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akinoameThe Alien Force is investigating a warehouse after Ben gets a tip--something that has Kevin suspicious, since Ben has practically no resources for these kinds of tips. It looks like there are Forever Knights plotting something, but when they try to break up the party, Gwen realizes it's all a hologram. And the tipster reveals himself: Magister Prior Gilhil of the Plumbers, and they're all under arrest for impersonating officers of the Plumbers.
Gilhil has been getting complaints the past couple of months that Ben and his friends have been flashing a Plumbers' badge everywhere, posing as law enforcement. Their records are mixed: Ben has pretty much a Get Out Of Jail Free Card because of the Omnitrix, and Azmuth (Secret of the Omnitrix) has enough influence that his vouching for Ben carries a lot of weight. Gwen has no record of ever impersonating an officer. Kevin? Ex-con, and Gilhil's not so sure about the "ex" part. He's partly willing to accept that Ben and Gwen have a claim by blood and are simply doing what their grandfather did, but Kevin doesn't have the same claim...until Kevin lets it slip that his biological father was a Plumber. Still, Gilhil isn't impressed by any of this. Earth is too backwater for the Plumbers to maintain a presence after Ben defeated Vilgax five years ago, and despite the kids' claims that there is significant alien activity, he can't find evidence pointing to it. For now, he'll reassign a new Magister to oversee Earth so he deal with their complaints, but if he ever catches them doing this again, all three of them are going straight to the Null Void. And with that, he takes Kevin's badge, deactivates it, and leaves. The Alien Force has been officially disbanded.
Kevin's not taking this well, and he explains how he heard all these stories about his father and wanted to be a Plumber when he was little. Now, all of it's been taken away. At the same time, someone's plotting something: a guy in a mask with an appearance somewhere in-between Darth Vader and Doctor Doom is attacking the DNAliens. Good, right? Wrong. Having kicked around the Highbreed Commander, he makes a deal with him. Later, Gwen visits Kevin at the garage, attempting to cheer him up and insisting they can still fight, but Kevin reminds her he stands a very good chance of being sent back to the Null Void at Gilhil's whim. And just as they're getting closer, the Highbreed attacks. They fight, get beat up, and Humongousaur shows up in just the knick of time to save them...and then Gilhil shows up, and the Highbreed insists they attacked him. Faced with this overwhelming bullshit, Gilhil does the only thing he can: He arrest the kids. But at least he's bringing the Highbreed downtown for questioning. But before he can do anything, they're all attacked by Darth Doom, the Darkstar of the title. Gwen's forcefields are the only thing that can stand up to his energy drain. Forced to demorph and losing more energy fast, Ben puts the evidence together and realizes the answer to his own question of "Who are you?" and tells Gwen to run. She does, leaving the guys to get captured while she figures out a plan of retaliation.
At a very familiar base of operations, the guys are awake and the aliens are confused. Darkstar was Gilhil's tipster, and of course, the Highbreed was scammed too, a fact that amuses Kevin to no end. But CSI Ben has put everything together: Darkstar knew about both the Plumbers and the Highbreed and had a grudge against the Alien Force. Only one person fit all of the evidence: Mike Morningstar (in case the lair wasn't a dead giveaway enough already). Number 85 of the Hero List says: "If the Evil Overlord wears a mask hiding his features, it's either because he doesn't want to be recognized or because he's bodaciously ugly. I will psych myself up for the shock resulting from either cause when I rip the mask off of him.". Morningstar has gotten uglier since we last saw him, and Ben and Kevin cringe. Gwen also proceeds to mock him as he starts draining everyone's energy. Gwen has every reason to be sarcastic and mouthy like the boys usually are: She's got an army of DNAliens behind her, ready to kick ass. Using them as Red Shirts, she takes advantage of the distraction to free the guys, and Kevin breaks them all out of their chains...except for the Highbreed, of course. A short, badass fight ensues in which all of the good guys proceed to wipe the floor with Darkstar.
Now that Darkstar's in custody and will be on his way to the Null Void, not to mention that he's seen there is a good amount of alien activity going on here, Gilhil changes his mind about reassigning anyone to Earth. They've already got a team ready to take on the dangers. With a comment of "You've been drafted," he gives Kevin and Gwen badges (telling Ben not to push his luck, since he's already got the Omnitrix), making them official agents assigned to planet Earth. Glad that he's got his badge back, Kevin heads off, letting the others know that he's got to tell his mom.
