As time ticks on, the choking, dence problems that have slowed everything to a crawl gets even worse, with the result being that everything has slowed to a complete stop. Faith has gone, hope seems lost and any chance of a happy ending seems all but impossible at this point…
Oh wait, did you think I was talking about the red dust? No, I’m afraid not my friends, you see once again I’m acting like the broken record player I obviously am and continuing my lament about the overdose of exposition that’s slowly but surely making Singluar Point something of a chore to sit through.
I’ve pretty much been pissing and moaning about it for eleven straight reviews now (soon to be twelve – hopefully not thirteen), but this latest episode takes the cake as, not only is Godzilla actually forced offscreen completely thanks to the gargantuan load of explanation, but we only have one, twenty-five minute episode left after this to wrap everything up.
I smell a cliffhanger on the wind…
As Mei, Kena and Pelops II explore the depths of Shiva containment facility, BB reveals that when they tried to test their singular point powered super-computer twenty five years earlier, it caused an explosion that caused Ashihara’s disappearance. It’s believed that the blast was caused by the computer accessing a connection through time directly to the Catastrophe that’s going to seemingly happen any day now due to the fact that Godzilla has retreated within his huge plume of red dust like a lazy workman hiding in a port-a-potty and is somehow growing even bigger.
The Otaki team are still waiting for Jet Jaguar to recover from its massive upgrade, but the going is slow as the large, grinning robot still has the reasoning (and voice) of Lamb Chop from that old kids program. However, their journey toward Godzilla is temporary hampered by the strange sight of many, glittering moths, that flit around them as if to signify some sort of portent. Not only does Yun manage to obtain and Orthogonal Diagonalyzer, but he figures out the coordinates he’s been given will eventually match Godzilla’s location once he grows to a certain size.
However, back in India, Mei’s group reaches the super computer, only to find that its emitting a space time distortion that alerts them to the fact that the Catastrophe is only three hours away – and on top of that, Salunga has finally broken free of his crystallised prison and is circling back to the Shiva facility with intent in those buggy eyes of his. Is the fact that the super computer is now playing that old folk song that started everything in the first place a death knell for mankind – or will the curious effects the time distortion had on Pelops II bear yet more confusing fruit?
At this point, I’m not entirely sure what it is I want from Singular Point. Do I want a Woody finale that somehow manages to drag every bit of random, science tit bit the show’s thrown at us from the start and heroically makes it all retroactively crystal clear at the expense of cool monsters – or do I want the writers to ditch everything they’ve painstakingly worked up to and just give us a good, old fashioned monster mash? I’ll tell what I do know, whatever I eventually get, it probably won’t be a balanced version that benefits either scenario.
As you may have guessed from the sheer sardonic velocity of the review thus far, the problems that have blighted Singular Point for me since day one have reached critical mass and has now gotten to the point where it’s actually forced out all of the stuff I was loving about the show. The fast paced action scenes that saw a tricked out Jet Jaguar get in a succession of awesome fights with Rodans, Anguirus and Kumongas feel like they occured years ago and the show barely even has room to show Salunga’s latest escape, encapsulating it with a single shot. However, as bad as incredibly frustrating as all that is, the fact that the episode doesn’t contain a single, clear, recognizable shot of Godzilla when the main, driving plot thread is that he’s going to destroy the world is nothing short of laughable.
In my defence, I’m not demanding that Singular Point dumbs down its science, merely that it structured it in such a way that it didn’t interfere so much with the monster fighting, which is – and I suspect I can speak for all of us here – the very thing that brought us to the party in the first damn place.
As the episode continued on with its continuous stream of thought concerning time, dimensions, AI and evolution, an awful certainty built in my mind that’s going to make watching the last episode pretty damn tough: what if all these multiple episodes of science-speak don’t come together and the finale only creates more questions for a sequel series to answer? If that proves to be the case, we won’t need footage of Godzilla going on a rampage through the streets, because I’ll be bloody well doing it.
It’s not all for naught. Shots of crimson stained cities are legitimately impressive, as is the huge cyclone of dust that Godzilla is currently chilling in (possibly hiding from the paparazzi, who knows) and the random moment where the show finally references Mothra hints at trippy, fluttery, glittery things to come – but it’s all, mercilessly compacted into sludge by the episode’s dire need to pass an ungodly amount of information like an obstructed bowel.
Even on a basic character level, the episode fails us, reducing both main and background characters to mere info dumps who can’t engage in anything particularly too strenuous or exciting as they have five pages of dialogue to race through before the next scene hits. We’ve learned nothing more about who Mei, Yun and Haberu than what we already knew from the first episode, with Jet Jaguar seemingly the only character in residence with anything close to something resembling a character arc.
There was a time there when season 1 of Singular Point was good and even a four or five episode run where it was almost great, but if the show doesn’t stop trying to sell us the sizzle and focus fully on the steak, it’s all going to be for nothing.
Despite two whole episodes of predominately verbal set up, there’s a worrying feeling that Singular Point still isn’t ready to jump headlong into the first season’s finale and will bring a lot of talky baggage into its final battle. However, much like the Showa Godzilla movies of old, there’s still a change that the King Of The Monsters could show up at the last second and metaphorically save the day – however, bad memories of the maligned anime trilogy don’t exactly have me holding my breath, atomic or otherwise.
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