Viewer Log: Voltron ep 9

A couple of years ago, I saw a news segment about something rather… odd. The story was about families, whom had lost loved ones, that were upset that their local phone providers were deleting old messages from said dead loved one. Some people find comfort in hearing these old messages, I guess. I personally don’t get it, but to each their own. Now, imagine if instead of just one or two recorded messages of a dead person, it was a semi-sentient AI with all of that dead person’s memories and personality. Yes, like Jor-El from the Superman movies.  Gets a little creepier with the AI, doesn’t it? Let’s get to it.

It's Sendak, on ICE.

The episode opens to Allura, still recovering healing the Balmera last time, spending some quality time with her Holo-Dad. Remember him? It is a holographic, self-aware copy of King Alfore, Allura’s dad. I’m not 100% sure why, but I find this really, really messed up. It’s like talking to an imaginary friend, except it talks back. Either way, can’t be psychologically healthy. I’m getting off task. Allura pines for her dead dad and her destroyed home world. Her game of holo-graphic pretend is interrupted by Coran, who insists that she get some more rest.

Meanwhile, Pidge runs a few tests on the “evil” crystal that the Gulra had plugged into the Castle of Lions when they invaded. Her experiments are interrupted by the others prepping to interrogate Sendak. Basically, the plan is to use the Castle’s AI memory recording technology to upload Sendak’s mind so they can peruse Sendak’s memories at their leisure. Coran is a little uncomfortable about the ethical quandaries of using his people’s technology like this, but they really don’t have any other options. There’s some technobabble, a little Keith/Lance insult fighting, and then a whole lot of waiting. Apparently encoding and decrypting the entirety of a sentient organism’s mind takes a while. Everyone starts breaking off to do other stuff, Hunk goes to eat some green space mush (shocking), Keith goes to do some training, Pidge goes to do more Crystal research, and Lance is forced to help Coran do some maintenance. Shiro stays behind. Hm… leaving a former POW alone with a former capture, I’m sure that nothing could possibly go wrong.

Then things start getting weird. Well, weird for the Castle of Lions. The food dispenser goes haywire, dousing Hunk and Pidge, who’d been walking by, in green food gunk. Lance, while cleaning a cryo-pod, gets locked inside and frozen. Coran doesn’t notice as he’s busy reminiscing and the Pod descended into its container after locking Lance in. With Keith, the Gladiator Drone he’s training with goes psycho and refuses to shut down when ordered. It tries to kill him. Things aren’t going great with Shiro, either, as he seems to be going into a pretty dark place while chatting with the Sendak-cicle.

Coran finds and frees Lance, but rules the Lance freezing an accident. This seems unlikely, especially since Holo-Dad is starting to say some creepy stuff to Allura, like luring her back into the hologram room and promising to take her home again. Which would be hard, because, you know, the planet was destroyed. Lance is stalked by malfunctioning technology. Various power failures, flashing lights, and a recording of Coran begging for help gets Lance stuck in the airlock. This can only end badly for Lance.

Yeah, I wouldn't want this purple
               cat man in my head, either.

Shiro is getting really, really, really frustrated with Sendak’s mind not cooperating. He asks it all sorts of questions, Where’s your base, where are your forces, does Zarkon have exploitable weaknesses, but the recorded memories remain silent. At least to Shiro’s questions. Shiro either starts hallucinating, or, Sendak somehow actually begins communicating with him. The entire conversation can be summed up with a Darth Vader quote, “Join me. It is your destiny!” Meanwhile, Pidge and Hunk go into Pidge’s lab and the Gulra Crystal. They’d realized that the Crystal might have something to do with the malfunctions, and try to disable it. Before they can do anything to the Crystal, the lab’s gravity is turned off and Pidge and Hunk get stuck floating in the air. At the same time, Keith is just barely escaping death by the Gladiator Drone. His evading leads him to the Airlock that Lance is locked in, mere moments before he’s launched into space. Keith gets the Gladiator to smash the door open, saves Lance, and sends the Gladiator into space.

Allura is lured into the Holo-chamber, where Holo-Dad promises to take her back home to Altea. The mice are obviously creeped out, but for once, Allura isn’t paying her rodent’s any mind. Of all the times not to notice mice. Back with Hunk and Pidge, they’re still stuck floating in space. They try to work together to get the Gravity working again, but mess it up. They are saved by Lance, Keith and Coran. Lance isn’t impressed with their “harrowing” ordeal. He thinks that floating is “not scary. That’s fun!” Back with Shiro, Sendak keeps up with the “Join me,” speech, which is really freaking Shiro out. He starts having another PTSD flashback, but is aware enough to jettison Sendak into space. Dooming someone to floating forever in the void between stars, that’s pretty hardcore. The team regroups, just in time for the Castle to jump into hyperspace.

