Sonic the Hedgehog (1993), Episode 2.05: Blast to the Past, Part 2

Sonic the Hedgehog (1993), Episode 2.05: Blast to the Past, Part 2
Original Air Date: October 8th, 1994

The second part of “Blast to the Past” didn’t waste much time getting into things. After a recap a minute long, we pick right up where we left off. Robotnik’s Destroyer warship has just crashed through the royal throne room. He captures the King, Uncle Chuck, Sonic and Sally. Our heroes quickly escape which is good, because they have a lot to do. They have to ensure the future — which they realize they’ve already changed — happens. They must reduce their younger selves, retrieve the plans for the original Roboticizer, and keep the Great Forest from being destroyed. Along the way, they both preserve and change events that will happen soon enough.

Yes, like all time travel stories, “Blast to the Past” has to acknowledge that you can’t go charging into the past willy-nilly. At the start of this second part, all Sonic and Sally have really done is hang out for an afternoon in Mobotropolis. Their mere presence in the past has been enough to change things. Robotnik’s plan has sped up and it includes polluting the Great Forest which didn’t happen before. The general accepted rule for this kind of stuff is that, even by changing the past a little, you’ve essentially created an alternate universe to go home too. (Though not too different. In one of the episode’s few sloppy moments, Sonic and Sally are able to escape their cell because Robotnik has apparently not update his prison block design in a decade.) Ben Hurst’s script at least seems sort of aware of this, though a twenty minute long kids cartoon doesn't really have time to get into the intricacies of time travel.

Then again, it’s hard to tell how much Hurst thought this through. Because “Blast to the Past, Part 2” features more time paradoxes than you can shake a fully-loaded chili dog at. By going into the past, Sonic and Sally indirectly cause the young Freedom Fighters to get captured. They then have to rescue themselves from the Roboticizer. Did their time travel cause these events to happen or where Sonic and Sally always meant to save their younger selves from slavery? If so, how did they ever escape and become Freedom Fighters in the original timeline?

If your heads aren’t spinning yet, think about this out. In this episode we see that Sonic and Sally are responsible for rescuing a young Bunnie from the Roboticizer. (Though she’s still fully organic at the episode’s end, so I guess she was half-Roboticized at some later point.) They also rescue a baby Dulcy by helping her Mom escape some SWATBots, cause Snively to loose his hair, and lead to Robotnik’s left arm becoming mechanical. Not to mention, it seems incredibly likely Sonic’s teenage persona was inspired by this mysterious stranger named Juice he met as a child. You’ll notice, all of these events came to pass in the original timeline. Did these incidents happen in different ways originally? Or is this some sort of stable time loop, Sonic and Sally always having traveled back in time? Again, there’s no way “SatAM” had time to explore all of these ideas. Whether haven really thought it through or was just being cute, I guess we’ll never know.

What we do know is that Hurst uses this episode to set up many of the season’s future plot points. We see Robotnik tosses King Acorn into the Void, while referencing Naugus. (Though, once again, we have to wonder why Robotnik didn’t just kill the king or at least Roboticze him.) We learn there was once an entire dragon race on Mobius but Robotnik wiped them out early in his reign, realizing they were too powerful to be kept around. Sabina, Dulcy’s mom, is still out there though, a plot point we’ll be getting to soon enough. It’s very clear that Hurst and Pat Allee has a master plan by this point and we’re going to put it into action, regardless of what the ABC execs had to say.

This is not the only example of how “Blast to the Past, Part 2” expands the lore. We learn that the opening sequence wasn’t exaggerating. Mobotropolis really did fall in the course of a montage. On one hand, it strikes me as pretty unlikely that Robotnik could remake such a grand, large city entirely in his image in the course of an afternoon. On the other hand, it’s such a striking image. As the Destroyer warship flies over the city, we see fountains run dry. Pristine, artful architecture becomes a cold, industrial cityscape. The blue skies are choked with fog. There’s something powerful about that, of evil coming into power and everything good around him immediately rotting into something corrupt and soulless.

