The Energon Pub

Indeed. Which also adds to the notion that the Beast Modes of Neo were cosmetic. Although personally I have always been partial to the idea that Altmodes are locked in. Hence why not everyone changes their mode to a spaceship or weapon. A disguise employed for a specific location.

Besides let's face it, even Gigatron and his Preds in Car Robots are a bit nebulous to place within the Beast Era, before they arrived on Earth. Would a Tenformer have been subservient to Magmatron, Galvatron or the Tripredacus Council?

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Indeed. Which also adds to the notion that the Beast Modes of Neo were cosmetic. Although personally I have always been partial to the idea that Altmodes are locked in. Hence why not everyone changes their mode to a spaceship or weapon. A disguise employed for a specific location.

Interestingly, one of the last episodes of Neo has Big Convoy strongly imply that organic beast modes have become commonplace on Cybertron, as if to say that adopting them is just what the race does by that time (which could also imply that adopting vehicle modes has become a thing of the past by then).

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Besides let's face it, even Gigatron and his Preds in Car Robots are a bit nebulous to place within the Beast Era, before they arrived on Earth. Would a Tenformer have been subservient to Magmatron, Galvatron or the Tripredacus Council?

The Predacon hierarchy in JBW seems to be that those we see in charge of the main bad guy team of each series are just in charge of that particular squadron.

Like, in Neo, Magmatron's Predacon crew were specifically called the "Magmatron Unit", with any other Predacons who guest-starred in the series merely being their allies but not explicitly under Magmatron's authority.

Likewise, Gigatron's Destrongers were just one unit that he commanded within the larger Destron (Predacon) faction.

But in all three, there's no sign of any overseeing governing body like the Tripredacus Council (or "Trypticon Council" as they were called in Japan), but that can be attested to the fact that BW Season 2 hadn't yet reached Japan at the time and so Takara didn't know about that group until after Second and Neo had already been made, since BW Season 1 didn't touch upon Predacon government. IIRC, the first mention of the Predacon Alliance didn't occur until "Other Visits (Part 2)" in Season 2.

So, Galvatron, Magmatron, and Gigatron were all treated as independent agents subservient to no one, each with their own individual agendas, but apparently not as contemporaries to each other either. With the hindsight we have now, I guess we can take this as a sign to deduce that the Predacon Alliance must have collapsed in the days following the Spark War.

Sabrblade wrote:Like, in Neo, Magmatron's Predacon crew were specifically called the "Magmatron Unit", with any other Predacons who guest-starred in the series merely being their allies but not explicitly under Magmatron's authority.

Likewise, Gigatron's Destrongers were just one unit that he commanded within the larger Destron (Predacon) faction.

But in all three, there's no sign of any overseeing governing body like the Tripredacus Council (or "Trypticon Council" as they were called in Japan), but that can be attested to the fact that BW Season 2 hadn't yet reached Japan at the time and so Takara didn't know about that group until after Second and Neo had already been made, since BW Season 1 didn't touch upon Predacon government. IIRC, the first mention of the Predacon Alliance didn't occur until "Other Visits (Part 2)" in Season 2.

So, Galvatron, Magmatron, and Gigatron were all treated as independent agents subservient to no one, each with their own individual agendas, but apparently not as contemporaries to each other either. With the hindsight we have now, I guess we can take this as a sign to deduce that the Predacon Alliance must have collapsed in the days following the Spark War.

Curious. It almost suggests that, whereas the Decepticons had a central unifying leader in almost all eras. The Predacons had become a feudal society. Of the two factions, their internal structure is the most unknown.
Their omission due to "potential confusion" in BM, only added to that really.

Of course, none of this would be explored in a film today. To be fair, a Beast Wars film in the late 90's wouldn't have done so either. If only the media of the era had an official comic running in parallel with the shows. That is probably where such insights would have been explored.