by Loki120 » Fri Jun 22, 2007 7:18 am
Pretty much everything new is set in it's own continuity, because they have this high-minded notion that "We be too stoopid to understand contin...continui...continuation." So under misguided attempts to tell a new story every time, we have a dozen or so new continuitys to follow instead on one long big one.
The only exception would be Beast Wars and Beast Machines, which despite a great number of people who just don't know better who believe that they take place after the comics, they do indeed continue the story from after the original cartoon (with a small number of offside references to the comic thrown in as in-jokes - hence the stem of deperate people trying to tie it into the comics instead of the cartoon). Though at first set as something completely different with only vague references to Cybertron and Autobots and Decepticons, towards the end of the first season and throughout the second the third season of Beast Wars they finally tied it to the original TF series (Autobots and Decepticons being the decendents of the Maximals and Predacons respectively - but were trapped millions of years in the past on Earth). If you haven't seen it, I definately recommend it. The story continued into Beast Machines, where the Maximals return to Cybertron in their expected timeline only to find it had been taken over by their long time nemesis, Megatron. After being reformatted into new techno-organic bodies, the rest of the series is the Maximals trying to discover what happened and find a way to save the sparks of every TF on the planet. - Again, fans like to shaft this one because even though it was still being produced by the same production company as Beast Wars (Mainframe), it was being done for Fox Kids - so the stories and characterizations were simplified a bit for the kiddies, and things like good guys don't use guns. Destruction was kept towards non-living things such as drones and buildings - and the bad guys couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. But the plots heavily exploited past events and articles from the original G1 cartoon - such as Vector Sigma, the Plasma Energy Chamber, the Key of Vector Sigma, the Hate Plague and so forth.
When that series ended, Hasbro pretty much had a choice. Continue the series from Beast Machines (which they toyed with a bit and had designs done for a series that would have been called Transtech), or go off in a completely new direction. They decided on the latter, and again, the series was simplified with a craze that every kid would recognize - the gotta catch 'em all Pokemon plot was imported, and Armada was born. But in the meantime, Hasbro needed something to fill the gap so they could develop this kiddie brigade, and imported a Japanese Transformers series and redubbed it for Fox kids. Since the toys were already produced for Japan, they also redid the toys and released them here, as well as produced a series of repaints to expand the line. This one-shot series was called Robots in Disguise. And outside that even though it has it's following, its pretty much kiddie fodder as far as the cartoon goes with absolutely no continuity from previous series - with the exceptions of vague references thrown in as in-jokes.
Armada led into Energon, and soon Cybertron (which could or could not argued as being part of this continuity). I would go into it more, but by this time I lost interest in the cartoon, though it has a pretty popular following. But again, this "Unicron Trilogy" as it's been dubbed by the fandom, does not connect with G1 in any way, and reestablishes it's own continuity.
During this time, in an effort to milk their sudden cash cow for all it's worth, Hasbro produced a new toy-specific continuity called Universe - which consisted of solely of repainted figures and released as new or old characters with new bodies. This had a vague story synopsis on the back which pretty much consistent of Transformers from all timelines converging to defeat the forces of Unicron and his Decepticons. This went on to produce a short lived comic series produced by 3H productions as a direct market product (I.E. you had to order it from their web site). They also produced a limited series called the Wreckers, which would have continued the G1/Beast Wars/Beast Machines continuity - but like Universe met an untimely demise when Hasbro pulled their license.
When Dreamwave won the license for Transformers, they were quick to set up their own continuity as well, pulling aspects from both comic and cartoon series to create a whole new G1 series. Likewise for their Armada/Energon series, which went a completely different way than the cartoon. But in the end, sanity set in, clamor for Transformers waned, and Bankruptcy set in. Dreamwave went out of business and left all their series unfinished. IDW picked up the license and have run the torch in yet a whole new direction as a sort of middle-finger to Dreamwave since they picked up a majority of their writers and artists.
A long-winded explanation of your question, I know. But as you can see, everyone has their own interpretation and even the current Transformers series has no connection to previous continuities.
