#why did the ''magic school bus'' theme song pop into my head

[transingthoseformers]

G1 SG au: Iirc the G1 cartoon Autobots left on Ark to look for energy elsewhere (in Marvel G1 they left to destroy threatening asteroids and got sidetracked).

SG Shockwave is in charge of the Nemesis because this was (supposed to be) at least in part a scientific expedition.

Makes sense, and it's gotta be such an interesting situation for Shockers because the mission changing so drastically bc ~sg autobots~

[loubuggins]

Lou’s TITANS Review

S1 E1 - Titans

The Titans show was not as bad as the hideous trailer made it out to be, but then again, maybe it reached my standards because I had them so low. I will say that there were moments in this episode that I actually enjoyed. The acting was decent and the special effects were cool to see, but the script was only sub-par. Like most shows or movies that aim to be more “mature,” this episode depended for too much on violence instead of telling a compelling story. Which, in my opinion, they have, but it’s being drowned by the excessive gore and grimdark nature that the show creators are trying way too hard to enforce. I do see potential in the plot, I just hope they will execute it better as the series progresses. I also have many theories surrounding the show, which I go into below the cut.The pilot episode is always one of the worst in any series so it would not be fair to judge the whole series based off of one episode. Therefore, I will continue to keep an open mind in these coming weeks as we continue to dive into this new twist to the Titans’ story.

Please note that this review contains only my opinion and that I am open to other ideas, but I do ask that extreme fans of this show ignore my review, as I am critical of certain aspects of the show.  

Read below the cut for my full review containing a summary of this episode!

The episode begins with the mysterious girl we come to know as Rachel Roth. She walks through a circus tent and ominous music playing in the background along with the odd sound of a joyful crowd in a seeming abandoned place gives away that this is a dream. She makes her way to the circus ring, where we see a flashback of the famous “Flying Graysons.” The family swing on the trapeze in what appears to be a very beautiful display, until the scene takes a sharp turn towards devastation. We see a young boy (Dick Grayson) scream in horror as he watches his parents fall to their deaths. There’s a lot of emotion in this scene and we see the dream come to an abrupt end as Rachel wakes up screaming and panicking.

Rachel’s mother runs in to comfort the young girl and if you listen closely, you’ll hear Rachel mention that she has had this dream before. Judging by her mother’s reaction, it’s clear she has confided in her mother before about this dream. It’s also revealed that Rachel can feel the boy’s pain and grief. It’s not an unusual statement to make about a dream, but this theme will continue to pop up throughout the show.

That morning, the mother wakes up to her alarm and we can tell by her appearance that she is exhausted and under a great deal of stress (Hm...I wonder why?) After taking her medicine she lifts her shirt up to reveal fresh scratch marks on her side. It’s never made clear how she received them, so to take a shot in the dark, I’d say they came from Rachel. When she enters the kitchen (wearing a nurse’s scrubs), we see Rachel quietly eating surgery Trix cereal and a cup of coffee. These may seem like minor details, but they bugged me greatly. Anyone who has seen the animated versions of Raven knows she’s a tea and waffles kind of girl.

Anyway, there is a tense conversation between mother and daughter that reveals the magical power that the girl has. It’s obvious that she can’t control it and it’s revealed that she doesn’t know what it really is or why she has this “darkness inside her.” Her mother seems to know something about Rachel’s powers, but refrains from sharing that information. It’s also worth noting that Rachel mentions being able to feel her mother’s emotions and using that empathy to know that she is lying.

After a dramatic scene between mother and daughter that makes Rachel look like Marvel’s Silver Banshee, we see the teenage girl hop on the bus headed for school. It’s fun to see one of my favorite characters in such a normal setting and I felt some compassion towards the poor girl. It’s clear that she has a good heart, but in typical Raven-fashion, she doesn’t know what to do about her more demonic side. Though she doesn’t appear aware of her demon heritage yet. I honestly would have liked to see more with her in school. We see her bullied on the bus, some random guy stands up for her, but brushes her off when she tries to thank him later in school. The whole thing seemed so insignificant, that they should have either cut the whole scene or added to it. This series seems to have an issue with priorities. If this season is meant to be about Raven, then let the focus be on Raven.

After the very short time in school, we are taken back to Rachel’s home where she is greeted by her mother and a random thug holding a gun to her mother’s head. The man makes Rachel’s mother reveal she is actually not Rachel’s mother, but before she can go further the man shots her point blank. The scene is unnecessarily graphic, as is most of the action scenes in this show. In a fit of rage, Rachel releases her soul-self and attacks the man. This all happens in a bit of a blur and while the CGI could be better, I didn’t find it as horrible as others did. After knocking the man unconscious, Rachel runs off and the focus shifts over to Detective Grayson.

I want to add that I have a theory as to the identity of this woman posing as Rachel’s mother. I believe it is Alice Williams (Roth), Raven’s aunt in the comics and older sister to Arella. In the comics, she is married and living a normal life with her family, but it's not like this show is hesitant to change a character’s backstory. Therefore, I think the woman is Alice Roth since her comic book counterpart is also very religious and she looks similar to Arella in appearance. My only other guess is that she was from Azarath, but I think my Aunt Alice theory makes more sense. It is sad though because I liked Aunt Alice.

