The string of favorites continues. I liked this one because we see more of the Doom/Galra empire's internal workings. And I always liked it when the villains tried, subtly or overtly, to work against each other. I guess this episode kind of prepared me for Babylon 5.
Zarkon is Dying
We open on Doom, but outside one of those weird mutant onion buildings. Lotor enters a room that could be nothing by a mad scientist's lab. He speaks to Zandra, a red robed, white-haired wizard who is clearly of Haggar's vintage. Zandra demonstrates a potion on a flower that turns it into a "Rosebeast." Yes, he actually says that. The rosebeast startles Lotor and he shatters the pot.
A soldier in a uniform very similar to Lotor's rushes in and tells Lotor that Zarkon is very ill. Zarkon is writhing around on a benchlike bier thing with ornamental zenomorph heads when Lotor enters, with Haggar watching over him. The same messenger soldier enters and tells them that the royal healers are ready, but Haggar says her magic will be enough.
Haggar leads Lotor to a "black altar" on steps behind Zarkons bed-thing. She makes some sort of invocation that Lotor watches skeptically. She does some stuff with beads and invokes those who made snakes and spiders. The string of beads falls apart and Haggar collapses. Apparently she can read the beads, because they tell her he needs to collect berries that grow only on Arus. Lotor is skeptical, thinking maybe she just wants him to fight Voltron. Haggar also does a little wheeling and dealing--she'll serve Lotor just as faithfully as she did Zarkon.
Lotor assembles his robot troops, and Zandra appears with a beaker full of the Rosebeast formula. Lotor leaves in his battle cruiser.
On Arus, the team is overseeing the construction of a new school. Allura, Nanny, and the handmaidens go into the forest to pick berries. Neil Ross and Michael Bell are forced to provide voices for the handmaidens. Ugh.
Lotor applies the rosebeast formula to a stand of dead trees. If the scene with the crabby apples trees in the Wizard of Oz scared you as a kid, this'll give you the willows.
In the forest, the princess and the others know something is wrong when they hear a noise like the bionic man. Allura sees a flock of birds fleeing the forest, and urges them to leave. Too late, the treebeasts are in upon them.
Keith sees the birds circling over the forest where the princess is. Keith brings Hunk and Lance with him, leaving Pidge to guard the children.
The trees close in on them, surrounding them by forming an evil hedge, and threatening them with scary flower monsters. Then Lotor appears, standing on the branch of a giant tree. He sees that Allura has already collected berries, but Keith and the others arrive just in time. Keith sends Allura back to the blue lion and rescues Nanny.
Lotor, who has done some pratfalling in the meantime, sends the plant beasts to follow them, and rendezvous with his flagship in the batplane. The treebeasts can fire beams from the flower heads. We see footage of the team entering the lions, but weren't all five of them already at the construction site?
Pidge is overwhelmed, holding off the three treebeasts by himself. The rest of the team arrives, and Lance tries to start a forest fire. Lotor orders the three beasts to merge into one. Keith orders them to fire magma missiles. All of this just makes the robeast angry. Pidge fires macrodarts from green lion's shoulder launcher, but he and the blue lion get caught and smashed together. A lot of flying and flailing ensues while the team tries to figure out how to get out of this chokehold. Keith orders Lance to dive at the beast's legs--he actually tunnels through the ground under it, knocking it over and freeing the two trapped lions. They form Voltron.
Voltron dropkicks the robeast, but it grabs him by the legs and spins him around overhead. He slams Volts to the ground a couple of times, and fires missiles out of its trunk. Hunk and Allura use the fire blasters, get Voltron free, then he forms blazing sword. Lotor leaves in defeat. No berries, no princess, no nuthin'.
In Zandra's lab, he plays with a cobra and then pours venom into a beaker. He threatens Zandra with it, then Zandra says he should tell Zarkon it's the berry juice of healing. Lotor does just that, but the cobra venom heals him. Lotor is awed and shamed. He's not going to be emperor anytime soon.
Footsteps in the Forest of Fear
The narrator tells us this the Galra Imperial Occult Science Research Lab. And Sincline's wizard is experimenting with the brain extract of beastmen. It instills lants with the souls of loyal half-beastmen. However, human souls are too strong, so more experiments are needed. Then a messenger appears to tell them Daibazaal has collapsed. He also announces the arrival of three physicians. This is serious Chinese folktale stuff to me--not any specific tale, but the idea of the tyrant struck ill, his sorceress driving away real physicians, his conniving son . . .
Honerva's invocation is to the god of Galra, and she uses the El roy mu el roy mu chant again. The god reveals to her that he needs the fresh blood of a human girl (who doesn't?!). That puts a slightly different spin on things vs. the berry juice in Voltron.
Yep, when we get to Altea, definitely all of the lions are at the building site. We also get a female-vocal ballad in the background. Huh. This is new for this series. They're picking raspberries, and apparently the forest is recovering after Daibazaal's invasions, or something, because Hys just abou has a heart attack looking at the raspberries.
Sincline urges the beastman souls to possess the trees and bring him suitable victims for a blood sacrifice. Very lucky that there's a bunch of chicks picking raspberries not far away. This time, they hear giant footsteps instead of the 6 Million Dollar Man sound. The handmaiden's voices aren't much better in this version, even considering that they've actually got actresses for the roles.
What is with the bumbling of Sincline in this episode? Kogane knocks him over and he hangs off the tree branch before flopping senselessly to the ground. In a scene that doesn't really get played for comedy. I mean, Kogane trying to haul Hys through the trees is sort of comical, but it's not emphasised.
The plant beasts combine into Giant Beastman Treeder. Yep. TREEDER. This is an example of Japanese children's shows using English words to actually represent some quality of the character they're naming, but still sound exotic.
The green lion shoulder weapon is called the "green knives." Other weapons are the black bazooka, yellow bazooka, and blue claws. I bet you can figure out what lions those come from. And they form to the fantastic sounds of Foh-mation VEE!!!
When Treeder grabs Golion by the legs, Kogane is translated as saying "Oh, crap!!" Then he orders a Grand Fire attack.
Sincline cuts the head off the Galra cobra, the poisonous king rade, and pours it into the beaker, then forces his scientist to drink it. He dies twitching. Sincline laughs, then decides to offer this to Daibazaal. When Diabazaal drinks it and gets better, Sincline says "father truly is the devil embodied!" Also, this is the first time we've seen Daibazaal bareheaded.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment