Oh crud! I accidently made a typo in my previous post. I forgot to put the word "not" in the phrase "he had been in control of the planet for very long prior to the movie." I've put it in now, so it now properly reads as "he had been in control of the planet for
not very long prior to the movie."
fenrir72 wrote:Thanks for the reply.
That info on how long Beast Megs controlled Cybertron was never really nailed down. At least G1 megs, there is some approximation we could make.
Well, it looks like I've come through with some info about that.
Are you familiar with an old series of short BotCon stories called "
Apelinq's War Journals"? If not, it was a series of short prose stories that were released in 2001 from late February to the end of June. They were originally released on BotCon's old sister site BotCon: Beyond, which no longer exists as its contents were merged with BotCon.com on November 13, 2001.
Anyway, "Apelinq's War Journals" were written in the form of personal logs written by the Wreckers' Squadron Commander, Apelinq, who was a redeco of Transmetal Optimus Primal exclusive to BotCon 2000. Within these Journal entries, Apelinq wrote logs about the goings-on on Cybertron in the days set after Optimus Primal's Maximals and Megatron's Predacons left Cybertron to partake in the Beast Wars, but before Megatron took over Cybertron in Beast Machines, essentially set squarely between the two cartoons... at first.
Later entries written by Apelinq referred to Megatron's fully taking over Cybertron and then events that actually happened in Beast Machines itself, such as Optimus Primal's Maximals returning to Cybertron in their Autobot shuttle. And the final few journal entries took place after a time travel accident put Apelinq in the middle of events set during Beast Wars seasons 2-3, but let's back up to the earlier entries that detailed Megatron's rise to power.
Each entry is given a date index of the number 316 followed by a decimal number, and the letters "AU" (which the fandom has latched on to meaning "After Unicron" as in, "after Unicron's last known major attack on Cybertron, like his 2005 attack from Transformers: The Movie"). The "316" most likely refers to the number of years, or stellar cycles, that have transpired since the "AU" era begin, which calls back to Blackarachnia's stating in the Beast Wars cartoon that the Great War between the Autobots and Decepticons had happened "three centuries ago". As for the decimal numbers, it is my belief that these refer to the specific day, or solar cycle, that Apelinq made each log entry. So, for instance the first journal entry is dated "316.075 AU", which could be determined to mean "The 316th year, Day 75, of the AU era".
With that in mind, we can use the dates Apelinq wrote in his journals to determine when Megatron took over, and how long he ruled Cybertron before Optimus Primal's team came along.
Journals 1-6 make it clear that Megatron is still in the process of taking over Cybertron, so we'll ignore those for now. Though, we will note the date of the first entry being "316.075 AU". Journal 7 is the first one to note that Cybertron's populace has been eradicated, implying that Megatron now rules Cybertron by this point. It also points out that Megatron turned Cybertron into a dead world "In less than a stellar cycle". With the date on this Journal entry being "316.258 AU", and with the date of the first Journal in mind, it is reasonable to say that Megatron's entire conquest took place within with the same year, and that he took over no later than the 258th day of the 316th year. Though, it is entirely possible that he wiped out the planet's population before the 258th day, but not earlier than the 247th day because the immediately previous entry, Journal 6, featured Megatron having not quite yet completed his takeover, and is dated "316.247 AU". Though, with the way Apelinq describes the situation in Journal 7, it sounds like the population was wiped out closer to that entry's date. Thus, we can conclude that Megatron's complete takeover was accomplished at some point just before Day 258 of the 316th year.
With that said, let's look to see when Primal's Maximal team showed up. Their arrival is first mentioned in Journal 9, which is dated "316.265 AU". Now, this is the date given for when their Autobot shuttle arrived. We know from the cartoon that Primal's amnesiac team was on the run from the Vehicons for some time after their ship was shot down. Though, presumably, not
too too long, but long enough for Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap, and Blackarachnia to become separated and feel like it's been awhile since they last saw each other when they all reunite in the first episode. Therefore, we can conclude that the first episode most likely took place a little bit after Day 265 of the 316th year.
Thus, we have Megatron's reign beginning close to Day 258 and Episode 1 occurring shortly after Day 265, providing us with a time gap of a little more than 7 days. If we wanted to be a little generous, we could round it up a bit to about 10 days or so.
Although, this is all just my guesswork based the assumption that the decimal numbers refer to days of the year. For all we know, they could refer to some other unit of time measurement. Though, the highest decimal, found in Journal 14 (as Journals 15-20 are dated "Unknown"), is 292. So, whatever the decimals refer to have to be small enough to allow 292 of them to occur within a year. And according to info given from Larry DiTillio by Ben Yee, a Cybertronian year, or Stellar Cycle, of the Beast Era cartoons is 400 Earth days, so the "decimals = days" idea seems reasonable to me.
Of course, all this technically just applies for the continuity of the 3H BotCon Beast Era fiction, which the two Beast Era cartoons are a part of, but so too are they a part of other Beast Era continuities. But as "Apelinq's War Journals" was written when the Beast Era was still relevant and when the concept of separate continuities was still in its infancy (meaning before the multiverse really became fully fleshed out), it's a fair thing to think about in regards to the continuity of the Beast Era cartoons from the time.
Hope this helped.
