Theft of the Golden Disk

 

Writers: Trent Troop, Ronald D. Smith, and Kristen Maxwell

Release date: July 1, 2007

 

This is a very low-budget computer-animated Beast Wars prequel produced for BotCon, the Transformers fan convention, using graphics that are somehow worse than the graphics in the original Beast Wars, which was already ten years old at the time this came out.

Megatron II is the protégé of Cryotek, who the Transformers Wiki describes as a Predacon mob boss, but based on this cartoon appears to be Just Some Guy. Cryotek, it turns out, has concocted a brilliant criminal scheme to steal the 1977 Voyager space probe's Golden Disk, a powerful artifact encoded with valuable secrets. That's right, Megatron wasn't actually the one who came up with the plan to steal the Golden Disk at all, it was Some Guy! That sucks!

Also in Cryotek's employ are Dinobot, Waspinator, Terrorsaur, Scorponok (whose Cybertronian name is "Clamps"), and three other dudes. Cryotek sends this crew to burglarize the Cybertropolis Maximal Data Archive, which contains information that, when decoded, will reveal the location of the Golden Disk. Megatron's mentor instructs him that only he, Cryotek, is allowed to decode the data, but Megatron transmits it to Tarantulas, who locates the Disk without Cryotek's knowledge. One of the three dudes takes what he thinks is the stolen data back to Cryotek, while the other two dudes are killed by their teammates, who are secretly working for Megatron.

 

Meanwhile, Cryotek alerts Maximal security to the break-in, throwing his pupil under the bus to keep the Maximals busy while he strikes at the real prize. But when he opens the floppy disk Megatron sent him, it contains only a tracking device, which Maximal security has followed to his secret base. Cryotek is arrested, while Megatron finally lays his hands on the Golden Disk.

Ancient graphics and dubious story decisions aside, Theft of the Golden Disk is kind of badass. It looks and sounds terrible but you can tell that people put a lot of heart and effort into making it. They even got the guy who did Megatron's voice on Beast Wars to come back! Which means none of the other Beast Wars characters get to speak because they couldn't afford their voice actors!

I really wish this was better than it is, because while it's a cool idea for a short and the intentions behind it are good, it's ultimately lacking in some significant ways. The primitive graphics and animation, limited voice acting, and near absence of character names made the story difficult to follow; I had to read a summary online to retroactively connect the dots of the plot. Most of the pre-beast mode character models are okay, but Dinobot's is absolutely atrocious, looking like he has a whole fucking backhoe for his right arm. And while I like that Megatron outsmarted his mentor and put one over on him in the end, I hate the idea that the entire inciting incident of the Beast Wars was actually Just Some Guy's plan all along, and Megatron just lucked into being in the right place at the right time. In the show he came across as this brilliant, charismatic visionary, but here he's an opportunistic flunky whose genius is in figuring out how to steal the ideas of the true mastermind.

An interesting and enjoyable piece of Beast Wars trivia, but still not one I would consider canon.