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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