Moving on to the bat boy, we see Grayson alone on a stakeout holding the file of some other thug who avoided charges against him for abusing his daughter. In a scene that looks like it came straight from Gabriel Picolo's Titans Zine, Dick looks over apprehensively at a briefcase sitting in his passenger seat. After some hesitation, he finally uses his thumb to unlock the case. Next, we see the thug with his other buddies in an alley (DC loves their alleys) as they begin the process of a drug deal. This is when Grayson, decked out in the Robin costume we have seen so much of, swoop in and fight them like some homicidal maniac. Nothing about this part is in character for the boy wonder. He brutally kills the criminals in an assortment of creative, yet painful ways. In the end, he goes to the man he was supposedly only after and beats him to death, but not before saying “If you ever touch your daughter again, I’ll find you.” This makes no sense once so ever and again, I blame the writers and the entire crew for not catching this mistake. It was very noticeable, and before the scene cuts again, we get the now famous line “F*** Batman.” After the horrendous fight (more like slaughter), we see Dick play the emo song that he so conveniently had on a record while cleaning the blood off one of his throwing R’s. We also get a nice long look at Brenton Thwaites shirtless, because the Robin fangirls need their fix I guess.

Back to Rachel, we get another ridiculous song as she takes a bus to Detriot. She finds her way to a soup kitchen and while she is there, a woman approaches her, offering to take her to a youth shelter. As Rachel is being led down a dark alleyway (seriously DC, again with the alley?), Her reflection (which I’m going to call her demon side) warns her not to follow. Trusting her instincts, Rachel runs away from the woman and attracts the attention of the police in order to escape.

As she waits in an interrogation room, Detective Grayson comes in to talk to her. She instantly recognizes him as the boy from her dream and without beating the bush, pleads for his help. I don’t criticize this though, because Raven was never one for tact. Grayson, however, is rightfully shaken up by her declaration but decides to investigate further. He makes the mistake of leaving the mystery girl alone and while he is gone, she is kidnapped by another cop.

Grayson follows them to an abandoned house, where he finds Rachel tied to a chair and about to have her heart cut out by the Acolyte. Now, this is where things start getting interesting. Before Grayson shows up, the Acolyte shares his villain monologue to Rachel, revealing that he intends to kill her in order to stop Trigon from coming, which is the exact opposite of what I thought his plan was going to be. It would be very different if the so-called “bad guys” of this show try to stop the end of the world from coming, rather than start it, and I honestly wouldn’t mind a refreshing twist to Raven’s story. However, in another surprise turn in events, Rachel loses control and her demon side takes over. Releasing her soul self, she performs a reverse exorcism on the Acolyte and kills him in a very disturbing and unpleasant way. I frankly don’t want to go into the details. By the time Grayson comes in, her soul self is back in her body and Rachel is panicking in her chair, claiming to have no memory of what had just taken place.

During all of this, on the other side of the world in Germany, we have our first look at Starfire (Anna Diop). The alien princess wakes up in a smashed car in the middle of the forest with a dead man beside her at the wheel. Dazed and confused she stumbles out of the car, only to have another vehicle racing down the road with men shooting in her direction. She takes off into the woods and after getting away from them, she somehow ends up at a gas station bathroom. She looks through her purse and it’s clear she has lost her memory, most likely from the accident (that probably was not much of an accident). Out of her purse, she pulls out a key that looks like the kind you would get for a locker or storage unit. The key also has a circular keychain with a picture of a cartoon frog. She also finds her passport, which says she’s an American citizen named Kory Anders. This leads me to believe she has been to America before, so it is possible she has met the boy wonder as well, but that is just my prediction. Not that this detail is of any importance, but the passport also says she is born on November 11th, 1991, which would make her 27 years old in the show. Just a fun fact.

The last item she pulls out is a hotel keycard, which leads her to the hotel the card belongs to (again, who knows how she arrived there). While she is there, a concierge seems to recognize her and Kory finds out she lives on the entire top floor of the hotel. When she arrives on her floor, she looks around to find any clues as to what happened to her before she lost her memory. All she finds is her apartment a mess, a half-packed suitcase, and a cell phone with a picture of her with her and some guy. Oh, and a beaten man tied up in her closet.

The first words out of his mouth were “Okay, don’t hurt me! I’ll tell you! They found her!” It isn’t clear at first who he is speaking about, but it is revealed later to be Rachel. As Starfire tries to retrace her steps, we start to get a taste of her character and what she has been up to up until now. Not a whole lot is made clear except that she was undercover and that she looking for Rachel. My theory is she was working for the JL in an undercover mission. She happened to stumble upon a much bigger scheme that has something to do with Rachel. She tried to do some digging but got too caught up in the crossfire. The crash was supposed to kill her, but she survived. Unfortunately, she lost her memory and doesn’t remember her original mission or the girl who changed it. Her hunt for Rachel will bring her to Robin, who she has already met before, but may not remember. Dick helps her and tries to recover her memories. Again, I think that her passport being American means she has met Dick before.

I have also heard that someone may have hired her to go undercover and find information about Rachel and that someone may have been Bruce. It would make some sense so I could get on board with that theory as well.

In the end, when moving to a store similar to Best Buy and it’s clear from the green animals playing on the TVs in the background that this is Gar’s (Ryan Potter) 3 seconds of fame, and let me tell you, I was not disappointed. The security guard follows a trail of video games down a hall where he finds a large, green tiger, shuffling through the games like how a cat plays with a toy mouse. As a lover of tigers and a major Beast Boy fan, I absolutely adored seeing him growl at the guard and take off with an Xbox game. Ryan says he picked Fallout 74, whatever that is (I’m not a gamer). Still, it was so much fun to watch and I thought Gar was the most in character so far, even if it was for only 3 seconds.

It’s obvious that this show will depend heavily on Ryan’s acting skills and Robin stans in order to stay relevant. Considering I’m only interested in the former, I’d give the series a thumbs down. However, I know from experience that any show’s pilot episode is usually its worst. Therefore, I plan to judge each episode by itself and will judge the season in the end. That said, I’d give this episode a 3 on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being the best. I say a 3, because while it gave an interesting storyline, but lacked in execution.

Rating: 3/5