Early & Unused Story Concepts in Bionicle: A Writeup (Version 2 now out!)

So here’s a personal project I’ve been working on for the past month! I’ve complied a comprehensive document that gathers a lot of concepts and story ideas from the first few years of Bionicle that were either changed or never saw the light of day. If you’re a longtime fan then I imagine a lot of this stuff will be familiar to you, but there’s also some brand new info here courtesy of one of Bionicle’s creators.

Hope you all enjoy!

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Well there’s a lot of unused story ideas that never been used in BIONICLE History, don’t wonder why some of them have change some of the ideas.

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What?

It’s clearly just for curiosity’s sake, and I personally am for that. Who said anything about it being strange or wrong that they did change? What’s your angle?

Also, certainly something interesting:
“All I can tell you is the story as I have always read and understood it. The Toa were told to go out and collect six Great Masks a piece. Once that was done, they would get their Gold Masks. That has been repeated multiple times in multiple places. Obviously, the folks doing the movies chose to interpret the story differently. I’m not saying they are wrong and you should ignore the movie, I am simply saying that is not how I understand the saga. I could certainly be wrong, and I know it has been established pre-gold mask that the Toa made use of Noble Mask powers. But here is what I wonder – there are six Noble Masks per koro, one of which is being worn by the Turaga. So if Tahu decides he needs to call on the Mask of Concealment, what happens? Vakama is wearing it. That is part of the reason I always tried to avoid the 'Toa using Noble Masks" issue in my stories. The other reason is that it would have made the initial story even more complicated if the emphasis was that the Toa had to collect 12 masks before they could progress – I did not have room in the comics to collect Great and Noble Masks.”
-Greg

Always wondered about the Noble masks. Stuff like that was preeeetty sketchy back then.

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Gordon Klimes’s interpretation of Makuta fits right into the Lego Movie universe, which we know Bionicle is a part of. If Makuta represents taking apart Lego Sets while Mata Nui represents rebuilding them into new MOCs, then maybe Makuta is just how the Matoran see Will Ferrell.

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Neat stuff. Makes me want to do some research on early/unused concepts for 09 and whatever was planned going forward.

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In collaboration with @Peri and @Mister-N, here is Version 2 of the document. It’s been greatly expanded with more early Bionicle facts, trivia and theories. Hope you all enjoy:

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I always loved the idea of nemesis in fiction, but the Shadow Toa as Extentions of Makuta itself sounds so cool… I think some of these unused concepts should live in the fan ficts or in the Fanon as Alternate Universes.

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Great document! It’s really given me a whole new perspective on the early years of Bionicle. It’s amazing how much more sense everything makes in 2001-2002 compared to the later years. I wish they had stuck closer to that direction than they did.

The Kini-databases idea has caused me to reconsider the meaning behind one of the lines that Vakama says at the end of MNOG:

“Our Prophecies said the Makuta’s defeat would end our troubles. But the Prophecies have changed.”

Where exactly are these Prophecies (note the capitalization) coming from? And how can they suddenly change?

Consider also one of Makuta’s lines in the Mask of Light film:

“The Seventh Toa has begun its approach. Again the prophecies of the Matoran oppose my will.”

Perhaps these Prophecies were actually notifications/directions that the
Turaga obtained from the Kini temples. Maybe some could even have been transmitted to the temples by Papu and Rangi themselves.

Or, considering the whole constellations + Red Star + Great Telescope thing in MNOG, perhaps that’s where the Prophecies came from. Perhaps the positioning of the Red Star in various constellations acted as an indicator of major events, so when the Bohrok were awakened, the Red Star, either on its own or via the control of Papu and Rangi, moved to form a constellation that signaled the arrival of the Bohrok.

This would explain how the Prophecies could “change”. The Red Star constellation was indicating that the Toa were about to awaken Mata Nui. And in the early versions of the story, they certainly tried. But when that didn’t go quite as planned, the constellations changed to indicate the arrival of the Bohrok, and so the Prophecies changed accordingly.

On a related note, if Papu and Rangi were on the Red Star, I wonder if they had become trapped there with limited tools at their disposal. After all, you’d think they would be on Mata Nui themselves to help fix things if they could. Perhaps they could still transmit info to the Kini temples somehow? Or perhaps they retained limited navigational control, allowing them to move the Red Star into position for various constellations.

If the Toa canisters were originally supposed to come from the Red Star, I assume that Papu and Rangi weren’t able to launch them themselves, so they had to wait for Takua to send the summoning signal.

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