#vlds7

[giddy-goblin]

Shiro: Gay, chronically ill, amputee, war veteran w/ PTSD, and a POC.

VLD Staff: hm. yes, let's make him the head of Voltron, the one that everyone looks up to as a strong, capable, and compassionate leader.

Me, wiping a tear from my eye: th ank you...

[rins-rambles]

R.I.P. Shiro cosplayers

S6: *Shiro's brought back but with white hair*

Cosplayers: Ah, Shiro just has all white/grey hair now. No biggie, one less thing to worry about, now I can use one wig!

S7: *Reveals Shiro's new arm*

Cosplayers:

[slouph]

Takashi Shirogane | Paladin of Light

[lemongogo]

nailed it

[zuspacey]

the black lion has trouble letting go of her pilots.

[itsiparwing]

- ‘ Permission Granted.’

I’ve been thinking a lot about Sam Holt’s return to Earth and what that would mean for Adam... idk s7 is stressing me out...

[missypena]

Phases of the Moon (Shiro).

Limited amount of prints available here!

[violethowler]

Cutting and Padding: An Analysis of Season 7′s Pacing and Story Structure

Earlier this week, Team Purple Lion’s official website went live, along with their latest project – a video reconstruction of what S7E7 The Last Stand: Part 1 would have looked like before the creation of the MFE pilots late in production. This got me thinking about some of Team Purple Lion’s previous analyses and what the original Season 7 looked like, so I went back through the episode and took notes on how much screen time the MFEs have from S7E7 The Last Stand: Part 1 to S7E13 Lion’s Pride: Part 2.

To be clear, when I say “original season” or “unedited season” I’m not talking about some hypothetical unicorn of a season where Shiro’s the Black Paladin again while Allura flies the Atlas and there is no wolf because Shiro is the one with the cool teleporting powers. I’m talking about if you took out The Feud, removed or condensed every scene that featured or focused on the MFE pilots, and swapped back in the three Season 8 episodes that Team Purple Lion maintains were originally part of Season 7, how would Season 7 look in terms of pacing and story structure?

@leakinghate postulated in her Seek Truth in Darkness meta that the unedited version of Season 8 would have been 17 episodes long due to the prior editing of Season 7: The MFE pilots were added in after production of Season 7 was already close to being finished, and we know from interviews that the animators needed to do a lot of extra work animating scenes for them, resulting in the creation of The Feud as a filler episode to give them a break. Hate theorized that the episodes Battle Scars, The Grudge, and Shadows were originally written for Season 7 before they had to be pushed into Season 8 in order to make room for the MFE pilots.

There are four things that support this conclusion: storyline payoff, narrative consistency, redundancy, and pacing:

Story Payoff: A frequent complain I saw in Season 8 was that after we see the Olkari evacuating their planet from the robeast attack, we never see them again. There’s no payoff to Olkari evacuating their planet. But Olkari are visible in the background of the Rebuilding Earth montage in S7E13 Lion’s Pride: Part 2. Which would have been the perfect payoff if Battle Scars had been in Season 7: we find out Olkarion’s destruction early in the season, and at the end of the season, the survivors come to help rebuild Earth.

Narrative consistency: the reverse tractor beam Zethrid’s crew uses to pin down the Paldins in The Grudge is the same one they used at the end of The Road Home. But it only worked that first time because we were told that the lions were at low power and couldn’t break free. In Season 8, they had access to the Atlas and had spent the last few episodes operating at full power. So how could the tractor beam work now?

Redundancy: With its current placement in Season 8, Shadows doesn’t offer any new information to the audience, only spelling out what everyone had already figured out four months ago – that Honerva had taken command of the Altean colony using their loyalty to Lotor to get them to fight for her and had assembled an army of Robeasts piloted by Alteans. In Season 8, it’s a waste of time to spend an entire episode repeating what the audience already knows.

But if this was originally supposed to be part of Season 7, it would fit: the flashbacks of Honerva would fill in where she had gone after Acxa tried to shoot her in “The Black Paladins”. The last seven minutes of what is now “Shadows” would have made an excellent cliffhanger for Lion’s Pride: Part 2 – after Allura says “an Altean” we could have cut to Honerva’s arrival at the colony and the montage of assembling her army of mechs, ending the season with Luka flying off to destroy Voltron and bring the events of the Robeast fight full circle.

Pacing: One of the most frequent criticisms of Season 7 was that the space arc of the season rushed by too fast and the Earth arc felt like it dragged on too long. The first half of Season 8 received similar complaints regarding dragged out pacing, as Honerva is identified as a threat early on but they don’t go to Oriande to face her until Episode 6. Shadows is a redundant episode that spins its wheels repeating what we already know.

But if you were to imagine what things would look like without the MFE pilots, things would be a lot different. Having Battle Scars and The Grudge take place in the first half of Season 7 stretches out the space road trip arc and helps it to feel less rushed. If you took away The Feud and the scenes in the second half of the season focusing on the MFEs, the Earth arc would be shortened by one episode and helps tighten up the pacing of the episodes.

