| “ | Megatron has fallen! I, Starscream, am now the leader of the Decepticons! | „ |
| ~ Starscream |
Starscream was the Decepticon's traitorous second in command, and is secondary antagonist in the first two seasons of the Transformers Generation One cartoon, as well as being a minor antagonist of The Movie, and a recurring antagonist of season 3 and is an antagonist of the Transformers The Headmasters.
History[]
Backstory[]
Before the Autobot-Decepticon war, as seen in flashback in Fire in the Sky, Starscream was a scientist. He and his best friend Skyfire were exploring the ancient Earth—when severe atmospheric conditions separated the two. Starscream circled the globe looking for Skyfire, but never found him. Upon his return to Cybertron, Starscream mostly abandoned his scientific pursuits, deciding that a career as a warrior would be much more exciting.
Season 1[]
Acting as second-in-command of the elite troops Megatron took with him aboard the Nemesis, in More Than Meets the Eye, Starscream was among the Transformers trapped in stasis on Earth for four million years after the Decepticons attacked the Autobot craft, Ark, causing it to crash on the planet. When the ship's computer, Teletraan I, was reactivated by a volcanic explosion in 1984, the Decepticons were the first to be reactivated and were restored with new Earthly alternate modes. Before departing, Starscream shot at the Ark as a petty parting gesture, causing a small tremor that knocked Optimus Prime into the path of the reconstruction beam, allowing the Autobots to be restored, and the war to continue on Earth.
As the war continued, in Fire in the Sky, Starscream's old friend Skyfire was discovered frozen in the Arctic Circle, and Megatron noted how concerned Starscream was to see Skyfire rescued. Starscream even took control of the revival process and successfully re-awakened his old friend. It was this friendship that initially led Skyfire to join the Decepticons, but when the latter refused to hurt humans, both Megatron and Starscream voiced their disgust. Not long after, several Autobots came to investigate the Decepticon activity and were subsequently captured; Starscream prepared to execute them and Starscream offered to forgive Skyfire if the latter would accept the first shot. Skyfire, disillusioned by his old friend's new warlike ways, joined the Autobots instead, and Starscream no longer gave him a second thought.
During the cataclysmic events that ensued when Megatron transported Cybertron into Earth's orbit in The Ultimate Doom, Starscream attempted to use the Decepticons' human ally, Doctor Arkeville, for his own purposes in Countdown to Extinction. Starscream forced him to take him to his secret lab, where he destabilized Arkeville's exponential generator, which, when it reached critical mass, would destroy the Earth. Starscream then fled with Arkeville to Cybertron, where Starscream intended to collect the energy released in Earth's destruction. When Optimus Prime and Megatron were forced to work together to stop Starscream's plan, Starscream returned to Earth to investigate why the generator had not exploded. Meanwhile, to remove the threat of the generator, Prime loaded it into Megatron's gun barrel and fired it into space—blasting Starscream out of the air in the process, causing him to fall to Earth and into a vengeful Megatron's clutches.
Season 2[]
Starscream was a prominent figure in most of Megatron's schemes over the next year. Ironically, given his invariably treacherous nature, in Atlantis Arise he was the first to sniff out Nergill's treachery when the Decepticons united with the underwater residents of Sub-Atlantica to take over the world, even going as far as saving Megatron from being shot by Nergill. He also incapacitated Megatron's Nightbird robot to maintain his own position of power in Enter the Nightbird. However, he also made several further plays for power—teaming up with the Triple Changers Blitzwing and Astrotrain to betray Megatron, only to be double-crossed himself, in Triple Takeover; duping the paranoiac Autobot, Red Alert into allowing him to acquire the Autobots' Negavator weapon in Auto-Bezerk; getting drunk on energon in Microbots, and more. Generally, almost every time that (the virtually indestructible) Megatron sustained even the slightest damage in a battle, Starscream would claim that Megatron had "fallen", and frantically urge the Decepticons to immediately follow himself as their new leader.
In Starscream's Brigade, Starscream and Megatron argued over Megatron favouring Shockwave. Starscream tried and failed to depose him and was dumped on Guadalcanal. Deceding to create his own army, Starscream freed the personality components of a group of renegade Decepticons, and installed them into five World War II vehicles left over from the Battle of Guadalcanal. He changed them into more modern vehicular forms, creating the Combaticons. Although the Combaticons had defeated Devastator and had Megatron relinquish control of the Decepticons to Starscream using their combined form, Bruticus, they were defeated by Menasor. Megatron subsequently had Astrotrain relocate Starscream and Bruticus to an asteroid in deep space. Finding himself once again in exile, Starscream vowed revenge.
