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matt_zimmerAlso a review for the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "The Rise Of Voltron"
I understand this series is beloved. So before we continue I want to assure you fans that my lukewarm review of the Pilot is not intended to dismiss or look down on your love. What you have to understand about this "passable" review is that you've seen more of this series than I have. I will not be shocked if it turns into a good show, sooner rather than later. But as I write this review, keep in mind I have not witnessed that yet. I am not going to tear down your fandom based on one episode. That is a common internet critic move (always performed by the bad ones) and it's not one I will be doing.
First impressions:
So far, the characters are majorly unlikable, particularly Lance. His behavior towards Princess Allura borders on gross (although I enjoy the fact that she think his ears are messed up).
I like Kimberly Brooks' voice as Allura.
The animation is good, but it's early so they haven't gone all out yet. I didn't expect them to.
As far as a new science fiction franchise goes, one in which I had never seen the original version, the aliens and planets were very accessible and easy to understand. The worst thing about a new sci-fi franchise is having to learn and memorable dozens of new different alien species and planets not found in other franchises. As far as the Pilot went, we basically met two major aliens to start off with. I don't feel suffocated or confused by that.
The mice: Oh, my God. That was awful. I don't even know what they are doing with that. Maybe it's some tribute to anime I am unaware of? Here's an unpopular opinion: A ton of cutesy anime actually SUCKS. Western writers should not be beholden to these kinds of dumb tropes if they are the ones writing the material.
I liked the visual gag of the snake Lion. I think they were intentionally channeling the Human Centipede with Robot Lions which is subversive. Maybe kids didn't make that connection, but I laughed.
I was not a big fan of that. Yet. Give me time. ***.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Some Assembly Required"
As far as second episodes go, that was all right. The characters are still annoying, and the food fight was stupid, but I've seen worse sophomore efforts from better shows.
I like that Keith and Lance actually crashed playing chicken. Didn't expect that.
I really enjoy the fact that the villains seem scary. She-Ra has some villains that should have been spooky too, but the cartoony stylized designs mitigated that a bit. Here the designs are just detailed and cinematic enough to be properly creepy and frightening.
Still not fully on-board the show but I'm getting the hang of it. ***.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Return Of The Gladiator"
Pidge is Katy? I always thought his design looked very feminine.
I could have told Pidge Shiro must have attacked Matt to protect him. I knew it the entire time. He should have asked me.
The bad guy mecha has an interesting look. It's very interesting that the Voltron Force don't seem to have any idea what they are doing when they are first fighting it.
I can't tell if the Erusians are cute or merely annoying. A problem with many of the characters on this show. Maybe a little from Column A and a little from Column B.
I personally found the Erusians' turnaround from believing Voltron is a monster sent from the Heavens to attack them to instantly accepting Allura's assurances that he was their protector instead far too quick to be remotely believable. That's not how entrenched political beliefs work, especially since these ones have a tinge of religious fervor to them. In reality, upon hearing that Allura controls the robot they should have been heading for the exits until Voltron proved himself to them. This is not something they simply should have taken Allura's word for.
Getting better. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Fall Of The Castle Of Lions"
The one-armed bat-lookin' alien with the detachable, light-up, electric arm is pretty dope.
I'm questioning the deal with Pidge, which is good. Is he transgendered and identifies as a male? If so, Allura is trying to bond with him all wrong. Or is Katy simply covertly "Yentyling" to be able to join an all-male space academy? Either scenario would be interesting.
The mice continue to drive me nuts. What is wrong with this show? It's like it somehow makes a far-fetched premise seem almost believable. And then the psychic cartoon mice show up and destroy that utterly, and I throw up my hands in despair. She-Ra did a LOT of cartoon stuff all things considered. But it never did anything as dumb as the mice, and the premise was more grounded for it.
Coran is a surprisingly good pilot. But not TOO good. He still crashes.
For the heroes to lose this spectacularly, this early in the show's run, tells me tough times are ahead. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Tears Of The Balmera"
So Pidge isn't transgendered, she's incognito. Still having a hard time believing the haircut and glasses fooled that doofy commander.