Battle Scars and The Grudge, in my opinion work best between The Way Forward and The Ruins. Reason number one being that it would give weight to the three-year time skip if the Paladins learned in the following episode that one of their closest allies had been attacked while they were gone. It would also fill in what happened to Acxa after the end of The Way Forward, as many of us were wondering why the Paladins just left her on the planet where she was holed up. If she accompanied them, possibly in her own ship, it would provide the opportunity for some more callbacks to Belly of the Weblum by having Acxa there for the Olkarion trip.

One possible explanation I’ve seen suggested that makes sense for why Shiro wouldn’t have been in this episode much is if he was injured during the escape in The Way Forward and needed a stint in the cryopod. Speaking of the cryopod, in the edited version of Season 7, it just disappears after A Little Adventure. But if we would have seen Shiro using it in Battle Scars before it was given away to save Ezor in The Grudge (because she’d still be alive), that would neatly explain why they don’t have it in The Ruins or The Journey Within.

The Ruins and The Journey Within would have been unaffected by the editing of Season 7 and thus would be unchanged.

The Last Stand Parts 1 and 2 are largely the same in terms of the Earth flashbacks, but in addition to the absence of the MFEs and the condensing of any montages they feature in, this would be the most appropriate place to have the scenes of Honerva from shadows intercut with the flashbacks on Earth. Aside from being set only a few months apart (Matt contacts Earth a year after Sam returns and says Voltron has been missing for six months, ergo Honerva’s flashbacks in Part 1 take place six months after Sam’s do), these scenes would visually and narratively contrast the warm, loving, and healthy dynamic of the Holt family with the Galra royal couple’s cold, controlling, and abusive relationship with their son.

With the MFE scenes swapped out and condensed to make room for Honerva’s flashbacks, the episode would still end right at the same place it did in the edited version of the season: with Sendak’s fleet surrounding Earth. But Part 2 would not have the same endpoint if you removed the MFEs. Without the MFE pilots, the scene of the MFE Ares fighters doing damage against Sendak’s fleet would be cut, along with the entire sequence of preparing to and then doing the raid on the supply depot that the MFE pilots and Veronica undertake. Without the raid on the supply depot, the circumstances of Veronica’s resitance network delivering refugees to the garrison change and would be condensed.

This would leave 8 minutes’ worth of space. The middle third of Shadows – the Kral Zera, the flashbacks to Lotor’s childhood, and Honerva using Kova to try and scry Lotor’s location – only take up about five minutes. The remaining three minutes, I believe would have consisted of the first three minutes of what is now Know Your Enemy. The music as the paladins climb out of the stolen Galra fighter to stare in horror at the ruined city feels like it’s building to an episode-ending wham moment. The cut off point would be around the 4:09 mark in Know Your Enemy (since the opening credits take up a minute, they don’t count, obviously).

Pictured above: the probable original ending of The Last Stand: Part 2

The original version of Know Your Enemy would pick up at what is now the 4:31 mark in the edited version of the episode (pictured below). It feels appropriate as ending an episode with a shot of a destroyed locale before the next episode opens with the protagonist walking among the rubble is a formula I have seen used in countless tv shows over the years.

There is another three minutes’ worth of exclusively MFE-focused content that wouldn’t be there in the unedited S7. When added with the missing three minutes now added to the end of The Last: Stand Part 2, we get a six-minute block in which we can pull content from the next episode.

I’m confident that that space would be filled with a condensed version of the reconnaissance mission to the Galran military installation, ending at the 9:43 mark of what is now Heart of the Lion and the reveal of the Zaiforge cannons. This sequence is seven minutes long in the edited version of S7 due to the inclusion of the MFE pilots, but without them, this sequence would be short enough to squeeze into roughly six minutes.

The Zaiforge recon sequence fits better as the final act of Know Your Enemy because it calls back to the main piece of the episode: the interrogation of Sendak’s A.I. Sendak’s A.I. says that if a planet refuses to surrender, then the Galra Empire destroys it. And that fate has only ever been dealt to Altea. Revealing the Zaiforge cannons at the end of “Know Your Enemy” (pictured below) should convey to the audience that because Earth refused to surrender, he plans to destroy Earth just as Altea was destroyed.

Heart of the Lion would still open with Shiro awakening from the surgery to attach his new arm. Not only does it preserve the intentional call back to show the differences between how the Garrison treated him after surgery compared to how the Galra Empire did, but it also neatly explains why Shiro wouldn’t be involved in the reconnaissance mission. From there, we would transition into the briefing scene where they work out the plan to summon the lions from Saturn. In the edited version of the episode, this happens around the 11-minute mark, and the scene for Shiro’s arm only takes the first two minutes, leaving a nine-minute window to pull material from the next episode. The scene of the paladins summoning their lions would be condensed without the MFE pilots there, expanding the gap.

The shot at the end of the edited version of the episode feels like there should be more after the Garrison’s reaction, and the opening two shots of what is now Trial by Fire are repeated from the ending of Heart of the Lion. The show has only ever reused a shot from the immediately previous episode three times up to that point, and in very specific contexts (following up from a season-ending cliffhanger, and to indicate episodes that are taking place simultaneously) so these two shots were most likely used as padding.