The team realizes that the evil Gulra Crystal must have corrupted the ship’s system and Holo-Dad’s AI. The corruption has turned Holo-Dad into a Nihilist, all life is meaningless and all that jazz, and plans to reunite with Allura in the afterlife. Creepy. To do this, he’s flying them to a sun that’s about to go Supernova. Allura has no idea this is going on, as Holo-Dad keeps her in a closed off simulation of Altea. Thankfully, the “good” part of Holo-Dad breaks through, and shows Allura the truth. She snaps out of it, and the team works to slow their decent into the dying star. The Voltron Lions push the Castle away from the star, while Allura goes to deactivate her Holo-Dad’s AI. “Evil” Holo-Dad tries to stop Allura, showing her memories of her Dad during happier times. Allura is able to do the hard thing and destroys her Holo-Dad’s AI. The Good part lasts long enough to say goodbye. After things have calmed down, Allura gives them a “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” speech.

This was an interesting episode. On the one hand, I do like the idea that the events of the previous arc still have some ramifications. It helps with the series continuity. Obviously, if the bad guys hack into your base, it’ll take some time to fix things. On the other, the whole death of Holo-Dad doesn’t have the weight that I think they wanted to have. It’s hard to care about a character’s ‘death’ when this is only the second time we’ve seen him. This is kind of inevitable, given that the Castle’s been disabled for the lasts couple of episodes, but, they could have tried a little more. Like many have Allura mention “What would Father do?” during the previous story and musing about how Holo-Dad would be helpful. Or something. The humor is still spot on. And seeing just how much Sendak’s presence had on Shiro’s damaged psyche is pretty interesting. He goes to some dark places. Overall, a good episode. Not the best, but a very necessary episode. Next time, episode 10. 

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Viewer Log: Voltron ep 8

I just want to take a second and applaud the Voltron guys with their monster delivery system. I’ve seen giant monsters appear in a TON of different ways. Interdimensional portals, radioactive mutations, crashing into a planet like a meteor, magically summoned, magically transformed via magic staff, magic grenades, and Scottish robots (Power Rangers went to some weird places) but, I can safely say that I’ve never seen monsters distributed by a casket shaped spacecraft. It’s creepy, foreboding, over the top, but not so over the top that it’s super stupid. High fives all around. Enough generic praising, let’s get to it.

Death-Gaze smells your fear.
And sees it, because, you know, thirty eyes.

Picking up again from last time, the Voltron Paladins are tensely waiting for the casket to open. Hunk prays for either an empty casket, or one filled with space candy. This would be a very different twist if Hunk’s prayers had been answered. Realizing the prayers for emptiness and sweets will most likely be in vain, they prep by drawing Voltron’s giant sword and shield combo. Lance is especially confident that they’ll be the creature if it’s like Mecha-Myzax. The casket opens and the Robeast emerges. Unfortunately, this new Robeast is pretty much nothing like Mecha-Myzax. Other than being a giant mechanical monster in the vague shape of an animal. Obviously. I can’t find an official name for this one, but given his numerous energy blasting eyes, I’ll call him Death-Gaze for simplicities sake. Why Death-Gaze? Because Laser-Lizard sounds silly. It resembles a giant man with a reptilian head, and long, thick arms. It has two main eyes on its head that swivel like a chameleon, as well as about fifteen extra eyes running along the inner part of each of its arms and one large central eye on his chest. Death-Gaze opens with an Iron-Man style chest beam blast, which shoves Voltron back. The fight is once again complicated by the fact they need to keep Death-Gaze’s blasts from the Balmera’s surface. Kind of hard to fight something when you’re constantly worried you’ll miss and hit the giant space whale/rock monster. They’re forced to split up, but Death-Gaze reveal that it can shoot more energy blasts from its additional eyes. Really hard to escape a monster that can shoot 360 degrees. They’re save by the Castle, which blasts Death-Gaze from the sky. The castle’s blast stop’s it, but only temporarily. The castle is pretty banged up from the armada fight earlier so it can’t sustain its firepower nor take a heavy hit.

Using the Castle’s attack as cover, they make a tactical retreat. Lions dive into the caves, while the Castle goes into space. Death-Gaze is too big to follow into the tunnels and its thrusters can’t lift it too far off the ground. Inside the cavern, the Paladins try to encourage the Balmeran’s but things are looking bleak. And that’s before its revealed the Balmera is dying. Too many crystals had been harvested, which are tied to its own life force, for it to survive. The Altean’s avoided such grizzly deaths of Balmeras by performing a ritual that helped recharge the creature. Equivalent exchange, for the win. The team has a few hours to evacuate the planet, but need to keep Death-Gaze busy while they get the Balmeran’s off planet. They plan to provoke and evade Death-Gaze while Shay and her people are loaded onto the Castle of Lions for Evac. Shay is unsure if the others will go along with the evac plan, but agrees to use their Balmera Whispering to ask the rest of her people. Allura plans to go planet side to help.

How I translate his snarls.

