Title: "Rocky's Odyssey"
Alt Title: "Gypsy Moon"
Number Of Episodes: 3
Recapper: Tustin2121
Better known as "Rocky's Odyssey", as the whole plot is a straight retelling of Homer's The Odyssey, with Rocky Jones stepping in for Ulysses. The plot of the epic is referenced so many times, as straight up reading ahead in the script or shadowing what just happened, its obvious the whole story arc is pretty much a "Reading Is Cool" Aesop, with the Odyssey front and center. It doesn't make the episode less interesting, just more predictable. On to the Recap!
Chapter 1
The show starts with the usual crew flying through a strange "atmosphere chain", that is, a strange phenomenon where one atmosphere is stretched and shared between two planetoids. The atmosphere is one of constant grating thunder. Professor Newton is up front trying to study the strange phenomenon, but he can't seem to find the two planetoids. (Interestingly, Rocky seems more knowledgeable of the subject of Gypsy Moons than Professor Newton).
Meanwhile, Bobby is being home—er—space schooled by Vena. Vena assigns a reading and book report of the Odyssey to him, which makes him mad. He tries to plead to Rocky about the assignment, but Rocky only agrees that he should read it. This makes Bobby exceptionally mad, to the point where he uses such phrases as "madder than a hatter", unironically, instead of the usual fare of alliterative space puns.
It's about this point when an airplane (yes, an airplane, flying through groundless atmosphere) starts attacking them, with "the lightning on their side". Rocky decides not to fire back (though Winky immediately sets up for missile firing), but instead decides to fly out of the atmosphere cloud, which causes the plane, attempting to follow, to stall out.
It's at about this point when the Orbit Jet finds one of the two planetoids in the cloud. The crew discusses for a moment whether to land and explore, Rocky pointing out that an expedition may take months. But the rest of the crew points out that this is an opportunity they can't pass up - the plantoids are indeed Gypsy Moons
, they won't be in the same place by the time they report in and come back. So they decide to try and land.
The problem is that the plane that was attacking them came from there, and they are not happy. They immediately catch the Orbit Jet in a magnetic malstrom, pulling the ship with electromagnitisim at such strength that its own rocket boosters are powerless against the pull. The natives land the ship on its side (so even if it wasn't being held by electromagnitisim, they're not in a physical position to blast off).
Rocky decides to allow the natives on board the ship so that they may talk through some translator machines: there's one set up in the navigation chamber, and one in the tail section. After some calibration, the machines, via ticker tape, translates what one person says in their language to the other person in the other room in their respective language.
We learn that the leader, Bovaro (and his wife Voltania), are the rulers of the moon Pozita. They are at war with, and have always been at war with, their twin planet Negato. If you hadn't guessed the metaphor yet, the two planets with electrical storms raging are like the positive and negative poles of magnetism and electricity (complete with costumes that are opposites, swapping the color schemes and switching the side of the logos and such). Turns out the planets were once one called Electro that were broken apart by the warring nations that now inhabit the two separate worlds.
Bovaro wants to to becomes friends with the crew, on the condition that they go destroy Negato. Rocky, of course, refuses. Vena is sent in to become friends with Voltania and attempt to assuage her to influence her husband. But Bavaro uses this as leverage, saying he'll brainwash Vena into hating Rocky. Rocky, in an attempt to save her, tries to blast the door open with missiles, to no avail.
But that plot thread is pretty quickly dropped when another plot point from the Odyssey drops in via Bobby (that kid reads fast): the trojan horse. Bovaro orders the rest of the crew to walk the other side of the planetoid, where the lightning between the planets it abundant, and see if that will change their mind. Winky and Rocky use that opportunity to pull a fast one and pretend to leave the ship, but reenter through the other door. Of course, Bovoro, thinking the ship is now empty, pulls it in with magnetism. He sends two goons into the ship, and Rocky and Winky take them out (in Winky's case via hilarious diving through Script-Reading Doors). They don the goons' outfits and infiltrate the castle, taking out Bovoro and recapturing Vena.
Vena reports that she talked with the wife and Voltania will try her best to influence Bovaro. Meanwhile, the epsiode ends with Winky becoming quite Genre Savvy and asking to read the ending to the Odyssey to see if Ulysses (and by extension Rocky and crew) will ever return home.
Chapter 2
Several weeks must have passed since Rocky landed on the Pozita, because the episode starts with Secretary Drake making a Space Ranger-wide announcement calling off the search for Rocky Jones, who is now officially MIA along with his crew. We see that Drake had an unusually close relationship with Rocky: he is like a father who has lost his son. Unfortunately, this touching scene is also picked up by Cleolata on Ophecious, and she fully intends to take advantage of Rocky Jones's absence.
Meanwhile, on Pozita, Bovaro is keeping the Orbit Jet in non-operational condition with his magnetism, freezing all the mechanisms in place. Bovaro once again pulls in the Orbit Jet (because he likes moving it about, it seems). Rocky, with the help of Vena and Voltania, gains an audience with Bovaro. They return to the ship within the span of a jump cut and start setting up the translation machines again. (Winky takes this time to insult the Pozitians to their face, them taking it as him simply talking to them since they can't speak his language.)
Rocky once again attempts to get him to let them go, and Bovaro still wants Rocky to simply destroy Negato. But Rocky refuses and instead offers and promises to be a third party to negotiations, which Bavaro reluctantly agrees to with the pressure of his wife.
But before he agrees, a Negato airplane comes through, playing high pitched screeching "music". Rocky, curious of what it is, asks Bovaro to come to the front view screen in the command chamber to identify the screeching music. Bovaro takes this opportunity to try, and succeed, at bringing down the airplane with one of the Orbit Jet's missiles, before Rocky and Winky take him out.
When asked, Bovaro describes the screeching as "Negato Music". The Negato Music turns mens' minds to mush by "destroying their intelligence and ambitions". Of course, this is matched up in the Odyssey with the siren songs, and Bobby, having conveniently just read that part, tells them they can overcome the music with ear plugs.
It's at this point that Bovaro agrees to allow Rocky Jones to try and reason with the Negato, and lifts his ship to a launch position. They take off and head to Negato, where the music is emanating. When they land, Winky must immediately shut off the Vizeo Graph to keep the song from penetrating the control chambers and driving them mad. Rocky outfits everyone with air helmets, which they pull the audio cables out of so that they cannot hear. Rocky does not pull out his own cables, acting as Ulysses once again. Winky keeps asking to tie Rocky up, as in the Odyssey, to keep him from going mad, but Rocky refuses.
Cue Rocky running around like a madman as the rest of the crew chase him down to try and restrain him. Eventually Winky makes the tackle while Bobby pulls the wiring, bringing Rocky abruptly back to his senses. They go and capture the Blue Oni leader of Negato and bring him into the ship where the siren song cannot reach. Once freed from the song, the leader snaps to his senses and realizes what he's done and how terrible the Negato Music is to the minds of men. He immediately agrees to speak with Bovaro about diplomacy, under the same rules the United Worlds of the Solar System uses for diplomacy (which are spelled out to him off camera as they travel back to Pozita.).
The two leaders come together and being discussing peace immedeately, and that is Rocky's cue to leave, ordering the crew to buckle up for destination Earth, something Vena's been longing to hear. But not all is well in the plot of the Odyssey, as Bobby relays: when Ulysses got back, his kingdom had been overthrown by enemies. Cut to Cleolata testing out her new Rocky Voice Splicer machine, which she made from voice samples of Rocky recorded when he was on Ophecious and someone's voice being mechanically altered to sound like him.
Chapter 3
As Rocky Jones lifts off for Earth, Cleolata is on her way into Space Ranger broadcast range. She broadcasts, with the magical Rocky Voice Generator, her/his intent to talk with Secretary Drake to a space station in the region. She/he sets up a voice contact meeting with the secretary shortly after.
Rocky's ship comes into range of hearing the broadcast over a few bands of the radio, but is not in range enough to broadcast back. Thus, he and his crew hear himself talking to Secretary Drake, who is elated to hear Rocky's voice. Rocky's voice tells Drake to come to Ankapor, a moon who is still neutral between the Ophecians and the UWSS but are having an election that may decide their stance one way or the other. The real Rocky puts together pretty quickly that it is a trap and Cleolata is behind it, and how she did so.
They set course to Ankapor, but unfortunately have a delay with an exceptionally hot meteor sticking to their fin. Winky attempts to "shake it off" by doing a few barrel rolls, but to no avail. So Rocky dons a space suit and attempts to cool down the rock with a water stream (which realistically curves with gravity and produces steam). When that doesn't help much, he shoots it, and it comes off, leaving a pretty big hole in the fin. This, of course, sets them back several days in travel time as they must fix the ship before they can continue (despite, you know, space and stuff).
Rocky once again returns to Bobby and the Odyssey, and in this part of the story, Ulysses goes undercover as a beggar to see what he can find. So they all come up with beggar disguises. They soon reach Ankapor, which just so happens to be a "bazaar planet".
Meanwhile, the other Rocky Jones has already arrived at Ankapor, and since Rocky hasn't really visited Ankapor recently, everyone thinks that Cleolata's right hand man is Rocky and that Cleolata's impressive cosplay of Vena is indeed Vena herself. Drake lands shortly after and, while he's not fooled, he soon gets a taste of fist and then brain scrambler to become fooled (though Drake puts up a really good fight in the mind control arena, even if he's totally lacking in physical prowess). He also comes with a Space Ranger who has never met Rocky except over radio band, and he is fooled by the farce.
Rocky soon makes it into the bazaar. Bobby and Newton go undercover as beggars for alms, listening in on conversation betwen the leader of Ankapor and the Space Ranger who came with Drake. Vena soon steps in as a gypsy "dancer girl", and leads the Ranger down a alleyway and is overpowered by Rocky and Winky. They soon convince him and he shows them the place where they are keeping Drake.
Rocky does some parkour up to the window and sneaks inside. He takes out the guy running the Rocky Voice Machine just as Drake and "Rocky" were to make an announcement to all the worlds of the UWSS. The announcement was to be that Drake and Rocky were handing over the worlds to the Ophecians, but Rocky puts the stop to that by telling everyone that this is a farce before attacking all the remaining men in the room and... simply letting Cleolata off with a stern warning.
Soon, Drake is reunited with Rocky and all is well again. The arc ends with Bobby informing Winky that their adventure wasn't exactly like the Odyssey: the crew didn't die on their way back home. Winky is shocked by this, delivering a non-spacy "Goodness Gracious" before an "Everybody Laughs" Ending.
