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Outfoxed
Synopsis | Review by Juan F. Lara | Review by Todd Jensen
Overview
by Kieran Dunn
- Owen Burnett and Anton Sevarius used to work for Cyberbiotics.
- Halcyon Renard is nearly obsessed with people taking responsibility for their actions.
- Goliath and Renard are now friends.
- Fox is Renard's daughter.
- Fox is pregnant.
Synopsis
by Leigh Ann Hussey
Act I
The "previously" section shows Xanatos' proposal to Fox; kisses, a fight scene and the wedding from Vows; escape scenes and the parole board hearing from Leader of the Pack; and some other scenes from Eye of the Beholder and The Thrill of the Hunt.
In Xanatos tower, the TV shows the Fortress II, about to depart on a test flight; Travis Marshall is interviewing Preston Vogel, right-hand man of the reclusive CEO of Cyberbiotics, Halcyon Reynard. FII is a replacement for Fortress I, which crashed into the river a year previously (cf. Awakening, Part V), and Marshall wonders aloud if they expect similar results. Vogel assures him that FII is manned only by their new cybots, which should prevent the corporate espionage that destroyed Fortress I. Vogel cuts the interview off when Marshall asks if it is true that Reynard has invested his entire personal fortune in FII and would be ruined if it should be destroyed.
Fox watches intently, but switches off the set when Xanatos enters, telling him, "I know what happens next."
On board Fortress II, Vogel tells Reynard, a frail old man in a hover-chair, that they're ready. Reynard orders Vogel to stay out of the way so that the test is not compromised, and they take off.
On a nearby crag, Goliath and Elisa watch. Goliath is sure that Xanatos is going to pull something; he was devious enough to trick Goliath into attacking the first ship (and here he flashes back to the planning of the attack, and then the attack itself), who knows what Xanatos has planned for this one? So he follows along, just to make sure. Elisa warns, "Just be careful out there..."
On board FII, video cameras show them Goliath's pursuit. Reynard orders cybot security released, and they fire on Goliath; he fights them, sorry that they can't be reasoned with. "That stings!" Finally they stun him, catch him as he falls, and fly him to the airship.
Goliath wakes up in a cage. Reynard, first assuming that Goliath is one of the Gen-U-Tech creations, is sure that Goliath is there to destroy FII for Xanatos. He shows Goliath a video taken from the attack on FI that clearly shows Goliath's involvement. Goliath objects; it was not his fault, he was duped. Reynard reacts in anger: "'Not my fault!' That sounds like every human employee I've ever fired. Crush them all together and you couldn't squeeze an iota of personal integrity from the lot of them." He insists that Goliath take responsibility for his actions. Goliath breaks out of the cage in a fury, but Reynard, unimpressed, stuns him with a gun mounted on his chair. Vogel, apologizing, says he'll put Goliath in maximum security. Just then, a call for Vogel comes in, and Reynard leaves him to take it in private.
It is Fox, checking that "the payment has been wired to your Swiss account" and the plan will go off as scoped. Vogel says there's one hitch -- Goliath, who'll be the perfect candidate to take the blame for the destruction.
Act II
Goliath tries to convince Reynard that Xanatos was to blame for the attack. Reynard acknowledges that Goliath is "not the first poor soul Xanatos has corrupted." Owen Burnett and Dr. Sevarius both used to work for Cyberbiotics. Reynard doesn't doubt that Xanatos was behind the attack, but refuses to relieve Goliath of responsibility for acts that inflicted grievous damage. "What are you going to do?" he demands. "A better question might be," Goliath replies, "what are you going to do?"
Fox and Xanatos spar in judo gear on a mat. Xanatos points out that if Fox's hostile take-over of Cyberbiotics succeeds, Reynard will be wiped out and he isn't a young man. "Oh, he'll manage," Fox says lightly. "He always does." If all goes well, Cyberbiotics will be hers by morning. A call comes in; Xanatos takes it. It's for Fox -- her doctor with "...test results?" "Oh, I guess I forgot to mention it," Fox says, picking up the phone.
Vogel, using voice override, implants a virus chip in one cybot and reactivates it. As the bot goes about its regular functions, it begins to infect the others.
Reynard considers turning Goliath over to the authorities. "Look at me, human!" Goliath objects. "I'd spend the rest of my life as a laboratory specimen. Was my crime against you so heinous to make that an equitable punishment?" Reynard chuckles. "We're making progress. You finally acknowledge that you committed a crime."