Kevin drops a bombshell this episode, revealing that his real father was a Plumber. As a kid, he'd heard his mom's stories, and he wanted to grow up to be a Plumber too. Of course, things didn't exactly go that way, as we see in the original Ben 10. For all the complaining fans of the original do, this is easy enough to fit into the original canon, simply by Kevin's emphasis of "real father." At some point, his mom remarried, and apparently his stepfather didn't know what was going on when Kevin's powers developed. From there, Kevin probably ran away and gave up his dream. When Magister Labrid gave him the chance to help, he had a chance at it again. Of course, this was only part of the reason he joined in "Ben 10 Returns," but allow me some gloating over being right in my analysis of that episode.
Darkstar--or rather, Morningstar back then--had been Kevin's foil in "All That Glitters." This episode makes it even more evident. Where Kevin in his first appearance in Alien Force started out as a clear-cut villain who decides to reform thanks to the Plumbers and Gwen, Darkstar has been ruined by Gwen and had already decided he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and prefered using his powers for personal gain. Now, just as with Kevin, his powers have evolved--he can absorb people's energy with a direct blast, making him that much more dangerous. The only thing on his mind now is revenge, and he'll take it by any means necessary.
Gilhil is the second Magister we've met (well, that we know of--we don't know Max's rank) so far, after Magister Labrid in "Ben 10 Returns." Gilhil explains that the Alien Force mistook the rank for a name, asking how they could pose as Plumbers when they had so little idea of how they worked. The Plumbers really come off sounding like the Green Lantern Corps, with officers assigned to different quadrants depending on the planets' level of technology. Earth, being only Level 2 ("Ben 10 Returns," "Kevin's Big Score"), is too low on the priority list to warrant much attention--unless there's something big attacking, such as Vilgax. But with him gone, the Earth Plumbers were disbanded for the next five years until the Alien Force took over (presumably, due to references in both Ben 10 and Race Against Time, there was a big enough threat in the past to warrant having several Earth Plumbers other than just Grandpa Max, and they were disbanded when things quieted down). There's some name-dropping going on when Gilhil mentions how the Galvans have given Ben free reign to mess around with anything short of a major crime because of the Omnitrix. Azmuth has vouched for Ben, and apparently, his word carries enough weight that Gilhil implies he'd have to go against orders to arrest Ben if he interferes. Perhaps this significance explains why Azmuth's insignia--of course, on the Omnitrix and seen in other contexts regarding him in Secret of the Omnitrix--is now the official emblem of the Plumbers.
As this episode was the sequel to "All That Glitters," of course, it was going to deal with the Kevin/Gwen ship. It was handled MUCH better this time around. Now, they've been hanging out for several months and have gotten a rhythm going. The scene in the garage does a great job showing that: Gwen agrees not to talk about Kevin's father and instead tries to find a way to help him keep fighting, insisting he's changed. They start moving closer together, and you KNOW they're going to kiss, and...the Highbreed attacks. Well, it figures. You get in the mood, and company stops by.
My first words upon seeing seeing Gwen's Big Damn Heroes moment were "Holy shit, Gwen!" 'Cause really, who would have thought she'd get the DNAliens to back her up? It was just plain awesome. The battle was frankly awesome, even if very short. Apparently, following "X = Ben + 2" where he switched directly from Alien X to Swampfire, Ben has overridden the Master Control Function that has previously required him to demorph and then switch ("Be-Knighted"). However, it seems to take a lot out of him. Between that and the energy drains, Ben nearly passes out after the battle, though he does apparently milk it for all it's worth. Despite this drawback, it appears he is on the way to becoming Ben 10,000 with this function overcome.
Season two is already starting off with a better feel for the characters. We've had a chance to get used to their timeskip personalities, and the filler episodes gave us a chance to see different facets of everyone's personalities. Ben is a good example--this episode draws in his deathly serious anger and interrogation methods from "Be-Knighted" as well as his lightheartedness from "The Gauntlet." He's actually not worried about Gilhil's warning, since they've gone all this time without getting in trouble, and Gilhil's got three hundred planets to deal with and Earth is so low on the priority list. This attitude ironically pisses Kevin off, and he's usually the more laid-back of them.
And on a more random note, because it did not escape my notice, is it just me, or did the music playing at Darkstar's entrance in the DNAliens' ship sound very stylistically similar to "The Imperial March" from Star Wars?
"Darkstar Rising" was written by Dwayne McDuffie. Voice actor credits will follow after they've been uploaded to TV.com, as I can't read the tiny print on the You Are Here credit-formatting.
