You missed the first minute of my episode because Cartoon Network started it at 8:29.
If you are on the West Coast, there’s still time to adjust it.
Feel free to post comments here.
PAD
You missed the first minute of my episode because Cartoon Network started it at 8:29.
If you are on the West Coast, there’s still time to adjust it.
Feel free to post comments here.
PAD
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Great episode, PAD. I especially loved the fight with Mr. Smoothie.
Has there been any talk of writing another?
Already have; an episode for the next “Ben 10: Evolutions,” the sequel series.
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PAD
I’m glad you’re enjoying a better animation experience with Ben 10 than you and Bill Mumy did with Roswell Conspiracies.
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On a related note, are you free to announce how many volumes your “Doom Dimension” manga is scheduled to run? Amazon.ca currently lists two.
CN also rearranged their Friday night schedule to bump Clone Wars to after Ben10, with less than a week’s notice (in fact, YahooTV’s site hadn’t been updated, suggesting an even shorter lead time).
CN’s motto seems to be, “If you can’t commit to watching us 24 hours a day, screw you.”
It was a good episode, but now they have just completely annihilated any sense of continuity within the show. Specifically, the explanation of Gwen’s abilities in season 2. It no longer makes any sense whatsoever.
Did Caroline like that you used her name?
The ep left me confused on a few points, PAD.
1, according to season 1 of AF, magic isn’t real. But your entire episode treated it as though it is. If it isn’t real, what the heck were Gwen and Charmcaster doing? And if it IS real, why was the official stance by the Plumbers and Gwen’s own grandmother (who’s “made of magic”, too) that it’s just alien powers?
2, since when can Upchuck consume normal food? Last I checked, his major limitation was that he could only use things other people found inedible (he couldn’t eat pizza in Ben 4, Good Buddy). And even after that… He does have a limit to his capacity. He would have needed to fire off a major explosive loogie after all that.
Yes, I =AM= a long term fan of this show. 🙂 And the Upchuck fight was absolutely hysterical. I just wish you’d tossed in Cannonbolt… Mostly because of the chaos I know you’re capible of unleashing.
A giant animate ceramic Mr. Smoothie is FOOD?
1. I think it all comes back to the notion that any sufficiently advanced form of science is going to be seen as magic. Is it magical energy? Is it manna? Potato/poh-tah-to. I actually considered having a whole section with Gwen addressing that very concept and describing her alien nature to Charmcaster but it was just too unwieldy and contrived to make work.
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2. That was kind of the joke, actually. The subtext was that whatever the hëll that crap Ben drinks is, it’s so far removed from food that even Upchuck can drink it.
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PAD
I’d still like an episode explaining the magic/science issue. Does Charmcaster have alien heritage too? Magical energy might actually be scientifically explainable in some way, but it’s still weird to see someone say she learned it with a spell book.
Ben seemed a little off in this episode. Was there supposed to be a joke about the Mr. Smoothies making him super hyper?
I really liked the Kevin/Gwen interaction. There were also a lot of good jokes, especially in the battle banter between Gwen and Charmcaster. I think my favorite joke was at the end when the monster let go of the pole.
“I’m not magic, you idiot! It’s alien energy!”
“Blah blah blah. Don’t care. It’s your’s… and now MINE!”
There and done. 😉 But thanks for letting Gwen do spells again. The lantern thing has been really boring.
That was what I figured on Upchuck… But still, why didn’t he expand?
Also, curious about the writing process on Ben 10. Do they give you the skinny on the availability of the various aliens? (“You can’t use Chromastone because we wanna make people sweat over his status”; “no bringing back any of the old schools”; “These are the ones needing screen time most. Use them.”) Or do they more or less give you cart blanche on who you get to use? It just seemed like you wanted to rely mostly on original series aliens (Upchuck and Diamondhead, and you mentioned WayBig).
Interesting Ditko-ish look on Charmcaster.
Unfortunately, as others have noted, this really just asks more questions than it answers. If Gwen still has the spellbooks and can still do “real” magic (presumably powered by her internal mana), why does she limit herself to being a Pink Lantern 99% of the time, with the other 1% being the tracking trick? If Charmcaster got her skills purely from training (and artifacts), what about the alien heritage she was supposed to have according to the Pop-Up Ben10 episodes? And while Ben10K and Kevin11K are clearly not in continuity with AF for a variety of reasons, how can it even be a divergent future at this point? (For a variety of reasons, I tend to maintain that Alien Force is a sort of Earth-2 deal, with many similar elements but other things, like Ben’s father, being rather different. But there’s never been an official statement to that effect.)
It seems to me that the ben 10k eps take place in a future where Alien Force’s events unfolded differently, or not at all. At the very least, Ben and Gwen never joined forces with Kevin, and Gwen never had that talk with Grandma.
Knowledge of the future changes present events and actions. Ben and Gwen saw that future. That automatically changed what was going to happen.
Funny episode! I laughed out loud when Charmcaster talked about her evil plot in front of Kevin, who then commented that they wouldn’t go if he said it was a trap. I also liked the villain who didn’t fall for the “let’s fight with no powers” thing. (On the flip side, we once again have heroes who know it’s a trap but still enter it. I wonder if that would work for other villainy? “I know the bad guy poisoned my drink — so I’ll go ahead and drink it!” [drinks] “Ukk! What was I thinking?!?”
A few questions for PAD:
1) What made you decide to write an episode where Ben was, by and large, unnecessary? Gwen and Kevin didn’t need him to battle the rock monsters, and the living shake (what, no animated fries and wad of meat?) didn’t seem so much menacing as a designated victim.
2) How’d you get the writing job for this (and the next) episode? I didn’t know cartoon series had guest writers, or searched for scripts.
3) Will the impact of this episode on Gwen and Kevin be part of the continuity, or will it be one of those “it happened but we’ll never mention it again” things?
OT: PAD any chance you’ll review AMC’s remake of the Prisoner miniseries? It’s been pretty interesting so far and it’d be great to hear your take.
For those of us trying to locate it after the fact … episode title or number, please?
In Charm’s Way
Appreciated.
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Ian and I finally sat down with the episode on the DVR (yes, I accounted for Cartoon Network’s usual screwy timing and extended my record time) and watched the thing. Not bad. I have no clue what the series is usually about but you kept it simple enough that the episode was accessible to first time viewers and still got some of the complexities of the characters and their relationships with one another across pretty dámņëd clearly.
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It was actually entertaining in a way that reminded me of what I liked about your time on Young Justice.
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And Ian liked the big fights and boom noises during same.