The Maximals are the descendants of the Autobots.   Megatron and his forces are a splinter group on the hunt for powerful crystals known as Energon, to be used in a ploy for power and dominance.   They do this with the aid of artifacts known as the Golden Disk and Megatron's stolen ship, the Darkside, which is equipped with a transwarp drive. A Maximal exploration ship, the Axalon, led by Optimus Primal, is sent to stop them. Together the ships plunge through a time/space phenomenon created by the transwarp device during their battle in space, and land on a mysterious planet. The planet is soon found to be rich in deposits of raw Energon, to the point that it proves to be poisonous to both factions' robot forms, forcing the factions to take on alternate organic forms for protection until their robot forms are needed. Thus the robots take on the beast forms of recognizable animals including mammals, birds, dinosaurs, arachnids and insects.

Before crashing, the Axalon deployed its cargo of “stasis pods” containing Maximal protoforms- Transformer robots with vulnerable and undeveloped physical forms, which are left to orbit the planet as an alternative to possible destruction in the initial crash landing. Throughout the series, stasis pods lose altitude and crash-land on the planet, and the Maximals and Predacons race and fight to acquire them, as protoforms acquired by Megatron's forces can be reprogrammed to become Predacons, as is the case with Blackarachnia and Inferno. The stasis pods were used as a plot device to introduce new characters.

Eventually it is discovered that the Transformers have in fact travelled back in time and landed on ancient Earth. Megatron decides to wipe out human civilization (currently a small group of proto-humans living in a single ravine), take control of the previously-crashed Autobot spaceship the Ark and kill the dormant, original Optimus Prime, Optimus Primal's ancestor. This would win the Beast Wars for the Predacons, alter the timeline, prevent the Autobots from being awakened by humanity in 1984 and ultimately defeating the Decepticons, and leave Megatron the ruler of the universe.

Beast Wars Series

Beast Wars II

   Beast Wars Neo

Beast Machines

Beast Wars Telemocha