Viewer Log: Voltron ep 10

Let’s recap what’s happened thus far. Four Galaxy Garrison scrubs and a former alien POW have turned into the Paladins of the Legendary Defender, Voltron. They have destroyed like fifteen warships, hundreds of enemy fighters, protected two innocent worlds, and smashed two unholy amalgams of magic and science. My goodness they’ve covered a lot of ground in only eleven episodes, haven’t they? And we’ve only had two Robeasts. How bizarre. Which actually has worked rather well for me. The build up to each monster fight has turned what was originally a “monster of the day/week” to something much more memorable. What sort of creature could possibly top ball-in-a-cup flinging Mecha-Myzax and multiple laser eye firing Death-Gaze? We’ll have to wait and see. Let’s get to it.

You laughed in the Purple Rain
Now cry in the Purple Lightning!

We start with the Paladins sifting through Sendak’s memories. The information is incomplete, you know, because Shiro launched the alien commander into space before the download could finish. Thankfully, they’re able to combine the incomplete memories with the incomplete data from Sendak’s Warship. Two fractured pieces make a whole… or something close to it. As Pidge sifted through the information, she notices one phrase that keeps coming up throughout both. It’s a Gulra phrase that translates to the “Universal Station, Galactic Hub, or Space Base.” I like the alliteration with the third one. They have a set of coordinates, but to everyone’s shock, Coran’s scan doesn’t detect anything of note. Just a single asteroid and a pair of planets. The team decide to check it out, since what evil empire would be obsessed with empty space?  Upon arrival they discover why nothing came up. There’s a lot of technobabble, but the way I understand it, the electromagnetic fields of the two planets and asteroid mask a base on the asteroid from scans. It’s the space equivalent of building a military base into a mountain, natural forces provide additional camouflage.

They are able to sneak aboard the vessel using Green Lion’s cloak and artificial cosmic interference, disable the guards (side note, Gulra troopers are stupid), and hack the base’s database. While they’re searching through the database, a ship arrives with a fresh shipment. Hunk use a broken Gulra drone to trick the new ship into thinking everything is alright. Again, Gulra troopers are stupid. While the new ship unloads, Pidge is able to learn… very little. The ship’s mainframe only seems to have the shipment schedule. Not what is being shipped, just the drop off and pick up times. Allura, who is refusing to accept failure today, insists that they sneak aboard the docked ship and see what they are carrying. How? She’ll dress up as a Gulra Guard and just walk aboard. What’s that? I hear some of you asking, how is she going to pass for a seven-foot-tall purple solider when she’s a five foot something tan princess? Shapeshifting. Yeah, this kind of comes out of nowhere. Allura explains her species can shapeshift and they used this power in more peaceful times to help diplomatic relations. I must ask, where the flying cuss word was this power earlier? It would have been really easy to sneak aboard the Gulra ship in this first episode with this superpower. No answer? I thought so. Shiro agrees, but insists that he comes along. We have a quick “boss fight” between the two, Allura insisting that she can take care of herself while Shiro insisting that as a team they need to work together. Allura finally relents and they sneak Shiro onboard the ship in a crate. Third time, Gulra = Stupid. How have the conquered the known universe?

It's a decent disguise. Too bad her acting wasn't up to snuff.

While the Princess and Captain are busy, Pidge starts hacking a drone’s CPU for info, and Keith goes off on his own to investigate the shipment itself, and the creepy Gulra Druid that accompanied it. While onboard the ship, Shiro has another PTSD Flashback, and remembers the Gulra Drones walk in predictable pattern. Maybe having the bulk of your army be comprised of robots wasn’t the best idea. They sneak deeper into the ship. While Pidge, Hunk and Lance keep trying to hack the drone, Keith catches up with the Druid. In a room filled with canisters of quintessence, he watches the black clan druid pump the canister with purple energy, turning the yellow liquid purple. Keith shows the other three and Coran a video of what he saw. This triggered a latent “exposition protocol” in the drone Pidge was fiddling with. The robot explains that the druid was “purifying the Quintessence into the Gulra’s main fuel source. Meanwhile, Allura and Shiro take out a few more guards and start hacking. I guess Shiro’s been taking some intro to hacking alien computer systems courses with Pidge, or something.

A lot of stuff starts happening at once. Shiro’s hack was detected and the Gulra throw all their troopers at them. At the same time, Keith tries to steal the quintessence, the druid senses a disturbance and teleports and starts throwing purple lighting. What is with these guys and the color purple? This is particularly bad for Keith as, you know, the worse possible weapon to have when fighting a magic guy is a sword. Which is the only weapon he has on hand. Hard to stab somebody when they can fling lightning or fire from fifteen feet away. Pidge is able to grab Green Lion and then rush in to save Keith. This seems to kill the druid, not many organisms can survive the vacuum of space, and Keith discovers that Quintessence has remarkable healing powers. His horrible electrical burns healed in seconds after being doused in the yellow goo. On the ship, Shiro and Allura are pretty hosed. They fought through several dozen troopers and made it to the escape pod, but more troopers are banging on the cargo bay door. Realizing that they can’t both escape, Allura choses to sacrifice herself so Shiro can get away. Makes sense, one of five guys that can pilot the ultimate robot champion > princess. She holds the door with her surprising super-strength while Shiro is jettisoned in an escape pod. When Shiro reunites with the others, he decides that they’ll do the incredibly stupid thing and attack Zarkon head on to get Allura back.

This is a pretty good continuation of our final story arc. Allura’s wounds seem pretty fresh after the whole Holo-Dad killing she had to do last time. At least, that’s what I attribute Allura’s stubbornness throughout the episode. Sure, the shapeshifting power thing was kind of out of left field, but, I’ll give it to them. I’ll mention that it isn’t a… fluid transformation, like with Mystique. The transformation takes a few moments, and she first grows and then changes color. It feels more like a process then with Mystique. It was also interesting to see how Shiro and Allura interact together. The other Voltron Paladins respect Shiro and often defer to his judgement. Makes sense as he’s the most seasoned pilot/soldier and team leader. But, Allura is technically his superior, she is the Princess, after all. He’s deferred to her a number of times, but almost never in the field during a mission. Two leaders trying to figure out the power dynamic, who is the most leaderie, it is a pairing that doesn’t come up all that often. Keith’s lone gunslinger act is short, but intense. His fight with the Gulra Druid is all kinds of crazy awesome. Also, love the look of the Gulra Druids. Creepy as heck. Lance, Pidge, and Hunk don’t have all that much to do in this one, as they spend most of their time monkeying with the Gulra drone, but they get a good laugh or two. Like when Pidge backhands Lance with the Gulra drone. Don’t worry, he’s okay… and deserved it. It also sets up the season finale, where they storm the enemy castle to get the Princess back. Hopefully there won’t be a toadstool there telling them their princess is in another space castle. Bet you didn’t expect this to end on a Super Mario reference, did you?

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