Netflix Retrospective - Dragons: Race to the Edge season 1 episodes 7-9

 

Reign of Fireworms

Fishlegs is out counting night terrors, part of his census, considering we haven’t seen any dragons other then Night Terrors on this island as natives, not sure what the point of this is. Suddenly, a Fireworm lands and destroys his census. Oh no… Thankfully, he has a backup, but another Fireworm shows up and burns that.

Fishlegs reports in, it’s possible these Fireworms could be scouts for a migration, soon a flock could arrive and set the entire island on fire. Snotlout is first to turn tail and run but Hiccup stops him, they begin preparing measures for the migration, preparing water troughs, finding a hideaway for the Night Terrors etc

The twins weren’t doing anything important because they found a stone with their names carved on it, it’s a claim stone, their ancestor laid claim to the island for himself and ancestors, forever and all time etc. Which means the twins own the Island. Gobber and Stoick (why is he here? Hasn’t he got a village to look after, and also no Dragon?) authenticates it.

They leave Hiccup to deal with the aftermath. He believes the best course of action is to let them deal with it and in turn learn that there’s responsibility involved and yada yada yada. The Fireworms begin arriving in larger numbers

The twins immediately decide to rename the island Thorstenten or something, and then begin handing out job assignments to the rest of the group. Fishlegs is a poet, Astrid is the brush clearer, Snotlout is their sergeant at arms and Hiccup is the stable boy. Snotlout’s job means has to enforce their rules and throw people to their ‘dungeon’ if they don’t obey.

The aforementioned rules: bow to their rulers, pay for everything, and S has been removed from the alphabet, with severe penalties for anyone who uses them. Hiccup uses an s in his next line and nothing happens.

Tuffnut uses the letter S in the very next scene. Either stick with your stupidly written rule or don’t. You don’t get props for this joke. And he keeps doing it. Astrid gets sentenced to the dungeon, after this joke continues to wear itself thin, and it wasn’t thick to begin with. OK, I’m done with this, just assume with every sentence there’s at least one line of dialogue with an s in it that’s not brought up or mentioned.

Fishlegs' poetry fails to impress, and he’s sent to the dungeon too. With the Fireworms closing in, Hiccup decides he needs to do something… and that gets him thrown in as well, and Snotlout throws himself in too, because he's an idiot. Hiccup is about to say enough is enough when the twins, having finally noticed the Fireworms, come begging for their help. Hiccup plays his gambit and they agree to divide the island between all of them in exchange for helping with the Fireworms. They attempt to deal with them head on but have little luck and they’re too late to build any meaningful base defences, but it turns out the Night Terrors have formed the Fireworm Queen, who guides the flock, Hiccup has an idea to lead them out to sea, with the Fireworms following.

The plan seems to work, leading the Fireworms to an island full of rocks, where they can’t set anything on fire. Order restored, Meatlug eats the claim stone just to be sure and they all dance.

I don’t like this episode much, the twin’s stupidity is annoying when focused on too much.

Rating 4/10

Crushing It

Dragons’ Edge is having issues with a Rumblehorn, so the crew have set up traps and keep a night watch rota, Snotlout and Hookfang are on night watch when something sets off one of the traps. They rush to investigate but find it’s Gobber who’s on the Island… they’re just going to forget that travel between Berk and the Island lasts several days on a dragon, aren’t they? (Note, he said he was on a boat for a week, still don’t buy it, boats are very slow, dragons much less so)

Anyway, they return to base to find the Rumblehorn had trashed it in their absence. He reports that Stoic’s ill-temper has gotten worse recently and he wants Hiccup to investigate. Funny, he didn't seem that ill-tempered when he showed up in the LAST FREAKING EPISODE. Gobber insists on staying behind, saying he’ll help sort things out but really he’s there to hide away from Stoick. Hiccup sets off and seconds later he lands on Berk and finds a villager who’d been chewed out by Stoick for having weapons in the wrong order, except he had been given daily different instructions on how to order them

Gobber gives some advice about building a defensive wall, and criticises the twin’s boar pit. Back to Hiccup, Stoic chews out Gothi’s ploughing and starts doing it himself but Hiccup still doesn’t manage to catch up with him until he gets to the dragon arena. The hugging reunion and the later assumption that his behaviour is down to Stoick missing him would be better if this weren’t episode 8, and Stoick's last appearance was in episode 7.

In the first real hint to what’s really going on, Stoick had been shining the saddle for his old dragon Thornado, watch Defenders of Berk, it will make more sense there. And as he begins to realise something’s amiss with himself, Hiccup offers to take him to the edge (which he first refuses on the grounds of there being too much to do – again, he was there in the last episode) and help with the dragon issue.

They build a wall, and Hiccup is back… just every time they forget that travel to and from the edge is supposed to be several days, know that I’m annoying. Anyway, Hiccup and Stoick arrive, just as Gobber is injured by some debris and is acting like a crazy person. Oh look, more Deadly Badders, first time we’ve seen dragons living on the island that aren’t the Night Terrors.

Stoick and Hiccup discover an ambush from the Rumblehorn, and follow it, but it begins doubling back on itself, so Stoic decides to offer himself up as bait. It seems to work and… oh, it’s Skullcrusher, guess we know where this episode ends. Stoick manages to wrangle the dragon but it takes off with him, his hand slips off the rope but thankfully Hiccup manages to rescue him

But unfortunately the rope leaves a scent for the Rumblehorn to follow. They return to find Gobber chasing sheep and wearing blue face paint. The Rumblehorn is soon upon them but seems to be following Gobber’s scent. The lack of bloodshed has Stoick kinda confused, something feels off to him so when Hiccup is preparing a kill shot as his last resort to protect Gobber, he stops him.

The Rumblehorn doesn’t seem to want to hurt Gobber, prompting Stoick to confront him, he shows Stoick a giant wave heading for them. With the wave getting close, they decide to re-enforce the wall Gobber was helping to create. With the Rumblehorn’s help, they manage to save the Island. Stoick heads back to Berk, on the Rumblehorn he’s christened Skullcrusher.

It’s a better episode but maybe a little rushed, glad to see we’re establishing a few elements that are in place in the second movie, something they’ll continue to do in this series.

Rating 7.5/10

Quake, Rattle and Roll

Hiccup has managed to build a telescope to help defend the island. The twins have built a lookout tower and are surprised it hasn’t fallen down, as soon as they leave, one of the rocks they built it with falls out.

Fishlegs is studying images from the Dragon Eye, and experimenting using different rocks for meatlug to create different flames. Snotlout is an asshole, that is all. The twins come to Hiccup and bring him to their good works but when the return the tower isn’t there, causing the twins to argue and fight until Hiccup breaks them up.

Fishlegs quickly calls him away, his experiments have uncovered the location of Dark Deep, the ancestral home of the Gronkles, like the dragon he rides. He’s already charted a course, and it’s ‘further than they’ve ever flown before,’ Hiccup insists on coming with to back him up. The twins have been up rebuilding the tower but it’s fallen down again.

They arrive at Dark Deep in seconds and Fishlegs begins to sing, Hiccup notices how empty the island is. They discover a few underground but are soon distracted by what appears to be a rolling boulder. Toothless’ plasma blasts do nothing and when they manage to avoid it, it begins rolling back towards them, uphill. It’s a dragon, we get it.

They avoid it again, but Fishlegs’ stomach gives them away, the Dragon decides to stop rolling and show itself to them. They call it the Catastrophic Quaken, which seems appropriate for when they decide to fly out, the Quaken follows them, but quickly falls and its impact with the ground creates an earthquake.

They bring the Gronkles back to the island and somehow a load of others have already arrived, without Hiccup and Fishlegs noticing on their flight. They may also have been responsible for destroying the twins’ watchtowers. OK, so they were on the island and no-one f*cking noticed. Hey Mister Census, I think you missed a few.

Hiccup decides, for some reason, to put the twins in charge of wrangling the Gronkles. Snotlout decides to offer his ‘support’ to helping get rid of the Quaken, help to, in his words, ‘fight dirty,’ this is gonna end well… He goes to Hiccup who thinks it’s not their right to interfere. Uh huh… Who are you are you and what have you done with Hiccup Haddock? You’ve literally been interfering in the vast majority of episodes this season!

This causes Fishlegs to have a nightmare and go to Snotlout for help. Snotlout teaches him what he knows and it seems to work. Hiccup is not stupid, though (I think we’re back to the real one now) and works out what they’re up to and confronts them about it and warns them that their tactic has disaster written all over it. Fishlegs seems to convince him that fighting the Quaken is the wrong move, before heading off. The twins bust in, claiming to have lost the Gronkles, and that’s the last straw for Fishlegs

He and Snotlout arrive at the island in seconds, upon seeing the Quaken, Snotlout bravely decides to run and quickly encounters Hiccup and Astrid, who’ve come to look for them. The fight gets Fishlegs knocked back into the tunnel, into the Quaken’s cave. The Quaken rolls towards them, and Fishlegs decides to stand his ground, and it works. Turns out the Quaken was being protective against intruders or something, doesn’t really explain why the other Gronkles were scared enough to leave the island, but they’re back now so…

It’s a decent episode, but a part of me wants some plot progression to actually happen now

Rating 7/10