Teen Titans – Review: Troq

A brave hero from outer space called Val-Yor comes to Earth, and asks
for the Titans help in defeating an otherworldly menace known as The Locrix. But
according to Val-Yor, Starfire may be the real problem…

Review by Gareb
Media by Gareb

Titans Voices
Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
Scott Menville as Robin
Khary Payton as Cyborg
Tara Strong as Raven
Hynden Walch as Starfire
Stephen Root as Val-Yor

I immediately thought we were taken back a year to the plot where
Starfire is forced to marry that green snot blob, otherwise an alien force will take over their planet, when this episode first came up on screen. Luckily it didn’t cop out into a
“rogue-agent-goes-crazy-and-lies” method, otherwise the episode would’ve been even more boring than it already was.

Obviously the most intriguing part was that it dealt with racism, albeit in a rather vague way. “Troq” really meant “useless, worthless” when it was referred to other alien species, mainly
Tamaranians; Val-Yer repeatedly called Starfire this throughout the episode, which gave her the adorable pouty face through out the majority of it. Once Cyborg called her “troqie”, Starfire immediately dropped that face, yelling at him and telling him to never call her that again. What followed was a nice scene between her and Cyborg, where Cyborg tells her he’s been through the same thing (“I am half machine”).

The rest of the episode was pure fluff; generic action, not that much in the terms of fighting (oddly enough, I think I’ve been spoiled by how crazy The Batman’s fights have been lately) and the animation was same as usual. Nothing spectacular here to be seen or heard.

This was definitely a filler episode; it can be missed and doesn’t play into the rest of the season at all.