Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics/Protect the Soccer Field

The title of this episode always makes me laugh.  'Cuz, y'know, it's all futuristic and in outer space and the villains are pointy-eared purple guys who use giant monsters as weapons.  And they have to fit the scripts to match someone else's animation and story planning.  So the opportunities for lampooning current events are limited.  G.I. Joe mocked the Soviet Union, Africa, and South America, Transformers mocked Qadaffi and the Soviet Union, all of the Sunbow series including Jem and Inhumanoids mocked Geraldo Rivera.  I'm pretty certain that WEP was playing with the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA when they called this one "Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics."

Doom Boycotts the Space Olympics

As Arus continues to recover under Voltron's protection, the planet has been honored by being selected to host the space Olympics.  The Voltron force and a bunch of Arusian children are tasked with building the stadium.  They have a massive . . . um, construction machine piloted by Hunk and the kids.  The kids ask Hunk why Doom is boycotting.  Because they're communists, Tommy.  The kids daydream about playing soccer.

While the team is in the bunkhouse taking showers, Allura and Nanny walk in on them.  Later, they all sit down to eat.  A kid who looks a lot like Tommy from the earthquake episode is actually named Denny here.  And Nanny spits while she talks.

On Doom, Lotor and Haggar are looking at a stolen diagram of Voltron.  Lotor is thinking that they could implant a computer brain in Voltron and take him over.  Haggar explains that Voltron's solar energy would melt the computer.  Instead, Haggar proposes implanting a computer brain in the giant construction vehicle.  He launches in his flagship and approaches Arus.

The kids and the team are sleeping in the bunkhouse.  Hunk smacks Denny in the face, who gets up and sees a bright light in the sky.  This is Lotor's flagship as it launches the neural guidance capsule into the construction machine.  Denny runs into the bunkhouse calling for the team as the robeast spreads a neural net through the machine.

The team looks at the machine.  Keith tells him that he was half asleep.  There's nothing like the understanding of your peers and mentors.

Lotor orders the robeast brain (this is one of those purple and green multi-eyed robeasts the Medusan petrified) to take control.

As the engine starts up, the team runs back out, just in time to see the machine crush the bunkhouse.  Pidge jump onto the bulldozer bucket and climbs up to the control cab, where he sees no one driving it.  Then the bucket dumps him to the ground.  The machine rolls on, smashing through the stadium and the gymnasium, then stops.  Keith surmises it's the work of Lotor.  Pidge again volunteers to do the dirty work.  He jumps into the cab and tries to shut it down.  Lotor gloats and orders the robeast to keep smashing stuff.  Pidge tries to stop it, but it . . . um, gradually rolls to a stop.

Allura and Coran have been watching this in castle control.  They also surmise that it's Lotor.

The next morning, the children are sitting in the cab while Pidge and Hunk are examining the engine.  Denny is upset no one listened to him.  Then the machine starts up again and Pidge and Hunk fall out.  The kids are trapped, buckled into their seats.  The team runs from the marauding machine.  Coran and Allura see this happening, and the princess launches in blue lion.  The machine dumps dirt on top of the team.

The arriving blue lion surveys the situation, then Lotor appears on her communications screen, taunting her with the image of the trapped children.  The flagship approaches blue lion as Lotor tries to convince her to join him.  She refuses, and the flagship opens fire.  Allura dodges and washes the dirt away to rescue the team and free the kids from their seats.  Allura picks up the team in blue lion's paw.

The cab glass was shattered by blue lion's water attack, but Lotor orders the robeast to close the glass again before the children can escape.  Meanwhile, the team launches in their lions.

The robeast operated machine spins around in circles with the kids aboard.  The team arrives and discusses strategy.  Keith scans it, and finds the robeast brain.  Hunk peels off to rescue the kids.  The team fires some animation-errored shoulder missiles while Hunk jumps onto the machine on foot.  The lions land on the machine and bite it as a distraction.  The lions block the machine from driving, and Hunk shatters the glass.  As he carries them to safety and prepares to jump it overpowers the lions.  They regroup and block it again, giving Hunk and the kids the chance to jump clear.

Lotor commands the robeast to fuse fully with the machine and turn it into a freaky looking front-end loaded monster.  The team forms Voltron in response. 

The robeast uses the pile-drivers as missiles.  Voltron dodges, then lands and wrestles hand-to-bucket with the 'beast, and then throws it.  In a move that's a total Soul Calibur combo, Voltron forms the blazing sword and finishes off their own earth-mover.

Optimus Prime explains that the lions are now tasked with building in the absence of their corrupted and destructed earth mover.  The day before the Olympics, the children plays soccer with the team.

Are these kids supposed to be the same three from the haunted castle episode?  Also, watching the series this way, I'm really beginning to believe that Suzuishi/Pidge is a lot more of a central character than I ever noticed before. 

Protect the Soccer Field

This time, the soccer field is simply being built as a charity project for the children of Altea.  Seidou describes the machine a combination bulldozer, piledriver, and dumptruck.  He bonds with the children.

Woah, we aaalmost get a Kurogane buffalo shot.  Ah, the Japanese and their total lack of fear of nudity.  Haha--in the dinner scene, Fala offers to stay the night with the children.  Hys puts an end to this, and Kogane explains that they need someone to stay on watch.

The dialogue between Sincline and Honerva is pretty much the same here as in Voltron, but there are enough visual cues that WEP didn't necessarily have a translated script.

The beastbrain beastman is in a capsule similar to, but modified from the ones the previous mecha beastmen were launched in.  And when he sees the beastman landing, the kids has got out to pee.  God, americans are such puritan pukes.  It's no more than what god gave us!!  (Name that reference).

The computer bits of the machine look an awful like contemporary circuit boards.

Sincline is incensed when he sees the Golion team standing outside and watching the machine.  He's upset that any Altean device to stand up to blackdeath beastman power.  Then the machine starts up.  Kogane guesses it's Galra even earlier than Voltron--the moment the bunkhouse is trashed.  When Suzuishi jumps in the cab and pulls on the brakes, Sincline orders the beastman to be clever and lull them off their guard--that's when it stops.

That is an awesome shot when Sincline's ship approaches blue lion as she hovers in the air.

Kogane uses an x-ray and ultrasonic internal scan to find the mecha beastman.  Then Seidou peels off without orders, but the team covers admirably.  I'm pretty sure the blue and black lions' attacks are some kind of animation error--there aren't the usual missile launchers, they just launch directly from the lion's torso blocks (rather than the white jointed parts of the shoulders, where the launchers usually form). 

Seidou manages to jump from a serious height with all three of the kinds climbing on him.

The machine becomes a full beastman once the brainbeast has full control of him.  And he's got a big pi symbol on his chest.  Most of the mecha beastman have the greek letters for which they are named emblazoned on them somewhere.

Since Seidou just saved the kids, he gets honored when the team gattais to the yellow lion theme.

As per their usual tactics, Kogane moves the fight away from the soccer field.  This might be something of a . . . trope?!

One of the animators must love cats.  The way the lions are animated as they reconstruct the stadium, especially green lion, really looks like real cat behavior.

Apparently soccer was really popular among Altean kids.