Death-Gaze is easily provoked, but not very easy to evade. The thing has got about thirty-three eyes, so yeah, it’s kind of hard to avoid it’s notice. While the Paladins dodge and weave, Allura arrives on the surface and tries to get everyone ready, but Shay lets her know that the Balmeran’s have elected to die with their world. Allura refuses to accept, and wants to try to convince everyone to leave. It’s revealed she has also has the ability to speak through the Balmera, and she uses it to convince the Balmerans to leave. Unfortunately, their escape route is destroyed by the Balmera’s death throws and Death-Gaze’s laser eyes. Can’t fix a broken escape route with speeches.

The Paladins are forced to change plans from attack and evade to destroying Death-Gaze. Which isn’t the best of plans, given how little success they’ve had even doing any damage to the darn thing. While the Paladins keep Death-Gaze busy, Allura discovers that she has the power to recharge the Balmera, hopefully saving it from collapsing. How convenient. The process could kill Allura if she isn’t strong enough, but she agrees to do it anyway to save the Balmerans. Less convenient. Meanwhile, the Lions are still having a heck of a time to stop Death-Gaze. Yellow tells Hunk to do the Bayard insert to form weapon thing that Keith did to make the sword. When Death-Gaze changes targets to the Castle, they form Voltron and have Hunk activate his Bayard weapon. It forms a shoulder mounted energy bazooka, which they use on Death-Gaze. The direct blast doesn’t help, but then Voltron reveals it’s got a pinpoint-targeting rapid fire mode. They shoot Death-Gaze, destroying most of his extra eyes. This gives Allura enough time to finish the recharge ritual, saving the Balmera. Voltron then punches Death-Gaze, finishing him off. High-fives all around. Or so they think. After the Paladins disembark from Voltron and everyone is breathing a sigh of relief, Death-Gaze gets back up, and charges another attack. It’s at this point that the now fully revitalized Balmera decides it’s had enough of this business, and encases the Robeast in crystals. Don’t mess with planet sized creatures. After the fighting, Hunk and Shay bonding over their shared fight, and Hunk vowing to stop Zarkon. It ends with Shay seeing her first sunrise. And so ends the seconds arc.

Zarkon loves his profile shots.

Arc number 2 was pretty darn good. There was a lot of build up to the battle with Death-Gaze on top of the Balmera, and it was pretty intense. I find it funny that despite all of the talk that they “Need to protect the Balmera,” and how they need to keep Death-Gaze from blasting it, that idea kid of goes out the door when the fighting begins. I know, survival trumps idealism, but then don’t talk about it so darn much. Jeeze. Death-Gaze is well designed and a good step up from Mecha-Myzaz. Why Haggar didn’t wait for the Gulra to gather enough quintessence to make two or more of these things, I’ll never know. Or, or gather enough quintessence to transform… let’s five space wolves, into an evil wolf themed Voltron. A Woltron. Or Snarltron. Or something. Idea for season 2. It was also cool to see Hunk get some character growth. The cowardly, dare I say yellow bellied, Hunk finally realizes that there’s somethings worth fighting for despite being afraid. Hopefully he won’t regress into a sniveling coward again. Or at least keep coward impulses in check. I know that it doesn’t happen in the rest of this season, but I’ve seen shows regress their characters between seasons before. I’m looking at you, Pokémon and your like 900 episodes and your main character still being an impulsive ten-year-old. Best not go down that particular road. So yeah, in summation, a good story arc, and good monster. High fives all around. Again. Next time, episode eight. 

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Viewer Log: Voltron ep 7

Space. The Final Frontier. There are a lot of weird stuff out there among the stars. But the weirdest concept is the sentient planet. An entire world that is self-aware, feels pain, and can affect its landscape. Can you imagine if earth worked like that? I doubt fracking and deforestation would be a problem if ol’ Gaia could put her two sense in. What? I think of the planet as a female. So sue me. Let’s get to it.

We open to Team Voltron planning to liberate the Balmera, and argue about who has the most accurate laser gun sound effects. Shiro is closest, in my opinion. Their plans are complicated by the fact the Balmera is alive and feels pain, so shooting the surface is kind of a no go. It’d be like shooting any living thing, it’d end badly. They come up with a plan to draw the Gulra out of the tunnels, fight them in the sky, and then fly in and free the rest of them once the Gulra were scrap. They use specialized scanning tech to determine how many Gulra and Balmerans are in the tunnel, to make things run more smoothly. Pidge plans to fly in, while using her new camouflage tech she outfitted the Green Lion with, to drop the probs.

Such a smug grin. Always glad to see it wiped off his face.

The guys start shooting the Gulra installations. This gives them a chance to show off their weapons. Black has a special jaw blade it can use to slice things. Red had a magma cannon, for melting. And Blue has an Ice Beam, for freezing. Red and Blue use their respective beams to melt a guard tower and the freeze it in place so it won’t hurt the Balmera. Despite the damage they cause, no Gulra fly out to stop them. They’re drawn deeper, since they detected Gulra fighters deeper inside and the prisoners too. The team breaks up, Keith and Lance go to take out the fighters, while the others go in to save the prisoners. Everything is so easy, from disabling the fighter ships to freeing the prisoners, it’s obviously a trap, and yet they have no other choice but to fall into it.

