Season 1, Episode 11: “Chain of Command”
Written by Amy Wolfram
Directed by Lauren Montgomery
Original release: March 3rd 2007
Running time: 22 minutes
Air time: Saturday morning
This is the prelude to the season finale. Fans of the 2003 cartoon may recognize Amy Wolfram as the writer of the Terra episodes, so you know we’re in good hands here.
But get comfortable, this is a long one.
We begin with the Legion cruiser speeding towards a crisis that is very dear to Lightning Lad in particular.
That’s because it’s about his home planet Winath (spelled Wynath in the subtitles).
If you’re curious it’s pronounced “we-nath”, not “why-nath” as I was expecting.
Lightning Lad was the butt of the joke for several episodes, but this time he’s in full serious hero mode.
And his interaction with Superman makes me realize… we’ve known LL was from an agricultural powerhouse, yet somehow that’s never been a big factor in his friendship with comicdom’s most famous farmboy.
Seriously, Winath is Space Kansas so much that they have to worry about space tornadoes.
The episode throws around the unit “megabar” like it was a fictional thing, but that’s a real unit of measure for pressure… and it’s HUGE.
The pressure at the bottom of the deepest part of the Earth’s ocean is 0.0011 megabars.
The pressure at the Earth’s core is 3.6 megabar.
So the planet is apparently routinely hit by something that delivers OVER FORTY TIMES the pressure at the Earths core?
Nope! It’s actually EVEN WORSE.
For reference, 500 megabars is ELEVEN TIMES the pressure at JUPITER’s core!!!
See, this is exactly why you should always go with made-up units unless you know what you’re doing, otherwise you’re open to nitpicking.
Saturn Girl expresses sympathy, and by the way she says it I wonder if her version of Titan went through a significant event.
The series won’t last long enough to know, as we never visit Titan.
She uses her powers to scan the planet, finding the people have evacuated the cities to move into an enormous shelter.
Nice bit of visual storytelling: throughout the episode, whenever we cut to the civilians we can clearly see it’s full of twins… but the episode doesn’t go out of its way to say that almost everyone on Winath is a twin. So I wonder how many readers unfamiliar with the Legion caught that.
The storm is so powerful that even the Legion Cruiser can’t land; this will actually give Bouncing Boy a time to shine as the team’s pilot (and more).
Interestingly, Lightning Lad refers to Triplicate Girl as “the Trips”.
So does that mean that the team consider her as three separate people? She’s normally called just “Triplicate Girl” by everyone.
Colossal Boy guest-stars in this episode, voiced by Adam Wylie… who is actually talking to himself in this scene since he also voices Brainiac 5.
It’s barely audible at points if you know it, but if you don’t you wouldn’t tell this is the same voice actor.
The pod eventually lands, and the Legionnaires reach the diffuser station.
And once inside, they are reunited with a Legionnaire who has been mentioned in the pilot episode.
The episode does a really good job at giving you the sense that he’s an integral part of the team, giving off great camaraderie vibes.
Wish I though of calling Cosmic Boy and Colossal Boy “CB1” and “CB2” earlier, that would’ve been helpful a few times.
Cosmic Boy is voiced by Wil Wheaton; you might think that would be stunt casting, but he’s no stranger to voicing DC characters: he was the voice of Aqualad in Teen Titans.
You absolutely don’t hear it, as the way he voices both is quite distinct from his real voice.
I can’t imagine any Legion fan in 1987 watching the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and guessing the kid playing Wesley Crusher would one day voice Cosmic Boy.
It is kind of strange that it took all this time for Cosmic Boy to show up, considering he’s both the hero and a huge Superman fan.
But the surprises don’t stop here, because Cosmic Boy also introduces a new recruit: Ferro Lad.
I’m shocked to see they went full Silver Age with him, both with the name and especially the look.
He’s voiced by voice actor Dave Wittenberg, who has voiced a bit of everything from cartoons to anime to video games.
He does a good job but not a memorable one with Ferro Lad.
Ferro Lad gives a quick power demonstration, which apparently Cosmic Boy doesn’t need: we see him use his powers several times throughout the episode, but at no point is magnetism ever even mentioned.
I must sympathize with Lightning Lad though: this is hardly the time for demonstrations.
However this is where a big part of the episode’s tension comes from, because despite being absent for months Cosmic Boy immediately jumps back into being the leader.
The diffuser station is overloaded, so of course the first step is having Brainiac 5 repair it while Cosmic Boy isolates the core.
While the rest of the team fixes the outside structure, Lightning Lad is irritated by Ferro Lad joining the team without an audition.
Leaving aside that LL hated auditions in the Subs episode… didn’t both Timber Wolf and technically Superman also join without an audition?
That argument will have to wait, because the core is being salvage at this point.
Superman does through the core into deep space, but he’s hit with enough force to render him unconscious.
So Bouncing Boy has to use his piloting skills to catch him in the upper atmosphere.
Good news: the core won’t destroy the planet.
Bad news: we don’t have the core.
This is a tense situation: the options are either attempt to build another core and use it to fix the weather, or evacuate the planet.
I’m slightly more on Cosmic Boy’s plan, but I love it when a story presents two contrasting plans and they both make sense from different perspectives.
But it’s not like Cosmic Boy’s plan needs everyone, since he only truly needs Brainiac 5…
…and Saturn Girl, to provide telepathic communications because there’s too much interference for the rings. And again: everyone’s position makes sense from their point of view!
Lightning Lad might be onto something because the storm is throwing hailstones the size of buildings! Although given their coloring it looks more like a meteor shower.
The one thing I don’t like about Ferro Lad is that he’s shown to have super-strength without transforming into iron. Makes him way less unique.
