Rating:
Hate might be too strong a word to describe how I feel about
Dragon Quest. The premise had potential,
and there are a number of fun moments.
But Merriwether Williams’ writing skills were still too raw at this
point, as the characters feel like broad stereotypes of themselves and the
episode devolves into a slapstick fest.
Spike’s “journey” is actually hanging out and playing games with the
guys, and he doesn’t really learn much other than that dragons really do
suck. Big questions like “who am I?” and
“where do I belong in this world?” are quickly swept under the rug in favor of
dragons hitting the ground while knocking over a tree. As soon as Spike thinks he might like to stay
with the dragons, TV law wins out, and outside forces ensure he returns to the
starting point. A potentially important
episode ends up being a “funny” one, but there really isn’t much to laugh at.
Anyone wondering what I’m talking about regarding pony
characterization need only watch Dragon Quest back to back with It’s About
Time. M.A. Larson’s understanding of
the characters is as good as Williams’ is bad.
Rarity is as stereotypically gay as she’s ever been, showing up to the
trench in an outlandish dress and knowing no other adjective than “fabulous”
to describe anything she’s done.
Confusingly, she seems to have a crush on Spike instead of the other
way around, and especially flagrant is Spike not seeming to notice Rarity at
all despite all the times she touches him.
Before he wouldn’t even wash his cheek after a Rarity peck, but
apparently (according to Williams) he got over her some time ago (and in some
time I mean between this episode and the last one, in which she still pervades
his dreams). There has been no precedent
or explanation of these two characters’ behavior in this show, and thus it
really doesn’t make sense.
Williams continued to be the president of the Rainbow Dash
Haters’ club here, making the oft-maligned pony the butt of many comeuppances
early on. One would think Dash would
take it easy a bit after knocking reading only to enjoy it, but naturally she
learned nothing and is only downright arrogant. Fortunately like Williams’ previous full
episode (Hearth’s Warming Eve), the plot led this to end before it got worse,
as Dash is stuck in a dragon costume for most of the second half. Of course, when (according to her) she could
have just stopped the plot in the beginning, the logical continuation is that
the episode is better off not existing at all.
Fluttershy’s quick appearance early on is obviously only for
comic effect, and her carefully opening the window instead of smashing through
it definitely seems like something she’d do (if also slightly obvious). The setup requires her to be surprisingly
forceful and outgoing (despite vowing to forgo her Iron Will-influenced
actions), and to also forget that she already did the dragon thing in the first
season (Dragonshy) while easily taming the hellbeast Cerberus during It’s About
Time. No problems going up to a
three-headed spawn of Satan, but observing dragons from a trench at a distance
is too much. Considering the behavior of
dragons we’ve seen on the show, this can almost be forgiven. Her VA-mate Pinkie Pie likewise disappears
after the opening few minutes because…well, I probably shouldn’t get into this
again.
Spike ignores the most loving he’s ever seen from Rarity to
set off on an ill-advised quest that can only end poorly. The big dragon “migration” (“once in a
generation”, so it has to be a one-off) doesn’t end anywhere exciting or in
some sort of dragon city. The elders
just lie around and take naps on some rocks, while the “teenagers” naturally
play any game they can think of (Spike is a “baby” and can already read, write,
walk, and talk, so I’m not really sure where on the dragon timescale a teenager
is). Instead of asking the older dragons
for advice or at least information on who he is, Spike completely abandons his
plan to play games with the teenagers, because, well, all that quest stuff was
boring anyways. To be fair, we’ve seen
nothing from dragons to suggest he would have had any success approaching
them.
Spike declares the teenagers to be more his size and speed,
but they’re really not. All of them are
much bigger and stronger than him, and only seem to do activities designed to
prove this. Naturally, they spend the
early parts of their meeting completely humiliating him, and naturally he only
wants to stick around and eventually becomes their friend. This only happens because Spike wins a
tail-pulling contest with the pony-dragon (not even remotely convincing despite
the dragons’ excuse for acceptance), and because he bellyflops into the
lava. Although this painful and amateur
maneuver should actually produce the biggest splash, the dragons just think it
proves how tough he is. Fortunately
their knowledge of physics isn’t very good yet (they’re probably not up to
that yet in school), because Spike’s smaller size means the impact wouldn’t
hurt him as much as the bigger dragons (yes, they’d hit the pit at the same
speed, but Spike’s momentum would be less).
They all decide to “quest” for some phoenix eggs, apparently
just to kill something instead of making a tasty delicacy or some black market
cash. Spike is tasked with distracting
the phoenixes since they’re some of the most badass fighters in all the
land. With equally great flying and burning
skills, Spike would’ve been toast if they weren’t distracted by the other
dragons making for the recently hatched kids.
The family is easily saved and gets the fuck out of there, but tragedy
still strikes as many a fine tree is lost that day solely for the sake of
comedy. Oh, I mean the one unhatched egg
is left behind.
Spike refuses to smash it on request, because, what’s the
point? They risked their lives for a
rare egg just to destroy it? Since the
other phoenixes just hatched, it’s likely the one inside this egg is pretty
well-formed already. For all they know,
he was having trouble breaking out, and this would actually have been doing
him a favor. In a rare good
characterization moment, Spike realizes he was just an abandoned egg once too,
and opts to save it instead (the morality of taking an egg away from its
parents is slightly questionable, but better than the alternative given the
current circumstances).
I absolutely called the good old Monty Python “run away!”
well before it happens, since it’s obviously the only logical course of
action. Twilight’s teleportation spell
is another one of those fiction creations with horrifying implications, since
it’s either something she should use more often or not at all (is it like a
transporter, killing the original Twilight and sending a perfect copy to the
destination?). She probably couldn’t
send everybody to the other side of the forest like that (considering they are
coming from near where the migration was), but at least it seems difficult for
her to pull off. Instead of tracking
down the phoenix family, Spike decides to keep the baby phoenix, who will
probably be kept in the same place as the other pets on the show.
Dragon Quest pretends to highlight Spike’s difficulty of
being a dragon in a pony world, but largely sidesteps this issue for most of
it. Mostly the episode is just comic
relief, but you really have to enjoy slapstick humor to laugh at anything more
than a few of the jokes. Everything
about Dragon Quest is over the top, and not in a good way. The various parts which suggest the episode shouldn’t
have happened don’t help things. Spike
doesn’t seem dissatisfied enough with his life that he should be looking to
completely uproot himself just to hang out with a species he has nothing in
common with. And again, Spike’s still a
baby. Trying to hang out with teenagers is
a terrible idea, even if he might be like them some day (thinking of my young
cousin trying to do the same thing would be equally disastrous). That makes Dragon Quest’s moral less “accept
yourself for who you are” and more “don’t think you’re a big boy/girl when
you’re obviously not yet”. Perhaps this
is an important episode for the 1-4 year-old demographic, but it doesn’t have
much to say to the rest of us.
Dragon Quest is another of many episodes designed not to be
thought about too hard. A couple of good
moments don’t make up for all the bad humor, and the plot both doesn’t make
sense and shouldn’t have occurred at all.
A one-off event is invented to help Spike learn about himself, but then
that never happens. Instead, the episode
is mostly a string of unfunny slapstick jokes which apparently ends up in a
lesson somewhere. Even if what happens is
understandably enough to remove Spike’s desire to be with his own kind, nothing
is really solved either. Presumably Spike
will be different when he grows up, although that certainly wasn’t the case
during Secret Of My Excess. Fortunately the
characters aren’t aging on My Little Pony,
so this is a question that probably won’t need to be addressed. But the two second season Spike episodes
have done exactly that, so…
Williams also introduces a weird racial vibe as to whether
Spike is dragon enough or has been corrupted by all those cracker-ass
ponies. While not explicitly stated, the
implication is that being a pony is much better than a dragon, as the latter either
horde or hurt things when they’re not being lazy. Certain animals might not be meant to
symbolize any particular race, but it’s weird that an accepting show would
preach fear and hate of a “strange” and different species unlike their
own. Instead of finally ending the
prejudice, we probably just hate dragons more now.
Cynically, I’d say this episode begins with Fluttershy’s
fear of dragons, and then justifies it with Spike going into the enemy’s den,
including an appearance by three ponies in “dragon face”. The dragons play crude “games” based on their
superior strength but which don’t seem very intelligent, and then end the day
trying to kill the unborn young of a different species. Spike realizes he doesn’t want to be like
those filthy heathen dragons, and would much rather be a pony. Because being a pony is the bestest thing in
the world. He’ll always be reminded of
the thing he hates every time he looks in the mirror, and will constantly try
to ignore who he is. Instead of
embracing his individuality, he’s ashamed by it.
No, Merriwether Williams probably isn’t a white supremacist,
but everything in Dragon Quest is so stereotypical that the whole episode ends
up coming off like that. And when the
characters haven’t been rendered faithfully, it’s hard for me to take the episode
seriously. And then I find myself thinking
about things like the implications of Twilight teleporting everywhere, and
whether the writer had to rush finishing her script before the next Klan meeting. My
Little Pony is capable of so much more than this, and episodes like Dragon
Quest shouldn’t be produced. Even if the
series is ostensibly meant for children, the hatred preached by this episode is
not something they really should be watching.
Even if it’s somewhat decent to watch, there isn’t a whole lot to like
about Dragon Quest if you think about it.
And if you’re not supposed to think about it, then I guess that just
makes the episode forgettable.
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