Hunk frees the Balmerans, Rox (still a dick) tells them that the Gulra took Shay to the core of the Balmera. Everyone knows that this is a trap, but… heroes. They can’t not fall into a trap to save someone. Everyone is drawn in, and, shockingly, the trap is sprung. The group assumed that the Gulra were going to ambush them at the core, where they were Lion-less and unable to fight back due to the danger of damaging the Balmera. Instead, the Gulra just lock them in the core and go to steal the Lions. The Gulra prefer the direct approach. So… The Paladins are locked in the heart of a planet, the Lions are vulnerable without their paladins, and the Castle of Lions is stuck against an armada. Not a great day. But, thankfully, Shay uses her Balmera Whispering powers to get her people to give them a hand. Rox, dick, reveals that he was the one that tipped off the Gulra, but convinces the rest of the Balmerans to help the Voltron Paladins. Less of a Dick.

The heart of a living planet.

In the Heart of the Gulra Empire, Prorock assures his Emperor that they’ll have the Voltron Lions in a manner of hours, but Zarkon isn’t convinced. The alien dictator is confident that Prorock has underestimated the Lions and their Paladins. On the Balmera, a warship joins the fight, and all hope seems lost. Thankfully, the Paladins are freed thanks to the Balmerans and just barely make it back to their Lions in time. Again, those forcefields the Lions project are useless. The five robot cats smash the Gulra fighters. The Castle takes a pretty huge hit from the warship, which gives the team enough time to form Voltron for the first time in like four episodes. They’re able to smash the Gulra Warship and 97% of the fighters in one fell swoop.  Prorock is rather “embarrassed” at this failure, but Zarkon doesn’t seem more than annoyed. Back with the team, we see why. Just when the take a breath another Gulra space-casket, bearing a Robeast, crashes.

Now, normally, episodes were the ‘surprise’ is so <blanking> obvious bore me but this one is decent. The humor makes up for a lot of the predictability throughout this episode. Heroes making laser gun noises, what other show does that? Keith and Lance are always good for a few yuks. And Hunk is great, especially with his self-deprecating humor. “This has got to be a trap. There’s no way I’m that good a shot.” This episode is meant to play up the next one, which it does. I really like the design of the Robeast’s caskets. Really unique means of transportation and just really, really creepy. Next time, episode 8 and our new Robeast Battle. 

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Viewer Log: Voltron ep 6

As much as I like this series, this is perhaps the weakest episode. It’s the closest that Voltron has to a filler episode. To those who haven’t seen that term before, a filler episode is an episode in a generally continuous serial series that are unrelated to the main plot, doesn’t significantly alter the relations between characters, and really only take up space. They do make reference to the episodes that follow, but only briefly. Let’s get to it.

Prorock, he's Sendak minus the Cybernetics.
Which automatically drops his awesomeness level by 2.

This one opens to Lance defrosting. There’s a short discussion about the difference between seconds, and the Altean’s time scale, a tick, which gets them so wrapped up that they don’t notice Lance getting out of his pod. He hits on Allura, which tells everyone that he’s right as rain. After getting some food in him, Lance compliments the mice but claims Keith did very little. Keith kind of freaks out at this, delivering one of my favorite lines of the series, “We had a bonding moment. I cradled you in my Arms!” to which Lance quickly retorts, “Nope, don’t remember. Didn’t happen.” Those goof balls. Sendak is revealed to be in a cryo-pod like Lance was, their Prisoner of War and hopefully a source of information. But Hunk “ain’t got time for that,” and insists that they go to the Balmera to free Shay and her people. Which leads into my other favorite line of this season, Pidge owning up to being female. Hunk makes a crack about “manning up” to which Pidge replies “I can’t man up. I’m a girl.” And then rambles about the difference between figures of speech and reality. It’s adorable. Everyone on the team, minus Lance, admits that they already knew that Pidge was a girl. This shift in his reality hits him hard. Poor Lance. They launch the Castle of Lions, which flies pretty well for a ship that’s been in the ground for 10,000 years, and head for the Balmara.

We then jump to darkly dreaming Zarkon and co. One of his other commanders, Prorock, insist that they send a fleet to the last known Voltron location to capture it. Haggar, on the other hand, insists that they remain where they are and finish an experimental Quintessence harvesting process. Zarkon sides with his Druid, but Prorock decides to take care of things on his own. He orders that all ships in the area keep on the lookout, and offer a reward to whoever has any information on Voltron. Hunk wants to rush to Shay and the Balmerans, but a distress beacon gets their attention. The Paladins have a “help everyone” rule, so they’re kind of required to help out. I’d argue that the fate of thousands of Balmerans is greater than the fate of a single ship’s crew, but this isn’t Star Trek, so they probably haven’t heard the “needs of the many,” line. Just saying. They land and meet some fugitive aliens. We have Rolo, the captain that Hunk is almost immediately suspicious of, Nyma a vaguely human looking alien female that Lance hits on almost immediately, and their robot Beezer, whom Pidge starts examining almost immediately. Such strong emotions all around.

