Coran, Coran

A science briefing about new tail weapons for each Lion is cut short by a distress call from Coran that breaks off on Wade's name. A rescued Coran, weak but insistent, tells the Voltron Force that Sky Marshall Wade has seized control of the Alliance and is building an army at a secret base on Tarvos. The five original pilots go to destroy it, leaving the cadets in the castle with Coran nominally in charge.

At the base Wade reveals that Coran is hanging captive inside it, and the pilots split up to reach him as the moon's core destabilises. Back at the castle, Daniel and Vince plan a secret lair and Larmina leads them into the catacombs, where the Coran they have been trusting turns out to be a robot carrying a bomb. Vince, guided by a hologram of King Alfor, finds he can raise a blue shield, and the castle survives.

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

Keith: Giles Panton Lance: Andrew Francis Allura: Ashleigh Ball Pidge / King Alfor: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Coran: Ron Halder Sky Marshall Wade: Garry Chalk

"Trapped in the belly of the base, you might say." -- Wade

"So, the great Commander Keith's sharp military wit is just figuring that out now." -- Wade

"What does bickering like teenage boys prove we need?" -- Allura

"How do we know that's the real Coran in there?"

"If that is the real Coran, who did we leave back in the castle?"

"Larmina, darling, is that any way to speak to your dearest royal advisor?" -- The robot Coran

"Don't you speak with his voice!" -- Larmina

"Are we really gonna argue over who makes the noble sacrifice?"

"The robot is the bomb." -- King Alfor

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.

Every team that has been apart for a while needs a test. The fourth episode of Voltron Force picks an unusual one, a trap built out of the pilots' own decency. Sky Marshall Wade does not have to outgun the original five. He has to let them hear that Coran is hanging in the belly of a moon base, and the rest takes care of itself.

The setup is brisk and tidy. A science briefing runs through a new weapon for each Lion's tail, from a freeze ray in the Blue Lion to "boomer blades" in the Green, and it ends on a distress call that breaks up on Wade's name. A rescued Coran then demands to be taken straight to the control room, weak but determined. He explains that Wade survived the Robeast attack, has taken over the Alliance and is building a force on Tarvos. Keith announces that he will lead, Lance objects that cutting off discussion is not a team thing, and Allura ends the quarrel by asking what bickering like teenage boys proves they need. It is a good little exchange, because it states the episode's problem out loud: these pilots have forgotten how to work as a team.

Wade's trap works because the Force's loyalty is predictable, and the script lets him say so. "You wanted us here," Keith realises, and Wade cannot resist replying that the great commander's sharp military wit is only just catching up. Garry Chalk plays him with relish, and we could listen to him gloat all day! When he later tells the Lions they have entered his hunting grounds, he is only describing the plan. The rescue becomes a test of whether the team will walk into a trap it can see. The episode's answer, after one sensible pause, is yes. As they split up somebody asks how they know it is the real Coran in there, and somebody else asks who they left behind in the castle. [1] The questions are fair, but the pilots go anyway; nobody pretends this is clever.

Downstairs, the cadets are the ones who actually catch the impostor, and they catch him because Daniel is rude. A couple of hours earlier Coran could not stay conscious at the controls of a fractal, Daniel points out, and now he is wandering the catacombs. For once, Daniel's lack of tact is the only security the castle has! The standout moment comes next. The robot, sneering behind a red mechanical eye, calls Larmina "darling" and himself her "dearest royal advisor" in Coran's own voice. She answers with the best line of the episode: "Don't you speak with his voice!" Her fury is personal, and it gives a fight in a stone passage more weight than the Lions get from all their stalking through teal corridors. [2]

The weakness is Vince. His shield arrives by hologram, delivered by King Alfor with the promise that there is much to teach him and the warning that this journey is his alone. A moment earlier Vince was complaining that all he had to show for his power was headaches, and a few minutes later he is standing behind a wall of blue light. The idea is good, since it gives a quiet cadet a use no pilot has, but it needs more runway than one episode slot with two plots in it could give. [3]

Set against the season, this is where the adults and the cadets stop living in separate shows. The two plots share nothing but a robot with Coran's face, but each group learns the same thing from opposite directions: the people you are annoyed with are the ones who come back for you. Lance and Keith arguing over who gets to make the noble sacrifice is the funniest proof of it, and Keith's closing admission that it was a spectacular rescue is earned. A fast, solid episode.

1 ^ Both questions come at about 10:04 and 10:09, and neither speaker is clearly identified. The castle Coran is first seen in the long corridor at about 7:59. 2 ^ The Lions creep through the teal corridor from about 12:11, and at 12:54 the Green Lion is shown dragging cables behind it. 3 ^ "The robot is the bomb" is said twice, once by Alfor's hologram at about 15:56 and again at about 17:27, when the scene cuts back to the catacombs. The second use is the one that lands.

1. The title is the twist, and the episode lets us enjoy it for a while: there are two Corans. The one the Force carries home refuses a checkup ("No. You will take me to the control room.") and turns out to be the bomb, while the real one hangs far down a corridor of the Tarvos base. Both teams catch on at about the same time. Daniel wonders how a Coran who "couldn't even stay conscious at the controls of a fractal" is exploring the catacombs, while on the moon someone asks "If that is the real Coran, who did we leave back in the castle?"
2. This is the first episode with the "Evil is back" narration, which then opens the other 22 after it. It aired on Thursday, June 23, 2011, a week after the premiere movie, as the first of the weekly episodes. The narration arrives right after a cold open that cuts off on "Wade..."
3. King Alfor makes his first appearance of the season here, as a hologram in the catacombs, and he singles out Vince. In Lion Riders Return Allura says she has seen her father too ("And I sense I'm not the only one"), and he turns up again in Rogue Trip and in the finale, Black.
4. Coran's distress call is cut off on Wade's name in the first minute. A call from Coran is cut off again in Black, and this time Maahox is the one who answers, "Coran was calling to inform you that I have begun my greatest experiment."
5. Daniel and Vince decide they need a secret HQ, "Kind of like the den, but cooler", and settle on "the lair". The gag has legs. The Hunkyard has two of the cadets saying they should be using the lair for something more important, Black reveals it to the older pilots as "our secret cadet lair", and "Do we really still need a secret meeting place" is a line in Deceive and Conquer. The den they are copying is the one introduced in New School Defenders.
6. "Team bonding" is a running gag with its own bookends. "Team rebonding it is" settles an argument, "Might as well make this team bonding official" goes with the Voltron formation, and the rescue ends with "So... Team bonding." The word comes back in The Hunkyard, which is built around "Cadet Bonding Day", and in Rogue Trip it is the answer to where Keith is.
7. The target is "Wade's secret base on Tarvos", and in New School Defenders Keith's hunt for a Wade base ends with a course set for Tarvos, a moon of Saturn. Keith says "I've been inside Wade's base before, so I'll take the lead", which fits, though nobody says outright that it is the same base.
8. The tail weapons unveiled in the opening briefing (a freeze ray for Blue, a precision laser for Red, a demolition tail for Yellow and boomer blades for Green) are not mentioned again by any other episode. The only tail talk later is two pilots stuck in rubble arguing about "a faster rate of fire" versus raw power.
9. The formation call is complete here, with an extra "Ultra Force!" tacked on at the end that we do not hear in any other episode. Compare Rogue Trip, where one of the cadets asks whether they need to "slow down for some sort of activate interlock spin" and decides on "Let's Voltron!" instead.

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