It was a good episode though. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Taking Flight"
I like how little drama was actually involved in Pidge revealing to everyone else she was a girl.
Lance is not only annoying, he's an idiot.
To be honest, I felt Hunk was perfectly justified in taking the victory lap he did for his "I told you so."
The aliens and robot in the episode had neat designs. The female was kind of pretty but still looked wholly alien.
These episodes are decent as they go along but I have yet to see anything that knocks my socks off, which definitely happened by She-Ra's 8th episode. I'm starting to be a little concerned. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Return To The Balmera"
It's really interesting that this is the first time in a few episodes that Voltron has actually appeared. I like that unlike Power Rangers, this show doesn't live or die by the mecha formations.
Nice character development that after Shay's brother initially blames Hunk for her capture he actually correctly realizes it was his fault.
I enjoyed Zarkon putting the ambitious general in his place.
Again. A good episode. But it's episode 9. We still haven't had a great one. That's a problem. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Rebirth"
Not feeling this one. I liked the animation in the battle at the end but I didn't find much of the rest of the episode credible.
I didn't find Allura's rallying the Balmeras and trying to convince them to join her all that altruistic to be honest. It struck me as a bit self-serving, especially since their only path forward to her were as soldiers for HER war. Luckily things turned out better for all involved but I didn't find Allura "refusing to give up" on the Balmerans tenacious. It seemed a bit selfish.
I also don't believe that speech would have moved every single Balmeran in the cave for a second. Political differences of opinion in societies DO exist. The only common thing about people everywhere is that they can't agree on anything.
Hunk treating the ground as a pet dog was embarrassing. That's the kind of scene a kids show does that I don't ever want to have an adult friend watch with me because they'll think I'm an idiot for watching a show with something that dumb in it. Do you know what's weird? It's been awhile since I've felt that icky feeling on a kids show if you don't count Power Rangers. I guess kids have just been lucky with most modern stuff. Not Hunk in this episode though.
Not great. **1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Crystal Venom"
Not quite a great episode yet. But it was close.
A combo haunted house / the ship goes crazy episode? All in.
I loved the scene of Sendak getting into Shiro's head! It alarmed me a little, truthfully.
I think Allura's goodbye to her father was moving. In fact it was probably more moving that it should have been because it was just an AI construct.
I feel like the episode ended too suddenly, and didn't give us a good beat or line to go out on.
But this was the best episode so far. ****.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Collection And Extraction"
Again. ALMOST great. Not quite.
Allura is quite a competent adventurer. I'm wondering why the others thought she wouldn't be. I suspect rank sexism. She's also surprisingly physically strong too.
The direction and animation in the quiet moments of Shiro and her sneaking around the base was very good. Lots of little beats and low-key movements to make it entirely credible.
I like that Shiro was cunning enough to correct the pronunciation of the alien who he was pretending to be's name after Allura says it wrong. It actually makes the guard Allura is trying to fool think he's legit. Very smart tactic.
The disappearing alien bad guy in the cloak Keith was fighting was spooky.
I'm coming around. Slowly but surely. ****.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "The Black Paladin"
That was excellent!
The visual effects in the space battles were fantastic. Quite a few bad guy ships got asploded so this show actually showed real death.
The climax was exciting, throwing complication after complication at the heroes. I think Keith did surprisingly admirably well in his battle with Zarkon. I was impressed.
Great finale. *****.
Star Trek: Discovery "People Of Earth"
Unlike the first two weeks I didn't love it. But I was sort of able to sit back and absorb what was going on to get a better feel for it.
Burnham and Book not being a ship strikes me as nothing but pure stubbornness on both of their ends. I think they believe (correctly I might add) sex would turn their extraordinary friendship ordinary. Is that something worth risking? And if that happened, is that actually all right? Are they making their friendship a bigger deal in their heads than it actually is? To be determined.
