At some point during the production of ReBoot, the show's creators came up with the idea for a movie titled 'Terabyte Rising'. Some ideas used for this movie made their way into Season 3, but a lot of it ended up in this first arc of Season 4. The first episode of this arc does a good job of establishing the status quo of this arc and introducing us to two of the key plot points.
We begin with an opening sequence that recaps the events of the previous season. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but the most notable difference is that the theme tune is a little different. It's still the recognisable ReBoot theme, but it has more of a techno vibe to it. I still prefer the original, but this is still a pretty cool rendition of the theme.
We open with a shot of Mainframe from the Twin Sea. As we pan up, we see that things look a bit different. For one, there is a second Mainframe right next to the first one. This is presumably the Twin City. We then cut to see Dot's Diner being constructed, being overseen by a teenage Dot as Frisket (who is currently a puppy) runs around. Enzo tells Dot that they're going to be late for their dad's experiment. Just as Dot realises this, a beam of light shoots out of the Twin City's Principle Office, which then causes the entire Twin City to explode and a shockwave is sent through Mainframe. Dot then wakes up on her desk. It was just a dream.
Meanwhile, Phong releases a tear from the Principle Office which Bob stabilises into a portal. Out of the portal comes Matrix and AndrAIa, who are being pursued by some Guardian fighters. Matrix and AndrAIa are able to take out some of them with the guns on their bikes, but in the end, the Guardians are able to open Mainframe to the net and then destroy the control tower - leaving them unable to get themselves offline.
Bob doesn't want to delete the Guardians, so rather than destroying their vehicles, he's containing them in forcefields. He attempts to communicate with the Guardians, with his old roommate Cardon being the one to communicate with him. Cardon demands that Bob joins them, and says that all that's left now is the word, and the word is Daemon. Matrix gets impatient, and launches several missiles at the Guardians. This causes the dogfight to resume, and to make matters worse, the system voice announces the arrival of an incoming game. As the battle commences, Bob orders Matrix and AndrAIa to enter the game. Matrix isn't too happy about this, but he obeys.
We then cut to the Super Computer. Particularly, a rather ornate looking room with a pendulum in the background. This could possibly be the Super Computer's clock speed room. There is also a throne in the room, and seated on it is a young female sprite with purple skin and flowing snake like hair. This is Daemon. Her advisor, Daecon, informs her that there is a system resisting her control, but they have located Guardian 452 - Bob. Daemon considers Bob her messenger, and asks Daecon to prepare something called the 'zoom room' so they can send him to her.
In the Principle Office war room, Specky reports to Dot that there is four participants in the Game. This confuses Dot at first, but she looks around and notices that Enzo and Frisket are missing. Inside the game, Matrix is ranting to AndrAIa about how he feels Bob is treating him like a kid. That's when they realise that Enzo and Frisket are in the game with them. Enzo and Frisket ReBoot, with Enzo turning into Mini Me from Austin Powers and Frisket becoming Mr Bigglesworth. Matrix and AndrAIa then ReBoot. AndrAIa becomes a fembot and Matrix becomes Dr Evil.
Outside the game, Bob suddenly begins to fade and falls out of the sky only to be caught by Hexadecimal. It turns out she decided to come and help out her favourite Guardian. She teleports him to outside his apartment where they're met by Mike the TV trying to do a news report on the two teaming up. Suddenly, Bob is taken by the zoom room, but Hexadecimal somehow gets him back.
Back in the Super Computer, it turns out that Hexadecimal switched Bob for... Mike the TV. He initially assumes that he's been deleted, but is relieved to learn he's in the Super Computer. He then gets scared once he realises that he's face to face with Daemon. After remarking that she doesn't really look like a Super Virus, Daemon steps on the floor which sends swirls of green energy towards Mike. As soon as they reach him, Mike is infected and under her control. After realising that Mike is close with Bob, she gets him to tell her all about him.
Back in the game, AndrAIa enters the user's area, and it turns out the user is Austin Powers, who instantly tries to seduce her. Outside the game, Hex is trying to get Bob to relax, but he's unable to with all the Guardians attacking. Hex decides to get rid of them, with Bob telling her not to delete them but just to get them out of Mainframe. Back in the game, Matrix has assembled the golden gun from the James Bond film 'The Man With The Golden Gun'. AndrAIa joins him and Enzo, bringing Austin Powers with her. Matrix is confused about where his pants are, but instantly shoots him to end the game.
As the game leaves, Hex uses her powers to round up all the Guardians and send them out of the system. After they leave Mouse reseals the system with a small Firewall. In the Super Computer, Daecon informs Daemon that they weren't able to take Mainframe. Daemon assumes that Bob is more powerful than she anticipated, but Daecon tells her it wasn't Bob, but a virus helping them. Mike tells them that it was Hexadecimal, and that he used to live with her.
