The Orbots consisted of five members: Tor (the tough guy), Bort (the morphing coward), Crunch (the obese non-stop eater), Bo (elemental bad girl) and Boo (beam projecting good girl). These five would combine to form the Mighty Orbot, who was pretty fucking large considering the five 'bots separated were only slightly above the height of an average human. When combined, Rob and Ohno would fly into the Mighty Orbot's chest, hook up his rocket car ship vehicle to the system and give commands from there. Again, thought they were only slightly larger than Rob when they were separate components, when Mighty Orbot was formed, Rob and his entire fucking beam car could fit inside the 'Bot's torso... I'd say that's either a classic Scooby-Doo proportion fuck up or the Orbots also grow larger when they combine. Mighty Orbot can draw different powers from the different members. For instance, the big trash heap has the strength of Tor, can transform it's limbs into weapons courtesy of Bort and can project elemental beams and force fields thanx to the ladies. Also in the cast is Rondu, the leader of the Galactic Patrol. As you can guess by their name, the Galactic Patrol is the combined police forces of some kind of planetary coalition who enforce the galactic laws and such. One member of the Galactic Patrol is Dia, daughter of Rondu (nepotism is alive and well, even in the 23rd century!) and admirer of Rob, though not of Rob's pocket protector wearing alter-ego, Bob. She's basically the series' "devil may care" Lois Lane character, who feels she has nothing to lose, everything to prove, and can't recognize a guy if he takes off his glasses and puts on a helmet and change of clothes. Dames, what a ditsy lot they are!

For every hero there has to be a villain, it's the law of Tao and the Organization of Cartoon Bullshit. The arch-nemesis of the Mighty Orbots and the Galactic Patrol? That would be the forces of Shadow, a terrorist syndicate lead by the big, glowing, five-eyed ball of flame: Umbra. Umbra is actually a super computer, though from the look of him, I'd say he's more like a sinister sphere of consolidated evil. But, that's just me. The forces of Shadow are many, and in this particular episode Umbra's minion is the vile and pointy headed alien Draconis. Speaking of this particular episode, now that I've pointed out the players, let's get down to business before my ass falls asleep.

The chaos begins with Voltron, I mean, Mighty Orbot as he... attacks an innocent space restaurant!? That doesn't exactly sound like the kind a thing a good guy would do, does it? That's exactly what Rob thinks, as he hops his beam car and tries to board this supposed Mighty Orbot. Of course, his attempt is met with gross failure, as "Mighty Orbot"s chest refuses to open. I think we all know that this is NOT Mighty Orbot. But, if this is an impostor, then where are the real Orbots? They're actually vacationing on a desert planet, soaking rays and screwing around as usual. Rob arrives to confront them about the recent doppleganger's rampage, when who else but the very fiend arrives to cause trouble! Forming Mighty Orbot, the group hooks up with Rob and Ohno and try battling the evil double. Every move they make (and every breath they take) is to no avail though, as the steel titan manages to dissipate at every move and evade our heroes! Well, they're not really "our" heroes, as I've never really heard of them before this, nor am I in any danger by this villainous Mighty Orbots, so, the Orbots really aren't MY hero. Anyway, since their Mighty Orbots form seems to be useless, the team breaks back up hoping to figure out some way they can take the bad guy out in their separate forms. Before they can formulate something, the bad guy runs off... hmmm, that's convenient. No soon that the big tin monster leaves, then the Galactic Patrol shows up with warrants for the Orbots' arrest! Super heroism sucks.

Put on trial by a court of their peers (in other words, two computers), the Orbots are found guilty, thanx in part to scathing testimony by their leader, Rob! They're found guilty and sent to the prison colony on Devil's Asteroid to serve out their sentence of 999 years of hard labor! What would make Rob do such a thing as lie AGAINST his own team? Well, turns out that Rob and Rondu were in cahoots to get the Orbots sent to Devil's Asteroid because Rondu thinks the asteroid's been overtaken by Shadow agents! Why not let the Orbots in on the secret? Well, when they enter Devil's Asteroid, they're each given a brainscan, and if they were in on the plot, then the brainscan would have revealed it! As for that evil Mighty Orbot, we learn that he's under the control of Shadow (no shit Einstein). Now that the real Orbots have been imprisoned, Umbra can now drop the disguise on his impostor, Tobor, and send it to destroy the Galactic Patrol! "Tobor" huh? Well, I can see the intellectual limitations of the series' creative staff here.

