New Episode. · 4:36pm Aug 20th, 2016
Spoilers for the new episode.
Oh my gosh! So much new changeling canon! So many fan theories laughed at! Hive mind? Nope! Doesn't look like it. The drones don't talk in their natural state? Yep, they totally do! They have names like Drone 8357? Nope! They have real names! They can only change into something roughly their size, only quadrupeds, and they can't change into inanimate objects? Nope. They can turn into dragons and rocks! They're hatched from eggs? Woohoo! We got that one right! They live in some sort of hive? Oh yeah! That's two! Spike songs suck? Sorry Cathy. You're a really talented VA, but you're given very little to work with on that.
Better than his attempt to sing the Cloudsdale National Anthem. That one... hurt.
Changelings aside, did anyone else totally get where Cadance and Shining Armor and all the rest of them were coming from? I mean, the invasion at the wedding had to be their, what Pearl Harbor, or something like that? Something they're not going to be forgetting for a long time. So I can't really fault them for being paranoid, especially with a new baby around. What if that one changeling they spotted was just a scout? It's a perfectly reasonable fear.
Plus I thought they accepted Thorax a little too quickly. I know it's only a 22 minute episode, but they go from "eek! a changeling!' to "We're buddies now! Here, let me present my newborn to you after you hissed and went feral the last time you got this close to her." Not buying it, especially from ponies who know they can mind control. Maybe the drones can't, but how do they know that? Spike says this one is good. How do they know that 1. this is the only changeling, and 2. Spike isn't being mind controlled? I mean, let's say that Thorax is just a scout, which, again, Spike has no proof that he isn't. I know he isn't, but I'm making a point. How does everypony know that Queen Chrysalis isn't hiding outside the city and mind controlled Spike? I dunno. It just seemed too quick to me.
Starlight Glimmer was wasted. You could have cut her out of the episode and not lost a thing. Might as well throw in the rest of the Mane Six if you're going to have everypony but Spike just stand around.
I'm getting a little weirded out by the devotion the crystal ponies (and hey, there are crystal pegasi now!) show Spike. They don't just love him, they worship him and just about treat his word as law. Not only is it creepy, but it's a one-note joke that hasn't changed at all in the past few seasons.
I'm always in favor of Groucho and the Mirror references. One of the funniest Marx Brothers moments ever.
Overall, it was a passable episode. Not awful, but not top-of-the-line either. It was alright.
But hey, once my editor gets back to me with the edits, which should be today, we'll get another chapter of The Prince! And I'm working on another chapter of TD v EQG! And Gwenwyn!
Traditional cute pony pic.
I Spoke to Ms. Smarty Pants Today fan art!
CUTE PONY PIC?!
4160795 Isn't it just disturbingly adorable?
It was a cool episode, friendly changelings are cannon. The only thing I was disappointed with was the voice. I swore it would be two toned like chrysalis but still a good episode
I think this is my favorite episode so far in season 6. Although, I can just imagine how many fanfics this removed from possible cannon.
Eh, have to disagree on at least one of them. Nothing particularly eliminates the possibility of a hive mind here. All that's technically required for a "hive mind" is that they all be connected through some form of collective intelligence, consciousness, or something of that nature. The basic concept doesn't demand that they can't have distinct personalities, that they can't be removed from that state, etc. The idea of an absolute hive mind - where they can't hide anything and are under the absolute control of one central entity - is probably the most popular depiction of the concept in fiction, but it's not the only one. Though I admit, given that's the kind of hive mind we see in fanon most of the time, it does a pretty thorough job of grinding the fics that use it that way into the dirt.
And the whole "drones can't talk in their natural state" thing has never made sense to me. It never really had any basis besides "we don't actually see them talk in their normal forms," and even without having actually seem them do it there were still several things that fans had to explain away before it could work (why they could talk in other forms but not their own, why Chrysalis could talk in both forms). When one explanation is "they didn't speak in their natural forms because they had no reason to speak in the episode" and the other is "They can speak when they're transformed, and even though nothing implied that it was a unique ability a Queen can speak in both forms, but they totally can't speak in their normal forms because, uh, reaso-wait, I meant 'we didn't technically see it so it must be impossible.'"
It's like the fanon that Luna creates the entire night sky instead of just moving the moon, except with even less justification. At least in the case of Luna making the night sky, the fanon seemed to arise before we'd actually seen her doing her job. It might not have had any actual support, but there wasn't anything outright contradicting it that had to be explained away to make it plausible like with the changelings. It just...it wasn't a line of reasoning that ever made much sense to me in the first place.
Yeah, I liked the episode overall, but there were a lot of things about the resolution that bugged me. No pun intended. Aside from the baffling number of things that didn't make sense about them suddenly accepting him (giving him a chance is one thing - deciding to just give him free reign and not be even slightly suspicious or cautious is a very different matter), what the heck happened to him going into that instinctive sort of feral state when he was around things like love and kindness?
If it's something that happens all the time (I know he suggested it was because he hadn't fed, but he also wasn't sure if being around it in the Crystal Empire would fix the problem...also, unless changelings abandoning the hive is common, I'm not sure if he'd even know whether it was just a natural instinct or result of not feeding), why did it suddenly stop? If he was too deprived of those feelings to resist it beforehand, how was Spike's tiny show of kindness enough to bring it out, but his huge show of kindness later not enough despite the fact that Thorax was only around those emotions briefly and then suffered outright rejection and betrayal?
If it wasn't such a major aspect of the episode's plot I would probably just brush it off. But him not being able to resist doing that when exposed to feelings of love and kindness was a plot device that played a key role in the conflict of the story. It's not very good writing to introduce it as a major plot element and then just brush it off to the side and leave it completely unaddressed.
I agree that she seemed like a completely wasted character here, but there is at least a plausible justification for her coming along. They imply at the beginning that she's been busy in Ponyville (Oh yeah? Then where the hell has she been these last few episodes?), so it makes sense that she'd want to take the chance to see Sunburst if Twilight was going to the Crystal Empire. Likewise, her little comment about being able to find a friendship lesson anywhere at the end kind of suggested - at least to me - that she picked up on the lesson as well, rather than Spike being the only one. That said, even if she did technically have a reason to come along and ended up learning something, it loses a lot of weight and just feels tacked on when she did so little aside from that.
And the thing is, this had a great setup to help her learn something. Here we have someone who still feels guilty about having done bad things with good intentions in the past, who has been trying to redeem herself in the eyes of the ones she hurt in the past (including Spike). Now suddenly there's another character that's desperately trying to change his ways and make up for his mistakes, and who made those mistakes because it was something that his kind need to do, but that they chose to do in a bad way. And you decide that the best way to handle this lesson is to have Spike take center stage while tossing Starlight into the background?
This was an okay Spike episode, but it could have been a great Starlight episode. Her own past could have made it easy for her to relate to Thorax's situation. Furthermore, while Spike and the Mane Six all had plenty of reason to be suspicious of changelings because of their previous experiences, Starlight doesn't. This is the same pony who was so removed from the rest of Equestria during her personal campaign to force equality on others that she didn't even know what the Wonderbolts were. Of all the main and support characters in the series, she's probably the one that would have the most reason to try befriending this strange creature that everyone else suspected of wrongdoing, while also having far more reason to feel pressured into denying knowing him when he was revealed.
So...yeah. I don't think this is a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination. It had some really fun material in it. I just think it could have been so much more, either by putting Starlight in Spike's role, or even just giving more attention to Thorax's side of things and explaining some of the plot elements that just kind of seemed to get dropped halfway through the story.
Wait. They do the mirror routine, WITHOUT Pinkie!?
Also good to see that Shining Armor is continuing the tradition of the the Royal Guard being rather useless by making the Crystal Guard the same way. Also kudos for ditching F.S.
Still waiting on a more full explanation on how the 'feeding on love' thing works though. Especially since the whole invasion just created more hate and stifled love.
I suppose this episode could have been done better, but honestly, considering what the writers who did this episode have worked on before, they did a fairly good job of surprising me with what they managed to pull out of the bag so to speak.
Starlight Glimmer is Cousin Oliver.
Did they forget to actually write the episode after coming up with the basic outline?
Thorax was the most boring possible version of a 'good changeling' and no one else except Spike did anything.
I was a bit disappointed by Thorax's voice (I know, odd complaint) as Chrysalis's voice made them more "buggy." I didn't want him to sound innocent. He should sound more evil so that trusting him would seem even more impossible even though he has a good heart. I mean, don't make him sound like Reaper, but he could sound more raspy.
And of course they turned too quickly. I was hoping they would still have some skepticism. Kinda like what they did with Discord. "Yeah we trust you, but you make one false move and oh, you don't want to know what happens next." Twilight's turn was believable though as she trusts Spike fully. Shining SHOULDN'T have turned and then Cadance is like "do it or you sleep on couch" and he's like "Changelings are cool ye?!?!"
Spike's song could have been better, but at least he got one.
And I hope Thorax becomes an enemy to the Changeling Swarm. He's a traitor in every sense of the word and I hope he has NO CHANCE of reconciling with his species. He was a malfunction in the hive mind. There have been many like him, but they end up dead before they end up on their own. Assimilate or be destroyed. Chrysalis is watching.
At least Starlight was there. She is still best pony. So cute
I'll give it a 7.8 outta 10
heh...so many possibilities...
4161399
Yeah, I don't think the hive mind fanon took a serious blow from the episode, given that it was clearly stated that Thorax was an anomaly who wasn't like other changelings. Heck, there are tons of "good changeling" stories on FimFic that changelings breaking from the hive mind to discover love and friendship and all that. There's a trope for that.
I'll definitely class it as an overall solid episode. There were a few issues, mostly due to needing a happy ending within a 22 minute runtime. I don't care how much Spike sings, Cadance and Shining should not be instantly and completely accepting of a thing that has an instinctual drive to try and eat their baby.
Yep, so many stories sent from possible to the trash bin with this episode. Possibly the hive mind debunk was the worst for me, I love that concept.
What I learned from this episode: Ponies can be convinced ANYTHING if you put it to song. They will do a complete 180 if it's put to a musical number. If they ever run into a villain who's shtick is song and dance themed conquering the world, the ponies will probably willingly hand the crown(s) over to them.
4162209 That's pretty much the plot of the second EG movie, and there is a solution for that. Battle of the bands. Also as long as the other side is singing against it it doesn't work. Bats is a good example, and the Pinkie and Rarity song also works even if they weren't exactly arguing in the song. Pinkie is actually the only one who fails at this. Apparently it's such a function of the ponyverse you have to be able to break the rules of the universe to fail to use a song in that way.
4160852 my thought is now, that comes later. I already figured there is no way that is the resolution to the changeling plot and Starlight is there because for the bigger plot latter she has to have met Thorax already. Then you take your admitedly good idea and apply it not to just one lone changeling abberation but the whole race. In other words, maybe it's because Starlight makes friends with Chrysalis later where everyone else has too many bad feelings toward her, and they don't want to repeat themselves.