#reboot rewatch

I hadn’t heard of it till I saw your blog, but I am certainly intrigued by the idea of another Mainframe Entertainment show that has human characters. (I tried Beast Wars: Transformers back in the day, but couldn’t get interested no matter how hard I tried- it was too juvenile, & I’m really only interested in stories about people.) I’ll definitely put it on my list of shows to watch! I’m planning on re-watching Gargoyles next though, since Greg Weisman is gonna be at that con I’m going to, & I have all three DVD sets sitting unopened right now! 

Well, that was the first time I ever saw ‘The Episode With No Name′, and wow things make more sense now! Even though I was definitely glad to have Captain Capacitor and the crew of the Saucy Mare back again the first time round, it’s much better now that I know what’s going on rather than just, “wait, weren’t we going to Mainframe? Why are we looking for Bob now??” LOL

Gosh though, the episodes in the Web look fantastic. All the space-y stuff is just gorgeous! And you gotta love the pirates. (And holy ravioli, I think ReBoot is the only show in the history of ever to have more than one female pirate in the crew! There’s at least three, and even in sci-fi stuff, where there's no historical accuracy to serve by excluding women, there’s usually never more than one female character in any pirate crew. But ReBoot has always had way more female characters than most shows, especially sci-fi shows, and that’s one of the things that I’ve always loved about it. No token girlfriend nonsense here! ALL the characters are real, complicated people we can all relate to.)

...AAAAND then we get back to Mainframe, and everything is pain & anguish. Like, cut my heart out with a knife, why don’t you?! Everything horrible that you could ever imagine happening as a worst-case scenario? Totally happened! Happy trails! o_O 

And even when you know it’ll be okay in the end, it really doesn’t hurt less to watch. I mean, my god, Phong! Don’t hurt Phong! And Dot, oh my god, what she must have been through, thinking her family was all dead, watching her city die all around her and being powerless to save it. I actually got a little teary when Dot & Enzo were reunited. Even though it’s a happy moment, it’s just so emotionally loaded after everything that’s happened and all they’ve been through, you just feel how much pain they’ve been carrying around until that moment, & it just hurts. But at least once they’re back together, you feel like everything will be alright again, somehow. Just don’t ever, ever make Dot cry again, universe! That is not okay!

I unfortunately felt Dot & Bob’s reunion fell a little flat by comparison, and not just because they were deliberately playing for a laugh. I just really, really miss Michael Benyaer, and have never felt like anyone else could ever be Bob. He had a wonderful, funny, quirky quality that no one else can replicate. Ian James Corlett is just too bland & whitebread, & the entire dynamic of Dot & Bob’s relationship is missing. Yes, this is a more serious storyline, but there’s something about Michael Benyaer’s goofy Bob that makes his heroic Bob all the more effective, and I really wanted to hear him here. There’s something a little flat about this version that leaves me feeling a little empty. It’s not Ian James Corlett’s fault or anything, I just think re-casting main characters is a nightmare no-win scenario. Unless you have a very broad, caricatured character that can be reasonably impersonated, another actor can’t re-create the old one’s voice & it changes the dynamic, & it just doesn’t work. (Luckily there wasn’t a lot of time for dialogue in the last four eps though! Just, you know, misery & despair...)

And you know you’re really into ReBoot when you get emotionally attached to random binomes in the crowd; I found it pretty hard to watch them getting killed off as the city shut down even knowing they’ll come back to life. I was just hoping that they wouldn’t kill off the cute little baby binome. That one family of binomes with their little baby has been in the background of every episode, and I’m just thinking: protect the baby binome at all costs! (And when the cute binome family was okay: “Whew! Thank heaven!!”) I’d already had my heart impaled while watching Captain Capacitor sacrifice the Saucy Mare, I mean that hurt, so I really couldn’t have dealt with more deaths, thanks. (Except, you know, pretty much everyone in Mainframe over the last eps...)

So it was basically the apocalypse at the end. I honestly don’t think any show, no matter how ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’ they claim to be, or how much violence & swearing they put in, has ever managed to be as all-consumingly bleak & utterly devastating as ReBoot in these four episodes. And it’s because we saw it when everything was wonderful, so the audience feels what’s lost as keenly as the characters do. It all hurt so much because we loved it so much. But leave it to ReBoot to break your heart into tiny little pieces only to throw us back to ridiculous happiness after all of it. The little silly moments of familiar Mainframe in-jokes, even amidst the chaos, were like tiny rays of hope, and of course we’d go right back to stupid happy as soon as it’s over, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Just sitting there like, “damn, I just had my heart torn out as it all fell down, I’m not ready for all this happiness yet- but I’m grinning like a goon as it all gets built back up, darn you- ooh look, the lights are going back on! The virals are freed! The Diner is back, OMG! I’mma cry now, but can I have a second to switch from sad tears to happy tears, okay?! Ahhhhh!!”

