Micro-continuity



Multiple Transformers media create multiple continuities within individual franchises, the most famous being the cartoon and Marvel comics which contributed similar but irreconcilably different versions of G1. However, while the most prominent continuity variations are generally well known, there exist many "micro-continuities", small continuities which are either slightly or totally incompatible with the major Fictions.

The extent to which any individual micro-continuities should be regarded as a valid alternate continuity(/timeline/dimension etc.) or mere apocrypha is a matter of individual fans' taste and the domain of personal (multiversal) canon.

Types of Micro-Continuities include:

Limited Fictions
Stories told either a small number of works of Fiction that share an apparent single continuity, such as the Ladybird Books, or even a single isolated work, such as the Transformers Beast Wars: Transmetals video game.

Although often small and insignificant in the wider scheme of things, such tales often contain interesting or unique takes on certain characters or situations, for example providing actual stories in which Ultra Magnus and Galvatron spent a prolonged period as opposing leaders, a staus quo clearly designed to be utilised as indicated by much of the lead-up to the movie and post-movie product advertising but which was ultimately never realised in the major fictions.

Implied continuities
While not consistently represented by Fictions, some percieved micro-continuities arise as the result of discrepancies between the toylines and their accompanying main Fictions. In G1 this was mainly limited to cases where individual toy characters' appearances vary drastically from the cartoon (and, by extension, most other media) such as Jetfire and Ironhide, but can also include discrepancies in tech specs such as Galvatron being described as merely "Decepticon City Commander" and is implied to indeed possess a lower rank than unspecified superiors (to say nothing of the fact that him being the reformatted Megatron is not even alluded to).

More Striking examples occur in Beast Wars and Beast Machines.

Toylines vs. shows
Unlike G1, the Beast Era did not draw on multiple major Fictions (at least originally), leading to a fairly unified canon. However, due to the fact that both shows produced by Mainframe were early, pioneering examples of fully-CG animated series, they were limited in the number of characters that could be included, resulting in both series possessing much tighter casts than all other Transformers Fictions. Unique amongst the many Transformers franchises, The two Beast Era shows did not feature the encyclopaedic inclusion of every availiable toy as a character in its Fiction, a fact which some fans feel was a major contributing factor to the percieved higher quality of the characterisation and overall writing of these series. At any rate, Beast Wars and Beast Machines feature only a limited proportion of the overall number of characters created, and furthermore the tight continuity and respecitive premises of the shows leave little room for their inclusion in the canon even in an "off camera" capacity (although see below in "When is a micro-continuity not a micro-continuity?"). An additional problem in Beast Wars is that several characters such as Waspinator and Rhinox were featured as Transmetal toys while in the cartoon they did not recieve these upgrades, thus creating a further discrepancy.

How then to account for the large number of (non)existant toy characters? It is absurd to dismiss them completely, and thus there are a few viewpoints. One can either presuppose that the toyline itself implies a micro-continuity in which the full number of toy characters coexisted, or one could attempt to reconcile these characters with a definitely-extant micro-continuity; that of the pre-cartoon series one tech-specs and minicomic.

The "G1 Beast Wars"
Tech Specs for the first waves of Beast Wars indicated that the Beast Wars took place in modern-day Earth and that Optimus Primal and Megatron were in fact just G1 Optimus Prime and Megatron in the latest in their long series of reformatted bodies. This storyline actually did exist in one installment of a Limited Fiction, a comic which was included with the Bat Optimus and Alligator Megatron 2-pack.

Although later Tech Specs were changed to reflect the cartoon (although this did not solve the Transmetals discrepancy), one can easily use these first-series materials to infer a micro-continuity existing that features a bat-mode Optimus Prime(al) leading troops that include the likes of both Rattrap and Armordillo against an alligator-mode Megatron and his minions such as Tarantulas and Iguanus, duking it out for the fate of modern, urban Earth. Whether one presumes that Optimus and Megatron subsequently "upgraded" to their gorilla and T-Rex modes, or if one can then include later waves of non-show characters and even non-show transmetalisations is open to debate.

Crawling with Maximals
By the same token, the Beast Machines toyline contained many toy-only characters, both Maximal, Vehicon and other groups who were again fairly incompatable with the tighly-plotted continuity of the cartoon that presents the dominant canon. A similar "implied continuity" can be posulated that would include these extra characters in an alternate version of events that supported a larger cast.

When is a micro-continuity not a micro-continuity?
There are some Fictions which have attempted to retroactively explain the presence (or rather absence) of the non-show characters in both Beast Wars and Beast Machines. 3H's Wreckers comics and associated projects attempted to fill out much of the Beast Machines gaps in an arguably workable fashion, while more recently IDW tackled virtually every toy-only Beast Wars character in Beast Wars: The Gathering. However, these two Fictions present contradictory information, and neither have (as yet) provided expansive storylines. Should these be considered major Fictions or mere micro-continuities themselves?