Viewer Log: Voltron ep 17

We take a few minutes away from our heroes to see some new alien’s in peril. These aliens, the Taujeer, have had their planet strip mined by the Gulra. And, to make matters worse, the Gulra steal their ship’s engines, leaving them stranded on their dying world. Well… that’s going to ruin their weekend plans.

So... you think you can play "I, spy" in space?
I spy with my little eye,
someone who's about to be chewed out.

Back with the Paladins, they’re all pretty shaken by the last couple of encounters with the Gulra. Being hounded across the known Universe has that effect on folks. They’re trying hard to figure out how Zarkon has been tracking them. They have three ideas, 1. Allura thinks that Zarkon is somehow tracking her unique Altean energy, 2. Keith thinks Zarkon is tracking him specifically because… reasons, 3. And Shiro thinks Zarkon is tracking Black Lion via their old connection.  Three is obviously the right answer, but Allura and Keith are hung up on their ideas. While the group tries to figure stuff out, Pidge has an idea. Using the information that they’ve gathered from various sources, she’s able to create an algorithm to locate the planet’s that the Gulra are most likely to hit next. Why is this important? Because being on the offensive is more productive then being defensive. Duh. Care to guess what the next most likely target in their area is? Taujeer. They're off to save the day.

Later that night, Keith has nightmares about Zarkon somehow tracking the team through him. FYI, while they haven’t stated it out loud yet, they’ve made it pretty clear that Keith is at least worried that he has some connection to the Gulra. Due in no small part to his heirloom dagger with the Blade of Marmora symbol on it. He’s so freaked out by the thought of endangering his comrades that, upon waking, he tries to make a run for it. In the hanger, he meets Allura, who planned to jump ship too. They agree to fly out together, using Pidge’s modified pod, to make sure that Zarkon isn’t tracking the ship through them. Two members of the team jumping ship, what could possibly go wrong?

When did he have time to make this?

The rest of the team are somewhat distracted by Taujeer falling apart to notice that they left right away. The planet is literally losing huge chunks of its crust. Shiro and the rest of the team land and meet the Taujeers. The alien’s leader explains about the whole resource stealing that the local Gulra Commander, Morvok, did. He also explains that the Taujeers knew their planet was basically molting. It sheds its outer crust, revealing an ocean of acid, before re-growing said crust later. The Gulra intervention just accelerated the process. The Taujeer’s had set up a shelter on their planet’s moon to wait out the acid period. But, obviously, losing their engines caused a kink in their plans.

Meanwhile, Keith and Allura bide their time waiting to see if the Gulra show up in deep space. Just them and the never-ending void of space. How riveting. While they wait, Keith does his best to convince Allura that maybe not all the Gulra are bad. This line of thought is probably as much for his benefit as hers. But, the whole 10,000 years of war, death of her planet, the functional extinction of her species, and the death of her father has Allura pretty firmly in the “Hate Gulra” camp. Talk about a losing battle. But, I think that Keith should get points for trying to change Allura’s mind.

With the bad guys, Zarkon has tracked them down again and has sent Morvok to handle them. Why doesn’t he warp in himself? No idea, though I imagine keeping up with several Castle of Lions’ wormhole jumps probably drained Zarkon’s main fleet of resources. For the moment.

Back with the others, they form a plan to save the Taujeer. Pidge uses Green’s Plant Cannon to stitch the remaining chunks of crust together. Lance then used Blue’s Ice Beam to cover the vines in a layer of ice, to make them last a little longer against the acid. Meanwhile, Hunk and Shiro use their Lions to keep the Taujeer’s ship level while Hunk and Coran make the ship space-worthy. They’re able to make the repairs necessary to get the Taujeer off planet, just in time for the Gulra to arrive and muck things up. Wonderful…

Its right at this moment that Keith and Allura realize the major flaw in their separation plan. Without Keith, the Paladins can’t form Voltron, as all five Paladins are necessary for the combination. Without Allura, the team can’t make wormholes, as she is the only one who can manipulate the quasi-mystic energy to create them. So, traveling between star systems in any less than 100 years is impossible without her. So, yeah, team is kind of screwed without them. Thankfully, at the moment they figure this out, they get Coran’s distress call that the Gulra are attacking. Relieved that they aren’t the ones being tracked, the two try to reunite with the others, but using Pidge’s modified fuel booster causes the engines to blow. The pod is destroyed, but Keitha and Allura are able to eject before it goes kaboom. So, Keith and Allura are left floating in the void of space. Wow, that is amazingly bad. Wonder if they’ll find the Sendak-cicle Shiro launched last season…

Everybody get's an upgrade!

The team is getting pummeled by the Gulra fighters, but are saved from total annihilation by Coran and the Castle’s laser fire. Realizing that they’re rapidly running out of options, Coran goes down and tries to pilot Red Lion. He even does a little dance to try and appeal to the picky Robo-Lion. Red, probably freaked out by Coran’s outfit, flies off.  Well, shoot. Oh wait, it’s going after Keith and Allura. Shoot retracted.

While all the fighting is going on, Hunk has been left beneath the Taujeer ship, holding it up. The increased frustration at being stuck like that causes Hunk and Yellow’s bond to deepen. But instead of getting a fancy blaster like Lance, Keith or Pidge, he gets about four times the armor. Nice. Keith arrives a moment later. They form Voltron and attack. Morkov plans to use his ship to ram them, but escapes via a pod. In order to stop the crashing Gulra capital ship, the Paladins insert the four out of five Bayards into their Lions. This supercharges the Leo Saber, allowing them to slice the warship like it was butter. They save the Taujeers, and there is much rejoicing. They also figure out the obvious, that since Morvok attacked the main group, Zarkon is tracking them through Black. About dang time.

I’m not going to repeat myself again after this one, but this was a good episode. If I don’t say anything to the contrary in the Voltron posts to come, just assume that I thought the episode was good. It’ll save us all some time. This episode has a nice payoff from the buildup last time. Granted, while I think that Allura and Keith’s believing themselves to be the thing that Zarkon is following was stupid, seeing the two of them legitimately freaked out at the prospect was a good character moment for them. Allura does try to explain why she thought the “Zarkon tracking Black” was impossible, claiming that no Paladin had ever been shown to call to their Lion over such a great distance. The thing is, the show hasn’t been very clear on how many generations of Voltron Paladins there have been since Zarkon went nuts. If there was another Black Paladin between Shiro and Zarkon, I get the feeling he/she didn’t have that much experience before they were killed. So, this is kind of like Allura saying “It’s never been done. Therefore, it can never be done.” Says the woman that is psychically linked to four alien mice. Nothing is impossible. There were a fair number of chuckles in this one too. Like the leader of the Taujeer’s saying “I would feel more comfortable with all five Paladins,” when he learned that one was missing. Or Morkov’s “We’ll ram them… prepare my escape pod” moment. Hunk’s armor upgrade, while somewhat underplayed, also looks awesome. And, come on, being underplayed is kind of Hunk’s thing. So yeah, good episode, with more to come.