As a Trekkie, I loved this one. Aside from being amused by the Star Trek references, I think it’s a good story, and had a good deal of that Star Trek spirit beyond the usual sort of homage episodes ReBoot usually does. And that’s because it was written by D.C. Fontana. 

I’d just finished watching the entire original series of Star Trek back when I first saw this episode, so that name immediately got my attention. D.C. Fontana actually wrote for Star Trek in the 60s. And later on again in the 80s. And for other sci-fi shows like Babylon 5 and popular TV dramas like The Waltons and Dallas. She was the first woman writer Star Trek ever had, and one of the few women writers in television in the early 60s when she started out. As a ten year old girl who wanted to be a writer, finding out that women had written for Star Trek since the beginning was amazing, and she wrote some fantastic episodes. 

So having her write a little Star Trek tribute for ReBoot was very cool to me, both because it gave what most people think of as a kids show a very tangible link to one of the most well-respected sci-fi franchises ever, and because it was awesome to see a woman writing for two shows I loved. 

I’ve been kind of depressed lately, and even Doctor Who wasn’t helping to distract me, so I figured what the heck- might as well watch some angsty ReBoot if I’m gonna feel sad anyway, right? So I’m watching, and it’s angsty as hell, but weirdly, it’s kind of making me feel a little better.

There’s some super sad stuff- baby Enzo losing that game, and Dot’s face when she thinks he’s been nullified- oh my god don’t ever put me through that again. It was really shocking to watch the first time when it was a surprise, but it’s still awful, because you’re sitting there watching these characters you love so much literally lose everything they ever loved. Like that’s it, that’s the moment Dot’s heart breaks. Dot is so good and so wonderful and deserves to be happy and oh god it just kills me to see her cry. ;_;

But (aside from that annoying raccoon episode, ye gods what were they thinking??) the writing is so solid & all rings true, and the leap in technology also means this season is gorgeous to look at. The new character models were a little hard to take at first, but I came to like them, and the improved movement is lovely. Also the color palate is richer & more varied, and the new lighting effects, especially, are so beautiful; being able to come from different angles, and have a sort of glowy ambiance, is just amazing. 

And then grown-up!Enzo & AndrAIa come along & I just remember how shocking that was back in the day! I think it was a cold open on that ep when it first aired, because I just remember being like ‘WTF!?’ when I first saw their grown-up versions! Like damn, who’d have thought they’d grow up to be that hot? That’s just weird! (Somehow I’m still slightly discomfited by AndrAIa’s cleavage & Enzo’s chest hair tbh, but whatever.) And that macho man crap doesn’t fool me one bit- I still want to wrap Enzo up in a blanket because he’s a tiny precious wounded baby oh my god.

But despite the new sad lost Enzo, their journey through all the different systems is so cool- seeing new places and new sprites. It’s just like ‘wow!’ to watch the ReBoot universe expand so hugely. 

I forgot how devastating that shit was! The little things you block out of your memory forget, like the diner being destroyed- that hurt. And Dot just staring at Glitch after losing Bob, and not even noticing that someone’s trying to attack her, or worse, not even caring. And little baby Enzo losing his hero & having to take on the responsibility of taking his place when he never should have had to... ugh. It was all so hopeful and then- bam! Our happy little Mainframe life is destroyed! I’ve seen it twice before, but still, I think it actually gets sadder every time. 

I don’t know if I should go right on to season 3 or take a break for some more Doctor Who before then. The first time season 3 aired, it was a total surprise, and I was just so euphorically happy to have any new ReBoot that I didn’t really feel too upset over most of the sad stuff that goes down- but I have a feeling this time it’ll be all about wallowing in the pain. 

For one thing, it just looked so cool! Is it a bad thing that I actually really like Hexadecimal’s aesthetic? I mean sure, she’s an evil virus, but I think her bold use of color and sense of whimsy are actually quite pretty! And just how a computer virus knows all those art history references I really couldn’t say, but as an art history nerd, it filled my little heart with geeky glee to see Mainframe filled up with Van Goghs and Dalis and Michelangelos. (What I wouldn’t give if a poster of Dot in the style of Andy Warhol was a real thing...)

The ending was actually kind of intense for a kids show- seeing Hexadecimal screaming in pain as all her energy leeched out, and seeing Bobs face knowing that he’d done it, was rather horrifying actually. But since it is a kids show, and one made in the 90s, at least there was no question that Bob would un-do it and help her. Much as I find it annoying in shows that the good guys keep letting the bad guys escape, I think the current trend of ‘dark’ shows about anti-heroes who are too cool to have compassion for anyone is much worse, and it’s nice to see a show with characters who are good people doing the right thing. (Bob you are a beautiful cinnamon roll, and my precious adorkable baby. <3)