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akinoameOn a dark and stormy night in Meridian, two Rebels have a daring attack on Prince Phobos’s weapons store in his castle. The leader, a human named Caleb, seethes in anger as he sees the weapons Phobos has taken from the people, including a bow made by the father of his friend Aldarn. Aldarn, meanwhile, waits below as Caleb sends barrels of gunpowder, but Caleb has taken too much time and too much powder. He is forced to blow up the rest and make a daring escape as both he and Aldarn have to abandon the powder they’d already saved in order to avoid capture.
It’s storming in Heatherfield on Earth as Hay Lin gets ready for school, and when she sneezes, she produces storm-force winds. Her grandmother, Yan Lin, is startled when a long-dormant jewel in a box hidden in her wardrobe suddenly reacts to Hay Lin. Hay Lin tries to confide in her grandmother about the weird allergic reaction, and Yan Lin tries to cover for it and her glowing wardrobe by suggesting Hay Lin invite her best friends over for snacks after school: Taranee Cook, Cornelia Hale, and Irma Lair. To Hay Lin’s own surprise, she decides to also bring along the new girl, Will Vandom, but there’s no time to worry about it before school.
While Caleb and Aldarn escape their pursuers on hugongs (essentially, Chocobos), school isn’t going so well for the girls. Will’s off to a rough start, and in her science project, Cornelia has utterly failed to kill the plant she was supposed to over-fertilize. Even when she tries to beat the crap out of it, the flower still blooms. Will dodges insults from school bully Uriah and his gang, and thanks Hay Lin for the invitation to her house—despite Cornelia’s horror that Hay Lin invited “New Girl.”
Phobos instructs his right-hand man, Cedric (who’s actually a snake monster who can transform into a human), to take over the responsibility of catching the two Rebels. Meanwhile, the girls are enjoying their snack, and the others’ teasing of Cornelia puts Will more at ease. Yan Lin arrives with the box and using her powers of illusion, tells them how a mystical Veil was created to isolate the evil world of Meridian from the rest of the universe (don’t worry, this will be retconned or otherwise forgotten by season 2). Phobos rules, but the legitimate heir to the throne (the question of “legitimacy” throws in a whole new set of implications that are never addressed) is believed to be somewhere on Earth. Portals in the Veil have been opening, allowing evil to escape to Earth, and it’s up to the Guardians of the Veil to seal them. Yan Lin had been a Guardian at their age, but now, it’s up to them: Irma with powers over water, Taranee with fire, Hay Lin with air, Cornelia with earth, and Will with Heart. With the Heart of Kandrakar, Will is able to transform the other girls and enhances their powers, while not having much that stands out on her own.
Say it with me, folks: What kind of lame power is Heart, anyway?
Somehow or another, Yan Lin knows that the Rebel Leader on Meridian is in danger, and she gives the girls their mission. Phobos watches via magic as Will tries to back out of the deal. Caleb and Aldarn have given their pursuers the slip, and Caleb tells Aldarn to go ahead without him to the Infinite City. He’s heard rumors that Phobos has discovered the true heir, and somebody needs to save the heir. Having a bromantic moment with Aldarn as he tells him to pass along the message for the men to “stay strong” and for the women “don’t worry” (yes, it’s corny as all hell coming from a fifteen-year-old), they then part ways—Aldarn to the Infinite City and Caleb to…a mountain…in the middle of nowhere…to look for a portal. Yeah, what part of this said, “Good plan” again? Unsurprisingly, Caleb runs into Cedric, who…throws him off the mountain. Guys, I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that impressed with this Rebel Leader.
The girls decide to practice their magic, and Will and Hay Lin discover the joys of flight (and in Hay Lin’s case, the joys of crashing into the camera. Goodbye, fourth wall) for hours while Caleb continues to fall down the mountain. Bad idea for pacing. He finally begins running down the mountain, with Cedric following, as he comes across a portal. Now, there is absolutely no reason he should know there’s a portal there. He has no powers, and as we will see soon, only one race on Meridian has the ability to track them down without magic. The girls are about to head home when the portal opens to them, spitting out Caleb while Cedric reaches through for him. Will is too scared to figure out what to do, but she still manages to transform the girls while Caleb screams for them to close the portal. They pool their magic together and Will tries to use the Heart, but she can’t control the power, and they close the portal too late to save Caleb. The girls are distressed by the whole thing—with Cornelia loudly blaming Will—and Yan Lin tells the girls not to fight, as they need to work together to win.
With Caleb in Phobos’s stronghold, the girls are still worried. He attempts an escape, but he’s outnumbered and thrown into what is essentially solitary confinement. Stuffed in a cage and lowered to the bottom of a pit, he’s supposed to spend the rest of his life in the Oubliette. Phobos’s guard, Vathek, very obviously hides a key in a loaf of bread and tosses it down to Caleb. Caleb then meets Blunk, a Passling smuggler he apparently has met in the past who, despite stealing his bread, is the one who actually finds the key. Caleb unlocks his shackles as Phobos begins his quest to locate teenage girls in Heatherfield and drag them back to his castle. I’m not sure if it’s less or more creepy than it sounds. Right now, he’s focusing on Will.
After talking with the others about picture day, Will separates from them as they head off together, clearly not feeling part of their close-knit group. But in a back-alley, she’s captured through a portal, leaving behind her backpack. Taranee finds it the next day and worriedly tells the girls she found it and the Heart abandoned. At Hay Lin’s insistence, the girls follow the Heart of Kandrakar to a portal. In the Oubliette, Caleb and Blunk attempt another escape, only to hear that they will be joined by a Guardian of the Veil. Neither Will nor Caleb is impressed with one another, as they both think the other too young to be handling the responsibility of saving the world. Apparently, neither of them thinks too highly of any other teenagers with attitude. While the girls try to make their way through Meridian to rescue them, our two heroes continue to argue, with Blunk feeling distinctly uncomfortable in the middle. The girls find the castle and with Cornelia’s powers, make their way across the moat by swinging like Tarzan. Phobos senses the Heart’s approach and sends out Cedric to meet them. In the dungeon, the girls find which of the three pits contains Will, Caleb, and Blunk, and send down the Heart to her. Thoroughly sick of Caleb, Will flies up and tells Irma to send enough water in for Caleb to float to the surface while Cornelia and Taranee fight off the guards and Hay Lin looks for an exit. The girls are surprised to see that the Rebel Leader is the boy from before, and even more surprised at Blunk. Blunk tells them of a secret tunnel, but it’s covered by bars. While Taranee tries to melt them open, Caleb goes to nobly sacrifice himself to hold off the guards, insisting that it’s more important to protect the Veil than worry about one Rebel’s life. Will is horrified, but Cornelia is impressed. But once the girls and Blunk have escaped, Will is determined to go back for Caleb, but Hay Lin insists that she’s a better flier. She arrives just in time to save him from a messy death from falling off another cliff. All seven of them find the portal in the swamp, but they have to fend off Gargoyle first. They make it through, but Gargoyle grabs Irma. Determined not to make the same mistake again, Will holds out the Heart and closes the portal, destroying Gargoyle’s stone arm and rescuing Irma.
This time, the girls are thrilled after their first adventure, and while Blunk heads off to torment poor Heatherfield, the humans all head to the Silver Dragon. Hay Lin realizes that the girls’ first initials spell out the acronym W.I.T.C.H., and the girls affirm their friendship with Will. But Yan Lin warns them that Will was not the real target—Phobos will attack again for another girl, and they must be ready.
As these are only the first two episodes, there isn’t a lot of time to completely develop the six main characters. Therefore, we have to settle for the first impressions.
Will is very insecure in her new school, having difficulties making friends and generally not fitting in with the other girls. This is clear when she asks Taranee if she makes the same turn down the street to her house, and Taranee says that she’s going to Irma’s for dinner. None of the girls realize that Will is desperately looking for a companion and that they’re leaving her out by not inviting her.
Her biggest problem is Cornelia, a haughty and stuck-up girl who makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t accept her, calling her “New Girl” and blaming her for Caleb’s capture. She tries to be the voice of reason, insisting that Yan Lin has lost it and that the “magic” around her has a logical explanation. But the real voices of reason are Taranee and Irma.
Taranee’s defining feature is her fear, as she’s afraid of her powers and heights and everything—we will see more of this throughout the season. But she’s also the sane one on the team, the real heart of the group. She reminds them that she had been the new girl on the block last year, which makes Cornelia’s disregard for Will rankle her. She finds Will’s backpack and realizes something horrible happened to her and is the first to insist they have to skip school (which we will later see is a big deal for her) to find her. She’s also the first one to follow Hay Lin into the portal, affirming her friendship with Will. This is fitting, as in the comics, she’s Will’s first friend in Heatherfield.
Irma, on the other hand, is a bit of an enforcer. She’s sarcastic, constantly needling Cornelia and generally calling her out on her bullshit. She doesn’t take her crap. But it’s part of a good heart. When the others start worrying about picture day, she’s the one who says she’d rather be true to who she really is and go into Meridian to kick some ass. It’s a short moment, but it speaks a lot for her character—for all of her bitingly cynical words, she’s determined to do the right thing.
Rounding out our quintet is Hay Lin, who is bubbly and cheerful. She’s a little ditzy, babbling on about things on occasion in a way that reminds me of Bridge from Power Rangers: SPD. She’s definitely the friendliest of the group, and she’s the one who makes the first moves to help Will and Caleb. She insists that they have to follow the Heart to find Will; and when Will tries to go back for Caleb, she’s the one who volunteers to go instead, arguing she’s better at flying. Nothing gets her down for long, as she doesn’t worry much about the weird glowing object in her grandmother’s closet, the fact that she sneezed and destroyed her room, the fact that she suddenly decided to strike up a friendship with Will, or the fact that a teenage boy was captured by a terrifying monster right in front of them. Oddly, it makes her the most focused on the team in these episodes, as she is able to clear her head and concentrate on Cedric, sketching him out for Yan Lin to identify, like a police artist.
Finally is the one guy on the team (well, for now), played by Greg Cipes. He’s a rebellious youth who causes trouble for everyone. The first impressions we get of him are of him stealing, being arrested, arguing with the hero, and all sorts of things that shouldn’t impress us. But despite his flaws, this young man with roguish charm has a good heart. He’s willing to sacrifice his own life in order to further the heroes’ mission, proving that he won’t let anything stop him from doing what he thinks is right. The first few episodes pretty much establish him as the main character, despite what the title says, but this will even out with time.
His name is Caleb, though, not Kevin this time. From there, the differences are that Caleb has much more obviously good motivations (saving the world, protecting the heir to the throne, helping the Rebellion, etc.) than Kevin’s are. He just has a habit of getting his ass thoroughly kicked throughout these first two episodes, which—come to think of it—describes Kevin at certain points in Alien Force too.
Little thing that bothered me, that I might need an expert in medieval weaponry to explain: Meridian has gunpowder, but no guns. In fact, I really don’t remember explosives of any type, unless Caleb just happened to go Mythbuster on all of them in the first episode. What would the barrels of gunpowder be used for if not to make things go boom?
The episode jumps around quite a bit, from Heatherfield to Meridian to Phobos’s castle, etc. It makes for painful recapping, though it wasn’t quite as noticeable watching it through. It builds up suspense, particularly important in an origin story episode.
Throughout these reviews, you will find me repeatedly criticizing Phobos’s plans, leading up to the season two episode “Y is for Yield.” This is one such example. We see in the Oubliette that there are three pits, one of which holds three prisoners: Blunk, who seems harmless but somehow is on Phobos’s shitlist; Caleb, the Rebel Leader; and Will, the Guardian of the Veil. Why in the world would Phobos put two very important and very powerful enemies in the same cell, when anyone with two braincells to rub together could tell you that they’d help one another escape?