Hunk starts repairing the down ship, but insists that Rolo and his crew stay outside while he works. He’s obviously suspicious, but Rolo seems cool about it. While Hunk tinkers, Rolo gives them a sob story about losing his people and his leg. It sounds like the kind of thing a guy makes up or embellishes for sympathy points. Hunk is super-impatient and obviously isn’t buying what Rolo is selling. Can’t say I blame him. Don’t trust purple aliens. That might seem color-ist, but purple aliens are usually the bad guys, just saying. While that’s going on, Lance keeps trying to impress Nyma, and is kind of too stupid to realize she’s playing him HARD. Like, I feel like if anyone of the others had been paying attention they’d have straight up told him, “Lance, she’s playing with you. Stop thinking with your d#(k.” She pushes all of his buttons to get him to take her out on a ride on Blue Lion. From implying he has to follow orders, to suggesting that she go to Keith for a ride when Lance suggest they go back. Nyma is good.

Hmm... not sure why Lance is attracted to her.
Yellow skin, weird hands, Twi'lek head thingies
All kind of detract from possible attractiveness.

Back with the Gulra, Haggar and several druids use a Gulra crystal to suck the Quintessence from a planet. Remember, Quintessence is like the lifeblood of the universe. So draining a planet of it is very, very, very bad. They pretty much kill a planet in about 15 seconds. Zarkon praises the new energy sucking method and how it’ll make capturing Voltron easier. Zarkon is clearly a “Big picture,” kind of bad guy.

Nyma keeps distracting Lance, and then calls Rolo in once she’s gotten him isolated. He gets handcuffed to a tree, and Nyma and Rolo steal the Blue Lion. The Lions put up a protective energy shield whenever their Paladin is out and about. These shields are useless. If it doesn’t stop the Lion from being moved, why the heck even bother to put it up? Also, anyone shocked the drifters turned out to be the bad guys? No. Good, I’m glad that was clear to everyone. Lance is able to contact the rest of the team, he has to stretch to get to his helmet to call them, and the other Paladins fly off to get Blue back.

Rolo contacts Prorock, and barters for the Blue Lion. They get their slate wiped clean in exchange for the Lion, plus the original posted reward. Rolo makes it sound like he’s conflicted about potentially damning the Paladins and the rest of the Universe, but get’s over it when Nyma reminds him that stealing from the Gulra carries a life sentence. Really? This kind of Empire strikes me as a “Break law = death,” sort of place. Just saying. The team catches up with them, but Rolo loses them in an asteroid belt. Keith follows through the asteroids, he and Red are the only ones fast/maneuverable enough to get through, while the others fly around. Rolo and co make it a difficult chase, but Keith proves to be the better pilot. They ground Rolo’s ship, eventually free Lance, and leave Rolo and the others on another asteroid. The episode ends with Haggar holding a vial of Quintessence before a lizard creature, promising to turn it into the strongest being in the universe. New Robeast in the House!

So yeah, this episode doesn’t really do that much. It’s pretty much just here to delay them getting back to the Balmera. I guess it does show what the Universe under the Gulra is like. Lots of thievery, plundering and just overall bad stuff. The bits with the Gulra, specifically Haggar killing a planet and then using the energy to create a new monster is kind of interesting. It sort of makes the monster, and all future monsters, a little more disturbing. If each of them is infused with the life energy of a planet… that’s pretty messed up when you think about it. So… if I had to grade this, it’s probably a C+. Not a terrible grade, but it will ruin this series 4.0 GPA. Just saying. Next, episode 7, Jail Break; Planet addition. 

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Viewer Log: Voltron ep 5

We begin pretty much right where last episode left off, with Commander Sendak sending his five Robot Drones to kill Pidge. They hack Pidge and Allura’s communication to figure out where she’s going. Clever little buggers. But, I do have to question sending your entire squad of robots to take out a single intruder. Sure, it may increase the odds of stopping the intruder, but decreases security around the control room. You’ve got the castle, the Lions, and most of the paladins. Sendak doesn’t even need to take off, really. Just call the boss, they’ll send a fleet, and then the bad guys win. I’m thinking too hard about this, aren’t I?

Not sure why Shay's species doesn't have pupils.

