One of the worst things on the planet is when a series decides to retcon that which came before it… Click to find out more, but beware of spoilers.
Seriously, I bloody well hate it. There’s a cartoon I like by the name of Ben 10. It started back in 2005, and is about a kid called Ben Tennyson who finds this wristband-like device known as the Omnitrix. With it, he gains access to multiple alien forms and uses it to beat up bad guys and do things that any 10 year old kid would do if they had that kind of power – sneaking into previews of their favourite game, hacking said favourite game… Heck, even dashing off to pick up some cheeseburgers from a Drive-Thru some ten miles away in a few minutes. Well, anyway. The show was awesome. It was funny, it had plenty of action and all three main protagonists were awesome. Ben was a mischievous 10 year old, Gwen was a snotty brainy 10 year old and Grandpa Max was a hardcore 60 year old. It was really well done.
The first season was great. It was about Ben learning how to use the Aliens he had access to, finding out who Vilgax is and also introducing a lot of who would become staple enemies in the series to follow. We also learn of magic, and Gwen’s interest in the field grows. The second season kept up the trend – we find out more secrets about important characters, new forms that Ben is able to access and we’re also introduced to Kevin (previously a one-shot antagonist) as the bad-ass super villain we will know him for a long time to come. The end of the second season, for me, is still unmatched in pure brilliance. Season 3 shows up, and with it we’re shown the future. Gwen has mastered magic and Ben has access to 10′000 Alien forms. Gwen also picks up, in this season, a method with which to begin to properly learn the magic she finds out she will have mastered in twenty years. An old enemy resurfaces, and the show once again gives us an amazing finale. The fourth and final season only went and made things even better. An enemy who we were told about in previous seasons comes back with a vengeance and takes centre stage for most of the season. We’re shown the future once again, and the show finishes with one of the greatest endings you could ever imagine for a show of this kind.
So in terms of sheer fun I think the original Ben 10 show was, I’d have given it a 9 at the very least. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write a full review of the series soon. Anyway, now onto the bad news. You see, Ben 10 has a sequel. It’s called Ben 10: Alien Force, and it promised to be bigger and better than the original series. Of course, I was pretty excited by the prospect and have waited eagerly for the show. Impatiently so, as I ended up downloading up to the current episode instead. But from the very first episode, things go south very quickly.
Kevin is no longer a bad-ass super villain. He’s a middleman for Alien tech smugglers. He doesn’t even have ANY of the powers he had in the first series, and he is no longer afflicted with the problem he had in the original series either. In fact, his entire power seems to have changed. Instead of absorbing and channeling energy, he now simply coats himself in whatever material it is he touches. How boring is that? At least before he had strengths and weaknesses. At least before he had a great personality and an almost single-minded desire to kill Ben. But no, by the end of the first episode Kevin is best buddies with Ben and Gwen. Did I mention that Ben can’t access ANY of the Aliens he had access to five years before? He has ten new ones, each of which are nothing more than amalgamations or offshoots of the Aliens he could access five years ago (Chromastone is basically a different looking Diamondhead and Humongousaur is the new Four Arms). Add in the annoying habit of calling out the Alien’s name whenever he transforms into them, as a weird sort of battlecry, and you already have two characters completely ruined. That isn’t it, by the way. Remember Ben 10? Remember that Gwen used a little book to learn magic? Remember Charmcaster and her uncle, Hex? Didn’t they use magic, too? Wait, didn’t the show also show us Gwen 20 years in the future, where she had the Charms of Bezel to bolster her magical powers? Well now we’re told that it wasn’t magic. Heck, no. Ben and Gwen are part alien, apparently. While it doesn’t affect Ben, it apparently gives Gwen her “magic”. Way to screw up the best part about Gwen, guys, seriously.
Now don’t get me wrong, Alien Force is a pretty good show. It has plenty of nostalgia, plenty of good fights and great character growth. Everything is fleshed out to much greater effect than the original series managed, and the enemies have more personality and diversity than before. But those glaring retcons really have ruined it for me – I’m mostly watching the show now to try to enjoy it, and to see how exactly the writers intend to sort this mess out.
*poke*