First off, our heroes are robots, but if you reverse the first two letters they become no ordinary robots, but Orbots! And the evil doppleganger? Well, I can just picture the geniuses at work right now. The setting: the producer's mother's dinner table. The writers, two guys in Green Lantern T-shirts and a girl in massive headgear drooling all over her Mighty Mouse sweatshirt, sit around doodling the letters to the word "robot" on pads of paper, attempting to figure out what ingenious name they can devise, all the while stuffing circus peanuts in their gaping jaws. They contemplate what to call their Mighty Orbot's evil twin, when one of the Green Lantern guys does a spit take with a mouthful of Hi-C and screams out, "'robot' backwards!". "Robot Backwards?" his two partners reply, unsure why their friend would want to name a villain Robot Backwards. After the guy explains what he meant, the three frantically write down the word "robot" backwards and come up with "Tobor". Proud of their new accomplishment, the three all try to give each other a high five. The resultant train wreck is a nightmare and they all lie there on the floor in a heap twitching and moaning.

So, now that the Orbots are in the hoosegow, under the tyrannical punishing tortures of Shadow employee Draconis, it's up to Rob and Ohno to bust in and break their friends out. On the other side of the prison Dia, unbeknownst to her that the Orbots' incarceration was all a set-up, sneaks into the place herself and steals Tobor to take back to Galactic Patrol HQ and prove the Orbots' innocence. Wow, for a prison planet, Devil's Asteroid's security must be one of those comical old guys in a rent-a-cop suit sleeping in front of a wall of security monitors while his coffee gets cold and his donuts go stale! No, even better, since this is a future of robots and such, I'll bet it's a fat robot with a metal old man moustache, and in his eyes are flashing the words "out to lunch"! Yep, that's what we have to look forward to in the future folks, set your phasers to "loot"! Anyway, Rob breaks out the 'Bots and they form Mighty Orbot. On the way back to the Galactic Patrol, they run into, who else, Dia in Tobor! They don't know Dia's in there though, so they attack. Unfortunately, Tobor's set to defend itself no matter what it's driver says, so it almost looks like we'll have a fight on our hands! Instead, that prick Draconis arrives and overtakes control of Tobor, holding Dia as hostage. This lasts all of 2 minutes as Mighty Orbot saves Dia and kicks Tobor's malfunctioning ass, dragging it back to GPHQ. The good guys are aquited and all is good and fine in the land of robotic lollipops and digitized rainbows. However, NOTHING was resolved with Devil's Asteroid! Shadow still owns it and nothing has changed... boy, being leader of the Galactic Patrol must not require much more than a high school education and decent pair of lips for the politicians.

What can I say? I don't see where the Go-Bots people had any place to complain. Sure, it's a story about talking robots that change form, big deal! The only shock is that the Voltron people didn't file a law suit earlier! Either way, I thought the story was moderately well developed. Some of the voice acting was annoying to have to sit through, but the animation was fairly solid. The characters though were probably the worst crew of robots in an animated series I've ever seen! I don't know if it was their stupid attitudes, their stupid screwing around, their stupid quirks or whatever stupid trait, but either way, I didn't like them damn Orbots. And, just as I have to complain about similar action toons from the '80s, the ending was a disappointment. All this build up, all this development for nothing! I would've appreciated a 5 minute battle with lasers and flaming wreckage and all those nice little extras. Instead I get "oh no! Tobor's malfunctioning!". Fucking Shadow made piece of garbage. They're lucky they never got to use it against the Galactic Patrol, or they would've been the laughing stock of intergalactic terrorist organizations all over the universe! At least this way Draconis can make up some story about a huge battle to end all battles that he eventually lost to the better 'Bot. The other way would've been a nightmare. From what I've seen, the GP is a laughing stock, and no matter what story you make up in prison to atone to losing to them, you're still gonna wind up some fat hairy dude's bitch! Oh well, at least the Mighty Orbots only lasted one season.