There’s also a really noticeable error. While everyone is escaping, Cornelia uses her powers to close a pair of heavy iron gates, then has a root seal them closed. But when they come across the bars on the tunnel, she’s completely useless. This can’t be telekinesis, since she doesn’t develop that until season two—it’s a plot point. So…yeah. Bad mistake.
The hardest part of this series is the voice credits. Quite a few of the characters fall somewhere in-between “major character” and “recurring character.” Some characters are important in the first and barely appear in the second (I’m looking at you, Aldarn); others are the opposite (Matt). For the sake of my sanity, all voice credits will be given for the first appearance, unless they happen to change in a subsequent appearance (typically because they realized they already had Dee Bradley Baker on staff).
“It Begins” and “It Resumes” were written by Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers. Will was played by Kelly Stables, Irma by Candi Milo, Taranee by Kittie, Cornelia by Christel Khalil, and Hay Lin by Liza Del Mundo. Caleb was played by Greg Cipes, and Blunk by Steve Blum. Mitchell Whitfield played Phobos, and Dee Bradley Baker played Cedric and Aldarn—along with just about anything that growled, I imagine. Lauren Tom played Yan Lin, Byrne Offut played Uriah, and Lloyd Sherr played Vathek.
On a sidenote, I recommend playing the Ben 10 Drinking Game: for every voice actor you come across who has been in one of the Ben 10 series, take a drink. But only for the voice actor and not the characters themselves, otherwise Dee Bradley Baker will make your liver commit suicide.
It’s storming in Heatherfield on Earth as Hay Lin gets ready for school, and when she sneezes, she produces storm-force winds. Her grandmother, Yan Lin, is startled when a long-dormant jewel in a box hidden in her wardrobe suddenly reacts to Hay Lin. Hay Lin tries to confide in her grandmother about the weird allergic reaction, and Yan Lin tries to cover for it and her glowing wardrobe by suggesting Hay Lin invite her best friends over for snacks after school: Taranee Cook, Cornelia Hale, and Irma Lair. To Hay Lin’s own surprise, she decides to also bring along the new girl, Will Vandom, but there’s no time to worry about it before school.
While Caleb and Aldarn escape their pursuers on hugongs (essentially, Chocobos), school isn’t going so well for the girls. Will’s off to a rough start, and in her science project, Cornelia has utterly failed to kill the plant she was supposed to over-fertilize. Even when she tries to beat the crap out of it, the flower still blooms. Will dodges insults from school bully Uriah and his gang, and thanks Hay Lin for the invitation to her house—despite Cornelia’s horror that Hay Lin invited “New Girl.”
Phobos instructs his right-hand man, Cedric (who’s actually a snake monster who can transform into a human), to take over the responsibility of catching the two Rebels. Meanwhile, the girls are enjoying their snack, and the others’ teasing of Cornelia puts Will more at ease. Yan Lin arrives with the box and using her powers of illusion, tells them how a mystical Veil was created to isolate the evil world of Meridian from the rest of the universe (don’t worry, this will be retconned or otherwise forgotten by season 2). Phobos rules, but the legitimate heir to the throne (the question of “legitimacy” throws in a whole new set of implications that are never addressed) is believed to be somewhere on Earth. Portals in the Veil have been opening, allowing evil to escape to Earth, and it’s up to the Guardians of the Veil to seal them. Yan Lin had been a Guardian at their age, but now, it’s up to them: Irma with powers over water, Taranee with fire, Hay Lin with air, Cornelia with earth, and Will with Heart. With the Heart of Kandrakar, Will is able to transform the other girls and enhances their powers, while not having much that stands out on her own.
Say it with me, folks: What kind of lame power is Heart, anyway?
