Voltron: Legendary Defender (Re)Watch 8.7, "Day Forty-Seven"

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A day in the life of the Coalition forces is presented as Legendary Defender presses onward.

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8.7, "Day Forty-Seven"

Written by Joshua Hamilton
Directed by Michael Chang

Synopsis

Kincaid sets up a video recorded to document a day in his and his shipmates' lives aboard the Atlas. He moves through his morning ablutions and lays out the premise of his own work. Others aboard the ship insert themselves into his work as he continues to go about his day, most notably Nadia Rizavi, who takes it on herself to enliven Kincaid's work.

As in the frame presented here.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

Interviews with various members of the crew ensue. Information provided is generally good, although the crew are not performers, and it shows. Their essential characters show through until a battle alert sounds. The camera tracks some of the action as it is carried through the ship by a dog.

One of the better camera-workers in the series, as it happens.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

The dog finds its way to the bridge of the Atlas while the battle--against a space-borne organism of great size--continues. The dog flees, and the camera is taken by the mice that have long been part of the franchise before being recovered by the dog.

The camera goes dead and is recovered by Kincaid. Recording resumes. Relationships among the crew are noted, and Nadia reintroduces herself to the work. Interviews continue, and the interviewees continue to demonstrate that they are not performers--with the exception of Coran, whose grandiose personality shines through, and Colleen Holt receives particular attention.

Quite the difference, this.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

Attention turns to a mission the Paladins will be conducting. They investigate a crashed Robeast, with a live feed being sent up to the Atlas as they do. The Paladins come under assault at they investigate, and the crew of the Atlas looks on with worry as the melee continues. Pidge's video feed reveals the Robeast's pilot, which the Paladins retrieve. As Kincaid and Rzavi move to follow up on the issue, they note the impasse in questioning Robeast pilots; they snoop on the questioning, finding that it does not go well. And Kincaid resists focusing overly much on Allura's emotional hurt.

Next on the list...
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

A later interview with Romelle reveals more about the Robeasts' pilots and their motivations. Another focuses on Allura and her reaction to the Robeasts' pilots, as well as her frustrations at events. And Hunk, whose culinary efforts have pervaded the episode, manages to create a breakthrough with the Robeasts' pilots that the others then turn to their own advantage before Kincaid closes out the recording and the day.

Discussion

Several plot threads move through the episode, an interweaving of narrative that is common in the series and has received comment before as evoking medieval antecedents. Of particular note for the Society is the thread surrounding Hunk's culinary efforts. His penchant for kitchen-craft is noted throughout the series, featuring well in several episodes (perhaps most emphatically "Space Mall"), and, in the present episode, it effects the resolution of what had seemed an impasse between the Coalition's Alteans and the Alteans suborned by Honerva. As such, and given the medieval chivalric contextual background of the series as a whole, it serves as something of an oblique reference to the tendency in Arthurian literature to associate points of narrative importance to mealtimes. Such a connection is admittedly subtle, but a thing can be effective even if not blatant, and the small nod that may be occasioned thereby helps to reaffirm yet one more time the medievalist underpinnings of Voltron: Legendary Defender.