DVD Reviews

Back to the review of Teen Titans Season 5 DVD. The first part covered how the Titans are assembling an army of honorary Titans to stand against the Brotherhood of Evil. Now on to the second disc…

The second half of the season opens with yet another episode that doesn’t feature the regular team. In “Lightspeed” the focus is on a team called the Hive Five – an evil version of the Titans crossed with the Fearsome Five – and the trouble they’re having with a new superhero. The setup is okay, but the episode is elevated by just who the new hero is. Michael Rosenbaum is drafted in from the Justice League for the first appearance of Kid Flash (one of the founders of the comic book Teen Titans). His voice is pitched up, but the character is almost identical to the League’s Flash. It’s great to see him run rings around the Hive Five. Can I also say that Billy Numerous is a work of genius!

“Revved Up” keeps up the speed, so to speak, with the Teen Titans engaged in a race with the Dig Dong Daddy. And, yes he is a real 1960s Teen Titan’s villain. With the Titan’s art style and tone there is only one way this can go. So it’s Wacky Races all the way once Gizmo, Red-X, and a hand full of other badguys get involved (they’re only missing the narrator). I wasn’t a fan of the mellow tunes, but then I’m more of an Easy Rider fan (is that a comics writer in the duck outfit).

Special attention has to be paid to “Go!” as it’s the Teen Titan’s origin episode. When the series first launched the Titans were up and running and already tight as a team so we never got to see how the group formed, at least until now. This episode quite closely follows the origin of the Wolfman/Perez group (watch our for their cameo and Perez’s shirt). Robin has recently moved on from his (still unnamed) mentor and is very much in Batman mode. Beast Boy has just been kicked out of the Doom Patrol. Even Cyborg is in the grey hooded jersey that he wore in his first comics appearance. It is Starfire’s flight from the Gordanians that brings them together, a little differently than in the comics admittedly, but the major beats are there. I really liked this episode and its a refreshing change to have a story completely focused on the core team.

“Calling All Titans” was the “who’s left to include” episode and is the first of the two-part final confrontation with the Brotherhood. It’s also the final leg of the Titan’s global odyssey to warn other teen heroes of the Brotherhood of Evil’s threat. This time the Titan’s split up and each meet up with a new hero each before heading home. Someone on the writing team must like Battle of the Planets as the T-Ship splitting into pods felt like a great rift on the Phoenix. Argent was an interesting take, Bushido was an excuse to have Robin fight Ninjas (never a bad thing), Pantha as a masked Mexican wrestler was just strange, and they sell the Herald as well as anybody has ever done. But I liked Beast Boy’s mountain quest to find Jericho best.

Once the all the Titan’s have been located the Brotherhood of Evil springs their trap and things get really serious. When the alliance of honorary Titans is at its largest the Brotherhood strikes, capturing several heroes in early stikes – they even manage to capture Robin by isolating him from the other Titans. “Titans Together” sees Beast Boy leading an unlikely group of b-list Titans in a counterstrike against the Brotherhood. His experience from the Doom Patrol serves him well and its interesting to see Beast Boy as the confident leader for a change. The action gets very hectic and there were more characters than I could count, but even then the founding five don’t get completely squeezed out.

After the two-part confrontation with the Brotherhood comes “Things Change” – the real final episode. The Titan’s have been away from the city for so long that they notice that its changed while they’ve been away. Redevelopment has erased their childhood landmarks, the city is growing, and the Titan’s need to face their own growth. The return of a particular old favourite really captures the spirit of the first few seasons. I won’t give any more spoilers about the ending, but its pretty fantastic and very nicely done.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like the expanded roster, but I have a definite preference for the original team. This season is really Teen Titans and friends and on that level it works pretty well. There isn’t the oppressive darkness that the Trigon storyline brought and while the Brotherhood of Evil are a credible threat they’re just a little too goofy to do true dark and moody. It’s only with “Calling All Titans” and “Titans Together” that the tone shifts into a more cinematic style and the Brotherhood really begins to look deadly. The season feels very cohesive in tone and story arc.

