I, Voltron

Former Sky Marshall Wade is found guilty on every count by the Galaxy Alliance Council, while Daniel puts on Vince's unfinished mind link prototype. Daniel's body lies in a medical bed with no brain activity, and his mind turns out to be inside Voltron, who is assembled in the hangar. Daniel likes it, plays hero for an Earth transport, and ignores his comm.

Then the news arrives that Wade has escaped and joined forces with the spider Robeast that once attacked Arus. Daniel flies off alone into a nest of Haggarium webbing, cannot form the Blazing Sword, and is trapped in a cocoon where his mind starts to merge with the Robeast's. The team follows and Vince goes in after him through a green digital space, where he persuades Daniel to let go. With Voltron drained, the pilots get him free of the Robeast and home so Daniel can wake up.

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 Wade: Gary Chalk Coran: Ron Halder Kala: Tabitha St. Germain

"Doesn't it bother anyone that he's not even trying to defend himself?"

"You know what, Daniel? You're the king of bad ideas!"

"We've been working to pilot Voltron. Now, I am Voltron." -- Daniel

"Always wanted to laser-write my name on the moon!" -- Daniel

"Glad to be of service, citizens." -- Daniel

"I remember when I once controlled Voltron." -- Wade

"Sorry. I hate spiders. And jerks." -- Daniel

"Voltron was trying to tell you something. No one person was meant to control it." -- Vince

"I should have listened to you, buddy." -- Daniel

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty."

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.

What happens to a cadet who will not listen when you turn him into a robot with a working radio? The episode's best joke, and its argument, is that nothing changes at all. Daniel puts on Vince's unfinished mind link tiara, wakes up inside Voltron, and treats the comm system as an inconvenience. Early on, someone tells him, "Pidge ran a diagnostic on your comm system," and then adds, "You're just not listening." When Keith takes over, Daniel answers that he is "Just testing the capabilities of Vince's invention," which is the voice of a boy who has taken a very large toy out of the box!

The set-up is quick and unusually well planted. Henry Gilroy's script opens on the Council's trial of Wade, with the charges read out in order and the gallery shouting "Guilty!" through a conviction dance. One observer asks the only question that matters: "Doesn't it bother anyone that he's not even trying to defend himself?" Another dismisses it, and the answer, a spider Robeast waiting in a nest of Haggarium webbing, turns up later.

Once Daniel is Voltron the writing finds its footing in comedy. His to-do list for Earth is skate-grinding the Great Wall, surfing a glacier, and laser-writing his name on the moon. The beat that makes him likeable comes when Earth Transport 721 calls for emergency assistance. He answers, and says "Glad to be of service, citizens. Have a nice day." Daniel wants to be Voltron, and Wade, who comes at him from the Robeast's web, knows what that wanting is: "I remember when I once controlled Voltron. Intoxicating, is it not? The power to puppeteer the defender of the universe." Wade is more than a villain with a fusion gimmick; he is what Daniel looks like if nobody stops him.

The standout scene is Vince in the green digital space, where it is just the two of them talking. Daniel, a glowing horned-helmet figure, insists he is Voltron, that the weapons failing earlier was "just a power failure." Vince reads the same fact the other way: "Voltron was trying to tell you something. No one person was meant to control it." The lesson grows out of an earlier scene in which Daniel called "Form! Blazing Sword!" and the Sword would not form, the machine was speaking, and he was too excited to hear it. Daniel's answer is just "You're right, Vince," yet his apology afterwards arrives without ceremony. When he says he should have listened to his friend, the reply is "Why start now?"

The weakness is the villain's side of the bargain. The trial is built to make us wonder how Wade will get free, and the answer is a line of dialogue, "Wade escaped," and the escape itself is only reported. [1] The mid-battle monologue in which Wade explains how his mind merged with the Robeast's, with its line about having "Planted the seed... of chaos," then does the job the escape should have done: it tells us what the antagonist has become. It is clear enough, but it arrives a little late.

The ending pays the joke at the top. Daniel wakes, says "I'll listen next time," and the final exchange has someone hearing a voice that no one spoke aloud. [2] It is a neat gag, but the garbled subtitles leave us unsure who hears it. We like the cadet storyline best when it is this compact: a flaw, an invention that exaggerates it, and a friend who repairs it by talking!

1 ^ The line comes at 4:38 on the subtitle track.

2 ^ The subtitle track renders Haggarium as "a garium" and sometimes Robeast as "lighter", so the last few exchanges are partly guesswork; this page uses the corrected spellings and avoids attributing the final lines.

1. The spider Robeast is a returning monster. Defenders of the Universe had the cocooning spider that wrapped up Wade's giant lion, fans on the Voltron wiki read it as Kala from the Drule side, and Deceive and Conquer backs them up with "Commander Kala, and I presume Sky Marshal Wade." Here Wade says of his time in jail, "Our bond really grew there," and somebody scrambles the pronouns: "He... she... it isn't kidding."
2. Daniel and Vince's mind link is born in the last seconds ("In my head", then "So... This is gonna be weird.") and it runs to the end of the season. They prank Larmina with it in Crossed Signals, Daniel snaps "I can't brain talk about this right now, Vince" in Deceive and Conquer, and in Black the big confession is that he only won the last battle because he could read the enemy's mind.
3. Awesome-Tron is named in only two episodes, Rogue Trip and this one, and this one milks it: somebody struggles through "Not... Awesome... Tron.", a groan of "Not Awesome-Tron!" goes up when it gets picked for the job, and Daniel gets the same treatment when he is hailed as "Dan-tron!" and signs off with "Dantron, out!"
4. Wade's charges double as a season recap. "Engineering the original Voltron malfunction" goes back to Voltron being written off as a hazard in New School Defenders, and "the hijacking of Voltron" is his takeover in Clash of the Lions. His first name, Herbert, is only used here.
5. The trial is split in two by the theme song. The Council breaks to deliberate, the pilots chant "Guilty!" (and somebody shows off a "lucky conviction dance"), Daniel puts on Vince's mind-link tiara and drops out cold, and only after the opening titles do we hear "we find you guilty on all counts."
6. The Wade side gloats, "I remember when I once controlled Voltron," which is the Clash of the Lions hijack again. This time the weapon call "Form! Blazing Sword!" fails ("Can't form your weapon"), just as it stalled in the spider's webs in Defenders of the Universe. Daniel blames "a power failure", and Vince has the real answer: "No one person was meant to control it."
7. Fans on the Voltron wiki read the title as a nod to I, Robot, which suits a story about a mind running a giant machine. Daniel also borrows the opening narration for himself: "Duty calls, and I am the defender of the universe!"
8. Nicktoons aired this on Wednesday, March 21, 2012, the fourth episode of the Wednesday run that began with Gary on leap day, February 29. Five episodes were left after it.

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