Sunday, October 27, 2019

Episode 33 - The Edge of Beyond



While Season 3 of ReBoot goes into some relatively dark territory (especially in comparison to what came before), there are certainly moments of light heartedness sprinkled throughout. For instance, last week's episode was a more light hearted heist/prison break adventure. I feel the purpose of that episode was to give the audience some respite from the darkness of the season as a whole before it goes into the abyss. Literally, of course, since our heroes are now venturing into The Web to find Bob. 

We begin the episode with The Saucy Mare traversing through Hyperspace with Ray Tracer flying alongside them. Mr Christopher narrates this sequence with his 'first mate's log' to remind us of the premise and the events of the previous episode. As he finishes his entry, Capacitor calls him to the deck and informs him that they've reached The Edge of Beyond. The ship soon leaves Hyperspace and enters The Edge of Beyond - a dark, empty abyss with a giant tear surrounded by debris in the middle of it.



Ray says he can open the tear and create a portal to the Web, but they'll need to create some Web Shields to prevent them from degrading once in The Web. The crew gets to work immediately, gathering the remains of dead web creatures and attaching them to the outside of the ship. Ray offers to help AndrAIa in a flirtatious manner, which irks Matrix, causing him to storm off in a huff. Annoyed at this, AndrAIa gets on a zip board and flies off to find more web creature remains.



She eventually comes across an organic sculpture made up of spheres. Ray spots her, and informs Matrix that they need to get to her immediately. However, it's too late, as a baby web creature hatches out of the sculpture and grabs onto AndrAIa, biting her and draining her of her energy. Matrix prepares to shoot the web creature as it flies away, but is blocked by Ray before he can make his shot. Ray says that killing the web creature will also kill AndrAIa. As the Web Creature flies towards the tear, Matrix locks a target onto it just before it escapes into the Web.



Back on the deck, we can see that the Mare has now been fully coated in the remains of Web Creatures, giving it a more organic, alien look. Capacitor asks Ray if it's possible to save AndrAIa since it would break his heart if they lost her. Ray says he'll face any danger for AndrAIa, and then Capacitor asks him to fetch Matrix from below deck. Below deck, Matrix and Frisket are watching AndrAIa, who is fading in and out, becoming transparent (somewhat similar to Dot in The Quick and The Fed). It turns out the web creature did more than steal her energy; it also took part of her code.



Ray leaves the ship through the air lock, and double clicks the icon on his belt (which looks like the Motorola logo), causing him to become covered in grey scales. He goes up to the tear, and reaches into it, causing it to turn into a portal to The Web. He goes through, followed by the Saucy Mare. The ship enters The Web, which turns out to be made up of sinister red and blue clouds with no clear signs of land. 




Gun soon picks up a lock on the web creature that attacked AndrAIa, and takes the wheel of the ship - following the creature's trail. This takes the ship through a data storm, which proves to be incredibly tough to traverse through. They eventually make it through, and Ray reunites with the crew on deck. He confronts Matrix about sailing the ship through a data storm. Matrix says he did it for AndrAIa since they need to capture the web creature to get her energy back. Ray points out he could have got everyone deleted, including AndrAIa. This angers Matrix, causing him to punch Ray. Ray gets up, and tells Matrix that the Web is his digital domain, and if he wants to survive, he needs to do what he says. Matrix pulls his gun on Ray only for Capacitor to lower it for him. Capacitor scolds both of them, telling Ray that there's only one captain on the ship, but he is open to taking Ray's advice. He then turns to Matrix, telling him that it's only for Dot's sake that he tolerates his behaviour. As Matrix sulks off, Ray says that Matrix's behaviour could kill them all if he keeps it up. Capacitor says that the Enzo he knew would have agreed with Ray, but that Enzo is long gone.

Some time passes, and Matrix is impatiently pacing the decks of the ship while Ray searches for the Web Creature. Eventually, Capacitor manages to locate a pack of the creatures, with the one they are searching for being amongst them. Matrix lends Ray AndrAIa's trident to use in an attempt to capture the creature. Ray goes to try and sneak up on the creature, and isn't able to spot the group of beasts being ridden by armoured humanoid creatures behind him. Just before Ray is about to strike the creature, he's ambushed by the battalion of creatures.



The crew of the Saucy Mare spot Ray's surf board (which has had a sizeable chunk bitten out of it), but Ray is nowhere to be seen. Inspired by Ray's sacrifice, Matrix decides to go after Ray in order to finish the job. Capacitor orders Bula to bring out a suit that they've made for him to protect him from being degraded in The Web. Just before he leaves, Matrix asks Capacitor to look after Gun, since it would degrade if he brought it with him outside. Shortly after he leaves, we see Ray's surfboard repair itself.



Matrix approaches the pod in a small lifeboat, where he's observed by two riders in the distance. They speak in dial up tones, and send some of their trained web creatures to ambush him. As the creatures he's hunting pass overhead, Matrix ends up knocking off the target he planted on the Web Creature. Shortly after, he's grabbed by another creature. Matrix attempts in vein to break free, and is eventually let go, and sent falling towards a swirling abyss. Ray then swoops in and saves him. Once back in the airlock, Matrix asks Ray what he is, and Ray tells him that he's a next generation search engine. Matrix reaches the conclusion that Ray is the surfboard. They join Capacitor on deck, and Matrix suggests to him that he orders battle stations. Outside the ship, we see a group of Web Riders watching the ship, preparing to attack, but their leader signals to them to hold their fire.


As our first proper glimpse at The Web, this episode does a great job of showing us what it's like after we saw what kind of beings live within near the end of Season 2. Visually, The Web looks stunning - the mixture of reds, blues and purples gives it a distinctly alien feel compared to everything else we've seen so far in the series, and really helps to sell the realms of The Web as a threatening realm that it's practically impossible to survive within. 

The most interesting thing about this episode is Matrix's character arc. At the start of this episode, he has a somewhat irrational hatred for Ray thanks to the attention he is giving AndrAIa. His jealousy is the catalyst for the chain of events leading up to AndrAIa getting bitten by a web creature, potentially killing her. He spends this episode determined to bring her back and save her by any means necessary, putting everyone else in danger as a result.

This ties in with the idea that the reason that Matrix didn't go fully over the edge during his time in the games was thanks to the love he received from AndrAIa. With AndrAIa potentially gone in this instance, it makes sense that Matrix is going to be a little more on edge than usual as he's going to want to stop her from dying. This leads to him making an incredibly dangerous risk in order to try and save her by pursuing the web creature through a data storm.

By the end of this episode, Matrix learns to somewhat respect Ray after he 'sacrifices' his life for AndrAIa, inspiring him to go out and finish what he started and capture the web creature they're looking for and save AndrAIa. This respect increases once Ray saves him when things don't go to plan and he's ambushed by the same group of Web Riders that ambushed Ray. This ends up concluding this small character arc that began in the previous episode.

This episode also introduces us to the Web Riders. While we don't know much about them at this point, they have an interesting design which provokes a lot of mystery and intrigue surrounding them. Who are they? What is their motive? Why are they attacking the crew of the Saucy Mare? Has Bob encountered these mysterious warriors as well? We learn a bit more about them in the next episode, but for now, they are set up as a deadly new threat that is somewhat unknown.

One thing that slightly irks me about this episode is how AndrAIa is rendered comatose for the majority of it's runtime. Of course, it makes for great character moments with Matrix, but at the same time, the show has essentially written off it's female lead for the time being. This doesn't hurt the episode too much, and the same fate could have befallen another character in different circumstances, but seeing as this show has tended to treat it's female cast really well up until this point, it's just a little off that they would place their only main female character around at this point in the story in a coma (Princess Bula is still around, but she doesn't really contribute much to the plot).

Asides from this nitpick, this is still a really good episode that provides Matrix with some more development and is a great introduction to The Web and the danger that it poses to our characters. It seems that all other life here is hostile, and with one of their ranks down, the odds are definitely against the crew of the Saucy Mare.

Next week: The Web Riders begin their attack on the Saucy Mare in 'Web Riders on the Storm'

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