Doctor Perseus Reviews: "The Cutie Re-Mark: Parts 1 and 2" and "Heaven Sent" *SPOILERS* · 12:00am Nov 29th, 2015
In this week's MLP Season 5 finale, Starlight Glimmer returns and travels back in time to stop the sonic rainboom that gave the Mane 6 their cutie marks. Now, Twilight and Spike must try their best to stop Starlight and save the Equestria they know and love from being erased from existence...
Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe I've found my favorite episode of Season 5, my favorite finale, and my favorite 2-parter of the entire series. So...yeah. I loved this one.
Where do I even begin with this finale? I guess I'll start with Twilight and Spike. I love how they were at the center of this finale together alongside Starlight (more on her in a bit). I guess you could consider this a pseudo Spike episode as well given how he's one of the main players. I'm fine thinking this since Princess Spike was far from what Spike deserved for his Season 5 outing. Anyway, it was great seeing them work together in order to get the timeline back in order. It was really something seeing Twilight getting progressively pushed to her breaking point in order to stop Starlight. And speaking of Starlight, it was great to see her get some more development here. We got an interesting and somewhat heartbreaking backstory for her as well as a surprising redemption. I especially liked how Starlight was eventually "defeated" through talking with Twilight aside from some epic battle. Granted, we got a quick battle between Twilight and Starlight at one point (which was a lot of fun) but I'm glad that the ultimate confrontation between the two was through talking it out. It reminded me a lot of how Korra stopped Kuvira in The Legend of Korra. I also liked how Starlight was initially oblivious to the ramifications her actions had on Equestria's timeline until Twilight showed her. It's clear that Starlight wasn't thinking much about the consequences of her actions and was simply focused on getting revenge. I think this following quote from a recent Doctor Who episode sums up Starlight's revenge drive quite nicely:
Oh, you don't actually know, do you? Because, like every other tantruming child in history, Bonnie, you don't actually know what you want.
I'll admit that one small thing that irked me was how quickly some of the ponies forgave Starlight for her actions (the prime example being the ponies from the premiere during their short cameo) but I'm willing to overlook that. I'm actually really hoping now that we get to see Starlight again in future episodes. At the end, it sounded like Twilight was hinting at taking Starlight as her student. How crazy would that be?! And it's been acknowledged that Starlight has some exceptionally powerful magical skills. I think it would be interesting to see Starlight learning how to perfect her magical skills by learning from Twilight. Maybe Season 6 could open with Twilight and Starlight taking on a threat together as mentor and student?
Moving on, this episode was just a brisk thrill ride from start to finish. Season 5 has pretty much dedicated itself to paying tribute to the past five years of the show. And this all came to a head here with literally every major villain of the show thus far making an appearance! King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis, Nightmare Moon, Tirek, evil Discord, and even Flim and Flam! Granted, those last four were only cameos but it's still awesome that we saw them. Obviously, this was MLP's It's a Wonderful Life episode and it went all out. Not to mention, this is easily one of the darkest episodes this show has given us. We see an all out war take place between Celestia and Sombra, we see a somewhat more gruesome battle between ponies and changelings, and things only got bleaker and bleaker from there. I don't know if this is just me but I got some serious Fallout and My Little Portal vibes from the King Sombra timeline. I think it was from the outfits they wore or something. It was freakin' awesome that Zecora was the leader of the rebellion in the Chrysalis timeline. And it was really cool seeing the Castle of the Two Sisters at its prime in the Nightmare Moon timeline. I also liked the dark addition of Celestia having taken Luna's place in the moon in that timeline.
But, of course, it was awesome seeing Twilight travel back to the moment of Rainbow Dash's first sonic rainboom. This is the type of time travel episode I've been dying to see this series do. I really liked seeing iconic flashback moments from The Cutie Mark Chronicles being twisted here to show what would have happened if the rainboom never happened. The ending song "Friends Are Always There For You" was very enjoyable and a very fitting ditty to end this epic episode on.
Overall, I absolutely LOVED The Cutie Re-Mark. It was dark, heartfelt, and was an overall epic conclusion to the best season of MLP thus far! And, now, we must once again bid farewell to MLP for another hiatus. Hopefully, the wait between now and the start of Season 6 won't be nearly as long as the break between Seasons 4 and 5. Expect my overview of Season 5, Part 2 soon as well as my overall thoughts on Season 5 as a whole.
So what did the rest of you think of The Cutie Re-Mark?
In this week's episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor finds himself alone in a strange place following the death of Clara. Will he be able to escape or will he fall victim to the monster that's slowly following him?
So...can Peter Capaldi carry an entire 55-minute episode on his own? You bet your ass he can!
This episode was simply a blast. But not an ordinary blast. More so a mental blast of emotion and intrigue. Peter Capaldi once again shines as the Doctor and he managed to practically carry this entire episode on his own with masterful skill. From excitement, to anger, to fear, to sadness, we got to see Capaldi show many different aspects of his Doctor. It was also very interesting delving into the mind of the Doctor and showing that, during life-threatening moments, he imagines himself back inside the TARDIS solving the problem whilst showing off in front of his companion. Speaking of companions, it's hard to forget at times that the person who goes through the companion heartbreak the most aside from us viewers is the Doctor himself. And with Clara's death fresh in his mind, there was no shortage of references to her. It really tugged at my heartstrings to see the Doctor imagining Clara inside of his head. The moment where Clara fully appeared inside the Doctor's mind in order to tell him to get off his ass was as heart-tugging as it was hilarious.
