41. Season One, Episode Forty One - “There Will Be A Royal Wedding”   

Doom Log File Title:  “Princess Romelle’s Escape”

Summary:  Prince Lotor gives Romelle the order to marry him or be cast in the Pit of Skulls.  She goes with Option B, and the angry spurned Lotor has the guards blast her into the Pit.  At least he finally followed through on a threat for a change.  When she hits bottom (amazingly not injured) she meets a “crazy man” holding a candle who helps her, while Lotor orders the guards to make sure she’s splattered and/or trapped like she’s supposed to be. I guess Crazy Man got his source of candlewax from the Earwax Dump site incidentally located deep within the Pit of Skulls.   Doomites have big ears, and that amount gets rather smelly.  Too bad it doesn't give off toxic fumes; the log files would have ended right about here. That’s when they see her with Crazy Man, and chase them.  Unfortunately they escape.  Crazy Man turns out to be Sven, the former Voltron blue lion pilot, and when she recognizes him he freaks out and tells her to get lost.  When she doesn’t, and talks about his past, he has an angsty sulk-fest and says he’s not who he used to be.  She says he could be.  After a run through the caverns (Cossack’s Note: Nice to know the Pit of Skulls has a back door!  Talk about security issues…) they see a slave ship escaping and suggests they try it.  My forces really need Continuing Education seminars if they don't know the fundamentals of a pit's design: it's a big HOLE, not an obstacle course.  He says they can’t, he’s a failure.  She says she has a transmitter (Cossack’s Note:  Looks like Mogor flunked Frisking 101 when she was in his custody!) that can reach Arus, but only he has the codes.  Why Lotor realizes she has vital secrets AFTER he throws her into the Pit of Skulls, I'll never know.  Talk about putting the spacecart before the robeast!Eventually he calls anyway.  Meanwhile, Lotor and Haggar order Mogor to assemble all the slaves in a demonstration to flush Romelle out.  They release the iron maiden robeast which attacks the assembled slaves unless Romelle gives herself up, and Sven says seeing stuff like that is why he went nuts.  Pussy.  This is family fare on Planet Doom.  Romelle doesn’t give herself up, which is what the other slaves want, and she and Sven lead a minor rebellion.  Only she and Sven are able to get away (Cossack’s Note: And boy, was the head of security not a happy guy after Zarkon heard about that!) and right around this time Voltron shows up.  He's head of heads on pikes now.  He fights the robeast and wins, and Romelle promises that she and Sven will come back and free the rest of the slaves.  Damn liberals.

Notable Doom Highlights:   Though most of us on Doom would rather forget about this low point in our war against Arus, Princess Romelle finding out the hard way that Lotor doesn’t like rejection is worth a watch.  You also find out that the Pit of Skulls is a big place and that if you survive that first step, you might live for a while in misery if you can navigate the tunnels.  Don’t expect an escape though—by the time I took command that convenient back door had long since been forcibly “caved in” by a few well-placed lazon blasts.  As the adage goes, third commander's a charm.

Notes:  Nobody knows how Sven wound up in the Pit of Skulls or why he’s alive, or why he didn’t have the misfortune of trying one of the many species of poisonous mushrooms that grow underground on Doom, but now there’s a standard operating procedure to do a full body cavity search and break a limb or two on anyone tossed into the Pit of Skulls.   Compound fractures are now part of the SOP.

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