Pidge makes it to the generator room. Flashes back to her back when she went by her birth name of Katie Holt, having one last dinner with her brother and father before their mission to Kerberos. It’s the kind of sweet, happy moment that if we hadn’t already seen them disappear, I’d have called disappearance or death. After Shiro, and her family’s disappearance, she breaks into the office of a Galaxy Garrison official for answers. Her snooping has told her that the official story that everyone had died in a crash was complete bull spit. She’s caught, it’s stated that it’s happened before, and told she’s forever banned from GG property. Katie swears she’ll never stop looking for answers, which she obviously didn’t. Back in the present she gets attacked by the drones. Allura then enlists her mice to help with the whole force-field disabling thing. Who knew being telepathically connected to rodents would be useful?

Pidge is able to escape the Gulra Guardbots thanks to a hologram, and her whip like Bayard. She escapes to the training deck, and uses the invisible maze from a few episodes ago to trap and disable two of the guards. One of the remaining guards chases her into the ventilation and nearly kills her. She smashes it, nearly falls down the same airduck as the bot, but is saved at the last moment by Rover. Such a helpful little machine.  

Back with Coran and Hunk, they bond with the local Balmerans. The lizard-like people are very pro-family and generous. Except for one of them, Rox, Shay’s brother. He says and does things that make it clear he’s going to make bad choices. He’s very much a “keep our heads down and deal with life, because a sucky life is better than death,” sort of fellow. These guys never make the right choices when baddies show up. Shay lets them know that there’s one “star ship class” crystal that they are looking for, but it’s pretty much impossible to get. The crystals are incredibly rare, even before the over mining, and the Gulra jealously guard these as soon as they’re discovered. Coran goes to do some recon while Hunk repairs the ship.

Back with Pidge, she flashes back to her first day at Galaxy Garrison, and meeting Hunk and Lance. She runs into the commander whose office she’d broken into several times before, who is apparently an idiot. Why? Pidge modeled her “Guy” look off of her brother. Same hair style and color, to the point that she’s just a shorter version of her bro. Someone the command would either have known personally or by reputation. So how the flying cuss word did he not figure out that Pidge Gunderson was Katie Holt? Or at least connected to the Holts. No idea. She blows off Hunk and Lance to do more snooping. Back in the present, Pidge finally gets she’d been kind of a jerk to her team in the pasts and resolves to do better now. And she’s going to start by saving the day today. You go, girl.

Back on the Balmera, Hunk bonds with Shay the Balmeran. Shay has no idea what the sky looks like, having been forced to live in the caverns of the Balmera all her life. Kind of messed up, right? Hunk is kind of flabbergasted by the fact that the obvious slave, the latest in countless generations of slaves, doesn’t have a concept of freedom. Damn, Hunk, I know you’re not always the brightest, but come on. Rox interrupts their discussion and keeps being a dick. Not even going to waste time trying to think of a D I C K acronym. Rox is just a dick, plain and simple. He basically tells Hunk to buzz off and stop filling his sister’s head with impossible dreams.

Pidge is able to further sabotage the castle, overloading the ships main engine and disabling the Gulra soldier for a moment. She and the soldier, Haxous, duke it out after he recovered. Grown Gulra Male vs. pre-teen/teenage girl, it’s not the most even fight. Not being sexist here, no teenager could hope to go toe to toe with a full grown adult and a soldier at that. Haxous has the height, weight, strength and experience advantage. Despite these obvious handicaps, with Rover’s help she’s able to cause Haxous to die pretty horribly. She trips him up with her Bayard’s energy chain and knocks him off the side of the platform they’re on. He grabs Rover, who opts to power down, killing itself to finish off Haxous. I’d scream noooooo, if Rover had been a slightly more memorable character. I kind of forgot about the little guy until the last two episodes. Pidge is heartbroken to see her little drone dying, but isn’t really given a chance to grieve. Sendak contacts Pidge via the comms, tortures Shiro and tries to force Pidge to surrender. Jerk.

Yet another living planet. They seem to be pretty common
across the universe.

On the Balmera, Coran comes up with a harebrained scheme to get the Crystal, it goes horribly, but they’re able to disable the guards and get their hands on the crystal. They free it using the old techniques, at the cost of Coran’s back, but they are caught by the Gulra robot Guards. Quick flash of Sendak making evil speeches, before returning to Hunk and Coran in prison. They’re freed by Shay, who had stolen the crystal, stuck it in their ship before freeing them. Huh, pretty lucky that one Balmeran is strong enough to move a battleship class crystal without an escort, isn’t it? They make a break for it, but Rax turns them in to the Gulra. Again, he’s a dick. Shay communes with the Balmera, who disables the guards with a cave in. Shay’s captured in the escape, but Hunk vows to free her.

