Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 8: Deep Six
"Deep Six" gets the rap as the worst episode of season one, and while rewatching this season I don't think it's the worst (I dislike "Forces of Nature" and "Car Trouble" a lot more, I think) it has the simple crime of being... boring. We are introduced to another supporting Titan, Aqualad, who is Aquaman's sidekick from the comics. Aqualad has ditched his stupid comic costume for a cool blue-black wetsuit and a has grown his hair long to attract the ladies, but other than his cool design, he isn't really that impressive. The entire episode's premise has Beast Boy being absolutely hostile to Aqualad for no reason despite Aqualad just being a nice dude who ends up getting justifiably pissed of at Beast Boy's 'sabotage' of their mission.
And Trident (who borrows his name from a classic Teen Titans villain, but has nothing in common) is a very bland villain. He's a mutated fishy Atlantean, but the big plot twist of just how Trident is able to be able to be everywhere at once has been spoiled by, well, two Tridents showing up to attack that random ship.
In the end, the plot suffers from being predictable and boring, and while I liked Aqualad's design, he doesn't really do much in this episode to really impress beyond talking to fish, and the constant bickering between Beast Boy and Aqualad honestly is just aggravating after the first few clashes. The fact that Aqualad has a generic 'hero' personality doesn't help matters either. I don't think this episode is outright bad... it's just one-note and repetitive, and there's only so much variations of 'Beast Boy is an unreasonable dick to Aqualad' you can do, and there really is no reason for Beast Boy to be so overtly suspicious and angry of Aqualad. He's shown to be a bit of a prankster, but never the gloryhound or the paranoid type -- and the whole Terra arc hasn't happened to him yet, so it really felt like an odd scripting decision. Plus the fact that despite the constant bickering and eventual friendship, Aqualad and Beast Boy doesn't actually defeat Trident by teamwork. They just escaped by dumb luck, with Beast Boy distracting the Tridents and causing them to fight each other, before buggering off and sealing them in an underwater cave.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Aqualad, real name Garth, is the sidekick to Aquaman, and was one of the five members of the very first incarnation of the Teen Titans, which back then was actually made up of sidekicks: Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, Speedy and Kid Flash. While he wasn't a member of the incarnation of the team that the show is based on, Garth would be a constant ally as Tempest (who has a far cooler costume than Aqualad) and would be a member of several other incarnations of the team. His costume is based on one of Aquaman's older costumes,
- Trident in this episode is portrayed to be an angry fish-man and a native of Atlantis. In the comics, Trident is a group of three people who share a stupid purple-yellow costume and a powerful fire/ice shooting trident. They have nothing to do with Atlantis, and were operatives of HIVE. Like the Trident here, the group's ability to attack several places in the city at the same time while the public and the Titans believes them to be the same person is a central gimmick of the villain. It's... not one of DC's best villains, to put it mildly.
- Aqualad's sidekick Tramm is original to the show, but his design would be used in the creators' next project Ben 10 as Grey Matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment