The Sand People/The Sand Planet of Death

Voltron has been to the end of the universe and essentially resurrected from the dead.  They are now actively allied with the fleet of planet Pollux and have a resistance force in place on planet Doom.  So, now they go to Tatooine and free the Jawas.  No, really.

The Sand People

Nighttime on Arus.  An alarm awakens Allura.  Keith and the rest of the team join her and Coran in the control room.  Coran has received an SOS from his old friend professor Sarwa on the sand planet, who warns of a plot to capture the sand people and turn them into robeast.  Coran urges them to go to his aid.  A big change from the days when he'd refuse to allow Voltron to leave. . .

Haggar explains her plot to supersuze the sand people.  Zarkon says his horoscope has advised him to be nasty.  "Round 'em up!" he says.

The team arrives on Tattooi-er, the Sand Planet--in their lions.  Making their way through high-altitude sandstorms, they land on Arrakis and split up to search for Dr. Sarwa.  Keith finds some unusual tracks and begins to follow them.  Allura finds a dried out river bed.  Lance looks over the desert from a cliff.  Hunk talks about food.  Pidge's lions sniffs along the sand.  Green lion sits down, and then sees light glinting off a spacecraft entering the atmosphere.  It's a skull ship.  A tower emerges from the sand--it's got that usual Doom architecture.

As green lion moves in for a closer look, sandworms suddenly jump out and start unscrewing green lion's joints.  A mysterious stranger on a desert tauntaun appears and tells Pidge to electrocute the sandworms.  It works.  "HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE"--nevermind.

The stranger introduces himself to Pidge as Professor Sarwa.  He explains that this is Lotor's staging area.  Keith joins them, having tracked Sarwa's tauntaun tracks.  He takes them to his lair, a giant desert mushroom.  Sitting around the camp fire, Sarwa explains the situation, surrounded by, um, oil.  really.  Sarwa agrees to lead them to the sandpeople, but they must ride taunta--unicorses.

The sand people burrow out of the ground and act all cute.  Allura names one Sandy and she gives him an Arusian bracelet.  Sarwa is glad the sand people like them.  Ugh.  Hunk must be filling in for Nanny when it comes to the embarassment quotient this episode.

Lotor's flagship flies overhead.  The sand people scatter and dive back into the sand.  The flagship lands.  He deploys sandtanks to go scoop sand people out of the sand.  The team, back in their lions, take off/  The sand people come out of the sand and try to run, but some get captured.  The team begins destroying the tanks.  Keith and Lotor argue over the radio a little bit.  Lotor's ship takes off and he orders the tanks to fire on the lions.  Lotor's ship fires blue fireballs (like the ones the very first robeast used) and knock out the lions.  The tanks take off using boosters and rejoin Lotor's command ship.  He fires a missile that causes a sand-wave to bury the lions.

Lotor takes the sand poeple to a lab.  Sandy--naturally--is supersized and branded with an S.  A more different S.

Meanwhile, yellow lion is leading the team through a tunnel to reach Lotor's base from below.  A soldier sees the lions on the screen and tells Mogor, who has a totally different voice (he sounds more like Cossack will in later episodes).  He goes to warn Lotor just as the lions break through.  Footsoldiers fire on them with small arms, but it doesn't go so well.  The tower emerges from the sand, flames erupting from it.

Lotor's ship takes off, and the supersized Sandy confronts the team.  The team all have rescued sand people in their cockpits.  Allura tries to reason with Sandy--apparently, the robeasting process also makes the bracelet bigger.  Sandy huffs and puffs and blows the lions back.  This reminds me of Dig Dug or some other weird 80s arcade game.

They form Voltron.  This won't end well for their little friend.

They do some pro-wrestling in the sand, and Sandy punctures Voltron in the crotch with his digging claws.  Lance sees the more different S glowing, and they determine that it's controlling him.  Voltron does some more pro-wrestling and rips the S off.  One of Lotor's officers informs him that robeast control has been lost.  Lotor flees in his command ship.  The team stands over the . . . sleeping Sandy.  And then Optimus Prime tells us that Sandy will recover and Voltron restored peace to Arakis.

The Sand Planet of Death

Yep.  Alarm.  Middle of night.  Sand planet.  He's called Dr. Harvard here.  Fala seems to have some familiarity with the sand people.

Honerva explains that the sand people are robust, due to living in a harsh environment (y'know, like Fremen), but they're too nice.  She can give them devil hearts to make them mean.

Dr. Harvard explains that the sandworms were introduced by the Harkon---er, Galra.  See?  All of Galra's ecology is evil.

The sand tauntauns make a horrible, repetitive noise that's almost as bad as the noise made by the bird dinosaur thing Obi-wan rode in Revenge of the Sith.  You know, the frilled lizard thing that could run as fast as General Greaves' unicycle?

They make some jokes about Seidou being a douchebag and Suzuishi being short.  Then Sincline comes and the oohs and the ahs are replaced by running and screaming.

OK, I'm going to interrupt myself here--I understand the purpose of this episode is to establish that Golion is now building alliances in their fight against Galra.  But--Gahhh!!!  This episode is stoopid.  It's evil space mice melting the computer room stoopid.  There had to be some contemporary show that the showrunners were mocking or parodying here--the pro-wrestling moves in the fight, the desert planet cliches--some of the stupid in this episode has to be in-jokes or something. 

Things I do like--in the fight with the sand tanks, they take care to animate the lions firing their customery weapons.  And the artillery on Sincline's flagship is a callback to the blue fireballs of the first beastman.  And I guess the sand tsunami bomb is the kind of ordnance a space military like Galra would carry when going to the Sand Planet.  But does Sincline really think Golion will be buried prermanently?  I mean, they're just buried in sand.  He's seen the lions take much, much more.

Sand uses a pretty conventional monster roar when supersized.  He sounds like Slimer in the first Ghostbusters movie.

OK, so where exactly is the sand mushroom Dr. Harvard lives in relative to the evil sand-tower?  Because in that fight it looks pretty nearby.

When yellow lion breaks into the tower, the footsoldiers open fire on him, and he just immolates them with fire breath--that looks pretty awesome.

They weirdly can't tell that Sand is the robeast, even though he LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE HE DID BEFORE.  Just bigger.  I guess that's a case of the animators drawing him for the audiences benefit.

Seriously, the sandpeople have to be a parody of something else, with the inhaling sand and then blowing the lions around--it's like from some dumb video game.

The team is far more harsh in dealing with Sand this time around.  Kogane tells Fala to cut off her feelings for him.  Apparently, that line is enough to get the black lion theme song played while they gattai.

Oh, yeah.  Sand dies, too.