Good news and bad news on the Trill. The idea that it's a human hybrid sort of goes with the idea that Trill Symbionts were always a LOT easier to insert and use than the higher ups on Trill ever wanted the public to believe on Deep Space Nine. While it's sort of consistent with that conspiracy, I don't like it because it devalues what makes that SPECIES unique to begin with. It was still a good twist to make the character Admiral Tull.
The bad thing is she's essentially a female Wesley Crusher. And don't give me lip for branding a capable woman as a Mary Sue. This is not toxic masculinity speaking. She is literally a kid who is smarter than and running rings around the adults. If she WEREN'T a Trill she'd be unbearably insufferable. As it stands, she is merely bearably insufferable.
The last shot of Earth was interesting because it looked like things had barely changed. I feel that's okay. I mean we have been promised flying cars since the 1950's. But the reality is the landscapes of our cities and towns have been somewhat static since the 1940's and WWII, and I think it's totally possible that Earth designs and buildings may have merely stopped at the 22nd and 23rd Century building and vehicle designs. But hey, Boothby's tree is bigger, and there are spaceboats in the Frisco Harbor, so things ARE a little different!
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that Earth left the Federation. Speaking as somebody living in America in 2020 I can totally believe an "evolved" Earth's response to the Burn is "We can take care of ourselves." That's totally believable, if entirely outside of Gene Roddenberry's beliefs and message. But I like this season of Discovery and the last season of Picard because they are tweaking and revising that message to speak to modern audiences. Here is my idea of good Star Trek: Showing humans working their problems out and doing the right thing because it makes the most amount of sense. Here is my idea of bad Star Trek: Humans do the right thing because humanity is inherently good and genetically evolved to the point where temptation to do the wrong thing doesn't exist. That was pretty much Roddenberry's entire tenure on TNG until his death, and you know what? I think it's a lousy moral. One of the coolest things about Star Trek to me is showing how and why working together and using diplomacy solves problems. For The Next Generation a lot of the conflict was gutted because the humans were ALWAYS right and supposedly genetically perfect and evolved from their mistakes. I don't care about or believe in a future in which humans somehow genetically shed "badness" only 300 or 400 years in the future, as if evolution speeds up randomly for virtuous species. What I care about is a future society of people who want and CHOOSE to do the right thing, not because their species has evolved to the point where it's the only thing they know. But because it's what they want and what they choose to do. I want to believe in a future society where we learn from out mistakes because we still make them. The idea that humans magically evolved away from racism, greed, and hatred in only 300 years is not science fiction. It's fantasy. It doesn't follow any scientific example of evolution that ever existed. And I like the imperfect humans this season and on Picard because Star Trek is now plausible to me. The future it shows does not strike me as occurring through magical thinking. Realistic behaving humans, makes a bright future for humanity easier to believe. Why Roddenberry didn't know or understand this himself is something that has confused me ever since I started watching the shows religiously in the 1990's. I think if you want to create a sprawling epic about the future psychology of humanity, you should at least understand how real-life people actually work, right?
For those who hate these Kurtzman shows and believe Eugene Roddenberry is hurting his father's legacy by signing off and producing them, I think it's just the opposite. You can argue about the quality of the shows. You can rage against the sloppy, infuriating continuity mistakes. But I think the new shows solidified Gene's legacy simply by showing the best of humanity more realistically than he did. I can barely watch most of the run of Next Gen, Enterprise, or Voyager without thinking almost all of the characters are a bunch of squares. You do not have to have every single person be perfect to portray a good future for humanity worth fighting for. I found the future of much of the first five Trek series besides Deep Space Nine cold, boring, and lifeless. And I don't feel that about the new shows, whatever their faults.
I also never understood the point of synthahol. It tastes like alcohol but doesn't get you drunk? Why would anyone drink that? Another unbelievable thing Roddenberry did NOT think through.
