Defenders of Berk 204 Review

PLOT A: "The deadly dragon with skin as white as snow"

While trapped down in the caves beneath Berk, Hiccup discovers not only the whispering deaths the Outcasts put underground, but a mysterious white dragon called the screaming death.

We all saw this plot coming…mostly because the advertisement for this season was hardly subtle about the fact that this dragon was going to be a major problem this season.

So ladies and gentlemen I give you the screaming death. Is it as big and bad as the Red Death in the movie…? Is the pudding worth the price?

…..Yeah, actually it is. I was really impressed with this new dragon as I wasn’t extremely moved by its design in the promotion poster, but seeing it move and be in action makes it at least 10 times more intimidating. It’s mean looking, creepy, but still looks like a dragon. Like they went for the mean look but it doesn’t look like they just piled on a bunch of extra stuff to make it look as scary as possible. The design just happens to work very well in its favor.

And it’s whole role seems rather interesting as well. Another “queen bee” dragon with a bunch of loyal whispering death hatchlings.  Oh, the possibilities…though hopefully not possibilities that’s just an exact rehash of the movie’s plot….

But, onto the actual plot behind the dragon, it’s good that they didn’t wait too long to have Hiccup find out that the Outcasts were planting dragons under the village, cause it would’ve been kind of lame to have him trying to figure out “who done it” for the whole first half of the season. But now that he knows, what is he gonna do? There’s a lot of “let them/it go” going on for these first few episodes…so something has to come to a boil eventually. And usually I’d be skeptical about big climatic battles as last season’s battles were rather…lackluster. But this season continually provides exciting battle after exciting battle so I’m feeling strangely optimistic that whatever battle is looming forth will deliver some solid action. Though I hope I’m not putting the prosthetic tail before the dragon here.

And speaking of said battle…it really deserves a shout out because not only did this episode do something I’ve been hoping it the show would do, but it did so very well.

As many of you know—and as I keep reminding so how could you forget?—pacing was one of my biggest complaints about last season, especially within the second act. The ending action would always be rushed to make up for the spare time the middle part of the episode, more or less, wasted. This season seems to have fixed this problem if the first four episodes are anything to judge, but this episode in particular was a shining example in how to utilize proper pacing.

How, you ask? Well, this episode was a tricky one, because the entire second half of it was nothing but a continuous battle. To do over ten minutes of nothing but battle and strategy you have to keep things moving and keep it fresh, both are extremely hard. But this episode seemed to pull it off. I think the main reason has to do with the fact that they allowed for so much time. The battle started in the middle of the second act, so they had the second half of the second act and all of the third to do nothing but battle. So it didn’t feel rushed or cut short.

This episode knew what to focus on and it was the battle, all the beginning was just set up and nicely paced set up at that. It didn’t linger too long with keeping Hiccup and Toothless underground, they found out what they needed to and then joined the fight.

But, whew, this is getting long…I liked the battle, and I didn’t even mind that the ending solution was obviously a callback to the movie with shot similarities and the whole nine yards. But I guess it’s just the right way vs. wrong way to reference the movie that makes it work (like in this episode’s case or 113’s case) or not work (*cough* 107 *cough*). But, like I said, I hope this isn’t foreshadowing that they’re going to rehash the plot of the movie as well.

And Hiccup’s doomsday senses are still tingling and we all know we haven’t seen the last of snow white dragon. Only question is…what it’s gonna do? I’m actually very exciting to find out.

So, good battle plotline. It had a tough job in being a plot that was 90% battle scenes and it was the main plot of the episode and it was only a two-plot episode so it had to carry more weight and it succeeded on all four ends.

Well done. My only slight nitpick might be that the ending conversation between Hiccup and Astrid seemed like rushed dialogue…it just felt like “oh we’re almost out of time, cut out some of the silence between the words” kind of thing. But it wasn’t episode-ruining. Just a nitpick for the sake of nitpicking. And there were just a few tiny little scenes where they slowed down the action and took too long of a pause—and almost unrealistic pause—like mostly when Astrid and Hiccup were strategizing how to defeat the screaming death…with the screaming death right behind them. Everything seemed a little too calm there, which kinda broke the tension since they did have this giant dragon still actively chasing them. Having them dodge something while trying to talk probably would’ve helped.

PLOT B: "Water we gonna do without water?" (okay that’s a lame title, sorry).

Berk’s well has dried up, leaving the village with a low water supply and no answers as to what happened.

So one of those “normal day on Berk” problems comes up. Gobber stinks, needs a bath, but oops there’s no water.

This plot was definitely just used as a reason to have Hiccup go underground to find the eggs, and the Gobber needs a bath gag was just put in for a laugh or two. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, it was just blindingly obvious.

Since this plot was just a “in the beginning and in the end” kind of thing, I can’t really say too much about it. The entire episode was really just heavily reliant on plot A. Luckily it did it’s job to deliver, but, to be honest, I feel like this “the water level is low” plot could’ve been replaced with just about any other plot that involves Hiccup somehow getting trapped underground and it still would’ve worked. So…it was pretty dispensable.

But, that doesn’t make it a bad choice, given that a choice had to be made. It just would’ve been nice to have a bit more of a seamless tie between plot A and B.

Though, once again, I did like how the flight club/academy was used effectively to help out a village problem. So, they still kept the group “doing something” with the academy before the big fight scene.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This episode was….(wait for it)….rock solid. (Couldn’t resist using that awful pun).

It was a big risk to have an episode put its supporting weight all on a ten-minute battle scene, but somehow it pulled it all together and kept the battle moving and interesting to watch. Not at any point can I say I was bored or wanting the fight to “just be over with already”, so they kept my attention on a continuous battle. Nice work.

Also, on a random note, I really enjoy watching Hiccup in so much action this season and, strangely enough, I love seeing him get thrown around (don’t know what that’s about, people do tend to have a sick obsession with liking their main characters to get hurt to a certain degree?). Now if only he’d get a scratch or two, because he had some really nasty falls in this fight, I don’t know how he didn’t dislocate his jaw or something.

But did I like this battle more than the one in the previous episode….?

Well, this one was longer and a lot more strategic so I should like it more. But there was something about the appeal of going out of the norm and having Hiccup fight off of Toothless that still makes me find the fight in 203 just a hair more entertaining despite it paling in comparison to length when put up against this fight.

Still, this episode was filled with lots of good stuff and an excellent usage of pacing techniques. I’m really liking how many of the season 1 flaws are getting fixed this season. I hope it keeps up!