[Plot Details] [Opinions] [Great Moments] [Caption Weirdness] [Rating]

Possession In a Nutshell...
Starscream drops in for a visit to brighten Waspinator's day...

All The Gruesome Details
Warning! Warning! Major spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk!
Don't want to read everything that happened in the episode? Well, fine then! Be that way! You can just darn well click here and skip to the next part, you spoilsport.

Somewhere out in space, there's a disembodied spark cruising around (Gee...Wonder whose it is?), accompanied by a sinister tune... And guess where it just happens to be headed? Yup, Earth--I mean, the planet where Beast Wars takes place... :)

Meanwhile, there's trouble at the Axalon in the form of a fierce thunderstorm that threatens to short out Sentinel, as Rhinox snarls that one more hit will make them the finale in what Cheetor termed a "light show." Optimus agrees, announces, "Better stow the spare weapons and ammo in the hold, underneath the armored flooring." (Whoa! Make that, "Better whip out the obvious exposition to whack the viewers upside the head with!" Op sure does have a bad habit of babbling expositionally, doesn't he? ;) )

And over at Pred Central, things aren't much better. They're also beleaguered by thunderstorms, especially because that disembodied spark takes a ride on an incoming bolt of lightning, smushing it into a computer panel...The one that Waspinator is working at. The resulting power surge sends him flying backwards through the air, poor guy. And Megatron isn't very sympathetic. He asks for a damage report. Waspinator reports that he's in pain but still functional. Megs, annoyed, retorts, "Not you, imbecile! THE COMPUTER!" (Geez, way to boost the morale of your subordinates there, Megs. No worries about them, but Primus forbid that something should happen to the computer... :) ) Luckily for Waspinator, Scorponok reports over the comm that there's an electrical fire on the lower deck, which distracts Megatron...

Back at Good Guy Central, they're stowing the extra weapons and ammo in the hold, underneath the armored flooring, just as Optimus said they should. :) They're having a grand old time until Rattrap gives 'em a buzz on the comm, reporting trouble.

Speaking of trouble, Waspinator's fiddling with the computer. It still won't work. Lamenting, "Waspinator not understaaaaand!" he gives it a whack for good measure...and out pops--Dum dum dum duuuuuuuum-- Starscream. Well, so to speak, anyway. It's his dang ghost again (Where's Bill Murray and crew when you need him?), and he takes over Waspinator's body. And Terrorsaur watches the whole thing happen...

Quick cut back to the Maximal base, where Rattrap gives Rhinox and Optimus Primal the bad news/worse news routine, reporting that the storm punched a hole in the Axalon's hull and knocked out much of their surveillance sensors on one side of the base. Whoops! The best thing that Optimus can say about the situation is that he hopes the Predacons are having problems of their own...

And, of course, they are! Down on the lower deck, Megs is hacking in the residual smoke from the electrical fire. He orders Scorpy to go find Waspinator...but Waspinator, with Starscream on board, finds them first... "Here I am at very long last!" he announces...and introduces himself as Air Commander Starscream of the Decepticon Battle Fleet.

Later, back up on the bridge, Megs and Co. gives Screamer the old third degree. Terrorsaur reports that he saw Waspinator get possessed. Blackarachnia points out that Starscream's "ancient history." (Oh, really??? Since when? According to "Dark Designs," the Great War--which I take to mean the events in G1--were only 300 years past. So where does BA get off callin' Screamer ancient? I mean, these guys measure their lifespans in millions of years, not hundreds of years! 300 years would be to them as an eyeblink is to us, not "ancient history"...) And then we get the little history lesson wherein we learn that the Decepticons are the ancestors of the Predacons and the Autobots are the ancestors of the Maximals, yadda, yadda, yadda...To finish up, Blackarachnia points out that Starscream was destroyed...(Er...um....Guess the history forgot to mention that, as of the last time we saw Starscream in G1, he was alive again, with a shiny new body and everything...Guess Galvatron made sure that tidbit didn't make it into the history. It'd be just like him... Er, um...Sorry, Dragonclaw. :) ) Anyway, then Starscream starts in with the...er, embellishing of his personal history, claiming that he bought it while defending his leader against Unicron (HAH!) in voice-over as we see a brief rendering of G1 Starscream and Unicron in planet mode. (Nice!) He reports that his spark endured Unicron's onslaught, and was set free to drift helplessly across space and time. Megs, cutting to the heart of the matter after Starscream's customary drama, asks what Starscream wants. To which Starscream reports that he wants only to serve the "glorious Megatron." Megatron seems highly dubious...and wants to know why he should trust Screamer. To which Starscream replies that he knows how to defeat the Maximals once and for all. Megs seems to like the sound of that...