Somehow or another, Yan Lin knows that the Rebel Leader on Meridian is in danger, and she gives the girls their mission. Phobos watches via magic as Will tries to back out of the deal. Caleb and Aldarn have given their pursuers the slip, and Caleb tells Aldarn to go ahead without him to the Infinite City. He’s heard rumors that Phobos has discovered the true heir, and somebody needs to save the heir. Having a bromantic moment with Aldarn as he tells him to pass along the message for the men to “stay strong” and for the women “don’t worry” (yes, it’s corny as all hell coming from a fifteen-year-old), they then part ways—Aldarn to the Infinite City and Caleb to…a mountain…in the middle of nowhere…to look for a portal. Yeah, what part of this said, “Good plan” again? Unsurprisingly, Caleb runs into Cedric, who…throws him off the mountain. Guys, I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that impressed with this Rebel Leader.
The girls decide to practice their magic, and Will and Hay Lin discover the joys of flight (and in Hay Lin’s case, the joys of crashing into the camera. Goodbye, fourth wall) for hours while Caleb continues to fall down the mountain. Bad idea for pacing. He finally begins running down the mountain, with Cedric following, as he comes across a portal. Now, there is absolutely no reason he should know there’s a portal there. He has no powers, and as we will see soon, only one race on Meridian has the ability to track them down without magic. The girls are about to head home when the portal opens to them, spitting out Caleb while Cedric reaches through for him. Will is too scared to figure out what to do, but she still manages to transform the girls while Caleb screams for them to close the portal. They pool their magic together and Will tries to use the Heart, but she can’t control the power, and they close the portal too late to save Caleb. The girls are distressed by the whole thing—with Cornelia loudly blaming Will—and Yan Lin tells the girls not to fight, as they need to work together to win.
With Caleb in Phobos’s stronghold, the girls are still worried. He attempts an escape, but he’s outnumbered and thrown into what is essentially solitary confinement. Stuffed in a cage and lowered to the bottom of a pit, he’s supposed to spend the rest of his life in the Oubliette. Phobos’s guard, Vathek, very obviously hides a key in a loaf of bread and tosses it down to Caleb. Caleb then meets Blunk, a Passling smuggler he apparently has met in the past who, despite stealing his bread, is the one who actually finds the key. Caleb unlocks his shackles as Phobos begins his quest to locate teenage girls in Heatherfield and drag them back to his castle. I’m not sure if it’s less or more creepy than it sounds. Right now, he’s focusing on Will.
After talking with the others about picture day, Will separates from them as they head off together, clearly not feeling part of their close-knit group. But in a back-alley, she’s captured through a portal, leaving behind her backpack. Taranee finds it the next day and worriedly tells the girls she found it and the Heart abandoned. At Hay Lin’s insistence, the girls follow the Heart of Kandrakar to a portal. In the Oubliette, Caleb and Blunk attempt another escape, only to hear that they will be joined by a Guardian of the Veil. Neither Will nor Caleb is impressed with one another, as they both think the other too young to be handling the responsibility of saving the world. Apparently, neither of them thinks too highly of any other teenagers with attitude. While the girls try to make their way through Meridian to rescue them, our two heroes continue to argue, with Blunk feeling distinctly uncomfortable in the middle. The girls find the castle and with Cornelia’s powers, make their way across the moat by swinging like Tarzan. Phobos senses the Heart’s approach and sends out Cedric to meet them. In the dungeon, the girls find which of the three pits contains Will, Caleb, and Blunk, and send down the Heart to her. Thoroughly sick of Caleb, Will flies up and tells Irma to send enough water in for Caleb to float to the surface while Cornelia and Taranee fight off the guards and Hay Lin looks for an exit. The girls are surprised to see that the Rebel Leader is the boy from before, and even more surprised at Blunk. Blunk tells them of a secret tunnel, but it’s covered by bars. While Taranee tries to melt them open, Caleb goes to nobly sacrifice himself to hold off the guards, insisting that it’s more important to protect the Veil than worry about one Rebel’s life. Will is horrified, but Cornelia is impressed. But once the girls and Blunk have escaped, Will is determined to go back for Caleb, but Hay Lin insists that she’s a better flier. She arrives just in time to save him from a messy death from falling off another cliff. All seven of them find the portal in the swamp, but they have to fend off Gargoyle first. They make it through, but Gargoyle grabs Irma. Determined not to make the same mistake again, Will holds out the Heart and closes the portal, destroying Gargoyle’s stone arm and rescuing Irma.
