EPISODE REVIEW: Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: “Deep” (Season 1, Episode 13)

Gah. This is killing me. This is my third review in an hour, and even with my shiny new style of writing reviews that *aren’t* sixteen pages long, it’s just too much. I’m dying here. Thank God for R2 and Sam, and the others who cover Friday night stuff on the other channels, or I’d never catch up. Just the same, I need, need, need, need, someone to step up and take over some of these reviews. I just can’t keep it up.

Anyway…

PLAY BY PLAY

Team Tennyson voyage to a particularly unrealistically designed water world to stop Aggregor from stealing yet another hunk of the infinity key. After several well-choreographed adventures, they fail. The key fragment on this world was tied in with a machine that was holding the whole world together. Because it was poorly designed, you see. And you thought I was just being insulting! The world starts to fall apart, but Ben is able to stabilize it, nearly dying in the process, and then - briefly - turning into an entire ocean.

It’s a superhero show, what do you want?

The battle is lost but the world is saved.

The End.

OBSERVATIONS

The writing is better, the animation is better, the action sequences are better choreographed, the voice acting is better, pretty much everything is better than it’s ever been before, but if I have to drop shows from my Friday night block of reviews, this is the first one that’s going. I’m not sure why, but I’m just not feeling it anymore. Lost my inspiration, more or less concurrently with my kids aging out of the show.

Fifty-two episodes of this show have been ordered, I’d guess to run in four blocks of thirteen. I guess rather than have a particularly solid story arc the way Alien Force did, they’re having a series of mini-arcs that wrap themselves up, and launch the next one. The first one was the Aggregor abductions, and now we’re on this Infinity Key business, seemingly half way through it. This will be followed by what? Something involving the Engine of Creation no doubt. They may be a larger arc that all this ties into as well, but it’s too early to say, really.

The puppy-fish thing that saves Kevin’s life was pretty funny.

I particularly loved the scene in the beginning where they needed to rescue Ben from his fans. I also really like that they’re dealing with the limitations of the Omnitrix, their plumber tech, and their own powers. Both Kevin and Ben almost drown, and this is the second time Ben has been in a hostile environment, where using the Omnitrix has meant that he’ll die when it times out and he changes back to human. That’s cool stuff.

Conversely, I felt the tension between Team Ben and Pike was rather forced and only padded out the story.

Sorry, that’s all I’ve got for tonight, kids, my fingers are killing me.

If you’re interested in taking over the reviews for this show, or any of the other Friday night CN fare, please drop me a line at [email protected] .