Edit: From my best guess, Paul Eiding voiced the Highbreed. TV.com reports that Wil Wheaton reprised his role as Morningstar/Darkstar, and J.K. Simmons played Gilhil.
Gilhil has been getting complaints the past couple of months that Ben and his friends have been flashing a Plumbers' badge everywhere, posing as law enforcement. Their records are mixed: Ben has pretty much a Get Out Of Jail Free Card because of the Omnitrix, and Azmuth (Secret of the Omnitrix) has enough influence that his vouching for Ben carries a lot of weight. Gwen has no record of ever impersonating an officer. Kevin? Ex-con, and Gilhil's not so sure about the "ex" part. He's partly willing to accept that Ben and Gwen have a claim by blood and are simply doing what their grandfather did, but Kevin doesn't have the same claim...until Kevin lets it slip that his biological father was a Plumber. Still, Gilhil isn't impressed by any of this. Earth is too backwater for the Plumbers to maintain a presence after Ben defeated Vilgax five years ago, and despite the kids' claims that there is significant alien activity, he can't find evidence pointing to it. For now, he'll reassign a new Magister to oversee Earth so he deal with their complaints, but if he ever catches them doing this again, all three of them are going straight to the Null Void. And with that, he takes Kevin's badge, deactivates it, and leaves. The Alien Force has been officially disbanded.
Kevin's not taking this well, and he explains how he heard all these stories about his father and wanted to be a Plumber when he was little. Now, all of it's been taken away. At the same time, someone's plotting something: a guy in a mask with an appearance somewhere in-between Darth Vader and Doctor Doom is attacking the DNAliens. Good, right? Wrong. Having kicked around the Highbreed Commander, he makes a deal with him. Later, Gwen visits Kevin at the garage, attempting to cheer him up and insisting they can still fight, but Kevin reminds her he stands a very good chance of being sent back to the Null Void at Gilhil's whim. And just as they're getting closer, the Highbreed attacks. They fight, get beat up, and Humongousaur shows up in just the knick of time to save them...and then Gilhil shows up, and the Highbreed insists they attacked him. Faced with this overwhelming bullshit, Gilhil does the only thing he can: He arrest the kids. But at least he's bringing the Highbreed downtown for questioning. But before he can do anything, they're all attacked by Darth Doom, the Darkstar of the title. Gwen's forcefields are the only thing that can stand up to his energy drain. Forced to demorph and losing more energy fast, Ben puts the evidence together and realizes the answer to his own question of "Who are you?" and tells Gwen to run. She does, leaving the guys to get captured while she figures out a plan of retaliation.
At a very familiar base of operations, the guys are awake and the aliens are confused. Darkstar was Gilhil's tipster, and of course, the Highbreed was scammed too, a fact that amuses Kevin to no end. But CSI Ben has put everything together: Darkstar knew about both the Plumbers and the Highbreed and had a grudge against the Alien Force. Only one person fit all of the evidence: Mike Morningstar (in case the lair wasn't a dead giveaway enough already). Number 85 of the Hero List says: "If the Evil Overlord wears a mask hiding his features, it's either because he doesn't want to be recognized or because he's bodaciously ugly. I will psych myself up for the shock resulting from either cause when I rip the mask off of him.". Morningstar has gotten uglier since we last saw him, and Ben and Kevin cringe. Gwen also proceeds to mock him as he starts draining everyone's energy. Gwen has every reason to be sarcastic and mouthy like the boys usually are: She's got an army of DNAliens behind her, ready to kick ass. Using them as Red Shirts, she takes advantage of the distraction to free the guys, and Kevin breaks them all out of their chains...except for the Highbreed, of course. A short, badass fight ensues in which all of the good guys proceed to wipe the floor with Darkstar.
Now that Darkstar's in custody and will be on his way to the Null Void, not to mention that he's seen there is a good amount of alien activity going on here, Gilhil changes his mind about reassigning anyone to Earth. They've already got a team ready to take on the dangers. With a comment of "You've been drafted," he gives Kevin and Gwen badges (telling Ben not to push his luck, since he's already got the Omnitrix), making them official agents assigned to planet Earth. Glad that he's got his badge back, Kevin heads off, letting the others know that he's got to tell his mom.
Kevin drops a bombshell this episode, revealing that his real father was a Plumber. As a kid, he'd heard his mom's stories, and he wanted to grow up to be a Plumber too. Of course, things didn't exactly go that way, as we see in the original Ben 10. For all the complaining fans of the original do, this is easy enough to fit into the original canon, simply by Kevin's emphasis of "real father." At some point, his mom remarried, and apparently his stepfather didn't know what was going on when Kevin's powers developed. From there, Kevin probably ran away and gave up his dream. When Magister Labrid gave him the chance to help, he had a chance at it again. Of course, this was only part of the reason he joined in "Ben 10 Returns," but allow me some gloating over being right in my analysis of that episode.
Darkstar--or rather, Morningstar back then--had been Kevin's foil in "All That Glitters." This episode makes it even more evident. Where Kevin in his first appearance in Alien Force started out as a clear-cut villain who decides to reform thanks to the Plumbers and Gwen, Darkstar has been ruined by Gwen and had already decided he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and prefered using his powers for personal gain. Now, just as with Kevin, his powers have evolved--he can absorb people's energy with a direct blast, making him that much more dangerous. The only thing on his mind now is revenge, and he'll take it by any means necessary.
Gilhil is the second Magister we've met (well, that we know of--we don't know Max's rank) so far, after Magister Labrid in "Ben 10 Returns." Gilhil explains that the Alien Force mistook the rank for a name, asking how they could pose as Plumbers when they had so little idea of how they worked. The Plumbers really come off sounding like the Green Lantern Corps, with officers assigned to different quadrants depending on the planets' level of technology. Earth, being only Level 2 ("Ben 10 Returns," "Kevin's Big Score"), is too low on the priority list to warrant much attention--unless there's something big attacking, such as Vilgax. But with him gone, the Earth Plumbers were disbanded for the next five years until the Alien Force took over (presumably, due to references in both Ben 10 and Race Against Time, there was a big enough threat in the past to warrant having several Earth Plumbers other than just Grandpa Max, and they were disbanded when things quieted down). There's some name-dropping going on when Gilhil mentions how the Galvans have given Ben free reign to mess around with anything short of a major crime because of the Omnitrix. Azmuth has vouched for Ben, and apparently, his word carries enough weight that Gilhil implies he'd have to go against orders to arrest Ben if he interferes. Perhaps this significance explains why Azmuth's insignia--of course, on the Omnitrix and seen in other contexts regarding him in Secret of the Omnitrix--is now the official emblem of the Plumbers.
As this episode was the sequel to "All That Glitters," of course, it was going to deal with the Kevin/Gwen ship. It was handled MUCH better this time around. Now, they've been hanging out for several months and have gotten a rhythm going. The scene in the garage does a great job showing that: Gwen agrees not to talk about Kevin's father and instead tries to find a way to help him keep fighting, insisting he's changed. They start moving closer together, and you KNOW they're going to kiss, and...the Highbreed attacks. Well, it figures. You get in the mood, and company stops by.
My first words upon seeing seeing Gwen's Big Damn Heroes moment were "Holy shit, Gwen!" 'Cause really, who would have thought she'd get the DNAliens to back her up? It was just plain awesome. The battle was frankly awesome, even if very short. Apparently, following "X = Ben + 2" where he switched directly from Alien X to Swampfire, Ben has overridden the Master Control Function that has previously required him to demorph and then switch ("Be-Knighted"). However, it seems to take a lot out of him. Between that and the energy drains, Ben nearly passes out after the battle, though he does apparently milk it for all it's worth. Despite this drawback, it appears he is on the way to becoming Ben 10,000 with this function overcome.
Season two is already starting off with a better feel for the characters. We've had a chance to get used to their timeskip personalities, and the filler episodes gave us a chance to see different facets of everyone's personalities. Ben is a good example--this episode draws in his deathly serious anger and interrogation methods from "Be-Knighted" as well as his lightheartedness from "The Gauntlet." He's actually not worried about Gilhil's warning, since they've gone all this time without getting in trouble, and Gilhil's got three hundred planets to deal with and Earth is so low on the priority list. This attitude ironically pisses Kevin off, and he's usually the more laid-back of them.
And on a more random note, because it did not escape my notice, is it just me, or did the music playing at Darkstar's entrance in the DNAliens' ship sound very stylistically similar to "The Imperial March" from Star Wars?
"Darkstar Rising" was written by Dwayne McDuffie. Voice actor credits will follow after they've been uploaded to TV.com, as I can't read the tiny print on the You Are Here credit-formatting.
Edit: From my best guess, Paul Eiding voiced the Highbreed. TV.com reports that Wil Wheaton reprised his role as Morningstar/Darkstar, and J.K. Simmons played Gilhil.
