Grand Mal

The Grand Mal is a ship from the Beast Machines cartoon portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

"What does everybody want?"

The Grand Mal is the transformable vessel that served as Megatron's body during part of the conflict with the technorganic Maximals on Cybertron. Its primary mode is a big, floating head resembling the control helmet Megatron wore previously. It can change to a ship mode, though if it has a robot mode it has never been shown to convert to it.

Fiction

Beast Wars cartoon continuity

Beast Machines cartoon

Poor Diagnostic Drone always wanted to be a toy designer.

As Megatron raged at the failure of yet another attempted purge of his organic elements, his Diagnostic Drone suggested he instead transfer his spark to an entirely mechanical body. As he spoke, screens behind him displayed wireframe schematics of a ship, a head, and a robot. Megatron immediately rejected the notion as too risky, for it would leave his spark briefly exposed. The Diagnostic Drone changed the subject to Nightscream, and the screens altered accordingly. Survivor

Despite Megatron's rejection, the Grand Mal suddenly appeared in its enormous, completed form soon after Megatron was destroyed. He and Optimus Primal had activated their doomsday devices and been obliterated by the colliding energies. Megatron's Vehicon army and all his systems of dominance went offline, but the building-sized head mysteriously arose from behind his citadel. Fallout Using some form of antigravity, it drifted with no apparent destination, never touching the ground.

To look cool. That's why.

Meanwhile, Megatron's spark still existed, but it inhabited a fully organic creature which had also appeared without explanation. All of his actions were aimed at one goal: reentering his citadel and using the control helmet to transfer his spark to the floating head. Duping the Maximals into helping him, he succeeded. From within his new body, he was able to reactivate the Vehicons and the city in general, putting the Maximals back on the run. Prometheus Unbound

The Grand Mal's face could move its eyes and eyebrows to express emotions, and often did so as Megatron spoke down to others while hovering in the sky; however, it never opened its mouth to speak except in telepathic visions. When other Transformers were inside the Grand Mal, Megatron would communicate via a smaller, internal, holographic head composed of Cybertronix; he would continue to use this virtual avatar even after the Grand Mal was occupied by Maximals. He only transformed the Grand Mal into ship mode once, in order to fire upon Botanica's shuttle and its sprawling plant life. Home Soil

And inside that head is another head, onward into infinity.

At some point, he moved his spark collection from the citadel to a massive, cylindrical holding vessel within himself. But this did not accomplish his goal of absorbing the sparks into his own. When he began the absorption process, for some reason his spark drifted out of the Grand Mal. This left him vulnerable to Nightscream's sonic blast, which sent his spark careening in a "depolarized" state. The Grand Mal once again floated rudderlessly. Sparkwar Pt. III: The Siege

For a time, Megatron wandered the planet bodiless, and the Maximals occupied the Grand Mal as their base. Spark of Darkness He eventually recomposed himself in the body of a Diagnostic Drone and led Vehicon assaults on the Grand Mal. The Maximals fought in defense of the sparks it contained, but when the Vehicons matched their weapons to its shield harmonics, they were able to bring it down. It crashed into the citadel. Endgame Pt. I: The Downward Spiral

The machinations of the Oracle have succeeded in creating the largest Chia Pet in the universe.

It was subsequently the site of the final battle between the Vehicons and the Maximals. The Maximals were able to reactivate its shields by tapping into a surface power source. Later, Primal chased various Vehicon drones through its depths, while Cheetor used its antigravity engines to launch the Vehicon generals Obsidian and Strika into planetary orbit. Endgame Pt. II: When Legends Fall

After the reformatting of Cybertron, its form remained visible, though covered with technorganic greenery. Endgame Pt. III: Seeds of the Future

3H comics

In less than three months after the Great Transformation, the crashed, vegetation-covered giant head had been dubbed Mount Megatron. Wreckers: Finale Part II

Legends comic

The remnants of the Grand Mal survived well into the age of the Great Convoys. Bonus Edition Vol. EX

