Dr. Starline is the secondary antagonist in the Sonic the Hedgehog IDW comic series.
Appearance
Dr. Starline is a mobian platypus with three long strands of hair combed over to his right side, with a streak of dark grey in his hair that matches his eyeshadow and bill. He wears a pair of orange tinted pince-nez glasses that rest atop his bill, a purple satin puffy armed shirt with a lighter purple waistcoat over the top done up with a singular swirly patterned button. His hands are webbed, and he is often seen with a glove over his left hand, which often contains his current gemstone of power. Beneath that glove his hand has been scarred from an accident whilst studying the Warp Topaz. Finally he wears a pair of boots with gold spurs that allow him to attack with a highly venomous poison. Unlike most platypus characters, Dr. Starline has a tail more akin to Knuckles the Echidna than the typical beaver like one.
History
Dr. Starline became fascinated by Dr. Eggman's endeavours ever since he had started his takeover of the world, finding the man to be brilliant scientist. This inspired him to follow his heroes footsteps and become an expert in robotics and arcane powers in his own right.
At some point Dr. Starline came across the Warp Topaz, and through careful studying and refinement managed to create a glove that would allow him to harness the dangerous power safely. By the time Dr. Starline had finished his research Sonic the Hedgehog and the rest of the resistance had managed to defeat Dr. Eggman, who had mysteriously gone missing.
Dr. Starline used the Warp Topaz' to open windows all over the world to search for Dr. Eggman, and searched tirelessly for his hero, making himself ill in the process from sleep deprevation. Upon coming across Windmill Village, Dr. Starline spotted an amnesiac Dr. Eggman, now going by the name of Mr. Tinker.
Planning to retrieve his hero and restore him to his once 'brilliant' ways, Starline broke the skunk brothers Rough and Tumble out of jail, promising if they helped retrieve Eggman from Windmill Village, Eggman would create weapons for them that would allow them to defeat Sonic and Knuckles who had defeated them prior. Whilst Rough and Tumble kidnapped Eggman, Starline set about collecting all seven chaos emeralds as a gift for his hero for when his memories returned.
Warping himself, Mr. Tinker, Rough and Tumble to the Final Egg, Starline hoped to jog the old memories within Mr. Tinker to return him back to Dr. Eggman. Mr. Tinker, terrified, pleaded for mercy, but Starline began aggressive hypnotherapy and electro shock therapy in order to bring his memories back, but nothing seemed to work until a beat up Metal Sonic appeared, having just lost a battle against the heroes. This immedietly returned Eggman's memories, and Starline wasted no time in offering the Chaos Emeralds as well as his and Rough and Tumble's services to the Eggman Empire.
Starline is accepted as Eggman's apprentice and begins to aid him in the creation of the Metal Virus, a deadly zombie like virus which transforms the victim into a 'zombot' capable of spreading the virus even further. Whilst Starline initially views this horrific creation with admiration and awe he is soon disgusted to find out that Eggman has no plans in place to combat the virus nor created a vaccine should they become infected.
Taking matters into his own hands, Dr. Starline researches into Eggman's past and discovers the Zeti have the power to control anything metallic. With the power of the Warp Topaz he travels to the Lost Hex to meet with Zavok without Eggman knowing. Starline and Zavok make a deal to work with one another suggesting that destroying Sonic will be their mutual goal, although both planned to betray the other. Starline for his part had found the Cacophonic Conch, the musical instrument that could control the Deadly Six. Upon presenting them to Eggman, Eggman accused Starline of betraying him.
Dr. Starline calmly denied this, but Eggman sends Metal Sonic to defeat the Zeti, who is easily immobilised by Zavok who reminds Eggman he can control any and all machines. Dr. Starline uses the Conch to try and control Zavok, but the moment he runs out of breath whilst blowing it, Zazz headbutts the Platypus, and Zeena steals the Conch off of them. Starline, confused opens a warp portal allowing himself, Eggman and Metal Sonic to escape to Angel Island, where they come across Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy. Sonic allows Eggman to explain the situation. The group attempt to come up with a way to rid themselves of the virus and of the Zeti, with Starline not wishing to use the Warp Topaz in conjunction to Super Sonic to remove the virus as the Warp Topaz was extremely unstable, refusing to attempt it and wishing to find a safer solution. He attempts to leave using the Warp Topaz declaring he'll find an antidote to the virus, but Eggman has had enough. They are out of time and he is out of patience. He has Metal Sonic grab Starline by the throat, removes the warp Topaz glove, tells Starline he is fired and has Metal Sonic throw him through the warp portal he attempted to leave by.
Starline, frustrated, makes a video blog later venting his frustrations about Dr. Eggman, although he still respects him a great deal. He decides to try and conquer the world himself to showcase how impressive and useful he is to Dr. Eggman, declaring he is still loyal to his hero despite what happened.