I'm not going to give this episode a rave review or a blockbuster grade. It felt very much like sort of a break before the season truly gets underway. But I want anyone who hates this show to understand that as bad as the continuity is, it's doing more for the legacy of Star Trek than Voyager and Enterprise ever did because I believe in this future, and I believe it's a place we can get to. And I think that's best thing any Star Trek show can do, and that's why I enjoy this one. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "The Rise Of Voltron"
I understand this series is beloved. So before we continue I want to assure you fans that my lukewarm review of the Pilot is not intended to dismiss or look down on your love. What you have to understand about this "passable" review is that you've seen more of this series than I have. I will not be shocked if it turns into a good show, sooner rather than later. But as I write this review, keep in mind I have not witnessed that yet. I am not going to tear down your fandom based on one episode. That is a common internet critic move (always performed by the bad ones) and it's not one I will be doing.
First impressions:
So far, the characters are majorly unlikable, particularly Lance. His behavior towards Princess Allura borders on gross (although I enjoy the fact that she think his ears are messed up).
I like Kimberly Brooks' voice as Allura.
The animation is good, but it's early so they haven't gone all out yet. I didn't expect them to.
As far as a new science fiction franchise goes, one in which I had never seen the original version, the aliens and planets were very accessible and easy to understand. The worst thing about a new sci-fi franchise is having to learn and memorable dozens of new different alien species and planets not found in other franchises. As far as the Pilot went, we basically met two major aliens to start off with. I don't feel suffocated or confused by that.
The mice: Oh, my God. That was awful. I don't even know what they are doing with that. Maybe it's some tribute to anime I am unaware of? Here's an unpopular opinion: A ton of cutesy anime actually SUCKS. Western writers should not be beholden to these kinds of dumb tropes if they are the ones writing the material.
I liked the visual gag of the snake Lion. I think they were intentionally channeling the Human Centipede with Robot Lions which is subversive. Maybe kids didn't make that connection, but I laughed.
I was not a big fan of that. Yet. Give me time. ***.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Some Assembly Required"
As far as second episodes go, that was all right. The characters are still annoying, and the food fight was stupid, but I've seen worse sophomore efforts from better shows.
I like that Keith and Lance actually crashed playing chicken. Didn't expect that.
I really enjoy the fact that the villains seem scary. She-Ra has some villains that should have been spooky too, but the cartoony stylized designs mitigated that a bit. Here the designs are just detailed and cinematic enough to be properly creepy and frightening.
Still not fully on-board the show but I'm getting the hang of it. ***.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Return Of The Gladiator"
Pidge is Katy? I always thought his design looked very feminine.
I could have told Pidge Shiro must have attacked Matt to protect him. I knew it the entire time. He should have asked me.
The bad guy mecha has an interesting look. It's very interesting that the Voltron Force don't seem to have any idea what they are doing when they are first fighting it.
I can't tell if the Erusians are cute or merely annoying. A problem with many of the characters on this show. Maybe a little from Column A and a little from Column B.
I personally found the Erusians' turnaround from believing Voltron is a monster sent from the Heavens to attack them to instantly accepting Allura's assurances that he was their protector instead far too quick to be remotely believable. That's not how entrenched political beliefs work, especially since these ones have a tinge of religious fervor to them. In reality, upon hearing that Allura controls the robot they should have been heading for the exits until Voltron proved himself to them. This is not something they simply should have taken Allura's word for.
Getting better. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Fall Of The Castle Of Lions"
The one-armed bat-lookin' alien with the detachable, light-up, electric arm is pretty dope.
I'm questioning the deal with Pidge, which is good. Is he transgendered and identifies as a male? If so, Allura is trying to bond with him all wrong. Or is Katy simply covertly "Yentyling" to be able to join an all-male space academy? Either scenario would be interesting.
The mice continue to drive me nuts. What is wrong with this show? It's like it somehow makes a far-fetched premise seem almost believable. And then the psychic cartoon mice show up and destroy that utterly, and I throw up my hands in despair. She-Ra did a LOT of cartoon stuff all things considered. But it never did anything as dumb as the mice, and the premise was more grounded for it.
Coran is a surprisingly good pilot. But not TOO good. He still crashes.
For the heroes to lose this spectacularly, this early in the show's run, tells me tough times are ahead. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Tears Of The Balmera"
So Pidge isn't transgendered, she's incognito. Still having a hard time believing the haircut and glasses fooled that doofy commander.