Beast Wars: Uprising

The Grand Mal was a giant fortress, used during the final days of the Great War. It was Thunderwing's fortress, and when he acquired the power of the Underbase, he fused with it, becoming an unstoppable monstrosity that required the Autobots and Decepticons to stop before it was brought down at Nova Cronum. Not All Megatrons This event would remain infamous for centuries, known among Builder and proto-former alike. Trigger Warnings

After the war's end, the newly joined Builders of Cybertron took the Grand Mal for their own, making it their primary military base. It was also where they kept their supply of protoforms under lock and key. Not All Megatrons

During the Grand Uprising, it was the Grand Mal where the Builders kept their last-ditch attempt to win the war, Galva Convoy, as he claimed to meditate on how to access the Energon Matrix within himself, unaware he was being manipulated by other parties. Not All Megatrons

Six cycles into the war, Galva Convoy unveiled his creations, the Vehicons at the Grand Mal, and remained there as the Vehicon Apocalypse was unleashed. Once the Builder Assembly was taken out by the drones, a selection of them began fixing the Grand Mal, restoring its abilities to fly. In a last-ditch attempt to end the Vehicon threat, Resistance leader Lio Convoy took a rag-tag team to infiltrate the base and end Galva Convoy. Ultimately, they succeeded, only to find he had just been a puppet for Lord Imperious Delirious, who had control of the entire base, making it fly into the air and unleashing its weaponry on the massed Maximal and Predacon armies below.

One of them, Rampage, heard Delirious's words and blasted his way through the shields, infiltrating the floating fortress, while the combined armies blasted away at the base's shields. On the inside, Rampage found Ro-Tor, the last of the Resistance's K-Bomb troops, and used it himself, destroying Delirious and the Grand Mal in a colossal explosion. Derailment

Toys

Beast Wars Returns

Third use of the mold. First use of the mold as the character it was meant to be.

• Megahead Megatron (April 14, 2005)
  • ID number: BR-12

A Japanese release, Megahead Megatron transforms into the Grand Mal's head mode with scuttling spider-leg action, opening jaw for chip-eating action, and a hidden spring-loaded missile launcher in its mouth. In robot mode, the launcher swings over his head, placing a battle mask down over his face. The robot looks nothing like the schematic seen in the cartoon (and there is no ship mode), but a few incidental design elements of the ship-transformation are seen in the toy.

If one removes the toy's spider-legs in head mode, it fits into the head socket of Fortress Maximus.

The figure was initially released in North America as the 2001 Robots in Disguise Deluxe Class Megatron Megabolt—an entirely different Megatron. While it had been designed as a Beast Machines toy, its release was delayed until after that line had ended. The mold was later used for Megabolt.

• More information on Megahead Megatron at TFU.info

Notes

• A grand mal is a type of seizure, and literally means "great pain" in French.
• The Grand Mal was not named in the Beast Machines cartoon. Fans at the time took to calling it the "Big Floating Head" (or "BFH" for short). The official name "Grand Mal" became known later from episode scripts and the short story "Singularity Ablyss" by series writer Bob Skir, published in the Transformers Legends anthology.
• It's unclear how the Grand Mal was created in the cartoon. It certainly could have been under construction "offscreen," but its only reference had been when Megatron rejected the notion. And, enigmatically, when Megatron entered it he declared: "For an eternity I slaved to free myself from the organic material contaminating my otherwise perfect technological body. I finally succeeded in separating the two, but my spark remained with the wrong half—the organic half." This perhaps implies that his "destruction" in the doomsday energy-storm spontaneously generated both Savage/Noble and the Grand Mal. But much is unknown about that entire event, and no clear answers exist.
• In a nod to the original The Transformers cartoon, Rattrap refers to the uninhabited Grand Mal as "a sparkless, floating tribute to Unicron".
• While the Thunderwing-based Grand Mal was not visually depicted in Beast Wars: Uprising, Christopher Colgin later drew it for a TFNation 2017 edition of "Not All Megatrons", which can be seen on Tumblr.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Megahead (メガヘッド Megaheddo)