Netflix Retrospective - ReBoot: The Guardian Code Season 1 Episodes 7-10

Let's get season 1 over with, shall we?

Game Day

We open with a basketball session, some are bad, some are good, and some are Trey, which makes him automatically awesome. Their team is called the code-breakers... 

Moving on, they have tough opponents in today’s big match so Austin, Parker, Tamra and Vera have come to cheer him on, whilst discussing being Guardians in an open area. I know their identities aren’t explicitly secret, but people would begin to think they’re nuts.

Trey’s father is still in the picture, and you can see this conflict coming, unless you don’t have eyes, ears, and more than half a brain cell. Vera starts cheer-leading because… There’s a difference between socially inept and stupid and Vera crosses that line a bit, the others introduce themselves to Trey’s dad and it goes about as well as you’d expect it to. Ie, badly

Meanwhile, at the Virusylum, a place that never stops being stupid, Megabyte and a large fleet of sentinels arrive to attack with a *sigh* cyber-catapult making their first impact. Vera takes note of this and she leaves with Austin, Parker and Tamra, it gets Trey’s notice but of course the game is about to begin.

Megabyte keeps glitching, which makes him mad, as the Guardians enter the digital world and begin their journey. They get a lock on Megabyte and fire, seemingly hitting him but the Department of internet security takes notice and begins tracking their code. Roll credits

The Guardians are about to return but Austin suggests they head to Megabyte’s fortress to retrieve the sphere first. The others reluctantly agree but we see that Megabyte never left the fortress. The Megabyte we saw was one of his copies. The Sourpuss isn’t happy that the Megabyte copy was ‘inferior,’ Megabyte says that creating a perfect copy of himself would drain too much of his energy, but the Sourpuss doesn’t care.

Enigma takes out the outer guards as Megabyte enters the duplication machine. The Guardians soon have an eye on the orb, but soon encounter multiple Megabytes, although the initially have some luck, it doesn’t last long. By half time, thanks particularly to Trey, the Codebreakers are winning the basketball match, seeing that his friends aren't there he tries to go to help but his father is a 1-dimensional jackass so Trey has to brush him off.

Trey heads into the world, despite Vera warning there’s a good chance he won’t be out in time for the second half of the match. D-Frag barges in and begins busting his way through the sentinels. He then easily destroys the remaining Megabyte clones, destroys the replicator and saves Vector’s life just for kicks. It is rather too easy when he shows up. But it turns out for all that effort, they still leave the f*cking sphere behind, Megabyte also finds ‘digital blood’ on his hands.

Back in the real world, apparently the second half hasn’t been great for the Codebreakers, who are now losing by 5 points with less than a minute left. Trey returns to his coach who wonders where he was but then ignores it. The others sit on the stands again, but with 4 seconds left things seem hopeless, but he makes a difficult shot to win a point. Apparently he was also fouled or something, so got one final throw to bring it in for them.

None-the-less he gets chewed out by his father, since that’s the only thing I’ve ever seen him f*cking do, I’m kind of bored of it. The 'I’m worried about you' bs doesn’t stick with me. Thankfully Austin comes along to pull his ass out of the fire, like he did to them 10 minutes ago. Not sure what he must think about Austin now, that he was doing drugs or something but I’d figure that should affirm his anti-Guardians position.

The Sourpuss finds out about the ‘digital blood’ which confirms that the Guardians are human beings in cyber-space, which he says ‘changes everything’

Continuing the trend of having a half-decent cyberspace adventure combined with a competently acted but badly written real world dilemma. This game should’ve been better set up and his father better developed

Rating 6/10

Artificial Intelligence

Time for the Sourpuss to make another move, and talk to himself a lot. Nothing new here

And I guess today we’re learning the dangers of over-reliance on technology? Alyx was set up in an earlier episode, but today Vera has set one up for Austin’s mother, despite Austin insisting she wouldn’t use it. The Sourpuss has begun infecting the Alyx system with dark code, meaning Vera attempting to demonstrate the system pre-heating the oven doesn’t work. Instead, it gives a rude response...

OK, so the trillion dollar question here is why the hell is he wasting his time doing this? He calls it phase one, so here’s hoping phase 2 is a doozy. Roll credits

Vera hasn’t been discovering abnormalities when analysing the system, but it has her a little bit on edge given that she too is an AI. Apparently it’s already made the f*cking news, which means it’s spreading. The Guardians suit up and arrive at the Alyx system hub,  with their plan to bypass security and begin a system reset. Enigma has a ghost mode now… OK… She heads for the switch whilst the others hold off security, with Googz using a groovitron hack.

Enigma performs the reset but that was part of Sourpuss’ plan, as now the entire system becomes infected with Dark code. Phase 2, Alyx ‘takes over’ at the moment that takes the form of Austin’s mother having some loud music in her car. Vector decides to screw the battle and go and rescue his mother, whilst the others go to join Enigma in the lower levels, where the walls seem to be moving.

It could be a call on Vector’s car as Alyx seems to be in control of the f*cking car now… I’m calling bullsh*t. Vector manages to disengage the car's Bluetooth, freeing the car from Alyx’s control, so he can head back. Austin’s mother makes a call to Austin but Vera’s the one to answer, and it’s about as awkward as you’d think.

So, Alyx’s malfunction has caused delays with trains and airports? How f*cking widely used is this system and I’m still wondering what the Sourpuss has to gain out of all this. Vera interacts with Alyx to try and get Alyx to reject the dark code, something which she is able to do incredibly easily. Vera soon finds the back door and seal it off, locking out the sourpuss, for now.