Meanwhile, the virus spreads among the cybots, marked by a corruscating halo around their heads. Vogel watches its progress on the screen of his laptop.
"No more excuses," Goliath sighs, accepting full responsibility. Reynard is glad Goliath was "gargoyle enough" to admit he was wrong. "It wasn't easy," Goliath replies. "Integrity is never easy," Reynard tells him. It is a daily, costly struggle that has cost Reynard his Anastasia and his Jeanine. "My angel of the night," Goliath sighs, and Reynard realizes Goliath may indeed know what he means. A cybot walks in, beginning to infect the guard bots. Thanking Reynard for the education he received, Goliath observes an arc jump from one bot to another and comments, "Do they do that often?" "Never, to my knowledge," Reynard replies, and calls Vogel, who says the bots have taken over and changed the heading to a direct collision course with Cyberbiotics Tower, and who accuses Goliath of letting himself be captured so as to bring the virus on board.
Vogel says they must evacuate and destroy the ship or Cyberbiotics will be history. Reynard says that if FII is destroyed he's ruined anyway. Vogel regretfully says that Reynard can place the blame on him if need be, but now there's no choice; collision will occur in 7 minutes, and the tower would never be evacuated in time. Vogel urges Reynard to meet him at the escape pods in 6 minutes, because he will jettison and use his access code to destroy Fortress II.
Act III
"How can this be happening?" Reynard shouts as the virus spreads among the cybot guards. "What Vogel said about me," Goliath says, "you have to know it's not true." "All I know," Reynard retorts, "is that I'm about to be wiped out!" Goliath breaks his chains, urging Reynard to open the bars. "I helped destroy Fortress I -- let me help you save Fortress II." While Reynard considers, Vogel runs for the escape pods and boards one. "Heaven help us both," Reynard says finally and opens the cage, but finds he can't override the guard bots. "I can," Goliath growls, and attacks -- between him and Reynard's chair-mounted blaster, the guards are quickly dispatched. Time's running out; Reynard leads Goliath toward the command center.
4:17 remain as Vogel watches on a monitor. He voice commands the bots to steer Reynard toward the escape pods and destroy Goliath. Reynard and Goliath fight their way through a few waves of bots; Reynard tells Goliath that he must reach the cybots' power source in the ship, the location of which Reynard shows him on his little monitor, and destroy it, to shut them all down simultaneously. [Note: the power center is quite reminiscent in look of the tractor beam power center on the Death Star...] Meanwhile, Reynard will head for the command center, to attempt to alter the ship's course.
The airship speeds toward Cyberbiotics Tower. Goliath fights hoards of cybot security fliers protecting the power supply; Reynard hastens toward the command center, blasting cybots as he goes. Vogel pleads with Reynard to abandon ship, saying he doesn't want Reynard's death on his conscience. Reynard gives Vogel permission to destroy FII should he fail to change its course, and as for him, he intends to go down with his ship.
Goliath finally destroys the power center by hurling one of the cybot crew into it. All over the ship, cybots shut down. "Outstanding!" Reynard exclaims. As he reaches the bridge, he blesses Vogel for giving him extra time, only then remembering that emergency course override can't be done by one man.
Vogel appears. "I knew you wouldn't let me down!" Reynard exclaims. "Yes, well," Vogel responds. "You have that effect on people." Getting quickly down to business, they execute a turn and clear the tower.
"Yes!" Reynard exults. "Oh, dear," Vogel says as a growling Goliath confronts him. Reynard reassures Goliath, and Vogel says he owes Goliath an apology for accusing him -- and then reveals that he has a confession to make.
Shortly afterwards, Reynard is even more convinced, by Vogel's betrayal, that humans have no integrity. Goliath disagrees, pointing out that Vogel's sabotage only showed "the folly of placing one's trust in single-minded automatons" that only know what they are programmed to know. "Only living beings possess the ability to change and make new choices. Ultimately, Vogel chose honor."
Reynard and Goliath part, not just even -- "a ship for a ship" -- but avowed friends.
As Goliath glides down and away, another figure stealthily glides over him to the ship. Firing a suction anchor, what is clearly Fox in a ninja suit, judging by her long red hair, reels the hang glider down to the top surface of the ship, then burns an entrance with a corrosive grenade.
