an interesting twist on the original G1 Transformers thrown into the storyline.

If you can't tell, I got my username from the show.

[AndyC]

Yeah, I liked Beast Wars, and it just kept getting better as they tied it in with the original show. Hard to say what my favourite episode was, but I loved the finale, with Megatron finding the orignal Decepticon battle cruiser and attacking the Maximals and the Ark. It was the one time Rattrap said "We're all gonna die" and actually meant it.

Beast machines just had it all wrong. The Transformers were cool because they were big, metal robots. Cybertron was cool because it was a machine world. Let's make the whole show about fighting to change those things. I stopped watching after a few episodes. Checked it out once more later on, and Megatron was flying around in a giant Zardoz head or something. Decided I'd made the right choice.

[BeyondTheGrave]

I was a big fan of Beast Wars and caught whenever it was on. I even had the video game for PS1 that was terribly but it was Beast Wars. Haven't seen a epsiode in a long time though.
 
Beast Machines I never had a chance to really watch it but from I remember I didn't like it. I do remember,As Mortal Envelope pointed out, Primial talking about the oracle alot.

[dean]

Didn't even know about Beast Machines until recently when I saw the dvds for the series in a bargain bin somewhere.  This pointed me firmly AWAY from it.

But I really enjoyed Beast Wars if not for the fact that I would get home from school and it would be on to ease me into the evening when I was a younger little tacker. 

Fun note: My special edition of Transformers The Movie [the original animation] has a few extras on it including a Japanese version of the first episode of Transformers and an episode of Beast Wars which I think is the one where they attack the Ark and plan to kill the original Optimus Prime, still in sleep-mode.  Great bonus which is almost better than the animated Ghostbusters episodes on my Ghostbusters Dvd pack.  Almost better.   

[AndyC]

But I really enjoyed Beast Wars if not for the fact that I would get home from school and it would be on to ease me into the evening when I was a younger little tacker. 

For me, Beast Wars was on before I went to work in the morning, so it was also part of my daily routine. Get up, shave, shower, watch Beast Wars and head out the door. The original Transformers was my after-school entertainment well into high school.