Joyride To Doom

Tired of being treated like kids, Daniel, Vince and Larmina take the Black, Red and Blue Lions out of the hangar and fly to Planet Doom to fetch a sample of the dark energy Pidge has been studying. They find Lotor revived and mutated by Haggarium, and Maahox captures them, tests their Voltcoms and starts taking an interest in what they can do.

Back at the castle the adults realise that three Lions are missing just as a Drule fleet approaches. Lotor, stronger than ever, carries off Allura and fights Keith and Lance on foot, then beats the reunited Voltron into the grass. With Vince glowing and unconscious beside Lance, Lance tries a new form and the fight turns. Daniel apologises and learns the sample was a success; Lotor, back in his cavern, learns the Haggarium has run out.

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

Keith: Giles Panton Lance / Commander Cossack: Andrew Francis Allura: Ashleigh Ball Pidge: Sam Vincent Hunk: Ty Olsson Daniel: Vincent Tong Vince: Doron Bell Jr. Larmina: Shannon Chan-Kent Maahox: Ron Halder Lotor: Mark Hildreth

"They sent children to fight me now?" -- Lotor

"Do you feel like telling your Uncle Maahox what you plan to do here?" -- Maahox

"Clearly, Lotor, my king, it would seem the Haggarium used to bring you back to life has some... side effects." -- Maahox

"It feels like I'm ready for the Voltron Force." -- Lotor

"We're being treated like kids." -- A cadet

"Wait, uh, did I say learn?" -- Daniel

"Did you guys know that Vince glows?" -- Lance

"I just wanted to be treated like one of you." -- Daniel

"This is a much more adult punishment." -- Lance

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.

Nobody in the castle will listen to the cadets, and the only people who take them seriously are the villains on Planet Doom.

It is the joke at the centre of this episode, and a better one than the setup lets on. The cold open has Pidge walking the team through a blue glow that seems to weaken the Lions. Daniel asks why they don't just go to Planet Doom and deal with it. The reply is a lecture about battle strategy and an afternoon with the navigation charts. Daniel's retort, "Wait, uh, did I say learn?", is the right mix of cheek and sulk. The heist that follows is quick and funny: Daniel claims the Black Lion, the other two cadets settle on the Blue and the Red, and they set down in a canyon so that Lotor will not see them coming. [1] But a green viewscreen in Lotor's lair shows the Lions landing there anyway!

The turn comes about seven minutes in. "They're children," Lotor tells Maahox, and then, "They sent children to fight me now?", adding with something close to appetite, "How very interesting." Maahox goes further. He greets the three captives as their "Uncle Maahox", takes their Voltcoms, exposes them to Haggarium to see what happens, and discovers that one of the cadets carries a trace of the energy that powers Voltron. The villains register the cadets' value within minutes. The heroes need a Drule fleet on the sensors before they notice three Lions are missing. When somebody asks how that is possible, the answer is a single name. Being underestimated is what got the cadets into trouble, and being noticed is about to hurt more.

The best scene belongs to Maahox. Lotor has come back with a bare, purple-spotted body, asks what is happening to him, and gets this reply: "Clearly, Lotor, my king, it would seem the Haggarium used to bring you back to life has some... side effects." Ron Halder holds the beat before "side effects," and the line manages to be a warning, a sales pitch and a courtier's shrug at once. [2] Lotor's answer, that he feels ready for the Voltron Force, is the other half of the joke. It sets a useful rule for the rest of the hour; this Lotor does not need a Robeast. He proves it by holding Allura upside down against the castle wall and, later, lifting a Drule ship over his head.

The weakness arrives in the last act. Lotor flattens Voltron and strides toward the fallen Red Lion. The fight is rescued by Vince, who goes out cold in a cockpit and starts to glow. [3] Lance's observation, "Did you guys know that Vince glows?", is a good joke, and "Form blazing... Guns?" is a better one, but the scene hands a decisive turn to an ability the episode has not explained. A story with so much to fit into one slot had little room to explain it, but it still feels like a lever being pulled.

The ending is quietly accurate about what the cadets wanted. Daniel's apology, "I just wanted to be treated like one of you. Not a kid", gets a sensible answer, and Lance's plan to give the three of them "a much more adult punishment" of time alone with the Lions is a smart little reversal, since it is what they asked for! In between, we cut to Lotor slumped in front of an enormous red orb, hearing from Maahox that the Haggarium has been spent on bringing him back, and answering that they will have to get more. The cadets get a chore and the villains get a shopping list. A busy, good-natured episode, and we had a good time with it!

1 ^ Daniel is in the Black Lion cockpit at about 3:40, and the Blue and Red Lions sit side by side in the rust-coloured desert at 3:53. 2 ^ Ron Halder, who plays Maahox here, also voices Coran in the previous episode. 3 ^ During the combining sequence the cadets ride with the adults: Daniel sits behind Keith in the Black Lion at about 18:01, Larmina beside Allura at 19:24, and an unconscious Vince beside Lance at 19:26.

1. Fans on the Voltron wiki count this as the debut of Red Center, the combination where Lance forms the head and the chest comes out red. The weapon call goes sideways, though: "Form blazing... Guns?" trails off with a question mark, as if nobody is sure what the new form is supposed to carry. Lion Riders Return settles it two weeks later with "Form Red Center!" and "Magma Pistols!"
2. The ending is a callback to the opening gag. Early on the cadets complain that battle strategy is too abstract and ask for "solo time" in the Lions. The last scene sentences them to time "alone with the lions", and the line that lands is "It's everything you asked for, Danny boy." Their first guess, "Latrine duty?", nods to the sentence Daniel and Vince got in "New School Defenders", but this is "a much more adult punishment".
3. The Lion keys come straight from the season opener, where Wade's pins turn out to be "the keys to the lions" and someone asks "Where's the black key?" The cadets divvy them up like a heist. Daniel says "I'm taking black", Larmina gets Blue, and the cadet who says "I've been feeling a bond with green" is told Pidge has the green key right now, so he ends up in Red. That bond pays off in The Army Of One, where Vince finally sits in the Green Lion's cockpit.
4. The Drule officer who gets "Commander, ready the ground troops" is never named in this episode, and fans on the Voltron wiki identify him as Commander Cossack. His name is finally said aloud in Dark Blue, during the stand-off over the Haggarium convoy.
5. Lance's "Did you guys know that Vince glows?" sounds like news to the grown-ups, but the cadets have already seen it. In "Coran, Coran", Vince stands with his eyes shining behind a glowing blue energy shield while the five original pilots are away on Tarvos.
6. There is no Robeast in this one, and the characters notice. The Force's scans come up empty ("But where's the Robeast?"), and Lotor gloats about "The day no Robeast fights Voltron" before wading into Voltron himself. It is an odd one for a show whose opening narration sells Voltron as the answer to Robeasts, and the finale, "Black", goes to the opposite extreme and turns a whole castle into one.
7. Maahox calls Lotor's bulk and glowing spots "side effects" of the Haggarium that revived him and warns that it is "remarkably unstable". By the end he has spent the rest of the supply ("I use what we have left to re-reanimate you"), and Lotor's reply is "A lot more." That shortage is the engine of Dark Blue, which opens with "We are running through our Haggarium supply far too quickly" and the promise "I'll just get more. Lots more."
8. Joyride To Doom aired on Thursday, June 30, 2011, the second weekly slot after the commercial-free 90-minute Trilogy premiere on June 16. By this point the series has already shown the cadets pushing against the pilots, and here they finally steal the Lions to prove themselves.

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