She moves onto the bridge behind Reynard's chair. "Hello, Jeanine," he sighs, before turning around. Pulling off her mask, she replies, "Hello Daddy." She bends to give him a peck on the cheek. "Almost got you that time," she says, "didn't I!"
Reynard can't understand why she wants to take Cyberbiotics from him, the company he built for her and would gladly have given her but for her marrying Xanatos -- and might still give her even so if she'd just stand up and ask for it honestly. "Oh, Daddy!" she chides him. "Asking you for it wouldn't be any fun at all!" "And fun," he sighs as they move toward her entry point, "is still more important to you than honor. I can't understand that."
"Well," she says, catching up one of his hands and pressing it to her belly, "maybe you'll have better luck relating to the next generation." As he stammers in astonishment, she climbs back out, leaving him with the staggering revelation that he's going to be a grandfather. She puts her mask back on as he gazes dumfounded.
The Fortress II sails into the sunrise as she glides away.
Review
by Juan F. Lara
Characters
- Reynard
In the first couple of acts Reynard was so dogmatic that he seemed one-dimensional to me. So I didn't believe it when Goliath said that he has learned old lessons from Reynard's lecturing. I thought he was just saying that to get Reynard off his case. :-) And I wasn't very moved by the scene where Reynard and Goliath went over their regrets. They sounded more like two people at a bar whining over drinks. :-) This weak character development kept me from caring all that much about whether Fortress-2 would crash or not.
Reynard did become heroic and likeable in Act 3, though. I particularly liked the scene where he and Goliath became friends. So I'm looking forward to his return, hopefully with more background info about him and Fox.
- Vogel
- I was intrigued by Vogel's ruthlessness in betraying Reynard and pretending to be loyal. But then Vogel backed out of his betrayal at the last minute, and I couldn't understand why considering how much effort he had placed in the betrayal. The threat of his boss's death probably re-inspired feelings of loyalty to Reynard, but the switch felt so sudden. Reynard's willingness to go down with the ship didn't seem enough to me.
- Fox
- She was easily my favorite part of the episode. I found her willingness to hurt her father so fascinating, and was impressed that she could be as ambitious as Xanatos. Her amorality and playfulness made a stark contrast with Reynard's moralism in the last scene. She also had an excellent chemistry with Xanatos in their karate scene. After this episode and "Upgrade", she's become one of my favorite characters.
Miscellaneous
Animation by Hong Ying Animation, Suzhou, China. The artwork looked generally O.K., and I especially liked the designs for the Cy-Bots. But at times movement was very jerky. And Reynard looked too caricatured.
Robert Culp played Reynard and Peter Scolari ("Newhart") played Vogel. The episode gave no explanation as to why Vogel looked so much like Owen. We found out that Fox's original name was Jeanine Reynard, and that Owen and Sevarius were former CB employees.
Goliath should've fled when those robots attacked him. By fighting them, he only made himself look like a threat.
Quotes
Reynard: No excuses, creature. Learn to take responsibility for your own
actions. And stop whining!
Goliath: A gargoyle doesn't whine. He ROARS! :-P
Goliath: Automatons know nothing of betrayal, or honor. They only know
what they are programmed to know.
[Good line. I liked how Goliath connected the robots to Reynard's feelings
about humanity.]
Vogel: On our tail, sir. We have a, uh, I don't know what we have.
Commentary/Review
by Todd Jensen
After seven episodes in a row dealing with the more magical side of the gargoyles' adventures, "Outfoxed" shifts back to a more relatively down-to-earth atmosphere. The only fantasy element in this story is Goliath; aside from him, we have a tale about industrial rivalry and hostile takeovers (with a little science fictional element involving Renard's robotic servants - and the limitations that they have).
Cyberbiotics, Xanatos's rival in "Awakening" and the gargoyles' victim, now is mapped out in greater detail, as its CEO, Halcyon Renard, is introduced on-stage, alongside his aide-de-camp, Preston Vogel (who bears a striking resemblance to Owen - for a very good reason, as we shall eventually learn). Ably voiced by Robert Culp, Renard is a grim old man, now confined to a high-tech wheelchair through the ravages of illness, but still a sharp-witted, no-nonsense figure. And, in contrast to the thoroughly amoral Xanatos and Fox, Renard believes firmly in integrity, and particularly in taking responsibility for one's actions. He certainly won't accept the fact that Goliath was duped by Xanatos into stealing the three disks from Cyberbiotics a year before as reason enough to pardon him; what matters to him is that Goliath still did it, and has to face the consequences of his actions. And even the fact that Goliath is an imposing gargoyle of formidable strength is not enough to intimidate him into changing his mind.
