Index: Maximals | Predacons | Others | Expanded Universe | Beast Wars Neo
Other characters appearing on Beast Wars. See the main Characters index here.
open/close all folders
Starscream
- Voiced by: Doug ParkerDebut: "Possession"
The eternally treacherous Air Commander of the Decepticons, reduced to an immortal, free-floating spark after his death.
- Ace Pilot: Starscream flies circles around the Maximals while possessing Waspinator.
- Blatant Lies: He initially claims that he was killed heroically protecting Galvatron from an attack by Unicron. Blackarachnia later confronts Starscream with the truth: Starscream betrayed Galvatron, and the Decepticon leader killed him for it. If The Transformers: The Movie can be considered canon to the events of the series (which mostly followed Broad Strokes from all available Generation 1 materials), then the lie is even more blatant, as in the movie, Unicron reconstructed Megatron into Galvatron, allowing the Decepticon leader to survive Starscream's treachery.
- The Cameo:
- A stasis-locked Starscream appears alongside the other Autobot and Decepticons who lie in stasis aboard the Ark.
- Starscream also features in one of Cheetor's nightmares, his wing emblazoned with the Decepticon logo covering the screen briefly.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: His reputation aside, Starscream historically died after betraying Galvatron backfired on him, and he allies himself with, then betrays the Predacon Megatron within the run of a single episode.
- Deadpan Snarker: Unsurprisingly, Starscream is quick with the put-downs. The first words he says in the series are a barb directed at Waspinator.Waspinator: Waspinator does not understand!
Starscream: I'll bet Waspinator seldom does! But try not to let it depress you, bug-face. - Demonic Possession: In the aptly titled "Possession", Starscream takes over Waspinator's body.
- Dirty Coward: He won't fight fair, and whenever it looks like he'll have to, Starscream flees first thing.
- The Dreaded: Starscream has quite the reputation in the modern day; Dinobot is astonished to learn who the Maximals had been fighting.
- Entitled Bastard: When Blackarachnia points out that Galvatron killed Starscream for betraying him, Starscream shrieks that Galvatron had been a fool and Starscream deserved to lead the Decepticons.
- Faux Affably Evil: He pretends to pledge loyalty to Megatron and to honor his deals with the Maximals, but it's obvious in all cases that it's a poorly disguised front.
- Hated by All: By the end of "Possession," he's made an enemy of both the Maximals and the Predacons, and the two factions are more than happy to be rid of him.
- Hypocrite: Starscream is shocked when Blackarachnia double-crosses him.Starscream: You betrayed me!
Blackarachnia: I studied with the master. - Jerkass: Starscream is an arrogant, backstabbing braggart who can only fake being a decent person.
- Large Ham: True to form for Starscream, he's full of dramatic declarations, loudly and proudly introducing himself to the Predacons with one such:Starscream: Allow me to introduce myself: Air Commander Starscream of the DECEPTICON BATTLE FLEET! [cue dramatic lightning]
- Mutants: According to Optimus Primal, Starscream's spark has a mutation that rendered it indestructible and immortal. Maximal scientists tried to replicate the effect, with the result being the Nigh-Invulnerable Protoform X.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Starscream only has an actual role in one standalone episode, but his immortal spark inspired the creation of Rampage, whose conscription by Megatron leads to the clone of Dinobot, who plays a pivotal role in the end of the Beast Wars, none of which would have been possible without Starscream.
- Smug Snake: As always, Starscream is cocksure of his ability to powerplay his way to the top, but isn't nearly as cunning as he thinks he is. The Predacons know not to trust him from the beginning and the Maximals know how best to manipulate him, and he ends up getting Out-Gambitted by both sides.
- The Starscream: True to form; he joins the Predacons, claiming to want to serve Megatron, then betrays him, tries to take over the Maximals, and seeks to kill Megatron to rule both factions.
- Weak, but Skilled: He's inhabiting the body of Waspinator, who's the weakest of the Cybertronians inhabiting Earth, but his combat experience means Starscream can fly and shoot effectively enough to make him far more dangerous in battle.
Transmutate
- Voiced by: Susan BluDebut: "Transmutate"
- Ambiguous Gender: It isn't clear whether it is male or female. If an alternate timeline where Transmutate lives on Cybertron is anything to go by, Transmutate is indeed female.
- Badass Biker: In an alternate continuity where Transmutate is female and has full control of her faculties, she transformers into a motorcycle.
- Berserk Button: In an alternate continuity, Transmutate is implied to have the Cybertronian equivalent of autism. She deeply resents any implication that there's something wrong with her because of her condition.
- Creepy Asymmetry: All of its body parts are mismatched to signify that it is a deformed Cybertronian that cannot transform. Its asymmetrical body also gives it an uncanny and deformed appearance.