Starline later uses a hypnosis glove to break into a maximum security prison and busts Rough, Tumble, Mimic and the defeated and captured Zavok out of jail, proposing they form a new team. Zavok and Mimic both initially refuse although Starline proposes he can fake Mimic's death preventing Eggman from sending assassins after him, and declares his loyalty to Zavok putting him in charge of the group, whilst attempting to manipulate things from the background. Rough and Tumble are just happy to get new weapons to cause chaos with which Starline promises them. Zavok eventually agrees, and the new team use their combined skills and powers to defeat the guards, blow up the prison and escape.
Starline organised his new team declaring they would raid one of Eggman's bases with the target of going after the Power Cores, orbs that can enhance the powers of strength, speed or flight in order to super power the team and disrupt Eggman's operations. During this time Starline accidentally let's slip his frustration at being abandoned to Zavok, who uncharacteristically appeared sympathetic, telling Starline he didn't need Eggman and easily had the potential to surpass Eggman if he tried. Starline felt conflicted about this, but continued on with his plan.
Upon obtaining the Power Cores, Starline handed them out giving Power type cores to both Zavok and Tumble to increase their base strength, Speed to increase Rough's natural speed and Flying to Mimic. Rough questioned why Starline wasn't taking one for himself, to which Starline responded that he had no natural abilities so it'd be a waste of resources. Secretly however, Dr. Starline had been putting together a special device that allowed him to switch between all three Power Cores, the Tri-Core.
Mimic, suspicious of Starline transformed himself into Starline and discovered by accessing his video diaries using his voice that Starline was planning to dispose of the members of the team once the missions were complete; Mimic's trechary was well documented and he was too dangerous to let run around disguising as others, Rough and Tumble would cause problems at the worst possible times and giving Zavok any sort of power could be disasterous. Zavok caught Mimic impersonating Starline, and was shown the video files showcasing both the Tri-Core and his plans of betrayal.
Zavok had known this from the start, as he'd realised the power cores could be used by anyone regardless of their traits simply by touch. The two agree to use Starline until his usefulness ended. Mimic still needed his records to be erased from Eggman's data files to allow him to live freely without fear of Eggman coming for him, and Zavok required access to Eggnet.
The next mission went smoothly at the beginning with Dr. Starline believing he'd managed to trick his teammates into trusting him entirely, thanks to praise from Zavok and Rough and Tumble's genuine enjoyment of including him and the others into their rhymes. Upon reaching a central database however, Mimic demanded Starline remove his records here and now, to which Starline initially declined to do but soon found a blade at his throat. Starline, terrified, called out to Zavok for help, but Zavok reveals to Rough and Tumble that Starline was planning to kill them all after this mission. Starline is forced to wipe Mimic out of Eggman's database and give Zavok control of all the badniks in the area. Rough and Tumble for their troubles were allowed to take all the power cores they had previously stolen. With that they said they no longer required Starline and attempted to kill him off.
Using the Tri-Core, Starline narrowly avoids being caught by Zavok using a Speed Power Core, block a punch from Tumble using a Power Power Core and immobilised Rough with his paralysing poison in his heels. Whilst escaping he contemplated that he'd followed Eggman's strategy of needlessly betraying his allies and creating more enemies, and with a little regret doubles back to salvage what he can by obtaining an Eggman base for himself and wiping it from Eggman's database before fleeing with his new base. He watched as Eggman and Zavok did battle destroying the hub and declared that he would not go back to Eggman's side.
Starline realising the usefulness of a team he can actually trust, sets about creating a new one in 'Operation: Remaster'. Starline obtains DNA from Sonic, Tails and Shadow. Upon discovering Eggman's former creation as Mr. Tinker, a wooden badnik with a will of her own, Belle the Tinkerer, Starline becomes fascinated by her, kidnaps her and excited by this new piece of once in a life time Eggman tech begins to study her, although states he will not disessemble her.
With the new data he collected, Operation: Remaster was in it's final stages. Combining the DNA of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, the personality matrix of Belle, a modified strain of the Metal Virus, the power cores he obtained with his former team and two kidnapped mobians, a tenrec and a fennec fox, Starline see's the error of Eggman's ways; rather than putting animals into robots, he's going to put robots into animals. He creates two new cyborgnetic henchmen based off of Sonic and Tails; Surge the Tenrec and Kitsunami the Fennec.
With this new duo, he begins to brainwash them into having very set missions; Surge is brainwashed into having an intense hatred of Sonic, and Kit's brainwashed into believing nothing but supporting Surge matters, erasing their previous personalities.
Trivia
- Dr. Starline has been said to be inspired by the ********** or 'Wechina' glitch character found in Knuckles' Chatotix that is thought to be the left over data of Tails. The glitch character appears as a white version of Knuckles with red gloves. A platypus was chosen as both it and the echidna are monotremes(mammals that lay eggs) and his name 'Starline' even comes from the glitch character's name just being a line of stars.
- Dr. Starline's tricore invention references Sonic Heroes with the power of Speed, Fly (flight) and Power.
- Dr. Starline's creations, Surge the Tenrec and Kitsunami the Fennec are, much like him, references to other glitch characters.
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