Hungry for Voltron

A lesson on tact opens the episode, and Larmina, who is sure Arus is the best planet in the galaxy, ends up cheering for it in a mock football-game exercise. A message then arrives over a long-disused diplomatic channel: Sypat, ruler of Ebb, wants an alliance and asks Allura to come in person, because his officers are afraid of Wade's fleet. The team calls it a trap, but Allura flies the Blue Lion to Ebb with Coran and Larmina anyway.

It is a trap. The Ebians are starving under Wade's blockade, and Sypat has agreed to lure her in as the price of relief. Wade sets the Blue Lion against a Waderoid in an arena for a live broadcast, with Larmina held beside him. The broadcast is jammed, the other four pilots form Voltron without the Blue Lion to break the blockade shield, and Ebb is freed. Manset arrives with food, and the team eats at the Ebians' table.

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

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

"Not tactics. Tact."

"Well, us Earthlings think Arus is number two, so do we get extra credit?"

"Maybe their culture has an early bedtime." -- Larmina

"Respect the weirdos." -- Larmina

"The courteous thing to do is eat it."

"We had no fuel, no supplies. We've been starving for months." -- Sypat

"You see, I knew how to make Sypat cooperate." -- Sky Marshall Wade

"Wow, hiding behind a girl. Did you learn that at tyrant school?" -- Larmina

"I think Wade's show is canceled."

"Diplomacy Voltron Force style kick butt!" -- Larmina

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.

Who is the better guest at a banquet on a starving planet: the princess who says the courteous thing is to eat what is served, or the cadet who will not touch it? "Hungry for Voltron" sets the question up as a classroom joke and then spends its running time letting both answers be right.

The cold open is a lesson in tact, not tactics. The class is reminded that the Voltron Force are representatives of Voltron and should be respectful of other cultures. Larmina, who is sure Arus has the best art and the best food, takes it as the speech she has been hearing for years. The exercise ends with her bellowing "Arus is number one!" at an imaginary rival crowd while someone points out that Earthlings rate Arus number two. She has just demonstrated the problem, so the episode must now test it.

It does so by sending Allura, the model diplomat, into a trap she has been warned about. A message arrives on a diplomatic channel nobody has used in years, from the ruler of Ebb, asking for an alliance and for her to come in person because his officers fear Wade's fleet. The team calls it a trap. She answers that the people of the galaxy must have hope, and takes the Blue Lion with Coran and Larmina to show that Voltron is back. It is brave and also what Wade bargained on, since he says later that he knew she would be naive enough to fly there.

The episode's spine is a reversal: Larmina is right about the food and wrong about the hosts, and the script lets her be both. The clues are planted as jokes. There are no lights in the base, a banquet nobody can identify, doors the guards lock once everyone is seated, and Ebians eating as if they have never seen food. Someone observes that it is not traditional cuisine, and Larmina's refusal to touch it, played for a laugh, turns out to be the correct instinct! Then the ruler explains himself, "We had no fuel, no supplies. We've been starving for months", and the banquet stops being a gag and becomes evidence [1]. The grown-ups counsel her to wait for all the facts, but she already has the facts about the dinner, and they have the facts about the man.

In the arena, the lesson becomes a weapon. Wade keeps Larmina beside him in his booth to discourage the Blue Lion from flying away, and she does what the opening scene tried to stop: "Wow, hiding behind a girl. Did you learn that at tyrant school?" It is the right use of her mouth, and we enjoyed watching it land on a villain who cannot resist narrating his own show. Allura and Coran take the Blue Lion out against a Waderoid with camera spheres hovering over the sand. Then the broadcast is cut short and the ruler is heard to be jamming the signal.

Meanwhile the other four pilots have to form Voltron without the Blue Lion, and the dialogue rehearses it as an engineering problem. Can it be done? Then comes the Blazing Sword, which is not enough, and Yellow Center with the wrecking maces, which drain the blockade shield but cannot break it. The answer arrives in a long stretch the subtitles leave silent [2].

The weak joint is the ruler himself. He lures the Princess in, is ashamed, confesses and sabotages his own bargain within a handful of scenes, so the change of heart is announced more than earned. A half hour that also holds a banquet, an arena and a four Lion Voltron is the likely reason. The story otherwise understands its subject; the villain is the blockade, not the Ebians, and the last scene puts Manset's food on the table and lets everyone eat!

Coming twelfth in the season, this is the episode that gives Larmina something to be right about. Her closing line, "Diplomacy Voltron Force style kick butt!", is half joke and half claim, yet the reply is "The young lady has great potential," followed by "I can only hope."

1 ^ The fan subtitles render the Ebian ruler's name several ways (Sir Pat, Cypat, Saipat, Psypat); the closing credits list the role as Sypat, voiced by the actor who also plays Pidge.

2 ^ The subtitles carry no dialogue between 19:28 ("What.") and 20:25 ("I call a fair fight."), so the solution is shown and not said.

1. Larmina's quarrel over food gets a payoff in Rogue Trip. Here a classmate tells her "I keep telling you, you've never had pizza on Earth," and she is sure her own planet's cooking wins. Three episodes later she is sitting in a diner booth on Earth, eating it.
2. Running gag: Larmina and butt-kicking. Allura says she wants her to see how diplomacy works, and Larmina mutters "And kick butt if things get out of hand." When Wade lays out his plans for the three of them, she answers "I hope those plans include my foot and your butt." The last scene gives her the final word when she is asked to add something about diplomacy: "Diplomacy Voltron Force style kick butt!"
3. Manset turns up in the last minute for one shot and one line ("I'm glad Manset could help us with the food supply"). Anyone who remembers him from Wanted and Unwanted, where he spends much of the episode eating bowls of green mush in a prison, can enjoy the irony that he is now the man delivering the groceries.
4. The feast is a trap that tells you so. Someone points out that the locals are "eating as if they've never seen food before," and asks "Is this where I mention how I noticed that the guards locked the doors after we sat down?" Then comes "Something stinks here, besides this." The closing joke is a dish that is "the best I've ever had." "Cause it's the only I've ever had."
5. With the Blue Lion stuck on Ebb, the other four form Voltron without it. "The Blazing Sword isn't as powerful without all five Lions," so it is Yellow Center and its Wrecking Maces. The lion-count joke is a running one: "We're three lions short" in "Joyride To Doom", and "one lion short of a Voltron" in Rogue Trip.
6. Wade has a lion at his side in the arena booth, and a brown lion yawns in the final shots of his defeat. A lion keeps turning up beside him: a brown lion stands in his trophy room in New School Defenders and later chases Daniel and Vince down a corridor, and a lion prowls beside him in Wanted and Unwanted.
7. The cold open sets up the whole episode with a pun. "Battle tactics?" "Not tactics. Tact." Larmina, who is sure Arus is the best planet in the galaxy, ends up cheering for it in a mock football game ("Arus is number one!") and a cadet answers "Well, us Earthlings think Arus is number two, so do we get extra credit?" She also gives herself a lesson at the banquet: "Right. Respect the weirdos."
8. Fans on the Voltron wiki have spotted that Ebb looks suspiciously like an Earth model, with the continents visible in the space shots. They also note that in the original 1984 series, Ebb is where Sven recovered from his injuries.
9. Hungry for Voltron aired on Thursday, August 18, 2011, the twelfth episode and the second to last before a break of more than two months. The show did not return until November 3.

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