Grand Mal


 * The Grand Mal is a space ship in the Beast Machines portion of the Generation 1/Beast Era continuity family.



The Grand Mal is the vessel Megatron inhabited during the second season of Beast Machines. It could change between being an immense aircraft and, well, a big floating head (bearing a resemblance to Megatron's own head).


 * Japanese name: Megahead

Beast Machines cartoon
Megatron had been working at length to purge his body of its biomechanical elements. In the midst of a cataclysmic confrontation with Optimus Primal, he apparently succeeded, splitting his organic components off into a separate entity (the purely biological Noble/Savage). His Spark, however, remained with the Noble/Savage portion, while his original robot form was destroyed by the combined forces that he and Primal had been unleashing.

Shortly afterwards, the Maximals encountered the Grand Mal, a giant version of Megatron's own head drifting empty, unmanned and lifeless above Cybertron; which Rattrap referred to as "...a sparkless floating tribute to Unicron". Apparently Megatron had been constructing it for some time in secret (schematics of it can be seen in the episode "Forbidden Fruit"), but was unable to reach it before the destruction of his original body. Some time later, with the unwitting help of the Maximals, "Noble" was eventually able to re-enter his citadel, where he transferred his Spark into the Grand Mal. The vessel served Megatron's body for much of the series' second season.

Inside the big floating head, Megatron often manifested himself as a slightly smaller floating holographic head.

Some time later, Megatron's Spark emerged from the Grand Mal while consuming the collective Sparks of Cybertron's population, an act which left him vulnerable to an attack by Nightscream. Nightscream's sonic blast left Megatron's Spark "depolarized", wandering madly about Cybertron without a body for a time. The Maximals occupied the empty Grand Mal and used it as their base, defending the captured Sparks of Cybertron's population that it contained.

In a subsequent battle, Megatron's Vehicons shot down the Grand Mal, which crashed on top of the citadel and was the site of the final battle between the Vehicons and Primal's team of Maximals. After the reformatting of Cybertron, its form remained visible, though covered with technorganic greenery.

''Note: The Grand Mal was not named in the Beast Machines television series. The name comes from scripts and the short story Singularity Ablyss by series writer Bob Skir.

Robots in Disguise
Megabolt