Despite the promises of revenge on Megatron from his creations, Starscream abandoned the Combaticons in The Revenge of Bruticus, blaming them for his failure to take over the Decepticons (where in reality they had helped him succeed). In a mix of cabin fever and boredom, he took his chances venturing into outer space. Ironically, the Combaticons ended up taking control of Cybertron by exiling Shockwave into deep space where he ran into Starscream and altered the space bridge to push the Earth into the sun, achieving revenge on Megatron, the Autobots, the Decepticons, and the Earth. Starscream arrived on Cybertron and tried to reclaim his leadership over his creations, but was imprisoned by the Combaticons along with Shockwave. The Combaticon take over forced another uneasy alliance between the Autobots and Decepticons, who fought Bruticus and ultimately defeated him, thanks to a weak spot revealed by Starscream in exchange for Megatron not killing him.
The Movie[]
In 2005, learning that the Autobots were readying for a major strike to take back the planet, Starscream accompanied Megatron and the Decepticons on a raid on Autobot City on Earth (although Starscream himself advocated hitting the Autobots' bases on Cybertron's moons first). During the battle, Starscream narrowly avoided being crushed by the transforming city, and was when Optimus Prime grievously wounded Megatron, Starscream mocked him, kicking him when he was down. On the return flight to Cybertron, the Decepticons found it necessary to reduce their mass so that Astrotrain could successfully make it back to the planet, and they chose to jettison the damaged passengers. Starscream threw Megatron out personally, grinning gleefully as his former leader screamed his name.
Fighting immediately broke out amongst the Decepticons over who would become leader now, but Starscream eventually won out. Upon reaching Cybertron, he quickly arranged for a coronation ceremony complete with trumpeters and a crown. Megatron, reborn by Unicron as Galvatron, arrived on Cybertron in the midst of Starscream's coronation, declaring the whole affair "bad comedy". Starscream had barely a moment to realize that he was Megatron before Galvatron transformed to cannon mode and killed him with a single blast. Frozen for a moment as his body crackled, blackened and fractured, Starscream crumbled to ash.
Season 3[]
This was not the end for Starscream as seen in Starscream's Ghost. When the turncoat Decepticon Octane was pursued by Cyclonus, Scourge and the Sweeps, he took refuge in the Decepticon Crypt in the lower levels of Cybertron, where Starscream was apparently honoured by a statue that was only a set of legs. In the Crypt, Octane was confronted by the spectral form of Starscream, who had transcended death as a "ghost". Starscream's ghost possessed Cyclonus, and he and Octane conspired to hand Galvatron over to Autobot leader Rodimus Prime. Galvatron was able to escape the trap, and returned to the Decepticon base in a state of fury. He shot his second-in-command, not realising Cyclonus had not been himself, but Starscream silently leapt into the body of a nearby Sweep.
In Ghost in the Machine, seeking to reactivate Unicron in the hope that the omnipotent being could restore his body, Starscream possessed Scourge and had him open fire on Galvatron, so that he would be branded a traitor and would have no option but to help him. Scourge was successfully able to bring Unicron's disembodied head back online, and the chaos-bringer gave Starscream three tasks he would have to complete in order to obtain his desire. Starscream was ordered by Unicron to steal the eyes of Metroplex and the transformation cog of Trypticon. Due to a mishap with one of Metroplex's eyes he ended up having to substitute one of Trypticon's eyes in its place. After he completed the task with the aid of Scourge, Scourge fled and Starscream was directed to connect Unicron's head to Cybertron itself so the planet could become his new body. Left without any hosts to possess, Starscream demanded that Unicron give him back his body so that he could complete the necessary connections. but as soon as the dark god complied, Starscream double-crossed him. Just then, a payload of explosives planted by the Autobots went off, hurling both Starscream and Unicron's head off into space. Starscream was last seen soaring off through space, as Galvatron fired upon him.
Starscream was the Decepticon's treacherous second in command, and a major antagonist of the Marvel's The Transformers comics.
History[]
Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.
Backstory[]
Millions of years ago, Starscream acted as the figurehead leader for the controlling dictators of the city-state of Vos. Following a botched attempt at igniting war between Iacon and Tarn, Vos went to war with Tarn, and both cities were destroyed by an exchange of photon missiles. The survivors of both cities were gathered together by the ex-gladiator Megatron, who used their bitterness towards Iacon to unite them under his control as the Decepticons.
Marvel's The Transformers[]
Early battles on Earth []
Four million years ago, in The Transformers, Starscream was part of Megatron's attack raid on the Autobot Ark, which ended catastrophically when the ship crashed on Earth, knocking all aboard offline. In 1984, a volcanic eruption reactivated the ship's computer, and it reactivated and rebuilt Starscream and the others aboard with new Earth alternate modes. The Decepticons quickly began hostilities, and during a battle at a drive-thru movie theatre, Starscream fled after Cliffjumper's glass gas shattered his chassis.
As the Decepticons sought a new source of fuel in Power Play, Starscream attempted to undermine Megatron's decision to attack the Harrison Nuclear Power Plant by proposing that Buzzsaw scout it first. Megatron instead sent Ravage to do the job, and his effective strategies reminded Starscream never to underestimate his commander. After the plant was seizing and its machinery usde to construct a base of operations for the Decepticons, Starscream abducted Sparkplug Witwicky, the Autobots' new human ally, in order to use him to convert earth fuels into Cybertronian fuel.
While Sparkplug was put to work, in Man of Iron, Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp were sent to England to investigate a Cybertronian signal that was discovered to be emanating from an spaceship that had crashed there centuries before. Starscream aided in killing the ship's occupant, the Man of Iron. After returning to America, as revealed in Decepticon Dam-Busters, Starscream took part in a Decepticon attack on Sherman Dam and helped hold off the Autobots while Soundwave extracted their energon fuel cubes. In Prisoner of War, Starscream and the other jets battled the human military forces who attempted to attack the Decepticons' base. Under cover of the attack, however, the Autobots were able to rescue Sparkplug.
Starscream advocated pursuing them in The Enemy Within, but the cautious Megatron refused, and Starscream, frustrated, began plotting against him. Intending to rally the Decepticons behind him by attacking humans in order to orchestrate a confrontation between the two sides, Starscream was caught by Ravage, and was forced to try and kill him in order to keep his plans secret. Both his attack and his attempt to murder Ravage failed, and when caught, Starscream demanded Trial by Combat. He dueled Brawn and won, but was shot down by a vengeful Ravage, who blamed the Autobots. As seen in Raiders of the Last Ark, Starscream was repaired and joined the Decepticons in attacking the Ark, though both sides were incapacitated when Optimus Prime activated the Ark's computer, Auntie. Afterwards, the Decepticons fled, vowing to return.
Powered up with Sparkplug's fuel in The Last Stand, and readying for a renewed attack on the Ark, Starscream berated Megatron for allowing Sparkplug to have been rescued, since the human would have shared his fuel with the Autobots. Megatron blasted him for his dissention, and Starscream thus agreed to the attack. During the battle, it seemed the Decepticons would win, but Starscream and the others doubled over in pain, due to Sparkplug's fuel being poisoned.
Working for Shockwave[]
After Shockwave's return defeated the Autobots, the repaired Starscream worked under him. In Dis-intergrated Circuits, the Decepticons seized control of one of G.B. Blackrock's oil rigs, prompting the industrialist to build a super-weapon to fight back. Starscream convinced Shockwave to let him and Frenzy destroy the weapon, secretly intending to use it to destroy Shockwave and take over. Attacking the unveiling ceremony at the Blackrock speedway, the two Decepticons were confronted by Jazz, Wheeljack and Circuit Breaker, whose electrical powers caused Starscream to lose control of his jet engines, forcing him to fly in robot mode, and dragged Frenzy with him in retreat.
After Shockwave and Megatron both went missing, in Crisis of Command, Soundwave assumed command, rejecting Starscream's apirations, and dubbed him a "missile with a mouth". Starscream was neededto capture Bumblebee, cutting off the Autobot scout's escape. Optimus Prime was subsequently challenged to fight his way through the Decepticons to rescue him, and despite Starscream's boasting, he was quickly defeated by Optimus.
In Rock and Roll-Out, Starscream and his fellow jets soon found their base surrounded by government forces, leaving them trapped for weeks. Shockwave aided them, and charged them using a power siphon he had built during his absence to convert sound energy from a Brick Springstern concert into energon cubes, but they were bested in the attempt by Bumblebee and a group of new Autobot recruits.
