I love this episode. It's got the crazy subterrainean robeast, the plot to destroy Arus with earthquakes, and all of this is pretty much revealed through Pidge's POV as he figures out what's going on, rather than the usual third person omniscient approach.
Lotor Traps Pidge
Lightning, wind, and storms are buffetting Arus. Coran explains to us that people's houses are being blown apart. Keith and Allura view the scenes of destruction with Coran in castle control. Allura and Keith decide to mount rescue and anti-looting operations.
Zarkon is not impressed with Lotor's plan of using storms. But Lotor says he also has a megabomb. Zarkon brightens at the mention of a megabomb.
The team leads townspeople to safety. Pidge finds a boy surrounded by dead rabbits. Pidge accuses him of looting and eating pets. This devolves into a fist fight. Pidge, despite all of his space explorer training, is distracted when he's hit in the head with a dead rabbit. He chases the boy into the woods until a trap snaps shut on his foot.
The boy returns as Pidge struggles with the trap. He releases him with a stick. His name's Tommy. Seems to be a common name on Arus. They see a wild boar caught in a trap. Then they see some Doom soldiers who pick up the boar and lug it off somewhere. Pidge goes to warn the team, but can't walk on his trapped foot.
At Tommy's house, Pidge calls castle control, but before he can explain who they saw, an earrrthquake! destroys Pidge's communicator. Tommy is apparently caring for his injured mother. Tommy leads Pidge outside to look at crevasses that have opened in their fields.
Underground, Lotor is driving a giant drill machine to a staging area where he will plant the megabomb. He explains this to Zarkon and Haggar when they call him, and claims he has no intention of capturing the princess. As soon as they hang up, he looks at his plans to capture the princess. No, really. He's got them written down on a map.
Pidge and Tommy can hear the drilling below ground. Meanwhile, Lotor fantasizes about destroying each one of the lions and the castle itself. He even blows up a room with an orange chair. And then he fantasizes riding in a carriage with Allura and, um, standing in front of a lot of Doomites with Allura while he's dressed in Zarkons king cloths. Then he returns the reality and starts drooling over the megabomb. He calls a Red Army soldier a moron.
Back in castle control, the team is concerned that they cannot find Pidge. Keith comes up with the innovative idea to search for him in the lions.
Pidge and Toomy are climbing down the crevasse on a rope. When they run out of rope, they just skid down the slope to find a tunnel full of Doom robots. Lotor puts on his helmet and declares it's time for the attack. He has a platoon of skull tanks take off through the tunnels. Pidge and Tommy watch them head for the castle. They run after them until Pidge can no longer run on his injured foot. Then Tommy helps him walk. Aw, they're bonding. They struggle through the tunnel until Pidge gets all I'm done for" 3PO style. Then Lotor finds them and calls them cave mice. Tommy calls Lotor a pointy-eared thug. Lotor gives Tommy a 10-count head start. He gets to two, and then gets bored at starts shooting at Tommy. He shoots him in the leg.
The team has assembled their lions outside Tommy's house. Tommy' s mom explains to them that they went underground. Hunk says some stuff. The lady cries. Then they see a light from the bottom of the crevasse, and footprints leading to the rope. Lance takes red lion makes his own tunnel.
Lotor has Pidge and Tommy tied to the megabomb. He gloats, then starts the timer. He leaves the two of them struggling, and then his lieutenant drives him to the invasion staging area where tanks and the drill machine are ready to drill to the surface. Lance detects the megabomb. He enters the bomb chamber and cuts Pidge and Tommy free. Lance stops the bomb timer. Kieth radios that Lotor's started his attack on the castle.
The skull tanks are doing a pretty good job against the castle defenses. Allura and Coran are in castle control as the castle starts to come down around them. On the main screen, they see Lotor order his infantry towards the castle. The three lions end the charge, then red lion drops of Pidge and Tommy. Pidge and Allura launch in their own lions.
Oh. The skull tanks don't do so well against the lions. Lotor calls his drill-thing the Spirocharger. Then he turns it into a robeast. The team forms Voltron.
The Spirocharger has a missile launcher in its torso. Voltron doges the missiles, then destroys the launcher with proton missile of his own. The spirocharger turns on its drills and flies at Voltron. Volts knocks him down with the spinning laser blade. It gets back up, so they form blazing sword and destroy it.
Lotor gloats that the megabomb is still ready to blow up. The castle looks a little worse for wear, but Coran shows Tommy that Voltron is throwing the megabomb out into deep space, where it may one day become a new sun.
Underground Operation
As they watch the storm in castle control, Fala, Kogane and Raible discuss the likelihood that Galra will stage an attack during the confusion. There's no sequence on Galra explaining that it's all an evel plan, as there is in Voltron.
Suzuishi is upset that the other boy is trapping and selling dead rabbits. This starts their fistfight and the chase. Then he steps in a trap. The other boy returns with a stick and releases him. He says he's not the one who set the trap. The boy's name is Mario. Then they see more than one dead trapped boar. It's what the Galra troops are eating while they're working on this operation.
I never noticed this before, but there are an awful lot of Suzuishi/Pidge-centric episodes. I think he features in more episodes than everyone else.
Mario and his mother explain that Mario traps the rabbits that damage their fields, and then sells them for medication for his mother's illness. The fissures caused by the earthquakes have destroyed their fields.
Sincline's first appearence in this episode is when he gets out of the drill machine and Daibazaal calls him to make fun of him for digging holes in the ground. Sincline shows him the bomb, and tells him he will set us up the bomb under Gradam. We also get the same basic dialogue that he doesn't care about the princess, and then instantly looks at his plan to capture the princess.
Sincline's fantasy about the destruction of Golion and Castle Gradam is over the top indulgent and graphic, with each member of the team writhing in flames as they die. And then the crazy marriage carriage with Fala and the wedding march playing in the background. Dude is nuts.
The Galra preparations are pretty extensive, suggesting they've been tunneling for a while. The chamber for the bomb is actually not just bare cave, but has the standard Galra "gray with blinky lights" architecture.
Also. The Black Army troops seem to for the infantry in this episode, while the blue-skinned Red Army soldiers are in tanks and the other vehicles. This is a continuation of the shift in Galra policy--now they're trying to undermine (literally, here) the integrity of Altean infrastructure. Going toe-to-toe with Golion doesn't work, trying to separate the lions and take them out one by one doesn't work, and finding weaknesses in Golion to exploit doesn't work. Now we'll just take out Castle Gradam and their entire support structure.
It's funny that both here and in Voltron the team is so hard pressed to reassure Tommy/Mario's mom. And that Hunk/Seidou has the biggest mouth.
I also like how red and yellow lions seem to be alternating diggin' duties. On earth it was red, when they needed to dig a well it was yellow, here it's red again.
See? That's a huge chamber they've built underground, on enemy territory. And that's a nifty vehicle Sincline's lieutenant drives him around in.
Kurogane uses metallic sensors to detect the giant bomb.
The Spirocharger is Mecha Beastman Delta here. They form Golrion to the black lion theme. Less fitting. I guess we don't here this one all that often.
This beastman really is no match for Golion. Its missile launcher gets taken out right away, and the space cutter puts an end to its flying days, like, right away. Then it just stands up and gets cleaved. So I guess it's probably good that this wasn't the primary part of the plan. Sincline escapes in the batplane. Where did he have that stashed?
Golion's eye flash weapon is good for bomb disposal, too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment