12. Season One, Episode Twelve - “Bad Birthday Party”
Doom Log File Title: “Prince Taybor the Inept”
Summary: In honor of King Zarkon’s birthday, his human nephew Prince Taybor (a real weenie, by the way) of Nemone throws a bash for him to coincide with a pickup of the nemonium fuel mined on the planet. The night before he arrives a slave from the mining operation on the planet escapes (a kid, no less) because most of the robots stationed there had been partying pretty hard and hitting the premium liquor a little early. I bet you didn’t know robots could get drunk, did you? You’d be amazed what they can come up with to keep their advanced AI happy these days. Anyway, the captain assigned to the nemonium mining operation works with Taybor to fix things, and they prepare a nice show of slave torture for Zarkon when he arrives. When the king makes his appearance (bringing Yurak and Haggar along with him) he’s pretty impressed at first. Unfortunately the Voltron Force shows up with their usual BS and they free the slaves in a flash, and Zarkon orders Yurak to punish Taybor. One weenie prince skewered on a light sword later, the three of them head back to their ship and release a pair of twin robeasts. After a short advantage where it looks like the robeasts might win, Voltron turns the tables and emerges victorious. The end result is the destruction of our mining operation and the release of our slaves on Nemone while the Voltron Force gloats about “liberating” one of our planets.
Uggh, Taybor. Yes, he is a member of my belated wife’s family, and yes, he shares a genetic relation to Lotor. After witnessing this pathetic waste in action, you see now why I am so hard on Lotor. Look at what he could have become!!! Luckily my in-laws are the quintessential sycophants and as shallow as Doom’s nights are long, so no one really complained that Taybor was relegated to Nemonian shish kebob. And my birthday, how horrible THAT turned out to be. Bad enough that they decided to build my statue in the middle of the freaking desert; look at me, do I LOOK like someone who would like to spend their days in dry sands; I live on a planet of thunderstorms!! It just goes to show you gratitude around here: when Lotor’s birthday came later on, I had a statue of pure gold made for him. I get iron. Gee, that’s so much better, because when I think status symbol, I think cast iron. Then, the statue gets BS’d, I get knocked off my seat, and worst of all, I didn’t even get to open my presents! Eh, they probably wouldn’t fit and I’d have to return them anyway.
Notable Doom Highlights: The robot captain in this episode is a blast. He’s one of the more advanced units, and some techie with a sense of humor slipped an ego chip and some organic mannerisms into his programming since he’s the most ambitious robot I’ve met and the only one I’ve seen that flounces around like that in a little red cape. Hagar says that her inspiration was Bender; who’d think she was a fan of a human’s work, let alone Matt Groening’s? Prince Taybor on the other hand was about as useless as they came, and that robot would’ve done a better job running Nemone than he did. Taybor sucked up to King Zarkon in a way that would do a vacuum sealer proud, and he had no clue whatsoever how do to anything but schmooze and talk politics. As a result, when we got to see Yurak prune him from Zarkon’s family tree it was very satisfying. They cut most of the gory footage out in the GA media clips, but even they couldn’t completely gloss over the fact that Yurak about slashed him in half. Apparently it was pretty messy, too, because the log file has a note of him complaining about how the blood spattered everywhere and he’d have to send his armor to be cleaned. It’s probably a good thing he did. Rumor has it that sleazy ol’ Taybor had every STD in the medical books and probably a few that weren’t from screwing any slave that was even halfway attractive, and who wants to catch that by chance through an open cut?
Aw, no. One time during one of his sucking-up sessions, some of his spittle landed on my hand. Great, now I have to get tested every three months for the next year!
Notes: The scene with the slaves buried up to their necks? And the robots rushing with swords? That’s how we play golf in my kingdom. Of course, the idea of the game is not to punt the head into a hole; it’s how far it travels after you slice it and kick it. Now, doesn’t that sound a lot more fun than old people putting on ugly grass wearing plaid pants? This incident was another shining example of Galaxy Alliance hypocrisy. Here we are minding our own business on one of our planets when a slave that isn’t even a citizen of a GA planet (Nemone is one of ours, guys, Zarkon conquered it years ago and it’s been officially annexed into the empire since before the Voltron Force was even born) gets used as an excuse to invade one of our worlds. Voltron not only cost us a ton in property damages and timeline setbacks for the mining operation, but also stole a bunch of our slaves. Yes, stole. Nemonians are our citizens, and slavery is perfectly legal in both the Drule Empire and local laws, so all Voltron’s mission amounted to was breaking and entering, petty theft, and vandalism on an interplanetary scale.
Call Judge Mathis, I’m suing!!!
As a side note, the GA neglected to mention that after that particular Voltron incident, another (more competent) member of Taybor’s family assumed his vacated throne and rebuilt the mining operation to not only be twice as efficient, but with better security. A good number of the Nemonian slaves were recovered or replaced and after we laid the smack down on that first rebellion, no one has dared to try and escape or breathe a word about trying to bring Voltron back again.
My statue was also rebuilt-on the oasis reserved for the slave’s water supply! Take that, infidels, mwha ha ha haaaa!
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