- Dumb Muscle: It's described as being barely smarter than a drone but it's very strong despite its deformities.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Willingly placed itself between Silverbolt and Rampage's weapons fire, urging its only two friends to stop fighting.
- Hollywood Autism: In an alternate universe, Transmutate is implied to have this by a quirk in her programming making it difficult for her to understand social cues and emotions. She is also angered by the claim that she is "broken" and that there's something wrong with her because of her programming.
- Morality Pet: For Rampage. While Rampage is clearly intent on manipulating it to join his plans for vengeance on both the Maximals and the Predacons, even he is distraught by Transmutate's demise. It's due to Rampage himself being powerful but deformed and sees a kindred spirit in the creature.
- Obliviously Evil: When working with Rampage as it sees him as it's friend. In an alternate universe where Transmutate is female and in full control of her faculties, she is tricked by Megatron's former boss Cryotek into committing crimes.
- Reluctant Warrior: In an alternate universe where Transmutate is a fully functional female Maximal, she's amazingly powerful. She's also scared of her own power, and prefers interacting with and learning about her fellow Transformers than fighting them.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: For everyone. Transmutate was a malformed protoform unable to transform who ends up destroyed.
- Super-Scream: It has sonic screams strong enough to send Inferno flying.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Transmutate's power is immense but it has a mind of a toddler. At the best of times, it seems barely aware of what it can do, but can overwhelm any other characters with a scream.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: It was killed during its premiere episode.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Its spark was too powerful for its malformed body to properly support. The spark was too unstable to risk transferring to a functional body without instantly destroying it. Rhinox states that it wouldn't be long before Transmutate's spark extinguished catastrophically.
The Vok
Voiced by: Blu Mankuma, Richard Newman
Debut: "Other Voices", "Other Victories" (in-person)
A bizarre race of aliens with godlike powers, their name being revealed in the last few episodes. For reasons not given during the series itself, the covered the Earth in raw energon and left a number of unusual machines on the planet. If their experiments go wrong, however, they destroy the planet.
- Aborted Arc: When revealing to Optimus they plan to nuke Earth in season one, they state "there is more danger than you know" and that Earth's destruction is necessary to prevent something worse. It never comes up again.
- Abusive Precursors/Benevolent Precursors: They manage to fit both sides. For the latter, they did seed Earth with energon which could potentially provide a clean source of energy to the humans in the future. The previous trope came in when you see that when their experiment didn't go the way they wanted thanks to the Beast Wars, they decide to destroy the entire planet.
- All There in the Manual: Their origin story. (They're what happened to the Swarm from Generation 2 comics, after the Matrix purified them. Or what all life in the universe will evolve into. Both creators had different visions of what they were.)
- The Atoner: According to most accepted version of their backstory they're trying to prevent the damage their ancestors caused to Earth.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Supposedly they are related to the swarm. Regardless, even the transformers feel insignificant next to them.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Their creations seemed to built a certain way to only do one thing and little else. Tigerhawk is the exception.
- The Dreaded: Both sides are terrified of the Vok, with Megatron calling a temporary truce while he looks into them coming to Earth, and the Maximals likewise dread the realization.
- Eldritch Abomination: Somewhat more benign case, the key word being somewhat.
- Energy Beings: They have no physical form.
- Greater-Scope Villain: They rarely appear in the series, but make one hell of an impact.
- Hypocrite: They send Tigerhawk to arrest/kill Megatron for disrupting time and space, even though they meddle with time by seeding Earth with energon and trying to destroy the planet.
- Knight of Cerebus: Their appearances are completely serious and at the end of the first season, it kicks off the finale and the near destruction of Earth.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Even compared to the Transformers, the Vok's capabilities are essentially magic. They can create raw energon, created a floating island with power weapons, built a powerful anti-Transformer ship, created their own Transformer with Elemental Powers, and made a second moon in orbit of the Earth that was contained a giant machine that fired a Death Ray that would, coupled with the explosions of the Energon, destroy the entire planet.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Their intentions are to guide other species to a higher level, much like they did. Despite their... unusual methods, they are much more well-intentioned than certain other beings.
- In their first appearance, they were unwilling to listen to Optimus and were hell-bent on destroying the Earth due to their experiment being "contaminated". However, when they arrive in Tigerhawk's body near the end of the series they imply they're now more willing to talk things out peacefully, but only after they deal with Megatron.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Exactly what they did after they sent Tigerhawk to Earth and the events of Beast Machines is never stated.note
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: They claim this about themselves at first. It seems to have been dropped as the series progressed.
- At one point they appear using A Form You Are Comfortable With, the only problem is that its the form of Unicron which has truly terrifying implications about just how much more powerful/bizarre they are than anything in Cybertronian experience.
