Viewer Log: Voltron ep 16

So, we last left our heroes staring down the barrel of a proverbial gun, the gun in this metaphor being the bulk of the Gulra fleet. Not a good way to end an otherwise successful day. Way out matched, and exhausted from saving the Olkari just a couple of hours ago, the team decides to bid a tactical retreat. He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. They have to dodge and weave the Gulra fighters, to build enough distance to safely wormhole jump away. They do this by slingshotting themselves around a nearby moon, and making the jump. Unfortunately, all the excitement seems to have done damage to their Teludav, the machine that lets them create their wormholes. As such, they fall out of the wormhole way too soon, and Allura is very near collapsing afterwards. To make matters worse, or at least less convenient, Coran has caught an Altean disease. It’s called the Slipperies, which causes him to excrete a whole lot of sweat. He’s particularly embarrassed by this because it’s an “old Altean” disease. He’s basically got his species equivalent of Gout. Joy.

Space, a never ending void of death and destruction.

Coran, despite his ailment, does his best to jerry rig their Teludav to be functional until they can get the right replacement parts. Their space engine uses energy refracted by special lenses to create the wormhole. The… excitement of the last few days caused multiple lenses to crack, which make wormhole travel much, much harder. The rest of the team takes some much-needed time off while Coran works. Hunk does some baking, or at the very least tries to. The ‘cookies’ he made only seem to break teeth. Lance and Keith separately decide to check out the pool, much to the other’s dismay, but get stuck in the elevator for a bit. They escape through a hatch, do that back to back climbing thing, and then make it to the pool. Which is on the ceiling. Alteans, does any of their architecture make sense? Pidge, feed up with not being able to understand anything on the ship, goes to learn Altean. The ship has a nifty little training program that uses a hologram generator to project the thing it’s teaching you the word for. But, unfortunately for her, Altean’s are bigger grammar snobs then I am. Mispronounce a word, and the hologram gets more and more aggressive until it attacks the ‘student.’ Pidge just barely gets the pronunciation right to call off the Altean equivalent of a bear. Which is then replaced by another Altean horror. She really should have been more concerned when the program mentioned that the safety was off. I’m starting to think the universe is better off with that planet gone. Shiro encourages Allura to rest while she can… about fifteen seconds before the Gulra arrive again. Allura seems rather shocked that the Gulra were able to find them so quickly, but seriously, the guy did it once before already. Everyone is called in to help out. Unfortunately, their effectiveness is somewhat limited when Coran starts cutting the power to non-essential systems. Why do the guns fall under “non-essential systems”? Because the Teludav needs all the power it can get. They just barely jump away again, at the cost of even more of the special lenses the Teludav uses to make the wormhole.

Grammar lesson, Level: Expert.

They arrive just outside a colossal dust storm. They fly into the storm in the hopes it’ll give them cover, just in case the Gulra track them down again. The Gulra track them down a few minutes later. Zarkon wants Voltron back bad. The Paladins form Voltron in an attempt to draw Zarkon’s attention long enough to rig up the Teludav. Which doesn’t work too well, but the Castle is able to get out of the dust storm. Zarkon uses the druids to activate his magic steroid enhanced connection to Voltron, causing the giant robot to seize up again. The Castle fires upon his flag ship, breaking Zarkon’s connection long enough for them to fly away. Coran spouts some technobabble, which sparks Pidge’s now slightly enhanced Altean vocab, who then announces that Hunk’s cookies might work as temporary Teludav lenses. The team then has to do, in Coran’s own words, “the most dangerous thing [he’s] ever seen,” and physically hold the lenses while the Teludav powers up. It doesn’t work, because the lenses aren’t shiny enough. But, thankfully, Coran uses his Slippery’s sweat to shine up the lenses. Tied up that little plot threat neatly, didn’t they? The team make another jump, escaping the Gulra once again, but Zarkon vows to continue the pursuit. I suppose when you’ve been chasing something for 10,000 years, it’s hard to let go.

This episode reminds me of an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, called “The Chase.” In both episodes, the heroes are doggedly chased by their respective antagonists across the landscape… spacescape. Patience is tested, heroes pushed to the brink, and the entire time the baddy smiles evilly. Very well done. Seeing the Paladins in how they use their very limited free time is also rather interesting. Keith and Lance try to relax with recreation but instead end up arguing, Hunk cooks, and Pidge tries to expand her mind. Yeah, pretty much sums all these guys in a few words, doesn’t it? Got to say, though I’m a little shocked that the team still hasn’t figured out how Zarkon is tracking them. The tyrant has been capable of causing the giant mech to freeze up, but somehow, it’s beyond them to believe that Zarkon is following Black across the cosmos? That’s just dumb. I haven’t touched on this much, but I have to say the scenery is amazing. I especially like the look of the dust storm, and the inner workings of the teladov. It’s rather interesting to see Zarkon shift from the calm cool plotter to actively chasing down the heroes. I imagine all the waiting around is finally starting to get to him. If I’d failed in my goal a half dozen times after 10,000 years, I suppose I’d start getting antsy too. FYI, this episode is mostly build up for the next one. Despite this, it’s still pretty good. A lot of shows I’ve seen have a tendency to screw up ‘build-up’ episodes like this one, but it works. I imagine that if this was a more standard series format, where I was waiting a week or more between episodes, I’d be more annoyed. But binge watching is a beautiful thing. Next time, episode 17.