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akinoameAs a preface to this, of course, I mentioned how Dwayne McDuffie, producer, story editor, and writer for Ben 10: Ultimate Alien died this week, and UA is my most regularly reviewed series. This break actually had nothing to do with that, given that Cartoon Network had their Hall of Games sports awards show this week in place of UA, but it did come at a good time, giving time for me to recover from the shock and sorrow. I had already planned on reviewing a W.I.T.C.H. episode in its place before he died. So if this review isn't quite as witty or funny (or, alternatively, lame) as usual, that's the reason.
For those who are following the Ben 10 reviews, the next episode, "Big Story," will be reviewed on a regular schedule.
In the woods of Meridian, the Rebels go all Robin Hood on a caravan, along with one in the city. Hilariously, Aldarn plays all badass and defiant before hiding behind a sheet of thick glass and praying it’s strong enough to survive the rhino riders. Though I do ask what he’s doing there; he’s supposed to be posing as an upstanding citizen, and he can’t exactly do that if he blows his cover and they let the bad guys live. But in any case, the Rebels capture the caravans, seizing food for everyone in the Infinite City. But Aldarn asks Caleb if he can pick up more chocolate for the kids, and Caleb promises that he will when he heads back to Earth tomorrow. Meanwhile, in the palace, Phobos is livid. Somehow or another, the Rebels knew his routes, and Cedric can’t fight the Rebels if he’s focusing on the Guardians. Phobos suspects a spy among his staff, and Ceddy suggests that they should spread a rumor about something important having been found—something to peak the Rebels’ interest and ferret out the spy among them. And Phobos knows just the bait.
On Earth, the Guardians locate a portal on an apartment’s roof, busting Caleb and Blunk who just came through. Caleb begs them to keep the portal open so he can bring chocolate to the kids, but Will points out that he’s supposed to tell them where the portals are so that they can close them; they can’t afford to leave them open. Their need to keep Earth safe conflicts with Caleb’s desire to provide aid to the Rebels and to the civilians back home. But this ends up being the last thing the Guardians need to worry about. At school, the girls sans Hay Lin notice the flyer for Drama Night and start complaining about it to a confused Will. Every year, four teams put together a short play for parents and whatever, and the other girls hate it. Except for Hay Lin, who signed them all up without asking. Nice. On Meridian, Ceddy tells the Captain of the Guard and two of his lieutenants that the Seal of Phobos was found at Torus Filney, shocking the hell out of them. Ceddy warns the three guards to keep this on the downlow, so as Albus Dumbledore would say, naturally the whole castle knows. Including Vathek, who decides to take this as a cue to leave the cafeteria. After school, Hay Lin tries to muster up the girls’ enthusiasm, but they’re understandably pissed about her railroading them into this. And why? Because she wanted to design the costumes, and she needed people to wear them. The worst part is that when you see the costumes, they’re not nearly as good as her fashions for Caleb. By the way, girls, you totally have the right to quit. Hay Lin had no right to drag you into this mess, and you have no commitment, especially given that the signup sheet wasn’t in your handwriting. The theme of play is mythology, and Yan Lin tells them an apparently Ancient Chinese story about four dragons and the nymph Xin Jing. When Will somehow makes the realization that this is the story of the origin of the Heart of Kandrakar, the girls decide that they have to do this as their play. Meanwhile, Caleb fails at eating ice cream. Ha-ha, laugh at alien boy. The girls build the set and props, and Taranee writes the script and plans to narrate (due to stage fright). Cornelia’s playing Xin Jing, leaving Will, Irma, and Hay Lin as only three of the four dragons. But then Blunk arrives, dressed in an angel costume, and Hay Lin realizes he works just fine.
Meanwhile, Caleb is sulking in the alleys, mad that he has to ask the girls for permission to use the portals to win his war. I mean, it’s not like their world is at stake too should the portals be left open. Blunk arrives with a message from Vathek, and Caleb is stunned by the news of the Seal’s discovery. Because it can open portals in the veil, it means he can bypass that pesky “permission” problem, and in any case, he’s got to get it before Phobos does. Two birds and one stone. He makes Blunk promise to tell him about the next portal before telling the girls, and when the next one opens, he ventures uphill with the supposed finder of the Seal, who says he has no clue what it is. But as the cloaked man leads Caleb through the sandpits of Torus Filney, Caleb suddenly finds himself sinking. In a scene directly stolen from Aladdin, Caleb shouts for help from the cloaked man, who turns around and reveals his true identity. Heeere’s Ceddy! Back on Earth, Yan Lin’s “Caleb is an idiot and just got himself into massive trouble” senses are tingling, and she shows the girls a note he left behind. Normally, I’d criticize such an assumption, but this is Caleb we’re talking about here. She points out the massive hole in logic he missed: if Phobos really had found the Seal, he wouldn’t have waited a day to pick it up (though to let you know, Grandma, an artifact from twelve years ago is hardly ancient, unless it’s a computer). It’s obviously a trap. The girls need to ditch their play, but Hay Lin insists that they’d be expelled. For dropping an extracurricular activity. I’d argue something logical here, but this is Sheffield we’re talking about here. Yan Lin decides this is the perfect time to introduce the Astral Drops, and the Guardians take to Meridian while the Astral Drops do the play. That they don’t know. Countdown to this backfiring.
The Guardians arrive in Torus Filney, and almost immediately, Will is grabbed by the Sandpit, and the others just manage to pull her out. They land on some safely non-sandy land, where local children warn of a boy who got pulled into the Sandpit, just like their brother had a long time ago. The Guardians decide to venture into the sands, with Cornelia using her powers to produce roots for them to use as anchors. Naturally, these roots snap almost immediately. Caleb warns the Guardians not to touch the ground or walls, since that’s how the Sandpit traps its victims. He’s already embedded into a sand pillar, and all around are mummified bodies trapped within the pillars. Caleb apologizes for stupidly going off like he did, and the girls free him, but the sand attacks. Hay Lin blows it away…and around, which is totally brilliant when you’re fighting sand that moves on its own and is trying to kill you. Cornelia…totally fails to use her earth powers, which really annoys me, to be honest. Are her powers seriously limited to plants only? Why is it called “earth,” then? Why not “wood”? Taranee turns out to be the only useful one on the team, blasting fireballs that harden the sand and make it impossible to reform. It’s actually a pretty good moment, showing in her desperation a hint of absolute fury within her, and she insists that they have to save the others. They do—or at least, they manage to save the villagers who were still alive because it looked like a lot more bodies in there, and they were seriously mummified. But at least the kids’ brother is rescued. To ensure that the Sandpit neeever attacks anyone again, Taranee and Irma melt and super-cool it into glass. The Guardians return to school, replacing their Astral Drops, and they mistake the shouts of anger from the audience for cheers. Turns out that the Astral Drops made a disaster of the play, culminating in spraying the audience with a fire hose (and Blunk tearing the curtains to make towels for everybody), and Knickerbocker bans them from the next year’s Drama Night, insisting they’ll still be in detention. Caleb apologizes to Yan Lin and says that at least Phobos doesn’t have the Seal. Meanwhile in Meridian, Ceddy realizes that Phobos was right about the spy and asks for a list of everyone who left the palace the day before. Meanwhile, he walks right over the sewer grate where the Seal of Phobos is hidden. In the same spot. Despite water currents. For twelve years.
Three major plot elements are introduced in this episode: the Astral Drops, the origin of the Heart, and the Seal of Phobos.
The Astral Drops are created from the Heart of Kandrakar with the magic words “spord lartsa” (no points for figuring out what that spells backwards), which absorbs them back once they’re done. They’re perfect doubles of the Guardians in every way, except that they don’t have the Guardians’ knowledge downloaded into their brains. This can lead to them doing some really stupid things, such as the play. It starts out decently, only a little bumpy with Taranee’s narration. The four dragons perform their “dragon dance” in a cute manner, though it’s not as awesome as this dragon dance. But Yan Lin’s “this is a disaster” senses are tingling early, and it all goes downhill from there. When the dragons show their pity for the peasants (represented by the audience), Drop!Will points out their “horrible, ugly, clothes.” The kids in the audience think this is hilarious, but Knickerbocker is not amused. It’s honestly not that bad. But when it comes time to bring rain to the people, the Astral Drops fail to use the confetti the Guardians had set aside for rain. No, instead they use a fire hose, and Blunk sympathetically offers “towels” to everyone that he ripped from the curtain. With the words “astral drops,” the Drops all return to the Heart of Kandrakar, and the girls get all the blame. Not such a good idea to use magic to solve all your problems, I guess.
The play the Drops perform is the secret origin of the Heart of Kandrakar. Long ago, there were four elemental dragons and a nymph, Xin Jing, who was the daughter of a cruel emperor. In the village near the Emperor’s palace, a long drought had resulted in famine. Xin Jing and the dragons pitied the peasants’ plight, and the dragons boiled water from the sea and cooled it into rain. With the drought ended, crops finally grew, saving the people. But the Emperor was pissed that the dragons used their power without his permission, and he had them sealed away within four mountains. Horrified by her father’s heartlessness, Xin Jing used a crystal amulet to unite the powers of the dragon, as well as herself, forming a single, pink dragon that flew away. All that remained was the jewel itself, the Heart of Kandrakar. It’s unknown exactly how much of this story is truth and how much is myth, but it will come up again in future episodes.
But possibly the most important introduction in this episode is the Seal of Phobos. Twelve years ago, the woman who took the lost princess to Earth used it to bypass the Veil, losing the talisman in the chaos. It actually ended up falling in a sewer grate in the city, and apparently never caused any drainage problems nor got swept away in a rainstorm. The Seal is a small, diamond-shaped metal talisman that can open anything, not just the Veil—essentially a Keyblade. It can also reveal anything that’s hidden. This makes it especially valuable when they namedrop something called the Book of Secrets.
Something to note is that Blunk and Caleb still have an antagonistic relationship here. Caleb only sees Blunk as a somewhat useful tool for locating portals, and he pays him for that job. He expects no loyalty from him, and Blunk actually tries to express his loyalty to the Rebellion. This relationship will develop over time.
Also, and I’m probably giving the writers too much credit, but I liked seeing how Blunk mistook the angel costume for a bird costume. Sure, Blunk’s not the brightest star in the sky, but there’s no reason to expect that Meridianites would recognize a creature from Earth religion, such as an angel. It would just look like some kind of weird bird-person.
And finally, I have to give Phobos and Cedric some advice. Your problem isn’t so much that you have a spy among your ranks. It’s more that nobody in your palace can keep a damn secret. Yes, this played in your favor. But honestly? How do you know it was really a spy that caused this and not somebody saying this where Rebels could hear? Or going home and telling the wife, who might be with the Rebellion or sympathetic or even goes on and blabs in public? Ceddy, you told three people to keep this hush-hush. They told their whole damn unit. Who then told the kitchen staff. Who then told the rank-and-file. Who then let Vathek overhear. Your soldiers are goddamn gossips! No wonder you’re losing so badly! Seriously, don’t put these guys in charge of anything anymore!
“Ambush at Torus Filney” was written by Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers.
For those who are following the Ben 10 reviews, the next episode, "Big Story," will be reviewed on a regular schedule.
In the woods of Meridian, the Rebels go all Robin Hood on a caravan, along with one in the city. Hilariously, Aldarn plays all badass and defiant before hiding behind a sheet of thick glass and praying it’s strong enough to survive the rhino riders. Though I do ask what he’s doing there; he’s supposed to be posing as an upstanding citizen, and he can’t exactly do that if he blows his cover and they let the bad guys live. But in any case, the Rebels capture the caravans, seizing food for everyone in the Infinite City. But Aldarn asks Caleb if he can pick up more chocolate for the kids, and Caleb promises that he will when he heads back to Earth tomorrow. Meanwhile, in the palace, Phobos is livid. Somehow or another, the Rebels knew his routes, and Cedric can’t fight the Rebels if he’s focusing on the Guardians. Phobos suspects a spy among his staff, and Ceddy suggests that they should spread a rumor about something important having been found—something to peak the Rebels’ interest and ferret out the spy among them. And Phobos knows just the bait.
On Earth, the Guardians locate a portal on an apartment’s roof, busting Caleb and Blunk who just came through. Caleb begs them to keep the portal open so he can bring chocolate to the kids, but Will points out that he’s supposed to tell them where the portals are so that they can close them; they can’t afford to leave them open. Their need to keep Earth safe conflicts with Caleb’s desire to provide aid to the Rebels and to the civilians back home. But this ends up being the last thing the Guardians need to worry about. At school, the girls sans Hay Lin notice the flyer for Drama Night and start complaining about it to a confused Will. Every year, four teams put together a short play for parents and whatever, and the other girls hate it. Except for Hay Lin, who signed them all up without asking. Nice. On Meridian, Ceddy tells the Captain of the Guard and two of his lieutenants that the Seal of Phobos was found at Torus Filney, shocking the hell out of them. Ceddy warns the three guards to keep this on the downlow, so as Albus Dumbledore would say, naturally the whole castle knows. Including Vathek, who decides to take this as a cue to leave the cafeteria. After school, Hay Lin tries to muster up the girls’ enthusiasm, but they’re understandably pissed about her railroading them into this. And why? Because she wanted to design the costumes, and she needed people to wear them. The worst part is that when you see the costumes, they’re not nearly as good as her fashions for Caleb. By the way, girls, you totally have the right to quit. Hay Lin had no right to drag you into this mess, and you have no commitment, especially given that the signup sheet wasn’t in your handwriting. The theme of play is mythology, and Yan Lin tells them an apparently Ancient Chinese story about four dragons and the nymph Xin Jing. When Will somehow makes the realization that this is the story of the origin of the Heart of Kandrakar, the girls decide that they have to do this as their play. Meanwhile, Caleb fails at eating ice cream. Ha-ha, laugh at alien boy. The girls build the set and props, and Taranee writes the script and plans to narrate (due to stage fright). Cornelia’s playing Xin Jing, leaving Will, Irma, and Hay Lin as only three of the four dragons. But then Blunk arrives, dressed in an angel costume, and Hay Lin realizes he works just fine.
Meanwhile, Caleb is sulking in the alleys, mad that he has to ask the girls for permission to use the portals to win his war. I mean, it’s not like their world is at stake too should the portals be left open. Blunk arrives with a message from Vathek, and Caleb is stunned by the news of the Seal’s discovery. Because it can open portals in the veil, it means he can bypass that pesky “permission” problem, and in any case, he’s got to get it before Phobos does. Two birds and one stone. He makes Blunk promise to tell him about the next portal before telling the girls, and when the next one opens, he ventures uphill with the supposed finder of the Seal, who says he has no clue what it is. But as the cloaked man leads Caleb through the sandpits of Torus Filney, Caleb suddenly finds himself sinking. In a scene directly stolen from Aladdin, Caleb shouts for help from the cloaked man, who turns around and reveals his true identity. Heeere’s Ceddy! Back on Earth, Yan Lin’s “Caleb is an idiot and just got himself into massive trouble” senses are tingling, and she shows the girls a note he left behind. Normally, I’d criticize such an assumption, but this is Caleb we’re talking about here. She points out the massive hole in logic he missed: if Phobos really had found the Seal, he wouldn’t have waited a day to pick it up (though to let you know, Grandma, an artifact from twelve years ago is hardly ancient, unless it’s a computer). It’s obviously a trap. The girls need to ditch their play, but Hay Lin insists that they’d be expelled. For dropping an extracurricular activity. I’d argue something logical here, but this is Sheffield we’re talking about here. Yan Lin decides this is the perfect time to introduce the Astral Drops, and the Guardians take to Meridian while the Astral Drops do the play. That they don’t know. Countdown to this backfiring.
The Guardians arrive in Torus Filney, and almost immediately, Will is grabbed by the Sandpit, and the others just manage to pull her out. They land on some safely non-sandy land, where local children warn of a boy who got pulled into the Sandpit, just like their brother had a long time ago. The Guardians decide to venture into the sands, with Cornelia using her powers to produce roots for them to use as anchors. Naturally, these roots snap almost immediately. Caleb warns the Guardians not to touch the ground or walls, since that’s how the Sandpit traps its victims. He’s already embedded into a sand pillar, and all around are mummified bodies trapped within the pillars. Caleb apologizes for stupidly going off like he did, and the girls free him, but the sand attacks. Hay Lin blows it away…and around, which is totally brilliant when you’re fighting sand that moves on its own and is trying to kill you. Cornelia…totally fails to use her earth powers, which really annoys me, to be honest. Are her powers seriously limited to plants only? Why is it called “earth,” then? Why not “wood”? Taranee turns out to be the only useful one on the team, blasting fireballs that harden the sand and make it impossible to reform. It’s actually a pretty good moment, showing in her desperation a hint of absolute fury within her, and she insists that they have to save the others. They do—or at least, they manage to save the villagers who were still alive because it looked like a lot more bodies in there, and they were seriously mummified. But at least the kids’ brother is rescued. To ensure that the Sandpit neeever attacks anyone again, Taranee and Irma melt and super-cool it into glass. The Guardians return to school, replacing their Astral Drops, and they mistake the shouts of anger from the audience for cheers. Turns out that the Astral Drops made a disaster of the play, culminating in spraying the audience with a fire hose (and Blunk tearing the curtains to make towels for everybody), and Knickerbocker bans them from the next year’s Drama Night, insisting they’ll still be in detention. Caleb apologizes to Yan Lin and says that at least Phobos doesn’t have the Seal. Meanwhile in Meridian, Ceddy realizes that Phobos was right about the spy and asks for a list of everyone who left the palace the day before. Meanwhile, he walks right over the sewer grate where the Seal of Phobos is hidden. In the same spot. Despite water currents. For twelve years.