- Given that they were about to destroy the Earth, Unicron's form was oddly appropriate.
- They claim to be adopting the form of "a figure of authority" pulled from Optimus's memories. Either they're bsing to cover the fact that they're trying to intimidate him, or they interpret "religious terror" as respect for authority.
The Tripredacus Council
Debut: "The Agenda (Part 1)"
- All There in the Manual: Fun Publications explained that they had Razorclaw killed as part of their own machinations...right as Razorclaw was on the verge of winning a new war pitting his new Predacon faction against the Autobots hence The Friend Nobody Likes status amongst the other Predacons.
- All There in the Script: Their names: Ram Horn, Sea Clamp and Cicadacon.
- These are, of course, the toys' names. The character models didn't come close to matching the toys (they were under a strict deadline), however, so Hasbro requested the names not be mentioned.
- Ambiguous Situation: According to Tarantulas, they, like him, are not descended from Autobots or Decepticons. However, unlike Tarantulas, they've never been confirmed or even implied to be creations of Unicron, leaving the Council's exact origins in the dark (assuming that Tarantulas was even being honest about them sharing his origins).
- Big Bad Ensemble: While offstage for the most part, the Tripredacus Council are behind Tarantulas' schemes, and they operate their own agenda separate from (and in opposition to) Megatron's.
- Category Traitor: Megatron and other Predacon radicals accuse the Council of "kissing the Maximal Elders' skid-plates" and want to take more direct action to overthrow the Maximals and establish the Predacons as the rulers of Cybertron.
- The Chessmaster: In a different way than Megatron; unlike the would-be tyrant, the Council are politicians, publicly abiding by the Pax Cybertronia treaty while secretly rearming and quietly dealing with troublemakers like Megatron.
- Evil Is Not Well-Lit: Their appearance in "The Agenda" (copied in every subsequent appearance in other media), has them gather in a dark room, lit only by a low-hanging light and a red glow that starts when they convene their session.
- Evil Versus Evil: Megatron hates the Council, and they feel the same way about him. The plot in "The Agenda" triptych is set off when they dispatch Ravage to capture and terminate him.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: They are very unpopular with the other Predacons with a large part of it being that they killed Razorclaw right when he was about to win the Autobot vs. Predacon war he had started.
- Greater-Scope Villain: They are secretly plotting their own schemes to take over Cybertron, and both Tarantulas and Ravage are taking orders from them, but the Council is otherwise far too distant for the protagonists to actually deal with.
- Minor Major Character: They are a mysterious council of Predacons who have their own big plans for Cybertron’s future, yet are exclusive to only a single episode of the Beast Wars cartoon.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: They're the leaders of the (comparatively) peaceful Predacons on Cybertron and constantly scheme knowing more than they would ever admit.
- Pragmatic Villainy: They declared Megatron a dangerous rogue and dispatch an agent to bring him in. They still want to take over Cybertron and start another Great War, but prefer to do so through patient planning that Megatron's actions threaten. In turn, Megatron and his sympathizers consider the Council a bunch of sellouts who are too scared to confront the Maximals directly.
- Underestimating Badassery: Averted, and also played straight. They knew Megatron was brilliant and dangerous, and they knew not to leave him alive. The problem was that they sent someone who could be convinced to aid him. Whoops.
- Villain Has a Point:
- They believe that Megatron is a dangerous renegade who needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. The threat Megatron poses speaks for itself, and his conquest of Cybertron would never have happened if the Council's efforts to terminate him had succeeded.
- Their policy of quiet manipulation earns them the ire of extremists like Megatron, but at the time of Beast Wars, the Predacons have no hope of overcoming the Maximals through force of arms. The Council's policies are Boring, but Practical in context. By Beast Machines, even Megatron seems to have come around on this, conquering Cybertron with viruses and sneak attacks instead of gathering an army of his own.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Seen near the end of season 2, and never brought up again as major villains, when the writers appeared to be hinting toward them playing a more significant role in the Beast Wars universe. And then Beast Machines went in a completely different direction and they were all but forgotten, leaving their fates unknown in the wake of Megatron's conquest of Cybertron.
Snowstalker
Debut: "Fallen Comrades"
A normal tiger who was Tigatron’s first friend when he emerged from his stasis pod.
- Back for the Dead: She came back just to be killed in an accidental avalanche.
- Damsel in Distress: Her first episode had her and Tigatron being used as hostages by the Predacons. Her only other appearance was her last.
- Dropped a Bridge on Her: She gets killed after only a handful of appearances.
- Kill the Cutie: Was an adorable white tiger who ended up killed off.
- Put on a Bus: After "Fallen Comrades", she disappears for a while until "Law Of The Jungle"...where she is killed off.
- Reused Character Design: Since Tigatron’s stasis pod scanned her body for his beast mode, she looks identical to Tigatron when he is in his tiger form.
- Sacrificial Lamb: She was killed off to show the lethal consequences of the Beast Wars.
- She's a Man in Japan: She was renamed "Torajiro" (a male name) in Japan and was recast as a youth whom Tigatron protected.
Una and Chak
Voiced by: Susan Blu (Una)
Debut: "Cutting Edge"
- Cheerful Child: A pair of happy prehistoric children.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Una was held captive by the predacons and forced to work on an energon disruptor cannon, because the predacons couldn't get close during the final assembly. With a low power test taking Depth-Charge out of commission, it's all Ratrap and Cheetor can do to rescue her, but they can't get near the cannon either. Just before Megatron fires the cannon at the Ark, Una reveals that she swiped the stabilizing crystal. Sure enough, the cannon backfires and takes the preds out.
- Cool Big Sis: Una certainly views Blackarachnia this way. The spider herself seems greatly annoyed by this.
- Little Miss Badass: Una takes apart Waspinator. In flight. Granted, everybody can do that, but she is no killer robot.
- She also uses a lever (which Cheetor taught her) to purposefully knock heavy equipment on top of Tarantulas.
- The Unintelligible: Being prehistoric children, they do not speak actual words, though by their last couple of appearances they have learned to say a few actual words (such as Cheetor's name).
Optimus Prime
- Debut: "The Agenda, Part 2"
The legendary leader of the Autobots and Optimus Primal's namesake.
- Ambiguous Situation: Prime's status in the modern day is unclear; the Maximals refer to him as a legendary figure, and Beast Machines shows statues of him erected on Cybertron, but whether Prime himself is alive, and where he is if that is the case, goes unstated. Even Megatron's taunt to Optimus Primal ("you Optimuses do enjoy sacrificing yourselves, don't you?") doesn't clear up Prime's fate, as for every Heroic Sacrifice Prime has undergone in various continuities, a resurrection usually follows.
- Amplifier Artifact: When Optimus Primal takes Prime's spark into his own body, it triggers a transformation into Primal's powerful Optimal Optimus body.
- Badass in Distress: "The Agenda, Part III" sees Prime under threat from the Predacon Megatron, who blasts him square in the face with as much power as he can muster.
- Boom, Headshot!: Megatron's attempted assassination of the comatose Prime involves a massive laser blast to the face. Thanks to the Maximals' intervention, Prime survives and is left as good as new.
- Greater-Scope Paragon: Prime's leadership is what led to the Autobots defeating the Decepticons during the Great War, leading to the modern state of Cybertron. Killing Prime to avert this defeat is the crux of Megatron's last ditch plan in Season 2.
- Made of Iron: Downplayed. A shot from the full available power from a Transmetal Megatron's main weapon, an attack never used prior or again in the series, causes severe and near-fatal damage to Prime, but said damage turns out to be survivable with medical care, after which Prime is good as new.
- Worthy Opponent: Even the modern Megatron, who loathes the fact that the Autobots won the war, considers Optimus Prime a great leader and knows that as long as the Autobot leader lives, the Decepticons' odds of winning the Great War are slim at best.
Megatron (G1)
- Voiced by: Garry ChalkDebut: "The Agenda, Part 2"
The leader of the Decepticons and namesake to the Predacon renegade Megatron. According to the episode "Possession", he eventually became Galvatron.
- Ambiguous Situation: Like Optimus Prime, the ultimate fate of Megatron/Galvatron in the Beast Wars era goes unmentioned in the animated series, though the implication is that, alive or dead, he's been absent for some time.
- Amplifier Artifact: His spark, taken into the body of his namesake, mutates Beast Wars Megatron into a powerful new dragon mode.
- Fling a Light into the Future: A villainous example; accepting the possibility that he might lose his war with the Autobots, Megatron encoded a message onto the Golden Disk, commanding any descendants of the Decepticons to use transwarp technology (still in its infancy when Megatron recorded the message) to alter history to ensure a Decepticon victory.
- The Ghost: Played with; while he appears and has an impact on the story as Megatron, his time as Galvatron is given far less focus; he never appears in that form in the series, and after "Possession", he's never referred to as "Galvatron" again (though primarily because the plot was triggered by actions he took before being reformatted).
- Greater-Scope Villain: It was this Megatron's plan to alter history that led his Predacon namesake to steal the Golden Disk and set off the events of the entire series. On a smaller scale, it was Galvatron's killing of Starscream that put the immortal Air Commander in a position to menace the Beast Warriors in "Possession".
- The Unfettered: Altering history in order to win the Great War was a major Hail Mary for Megatron; even his Predacon namesake balked at it at first, and only followed through when all else had failed.
