Favorite line from the episode: "Clay and Marl got boocoo blodo!" "Wanna go dancing?" That... that is not what I expected a couple of Grounders to do with the profits from a robot bounty hunter expedition. Dancing.
Aww moment in 3....2.....1
I thought that was a cute little moment.
Aww, the link's broken. D: What scene was this originally a picture of?
One mainframe to rule them all... and one guard-bot. Yes indeedly, Eclips'd, that was UTTER FAIL. It makes no sense to have just one mega-computer for the entire Galactic Alliance that apparently controls the electricity and whatnot OF EVERY FREAKING PLANET. INCLUDING STAR COMMAND. I mean, what gives, seriously. Were the writers/animators doubting our intelligence that much?
Yeah, I'm still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for that one. Maybe it wasn't so much that this one computer controlled the entire Galactic Empire, but that this computer was linked together with all of the other computers? Like, the 10,000 world-wide computers report to the 750 solar system-wide computers report to the 50 sector-wide computers report to the 1 galaxy-wide computer? So destroying the computer itself wouldn't necessarily destroy the entire system, but intentionally introducing some sort of virus to the top computer would let the damage spread from the main computer to all of the local subservient computers. It doesn't make sense that one computer controls EVERYTHING, but it WOULD make sense to have a central computer that has access to all of the other main computers, or that helps run the Galactic Alliance's equivalent of the Internet, or something like that.
It's a stretch of a theory, yeah, and it it isn't exactly 100% supported by canon evidence.
BUT IT'S BETTER THAN SAYING ONE COMPUTER RUNS EVERYTHING. I mean, sheesh.
As to the lax security, maybe the GA is so cocky about their security around Capital Planet itself that they don't think anyone with evil plans would even get to the surface of the planet itself? In short: evil won because good is stupid.
Or maybe the writers just didn't use their noggins. *throws up hands*
Not to mention. Vicki Vortex. And Zurg. WHAAAAAT. What the heck was Zurg doing, dripping sugary ooze all over the place!? Who scripted this!? Zurg does NOT flirt. Seriously. He'd chafe his hide and get the worst rash in history upon contact with romance!
JUST WHAT.
Okay, THIS one I can try to explain. First of all--he
doesn't flirt. Direct quotes of all the dialogue he uses to refer to Vicki Vortex (because I have nothing better to do):
"Darkmatter, why do I waste my time with you? Precious time, that I could spend with my date: the lovely Vicki Vortex, spokesmodel extraordinaire?"
"Oh, darling, who was that?" (About her phone call.)
Neither line is particularly sappy. (Although, still: "darling"??) In the first line, he gets this look on his face when he describes Vicki that COULD be interpreted as "Oh man, what a babe," but could ALSO be interpreted as something more similar to "Take THAT, every other male in the Galactic Alliance: I got a date with the hottest chick in your alliance and YOU DIDN'T, and now I am gloating by pointing out how lovely she is. Nyah-nyah-nyah." Some of Zurg's facial expressions can be interpreted a wide variety of ways.
In the second line, he might only be calling her "darling" because, well, if he'd said, "Who was that?! I said no one takes personal calls in my fortress," Vicki seems like the type of person who would go "Oh. My. Gosh. It is like SO none of your business." Remember in The Torque Armada, when Zurg acts nice to the grubs because he'd been informed that it would help productivity? Maybe he's taking the same tact with Vicki. Flattery to get what you want.
He doesn't seem very into her anyway. When Vicki gets a call on her phone, and Warp wonders how someone got her number, Zurg just says, "Hmm, she never gave it to me." It sounds a lot more like a "Huh, how about that?" statement then like "Hey, why didn't
I get her number?!" There's no resentment or envy behind his statement. So he doesn't seem to particularly care about her number.
And immediately after that, Vicki basically says two things: XR's got all the knowledge of the Galactic Alliance in his head, and she wants to go out tonight. What does Zurg do? He goes "Entire knowledge of the Galactic Alliance? I must have that robot!!" He never even acknowledges Vicki again, much less her request to go out. (And she presumably gets bored and wanders off.) Zurg's still got his priorities in order.
(And I'm pretty sure
this happened too, but for some reason I can't find this scene again; if I just imagined it, then completely ignore this paragraph. The only other time Zurg brings Vicki up, I THINK, is at a point when he says that when he gets his hands on XR, he's going to download a multitude of things--including Vicki's phone number. But he only mentions that at the end of a long string of other, practical things things he wants to download, almost like an afterthought. I could see his train of thought being "Ooh, I'm going to download this and this and this, and... hmm. I found out about XR's knowledge because he had Vicki Vortex's phone number, didn't I? Aww, heck, I'll download that too! Just to rub it in!" But again, I might've imagined that scene, since I can't locate it now. Although I don't know WHY I'd imagine that up... If anyone else remembers it and knows where it occurred in the episode, please tell me so I know I'm not crazy.)