In one of the strangest scenes I’ve seen, the mice kill the remaining drone and disable the shield letting Keith and Allura back inside. Most vicious yet brilliant little vermin, ever. Pidge uses more holograms to distract Sendak, but the Gulra commander is craftier then she anticipated and sees through her rouse. He nabs her in his robot arm and starts crushing her. Keith and Allura arrive, Sendak implies he’ll crush Pidge in his robot hand if they don’t stand down. In the excitement, no one notices that Lance momentarily wakes up. Somehow he’s able to read the situation, summon his Bayard blaster, and shoots Sendak in the back. The impact is enough to force him to drop Pidge, but not kill him… for reasons. The group then rushes Sendak, literally disarming him of his robo-arm, before capturing him inside a force field. Keith and Lance have a bro-bonding moment, as Keith helps the injured Lance up and he grumbles “we make a good team.” Awh. Hunk and Coran just barely escape the Balmera thanks to Pidge’s tinkering with their pod. She included a booster rocket, which could have turned the pod into a fireball, but doesn’t because… reasons. Makes you wonder why they included the two lines setting up the possible consequences of using the booster rocket. Once they get back, they plug in the new crystal, Lance is stuck in a cryogenic healing pod, and Pidge decides to stay with the team. Hooray for teamwork.

This is a very Pidge centric episode. It answers a whole bunch of questions about her past, why she decided to infiltrate Galaxy Garrison, why she hid her gender, and also helped give her some character growth. Killing Rover to reach that end felt a little forced, but meh, I’ll let them have it. It also helps to set up Hunk’s story arc for the next few episodes, as watching Shay get captured to save them hits him pretty hard. Shay’s capture is Hunks, to quote Tallahassee from Zombieland, “Time to Nut up or Shut up” moment. Everybody needs one of those. The fight scenes, both between Haxous and Pidge as well as between most of the team and Sendak, are really well done despite only being a few seconds long. Once again, no Voltron, but as we established earlier, this isn’t really a bad thing. Less stuff about Voltron means more stuff about the characters, just about always a good thing. So yeah, a good episode. Next time, episode six.

http://voltron.wikia.com/wiki/File:Shay_(Voltron).png
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Viewer Log: Voltron ep 4

Episode 4 is the start of the new story arc. I kicked around a few ideas for an unofficial name for the next few episode’s arc, and settled on the Plight of the Balmera, for reasons that will be made apparent in the next couple of minutes. Why do I need to unofficially name the arc? Because, again, folks keep saying that you can just binge this. I, on the other hand, think we can break this up a little more. Enough set up, let’s get to it.

Hm... I'm hearing Stewie from Family Guy screaming
"Victory is Mine!" Not sure why...

Things start out peaceful enough, with Allura hosting a sort of ‘Getting to Know You’ party for the Arusians that they befriended last time. They seem to be taking the whole, “holy place that we’re not supposed to enter is actually somebody’s house,” thing pretty well. Which is a little surprising, not going to lie. But they took the whole “our goddess is actually a giant fighting robot” thing pretty well, too, so maybe Arusian’s are just a very accepting people. Everyone seems to be having a good time, except for a few folks. Shiro is ill at ease, believing that the casual little get together is just making them an easy target for Gulra attack. At the same time, Lance is suddenly hit by an extreme feeling of homesickness, as the grand scale of their fight against the evil alien empire and the sheer size of the universe kind of just hits him in the face. He misses his mom, can’t fault a guy for that. And Pidge is acting incredibly shifty, and gathering food into a knapsack. At the same time, Allura is learning secrets about her friends from the mice that she is psychically bonded too. Why the heck is that not the weirdest sentence that I’ve ever written? Anyway, she learns something about Hunk and Lance, we’re not told exactly what, and is given the ‘shocking news’ that Pidge is in fact a girl. After seeing Pidge pilfering pastries, and then cleaning her ear in a most unladylike manner, she asks the obvious question, “Are you sure?” and when the mice stand by their news, she vows to get to the bottom of this.

Outside the party, Commander Sendak and his minimal surviving crew, one other soldier and like five robot drones, are doing exactly what Shiro was worrying about, plotting to attack. They spend a few minutes trying to figure out how to attack a fully functional, highly advanced castle with so few troops, when the opportunity presents itself. The two aliens see that Pidge has Rover, her flying Gulra drone companion, and come up with an ingenious plan. use some alien tech to copy its signal frequency. Why? So they can upload it into their own drone and send it in as a Trojan Horse. The computer will scan it, think that it’s Rover and not react to them. Simple, but effective. Also, this is why it is bad to steal enemy technology. Just saying.

After a sort of awkward conversation where Allura tries to get Pidge to spill the beans on her being “a her,” Pidge reveals she’s dropping out of the whole Team Voltron thing, and going to look for her father and brother. She rigged up a shuttle pod to use, and is planning on leaving that night. Hunk is all for bailing too, he’s not the bravest of folks if that wasn’t clear, but Keith on the other hand is very vocal about how selfish they’re both being, putting their personal baggage over the fate of the known universe. I’m with Keith on this one. While I can understand wanting to find missing family members and being terrified of fighting an alien empire, when you’re one of five people that can pilot a giant fighting Robot, you muscle through it. The needs of the many out ways the needs of the few and all that, just saying.