When this episode wasn't emotional, it was tense and terrifying. The Veil was a perfect monster for this episode. Never stopping. Always walking towards the Doctor. Waiting to kill him. I liked that it was never really revealed what the Veil actually was. The twist involving the events in the castle constantly looping over and over again for billions of years was very interesting. And it was even more shocking to learn that the entire world the Doctor was in resided inside his confession dial. The special effects in this episode were also spectacular. Two notable moments of praise were when time stopped for the first time and the Doctor flicked a frozen fly and later when we got a full shot of the entire castle and its surrounding ocean.
Now, I must say that there's one thing I was disappointed by: the cliffhanger. Now, don't get me wrong. It was a great cliffhanger and I'm fanboying all over the place with excitement about what lies in the next episode. In fact, my disappointment has nothing to do with the cliffhanger itself. My disappointment lies with the fact that the BBC freakin' spoiled it! The plot summaries for these two episodes released weeks earlier flat out stated that the Doctor would return to Gallifrey. If I hadn't had known this, I would have fallen out of my chair from what I saw at the end. While I am still very much excited for what lies in the final episode, I do wish I could have been given the chance to experience the true shock of this cliffhanger for myself without the BBC spoiling it. This is made even more annoying by the fact that this was probably the most over-hyped cliffhanger of the entire show thus far. Moffat's been talking about this cliffhanger since before Series 8 began airing. And now it's here and the initial shock has been stolen by the BBC. I'm not sure who's to blame here. From what I've seen, both Moffat and the BBC have been bad about giving away too much info about future episodes this year ever since Moffat gave his spoilerific Radio Times interview (which I, thankfully, never read). It's disappointing since, before that, the BBC had been completely successful in keeping details about Series 9 from leaking (which made sense given the large Series 8 script leak last year). Oh well. I'm still shaking in my chair with excitement over what's to come.
Overall, Heaven Sent was a truly spectacular episode that I'm sure to watch again and again. It was dark, emotional, terrifying, and showed some of Capaldi's best work as the Doctor thus far!
Next week, Series 9 comes to its inevitable close with Hell Bent!
What did the rest of you think of Heaven Sent?
Personally, this one really started losing me around the first return to the present. I'm a time travel fan in general, and For Want of a Nail is a perfectly good trope for time travel and/or AU stories, but I don't buy that this variety of bad futures could result from Rainbow Dash not performing the Sonic Rainboom, especially since nearly all of the futures still require Nightmare Moon being defeated on schedule, with absolutely no explanation given. For that matter, how is anyone still alive in Nightmare Moon's timeline after several years of eternal night (ie, no sunlight for growing food, trees dying out in the process, oxygen depletion and freezing cold temperatures)?
I'm also less than satisfied with Starlight's redemption, mostly because it comes several minutes after she's been confronted with the consequences of her actions (and why she didn't see any of this coming is another nagging question, along with why she never previously returned to the present after her various sabotage attempts), but also the whole Sunburst excuse, since she gives no indication of even trying to keep in touch with him after he left for Canterlot, and no one points this out to her.
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Did you expect the episode to go into a full timeline analysis of each little event that led to each of the bad futures? As Zecora pointed out, every little change in time causes a ripple effect. The differing methods of how the rainboom was stopped could have led to different friendships being made, different friendships lost, different choices made, etc. Maybe Celestia was able to change Nightmare Moon back into Luna on her own in some of these timelines.
Well, we've seen plants continue to thrive in the Everfree Forest. So I'm willing to bet that there's some natural magics and pony magics that exist in this universe to keep plants alive without sunlight. And, even then, I think a little suspension of disbelief can be accepted in a universe where the Sun and Moon only revolve around the planet due to magic.
As I pointed out in my review, Starlight was so focused on simply getting revenge (as well as clouded by her doubt that one friendship could mean so much) that she didn't think about the ramifications of her actions. Granted, I agree that it is a bit head-scratching why she didn't return to the altered present along with Twilight and Spike each time. Though, it could be argued that since Twilight and Spike went into the past the first time through a separate portal from Starlight's that the same concept would work the other way around with two portals opening up when the past was changed. But before Starlight could go through, Twilight would jump back into the past from the present thus also bringing Starlight back to that certain point in the past with her. That's how I look at it anyway. Finally, I agree that some mention of her trying to make contact with Sunburst and failing would have been nice but I'm personally willing to assume that she did.
The Superwholock fandom will be in a tizzy from seeing that. Sherlock does the same thing by going into his mind palace the instant something crucial happens. Is that Moffat reusing a theme from his other show? Maybe, but I enjoy believing that the Time Lord, with that supercomputer brain of his, can do it.
Also seeing Gallifrey and the Confession dial really did throw me out of my seat. Total mind blown moment
Jeeezus though... over 1Billion years, punching his way through 20 feet of a harder than diamond wall. Rory Williams eat your heart out.
