A Meeting of Minds

 

Writer: Simon Furman

Publication date: November 30, 2004

 

A short story written by Simon Furman for the Transformers Legends anthology. Following the events of the Beast Wars episode "Master Blaster," Megatron II has merged his spark with that of the original G1 Megatron (hey, didn't they say in Reaching the Omega Point that that had never been done before?). Though nothing on the show suggests anything like this ever happening, G1 Megatron's consciousness is now fully aware inside Megatron II's mind and they maintain a running dialogue where Megatron I tells Megatron II how much he sucks and Megatron II thanks him for inspiring him to become a better tyrant.

Meanwhile, Quickstrike is awaiting his trial, but Megatron puts him on probation so he can plant a device in the Maximal base that will make them all fight each other. While they are thus distracted, Megatron I's plan is to sneak into the Ark and reanimate all the dormant G1 Autobots and Decepticons to build an army that the two Megatrons can use to take over Cybertron. Megatron II follows along blindly because Simon Furman has no respect for him as a character in any of his Transformers work.

The plan goes off without a hitch and Megatron II uses a fragment of his spark energy to animate Starscream as a mindless zombie slave, but it turns out that the puppetmaster controlling Starscream is actually Megatron I, who makes Starscream drag Megatron II over to Megatron I's body so he can get his spark back. Megatron II is able to summon the mental fortitude to regain control of his body and suppress Megatron I's will, but this leaves him weakened and exhausted, so when the Maximals burst in to stop him he's forced to abandon his zombie-army plan and run away.

Optimus Primal had been feeling down in the dumps after the Predacons mind-controlled him in the most recent episode, but now that he foiled Megatron's new mind-control scheme he's feeling right as rain again. Glad we worked that little character arc in there.

The story ends with a time jump forward three episodes, to the deleted scene from the end of "Nemesis, Part 2" where the Maximals return Megatron I's spark to his body before taking Megatron II back to Cybertron with them. Although Megatron I remains powered down, Megatron II swears he sees him smile.

Kind of interesting idea for a story that unfortunately never really lives up to its own premise. Getting to see the two Megatrons interact and play off each other has a lot of promise, but Megatron II behaves largely as a fawning sycophant, and Megatron I just treats him like an asshole. I would have preferred to see their interactions if Megatron I wasn't trying to manipulate him or get something out of him, if they had to work together and Megatron I was trying to give Megatron II legitimate leadership advice. That would have been more interesting to me personally than this version that was doomed to go nowhere from the start.