Krypt: "You are a pair of incompetents! With a whole FLEET at your command, you can't bring down ONE Earth ship?!"
Desslok: "Tell Ganz I'm a little confused: Whose side is he fighting on, anyway?"
Colonel Ganz and Bane, his assistant, make a last-ditch effort to defeat the Star Force after the destruction of their Pluto base. The Argo hides in the asteroid belt, the remains of the planet Minerva, while it makes repairs. Sandor devises a means to camoflauge the ship with rocks. The rocks can be polarized and strung into a revolving ring that moves into the path of any oncoming fire. Sandor then reverses the polarity of the ring, flinging the asteroids out at the surrounding Gamilon fleet. The fleet is destroyed.
Notes:
We learn in this episode that "there used to be ten planets". Minerva was the first planet the Gamilons destroyed. Why they did this is uncertain. Perhaps a show of force. Perhaps mining for the raw materials for the planet bombs they would hurl at earth.
In the second season, we will learn that there are/were actually eleven planets in our solar system, the eleventh being Brumas.
"We've just left our solar system. From now on, visual communication WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE." -- Communications Officer, Homer
The Star Force is almost too far from Earth for any video communication, so the crew takes its last chance to say goodbye to their families. With no family on Earth, Derek gets drunk with the Captain in his quarters, and bids farewell to Earth from the window.
Actually, the above synopsis does not do this episode justice. It's a heavily emotional one, and reveals a tremendous amount of depth in each of the main characters. Being out of communication with Earth is the first strike to the Star Force's morale, and the Gamilons will eventually discover that they can take advantage of this (Ep 1-19).
This episode features the only English song in Star Blazers other than its credits, and it is sung and hummed to the tune of the Japanese Yamato song, Scarlet Scarf.
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