Sorry this took a while; my day job
has me working 14-hour days right now. Since December 3rd I’ve been
up at 4 am to get to work by 5, and mostly haven’t left until 6 or 7. I hope
you can understand that, when one has at best two hours of free time in a day,
that pleasure projects like their blog suffer. Got to love Christmas time. As
such, I haven’t gotten Justice League
ready yet. I know, I’m terrible. The good news is that I should have seen it,
written it up and posted it by Sunday or Tuesday of this week. Fingers crossed.
Until then, let’s enjoy a little more Voltron.
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| How does he get all that hair in his helmet? |
Okay, so when we last left the
Voltron Paladins, not only had they been able to drive off Prince Lotor and his
forces, but they were also able to slap a tracer onto his ship and are now
tracking them down. The group warp to the latest location of Lotor’s ship, but
at about an hour’s distance away. They want to fly in and hopefully surprise
him. Hunk is the first one to point out that going in guns blazing might not be
the best idea. Why? Well, he and Pidge are the only two pilots that don’t need
to make any adjustments. Both Keith and Lance are flying two completely
different Lions at this point, and Allura is just learning to pilot period.
When 3/5ths of your team isn’t use to the machine they’re in, odds are not in
your favor. But, Keith disagrees. He seems to be under the impression that if
they can take out Lotor, then anything is worth the risk. Which, I can kind of
get, cutting down another Gulra leader so soon after the last one might cripple
the empire beyond recovery. But, on the other hand, Lotor isn’t one to go down
easily.
Case in point, Lotor and his crew
were able to detect the Lions tailing them, and is already planning a counter
measure. Rather than attack the group with the main warship and risk damaging it,
Lotor opts to take his own personal vehicle to deter the Paladins while his
ship preps for a warp. He flies out to meet them. Keith, seeing Lotor’s ship,
orders a charge. And things pretty much immediately start going haywire. Black
Lion is too slow, both in movement speed and reaction time, for Keith’s liking,
Red Lion is too fast, with too sensitive controls for Lance to operate
effectively, and Allura is pretty much pressing buttons and pulling levers at
random. Lotor easily out maneuvers everyone, and smacks the lions around for a
while, while the team flounders. The Paladins try to form Voltron, but the
disharmony between the Paladins and their Lion’s kind of makes that impossible.
Unfortunately, Lotor notices this and decides to capitalize on it.
He flies off, trying to lead the
Paladins to the planet Thayseriks. Thayseriks has a completely uninhabitable
terrain, an atmosphere of 90% poison gases that are difficult to see through,
and a weird magnetic field that makes tracking difficult. Lotor, who knew all
of this, prepped his ship for the conditions and used the unique conditions of Thayseriks
to his advantage. The Paladins follow, and are easily split up thanks to the
death planet’s atmosphere and Lotor’s piloting.
Keith and Lance end up in ear shot
of each other, while the other three are scattered. As per usual, Keith and
Lance start fighting. I feel like I should make some sort of crass comment about
the two of them getting a room, but that’s beneath me. The arguing finally
stops when Keith actually listens to Lance, hell having finally frozen over,
and realizing that his leadership qualities haven’t really been up to snuff
today. They decide to regroup with the others.
Outside the planet’s atmosphere, Lotor’s
generals have called in their closest fleet as back up. The main reason why they’re
still sitting things out, though, is that Thayseriks’ atmosphere is REALLY
unstable in places, as in massive explosions can be caused if the wrong pocket
of gas is ignited. So, the four Half-Gulra elect to wait for an opportune
moment to strike.
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| First days are hard enough without laser fire or death threats. |
The Paladins have been able to
regroup by this point, but they’re still dealing with a highly maneuverable enemy
on hostile ground. Lotor continues to outfly them despite their best efforts,
tricks them into firing their weapons, causes a massive explosion to separate them
again, and ultimately targets the weakest link, Allura. The princess has got a
lot of skill, but she’s still only been a Paladin for like two days, so that
designation is kind of understandable. Allura is able to shake off Lotor, but
is clearly on her last frayed nerve by the time she finds cover.
Keith and Lance end up finding each
other, again, fight again, and Lance motivates Keith to do better, again. There’s
a fair amount of rinse and repeat with these two. Meanwhile, Hunk and Pidge
link up again. Hunk asks the obvious question of their tech guru, can she do
something to level the playing field. Unfortunately, the single worst place to
ask for tech modifications is when a psycho alien is liable to leap out of
nowhere and pepper your ship with holes. Yeah, Pidge is good, but her hands are
pretty much tied right now.
Allura, having hidden out in a
crevice on the planet’s surface, is trying desperately to get Blue to work with
her. She tries to use the Lance approach, which comes across as her hitting on
the giant robot, but I guess Blue isn’t impressed. She ultimately swallows her
pride and flat out begs Blue to help her out, which causes the mecha-cat to finally
sync with its new pilot. Just in time for Lotor to find them. Allura flies off.
Thankfully, bonding with Blue let her access the Lion’s more advanced arsenal,
namely its sonic weaponry. Using the big sonic blaster as a sonar device, Allura
is finally able to outfly Lotor. She leads him into a pocket of the explosive
gas, then circles around and uses Blue’s Freezing cannon to coat his ship’s
left wing in ice. Lotor bails, just in time for his fleet to arrive.
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| Victory is Voltron's, for now. |
The Paladins are able to meet up.
They form Voltron, summon the Leo Saber, and smash the heck out of the bulk of
Lotor’s minions. They elect to allow Lotor to escape, so that they can prep and
train for another fight. Unfortunately, Lotor has a similar plan. He puts it
best, the Paladins bringing Voltron back again isn’t a problem, it’s “an
opportunity.” How sinister.
This episode does a lot with a relatively
simple premise. The team spends most of the episode flying around an alien
planet that is forcing them to adjust to their new roles. Keith gets several
painful examples of his lone wolf, shoot first ask questions later, mentality
not working when he’s coordinating a team. Lance is forced to repeatedly, and
loudly, both berate his teammate (which he’s used to and enjoys) and add moral
support when he can (which is new to him and he doesn’t enjoy as much). Allura
has the worst of it, as she has to do inn an episode what the others took most
of two seasons to accomplish, learning to fly and bonding with her beast. It’s
a tall order, but she’s able to figure it out. I get the sense that Lotor is little
more hands on then his father was. Don’t get me wrong, Zarkon wasn’t above
getting his hands dirty, but that was typically when his goal was within sight.
Otherwise, he seemed content with sending warships and soldiers to do the day
to day battling. Lotor, on the other hand, decided to be the distraction rather
than leave the job to anyone else. Granted, he probably had the best small
fighter piloting skills of any of his minions, but nobody said he HAD to fight
the Paladins. He’s an incredibly clever fighter, perfectly willing to force the
paladins to fight the environment as much as himself. His plan might have
worked too, if Keith, Lance and Allura hadn’t worked out their personal issues
in such a timely manner. Just saying. The next time we visit the Paladins,
things get weird… weirder.
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