After getting rid of the Guardians, Hex lands and asks Bob for a kiss. Bob goes to kiss her on the cheek, but she grabs Bob and passionately kisses him. At this moment, Dot contacts him on the vid window and is shocked at what she sees, with Hex not being particularly happy to see her. Bob instantly closes the vid window. Suddenly, Hex's icon starts glowing and spinning. Then Hex starts turning white, which causes all the nulls to form a protective cocoon around her (i.e. Nullzilla).
Back at the Principle Office, everyone observes the events on a Vid Window. Young Enzo is confused, so Phong hands him a DVD to watch so he can get caught up on what's happened. Matrix is clearly not happy about this due to his hatred of viruses, and is still mad at Bob for sending him into the game as he felt they were doing fine until then. On the screen, Hack and Slash are chasing Nibbles, Megabyte's pet null. Dot reckons they're still looking after him to cover themselves in case Megabyte ever comes back. When Nibbles enters the pile of nulls, it begins talking - 'I'm back! Daughter! Help!', it cries. Dot, Matrix, and Enzo are all disturbed by this. As Dot reveals, they have good reason to be - that creature is their father, Welman Matrix.
This episode is a great way to start the season and establish the plot for this arc. Here, we get introduced to the two plot points that are possibly the most vital to this particular story - Daemon, a plot thread introduced in Season 3, and the destruction of Mainframe's twin city - a plot point briefly touched upon in Season 2 but brought back in a big way this time around.
Let's talk about Daemon herself first. We don't see much of her at first, but she definitely leaves an impression due to how much mystery there is surrounding her character. She's a lot different to the other viruses we've had so far in the series. She looks very unassuming (something which Mike the TV points out to her, and I imagine mirrors a lot of fan reactions around the time), but she is established to be very powerful and has a very strong influence over the Guardians.
At the start of the episode, we see that Daemon has already infected several systems, so after building up her forces by infecting the Guardians, she has now begun to use them to force her way into systems in order to infect the entire net. Even though we don't see much of her in this episode, it's established that she is a much more deadly threat than Megabyte and the stakes this time are higher than they've ever been. Previous seasons have been about protecting Mainframe - this time they have to save the entire net.
The Twin City plotline is reintroduced in a big way. For the first time in the series, we are greeted with a flashback to before the events of the show took place. We'll get more of these throughout the arc, all of which help to flesh out the show's backstory, but after Dot mentioned this event in AndrAIa, we now get to see it happening. This doesn't come back into the story until the end, when we find out that Nibbles - Megabyte's pet null - is actually her dad. Back in Nullzilla, Megabyte referred to the null as 'father', but it wasn't 100% clear why he called him that. Was he referring to the fact that he was Dot's father? We'll get an explanation later, but for now, it's a great building block for this arc to build on.
Bob has to deal with a lot of internal conflict this time around. He now has to do battle with his former friends and allies - the organisation he's a part of. He knows that they can't control their actions as they are under the control of a virus, but he still can't let them wreck havoc on his system. His method? Containing the Guardians so they can no longer attack. While this does prove to be somewhat effective, he's somehow been weakened so wasn't able to take them on himself.
Hexadecimal appears to be somewhat good now. Bob fixing her mask at the end of the previous season appears to have calmed her down somewhat, but her love for Bob appears to have gotten more intense. However, this does mean that she's more than happy to help Mainframe for his sake. This is something that could come in handy when dealing with Daemon. But, much like Bob, something is happening to her, too. Her icon started to change her causing the nulls to swarm her. What caused this to happen, and what will the end result be?
This episode manages to have a good balance of seriousness and humour. While the stakes are pretty high, it doesn't feel quite as dark in tone as Season 3 did. The main sources of humour this time are Mike the TV and the game - being a spoof of Austin Powers. It's a pretty interesting idea to spoof Austin Powers, since that was already a spoof of James Bond itself. The sequence itself is pretty funny, though, ending with Matrix simply shooting Austin (something which Dr Evil himself refuses to do in the films, instead preferring to place him in situations he can easily escape from).
However, the episode isn't perfect. It takes a while to figure out what's going on since the episode kind of begins in the middle of an adventure, meaning we're thrust into a story without us knowing what the characters are doing and why. However, given the behind the scenes issues with this season (which I will be covering when we get to the end of the season), it could have been the case that there was initially part of the story explaining what was happening, but it was cut for time. It's not too big of an issue, and it doesn't bog the episode down too much.
This episode gets the season off to a great start, establishing the key parts of the story going forward while keeping up the high quality of writing the show has been utilising since Season 2. This plot is made to feel massive, and the end of the episode leaves you hungry for the next episode to see where the story is going to go from here.
Next week: Daemon's infection continues as Matrix and AndrAIa try and close systems that she has yet to control in 'Cross Nodes'.
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