Monday, January 15, 2018

Episode 46 : Haunted Planet

Skeleton General Skull Kaiser
(The Dark)

Skull Kaiser, formerly one of Samhain's greatest generals, stages a rebellion against impossible odds. The fate of countless worlds rests upon his ability to protect the Loss Queen and beat back her assailants. Along the way he is forced to fight old friends and make new allies...

Episode 46 : Haunted Planet

Skull Kaiser is fighting the shapes and shadows that threatened him in the previous episode—or rather, he's trying to. He is becoming exhausted and he finally guesses that the things attacking him aren't real. He shrugs off a few last "attacks" from the shadowy opponents and shouts to the unseen woman, telling her that he's had enough of her phantoms. The woman laughs in response and assures him that they aren't her phantoms but his, and continues mockingly, telling him she isn't surprised he's able to defend himself so well against his own memories since he's done such a fine job of burying them. That coupled with the fact that he's such a formidable fighter, has made her job rather easy since as long as he can defend himself he cannot/will not face his greatest fear. And as long as that's the case she'll be bored, but he'll remain prisoner here on this haunted planet. Skull Kaiser concludes that his freedom is contingent on regaining his memory and the voice rewards him with a halfhearted, "perhaps". Almost forgetting the voice now and wondering how to accomplish this goal, Skull Kaiser looks around him trying to find something to inspire the beginning of his search and as his eyes fall upon one particular wrecked building, the voice whispers before fading out, that maybe he should start there. He stares at the building for a moment longer realizing that it must be the same one he came out of when he had the hallucination in episode 42 and then sets off towards it.

As he walks down the broken street, whispers and muffled voices can be heard and the light shifts erratically between night day. It's as if the street is crowded with unseen ghosts and Skull Kaiser does his best to keep his nerve up and not be distracted by the strange noise. As he reaches the front doors to the building he's going to, he's overwhelmed by the sound of a voice specifically addressing him, wishing him good morning.

There is a weird stretching/echo effect on the voice and the time flashes to and remains daylight. He looks through the glass door and sees a man dressed in a suit smiling at him and for a brief moment. Skull Kaiser can see things as they must have been before the catastrophe struck. In the daylight everything is whole and the street is crowded with people and automobiles. The vision fades but seems to hit Skull Kaiser in the head like an actual brick. After gathering himself and a moment of surveying the again-broken cityscape, he enters the building.

As he proceeds down the halls, he continues to hear snatches of distorted voices and the scene flickers between the dark, wrecked version of the building to a well-lit, occupied version of it, but the flashes are few and never last long enough to distinguish anything. He turns constantly to the sound of voices that seem to hail him and he has to steady himself more than once. As he goes, Skull Kaiser begins to think some of this might be familiar.

He arrives at one particular office and he stops. He turns in a circle looking around and a distorted female voice asks him if he remembers. It repeats three or four times over the course of which the voice changes to another woman's. Skull Kaiser turns to see a woman standing behind him, he gasps and recognizes her as Champagne! But it's not Champagne. It looks exactly like her, but she's wearing the clothes normal to this place and Skull Kaiser begins to stammer for a moment, acknowledging that it's not Champagne, but... Jennifer. Then she disappears leaving Skull Kaiser confused and shaken. Who is that woman if she's not Champagne? There is something so normal and right and familiar about her that he begins to wonder if Champagne isn't some exotic dream based upon this very real woman. He begins to question reality. He's had his notions of reality challenged lately in his dream of defeating the Halloween Empire, could the 8 Hells also be a dream? Is this just another dream? Is he approaching consciousness, is this just the only acceptable route his brain can concoct? Or is it just the opposite? Is he slowly approaching oblivion, by degrees of isolation? This lengthy self-doubt soliloquy is accompanied by a nice montage recapping most of the events of the last two series visually until Skull Kaiser works himself up into an anguished frenzy, where he shouts at the top of his lungs, "Who am I?!" as the episode closes.

To Be Continued...

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