Brains

Pidge cannot reach his brother Chip or anyone else on Balto, the technology-minded planet of ninja scientists he comes from. The Voltron Force flies there and finds the city silent and the Boltons shuffling through the streets with glowing purple eyes, chanting "Brains!". Vince is sure they are zombies; Pidge insists they are infected people and refuses to let anyone hurt them.

The team is chased into a mall of exploding throwing stars, a Samurai Robeast demands a fight with Voltron, and Chip's trail leads to an underground lab. There Maahox is mining Bolton brains for information on Voltron's programming for Lotor, turning his victims into zombies as a side effect. Voltron takes up the Blazing Sword once Larmina plugs in her Voltcom, Vince reverses the machine, and Chip is found.

Voice cast, as credited on this episode's closing titles (role, then actor).

Keith: Giles Panton Lance: Andrew Francis Allura: Ashleigh Ball Pidge: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Lotor: Mark Hildreth Maahox: Ron Halder Chip: Gabe Khouth

"Maybe they're all indoors, doing science-y things."

"They're ninja scientist zombies!"

"I may not know how to stop zombies, but I know how to stop ninjas!" -- Pidge

"I like to call them smart stars." -- Pidge

"I take it back." -- Vince

"Do I need to mention the fact that zombies love dead ends?"

"Mining their brains for information." -- Maahox

"The ancient Boltons were responsible for the original programming for your precious Voltron." -- Maahox

"Voltron's story is getting more and more interesting."

Transcribed from the episode's subtitle track, which we checked against the audio, with misspelled names corrected. Speakers are named only where the dialogue or the picture makes them clear.

Everybody in this episode is right, and the script has the sense to let them all be right at the same time. Vince knows his zombie movies, and when a street of silent figures with glowing purple eyes turns round and chants "Brains!", his instincts are the correct ones. Pidge, on the other hand, has a planet to defend. These are Boltons, he says, they have caught something, and nobody is to lay a hand on them. He is right too, but the quarrel between the two positions runs most of the way down to the underground lab without either side quite winning it.

The quarrel is what the episode turns on, and the title is why it works. "Brains" sounds like the cheapest gag on offer, a cartoon pulling on a zombie mask, and for the first act it is just that. We get a neon ghost town, exploding throwing stars from ninjas in switched-on chameleon suits, and Vince reciting the rules of the genre as though he kept them laminated. Then Maahox, in his farm of glowing pods, tells Pidge what he is doing to the Boltons: "Mining their brains for information." The crowd was never hungry; it was being harvested, and the chanting is a side effect, which he calls small. The zombies are real in every way the cadets feared, but the reason for them is the reverse of what the cadets assumed. [1]

The standout is the mall, and it is the best stretch because it stops pretending to be a threat. The group keeps passing the same teenage couture shop. Vince concludes that it is a zombie trap where shoppers go in and cannot get out, yet someone replies that it is just a mall and that all malls are like this. Later Vince is separated from the rest, having broken what is described as one rule of zombie movies, a big one. Pidge steps in front of him: "I may not know how to stop zombies, but I know how to stop ninjas!" Vince asks, reasonably, about the single throwing star. The star turns out to be a smart star and goes through the pursuing Boltons like a grenade. Vince's "Ninjalicious!" is followed by the line the chase was built to deliver: "I take it back." He concedes at once and without sulking, and Pidge is allowed to enjoy it. We could have stayed in that mall for another ten minutes!

The giant-robot half is less sure of itself. Chip's apartment is empty, so Pidge keys his Voltcom to the signature of Chip's chameleon suit, which leads to a dead end that is secretly a lift. [2] Meanwhile the Samurai Robeast arrives with a speech about honour, announcing that beating the Lions at anything less than full power would be a disgrace. Voltron cannot match its hand-to-hand speed. Larmina proposes answering it with martial arts. The team says that is not in Voltron's bag of tricks, but Larmina replies that neither was the speed boost until Daniel came along and plugged in his Voltcom. It is a good argument, rooted in what the series has already shown. Then it is solved the way the speed boost was solved, by a cadet plugging in, and the Blazing Sword answers the Robeast's blade. Reaching for the same lever twice is forgivable; what hurts is that the duel never touches the lab where the story is. The two halves take turns instead of informing each other. [3]

What the lab does leave behind is a reveal that earns the title. The ancient Boltons did the original programming for Voltron, which is why Lotor wanted their minds in the first place. Maahox is about halfway through the job when Vince, of all people, is at a console reversing the effect. A static-filled face on a monitor tells Maahox his plan has failed again, Chip is found unharmed, and the rescuers remark that Voltron's story is getting more and more interesting. It is a hinge for the season rather than a highlight, a comic episode that ends on the uneasy possibility that Lotor may already know things about Voltron that its pilots do not.

1 ^ The cold open plays before the titles and contains the plot in miniature. Lotor arrives on a Balto with no one to greet him, says he has heard that its people hold certain information about Voltron, "His instruction manual, if you will", and tells someone they are going to hand it over.

2 ^ A flash inverts the colours of the apartment scene between 11:45 and 11:58, and the picture goes briefly negative.

3 ^ The subtitle track spells the scientist's name as Mayhawks throughout; the closing credits give Maahox, and we follow it.

1. Chip, Pidge's brother, makes his first appearance here, and he is not in any of the other 25 episodes. The episode aired Thursday, November 17, 2011. The next one did not come until Sunday, November 27, which skips Thanksgiving Day itself.
2. Fans on the Voltron wiki have asked why the Alliance never sent a scout when Balto stopped transmitting. When someone suggests "Maybe he's busy today," Pidge answers "It was a week ago," and once Keith checks, "There are no transmissions coming from Balto." That is the nitpick: a whole technology planet goes dark for a week and only the Force notices.
3. Maahox's lab spills a big secret: "The ancient Boltons were responsible for the original programming for your precious Voltron." Five Forged follows up when Pidge recognizes Balto's circuit patterns in the Path of Lions and says "We know my planet provided the technology for the original Voltron." The closing line calls Balto "yet another planet that had a hand in its creation."
4. Lotor opens the episode demanding Voltron's "instruction manual" and the Force's worry at the end is that Maahox got about halfway: "Lotor may know things about Voltron that we don't even know." The idea returns two episodes on in "Gary", where someone warns "He knows about Voltron's programming."
5. The zombie-movie rulebook is quoted constantly. A mall is "zombie 101", and when the group splits someone admits "I'm breaking like ten of the most basic rules of zombie movies." The answer: "No. Just one. But it's a big one! Don't. Get. Separated!"
6. Pidge's exploding throwing stars get the episode's best wordplay: asked "With one throwing star?", he says "I like to call them smart stars." The ninja thread runs back to Inside the Music, where the Green Center form is named "Tech Ninja Voltron", and here someone asks "Pidge, don't you always claim to be descended from... ninjas?"
7. The mall chase makes fun of its own scenery. They comment on the "same stores over and over again", someone spots "another fun, fun teenage couture outfit", and Vince decides it is a zombie trap. The reply: "Vince, it's just a mall. All malls are like this."
8. Haggarium infection gets a horror makeover here, with the Boltons shuffling along with glowing purple eyes. When Daniel's own eyes glow violet in Roots of Evil, it lands differently for anyone who remembers this episode.
9. While Pidge keys his Voltcom to track Chip's chameleon suit, the picture flashes into inverted colors for a moment in the dim apartment,.

Voltron Force, the 2011 continuation, in which the 1984 pilots take on cadets.