Halo improves (a little) with its second episode, “Unbound”

Freed from the shackles of military obedience, Master Chief and his survivor run-away Kwan take off to find shelter in some safe portion of the galaxy. The search for sanctuary brings them to The Rubble, a hideaway city for rebels and other space-trotting trouble-makers on a gigantic asteroid. Meanwhile, Dr. Halsey is pressured by the UNSC higher-ups to find a way to bring the renegade Spartan under control, and an unorthodox remedy is suggested. All this and more in this episode of Halo, “Unbound.”

The episode opens with a flashback too 22 years ago at the UNSC’s training camp. A young Master Chief awakens from sleep and sneaks outside the barracks to meet another soldier, Soren-066.

The two were good friends, but Soren eventually decided to abandon the military and seek a life of freedom. He invited Chief to join him, but Chief refused and threatened to turn on him after his escape. Soren pleads with Master Chief to take control of his own life and seek freedom, but he remains firm, although he grant Soren the mercy of a five-minute head start. Back in the present, we learn that The Rubble is, naturally, run by Soren-066!

Welcome to the Rubble

So, the Rubble. I’ll be honest: this place isn’t that interesting to me, although I like the production design of it. Madrigal was a typical desert planet, and the UNSC planet, though slick, is built with a lot of very obvious CGI. With the exception of wide exterior shots, the Rubble features a lot of sets with tons of extras and cluttered, close-together structures. It shows a lot of effort on the show’s part.

The shame of it is is that the setting itself is not very inventive. How many sci-fi stories have the heroes visit a space port full of rouges? This is basically an asteroid version of the cantina on Tatooine. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun trope setting, but something fun and interesting has to be done with it. Just giving the place a metro system with lines flowing between asteroids isn’t an interesting enough twist.

Anyway, Master Chief enters the Rubble and is stared down as he makes his way through a corridor of workers. He moves a loaded forklift sent to block his path (which could have very easily been walked around, but I guess the writers wanted to give Chief a strength test), and meets Soren on the other side. Soren is surprisingly cheerful to greet Master Chief after 22 years. Too cheerful.

I get what the show is doing, Soren is the old friend that the heroes seek help from, a standard beat in a lot of stories, but I don’t know. Twenty-two years seems like too long a time gap for us to believe that these two are still on good terms. Maybe if we had seen just a bit more of Soren and Master Chief’s youth together.

That aside, Soren is an interesting character, and I like him for his function. Master Chief denied his invitation to freedom 22 years ago. Now that Master Chief has decided he wants independence (or at least is on the journey towards doing so), Soren represents both a second chance as well as a link to his past.

However, as a character, I just find him annoying. Every line from him seems to be a joke or a quip. Yes, writers, I get it, he is the cool rebel space cowboy character. Can we dial back the facetious joke-making, please?

Meanwhile, in the scheming scientist portion of the show…

Later, Master Chief is looking for more information about the artifact that the Covenant and the UNSC are after, so Soren brings him to what I can only assume is a jail or insane asylum (so much for the Rubble being a place where people can be free) to meet Reth, a human who has been to the Covenant’s headquarters and lived to tell the tale. After Soren shows Master Chief to Reth’s unlocked cell (seriously, no lock, no code, they just push the iron doors open. Maybe these people just want to be held in cells?), Reth proceeds to mutter like a madman about what he has seen and what he knows. To prevent mass destruction, the artifact and keystones must be destroyed.

On the other side of things, we follow Dr. Halsey and her very boring superiors as they argue over whether she is able to control Master Chief. The bulk of the arguing happens at this big council meeting. While I find most of these higher-up types bland, the moment where Dr. Halsey ropes Admiral Margaret into her plan by coercing her to play along or risk disappointing the council was pretty tense. I’m not sure how much the show will focus on these political mind games among these UNSC officials, but that’s the only time I take interest in their scenes.

And that’s this week’s episode of Halo the Series. A bit better than the first episode, if only because there were no glossed over and poorly written massacres. However, the writing has yet to direction itself from its sci-fi peers in a way worth recommending. We’ll see what Episode 3 has to offer next week.

Grade C-

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