Treasure of Planet Tyrus/The Demon's Birthday

Here's another of my favorite episodes.  This one makes up for the evil space mice.  It's got a unique plot, we see more of the Doom/Galra Empire, and our heroes actually plot against the baddies for once.

Treasure of Planet Tyrus

A meteor shower and Planet Tyrus--explained to us that it's a refreshing vacation destination for evil types.  And some more H.R. Gigir architecture.  The blue cat gets a "lava bath" and Lotor gets a massage.  Then Zarkon calls in and scolds Lotor, who's supposed to be guarding the treasure ship on the way to planet Doom.  He also tells Lotor that there's a gold statue of Lotor on board.  Lotor swears to protect the ship.

How ironic, 'cuz we immediately cut to the ship crashing into asteroids and belching flames.

At castle control, Coran looks like he's playing DJ, but he's actually listening to a distress signal from a ship near planet Tyrus.  Apparently Zarkon stole stuff from Arus last week.  They launch to try to recover it.  Since only a treasure ship would be heading to planet Tyrus.  The lions streak past meteors until Pidge picks up a signal in the North Quadrant. 

They find the ship derelict.  They enter through a hole in the hull and begin exploring.  Keith and Lance do a bit of a SWAT team entry.  (This one reminds me of "My Brother the Robeast" in some ways, which we all know is another favorite).  The team SWAT's their way right into the room with the gold Lotor statue.  They restrain Hunk from shooting at the statue. 

Cheddar appears, and actually serves a purpose in this episode--I don't categorically hate the space mice (the way I hate Nanny no matter what she does)--in some episodes they're actually pretty cool.  Like this one.  Cheddar leads the way to a massive treasure chest and some "unconscious" guards.  Pidge finds a massive key to the gold chest.  Hunk opens the chest, revealing a treasure haul that looks a lot like the treasure from Ghost Castle.  Allura realizes that they needed all of the treasure for special medicine for Arus from planet Syban.

Cheddar runs to a portal and gets their attention as a Rooster Frigate appears.  Wow.  Space mice are better than radar.

The Frigate harpoons the treasure ship (which is massive).  As the Doomites are boarding, red lion "atomizes" and melts its way into the statue.  A contigent of Lotor's Doom troops enters the chamber with the giant statue.  Keith, in the uniform of a palace guard, stumbles out and convinces the captain that they will continue to guard the treasure.  (The guard captain is one of the Prussian-looking red uniformed ones).

The Rooster Frigate has magically morphed into Lotor's flagship.  Oh well.  They hall the treasure ship back to Tyrus.  The ruler of Tyrus (I missed his name) pours Koolaid for Lotor, Haggar, and himself.  The guard captain appears and tells him the treasure is ready.  The Voltron force appears all in guard uniforms and stumble when opening the chest, arousing Lotor's suspicions.  Lotor yells at the guard captain and draws his sword, then threatens to unmask the guards.  Keith does a backflip onto the chest and rips off the uniform.  The rest of the team follow suit, weilding the guards' swords.  Lotor sends a swarm of other royal guardsmen acter them, and we get a bunch of animation errors and the guards change from royal guardsmen, the blue-skinned soldiers, and the gray troops. 

Lance falls down a trap door into a chamber full of troglodyte zombies, Pidge, Hunk, and Allura are held at gunpoint, and Lotor corners Keith with his sword.  A new huard captain arrives and tells Lotor the celebration is ready.  In the dungeon, Cheddar chews an escape route for Lance, who evades the zombies.

The team is tied to stakes while Lotor watches fireworks and tries to ply Allura with the red lava juice of Tyrus.  She manages to get a knife to start cutting her bonds.  The ruler of Tyrus  (Ah, his name is Count Zaida) tows a gigantice cake.  Cheddar burrows out of the cake (Lance had told him to plant one of Pidge's grenade somewhere.).  Gray soldiers wearing helmets appear with torches to set the team on fire, but Count Zaida says they should torture them by eating cake in front of them.  Lotor walks over to the cake but it explodes.  Lance burns ouf of the statue in red lion.  The rest of the team has been freed by Cheddar.  Haggar lays down some covering fire for Lotor with the guns of the flagship.  The ship lifts off.

The team get back to the rest of their lions and form Voltron.  They smash into the ship and cripple it before forming the blazing sword.  Voltron hacks his way into the ship.  As it goes up in flames, Lotor and Haggar flee in an escape ship, leaving Count Zaida.  The ship crashes into the Giger palace and explodes.  Voltron watches the palace burn.

We return to Allura kissing Lance.  Again.  And Coran says they got enough valuables back to pay for the medicine.

The Demon's Birthday

The planet is called Walbrane.  That's right--Walbrane.  Interestingly, it looks a lot like Galra from orbit.  Maybe Daibazaal initiates a program of Galra-forming as they conquer planets.  I haven't been mentioning what happens before the title card very often, but in this episode, I like the fact that they set up Sincline and Honerva on Walbrane before the title card.  Oh, and Honerva is bathing Jaga in blood.  My parent's cat would probably enjoy that, too.

The ruler of Walbrane is King Walbrane.  It's probably some royal convention that saves time-pressed and lazy staff writers.  It's revealed that this is Sincline's 106th birthday.  Which leads to a weird chronological problem later on.

The Golion team are wary that the SOS from the treasure ship may be a trap, but they decide the best way of dealing with it is to go spring the trap, just in case.  I like this ship design.  And its sheer size.  Platte is pretty awesome in this episode.  And, when red lion melts into the statue, we get the first view of the lions' inner workings--some sort of energy lines going into a central crystal thing.  The design is a little different in this episode, but we'll see a lot more of it in the next show.

In some shots, the sky of planet Walbrane looks like it has some fancy aurora borealis stuff going on.  The Walbranians actually come out to celebrate Sincline's birthday.  Since they're all dressed like King Walbrane, they're probably the royalty who've benefited from a relationship with Galra.  There's probably some oppressed civilians hidden away somewhere . . .

Sincline totally kills the Red Army commander for not suspecting the royal guardsmen are actually the Golion pilots.  In fact, the ensuing battle is pretty gruesome, with the team hacking up guardsmen pretty enthusiastically.

Oh, hey, Kurogane meets up with some guys who certainly look like oppressed masses to me.  Red Army soldiers apparently find four of the lions hidden in the treasure ship.  And they are totally using pickup trucks to unload the treasure ship.

And, this time around, when Platte blows up the cake, we don't have to sit through dumb dialogue about angel food and devil's food cake.  And, we probably shouldn't worry too much about how Kurogane got back in red lion with it buried inside the statue.  Fittingly, they form Golion to the red lion theme.

Sincline leaves King Walbrane to get crushed by debris as the flaship crashes into the Giger palace.  Take that, king stupidname!!