Lotor's New Hitman
We are treated to a dogfight between different Doom fighters. Zarkon, Lotor and Morgil are all watching the precision flying team, who are nothing like the team they had when Lotor was at the academy. Then a new red fighter appears and shoots down the remaining red--er, green and yellow fighters (gods, the first time they have a recolor of this animation model, they screwup coloring the old versions). The new arrival takes out the other fighters, then buzzes the royalty and lands in from the king. We see a the way these fighters can land on, um, land.
Carp, the pilot, leaps out and antagonizes Morgil while impressing Lotor and Zarkon. Morgil threatens him with a scimitar, but Lotor and Zarkon agree to give him one of Haggar's robeasts to pilot to defeat Voltron.
In Haggar's lab, Carp looks at the new robeast and finds it wanting--wanting to be red, and to have more windows. Haggar doesn't do windows, but she does change it to red. And lowers Carp into the head inside a cockpit pod thing..
Lotor's flagship, accompanied by fighters, launches the big capsule with Carp's robeast. It slams into the surface of Arus, then transforms into a rolling high-speed tank mode. It trashes the Arusian town, and Carp cackles and gloats. Lotor watches from his bridge and gloats. Arusian townspeople scatter at the rampage.
The team watches the attack in castle control. They launch the lions. Carp's robeast smashes some buildings in its bipedal mode, then folds up and rolls away. Keith and Allura put out the fires and rescue a kid trapped under wreckage. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance take off after Carp. Hunk follows him into the tunnel, while Pidge and Lance take some alternate dimension shortcut and beat them to the other end of the tunnel. Carp pulls away from Hunk, the tears off over red and green lions, turning into a flying mode. Green lion pounces, but the flying mode uses wing-wind to blow Pidge back. Hunk knocks Carp back, but he recovers and takes off. Hunk recalls Keith and the princess from the town and they form Voltron.
Voltron chases Carp, reaching Mach 9. Carp suddenly plunges into a rocky canyon, forcing Voltron to chase him between the narrow walls. Keith can't steer, and grinds Voltron's leg arm against the wall. They crash, with Pidge unconscious and green lion damaged. Carp taunts them some more, and Keith prepares the lion head attack. As Carp circles overhead, they launch the lion heads. Voltron uses laser guidance, and all four heads miss. And the team members' visors change color. Lotor recalls him and they return to Doom.
At an officer's party, a red army soldier reports that Carp demands to join the party. Morgil protests, but Lotor allows him in Carp drinks blood wine offered to him by a bellydancer. He makes a mess of himself. Morgil is jealous of Carp. He doesn't like this development. Lotor alludes to a plan to destroy Voltron.
Green lion is being repared. Keith figures out that Carp had used the tunnel chase to test the lions' maximum speed. Somehow yellow lion in a tunnel told him how fast the lion head attack would be. Just then, Carp returns and strafes the castle. The team rushes out of green lion sickbay into castle control. They launch the lions. Again. Then they form Voltron. Again. This time, the formation uses the Golion intro footage. They chase Carp around in the mountains again. Hunk claims they've apparently come up with all kinds of spead they're now holding back.
Then Lotor launches electric space mines. Carp weaves his way out of the minefield that has trapped Voltron, and begins detonating the mines again. Voltron separates. They use tornado, sand, and water attacks to clear the mines, then reform Voltron. This is three times we get a combination sequence. Were they short on story, or time, when making this episode?!
This time, rather than launching the lion head attack from standing, Voltron starts flying, planning to launch the lion heads at Mach 10. The lion heads catch up to Carp, punch holes in his robeast, and return to Volts. They form blazing sword, and that's it for Carp. Morgil chuckles at Carp's demise. Lotor hopes he'll land safely on planet Gloom, but crashes in an explosion that would have decimated the planet. Voltron leaves Arus' atmosphere and dpoes a victory lap in space.
Space Speed Demon
Gibra, who's usually named Gobra, is called Gibra in this episode. Which is funny, because he's usually called Mogor in Voltron, but is called Morgil in this one. Even though Morgil is the name I remember and the one I've been using, even in episodes when he's Mogor. Anyway, Gibra is in charge of the Galra Air Force. Their maneuvers are no match for Golion.
The talented pilot with a flair for red is Reggar in this episode. He wears a unique uniform, and looks like he might be the same race as the rest of Galra, but is kinda weird looking, And he does this creepy thing with his eyes. And he wants Gibra's job. At Honerva's lab, Reggar and Gibra do some more bonding before Honerva recolors the beastman and Reggar is docked in Mecha Beastman Mu Reggar's head.
It should be no surprise that there is far more Altean death in Reggar's attack this time around, should it?
When they chase Reggar into the tunnel, Kurogane is surprised that the mecha can fly, since they've only seen it rolling until now.
Still. How do green and red lions make it to the end of the tunnel by flying over the mountain the tunnel goes through? And where does this tunnel go? What's it for?
Reggar is hitting more than 500 kph in the tunnel.
We get an instrumental elevator music version of all the lion themes for the first gattai sequence of the night.
Kogane tries to locate Mu Reggar with the laser sensor. Whatever that is.
OK, seriously, how can flying robots with no discernible engines or thrust go mach 10?
In this version, Gibra is mad because Reggar shouldn't be allowed to leave the beastman cockpit. At the party, we get more brief shots of the bellydancers and more weird Galra . . . officers. Royalty. Whatever these guys are.
Keith's and Kogane's dialogue matches pretty closely about the lack of operator error and how they've gone over data from the fight. And then Keith's veers away when Kogane explains, quite succinctly, that the four lion attack goes at mach 10 while Reggar accelerated to mach 15. Then Reggar returns and they form Golion to Fo-ma-shun VEE!!!
Reggar's laugh is ridiculous.
I do like those space mines. That was a cool idea. They escape from the mines in a reverse Y formation. W-aahhh!?! Oh, you can see it in the last shot just before they combine again. And in none of these combination sequences did they use the opening sequences, always the standard white-lightning combination (the intro sequence has yellow lightning).
It's awful convenient that the mecha beastmen just uniformly stand there, paralyzed, after getting hit with the four lion attack. And Reggar doesn't crash on planet Gloom. He just gets vaporized. And then the sun rises over Altea.
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