Episode Reviews: Dragonshy

At long last, our first adventure episode since the Pilot. There's a dragon that needs to be dealt with, and Princess Celestia has entrusted our mares with the great responsibility of telling him to leave. But can Fluttershy stop being...shy? Let's find out with "Dragonshy."

TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 1

Episode: 7

Written By: Meghan McCarthy

First Aired: November 26, 2010

SUMMARY:

While trying to feed Angel a carrot (and getting beamed by the vegetable for her trouble), Fluttershy discovers that a big cloud of thick black smoke is covering the sky. The rest of Ponyville seems to pay it no heed to her warnings, seeing as how Rainbow Dash is wowing everypony with her attempt to break the ball-bouncing record. It isn’t until Twilight arrives that everypony finally realizes how much trouble they’re in. The good news is, it’s not a fire. The bad news? It’s a dragon.

The Mane 6 gather in the library for a quick meeting. The smoke is being caused by a sleeping dragon’s snoring, as he’s taken up residence in a nearby mountain cave and is taking a hundred-year nap. If he’s not woken up and told to relocate, the smoke will spread across all of Equestria until the entire land is blocked off from the sun. Naturally, Dash just wants to fly up and smash the dragon to pieces, but Twilight is insistent that all six go up as a team and try to persuade him to leave. Everypony quickly gallops away to prepare, and are all ready to go…except for Fluttershy, who tries to back out of the expedition. Twilight, however, needs her knowledge of creatures to help negotiate with the dragon, and has Spike stay behind to take care of her woodland critters.

The six set off for their destiny, but are held up every step of the way by Fluttershy. She refuses to climb up the mountain since it’s so high, is afraid to jump over a three-inch gap, and causes an avalanche after screaming over a leaf touching her. Rainbow Dash takes every chance to berate her for even being here, while by the end even the others are utterly fed up with her. And when they reach the cave, Fluttershy refuses to go in because…she’s afraid of dragons. Choosing to damn Equestria to a slow, lingering death, she just stays put while the others all make their stabs at convincing the dragon to leave.

Twilight tries to talk it over, but the dragon just ignores her. Rarity tries to sweet talk him, but in the process of fulfilling her real objective (getting ahold of the dragon’s hoard), she angers him even more and has to flee to the outside. Pinkie tries to make him laugh, but that plan is so stupid that we don’t even get to see it on screen. Applejack has built the Appletron 56093 Death Machine, but there wasn’t enough in the animation budget to show it, so she’s not allowed to do anything. Finally, Dash has had enough, and just charges into the cave and kicks the dragon square in the nose. The good news is, this wakes him up.

The bad news is, it makes him ANGRY.

The dragon roars so powerfully that he knocks Dash out of the cave into the rest of the Mane 6 (save Fluttershy). A second blast sends them slamming into a rock, which then crumbles to reveal the shy pony’s hiding spot. When she sees her helpless friends at the mercy of the monstrous dragon, however, she is finally able to overcome her shyness and flies up onto his nose, looks him straight in the eye, and loudly chastises him for daring to hurt her friends and being a bully. The dragon says that Dash started it (which she’s proud of), but Fluttershy responds that he’s a big dragon and should have known better than to take his naps where others could be harmed by his snoring. Her words strike him so deeply that he starts crying until Fluttershy calms him down, telling him that he’s not a bad dragon, just one that made a bad decision.

The dragon packs up his treasure and leaves, allowing the Pegasi to clear the skies. The ponies gather around to congratulate Fluttershy before returning home, where Angel seems to have it in for Spike. Twilight narrates to Celestia that their mission was a complete success, and that she’s learned that you should never lose faith in her friends. Meanwhile, Dash has been left psychologically scarred by the encounter, which Pinkie uses to cost her the ball-bouncing record again.

REVIEW:

“Dragonshy” is an odd beast. Initially, Faust had envisioned that a good chunk of the series would be based around “adventure” episodes, where the ponies go off to do battle with dark forces, explore lands outside of Ponyville, and just have various more action-based adventures. Unfortunately, Hasbro was much more interested in the slice-of-life episodes, so the adventure idea never took off. In fact, of the first season, only the Pilot, “Dragonshy,” the second half of “Feeling Pinkie Keen” and “Over a Barrel” could really count as adventure episodes. The second season had only “Return of Harmony,” “Last Roundup,” and “A Canterlot Wedding,” and even then the first and last ones don’t feature any settings outside of the norm; they just focus more on the ponies overcoming a straight-on, super-powerful villain. Hopefully Season Three will have more.

This is the first Fluttershy episode, and the first one where Angel is really a jerk. Granted, throwing a carrot isn’t anywhere near as bad as smacking someone before shoving a book in their face, but still, jerks will be jerks. The bits where Fluttershy tries to convince the town that something’s going on are actually pretty well-handled, although I don’t get why nopony else was able to notice the smoke until Twilight pointed it out. Also, Rainbow Dash is adorable when she’s bouncing that ball, and I loved Pinkie accidentally ruining her efforts by trying to set up a party. Oh, and we see Lyra sitting like a human, starting one of the very first bits of fanon in the fandom’s history.

The library scene is mostly just okay, but it helps set up something I find rather interesting. There’s a national crisis brewing in Ponyville, and does Celestia send her best knights out to bring an end to the disaster? No. Instead, she requests that her personal student and her friends go up there and see what they can do. On the one hand, this can seem rather stupid, since the party consists of a student, a farmer, a fashion designer, a weather pony, a park ranger, and Pinkie Pie. On the other hand, this also shows a great deal of trust in their capabilities to handle the situation. After all, they’re the ones who defeated Nightmare Moon and saved her sister. If you can take out a mad god, then surely a giant, fire-breathing, can-eat-a-pony-in-one-bite dragon is right up your alley.

The “gearing up” montage is by far my favorite moment of the episode. Everything here just fits the characters perfectly, from Rainbow Dash applying rainbows as face paint to Rarity swapping out her helmet for a camo hat. But my favorite getup is Fluttershy’s; it’s the combination of a football helmet and inner tube that just makes me crack up. Throw in some really good animation effects, and you have a really good montage moment. Unfortunately, none of this has any meaning on the episode, as in the next scene all their extra outfits and gear are gone save for their saddlebags.

When they actually start climbing the mountain, though, my patience starts to wear thin on a couple of things. The biggest problem with this episode, as with many of the early Season One eps, is that it doesn’t exactly hold up that well to modern viewings. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad episode, but there are some definitely questionable things it does. The biggest issue here is with the characters; namely, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Rarity. Fluttershy is, to put it frankly, absolutely useless here. While that may have been the point, it’s dragged out for far too long, until you just want to reach out through the screen and strangle the poor girl. Heck, she almost gets the entire group killed in an avalanche. And the biggest problem is, they drag her all the way to the top…and she won’t do anything. She’s so absolutely terrified that she’d rather doom Equestria than stand up for herself. It isn’t until her friends are in mortal danger that she finally does something, but needless to say, this pretty much started moving Fluttershy down towards the “Worst Pony” position.

Rainbow Dash is an exceptionally big jerk here, constantly reminding Twilight of how much of a useless load Fluttershy is. And while there’s some truth there, Dash is surprisingly aggressive with the “Fluttershy sucks” stuff. On its own, it’s passable, but when you factor in that the two have known each other since they were kids, and that Dash never showed this kind of opinion of Fluttershy before, it makes her just feel kind of out of place here. And then, of course, she almost causes a wipe by attacking the raid boss head-on, thereby getting the group knocked together so they could be hit by the dragon’s AoE. I would call this development, but with the “Cutie Mark Chronicles” and “Hurricane Fluttershy” flashbacks added into the equation, it feels like we’re missing an episode here.

And then there’s Rarity. Oh, early show Rarity, how I haven’t missed you. Yeah, anything with Rarity in a major role before “Suited for Success” isn’t really my cup of tea. The biggest problem with her is that her major vice (Greed) stands in direct contrast with her Element (Generosity), so whenever the former overshadows the latter, you’re going to have problems. Here, she gets some great lines in the beginning, and I liked how she packed extra scarves just in case, but her ultimate goal is to get some of the gemstones from the dragon’s hoard. When she gets her chance to shine, she actually almost succeeds, but alas, her greed speeds along Equestria’s doom. In fact, rather than be upset that she failed to stop the dragon, she’s throwing a fit because she couldn’t get hold of a diamond. Way to not endear yourself to me.

The hike up the mountain has some good bits here and there. I loved the fainting goat thing, although the “Fluttershy is afraid of her own shadow” thing takes her fears way too far. Pinkie’s song, “Hop, Skip and Jump,” was funny enough on its own, especially with Twilight reaction, but when we discover just how short the jump was, I had to laugh. The avalanche has some very good animation for such an early episode, especially given the budget they had to work with.

I’ve already pretty much covered the stuff with the dragon, so here’s my opinion of the resolution. Fluttershy stands up to the dragon, uses what looks like The Stare (even if it doesn’t have a name yet), and manages to beat it down with just her words. On the one hand, this is awesome. This is the first time we’ve seen what Fluttershy is really capable of when she isn’t letting her fear get the better of her, and it’s downright scary. Scenes like this are probably what helped solidify her as the most popular Mane 6 character of Season One. However, this also poses a bit of a problem. You see, Fluttershy’s main characteristics are being kind and shy, with the latter being something she has to overcome to save the day. This episode pretty much ends Fluttershy’s development, since the only thing writers will do with her from now on is repeat the plot of “Dragonshy,” but with terms switched in and out. “Stare Master” has her repeat the final confrontation with the dragon, only with a cockatrice. “Green Isn’t Your Color” is about her getting over her fear of letting her friends down with the truth. “Putting Your Hoof Down” is about her becoming more assertive, and “Hurricane Fluttershy” is her getting over performance anxiety. In fact, the only ones don't repeat the plot is “A Bird in the Hoof,” a fairly middling late Season One offering, and "Keep Calm and Flutter On," which has a whole host of problems of its own.

The moral is a pretty standard one, but it’s definitely a “golden oldie,” and it works perfectly with the episode. Unfortunately, the episode ends on a rather low note with Pinkie deliberately sabotaging Dash’s attempts at breaking the ball-bouncing record. Still, Dash is so cute when she turns into a goat.

CONCLUSION:

Back in my “Analysis of Season One” blog post on Fimfiction, I placed Dragonshy as one of the “not-so-good” episodes of the first season. Again, though, that doesn’t mean it’s a terrible episode; it’s just not very good when connected to the rest of the show. The characters here are really different, even compared to other episodes from the same period, and it’s obvious that a lot of things weren’t fully developed just yet. Still, it’s one of the few straight adventure episodes we have, and I respect it for that. All in all, it’s a great episode to introduce the show with, but it doesn’t hold up as well as I would have hoped.