Review – Dragons: Defenders of Berk “Tunnel Vision”

Looks like things are about to come to fruition in this episode of Dragons. What goes down? Read on to find out!

SPOILERS!

Looks like poor Gobber needs to take a bath. It takes Hiccup and Astrid (with their dragons, of course) to corner him, with Stoic trying to talk sense into him. Hiccup manages to trick Gobber into the tub, but Fishlegs doesn’t have the water. Seems as though the well they dug is dry. At flying camp, jobs are divided up to get water to the camp, while Hiccup and Fishlegs go to investigate the missing water. Meatlug is lowering Hiccup down, where he notices the water line was relatively high, and still wet. So, he gets lowered down further, until Meetlug gets distracted by what can only be described as an appetizing pile of rocks. (Try making a meal out of that, Chef Rich!)

Hiccup and Toothless make it to the caverns under the village, only to see it dug out by something. Hiccup makes it down a tunnel to find that they aren’t alone. Hiccup realizes that there are dragon eggs in these catacombs, and they’re Whispering Death ones, at that. They come across the huge hole from the that the big Whispering Death made. As they’re walking around, they stumble across the cackle of dragons.

In a scene reminiscent of Jurassic Park, a kid looks into a bucket of water to see the reverberations of the incoming dragon attack. The Whispering Deaths are wreaking havoc on the village. After some chaos and inability to stop them, the kids manage to gain the upper hand, and drive them away from the village. Unfortunately, they only drive away the small ones. The big daddy erupts from the side of the mountain.

This dragon has never been before, and is apparently a rare Screaming Death, and it gathered the other Whispering Deaths back. Just as it seems that Hiccup is about to get eaten, Stoic comes with his dragon, Thornado. Stoic and Hiccup manage to lead the Screaming Death away from the town with the shield’s reflection. The gang all meet up to help Hiccup, so he can get away with the big dragon. Hiccup manages to trick the Screaming Death into giving itself some form of concussion. It gets the Whispering Deaths to help it fly off, since it can’t do so by itself. With the day saved, and Berk getting put back together, there is only one thing left for resolution. The episode ends with Gobber getting a mean scrub down by Ruff and Tuff.

This episode has it all, tonight. We finally got to see what cut out those huge holes under Berk, I finally got to see what a Whispering Death looks like, and it had a fantastic mix of comedy and action.  The bits with Snotlout and Astrid going back and forth about selling water was funny, same with Meatlug’s fart and bludgeon. The animation studio keeps surprising me as well. These fight scenes I’ve been watching in this show are FANTASTIC. If they haven’t done the movie, they should.  The animation is definitely top notch. I know I’ve said this before, but keeping the cast of the movie in the show helps, also. One thing you need to remember while watching this episode, though. The Screaming Death is one badass dragon. This episode brings this mini-arc to an end, and quite fantastically.