It was a good episode though. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Taking Flight"
I like how little drama was actually involved in Pidge revealing to everyone else she was a girl.
Lance is not only annoying, he's an idiot.
To be honest, I felt Hunk was perfectly justified in taking the victory lap he did for his "I told you so."
The aliens and robot in the episode had neat designs. The female was kind of pretty but still looked wholly alien.
These episodes are decent as they go along but I have yet to see anything that knocks my socks off, which definitely happened by She-Ra's 8th episode. I'm starting to be a little concerned. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Return To The Balmera"
It's really interesting that this is the first time in a few episodes that Voltron has actually appeared. I like that unlike Power Rangers, this show doesn't live or die by the mecha formations.
Nice character development that after Shay's brother initially blames Hunk for her capture he actually correctly realizes it was his fault.
I enjoyed Zarkon putting the ambitious general in his place.
Again. A good episode. But it's episode 9. We still haven't had a great one. That's a problem. ***1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Rebirth"
Not feeling this one. I liked the animation in the battle at the end but I didn't find much of the rest of the episode credible.
I didn't find Allura's rallying the Balmeras and trying to convince them to join her all that altruistic to be honest. It struck me as a bit self-serving, especially since their only path forward to her were as soldiers for HER war. Luckily things turned out better for all involved but I didn't find Allura "refusing to give up" on the Balmerans tenacious. It seemed a bit selfish.
I also don't believe that speech would have moved every single Balmeran in the cave for a second. Political differences of opinion in societies DO exist. The only common thing about people everywhere is that they can't agree on anything.
Hunk treating the ground as a pet dog was embarrassing. That's the kind of scene a kids show does that I don't ever want to have an adult friend watch with me because they'll think I'm an idiot for watching a show with something that dumb in it. Do you know what's weird? It's been awhile since I've felt that icky feeling on a kids show if you don't count Power Rangers. I guess kids have just been lucky with most modern stuff. Not Hunk in this episode though.
Not great. **1/2.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Crystal Venom"
Not quite a great episode yet. But it was close.
A combo haunted house / the ship goes crazy episode? All in.
I loved the scene of Sendak getting into Shiro's head! It alarmed me a little, truthfully.
I think Allura's goodbye to her father was moving. In fact it was probably more moving that it should have been because it was just an AI construct.
I feel like the episode ended too suddenly, and didn't give us a good beat or line to go out on.
But this was the best episode so far. ****.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "Collection And Extraction"
Again. ALMOST great. Not quite.
Allura is quite a competent adventurer. I'm wondering why the others thought she wouldn't be. I suspect rank sexism. She's also surprisingly physically strong too.
The direction and animation in the quiet moments of Shiro and her sneaking around the base was very good. Lots of little beats and low-key movements to make it entirely credible.
I like that Shiro was cunning enough to correct the pronunciation of the alien who he was pretending to be's name after Allura says it wrong. It actually makes the guard Allura is trying to fool think he's legit. Very smart tactic.
The disappearing alien bad guy in the cloak Keith was fighting was spooky.
I'm coming around. Slowly but surely. ****.
Voltron: Legendary Defender "The Black Paladin"
That was excellent!
The visual effects in the space battles were fantastic. Quite a few bad guy ships got asploded so this show actually showed real death.
The climax was exciting, throwing complication after complication at the heroes. I think Keith did surprisingly admirably well in his battle with Zarkon. I was impressed.
Great finale. *****.
Star Trek: Discovery "People Of Earth"
Unlike the first two weeks I didn't love it. But I was sort of able to sit back and absorb what was going on to get a better feel for it.
Burnham and Book not being a ship strikes me as nothing but pure stubbornness on both of their ends. I think they believe (correctly I might add) sex would turn their extraordinary friendship ordinary. Is that something worth risking? And if that happened, is that actually all right? Are they making their friendship a bigger deal in their heads than it actually is? To be determined.
Good news and bad news on the Trill. The idea that it's a human hybrid sort of goes with the idea that Trill Symbionts were always a LOT easier to insert and use than the higher ups on Trill ever wanted the public to believe on Deep Space Nine. While it's sort of consistent with that conspiracy, I don't like it because it devalues what makes that SPECIES unique to begin with. It was still a good twist to make the character Admiral Tull.