Three major plot elements are introduced in this episode: the Astral Drops, the origin of the Heart, and the Seal of Phobos.
The Astral Drops are created from the Heart of Kandrakar with the magic words “spord lartsa” (no points for figuring out what that spells backwards), which absorbs them back once they’re done. They’re perfect doubles of the Guardians in every way, except that they don’t have the Guardians’ knowledge downloaded into their brains. This can lead to them doing some really stupid things, such as the play. It starts out decently, only a little bumpy with Taranee’s narration. The four dragons perform their “dragon dance” in a cute manner, though it’s not as awesome as this dragon dance. But Yan Lin’s “this is a disaster” senses are tingling early, and it all goes downhill from there. When the dragons show their pity for the peasants (represented by the audience), Drop!Will points out their “horrible, ugly, clothes.” The kids in the audience think this is hilarious, but Knickerbocker is not amused. It’s honestly not that bad. But when it comes time to bring rain to the people, the Astral Drops fail to use the confetti the Guardians had set aside for rain. No, instead they use a fire hose, and Blunk sympathetically offers “towels” to everyone that he ripped from the curtain. With the words “astral drops,” the Drops all return to the Heart of Kandrakar, and the girls get all the blame. Not such a good idea to use magic to solve all your problems, I guess.
The play the Drops perform is the secret origin of the Heart of Kandrakar. Long ago, there were four elemental dragons and a nymph, Xin Jing, who was the daughter of a cruel emperor. In the village near the Emperor’s palace, a long drought had resulted in famine. Xin Jing and the dragons pitied the peasants’ plight, and the dragons boiled water from the sea and cooled it into rain. With the drought ended, crops finally grew, saving the people. But the Emperor was pissed that the dragons used their power without his permission, and he had them sealed away within four mountains. Horrified by her father’s heartlessness, Xin Jing used a crystal amulet to unite the powers of the dragon, as well as herself, forming a single, pink dragon that flew away. All that remained was the jewel itself, the Heart of Kandrakar. It’s unknown exactly how much of this story is truth and how much is myth, but it will come up again in future episodes.
But possibly the most important introduction in this episode is the Seal of Phobos. Twelve years ago, the woman who took the lost princess to Earth used it to bypass the Veil, losing the talisman in the chaos. It actually ended up falling in a sewer grate in the city, and apparently never caused any drainage problems nor got swept away in a rainstorm. The Seal is a small, diamond-shaped metal talisman that can open anything, not just the Veil—essentially a Keyblade. It can also reveal anything that’s hidden. This makes it especially valuable when they namedrop something called the Book of Secrets.
Something to note is that Blunk and Caleb still have an antagonistic relationship here. Caleb only sees Blunk as a somewhat useful tool for locating portals, and he pays him for that job. He expects no loyalty from him, and Blunk actually tries to express his loyalty to the Rebellion. This relationship will develop over time.
Also, and I’m probably giving the writers too much credit, but I liked seeing how Blunk mistook the angel costume for a bird costume. Sure, Blunk’s not the brightest star in the sky, but there’s no reason to expect that Meridianites would recognize a creature from Earth religion, such as an angel. It would just look like some kind of weird bird-person.
And finally, I have to give Phobos and Cedric some advice. Your problem isn’t so much that you have a spy among your ranks. It’s more that nobody in your palace can keep a damn secret. Yes, this played in your favor. But honestly? How do you know it was really a spy that caused this and not somebody saying this where Rebels could hear? Or going home and telling the wife, who might be with the Rebellion or sympathetic or even goes on and blabs in public? Ceddy, you told three people to keep this hush-hush. They told their whole damn unit. Who then told the kitchen staff. Who then told the rank-and-file. Who then let Vathek overhear. Your soldiers are goddamn gossips! No wonder you’re losing so badly! Seriously, don’t put these guys in charge of anything anymore!
“Ambush at Torus Filney” was written by Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers.