And so we speed through the first half of the second disc, putting episodes 10 - 13 under the cosmic microscope....
EPISODE 10
A nice sedate, somewhat yearning opening to this episode, Telemachus watching the video memory of his mother. Again, an earth-like planet is detected in the Odyssey's path. It transpires this is a living museum and our heroes are pulled in and shrunk to suit by a magical prism. Landing the Odyssey in the sea, preferring the open water, Ulysses sets out to find the source of the mysterious transmission and is trapped in a giant clam....
The children set out in pursuit, traversing a graveyard of spaceships, in the hope of finding Ulysses. Both are separately swept up by the slaves of The Great Antipotese and end up within the museum itself, Ulysses's ship encrusted and mistaken for a pearl. Can our tiny heroes evade Antipotese (and his wild cat) long enough to use the prism to restore themselves and their ship...?
EPISODE 11
"...even in death you will find no peace."
The Odyssey is passed by a remote control capsule which turns out to be an empty Trident Transporter. Ulysses follows it, hoping it will lead them to the base of the gods and provide clues as to the route back to Earth. Suddenly the Odyssey encounters and unknown energy zone and is sucked into a vortex, crossing into a new dimension, arriving at The Stairway of Olympus....
After continuing in the shuttle for some time, and having defeated the gods' 'Immortal Army' Ulysses, separated from the children is given a choice - will he choose the armchair on the left or right, will he choose the route back to Earth over the children? The choice is an easy one, of course, the episode then ending somewhat abruptly (but not without Shirka mournfully echoing that they are "lost in the universe of Olympus. Lost. Lost....")
EPISODE 12
"The crew. Save the crew."
The Odyssey is drifting in deep space when it comes across a luminous object that is in fact "remnants of an old spaceship" from 2001 Earth. Hoping to find the route back to Earth on the ship's computer our heroes stumble across a crew member in suspended animation. Before falling back into a deep sleep the captain warns Ulysses that the crew can be found on the twin planets of fire and ice....
Ulysses speeds to their rescue leaving the children to puzzle over the true identity of the surviving "captain".... The Sign of the Trident reveals that he is, naturally, a tool of the gods and that Ulysses, his shuttle now trapped in a brilliant vortex between fire and ice - "...either way your fate is sealed..." - is in extreme danger. The children speed to his rescue while Nono tackles the creepy, Terminator-esque "captain"....
EPISODE 13
The children are playing hide and seek when Yumi suddenly declares that Zotra, "The White Planet" is coming. It is, in fact, a "meteoric object" that is approaching and Ulysses manages to just avoid it by carefully piloting the Odyssey. Yumi is convinced it is a part of Zotra and persuades Ulysses to follow it to be sure. The meteor leads them to a swamp planet and Ulysses and Umi travel down to the surface to investigate. Unfortunately they come under some sort of attack and static interference means the signal back to the Odyssey (and the anxious Telemachus and Nono) is jammed and eventually lost....
Ulysses and Yumi suddenly return to the Odyssey and order Telemachus to turn the transmitter off and to leave the planet's orbit at full speed. Telemachus has his suspicions and, while his real father battles multiple copies of himself on the planet surface, he must evade this dangerous duplicate, switch on the radio and send a shuttle in time to save them....
Hmm, unlucky 13 for this episode as there seems to be a real dip in quality in terms of both the rendering of the characters and the animation, making for a pretty ropey experience throughout....
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