Daniel Witwicky (G1)

Daniel Witwicky is a human in Generation 1 continuity



Daniel Witwicky is the human son of Spike and Carly Witwicky, whose first appearance is in Transformers: The Movie. He is approximately 12 years of age in 2005. Though Daniel is supposedly characterized as a 'normal pre-teen boy', he often comes across as annoying, and often gets into serious trouble which requires either his father or the Autobots to save him.

Despite his shortcomings, Daniel has been an asset at times, including saving a number of autobots from Unicron in 2005, and helped bring a mad Quintesson to justice in 2006. Daniel's misadventures often had him either paired with Wheelie or Grimlock.

Finally, during the 'Rebirth Saga', Daniel was seriously injured in an attack by Decepticons and required extensive life support. Arcee volunteered her own systems to assist in saving Daniel's life. Her head was reconfigured into an exo-suit, and allowed Daniel to become Arcee's Headmaster partner.

This new body wouldn't do much to help Daniel's luck, however, as he was captured by the Decepticons again and forced to turn over the key to the Plasma Energy Chamber. When Vector Sigma revitalized Cybertron using that energy, Arcee and Daniel joined Cerebros and Spike Witwicky on Nebulos to finish the eradication of the Decepticon allies, the Hive.

3H Wreckers Comics
In 2025 or so, Daniel Witwicky detonated an explosive to destroy a legion of Nightbird drones, killing himself and Wheelie in the process. This event caused Arcee to enter a deep depression, setting the stage for her personality change as she became a Wrecker.

Apocrypha
Daniel is generally considered by many fans to be something of a low-point character, largely because of how poorly he was generally utilized. In several season three episodes, Daniel was easily considered as annoying, as he provided the impetus for bad plots, showed little capability for anything other than being captured. Lastly, the voice actor's take on the character certainly did not help matters, using a high-pitched and whiny tone to his voice at all times.

A common marketing and television practice is to bring in younger characters into a show in order to renew interest and target younger audiences. It's believed that Daniel's inclusion into the show, and Wheelie's creation, was specifically mandated by Hasbro for this reason, as a large number of 'first wave' fans were leaving Transformers as they were getting older. As a toy company, it's certainly understandable that Hasbro would be concerned about this, as 10 year olds who came into Transformers at the beginning would be looking at their teenage years in season three.

If that really was the reason for their inclusion, then, it backfired. Daniel (and Wheelie's) presence in the final regular seasion of the cartoon seemed to do more to alienate many existing fans than to bring any new ones in. The Transformers would effectively be cancelled after season three, with only three new episodes made afterwards, and a slow and lingering death-spiral for the entire franchise as many older fans continued to feel alienated and moved on to other things.