Back at the Axalon the landscape is looking a bit worse for the wear, with scorch marks from lightning strikes all over the place...and one of Scorponok's Cyberbees is buzzing about, too. Cheetor takes in the damage, then spots the Cyberbee and shoots at it. And for once, he doesn't miss. Since he reports in to Optimus, who, along with Rhinox, is puttering around in the computer core, that they were "starring in someone's home video" (So long as Scorponok doesn't send it in to "America's Funniest Home Videos"...) while holding the smoking, sizzling sparking remains of the thing. (Cheetor: "Hey Optimus! Look what I snagged us for dinner tonight!" :) )

Over at Pred Central, Megatron and Starscream are watching the Bee's transmission, and see the huge hole in the side of the Axalon. Starscream dubs it the "perfect opportunity to attack!" Megs counters that that's what the Maximals will be expecting. "Exactly!" Starscream crows. Megatron gently points out to him that he's being loony, whereupon Starscream explains that, while the Maximals are distracted by guarding the hole, they'll attack from the other side. (Like the Maximals wouldn't be expecting that, too...Oh well. :) )

But, conveniently, the Maximals didn't anticipate such a sneaky attack, and the plan works perfectly. The Preds attack, there's a big fight. In the midst of the fight, Cheetor, while trying to blast "Waspinator," notices that "Buzzbrain" has a few new moves and wonders where they came from. Starscream helpfully tells them all that he's now Starscream, something that surprises the heck out of Dinobot. While he's momentarily distracted, Megatron takes the opportunity to blast Dinobot in the back, taking him down for the count. This spooks Optimus, who calls for a full retreat. He takes off, carrying Dinobot, punches Terrorsaur in the face when he tries to block Primal's retreat, and splits, leaving the Axalon in Predacon hands...

...Which makes Megs a happy boy, indeed. Tarantulas worries that with all of them at the Axalon their own base is unprotected, so Megs decides that he, Tarantulas, and Terrorsaur will head back to their own base, leaving Blackarachnia and Scorponok at the Axalon under Starscream's command. Terrorsaur protests, wondering why Starscream gets promoted, leaving himself open for some rough treatment (Which is rather reminiscent of G1. I've gotta wonder what might have gone through Starscream's head while watching Terrorsaur get tossed around by Megatron. Painful flashbacks? Thankfulness that it wasn't happening to him? Perverse delight in seeing someone else get some punishment for a change...? And I love it, when Scorponok, behind Megatron, ducks as Terrorsaur's getting tossed aside by Megs...and then he gazes over at where Terrorsaur landed. Why that amuses me, I don't know...)

Starscream, meanwhile, says all sweetly that he was just glad he had a chance to help. "Yeah, right," BA, sitting all lady-like on one of the computer stations, grumbles. Megatron, meanwhile, turns to Scorponok, annouces that "We are well pleased with Starscream" (Using the royal "we" now, Megatron, are we? Geez, Inferno's butt-kissing has really gone to your head, hasn't it?), but Megs wants Scorponok to watch him...closely. Scorpy, of course, is happy to oblige.

Out in a forest, the Maximals, minus Tigatron and Airazor, have gathered. Optimus is tending to Dinobot, Cheetor's stalking around muttering about Predacons going through his stuff, to which Rattrap fires off a stinging retort. Optimus, meanwhile, reports that Dinobot will make a full recovery. That doesn't mean he can't be grouchy, of course... He berates Optimus for retreating from the battle tells him that he should have stayed "to the bitter end." Optimus agrees that, yeah, it woulda been bitter all right. But then he changes the subject to Starscream, laments that the files on Screamer had been sealed by the Maximal elders. (Stupid Elders! Yeah, like let's the classify the file on a guy who's still floating around out there somewhere, biding his time. Sheesh! Idiots!) And Dinobot agrees with me, only he calls the Elders "Fools!" Fortunately, Dinobot knows all about Starscream, knows that he was "deceitful and scheming" (Yep!) and that he was the "most notorious traitor of all."

(Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Waitaminute! Time out for some Screamer defense here! At no time was Starscream ever a traitor. At least, not to the Decepticon cause itself. He'd stab Megatron, personally, in the back without hesitation, sure, but that has nothing to do with being a traitor to the cause. He simply wanted power for himself. He wanted to be the one in control of the cause, yes, but he was never a traitor to the cause. No, that boy was a Decepticon through and through and, during the course of the G1 cartoon, he was never anything but a Decepticon--At least, not while he was alive. After he died he got a little wonky, sure, but dying will do that to you... :) And just where the heck does Dinobot come off calling anyone else a traitor, anyway?? 'Tis a bit like the pot calling the kettle black there, Dinobot dearie... OK, end of rant. Sorry 'bout that. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled summary, already in progress... :) )

Anyway, with that information--erroneous as it may be--in mind, Optimus Primal gets an inkling that perhaps--just perhaps--Starscream's got something up his sleeve, so to speak...