In Plight of the Bumblebee, Shockwave decided to brainwash Bumblebee into becoming a Decepticon, and Starscream joined him and the other Decepticons in relentlessly hunting the small Autobot when he was alone. It wasn't until human authorities and the Autobots arrived to rescue Bumblebee did the Decepticons abandon their hunt.
In To a Power Unknown, Starscream was among a group of Decepticons attacking on a human town when a energy blast reversed their personalities. The now compassionate Starscream aided in reapairing the town. Once the blast's effects wore off, the Decepticons tracked its origin to England. They headed overseas to retaliate for what they believed was an Autobot trick.They split up upon arrival, and Starscream spotted Optimus Prime driving down a highway. He opened fire just as another energy blast once more scrambled his circuits. Now regretting his aggression, Starscream began questioning the whole point of the war, statring to wish for peace. He returned to his normal self in short order, but when he tried to launch another missile at the Autobots, he found that his weapons were malfunctioning.
He pulled away and resumed tracking the energy blasts, getting hit a third time upon approach. Though his personality was intact, the rest of his systems went haywire. With several other planes performing acrobatics in the sky nearby, Starscream was forced to make a landing for his own safety. Upon making landfall, he was mistaken by Zeke Heilmann to be a an escape vehicle sent by his superiors. Heilmann was a spy who had snatched away the device responsible for the energy blasts: the "PARD." Jazz, who had also tracked down Heilmann, tried to stop Starscream from escaping by launching a heat-seeking missile after him. Starscream found he was still malfunctioning, thus cound not outpace it. He transformed and dumped Heilmann into the missile's path. Both the human and the PARD were obliterated, and Starscream turned to battle the Autobot. But when the Red Arrows turned up to investigate the situation, Starscream hid out in a scrapyard.
Captured by the Autobots[]
After Straxus reestablished contact with the Earth Decepticons, Starscream was among the Decepticons who headed to the space bridge Straxus constructed to welcome reinforcements from Cybertron. However, as seen in Command Performances, they discovered that the Autobot resistance cell had arrived over the bridge instead. Before they could attack, Megatron was alerted to an Autobot raid on the Decepticons' base, but rather than return to aid in the defense, Megatron instead ordered an assault on the unguarded Ark. However, the newly created Autobot, Omega Supreme deactivated Starscream and almost all the other Decepticons attacking the Ark.
In the US comics, Starscream would remain in stasis in the Ark for years, until he was among those rescued in Totaled, where Ratbat's Decepticons saved their comrades from the Ark. The UK comics instead had Starscream forge a different path, before joining up with Ratbat later.
To be added
The Underbase Saga[]
In Club Con, Starscream worked with Ratbat as the manager and public face of Club Con, a human island resort was a cover for their efforts to uncover subterranean information on the database the Underbase. In The Flames of Boltax, when a pair of Autobot audio and video tapes recording the loss of the Underbase were found, Starscream convinced Ratbat to let him see the information. In the playback, he witnessed a young Optimus Prime thwart Megatron's attempt to possess the Underbase by shooting the legendary database into space.
In Cold War, Starscream manipulated events in order to gain access to that power. He invited Scorponok and his Decepticons over to Ratbat's headquarters, without alerting his commander. He manipulated Scorponok and Ratbat's forces into fighting each other, due to Ratbat witholding knowledge of the Underbase, allowing Starscream to slip away with prisoner Buster Witwicky. He gave the human equipment to lure the Autobots to the Decepticon's Actic base, and left him to freeze on an iceberg. The battle between the two groups of Decepticons served to distract them as Starscream stole a ship from Scorponok to look for the Underbase on his own.
In Dark Star, after finding the ancient database, Starscream began absorbing its power. He was unable to finish the task as he was blasted by Ratbat's ship, piloted by a temporary Autobot/Decepticon alliance. Despite the interuption, Starscream was immensly powerful. With his new strength, Starscream hurled his ship at Ratbat's craft, and headed for Earth to prove himself by destroying New York, Tokyo and Buenos Aires. The Autobots and Decepticons travelled to those locations to try and stop Starscream, but they ultimately failed, as a massive amount of the Transformers on Earth were killed, or incapacitated by Starscream's rampage. Starscream only stopped after intercepting a radio transmission between Fortress Maximus and Optimus Prime, and realized that the Autobot leader was elsewhere. Seeking out Prime, Starscream attempted to finish absorbing the Underbase, only to have it overload and destroy him.