This episode keeps truly respecting the intelligence of its audience (not always a given with cartoons for this target audience); they don’t exactly say why Ferro Lad wears a mask, they trust the audience will get it.
Although they still show the Trips using a regular glass thermometer to get Superman’s temperature.
The Legion has been doing a good job so far… from what they can see: Bouncing Boy is the only one figuring out they’re only doing damage control without figuring out the pattern.
Not that the team on the ground believes him.
Even Superman is too busy to listen to Bouncing Boy.
Cosmic Boy’s team is keeping busy, with Brainiac 5 rebuilding the core…
…and Saturn Girl being vital in her role of doing absolutely nothing.
Lightning Lad tries to focus on saving the family farm…
…but he barely gets to save a picture of his family before the farm is destroyed.
This is technically the first confirmation that Lightning Lass exists in this continuity; we’ll have to wait the next season for an actual appearance.
But at least Brainiac 5 has just repaired the core, as Saturn Girl informs them.
But that means Saturn Girl doesn’t have to be the team’s phone anymore.
Kari Wahlgren voicing Saturn Girl does a fantastic job here playing up her frustration.
But, unlike Season 2 who will handle him a jerk, Cosmic Boy clearly wasn’t doing it on purpose.
The situation is understandably difficult at the shelter, but Saturn Girl has the people’s trust.
Sooo… why isn’t the episode ending?
Because while repairing the station was indeed the way to go, that’s not good enough.
Being in the upper atmosphere, Bouncing Boy is the only one to see the big picture: the next storm will create a gigantic mudslide that will completely destroy the shelter.
Bouncing Boy’s orders seem kind of random and counter-intuitive at first…
I’m not entirely sure it makes much sense… would a forest fire generate enough heat to redirect an entire river like this!?
Especially since you have a guy who used to have in his introduction “he can divert the course of mighty rivers”.
In fact, the whole reason Superman has to move the tornadoes around is to divert the river in the first place, so what was even the point of the forest fire?
But at least it works: the storm doesn’t hit the shelter.
With the repaired station back online and the storm dissipated, NOW the United Planets support ships show up.
Sooo… why isn’t the episode ending?
Well, now that Cosmic Boy is back, there’s still the issue of who will be in charge.
Which means that TWO MINUTES from the end of the episode, we have an election!!!
And the winner is…
Cosmic Boy is such a good guy that he doesn’t seem to have any resentment over losing re-election against a guy who wasn’t even running.
Perhaps more surprising given his characterization in this series, even Lightning Lad is all for it.
It sure would suck if the election happened right before the Legion’s darkest hour.
Animated significance: 6/10
While Bouncing Boy’s tenure will indeed be short, this is the preamble to the season finale.
Does any of this show up in regular continuity?
It’s a true crime that Bouncing Boy has never won a Legion election in the comics.
Silver Age-ness: 7/10
Don’t think too hard about the physics of that storm.
Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
This is probably my favorite episode of the whole show. As a standalone, I would probably consider this the best possible introduction to the Legion for anyone who is not familiar with it.
It has personal drama, it has character growth, it has worldbuilding, it even has office politics!
This is the Legion at its best: a large cast of diverse characters doing hero stuff while bouncing off each other’s personalities.
Plus as I have mentioned multiple times in the review, the episode REALLY respects the intelligence of the viewers AND it goes through great lengths to have characters disagreeing without anyone being entirely unreasonable. Which should be a given, but man is that rare to see.
And while it packs A LOT into 22 minutes, it never feels overstuffed.
Compare and contrast with Episode 10: the reason why I’m reviewing two episodes back-to-back is because that one had barely enough plot for one episode, while this one would have enough to be a two-parter!
You know what a Legion election means: wild speculation on my part on how each Legionnaire voted!!! There are currently 19 Legionnaires.
From the regular cast:
Brainiac 5 = most likely himself
Saturn Girl = given this episode, I can’t imagine her confirming Cosmic Boy. And while she’s supportive of Lightning Lad, I’d say she’s more likely to vote Bouncing Boy
Bouncing Boy = definitely would not vote for himself. I’d say he voted Lightning Lad.
Triplicate Girl = Bouncing Boy all the way
Phantom Girl = has she even interacted with Bouncing Boy so far? Even if she heard his contribution, she was supportive enough of Lightning Lad to probably vote for him.
Lightning Lad = most likely himself
Superman = biggest Bouncing Boy supporter outside of Triplicate Girl
Timber Wolf =hasn’t even met Cosmic Boy and had a bit of adversarial attitude against Lightning Lad, so he might vote Bouncing Boy.
From this episode’s roster:
Cosmic Boy = too much of a nice guy to vote himself and too critical of Lightning Lad. He was visibly surprised to see Bouncing Boy winning so probably didn’t vote for him; might have been tempted to vote Superman, but I’d say he went for seniority and voted Saturn Girl.
Colossal Boy and Ferro Lad = impressed enough by Bouncing Boy to vote for him.
The two Legionnaires who barely had any screen time:
Matter-Eater Lad = his buddy Lightning Lad
Star Boy =he’s the latest recruit from the auditions. Since we know Bouncing Boy held advanced courses for recruits, it’s possible Star Boy was already impressed enough to vote for him.
And finally we have the hardest ones: the Legionnaires who have only had cameos. This is COMPLETE speculation on my part.
None of them has interacted with the regular cast on-screen, so I’m willing to say that EVERYONE voted to keep Cosmic Boy:
Shrinking Violet
Blok
Element Lad
Dream Girl
Sun Boy
Tyroc
Based on these assumptions, the election results MIGHT have been:
Bouncing Boy = 7 votes
Cosmic Boy = 6 votes
Lightning Lad = 4 votes
Brainiac 5 = 1 vote
Saturn Girl = 1 vote