In a pointless scene, Airazor reports to Tigatron, who's prowling aimlessly, that half the Preds left the Axalon and, obliquely, that Starscream's in charge of those left at the Axalon And then she flies off. (Okaaaaaay...)

At the Axalon, Starscream's confronting Blackarachnia, who's apparently been acting a bit shifty, shifty enough that Starscream noticed. Blackarachnia finally tells him that she looked up his file and found out that Starscream's been...embellishing...the truth. She knows that he was killed by Galvatron after betraying him... (Um, he was? Seems to me that Starscream never betrayed Galvatron. No, Galvatron just waltzed in and blowed him up for no good reason! *Grrrrr...* Unless, of course, you believe that "Galvatron" is just another word for "Megatron," and I guess that's what's being implied here. Me, I don't buy it... Anyway, seems to me that the Predacons' records are just a bit faulty when it comes to my man Starscream... :)) Screamer loses it for a bit, screeches, "Galvatron was a fool!" (Yep, I'd agree...Sorry, Dragonclaw. Again. :)) and "I deserved to lead!" (Wellllll... No, don't think so. Sorry, kumquat, but you just don't got what it takes. :) But I still love you anyway! :) ) But after calming himself he asks why BA didn't tell Megatron all of this, to which BA coyly replies that she thought that Starscream might make her "a better offer." And then, with a wink, she saunters off. Starscream follows, delighted that he's found a protégé. Scorponok interrupts the cozy moment by reporting that the Maximals are approaching.

And they are. All of them...except Airazor. Rhinox is dragging Dinobot on a travois as the Maximals march up to their erstwhile base. Optimus transforms...and announces their surrender. And the Maximals all hang their heads in defeat (How 'bout we overact just a bit more, guys...? :) )

Back from the commercial, Starscream drops down on the lift thingy to have a chat with the Maximals. Dinobot, getting an eyeful of him, jerks his head up from the travois and growls. Rattrap admonishes him that he's supposed to be playing "half-dead." Dinobot snaps his teeth at him and warns that Rattrap will become his role model in that endeavor if he doesn't shut up. Rattrap goes to protest, only to be silenced by a big old growl from Tigatron (Nightwind: "Ooh!" *shiver* :) ) "If it ain't the dinosaurs up your nose," Rattrap laments, "it's the felines." (Poor Rattrap...He's surrounded by guys who'd like to eat him... :) )

Starscream, meanwhile, is suspicious of the Maximals' motives. He thinks their surrender to convenient. Optimus reports that Dinobot's croakin' so they need the CR chamber. Starscream asks what's in it for him...and Optimus says that they'll do whatever he wants them to do. Screamer likes the sound of that. So Dinobot and Optimus Primal go aboard, Dinobot, overacting for all he's worth, goes in the CR Chamber, and Optimus reaps the reward. He gets disarmed, forced to transform, and then chained "in the hold (Yeah, you know! Where they stowed all the extra weapons and ammo, underneath the armored flooring!) or somewhere." Then Starscream goes outside to gloat to the other Maximals, reports that "the ape and the raptor" will be destroyed if they don't do exactly what he says. Tigatron protests, but the Maximals are left with no choice. Starscream orders them to attack the Predacon base. So off the Maximals go...

Inside the Axalon, Optimus busts out of his restraints and partakes of the extra weapons and ammo stored underneath the armored flooring, just as he'd apparently planned all along.

Starscream and BA are watching the Maximals attacking the Pred base, but the show is interrupted by Optimus Primal, who attacks with the weapons he got from underneath...OK, I'll stop with that comment... Anyway, he attacks. Starscream and BA retaliate. Optimus makes it a "double date" by springing Dinobot from the CR Chamber by the simple expedient of shooting it. (Oh, great job! Blow up your miraculous healing device, why don'tcha, silly boy?!) The two Maximals seem set to kick serious keister, so Starscream takes off...leaving Blackarachnia behind... (Beware, Screamer! Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn'd! :) ) She splits, too. Optimus tries to contact Rhinox to no avail. He goes out to find them while Dinobot sits on his hiney back at the Axalon, apparently.

