Flash Form Go!

Lance, Allura and Hunk seal a volcanic mountain on a farming region of Arus, but Pidge finds that no volcano was responsible: something has been punching identical holes in mountains, forests and lakes across the planet. It is a probe hunting for the Lions' dens, and it moves at Hyper Mach 3, faster than any Lion has flown. Lance takes the Red Lion after it with Daniel tagging along, diverts power from the shields, and ends up with a damaged Lion that is emitting a homing signal.

When the probe smashes into the Lions mid-formation, Daniel points out that Voltron takes 36 seconds to assemble. He and Vince secretly link his Voltcom speed power to the Red Lion, which angers Lance and Keith but yields a clear image of the probe, a giant eye. At the Castle the Force uses Flash Form to combine instantly, and Daniel's speed sharpens the Blazing Sword for the kill.

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 Maahox / Farmer Barmy: Ron Halder

"A cool band name?" -- Lance

"I'm so fast, I'm already in next week high-fiving you because we kicked its butt." -- Lance

"Look, I've been Voltron's biggest fan since I was a kid." -- Daniel

"You really think the bad guys are gonna say, Sure, you go ahead and become the defender of the universe." -- Daniel

"This is the lion. This is you crossing the line." -- Lance

"We clearly have different definitions of the word awesome!" -- Vince

"All Daniel wanted to do was help the man he admires most." -- Allura

"Your time in the Red Lion is far from over." -- Allura

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.

Voltron assembles itself the same way every time, to the same chant of interlocks, dinotherms and infra-cells. It takes a cadet who grew up a fan to notice how long that takes. "Flash Form Go!" is built on a flaw nobody on the team has had cause to examine, because nobody had ever tried to exploit it.

Everything before the idea is competent. A cold open has Lance, Allura and Hunk sealing a lava-spitting mountain by combining fire, water and earth, with Lance asking whether that makes them "A cool band name?" Then Pidge's scans find that something is boring identical holes into mountains, forests and lakes across Arus. The team works out that it is searching the planet for the Lions' dens. The probe is faster than any Lion has flown. Lance takes the Red Lion after it, with Daniel tagging along to watch him set a speed record, and promptly reroutes the shield power to his tail thrusters. It is a familiar bad idea carried out by a proud pilot, and the Red Lion's systems fail while the probe starts homing in on it.

The episode is about expertise as a kind of blindness. Voltron gets caught half-assembled and thrown around. When the pilots argue back at the Castle, Daniel offers the fact he has been sitting on: he has timed the formation, and it takes 36 seconds. Someone points out, reasonably, that for a robot that size this is not long at all. Daniel's reply is the best line in the script: "You really think the bad guys are gonna say, Sure, you go ahead and become the defender of the universe." Both of them are right, and the script knows it, even conceding that it is strange no enemy has attacked mid-formation before now. The Force never saw the flaw because the routine was theirs; the outsider who loves Voltron saw it from outside.

Lance is the trouble, and it is to the writers' credit that he is not the villain of his own episode. His objection is never that Daniel is wrong, but that Daniel is a cadet and the Red Lion is his. The training-room scene, where he fights a Lotor hologram and tells Daniel "This is the lion. This is you crossing the line," is a man defending a seat rather than making an argument. The standout is the scene by launch bay 1. Allura puts a hand on his arm and tells him that Daniel only wanted to help the man he admires most. Lance asks whether she thinks he is being a jerk, and she answers "Your words, not mine." Then she gives him the way out: "Your time in the Red Lion is far from over." It is kind and quick, yet it does not let him off.

The weakness is shape, and by the time Allura gets to Lance, the same argument has run three times, with Lance lecturing Daniel in the sim room, then Lance and Keith shouting after the flight, and now this. A pilot's suggestion of hoagies for lunch is welcome relief in the middle one, but the story stands still while the characters rehearse a quarrel the audience settled early. The secret test flight, where Vince is pinned in his seat and declares that they "clearly have different definitions of the word awesome," is the funniest thing in the half hour, and we wish it had more room. [1]

The finish pays off the setup cleanly. [2] The eye hammers the Castle and Voltron forms in a single beat at the call of "Flash form, go!" Then the speed earns its keep twice, first to assemble the robot and again to put an edge on the Blazing Sword for the final cut, and we cheered at that! Lance's apology in the sim room stops short of a full one, which is the right size.

Daniel's speed gets a job the veterans cannot do, and the cost to Lance is real. Making the veterans learn from the newest pilot is a plot rather than a gimmick.

1 ^ Daniel's Voltcom mark flares white on his wrist during the flight (about 14:18), the visual cue that his speed power is active.

2 ^ The formation chant is spoken in full at 7:53 and again at 8:44, after the probe has broken up the first attempt.

1. Fans on the Voltron wiki point out that iTunes lists this one as "Flash Forms A Go!", while the title card says "Flash Form Go!". The title is also the in-story call: Daniel's turbo-speed Voltcom power lets the team shout "Flash form, go!" and assemble Voltron in a blink. It sticks around. In "Predator Robeast" it's "Daniel, power up." "Flash form!" "Go!", and by Black the verdict is "Voltron is all Flash Form all the time now."
2. Daniel's stopwatch figure is oddly checkable. He says he has timed the formation at "36 seconds", and on the dialogue clock Joyride To Doom runs from "Activate interlocks" (16:11) to "I'll form the head!" (16:47), and The Hunkyard from 2:42 to 3:18. That is 36 seconds each time. (Hungry for Voltron gets from the same two lines in about 21.)
3. "It's never happened. This is what you call a first." Voltron fails to form at all, and the full preamble ("Activate interlocks... Mega thrusters are go") plays twice in the middle of the fight, with a suggestion to "skip the preamble". The cadets take that advice literally in Rogue Trip, where the answer to "Don't we need to slow down for some sort of activate interlock spin?" is "Nope."
4. Hyper Mach is a speed scale that only this episode uses. The probe moves at "Hyper Mach 3", "We've never even pushed one of our lions past Hyper Mach 2" (followed by a pointed "Yet."), Lance claims "Hyper Mach 2, which I believe you said was impossible", and Daniel and Vince clear it with a "Hypersonic Boom!"
5. There is a running bowling gag. The probe's mystery holes get "Could be a giant stray bowling ball", then "I got a strike once. On the wrong Lane.", "I'm still voting bowling ball", and finally "Turns out, not a bowling ball." Bowling shows up again in Dradin, Baby, Dradin with "Not the diamond encrusted bowling lanes!"
6. Lance sneers, "Remember, I was the red lion while you were still playing with your Voltron toys." Daniel's reply is "my last action figure didn't get all snarty on me". He also says he has been "Voltron's biggest fan since I was a kid", the very claim Dudley makes in Rogue Trip, where the cadets get to see what that looks like from the other side.
7. When Daniel asks Vince to help him take the Red Lion out in secret, Vince's answer is "You know what happened last time. Lance and Keith will go supernova on us." It reads like a nod to Joyride To Doom, where the cadets took three Lions without asking.
8. Flash Form Go aired on Thursday, July 21, 2011, the fifth Thursday after the Trilogy premiere, and the title narration ("Evil is back...") does not turn up until about 2:35, later than in any other episode that has it except Black.

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