The following text is an excerpt from the official Beast Wars Story Bible, written by Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio. It's from a draft from Dec. 1995, before the first show aired...

MAXIMAL CHARACTER PROFILE

Name: CHEETOR
Function: Scout
Beast Form: Cheetah
Robotic Form: Black and Orange Humanoid

Weaponry: Quasar cannon (hand held), Cybertronic beams (eyes), mist projector (belly mounted, can produce a mist of magnetic particles designed to disrupt circuitry)

Skills: Speed, Agility, Marksmanship, Track, Jungle Survival, Acrobatics, Pilot, Driver

Interests/Hobbies: Cheetor is quite fond of rock n' roll music, anything that goes fast and coconut milk.

Attitude: Cheetor is the teenager of the group. He is impulsive, mischievous, restless, a furry ball of restless energy, always wanting to run, to move, to hunt. His words hurry all over themselves and he tends to say a lot in a very little amount of time. Optimus always understands him, Rhinox never. Cheetor is the Scout of the Maximals, his keen eye for tracking and his astonishing speed (in both robot and beast form) enabling him to get into and out of most any situation. He is also intensely loyal to the Maximals and will risk his own life for any one of them, even DinoBot.

Cheetor is very enthusiastic, in fact sometimes he is too enthusiastic. You might think of him as the prime cheerleader of the Maximals, encouraging them when they're up, supporting them when they're down. He is also very sure of himself and this gets him into lots of trouble.

Cheetor's motor-mouth mode of speech is peppered with slang terms only he seems to understand ( we will create these terms for him). He is not a babbler -- his speech may be quick, but he always has something to say. He also likes to sing snatches of rock n' roll tunes whenever the feeling strikes him.

Though Cheetor will be played as younger than the rest of the Maximals, he should not be played as some brain dead Surfer Dude.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Optimus Primal and Cheetor have a quasi father-son relationship. Cheetor admires Optimus greatly though at times he resents his advice and his attempts to protect Cheetor from their enemies. Nevertheless he thinks Optimus is the spottiest and will go to great lengths to impress him.

DinoBot dislikes everything about Cheetor, his enthusiasm, his singing, his talk etc. Cheetor is not so fond of DinoBot either but since Optimus feels the former Predacon is needed, Cheetor tries constantly to be friendly toward him, often with comically outrageous consequences.

Rattrap gets exasperated with "the kid" on occasion but otherwise they have a friendly relationship. Cheetor admires Rattrap's street-wise savvy and wry humor, though he never gets his jokes.

Rhinox is simply too slow for Cheetor to deal with. They are exact opposites, Cheetor doing everything in life at Mach 10 and Rhinox placidly going with the flow. It's not that he doesn't like Rhinox but rather that he is too restless to deal with him on a regular basis.

From Package Tech Spec:
Like a bolt of greased lightning, Cheetor strikes fast and strikes hard. Quiet and confident with incredible reflexes, he is equally efficient when battling in robot mode or in his artificially enhanced organic Earth form. Constantly stalks the jungle in search of Predacon enemies, daring them to challenge him and his laser powered quasar cannon!

Strength: 6.0
Intelligence: 5.0
Speed: 10.0
Endurance: 8.0
Rank: 6.0
Courage: 9.0
Firepower: 7.0
Skill: 7.0

Bibliography of significant appearances:

episode 1. Beast Wars, part 1, fresh after the Axalon crash on pre-historic Earth receiving his new cheetah form, it is the youthful Cheetor who rushes off to explore, leading to the first confrontation between Maximals and Predacons on Earth.

episode 3, The Web: After failing at a chance to obtain a laser canon which also crash landed on Earth, Cheetor disobeys another order of Optimus and finds himself caught in the web of Tarantulas.

episode 4, Equal Measures: Cheetor makes ammends following his previous debacle by saving the day when he finds himself trapped inside the Predacon base.

episode 15, The Spark: Cheetor stalls Predacon attackers as Rhinox tries to save the spark of a fellow Maximal.

Cheetor plays a role, though not quite as pivotal in remaining episodes of Beast Wars season 1.