For all the new Titans and additional characters the ones that work best are those that have the richest comic background. For me Speedy, Aqualad and now Kid Flash are the most interesting of the non-core Titans. It’s just a pity that this series had to come to an end. Season Five is your final fix for the manga inspired Teen Titans. It was an unexpected direction to go and quite a bold one, but it produced five fantastic seasons of cartoon action.

Love it or hate it the final season of the excellent anime-inspired Teen Titans is now in the shops. The animated Titans show has a fantastic ability to switch between brooding/dark and whimsy/light without missing a beat. I must admit I hadn’t seen this season until the review copy arrived so I’ve split this review in half so I can get my initial thoughts up before finishing the second disc.

DISC ONE

The fifth season of Teen Titans introduces us to the Doom Patrol – Beast Boy’s original team. Fans of the comic will know the Doom Patrol as a collection of freaks who debuted almost simultaneously with Marvel’s X-Men. While the X-Men grew into a massive franchise the Doom Patrol has remained something of a cult property and has often attracted a more innovative and down right strange form of superhero story. In the context of the Teen Titans Universe the Doom Patrol are the senior superhero team, a near legendary group of competent adult heroes led by the square-jawed Mento.

The Doom Patrol’s opponents are the Brotherhood of Evil who are led by the Brain (literally a brain in a jar). The entire season parallels the final season of Justice League Unlimited with a shadowy villain organisation gunning for the assembled heroes. It’s impossible not to draw comparisons between the Titan’s version of the Doom Patrol and the Incredibles. They’ve got the entire 1960s action-vibe and the Brotherhood of Evil’s initial set-up are very much in the mould of a James Bond villain.

The opening “Homecoming” two-parter is a classic rescue the family routine followed by a stop the villains heist. We’re shown in flashback how Beast Boy was harshly kicked out by Mento, then in the present day Beast Boy and the Titans are called in to free the Patrol from the Brotherhoods clutches. The action is really cool and its nice to all the heroes in action, but the new characters aren’t that sympathetic. Indeed they’re introduced to place angst on Beast Boy. It’s not something we’ve seen much of in the Teen Titans. Usually they’re shown operating completely free of any sort of adult authority and when adults appear they’re usually villains.

The defeat of the Brotherhood sets up the arc for the entire season as the Brain enlists an entire army of Titans enemies for his revenge. From the third episode the Brotherhood starts rounding up anybody who has worked with the Titans including the Wildebeast and Hotspot. That starts a world tour as the Titans touch base with various honorary Titans and run into different villains in new and varied locations.

The idea of the heroes operating in different parts of the world is interesting. I particularly liked the use of North Africa as a backdrop for the Hotspot/Madame Rouge confrontation in “Trust.” However, the inclusion of the Doom Patrol and the amount of time given to the Brotherhood’s activities actually leaves very little screen time for the real Titans in the opening episodes of their own cartoon. The fourth episode even features an entirely different set of Titans (the Titans East) fighting Film Freak.

The season arc isn’t too heavily stressed, but care is taken to make the Titan’s globe trotting logical. In episode 4 Cyborg is shown on the communicator dressed in warm weather gear when talking to Titans East and then in episodes 5 and 6 the main Titans team are shown in Siberia and at the North pole. It may not be obvious when watched separately, but it makes for a nice sense of continuity when watching the episodes back-to-back as I was.

Episode five, “Snowblind”, takes the Titan’s to Siberia as they track a nuclear powered outcast called Red Star through the harsh winter wilderness. It’s a fantastic episode and is one of the strongest of the season. The character I was most surprised to see was Kole. I never really cared for the comic book version – one of the classic dead characters – but here entrance in the euphoniously named “Kole” (episode six) is hilarious, definitely worthy of Stone Boy from the Subs. Episode seven, “Hide and Seek”, is Raven as Maria von Trapp looking after a gang of pre-school heroes. It’s a nice idea and seems rather formulaic at first, but gets pretty weird once Monsieur Mallah and Bobby show up.