It sounds like this is also your favorite Josh Haber episode of the entire series. That's right, just like how Meghan McCarthy was the writer for both Twilight's Kingdom and Rainbow Rocks last season, Josh Haber wrote both The Cutie Remark and Friendship Games. I wonder if the same thing will happen with the Season 6 finale and the fourth Equestria Girls movie Legend of Everfree? So far, only the paring of Magical Mystery Cure and the original Equestria Girls film have separate writers (the former by M.A. Larson and the latter by Meghan McCarthy).
Also, you know something I've noticed? Season 5 is the first MLP: FIM season to start and finish its run within the same year. I mean, with the previous seasons, they began sometime during the second half of a year and then ended sometime during the first half of the following year. But with Season 5, it premiered during the first half of 2015 and concluded during the second half of 2015.
* Season 1: 10/10/10-5/6/11
* Season 2: 9/17/11-4/21/12
* Season 3: 11/10/12-2/16/13
* Season 4: 11/23/13-5/10/14
* Season 5: 4/4/15-11/28/15
I have been avoiding spoilers for Doctor Who this season, and let me tell you, the SECOND the Doctor stepped onto Gallifrey (the fact I can identify Gallifrey on sight proves how much of a Whovian I am) I was STUNNED. Like, I said 'Holy shit..." out loud it was so good.
I didn't realize the ending of Heaven Sent was spoiled, but I kinda figured out where the Doctor was when he said, "Tell them I'm back and that I took the long way round."
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I've yet to watch Sherlock but I've heard good things about it. I would assume that this would be Moffat referencing his other show. Might be the closest thing to a crossover between the two that we ever get.
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Huh. I didn't notice that until now. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how next season and the next EG movie play out.
I guess they wanted to change the airing schedule for some reason. That would explain the MASSIVE hiatus between Seasons 4 and 5.
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Good on you. I mean, I don't go around looking for super spoilery stuff. I just watch the promos, look at the sneak peeks, look at the promo pics, read the summaries, and monitor the progress of a season. Ya now, the average stuff that's meant to tease you about upcoming episodes without giving away too much. It's just weird how open the BBC was about some massive spoilers this year.
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I forgot to mention it in my review but I thought that was a really great reference back to the ending of The Day of the Doctor. Continuity!
3579114 Well with Sherlock he uses his eidetic memory in the form of a space where he stores all relevant and irrelevant information for later use. When pushed to the limit in say, the act of being shot, he delves into it and figures out a way not to go into shock by remembering medical knowledge.
With the Doctor he retreats to a safe place to work out the problem at hand, which he does best while explaining it like a showman.
It's explained well enough and differently enough that you technically can't call it a reference. But they are similar.
All of that is considered spoiled information. Anything released before the airing of the episode in question, even through official channels, is considered by many to be akin to spoiling a bit if the episode. Especially summaries. You can be hyped enough without going out of your way and risking your blindness by looking at these things.
THAT SAID I still sympathize with you. I mean, you'd think with a 45min run time they'd have enough content to release a sneak peak that doesn't give away such a major plot point.
3579130 I wasn't trying to be rude. The reason I haven't seen any spoilers is beacuse I have only seen any Doctor Who related things this season on your reviews, so I you don't mention it, I didn't know it.
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Sorry! I wasn't trying to imply that I thought you were being rude. I was congratulating you for being able to stay spoiler free. I apologize if my response gave you the wrong idea.
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Fair point. I suppose the correct way to word it is that I look for little tidbits about what to expect from an upcoming episode but I try my best to stay away from bigger spoilers. But, seriously, this was the plot synopsis for Heaven Sent:
And this was the plot synopsis for Hell Bent:
And these were both released before Sleep No More aired.
I suppose I'm going to need to avoid reading plot summaries from the BBC in the future.
I've been SPOILED! Dang it, why haven't I finished watching Book 4 yet?!
Anyway, as for "The Cutie Re-Mark," I can't say I was as enthused about it as you were. I didn't think Starlight's reformation was that surprising either. It just seems par for the course for MLP. I go into other thoughts in my review on my blog.
As for "Heaven Sent," I also enjoyed it. It actually hurt to see the Doctor experience this over and over and over again for two billion years. But to see him spend a couple of minutes each time pounding away at a solid wall of a substance harder than diamond until he finally broke through was amazing!
I actually did not know that. I don't really keep up with Doctor Who news so I was unspoiled. However, I wasn't actually that sure it was Gallifrey. My reaction was like "Gallifrey?"
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Sorry 'bout that. At least I didn't go into full details on how that came to pass. But, seriously, go watch Book 4 now.
I think I was more surprised by Starlight being taken under Twilight's wing and being included among the Mane 6. If my and DrWolf's feelings are correct, we might see Starlight join the main cast in Season 6.
As you can probably tell, I'm one of those people who stalks the internet for any piece of news about upcoming episodes. I don't look for full-on major spoilers but I do like getting snippets and glances at what's to come in order to tide myself over. I might have to give that up if the BBC continues to be so annoyingly spoilery.
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Yeah, I should go do that.