Paradox

 

Writer: Simon Furman 

Publication date: July 16, 1999 

Prologue: Another time, another nameless Simon Furman character. In the era of Beast Machines, "the Hunter" is a servant of Megatron following his conquest of Cybertron, helping his forces purge the world of undesirables. But now he finds himself the undesirable, divested of his former power and status and pursued like his own victims had been. Beaten and afraid, he stumbles upon the entrance to a cave; from inside, he hears a voice, promising him all the dark desires of his embittered heart...

 

Windrazor has arrived in late season three of Beast Wars, as indicated by Megatron in his Transmetal 2 dragon form randomly flying around. Windrazor is like "huh, that's weird" and then goes on about his business. A tracking device has come through the transwarp portal with him, and he follows it deep into a cave, where he discovers a pit full of the Dark Essence that Shokaract sent his heralds back in time to find.

Meanwhile, Rhinox has detected the arrival of a time traveler on prehistoric Earth, and the Maximals follow Windrazor's trail of "displaced chronal particles" in hopes of finding a way to get back to their own time. Their current line-up consists of Optimus Primal in his Matrix-enhanced "Optimal Optimus" form, Rhinox, Rattrap, Cheetor, Blackarachnia, and Silverbolt. Depth Charge should also be around at this point but they don't mention him. Hey, what happened to Onyx Primal and Packrat, everyone's favorite fake characters?

But the Predacons have also detected the opening of a transwarp portal, and they ambush the Maximals on their way to the cave. It's just like the cartoon! The Predacon roster includes Megatron, Inferno, Rampage, Quickstrike, Waspinator, and the evil clone of Dinobot. 

 

Now, Megatron gets his dragon alt mode when Quickstrike betrays him in "Master Blaster." The following episode, "Other Victories," sees Quickstrike on trial for his treachery, but the proceedings are interrupted when Tigerhawk arrives on Earth and destroys the Predacon base. Then the episode after that is the series finale. So the events of Paradox have to occur after "Master Blaster" but, presumably, before "Other Victories," or else Tigerhawk would be with the Maximals. So it's weird that Quickstrike is just hanging out with the team here instead of being incarcerated for trying to kill Megatron. Maybe he's on probation.

Megatron splits from the others to go after the time traveler, forcing Optimus Primal to leave his beleaguered comrades under fire to stop him. In the cave, Windrazor surmises that the Dark Essence must be what will enable Shokaract's rise to power in the future. Something has disrupted the timestream, potentially changing history so that Shokaract never discovers the Dark Essence, which is why he has sent his heralds back in time to safeguard it. Suddenly, Megatron arrives in the cave and beats the shit out of Windrazor. Surveying the pit, he immediately recognizes the Dark Essence for what it is, somehow: the lingering lifeforce of Unicron, concentrated here after Unicron's destruction by Judd Nelson.

Yes, it's like a million years before the events of The Transformers: The Movie, but Windrazor has surmised that this era may be some kind of temporal nexus, drawing temporally displaced people and Essences to it from throughout history. Sure, let's go with that.

Optimus Primal arrives and threatens Megatron with his raygun, but Megatron holds Windrazor in front of him as a Transformer shield. Windrazor gives in to the violent bloodlust of the Cub, knocking Megatron away from the pit but also lowering his mental resistance to the will of the Dark Essence. It's able to take control of him, and just like that, Unicron is reborn.

Meanwhile, there's another storyline going on involving Sandstorm, the repainted Scorponok figure who leads the Predacon resistance on Shokaract's subjugated Cybertron. He travels to J'nwan, a region of Cybertron that exists outside of normal spacetime for the sake of plot convenience. J'nwan is a quantum fever dream of shifting geography where all of time exists simultaneously and various realities are constantly bleeding through from other realms. Don't worry, it's not nearly as cool as it sounds, Furman just uses vague, abstract language to describe the actual physical reality of it, seeming more interested in his own "ornate prose" than in crafting a truly unique or memorable addition to the lore.

Also, the temporal dislocation of the area allows for the presence of legendary heroes from Cybertron's past. J'nwan = Gen One = Generation 1. Come on, man.

Sandstorm meets with "the Authority," another anonymous legacy character identified only by a portentous Furman alias because that's more mysterious, and asks for his help to stop Shokaract, both the apocalyptic conflict and the dude, but the Authority says that this current war is no longer his war and it must fall to the next generation to stop this threat.

Back on prehistoric Earth, the Maximals have succeeded in blowing up Waspinator, but they self-deprecatingly note that this is no great accomplishment. Suddenly, the Predacons' guns fall silent, their owners frozen in place by the coming of the Chaos-Bringer. He still appears in the physical form of a repainted Silverbolt (although strangely no one observes the uncanny resemblance when the real Silverbolt is standing right there), but is surrounded by a dark halo thrown in the shape of Unicron. You can see how this would look a lot cooler in a comic book. In prose it unfortunately sounds kind of silly, like an over-literalization of an idea best left abstract.

We get a short passage from Unicron's point of view where he glories over how evil he is, relishing the Maximals' despair and thinking about how he wants to eat them. I really dislike this, and not just because it's stupid. Paradox was the first time a writer had brought back Unicron as a character since the days of the G1 cartoon and comic series, so it's not like there was a ton of content to inform his characterization, but just going by the movie alone you get the sense of him: a force of nature, a chthonic entity existing on a scale of time and space beyond the mortal plane, something outside of human (or Transformer) understanding and morality. Here he's just cackling gleefully to himself about how "nobility and virtue always tasted better," like a villain in a Saturday morning toy commercial for kindergarteners.

 

"I AM THE DARK GOD OF CHAOS, THE DEVOURER OF WORLDS. I HAVE EXISTED SINCE BEFORE THE DAWN OF TIME AND I WILL EXIST WHEN THE LAST STAR GOES COLD. I HAVE SEEN THE DEATHS OF GODS AND UNIVERSES AND—OH, CURSES, FOILED AGAIN! I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, MAXIMALS! NEXT TIIIIIME!!!"

But anyway the Veteran and the Cub meet on the psychic plane or whatever and decide that Unicron was able to take over their body because they're both too reluctant to completely surrender their old identities. They decide to work together, and this enables them to instantly get un-possessed. "NO!" says Unicron, then he's dead again. He was back for like five minutes.

But thank God, because that means it's finally time to get to the real villain of this story, an OC way cooler and eviller and badasser than that hack Orson Welles. Shokaract has come! The first thing he does is rip Optimus Primal's spark out of his body. NEXT: THE CONCLUSION.

After several chapters of backstory, build-up, and introducing lame OCs idgaf about, this story is finally getting interesting. I'm sure it's just coincidence that it took the established Beast Wars cast showing up for that to happen. The reintroduction of Unicron was genuinely cool and exciting... for the whole minute that it lasted. There's one more chapter to wrap everything up, so if he's really gone and doesn't appear again at all I have to question what the point of bringing him back even was.

Wait what was the paradox???