Prisoners of War: Waspinator
Featured Cartoon Appearances: Dark Voyage, Coming of the Fuzors, pt. 1
Featured Comic Appearances: Yeah, right...:)
Fanfic Appearances: "Hero" by Lizard
Note: I didn't call "Possession" a featured appearance because really that's a Starscream episode. Also, because of the low number of characters in Beast Wars, just about any episode can be a featured appearance. Basically I picked these at random. :)
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Comic relief. That's the basic picture a casual fan of Beast Wars sees when they think of Waspinator. "Hey, look Waspinator got blown to bits again. See you next episode." He's known to my wife as "that poor guy." There's more to Waspinator than some bumbling idiot though. Really, there is.
He has to be good at something. BW Megatron brought him with on the mission for some reason. I think the best bet, looking at his alternate form, is navigator. He seems to me to be the most adept flyer among the Predacons. He gets shot down, yeah, but nobody in the show seems to be able to stay in the air for extended periods of time around the enemy. He's also a good warrior and has good instincts. He's Megatron's Pred of choice in the first couple of episodes. As for the instinct part, watch nearly any episode and you'll see Waspinator close by when Maximals are around and far from base. It happens in Spider's Game, Maximal No More, and a couple of others. What holds Waspinator back is his speech impediment and his case of bad luck.
Waspinator obviously gets little respect and I think a big part of that is the fact that he talks like a G1 cartoon Dinobot. The only Pred he gets any respect from seems to be Terrorsaur, which probably stems from the two always being around each other. Terrorsaur would probably see more to Waspinator if he wasn't wrapped up in his own little world most of the time. Waspinator knows that his lack of respect among the Predacons began because of the speech impediment. So he feels he must prove himself all the time. If you listen to him talk, he exudes confidence. But deep down, probably not even known to him, he suffers from a supreme lack of confidence. He rushes out to claim a victory too rashly, surrounded by his confident front, only to wake up the next day in the CR chamber. And each time he exits that CR chamber, his comrades have just a little less respect for him than before his "assured victory." And each time he leaves the CR chamber, he rushes right back to another battle. Again he is confident that the outcome will be his victory. More likely than not he'll be back in the CR chamber before long. Waspinator's excitement is very evident when he is given an "important task." The only time you see Waspinator mope is when he doesn't feel the task is difficult at all. When he isn't challenged but it, it simply shows that the other's have no respect for his abilities. Of course there's also the bad luck. If half the things that have happened to him didn't happen, he'd have some of that respect he craves.
I said above that there's more to Waspinator than "that poor guy." From time to time, around the speech impediment, it sneaks out. By looking more than casually at him, you know he's not stupid. He's not the sharpest nail in the bag, but far from stupid. He's one of the Preds in charge of the computers in the Predacons' base. He might have been the last Predacon of those who cared to figure out that the planet was Earth, but he still figured it out independently. He knew how important the golden disks were to any future victories, that they "gave a record of the future and ultimate power." Even Blackarchnia didn't grasp this right away. This scene is one of the scenes that depict Waspinator a little differently. It shows a different, more devious side of him usually lost to those around him. In Dark Voyage, he was hunting down the injured Maximal's and says something like "Waspinator tired of stupid Maximals. This time will make sure of their destruction." The first time I heard this, the words and the inflection in his voice, I almost had a shiver go down spine. That whole phrase sounded so out of character from earlier episodes that it was almost like a totally different character, as did the conversion with Dinobot about the golden disks. But what it was was the real Waspinator. A reasonably intelligent, skillful warrior. The way he talks, the bad luck that often follows him, and the lack of respect these that stems from these hide this not only from others but sometimes from himself as well.
Of course none of this is remotely set in stone. Waspinator is still alive, in pieces, and kicking. With any luck, season three will deal more with Waspinator and hopefully give him a starring role without Starscream hanging around in his body. I can just hear Waspinator now: "Waspinator finally gets starring role and stinking dead Decepticon comes and steals body."