All in all, while Zurg may be on a date with Vicki Vortex, he doesn't seem into it. The closest he even gets to flirting is the word "darling," which may not have been used sincerely, and the rest of the time she's on the scene Zurg mostly doesn't pay attention to her.
Of course, there's still the question of
why he dated her... Well, there could be a thousand reasons why. (And for anyone who's ventured in to the "Is Zurg really Buzz's FATHER?" thread recently, you'll know that I'm very good at coming up with a load of reasons to justify a single idea.)
First, the stereotypical: maybe Zurg is planning ahead. As an evil emperor, he might need an heir someday (unless he plans to be immortal, but it never hurts to have a Plan B). Even if he's got no personal interest in dating and romance, he might have decided that it couldn't hurt to start cultivating a relationship so that he could
exploit someone for her heir-producing abilities potentially start a little family in the future, yeah, that's how he'll phrase it, much less likely to make her run away in terror. Given, this is unlikely, even for Zurg (since he could presumably clone himself), but it is a possibility. Assuming he's of a compatible species with Vicki. If this is the case, he may have settled on "the lovely" Vicki Vortex to ensure that his heirs will be as attractive as they are deadly. (True, the entire concept of having heirs is dangerous to evil emperors, as the
Evil Overlord List rules 18 and 19 demonstrate. But Zurg's broken so many Evil Overlord List rules already...)
Alternatively, this could just be what he does in his spare time: do random things to annoy the rest of the Galactic Alliance. So he can't blow Capital Planet up (yet). At least he can get a date with the most attractive lady in the Alliance, just to prove that good drools and evil rules in EVERY aspect of existence, INCLUDING romance. And if Vicki Vortex doesn't even share her personal number with anybody, the odds are that she doesn't date much either. So, the fact that Zurg got a date with her gives him a bragging right that very few other people will ever have. For example, has
Buzz Lightyear ever been on a date with Vicki Vortex? Has Buzz Lightyear ever gotten Vicki Vortex to come to
his own home? I'm betting not.
Finally, maybe Zurg didn't even ask her out. Maybe it was Vicki Vortex's idea, and Zurg went along with it for whatever reason: he describes her as a "spokesmodel extraordinaire," so maybe she promised him some free samples of whatever it is she's spokesmodeling for? Could be anything. Could be really fast spaceships. Or maybe he agreed to go out with her for one of the above reasons, like bragging rights.
That brings up the question of why Vicki Vortex would want to go out with Zurg. (And even if she didn't ask him, there's still the question of why she agreed to go on a date.) We don't know much about her. Maybe she secretly supports the cause of evil, or thinks that it'd be awesome to be First Lady of an Emperor, evil or otherwise. (I mean, this is BLoSC. They would play a "supermodels are EVIL" message for laughs.) Maybe her manager said it'd be a good move for her career, once the tabloids caught hold of it: in showbiz, ALL publicity is good publicity. She could just be some bimbo who honestly has no idea who she's dealing with and just likes to go on dates--although her annoyance over a stranger getting her personal number would indicate she isn't that loose.
Or maybe she's actually into Zurg. True, she looks pretty bored during her whole scene, but I'd bet she looks like that 24/7, whether she's having a good time or not. Plus, during the time we see Vicki, Zurg's pretty much ignoring her and discussing business with Warp, so she could be putting on the bored face to show that she doesn't like having Zurg's attention drawn away from her and she would kind of like it back, thanks. Also, the only time she sounds like she's actually interested in something (inasmuch as she sounds "interested" in
anything, considering her attitude) is when she asks Zurg if they can go out tonight. Notice: SHE asks HIM if they can go out. And of course she gets huffy when Zurg ignores her request and starts making evil plans with Warp.
So yeah. Zurg can go on a date with somebody without getting dumped into the Unexpectedly OOC Wasteland. We only saw one scene between him and Vicki, so there's not enough to tell what the precise backstory to this "date" is.
(Personally, I like the idea of a super-popular model falling for Zurg, and Zurg agreeing to go on a date for the lulz and/or bragging rights. As long as she's fine with a goodnight wave-from-a-distance instead of a goodnight kiss. Cooties, you know.)