Teen Titans S05E10 Review: Origin Story

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 10: Go

Oh hey, surprise prequel episode! It's an episode that... really felt like it needed some revisions. After Teen Titans' staunch stance at never touching superhero origin stories, we get the origin story of... well, the team, with brief allusions to Starfire and Cyborg's origins. It really should be exciting and deliver big revelations, but there really isn't anything big that got revealed here. It really is an episode that would've fit better in the first two seasons, and while it's cool to see how the Titans first met each other, it's also a bit unnecessary to take twenty minutes to tell the whole story. "Oh, Starfire got kidnapped by Gordanian slave traders, she rampages a bit, meets the other four Titans, they become buddies and beat up the aliens." There are several cool moments with Beast Boy trying to shake off the shackles of his past in the Doom Patrol, Robin trying to shake off his shackles of being Batman's apprentice, and both Raven and Cyborg just being full of self-loathing and angry at the world (until Beast Boy's like all 'cool'!)... but it's nothing we haven't already seen before.

I don't know, I think I would've liked this episode a lot more if it took place earlier in the series, but even then the plot and scripting isn't anything too  special after the novelty of 'oh, look how awkward Raven is!' and angry rampaging Starfire wears off. Though to the show's credit, having Starfire explore a very different side of her and being utterly this angry rampaging monster speaking in an alien tongue is a cool side to the character we've never really seen explored in the series, and makes me somewhat sad that Starfire never got a chance to really be explored as a character.

I don't know why this episode felt so generic. Maybe it's because the whole 'origin' story ended up taking like two or three minutes each with the show's insistence on still keeping things vague, and the bulk of it is just boring Gordanian fighting? It's a bit strange to make an origin episode while still not actually showing us Robin's origin as Batman's protege or Cyborg's accident that caused his transformation or Beast Boy leaving the Doom Patrol. So despite the coolness of having a prequel episode, it all ended up being a bit uninteresting. And honestly the fifth season biggest problem isn't the fact that it features the main cast so little, it's just that the underwhelming episodes outweigh the good ones.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Gordanians are a race of reptilian slave-traders in the comics, and their depiction in the comics and their antagonism with the Tamaraneans are more or less similar with their comic counterparts.
• The robber talking to Robin about how "this isn't your town, Aren't you supposed to be with-" is definitely an allusion to Batman. Additionally, we get some allusions to Robin's theme from The New Batman Adventures. 
• Robotman is briefly mentioned by Beast Boy when he first meets Cyborg.