Sad Lance. :(

While this is going on, Coran and Lance bond a little over their shared homesickness. Not sure why, Coran’s homeworld of Altea sounds kind of awful. What? Don’t give me that look. It rains hot lead. Regularly! It’s probably for the best that it’s either space debris or a lifeless husk, now. Wow, I went to dark place with that one. Their screen time is cut short by Trojan-Drone, who flies in and blows the crystal powering the castle to smithereens. Lance gets pretty badly injured protecting Coran, throwing himself between him and the explosion. And at the same time, Sendak launches a raid against the Arusian village. Dude is really great at causing a ruckus, isn’t he?

So let’s go over the bad news. 1. The Castle is completely without power, cutting the team off from the Altean tech they need to help Lance recover, castle defenses, and the Voltron Lions which are now locked in their bays. 2. Lance is badly injured, in a coma, and will probably die horribly if he doesn’t receive medical care. 3. Their allies are under attack and will probably die without help. And 4. The enemy is pretty much at the gates, waiting to pounce. All around, a pretty awful end to the evening. They decide to divide and conquer. Keith and Allura go to help the Arusians. Hunk and Coran go out using Pidge’s Pod to find a replacement crystal. Pidge had left the bay for her pod open, since she expected to leave in a couple of minutes. Hooray for selfish goals… for once. And Shiro and Pidge stay behind to protect the castle and Lance.

And things spiral out of control from there. Once at the village, Keith and Allura realize that the attack was a diversion to split them up, thus weakening the castle’s pretty much non-existent defenses. Amazing what you can do with a few broken robots, sticks, and a handful of high grade explosives, isn’t it? At the same time, Sendak and his crew attack the castle. Seven on two, not great odds. Despite being outgunned, and outnumbered, Shiro actually puts up an amazing fight. He and Sendak actually fight to a standstill, despite the alien’s assumed more extensive combat training, and his obviously better robot arm. While Shiro’s arm is really just a normal arm with a purple energy pulse, Sendak’s arm is like a mace attached to his shoulder. But, Shiro is forced to surrender when Sendak’s second-in-command puts a gun to Lance’s head. Damn villains, always pulling stunts like that. Pidge escapes by using her small size and some stealth technology she’d rigged up.

Keith and Allura get back to the castle about two seconds too late to do anything. The Gulra plug in their own evil version of a power crystal, power up the forcefield, and begin prepping for takeoff. The castle is actually a giant space ship; did I forget to mention that? But, thankfully, all is not lost thanks to Allura’s knowledge of the ship, and Pidge’s impressive brain. They’re able to disable a few key systems, grounding the ship a while longer. Unfortunately, Sendak is able to spot the pintsized saboteur and sends his troops to take care of the problem.

They're adorable, and harbingers of chaos!

Meanwhile, Hunk and Coran make it to a Balmera. A Balmera is a planet sized, fossilized living creature. It’s space, I guarantee that the Balmera isn’t the weirdest sci fi organism out there. Coran is rather horrified to learn that the Gulra were already at this particular Balmera and had set up a mining colony on it. They strip mine the creature for its precious crystals, rather than harvesting them and then doing a sort of ritual to replenish the Balmera’s strength, like the Alteans did 10,000 years ago. They’re shot at, shot down, and barely avoid being captured thanks to some helpful locals. Well, a helpful alien. Shey the Balmera lizard woman, and her stick in the mud brother Rax give them shelter from the Gulra troopers.  And that’s how it ends. Cliffhangers, they’re intense.

So… you may have noticed something missing from this episode. Yeah, no Voltron. Heck, we really don’t even see the individual Lions this time around. That’s the thing, in this iteration of the show, Voltron actually doesn’t appear that often. Which, is kind of a good thing. Sure, title character and all that, but in the end Voltron is just a tool for the heroes to use. The really interesting stuff involves the… what’s the best word here, considering the cast is only partially human? Humanoids? Sapients? People? Yeah we’ll go with people. The really interesting stuff involves the people. By showing them in a situation where their backs are to the wall, their greatest weapons are disabled, and their forced to fight tooth and nail for any chance at a victory, you get more intense drama and character development. It’s for that reason that I think that this remake is superior to my vague recollections of the original, from a story telling perspective. What’s better, a show that follows a formula in every episode, personal conflict, monster attack, stock footage of robots combining, kill monster, conflict resolved, hooray? Or, a story where the characters are constantly put in new situation and are always being forced to adapt to the new challenges that meet them? Yeah, number two is clearly better. And, despite Lance getting KOed for most of the episode, this episode actually had a few good character moments for Lance. His homesickness and description of his home life does add a fair amount of depth to Mr. Overconfident, Want-to-be Casanova Lance. He misses his family, particularly his Mom. Aw, almost makes up for Lance constantly hitting on Allura. Overall, a solid episode even if Voltron didn’t make an actual appearance. Next time, Episode Five. 

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