So, people immediately regain their trust in Alyx again, but Austin’s mother is less convinced, but apparently having a cooked meal is more important than your life being in danger so she comes around. And we end with the sourpuss ranting to himself again.

This is a f*cking stupid episode and is among the worst so far.

Rating 3.5/10

Datastorm

We open with Sourpuss hacking into a weather satellite because he wants to redirect a storm and already we have a problem. A weather satellite is there to monitor and predict the weather, it can’t f*cking change it! You could pretty much end my review here, but we’ll continue anyway

He contacts Megabyte wanting help dealing with the military computer defences. Meanwhile in the human world the most horrific thing has happened, AUSTIN’S MOM HAS STARTED DATING!

  

The boyfriend is named Mark and was a friend of Austin’s father. Megabyte begins his assault and soon the security is eliminated because the security of the f*cking military is cr*p. Apparently the date’s over, Austin’s mother is making a survival kit of tinned sh*t in case the storm hits. Because the cliché that a grieving son can never allow his mother to regain happiness by dating someone else still f*cking exists, we get this sh*t with Austin.

The Guardians soon get word of the attack and get in position as Sourpuss begins doing things he shouldn’t be able to do with a satellite, even if it’s a military special weapons one, it’s bullsh*t. The Guardians make quick work of the blockade megabyte set up, but the storm is already hitting their home. Enigma and D-Frag have to deal with the sentinels alone whilst Vector and Googz head closer in to hopefully eliminate the dark code. Vera takes control of the Codek to provide them some air support

So, what does the Sourpuss get out of this non-sensical plan? Anyway, with hacking it a non-option with all the dark code, their best option is a bomb to blow up the entire satellite’s CPU. The DIS show up and begin firing on everyone, Guardians included. Vector has a close shave but they all manage to escape as the CPU explodes, rendering the satellite useless, the Sourpuss has a rant about it as the storm returns to its natural course, with the DIS taking credit for it.

And then we find that Austin’s mother called several times whilst they were in Cyberspace. Plus the non-conflict about Mark is resolved, I guess. They get Chinese to celebrate. Mark gets a call, implying he has some kind of agenda

This rivals the last episode in terms of really dumb, in fact, I’m calling it the worst episode thus far

Rating 3/10

Mainframe Mayhem

Who’s ready for a crossover?

Parker is practising his flirtatious banter. It’s a long running subplot that he’s in love with Vera. He’s the Razor of the group, minus any semblance of personality beyond NERD. It all goes to pot the moment Vera shows up. The babbling is fortunately stopped by a vid-call from Trey, who won an away game. He and Vera are apparently on for tonight or something.

Meanwhile, Megabyte is using his *sigh* cyber catapult against a seemingly impenetrable black door, well, I say impenetrable, a first shot does nothing, but the second shot creates a hole in it. Vera detects this and apparently Vector and Enigma are already active, so they’re sent to investigate. They find a bunch of un rendered models, as Megabyte approaches Hexadecimal, his sister.

I do like the design of Hexadecimal, not sure if that’s directly ripping off the old show, but let’s face it, it probably is. Hexadecimal initially doesn’t recognise Megabyte until he starts giving her the Darth Vader sh*t. Vera tracks the real world location of the mainframe Megabyte is in and finds that he’s in the room, in an old mainframe out the back that’s still operational for some reason. It was set up by Austin’s father.

Parker reboots the mainframe using a giant lever. Meanwhile some human… let’s called him Nerd, is happy it’s back online. Meanwhile, Vector and Engima encounter Bob, one of the original guardians of the mainframe. We’re introduced to Dot and Enzo, also from the original series, at a diner as Googz makes his entrance.

They work out that Megabyte is there to free Hexadecimal and soon catch up with him, there’s a bit of flirting between Bob and Hexadecimal, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Nerd gets a game out of a box called Starship Alcatraz, it has its own pillow and everything. A black cube descends on Vector, Googz and Bob, the aforementioned game, they’re now stuck inside until they can win.

Engima isn’t having much luck either, as she can’t stop Megabyte and Hexadecimal getting away. Bob uses a gimmick to get the weapons he needs and the others find they can’t use their weapons nor can they use the same gimmick. They’re quickly on the move as they have to beat the player or they’re stuck. This sounds really f*cking stupid!

Googz recognises the game and decides they need a different approach, beginning to collect eyes from the spiders that are attacking them. Yeah, why are there spiders in a space-prison? They head to the control panel and begin imputing them into a special console. This somehow makes them win and Nerd loses. With this weirdness over, they part company on good terms.

There’s a pizza party, and Tamra is feeling down about letting them get away. Look, the 4 of you barely hold your own against Megabyte, there’s no way Enigma could’ve taken them both on her own. Trey and Vera head out, and Parker assumes they’re on a date, and is devastated to have blown his chances. Tamra is still feeling down.

Meanwhile Hexadecimal is introduced to the fortress and Megabyte’s plans.

This… and I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear this, is not a good episode. For what Netflix billed as a season finale it lacks any sort of punch, it’s contrived as all hell and the romantic banter is atrocious. 

As a crossover is doesn’t do anything to entice me to the original ReBoot series, barely giving us time to know anything about their world or the challenges they face, or even the characters themselves.

The one thing this episode does do right is introduce Hexadecimal and keep her as a long-running foe, it will hopefully shake things up in season 2.

Rating 4/10

We’ll cover season 2 next year, but in the meantime, there be dragons coming to Rage Issues!