(While Renard's stern lecture to Goliath is meant to be serious - and certainly is serious on the immediate level - I find a slight touch of the comedic in the mere situation; Renard has just captured a being that shouldn't exist outside of fantasy fiction or art, a living gargoyle from medieval Scotland - and speaks to it as if it was an erring human employee. Evidently Renard's near-obsession with the concept of personal responsibility is so strong that hearing the words "not my fault" is enough to make him forget that the being whom he's speaking to is anything but mundane.)
Faced with such a formidable captor, Goliath soon comes to realize that his good intentions are not enough; he must accept responsibility for his blow upon Cyberbiotics and stop placing all the blame on Xanatos. (This realization is perhaps all the more important when we remember, from a few episodes before, that a core component in Demona's going wrong is that she constantly refused responsibility for her past deeds, blaming them all on the humans; Goliath clearly must not follow in her footsteps.) As he admits to Renard afterwards, while he knows the importance of integrity and (in general) lives by it, it's important for him to be reminded of its "text".
In sharp contrast to her stern and rigid father, Fox is as cheerily amoral as ever as she plots the sabotage of Fortress-2. The revelation at the end that she was Renard's daughter took me by surprise the first time that I saw this episode, but on later reviewings, I noticed that it had been well-prepared for. Renard's name was an obvious clue; another was Xanatos and Fox's conversation during their judo match. Xanatos's concern over the fact that Renard would be ruined if Fox's plan succeeded, and Fox's breezy confidence that Renard would be able to recover, displayed a certain familiarity towards him that indicated that to them, this was not just another business rival. Fox displays herself as just as much a trickster as her husband (appropriately tying in with her name; the fox has a long-standing trickster role in European folklore, going back to Aesop), particularly when she visits Renard at the end. Her cheery remark of "Almost got you that time" shows that her real purpose in setting up the whole scheme was to enjoy all the intrigue and plotting; no wonder she is not disturbed that her plan failed. (She stresses this all the more when Renard tells her that he'd have willingly given her Cyberbiotics if she only asked for it honestly, and she replies "Asking for it wouldn't be any fun at all.") And she delights in surprising not only her father, but Xanatos as well, in revealing that she's pregnant.
Vogel plays a noteworthy role of his own as he begins by serving as Fox's help from within, spreading her virus to infect the robots on board, and even ready to frame Goliath for the sabotage. While some viewers have felt that his turnaround was too quick to be convincing, I found it believable. Vogel clearly respects Renard (who may be a strict employee, but also a fair one; he respects Vogel's privacy, for example), and is troubled to see that the old man is ready to sacrifice himself to prevent a collision between Fortress-2 and the Cyberbiotics Tower. Evidently, while he had no qualms about the destruction of a lot of Cyberbiotics machinery, he can't go so far as to bring about a man's death, particularly Renard's. So I can accept his change of heart as he helps Renard avert the disaster.
In the denouement, Goliath, having learned from Renard, is now able to teach him in turn, pointing out to him the clear disadvantage that robots have against living beings in one important area. Robots (such as the mechanical crew of Fortress-2) cannot make moral choices; the robots infected with the virus could not decide for themselves to resist the reprogramming and refuse to carry out the new directive from Fox. A flesh-and-blood being can, however; thus Vogel could decide to help Renard after all and abandon his original betrayal. Renard himself admits the wisdom in Goliath's words. And a moving scene follows as Goliath shakes hands with him, saying "We are friends".
Tidbits
Renard mentions that Owen and Sevarius were both originally Cyberbiotics employees but were lured away by Xanatos (one doubts that Xanatos had to try very hard to lure Sevarius, at the least).
We discover Fox's original name, Jeanine Renard (though we've already learned in "Vows" that it's no longer her legal name), and learn of Renard's ex-wife Anastasia for the first time (though we won't meet her until "Walkabout").
Travis Marshall appears again, to interview Vogel on the eve of Fortress-2's launch.
To fill up the half-hour, a clip from "Awakening" was added in to show the destruction of Fortress-1 as Goliath reminisces about it to Elisa.