Meanwhile, Rattrap and Cheetor are crawling on their bellies toward the Predacon base, attempting to evade those dastardly autoguns, I suppose. They get pretty close when someone literally turns the spotlight on them. Bullets fly (And since I'm watching edited the FOX Kids version here, I don't get to see 'em, dangit! :) In fact the scene is rather choppily edited, so I can't tell you exactly what happened, originally. Much violence, let's put it that way. :) ) Eventually, Rattrap and Cheetor haul their buns back to where they started. Rhinox, doing a Double Chain Guns o' Doom, says that their attack is "suicide" and that they have to fall back.

But Starscream arrives on the scene and nixes that idea, pronto. Unfortunately for him, Optimus Primal is right on his tail, and he announces that Starscream is "giving space debris a very bad name." Starscream snipes that Primal is being irritating. They have big fight! But it’s a short one. Starscream ends up lying near a patch of energon with Optimus' big arm-mounted gun in his face. Since it’s a familiar position for him, he falls back on old tactics, and tries to talk and wheedle his way out of getting blowed up. Blackarachnia arrives on the scene, and Starscream implores her to help him. Ah, but remember, she's been scorned! She shoots at the energon that's right by Starscream's head. ("You’ve betrayed me!" Starscream yells. "I studied with the master," Blackarachnia retorts.) Primal scoots with an "Hasta la vista, Starscream," and the energon blows up, taking Starscream with it. (Well, actually it takes Waspinator's body with it. Starscream's spark, of course, splits. )

Later, Megs is putting Waspinator, who's complaining that he "has a headache in his whole body," back together while Blackarachnia wheedles her way back into Megatron's good graces by telling him that she had to play along with Starscream in order to find out his true intentions. Megs tells BA that she's "smooth. Very smooth" but that her smoothness doesn't inspire confidence…

Back at the Axalon the clean-up commences. Optimus glances up at Cheetor lounging up on the roof near the open hatch and asks if he's planning to help anytime soon, to which Cheetor replies that he was "just checking for new constellations. Twinkle, twinkle, little Starscream." And, of course, at that moment, Starscream's spark is tumbling through space, vowing revenge...

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Nightwind's Unsolicited Opinions

I cannot express how prepared I was to absolutely despise this episode. I'd heard about the episode before I started to watch Beast Wars and when I began to watch the series, I was sort of anticipating seeing the episode but sort of dreading it at the same time. Why? Well...I'm a big old Starscream fan, of course, and I'd been told that we get to see him in 3D for brief snatches of time in this episode. I was looking forward to seeing that. I was looking forward to seeing how the writers would go about fitting him into the Beast Wars universe. Heck, I was just looking forward to having him around again. Terrorsaur when he's in "Starscream mode" is a poor substitute, I'm afraid...

But I was dreading seeing the episode because I had it in my head that the writer of the episode wouldn't get Starscream "right," that he wouldn't be consistent with his G1 characterization. And, more importantly, that no one would ever be able to do his voice like Chris Latta did his voice. After all, in quite a few ways, Starscream is his voice, much the same way as Jazz was his voice. Lose the voice and you lose the character. At least, that's how it is for me. Sound and voices are very important to me...which is ironic when you consider that I've lost most of the hearing in one ear. :)

So was I surprised that neither of those fears panned out! The writer of the episode, Ian Weir, was either familiar with G1 or he did his homework. Starscream's characterization was just about perfect in all of its facets. He was at his smarmy, deceitful, scheming, conniving, lying, cheating, treacherous, arrogant and self-aggrandizing best, even down to his tendency to butt-kiss when necessary. I was very impressed. His attitude was right. His speech pattern was right. His entire characterization was spot-on. And then there's the voice... Doug Parker (Who normally does Terrorsaur's voice, ironically enough) also did his homework, methinks. His voice work in this episode was about as close to Chris Latta as I think is possible to get. And the way he delivered the lines was also true to Chris Latta's delivery in G1. He did a wonderful job. I was very, very impressed on all counts.

So with those two fears out of the way, I was able to sit back and enjoy the episode...and wonder about some stuff. Wouldn't be Nightwind without her "Wonderments." :)

The first thing I wonder about is whether or not Starscream knew where he was, and, if he did know, if he had just coincidentally drifted to Earth (Which is a bit too coincidental for me to swallow.) or if he somehow maneuvered himself there for a nefarious purpose. After all, he of all people knows just what is lurking there on ancient Earth. Yes, he knows the Ark is there. He knows his body is there, albeit it's probably a little beaten up. Moreover, he knows that Megatron's body is there...and that it's helpless. How much more fun would this episode have been if it had taken place in the third season of the show, and that had been the plot, that Starscream had showed up to reclaim his body and trounce G1 Megatron when he couldn't have possibly fought back...? Fanfic fodder, perhaps? I think so! :)