The bad thing is she's essentially a female Wesley Crusher. And don't give me lip for branding a capable woman as a Mary Sue. This is not toxic masculinity speaking. She is literally a kid who is smarter than and running rings around the adults. If she WEREN'T a Trill she'd be unbearably insufferable. As it stands, she is merely bearably insufferable.
The last shot of Earth was interesting because it looked like things had barely changed. I feel that's okay. I mean we have been promised flying cars since the 1950's. But the reality is the landscapes of our cities and towns have been somewhat static since the 1940's and WWII, and I think it's totally possible that Earth designs and buildings may have merely stopped at the 22nd and 23rd Century building and vehicle designs. But hey, Boothby's tree is bigger, and there are spaceboats in the Frisco Harbor, so things ARE a little different!
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that Earth left the Federation. Speaking as somebody living in America in 2020 I can totally believe an "evolved" Earth's response to the Burn is "We can take care of ourselves." That's totally believable, if entirely outside of Gene Roddenberry's beliefs and message. But I like this season of Discovery and the last season of Picard because they are tweaking and revising that message to speak to modern audiences. Here is my idea of good Star Trek: Showing humans working their problems out and doing the right thing because it makes the most amount of sense. Here is my idea of bad Star Trek: Humans do the right thing because humanity is inherently good and genetically evolved to the point where temptation to do the wrong thing doesn't exist. That was pretty much Roddenberry's entire tenure on TNG until his death, and you know what? I think it's a lousy moral. One of the coolest things about Star Trek to me is showing how and why working together and using diplomacy solves problems. For The Next Generation a lot of the conflict was gutted because the humans were ALWAYS right and supposedly genetically perfect and evolved from their mistakes. I don't care about or believe in a future in which humans somehow genetically shed "badness" only 300 or 400 years in the future, as if evolution speeds up randomly for virtuous species. What I care about is a future society of people who want and CHOOSE to do the right thing, not because their species has evolved to the point where it's the only thing they know. But because it's what they want and what they choose to do. I want to believe in a future society where we learn from out mistakes because we still make them. The idea that humans magically evolved away from racism, greed, and hatred in only 300 years is not science fiction. It's fantasy. It doesn't follow any scientific example of evolution that ever existed. And I like the imperfect humans this season and on Picard because Star Trek is now plausible to me. The future it shows does not strike me as occurring through magical thinking. Realistic behaving humans, makes a bright future for humanity easier to believe. Why Roddenberry didn't know or understand this himself is something that has confused me ever since I started watching the shows religiously in the 1990's. I think if you want to create a sprawling epic about the future psychology of humanity, you should at least understand how real-life people actually work, right?
For those who hate these Kurtzman shows and believe Eugene Roddenberry is hurting his father's legacy by signing off and producing them, I think it's just the opposite. You can argue about the quality of the shows. You can rage against the sloppy, infuriating continuity mistakes. But I think the new shows solidified Gene's legacy simply by showing the best of humanity more realistically than he did. I can barely watch most of the run of Next Gen, Enterprise, or Voyager without thinking almost all of the characters are a bunch of squares. You do not have to have every single person be perfect to portray a good future for humanity worth fighting for. I found the future of much of the first five Trek series besides Deep Space Nine cold, boring, and lifeless. And I don't feel that about the new shows, whatever their faults.
I also never understood the point of synthahol. It tastes like alcohol but doesn't get you drunk? Why would anyone drink that? Another unbelievable thing Roddenberry did NOT think through.
I'm not going to give this episode a rave review or a blockbuster grade. It felt very much like sort of a break before the season truly gets underway. But I want anyone who hates this show to understand that as bad as the continuity is, it's doing more for the legacy of Star Trek than Voyager and Enterprise ever did because I believe in this future, and I believe it's a place we can get to. And I think that's best thing any Star Trek show can do, and that's why I enjoy this one. ***1/2.