In Race with the Devil, Starscream's corpse crashed in South America, but remained in an undead state, due to the residual Underbase energy, and was driven by Starscream's murderous impulses into an rampage. After nearly killing Susan Hoffman and her assistants, the zombie Starscream confronted Dreadwind and Darkwing, who had been sent to recover Starscream's body, and the Autobot Triggerbots. Triggerbot Backstreet appealed to the residual Underbase energy and convinced it to try and regain control of itself, but as soon as it did, the Decepticons siphoned the Underbase's remaining power from the body. Starscream's corpse returned to being an inanimate pile of scrap, which the pair quickly collected.
Resurrected as a Pretender[]
In The Resurrection Gambit, Starscream's remains were delivered to Megatron in his Cybertronian base, who kidnapped Ratchet and forced him to rebuild Starscream with a powerful Pretender shell. After the shell had finished healing the body inside in All the Familiar Faces, Megatron sent the supposedly mind-wiped Starscream to Earth, where he attacked in the middle of a meeting between Scorponok and Optimus Prime's forces.
In Skin Deep, while battling the two armies, Starscream was aided by his enemies believing he was a vengeful spirit, and most of Scorponok's troops fled the battlefield. After Hot Rod shot their attacker, Starscream showed he was a physical being. His old personality resurfaced, as Ratchet intended, and Starscream surrendered and begged Scorponok to let him join.
Although allowed to join Scorponok, in Fallen Star, Starscream wallowed in self-pity, believing that all the other Decepticons considered him a joke for his many failed takeover attempts and defeats. His self-esteem was further weakened when the other Decepticons avoided and rejected him. In reality, the other Decepticons were terrified of Starscream, due to the Underbase incident. Starscream sulked about it for a while until he bumped into a group of Autobots, sent to spy on him. The equally terrified Autobots attempted to flee from his, which Starscream misinterpreted as a dismissal of him. Gunning down and capturing the Autobots, Starscream found his confidence beginning to return.
Alliance with Shockwave[]
To be added
Original future (UK)[]
Originally, the UK comics depicted the events of the Movie as the definitive future of the comics storyline, however the events of Time Wars would rewrite the timeline. to be added
Generation 2[]
To be added
Regeneration One[]
to be added
Trivia[]
- In some reprints of Man of Iron, Starscream is depicted as his killer, while in others, it's either Skywarp or Thundercraker.
- The Underbase Saga is presumably the inspiration for storylines where Starscream tries to become Godlike, such as in Cybertron, and Combiner Wars.
</nowiki>Starscream's ghost returned as a one-shot antagonist of Beast Wars..
Beast Wars[]
Given that Beast Wars references both the Sunbow cartoon and the Marvel comic, it can be seen as a continuation of both the cartoon and comic.
Starscream doesn't physically appear in Beast Wars, except for his body left in stasis lock aboard the Ark spaceship.
However, in Possession Starscream's ghost, created due his mutant, indestructible spark, travelled through time and space to prehistoric Earth, where he possessed Waspinator's body during an electrical storm. He ingratiated himself with the Predacon Megatron, claiming that he had been destroyed by Unicron while protecting Galvatron. After leading a successful raid on the Axalon, he was left in command of the captured Maximal ship, along with Scorponok and Blackarachnia, who impressed Starscream by seeing through his deception, and took on as a "protégé".
When the defeated Maximals surrendered to him, he took Dinobot and Optimus Primal hostage and ordered the remaining Maximals to attack the Darksyde. Scorponok objected, but was overruled. Shortly after the attack began, the two captive Maximals broke out and drove the Predacons out of the Axalon. Starscream fled, pursued by Primal, and abandoned Blackarachnia to her fate. After a chase, Primal cornered Starscream at an energon deposit, paralysing him. As he tried to bargain his way out of his predicament, the vengeful Blackarachnia detonated the energon, blowing Waspinator to scrap and forcing Starscream's spark out of his body. Adrift in space once more, Starscream's ghost vowed revenge.
Trivia[]
- While the concept of Starscream's ghost comes from the Sunbow cartoon, his design bears resemblance to the Marvel comic.
- Ironically his voice actor, Doug Parker, doing an impression of Chris Latta, voiced the Starscream equivalent of the series, Terrorsaur.