This time, the girls are thrilled after their first adventure, and while Blunk heads off to torment poor Heatherfield, the humans all head to the Silver Dragon. Hay Lin realizes that the girls’ first initials spell out the acronym W.I.T.C.H., and the girls affirm their friendship with Will. But Yan Lin warns them that Will was not the real target—Phobos will attack again for another girl, and they must be ready.
As these are only the first two episodes, there isn’t a lot of time to completely develop the six main characters. Therefore, we have to settle for the first impressions.
Will is very insecure in her new school, having difficulties making friends and generally not fitting in with the other girls. This is clear when she asks Taranee if she makes the same turn down the street to her house, and Taranee says that she’s going to Irma’s for dinner. None of the girls realize that Will is desperately looking for a companion and that they’re leaving her out by not inviting her.
Her biggest problem is Cornelia, a haughty and stuck-up girl who makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t accept her, calling her “New Girl” and blaming her for Caleb’s capture. She tries to be the voice of reason, insisting that Yan Lin has lost it and that the “magic” around her has a logical explanation. But the real voices of reason are Taranee and Irma.
Taranee’s defining feature is her fear, as she’s afraid of her powers and heights and everything—we will see more of this throughout the season. But she’s also the sane one on the team, the real heart of the group. She reminds them that she had been the new girl on the block last year, which makes Cornelia’s disregard for Will rankle her. She finds Will’s backpack and realizes something horrible happened to her and is the first to insist they have to skip school (which we will later see is a big deal for her) to find her. She’s also the first one to follow Hay Lin into the portal, affirming her friendship with Will. This is fitting, as in the comics, she’s Will’s first friend in Heatherfield.
Irma, on the other hand, is a bit of an enforcer. She’s sarcastic, constantly needling Cornelia and generally calling her out on her bullshit. She doesn’t take her crap. But it’s part of a good heart. When the others start worrying about picture day, she’s the one who says she’d rather be true to who she really is and go into Meridian to kick some ass. It’s a short moment, but it speaks a lot for her character—for all of her bitingly cynical words, she’s determined to do the right thing.
Rounding out our quintet is Hay Lin, who is bubbly and cheerful. She’s a little ditzy, babbling on about things on occasion in a way that reminds me of Bridge from Power Rangers: SPD. She’s definitely the friendliest of the group, and she’s the one who makes the first moves to help Will and Caleb. She insists that they have to follow the Heart to find Will; and when Will tries to go back for Caleb, she’s the one who volunteers to go instead, arguing she’s better at flying. Nothing gets her down for long, as she doesn’t worry much about the weird glowing object in her grandmother’s closet, the fact that she sneezed and destroyed her room, the fact that she suddenly decided to strike up a friendship with Will, or the fact that a teenage boy was captured by a terrifying monster right in front of them. Oddly, it makes her the most focused on the team in these episodes, as she is able to clear her head and concentrate on Cedric, sketching him out for Yan Lin to identify, like a police artist.
Finally is the one guy on the team (well, for now), played by Greg Cipes. He’s a rebellious youth who causes trouble for everyone. The first impressions we get of him are of him stealing, being arrested, arguing with the hero, and all sorts of things that shouldn’t impress us. But despite his flaws, this young man with roguish charm has a good heart. He’s willing to sacrifice his own life in order to further the heroes’ mission, proving that he won’t let anything stop him from doing what he thinks is right. The first few episodes pretty much establish him as the main character, despite what the title says, but this will even out with time.
His name is Caleb, though, not Kevin this time. From there, the differences are that Caleb has much more obviously good motivations (saving the world, protecting the heir to the throne, helping the Rebellion, etc.) than Kevin’s are. He just has a habit of getting his ass thoroughly kicked throughout these first two episodes, which—come to think of it—describes Kevin at certain points in Alien Force too.
Little thing that bothered me, that I might need an expert in medieval weaponry to explain: Meridian has gunpowder, but no guns. In fact, I really don’t remember explosives of any type, unless Caleb just happened to go Mythbuster on all of them in the first episode. What would the barrels of gunpowder be used for if not to make things go boom?
The episode jumps around quite a bit, from Heatherfield to Meridian to Phobos’s castle, etc. It makes for painful recapping, though it wasn’t quite as noticeable watching it through. It builds up suspense, particularly important in an origin story episode.
Throughout these reviews, you will find me repeatedly criticizing Phobos’s plans, leading up to the season two episode “Y is for Yield.” This is one such example. We see in the Oubliette that there are three pits, one of which holds three prisoners: Blunk, who seems harmless but somehow is on Phobos’s shitlist; Caleb, the Rebel Leader; and Will, the Guardian of the Veil. Why in the world would Phobos put two very important and very powerful enemies in the same cell, when anyone with two braincells to rub together could tell you that they’d help one another escape?
There’s also a really noticeable error. While everyone is escaping, Cornelia uses her powers to close a pair of heavy iron gates, then has a root seal them closed. But when they come across the bars on the tunnel, she’s completely useless. This can’t be telekinesis, since she doesn’t develop that until season two—it’s a plot point. So…yeah. Bad mistake.
The hardest part of this series is the voice credits. Quite a few of the characters fall somewhere in-between “major character” and “recurring character.” Some characters are important in the first and barely appear in the second (I’m looking at you, Aldarn); others are the opposite (Matt). For the sake of my sanity, all voice credits will be given for the first appearance, unless they happen to change in a subsequent appearance (typically because they realized they already had Dee Bradley Baker on staff).
“It Begins” and “It Resumes” were written by Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers. Will was played by Kelly Stables, Irma by Candi Milo, Taranee by Kittie, Cornelia by Christel Khalil, and Hay Lin by Liza Del Mundo. Caleb was played by Greg Cipes, and Blunk by Steve Blum. Mitchell Whitfield played Phobos, and Dee Bradley Baker played Cedric and Aldarn—along with just about anything that growled, I imagine. Lauren Tom played Yan Lin, Byrne Offut played Uriah, and Lloyd Sherr played Vathek.
On a sidenote, I recommend playing the Ben 10 Drinking Game: for every voice actor you come across who has been in one of the Ben 10 series, take a drink. But only for the voice actor and not the characters themselves, otherwise Dee Bradley Baker will make your liver commit suicide.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-10 04:11 pm (UTC)I'm not sure I follow on the comment about Vathek? Mind you, it's been years since I wrote the review, so maybe my memory is fuzzy and re-reading it isn't jogging anything.
As far as Yan Lin's explanation goes, she implies that the Veil was erected specifically to lock out Meridian. Later, we'd see that it was to seal off every world and especially Kandrakar itself. My guess is that the first season was trying to play it safe with just dealing with two worlds rather than the many from the comics. There were more implications about Meridian overall that were good worldbuilding at the time but seemed utterly forgotten or overwritten in season 2.
And a lot of my issue stems from the fact that I am in the U.S., and the show that was being marketed was different from the show we got. There's also a general complaint somewhere about how girls' superhero shows tend to also have to be slice-of-life or comedies while boys get Superman and Batman, but that's a rant for another year.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-11 09:12 pm (UTC)I do know my criticism of Phobos is this: when you are an evil dictator trying to maintain your iron grip on a kingdom, you damn well better know every single detail of what's going on in your ranks, especially in your prisons.