“Evil,” of course, is subjective as Robotnik seems to be having a pretty good time. Once again, Jim Cummings’ performance is truly the stuff of Saturday morning legend. The way he gloats ecstatically as fog is belched into the air, or berates a terrified Snively, is truly impressive. After Sonic escapes and ruins his plans, Cummings once again gets to scream in absolute unhinged rage. This follows a wonderful exchange, where he hisses that he already hates Sonic. While the performances on “SatAM” were overall wonderful, it’s increasingly clear that Cummings was and is on a different level. Jaleel White is goofy fun, Kath Soucie is often a grieving raw nerve but Cummings elevates the material to high melodrama.

Having a good villain is certainly a requirement for a properly entertaining action/adventure story. And that’s exactly what “Blast to the Past, Part 2.” After a more laid back first part, the continuation gives us lots of what we associate with “SatAM:” Sonic and Sally sneaking around and wrecking Robotnik’s shit. One of my favorite action beats in the entire series has Power Ring-infused Sonic rocketing into the air through the Knothole slide and falling towards the Destroyer. Sonic and Sally only survive the landing thanks to Sonic’s quick-thinking. It’s nice to see the hedgehog using his head, since Sally has increasingly become the brains of the operation. And it all looks pretty good too. Maybe the animation in the first half was kind of janky because the show was saving its money for this one. The action scenes are smooth and full of zip, while the characters remain lively and expressive.

As much as I like “Blast to the Past, Part 2,” it’s still an episode primarily concerned for plot. I wish it left a little more room for emotional issues. After their tearful reunion last time, Sally never gets a chance to react to loosing her again. The King gets captured and Voided but we never see how this makes Sally feel. Meanwhile, little Sonic also gets his share of childhood trauma. He’s next in line when Uncle Chuck gets turned into an emotionless robot right before his eyes. He seems pretty upset about, the hedgehog hero crying again, but his mood quickly improves after a pep talk from “Juice.” I didn’t expect a kids cartoon to delve into how this childhood trauma drives Sonic’s later act. (I suppose it’s even possible these events didn’t happen this way in the un-fucked-with timeline.) But it’s a pretty big idea to throw in there and then just skate away from.

The “there must always be losses” ending is somewhat undermined by the sitcom Schlick
Hurst doesn’t break his mantra of “There must always be losses.” Upon returning to the present, Sonic outright wonders if this time travel excursion had any point at all. Robotnik still came to power, the King was still un-person’d, and Chuck was still turned into a robot. Sally informs him that it wasn’t a pointless trip, as they did retrieve the original Roboticizer plans, bringing them one step closer to their goal of returning all Robians to normal. It could’ve been a powerful moment, Sonic grappling with the question of whether smaller victories are worth it if the war is stilll unwon.

Instead, Tails flies in and informs the two that Rosie is looking for them. Yes, Sally casually changed the future — or created a branching timeline or however his is supposed to work — by informing her childhood nanny not to ever leave Knothole... Because Rosie would have eventually been captured and Roboticize while out in the Great Forest. Now, this means Rosie has always been in Knothole.... Meaning Sonic and Sally have returned to a future that isn’t technically their home. And that the chipmunk and hedgehog Freedom Fighters will look suspiciously familiar to the nanny. Instead of confronting these ideas head on, “SatAM” goes for the easy sitcom-style ending of Sonic being confused by the entire situation. Which was probably for the best, as the kids in the audience were probably baffled enough already, but isn’t very satisfying on an emotional level to this viewer.

Either way, “Blast to the Past” improves a lot in its second half, after some problems in the first. One really has to admire the vision Ben Hurst and the rest of the show’s team brought to a cartoon designed to sell video games. I don’t know how many other cartoons from 1994 would get me discussing the peculiarities of time travel like this. To serious fans of “SatAm,” this is a pretty pivotal two-parter so I am forced to give this a very high score. I didn’t make the rules, guys. [8/10]