Sonic Boom, 2.02: Spacemageddonocalypse

Sonic Boom, 2.02: Spacemageddonocalypse

Original Air Date: November 19th, 2016

The scientists paid to keep track of such things tells us that a world-ending asteroid tends to hit Earth about every 500,000 years. That doesn’t seem very frequent and odds of such an event occurring in our lifetimes seem low. An asteroid hasn’t even killed anyone since ancient China! Yet we hear about what NASA calls potentially hazardous objects all the time. It seems at least once a year there’s some alarmist news article about a cataclysmic piece of space debris that has some percentage of a chance of hitting the planet at some point in the future. Despite that, there’s only seventeen known objects on the Sentry Risk Table as of this writing. Which I guess is still more than would be ideal but I think climate change or some jackass starting a nuclear war are much more likely end-of-the-world scenarios. 

Nevertheless, human culture is fascinated by the idea of an Earth-killing meteor smashing into us. It murdered the dinosaurs, so I suppose it seems suitably dramatic for the same thing to kill us. A movie about such an event comes out roughly once a year, usually in the form of direct-to-Syfy-Channel schlock, sometimes as dueling big-budget summer tentpoles, even rarer as overly smug social satires. Since Sonic tangos with world-annihilating threats all the time, it’s not surprising “Sonic Boom” would riff on the idea of a big ol’ space rock fucking everything up. 

Which brings me to “Spacemageddonocalypse,” an episode with a very good title. While in orbit above the world, Eggman discovers a massive rock is on a collision course with the planet. He immediately looks to exploit the situation, selling spaces within his doomsday bunker to anyone in town willing to pay. Sonic and Tails decide to take a more altruistic approach. The fox builds a mirror machine to shoot a heat ray at the rock, in hopes of throwing it off-course. Yet there's too much shit in between here and there, forcing the gang to steal Eggman's rocket and get closer to the asteroid. The fate of the world ends up in the hands of... Knuckles? 

I said in the last review that the budget for season two of "Sonic Boom" didn't seem appreciatively bigger yet. Well, that changes here. "Spacemageddonocalyps" begins in a totally new environment for this show: Outer fuckin' space. In fact, between the Eggman-in-orbit opening and Knuckles' heroic crash into the asteroid, it's clear that the showrunners had a little more money to throw around for this episode. There's also some new musical stings in this episode, like the totally expected "Also Sprach Zarathustra" parody and a pretty neat guitar-driven piece that plays when Knuckles is making his big escape. And is it just me or does everyone look a little shinier in general? I guess there was a budgetary boost despite the move to Boomerang. 

The very familiar musical moment is not the only shout-out to "2001: A Space Odyssey" – a movie kids definitely see parodied more often than they actually watch – here. Joelle Sellner definitely had some fun paying homage to well-known sci-if movies. The first scene has Cubot and Orbot bouncing around space, it what feels like may be a half-formed reference to "Gravity." There's a cute moment of Tails' solar ray bouncing around space, each deflection resulting in a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" style musical note. The finale, of Knuckles crashing the rocket and solving problems the Smashy-Smashy way, features a random Wilhelm Scream. I'm not sure if everyone's favorite echidna surfing on a satellite is a specific reference but it reminds me of shit like the "Spaced Invaders" poster. And, of course, the title points towards the entire episode being an "Armageddon" riff of sorts. 

This isn't just a collection of nods towards on well known sci-if tropes. In fact, there's even a bit of kind of sharp social satire. With his legion of laser-shooting robots, Eggman definitely has the means to destroy the asteroid or at least throw it off-course. He doesn't think of that at all. After securing his own survival, via his underground bunker, he immediately decides to use this opportunity to make some money. Of course, the local people-in-power – mainly the mayor and his team – are the first to sign up for this. It's a demoralizingly accurate bit of writing to deduce that, when faced with the end of the world, the rich and powerful would try to exploit the situation for financial and personal gain. I mean, that's exactly what has happened with climate change. I just didn't expect to see that message reflected in a children's cartoon. 

More important than any of that, "Spacemageddonocalypse" is a pretty funny episode. There's lots of good-natured absurdity packed into these eleven minutes. The best of which is probably Sonic pettily using minor laws to successfully repossess Eggman's rocket, a joke that is then likably drawn out. A brief line of dialogue defining the difference between asteroids and meteors made me chuckle. As did a circular conversation where Tails attempts to shorten the name of his asteroid-destroying device. Honestly, Sticks got me to laugh the most in this installment. Her conspiratorial ranting, about mirrors and aliens and the legitimacy of space landings, all amused me. Little bits of dialogue, concerning a poster of himself Eggman put up or Tails' telescope, represent the writers successfully trying to squeeze as many jokes into this episode as possible. 

In fact, "Spacemageddonocalypse" feels surprisingly packed full of incident and full formed despite its short runtime. Sonic even gets a character arc of sorts, annoyed that Knuckles gets to be the big hero and having his own chance to prove himself. That makes this among the strongest episodes of "Boom" I've yet seen. Am I the only one who wants Neil DeGrasse Tyson to watch this and go into a full-on fit pulling all of its scientific inaccuracies apart? [7/10]