Review: Dragons Defenders of Berk “View to a Skrill” Parts One and Two

Spoilers!

Hiccup, Snotlout and Astrid are heading north to find Bucket and Mulch. They see that the two are being attacked by berserkers. They hone in on the berserker ship. Bucket and Mulch tried to help them, but they attacked. Bucket and Mulch saw what they were trying to dig up, which looks to be a frozen dragon. Hiccup then has the bright idea to bring the dragon to Berk. Meatlug melts a chunk out of the block, with Hiccup and Fishlegs getting overly excited at the prospect of something. They run off, telling everyone else to not touch the dragon. In the mess hall, Stoick and Gobber are discussing the attack with Bucket and Mulch, when Hiccup and Fishlegs come in and tell them that the dragon they found was a Skrill, which is the symbol of Dagur and the Berserkers. They leave, and Gobber tells them a legend of the Skrill, which makes it more William Wallace than dragon, with lightning coming out of his mouth and thunder farts abound.

As they’re walking towards the Academy, they see a huge explosion, which means that Ruff, Tuff, and Snotlout didn’t exactly pay attention to Hiccup. After a couple seconds, the Skrill manages to get away. Hiccup takes the team to find the Skrill, then tame it. They need to keep him away from Dagur. Their search brings them to Silent Sven, who fought the Skrill off with his head. They see the lightning storm, and head towards that. There, Hiccup gets a first hand account to how well the Skrill uses lightning. They regroup, and try to force the Skrill into the water. Just as they are about to get it in the water, they are attacked by Dagur and berserkers.

Hiccup and the gang regroup on a near island. Snotlout is gone, because he got jacked by a lightning bolt. Snotlout, Fishlegs and Astrid go to fight the berserkers, with the twins and Hiccup going after the Skrill. Barf is going to let out all of his gas in the cloud, and igniting it when they get to the other side. It worked, just not well enough, because the Skrill went back up in the air. Now, the Skrill is hyper charged with lightning, and chasing after Hiccup. The twins get back in the fight, with the Skrill going after them. It shoots a lightning blast, and Hiccup saves them both by shooting a blast of their own. That causes an explosion, with the twins, the Skrill, and  Hiccup going in different directions. The twins end up near where the Skrill splashed down, unfortunately, Alvin was there to snatch up the Skrill.

Hiccup and Toothless are flying around, looking for the twins. After a brief stop back at Berk, Hiccup goes back out. He rethinks his search options, and goes searching for the lightning, thinking the twins went after the Skrill. Hiccup has to wait out the storm, so he heads to Outcast Island. He’s overlooking what looks to be a replica of the training arena at Berk, when Ruff and Tuff appear. They exchange information, when Dagur appears. Him and Alvin made a deal where Dagur gets the Skrill. And of course, Alvin is going to double cross Dagur.

Hiccups nominates Tuff to infiltrate the Outcasts to learn more about what is being planned.  Tuff’s ways may be the crudest of the crude, but it gets done. He gets to where Alvin and Dagur are having their meeting. There is a lot of dissension between the two. They can’t agree to who’s plan is going to implemented. Tuff almost gets caught by Dagur by how he eats his food. After faking a poem, and pushing away a speech impaired Mildew, and a nice song and dance number. Tuff makes it back to Hiccup, tells him the plan, then gets dispatched to distract the guards so Hiccup can free the Skrill. Hiccup makes it to the arena, but the guards are already knocked out, and the Skrill is gone. It wasn’t Tuff, because he was busy telling jokes to some guards.

Alvin blocks Dagur from leaving. Unsurprisingly, it’s because he stole the Skrill. After a brief fight with Dagur, Alvin flees into the water when Dagur starts to control the Skrill. He electrifies the water, presumably defeating Alvin.  Dagur assumes command of both fleets, when Hiccup appears goading Dagur into a one-on-one fight. Hiccup lures him into a puddle, since he wasn’t mounted on the Skrill. Hiccup gets the Skrill to electrocute Dagur, then high-tails it out of there, with the Skrill in tow. Hiccup gets it in an iceberg, and knocks it out. Ruff and Tuff offer to seal it in ice, hopefully to not be seen again.

So, that was a lot of stuff that happened, but it doesn’t feel like a lot of stuff happened at the same time. Right out of the gate, if you were to cut out most of the fluff, you’d have a very action packed episode. Unfortunately, because these are the last new episodes for the year, I feel that they just wanted to drag this out. For instance, most of the time at Berk in the beginning didn’t lead to anything important that had to happen there. The anecdote of the Skrill could have been done by Fishlegs, like it is every episode. If you wanted to change it up, do a quick flashback. I get that this was supposed to be a big event, but I felt a flat line for most of this. I needed more action, I guess.

During the second episode, when you see that Alvin and Dagur teamed up, that’s where things started to get interesting. The only thing in common between the two is their hatred for Berk. But, Alvin wants to subjugate the dragons, where Dagur wants to kill them all, except for the Skrill on his buckle, shields, and sail. It was an odd pairing, but you knew it wasn’t going to last very long. Which leads me to Alvin’s presumable defeat. If you expect me to believe that he died from Dagur’s dragon, you’re nuts. He has been at worse odds, and still came out of it. The animation, as usual, was top notch. The lightning effects, from the shooting to when the Skrill took the lightning in, were very well done. Nothing slipped here. The shortcomings on this episode definitely came from the writing. This episode was decent, but left me with a lot of “WTF?!” moments, but definitely not one of the show’s stronger efforts.