Inside the Music

A Galaxy Alliance ambassador is meeting Allura on the eve of galactic reunification when Larmina's entrance sends the delegation diving under the tables. Allura, who wants her niece to take her royal duty seriously, hands her the job of booking a Great Galactic Music Festival, and Larmina, who sees through the trick and takes the job anyway, signs up every band she loves. Keith worries that Lotor will exploit the crowd of dignitaries. The one act she cannot reach, Stereolactic, is booked by Pidge, who turns out to be the band's only member, DJ Prong, projecting the rest as holograms.

Lotor's message hijacks an act's intro video, and while the cadets chase DJ Prong as the suspected Drule agent, the real one, in the sound crew, unleashes a speaker-covered Haggarium robot. Voltron takes Green Center form, Larmina and Daniel are trapped inside the robot, and the Boomerang Shield finishes the robot.

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

"I see you playing your little mind game. And it totally worked!" -- Larmina

"Surely the people can appreciate the difference between kicking butt and kissing it." -- Larmina

"They're just people. Incredibly cool, ultra-talented, tremendously famous people." -- Pidge

"Oh, and leading a secret double life, that's not freaky at all."

"Stereolactic got so big so fast, I was afraid I'd lose what's most important to me." -- Pidge

"My ultimate loyalty lies with Voltron Force." -- Pidge

"He had no ear."

"Let's see how this record spins!"

"You may be a royal pain, but you are definitely a royal at heart."

"Pidge, are we seriously doing the robot?"

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.

Larmina and Pidge are each dodging a job they happen to be good at. Larmina tells her aunt that royal heritage is a waste of time and that she wants to serve in combat with the Voltron Force, and then happily books every band she loves. Pidge ranks the Force above everything, but he is also the reclusive star of a band that nobody can contact and that is said never to play live. The episode asks what each of them owes to the job they are dodging.

It gets the setup right. The cold open puts an ambassador in front of Allura, talking of the cusp of galactic reunification, and she remarks that if she knows her niece there will soon be an entrance. The delegation takes it for an attack and dives under the tables! Then Allura works on Larmina. She says she will ask "some low-level bureaucrat" to plan a music festival, and Larmina answers with the line that sums up both of them: "I see you playing your little mind game. And it totally worked!" It characterizes better than a lecture on duty could. Allura wins by understanding that the girl who prefers "kicking butt" to "kissing it" cannot resist a lineup of her favorite bands.

The spine arrives in the unmasking. Daniel, Vince and Larmina corner a suspect who has just killed their communicators, and the figure in the black suit with orange lines turns out to be Pidge. His explanation states the theme outright: Stereolactic "got so big so fast, I was afraid I'd lose what's most important to me. My identity." Earlier he is funnier still, when his friends gush over Stereolactic and he shrugs that they're just people, incredibly cool, ultra-talented, tremendously famous people. [1] "My ultimate loyalty lies with Voltron Force," he says, and the sentence turns Larmina's problem inside out. She wants to be a pilot and not a princess. He wants to be a pilot and not a pop star; the plot lands both of them in the same place, because what each of them avoids is what saves the day.

The fight carries the same idea. Larmina and Daniel end up inside the speaker-covered robot, and once the Haggarium that is shutting down their communicators is down, they report in from its belly. The closing verdict, that Larmina is "a royal pain" but "a royal at heart," is earned by that act of leading from a position where she cannot fight. The Green Center form then gets the neatest piece of business in the action. With the robot too charged to approach, someone announces it is time to kick out the jams and sends the Boomerang Shield out to the line "Let's see how this record spins!" We also learn that the Haggarium is leaking in through the hole in the Black Lion's piece of the Nexus, and that links the plot back to Wade's last battle. [2]

The weak part is the mystery. Keith's insistence on vetting every performer sounds like a fuse, yet no result of his check is ever shown, and DJ Prong, the only suspect, is cleared almost as soon as he is cornered. The real Drule agent is the sound guy, and the clue that points to him is a joke: "He had no ear." A story that spends its first half building a reclusive musician as the likeliest threat deserves a culprit we have had more reason to suspect. The reason is probably practical, because the Prong unmasking and the festival needed the room. Still, the whodunit never really competes with the secret identity.

Placed after Wade's fall, the episode is a breather that still carries the season's weight. The Alliance is only "on the verge of a fragile unity," and Larmina goes from reluctant royal to the person who rallies the others. It closes on a dance gag, with someone asking Pidge whether they are seriously doing the robot!

1 ^ The face is shown at 13:04, but the black-suited figure with orange lines is glimpsed earlier with no face showing, crouched on stacked crates at 11:48 and in a dark shaft at 12:19.

2 ^ Fan transcripts of this episode are rough on names: the band and Larmina are both heard in several spellings. This guide uses the spellings the dialogue supports.

1. Stereolactic, the band everyone is desperate to book, exists only in this episode: none of the other 25 mention it or the festival again. Its big reveal is that the band is holograms run by one DJ, which prompts a nice meta line, "My favorite band... is a cartoon?" (said in a cartoon).
2. Green Center makes its debut here. Predator Robeast cycled through the other Centers and was left with "We haven't tried Green Center yet!" and a last-ditch "Maybe the Green Center configuration." This time someone calls "For Green Center!", and the Boomerang Shield makes its first appearance as a called-out weapon at the end. Both are back in "The Army of One".
3. This was the first new episode in ten weeks. Nicktoons aired it on Thursday, November 3, 2011, after Clash of the Lions had gone out on August 25, and the opening scene is all about "the very cusp of galactic reunification", and the talk afterward is of "a fragile unity" now that Wade has been beaten (see Clash of the Lions).
4. Pidge keeps his double life a secret because "My ultimate loyalty lies with Voltron Force." The brush-off he gets earlier is brutal fun: "Pidge, they are like the coolest band in the entire quadrant, and you're... You!" He turns out to be the one person who can book them.
5. The cold open is a gag about how the Alliance sees Larmina. An ambassador is mid-speech when the room dives for cover ("We are under attack!" and "Quick, under the tables!"), and the culprit is just Larmina's entrance, which Allura had predicted moments earlier.
6. The hole in the Black Lion's piece of the Nexus is why the Lions struggle against the sonic robot: "It's like Haggarium is leeching in." The fix goes through the next few episodes, with Gary and Five Forged both coming back to it. Voltcoms also get knocked out ("The Haggarium shut down our Voltcoms"), and a jamming signal does the same in Five Forged.
7. "Tech Ninja Voltron?" seems to be a nod to Pidge's heritage, and it pays off two episodes later in Brains, where we learn his planet Balto is full of ninja scientists and the others tease him for always claiming ninja ancestors.
8. Lotor never shows up in person. All we get is a hijacked video that promises "the era of chaos" and the line "Enjoy the show!", and the saboteur turns out to be the sound guy, who "had no ear".
9. A music episode feels right for a show whose theme song, Nicktoons announced, was by Swizz Beatz. It ends on a wry note, with "Pidge, are we seriously doing the robot?"

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