Daily Archives: March 30, 2026

‘Beast Wars’ Review #38 – ‘Proving Grounds’

Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

We’re back to a single-episode story in Season 3 of ‘Beast Wars: Transformers’, as we’re checking out ‘Proving Grounds’ – a story about Blackarachnia, who leaves the Maximals and is convinced she has no place among them. She also isn’t willing to be reprogrammed to have her Predacon core removed. Blackarachnia also gets stalked by the Transmetal II version of Dinobot, who is the only other Predacon featured in the episode. Megatron and other Predacons like Waspinator, Inferno and Quickstrike don’t appear in this story at all. The first time I saw ‘Proving Grounds’ was on Volume 2 of the four official VHS releases of ‘Beast Wars’ containing Season 3 episodes that had never been shown before via GMTV in the UK. The episode was later released in a ‘Beast Wars’ Volume 2 UK DVD release, which included it and the two-part story ‘Feral Scream’ set before it. I’ve also seen ‘Proving Grounds’ in the ‘Beast Wars’ 15th anniversary DVD box set, and it can now be seen on YouTube. Will Blackarachnia leave the Maximals forever or will Silverbolt persuade her otherwise? Continue reading