Speaking of bodies, though...Where did Starscream's go, I wonder? As I said in the summary, at the end of G1's "Ghost in the Machine," Starscream has a body again, one that he tricked Unicron into giving to him. Galvatron shoots him and sends him flying through space shortly after he gets that body, sure, but he still has that body. He's no longer a ghost or a disembodied spark. So where did his new body go? Seems to me that the BW folks wanted to conveniently forget some of the events of the 3rd season of G1...or maybe they didn't know about all of those events, I don't know...Well, whatever the case, I'm guessing that they wanted to do the "Starscream possesses Waspinator" thing, and if Starscream was in a body to begin with, that might have been problematic... :)

And Starscream made a rather ironic choice of "hosts," didn't he? You've got scheming, lying, devious Starscream...and you've got Waspinator who is...well, none of those things. I rather like that irony, though it would have been interesting had Starscream possessed a Predacon of like minds with him...like Tarantulas, perhaps...or even Terrorsaur. But I like the irony of Waspinator, so I'm not complaining. :) There's one thing I did miss about the possession angle, though. Back in G1, when Starscream's ghost would possess another character, that other character wasn't completely subsumed by Starscream's personality, resulting in amusing exchanges between possessor and possessed. That's always been a highlight of the "Starscream's ghost" arc to me, so it's sad that it didn't happen here in "Possession." Perhaps Waspinator's personality wasn't strong enough to be "heard" over Starscream's invading one...

A few other things that struck me as odd...

And one final thing before I move on. This is the first time in Beast Wars that we see G1 characters rendered in 3-D. And I must say that Unicron-as-planet, in the brief glimpse that we get of him, looks very nice, as I said. But as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the G1 characters as we see them on Beast Wars just don't...look right to me. I can't really explain it, to tell you the truth. I was just never entirely happy with the way they looked. I guess I just have a clear picture in my head of what some of the characters--the Seekers, especially--would look like if I met them on the street...and the Beast Wars version of them ain't it! Especially when it comes to the Seekers' heads, which we get to see more in close-up in "The Agenda." They just don't look right to me at all...

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Great Moments

Oh, there are lots... :) For one thing, there are some nice little details in this episode, one that I noticed right off the bat, one that took me a few viewings to notice, unobservant dimwit that I can be... :) The first one, the one that I noticed first, is that, once possessed, Waspinator's buzzing is gone, replaced by jet engine sounds. Cute! It even extends to the closed captions (where Waspinator's background buzzing is often noted in the caption where background music is noted). The captions occasionally say "Jet engine noises" in order to point out the difference to all of us hearing impaired folk out here between regular Waspinator and possessed Waspinator. :) The other is that the Predacon symbols on the sides of Waspinator's head get replaced with Decepticon symbols after his possession. This is the first Beast Wars episode where G1 storyline events are directly referenced, other than Waspinator's brief, throwaway stint as Shrapnel back in "Dark Designs," so it's nice to see those symbols there. Well, if you're a Decepticon fan, that is... :) And on the dialogue front, there's a seven-way tie for my favorite line. :) We have:

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Closed Captioning Weirdness
(Or, sometimes what you think they say is not really what they say...)

Oh, they came so close! So close! Until the very end, it was perfect, even down to captioning Waspinator's jet noises, as I said. But then... After Blackarachnia explains to Megatron why she appeared to be consorting with Starscream, Megatron says that she's smooth...and then he says, "It does not inspire confidence, though" instead of, "It does not inspire confidence, noooo..." Close but no ceeeegar, captioners! :)

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Totally Arbitrary Overall Rating, Just For the Heck of It

Perhaps surprisingly, this is not one of my favorite episodes of the series, though not for the reasons that I was fearing I'd dislike it. And, in truth, I don't dislike it. It's wonderful to see Starscream and it's wonderful that he's pretty much spot-on characterization-wise...but when you get right down to it, the episode is pretty empty plot-wise. It's got a bad case of "stunt casting," I think. We're supposed to be so dazzled by Starscream's presence that we ignore the fact that, in the end, nothing happens in this episode. Starscream's designs are never even fully revealed, which would have helped the episode greatly, I think. Starscream shows, there's fighting, Starscream leaves. That's it. While there are cute snippets of dialogue to make things a little more interesting, in the end, the episode, aside from Starscream's antics, is pretty blah. So...I guess...when you tally everything up, I'd give it a...6. Starscream's presence lifts it above average in my opinion, but even he cannot entirely save an empty plot.