My Megatron Master Plan Five

I'm probably getting way too specific with my fives this week, in an effort to vary my topics beyond movies or music. This week I'm going to list the five best plans perpetrated by the bearers of the most notorious name in Transformers history. Over the years, various incarnations of the franchise have seen various versions of the character Megatron. I'm going with the ones I'm most familiar with, the original from 1984 and his namesake successor from Beast Wars and Beast Machines. In fact, it's actually Megatron II who gets the top spot in the list, and of course SPOILERS ensue for anyone who hasn't seen these:

1) Megatron II alters history by shooting Optimus Prime in the past. (The Agenda - Part III):
The premise of the original Transformers was that two warring factions of sentient robots, the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons were locked in a brutal civil war. During one conflict, the Decepticons board an Autobot vessel, The Ark, and in the ensuing battle the ship crashes into a volcano on Earth, four million years in our past. They remain dormant until the volcano, located in Oregon, erupts in 1984, jostling the ship and awakening the computer, which begins repairs by scanning local vehicles, giving the robots the ability to change their forms and blend in.

The Autobots eventually win that war, and in the far future their descendants, the Maximals, rule over the Predacons, who evolved from the Decepticons. In Beast Wars, a group of Predacons steal a mysterious disc and flee their homeworld, led by a new robot calling himself Megatron after the Decepticons' greatest leader. A Maximal ship pursues, and they end up shooting each other down over a prehistoric planet of unknown origin. They adapt to the local beast forms and a new war begins. In the 39th episode and second season finale, it is finally revealed that the rival vessels traveled across time as well as space, and were actually on Earth the whole time! The disc the Predacons stole contained information left behind by the original Megatron as a failsafe, with instructions should the Decepticons lose the original war. It contained the location of the Ark, and Megatron II uses the information to SHOOT THE DORMANT OPTIMUS PRIME IN THE HEAD, in an attempt to alter history. Did he succeed? Fans were left to agonize for months over the outcome of one of the greatest cliffhangers in animation history.


2) Megatron uses an Autobot shuttle to get his entire army past the formidable defenses of an Earth base, resulting in major casualties. (The Transformers: The Movie):
Within the first twenty minutes of the franchise's first cinematic outing, it was fairly obvious that the stakes were higher than on the after school cartoon. Set in the “future” of 2005(the film was released in 1986), the movie opens with the Decepticons in firm control of Cybertron, the Transformers' home planet. The Autobots have bases on Cybertron's moons, but their real foothold is on Earth, where they had expanded their headquarters, once merely the wreckage of the Ark, into Metroplex, the Autobot City. Megatron's spies bring him word of an Autobot shuttle making a supply run to Earth, and his forces ambush the ship, quickly killing off several major characters. The real world explanation of this development was that the show served to promote action figures, and since those toys were no longer being made their characters were expendable. I didn't know that when I was 10 years old, of course.

Megatron's ruse works, and he gets fairly close before one of the Autobots notices a hole in the side of the ship. A brutal battle ensues and the Decepticons nearly crush their enemy, when Optimus Prime arrives with reinforcements. Prime and Megatron engage in a duel to the death that leaves both with fatal injuries. In the aftermath, Prime dies surrounded by friends while Megatron, dumped in space by his traitorous lieutenant Starscream, is revived by the world-devourer Unicron and given a new, more powerful body as Galvatron. As master plans go, killing your enemy along with 90% of his original army and getting yourself an upgrade definitely qualifies as a success, no matter what happens later in the film or in the third season of the cartoon.


3) Megatron employs a device called the “Transfixatron” to trap the Autobots in their vehicular forms. (The Autobot Run):
It's such a simple plan, but remains one of my fondest episodes. While the Decepticons turned into things like guns or fighter jets, most of the Autobots just turned into cars initially. Megatron has his Constructicons build a device that traps his enemies in their car modes, so they can't transform or access their weapons. He then herds them up and prepares to demolish them in a giant crusher. If not for the intervention of a few missed Autobots and their human allies, his plan may well have succeeded.

4) Megatron convinces humanity that the Autobots are actually the evil ones, exiling them from Earth in a ship headed into the sun. (Megatron's Master Plan Part I and Part II):
No list of Megatron's Master Plans would be complete without an episode of the same name! In the ultimate publicity spin, Megatron frames the Autobots and with the help of a corrupt politician, reverses the public's view of the warring factions. The Decepticons are thrown parades while the Autobots are shuttled back to Cybertron, but Megatron secretly reprograms the ship to take his enemies into the sun instead.

5) Megatron II succeeds in conquering Cybertron, removing the sparks(souls) of all its inhabitants and recycling their bodies into mindless drones. (Beast Machines):
Beast Wars was popular enough to merit a spinoff. That series left off with the Maximals on their way back to their proper time and planet, with Megatron strapped to the roof of their shuttle. While in transwarp space the villain is torn free, and emerges from the timestream well before his enemies. When they arrive home, they find their future has indeed been changed, and Beast Machines finds our heroes as an outnumbered band of revolutionaries fighting a dictator and an entire world of mindless enemies, led by three generals whose sparks would eventually be revealed as familiar characters from the Beast Wars. While I liked the first series better in terms of plot and animation style, I have to acknowledge the fact that Megatron II succeeded at what they spent 52 episodes trying to prevent. More importantly, there was a moral ambiguity at the core of the show, with the Maximals almost behaving like terrorists in their campaign for the survival of the organic traits they incorporated on Earth while Megatron strove for a purely technological Cybertron. At times, you weren't always sure you were rooting for the right faction, and that was something new for a franchise that once clearly labeled groups with “heroic” and “evil”.