(Pictured above: one of the two shots re-used between Heart of the Lion and Trial by Fire) 

From there, we would have all of the scenes from Trial by Fire focused on the Paladins learning to pilot their lions remotely. Because this episode is called Heart of the Lion, after all. Why wouldn’t you expect an episode with a title like that to have the Paladins unlock a cool new ability. We would also have the Atlas launch during this episode, as the Atlas’s power problems were an excuse to have the MFE pilots get some action in while the Paladins were incapacitated. Without the MFE pilots, they would have gotten the crystalized Castle of Lions in there a lot faster. The ending of Heart of the Lion would be the ending for Trial by Fire, with Admiral Sanda’s death before the Paladins escape the ship.

You’ll notice that with the ending of Trial by Fire moved to be the ending of Heart of the Lion, there’s nothing actually left in Trial by Fire itself. This is because Trial by Fire didn’t exist before the creation of the MFE pilots. Of the three episodes nestled between The Last Stand and Lion’s Pride, only two titles are applicable to anything that happens in these episodes. “Know Your Enemy” refers to understanding how Sendak thinks and figuring out what his plans for Earth are. Heart of the Lion refers to the Paladins’ ability to call their lions from deep space and pilot them remotely.

But just like Hate pointed out about Uncharted Regions in Season 8, there is nothing in the Earth arc of Season 7 that can be accurately described as a trial by fire. The phrase trial by fire refers to someone performing well for the first time under intense pressure. However this is typically preceded by a previous attempt at achieving their goal that fails the first time (or first few times). This isn’t the first time that the Paladins have given the Lions directions remotely. They just did it in Heart of the Lion on a smaller scale. The MFE pilots aren’t piloting their fighters for the first time, they’ve been doing it since before the invasion. It could be referring to the Atlas, but this is the first time it’s being powered up, and the Atlas’ full capabilities won’t be tested until Lion’s Pride: Part 1 and Part 2. When you tally up the amount of screen-time the MFE pilots got in the back half of Season 7, it adds up to one episode’s worth of content. Therefore, before the MFE pilots were created late in production, Trial by Fire didn’t exist. 

Lion’s Pride: Part 1 would start exactly where it did in the edited Season 7, minus the transformation sequence. Roughly six minutes of the episode is focused on the MFE pilots and wouldn’t have been there during the original season. This means that the first six minutes of Lion’s Pride: Part 2 were originally the ending of Part 1. The most organic stopping point would be around 6:48 of the edited Lion’s Pride: Part 2, just after Pidge uses her Bayard to drive the Robeast off of Voltron when it’s using its Komar blades to drain their Quintessence. Part 2 would pick up with Shiro asking if the Paladins are okay, and Hunk responding that the blades had sapped their energy.

There’s about a minute of MFE pilot action in this episode, which adds up to a seven-minute space at the end that would be the prefect spot for the last seven minutes of Shadows, where just after we see the Altean pilot, we flash back to Honerva’s arrival on the colony and find out what happened to the missing Alteans.

The Earth arc dragged on for so long because having to make room for the MFE pilots so late in the pipeline forced the production team to rearrange scenes and create an entirely new episode to make sure they had room, throwing off the content of the other episodes from where everything was supposed to be, such that the title of each episode no longer matched its content. 

Even though each episode of Voltron is a piece of the larger narrative, every episode still has an arc within the episode itself. Every individual episode still has a clear beginning, middle, and end. But with the content in the second half of Season 7 rearranged to give the MFE pilots the spotlight, the ending of one episode became the middle of another. And instead of two tightly paced episodes that each had a clear beginning, middle, and end, we got three episodes that were just one hour-long middle.

Doesn’t what I just outlined above flow much better? With two additional episodes, the front half of Season 7 gets some more room to breathe instead of skipping through so much, and the Earth arc doesn’t feel like it drags on for so long. Plus, having Honerva’s flashbacks here makes for a better fit in terms of contrast and in what it reveals to the audience than when it’s repeating what we already figured out months ago.

TL; DR: Before the executive meddling that resulted in the creation of the MFE pilots, Season 7 would have looked like this:

A Little Adventure

The Road Home

The Way Forward

Battle Scars

The Grudge

The Ruins

The Journey Within

The Last Stand: Part 1

The Last Stand: Part 2

Know Your Enemy

Heart of the Lions

Lion’s Pride: Part 1

Lion’s Pride: Part 2

And after the creation of the MFE pilots, they were given enough screen time that a new episode Trial by Fire had to be commissioned to spread out the content that would have originally been two episodes. As a consequence, Battle Scars, The Grudge, and the content that would become Shadows had to be moved into Season 8 to compensate, with The Feud being made to fill the gap created in the first half of the season.

I’d like to thank the members of Team Purple Lion (@leakinghate @felixazrael @crystal-rebellion @dragonofyang and @voltronisruiningmylife) for all the hard work they’ve done reverse engineering what everything looked like before the executive meddling happened. I wouldn’t be able to write meta like this without their thoroughly research analyses to build on.