User blog:AustinDR/Lord Commander (EP)

A preview of what I will be discussing for May 21st on the cleanup forum regarding Final Space. WIP.

What is the work?
(WIP)

Who is he?
In the original pilot, a blatant parody of an evil overlord who is Played for Laughs. Here? A cold-hearted, megalomaniacal psychopath who is played seriously. The Lord Commander is the Big Bad of the series who is slowly dying because he was continuously abusing his telepathic abilities. He sees the answer in Mooncake and would do absolutely everything to achieve his goal. Not much is known about the Lord Commander before he became a tyrant. What is known is that he was once a member of the Infinity Guard named Jack and served as the co-pilot and best friend to Gary’s father --John Goodspeed-- having worked under him for 29 years. On one eventful day, John leaves Gary because he had a mission regarding a gravitational disturbance. John’s father ends up dying, and the resounding explosion causes a wave of energy from Final Space to hit Jack, granting him telekinetic abilities. From that day onward, the old Jack died in the explosion, becoming known simply as the Lord Commander. What has he done?

Let’s start chronologically. As revealed in Chapter Six, Avocato was once the right-hand-man to the Lord Commander and served him without question at least until the Lord Commander decided to test his loyalty. The Lord Commander gathered his top lieutenants one day and demanded that they kill their firstborn as a display of loyalty to him. While most of the lieutenants obeyed without question, Avocato refuses to follow through and instead kills the guards before turning his weapon onto the Lord Commander. Enraged by his insolence, the Lord Commander takes his son hostage and threatens to murder him if he rebelled against him again. Sometime afterward, a ship named the Scarlet Lance discover a gelatinous alien lifeform and name it Specimen E35-1. However, the ship finds its transmission being interrupted by the Lord Commander and his fleets, ending with the Lord Commander massacring the crew. Series wise, the Lord Commander makes his debut in Chapter One when he interrogates a man, believing that he has some information on Specimen E35-1 (having since been named Mooncake by Gary). When the man failed to provide him with the information he was looking for, the Lord Commander uses his telekinetic powers to painfully contort the man’s body before breaking his neck whilst claiming that it would be rude to kill him. He then allows one of his minions to eat the corpse. The Lord Commander learns that Specimen E35-1 was on the Galaxy One and sends several of his henchmen to invade the prison ship. Even though this would add onto his sentence, Gary orders HUE to advance the speed of the Galaxy One to escape.

In Chapter Two, as a way of evading a bounty hunter, Gary and Avocato travel to Tera Con Prime. Avocato finds his son Little Cato only to fall into a trap set by the Lord Commander. Whilst angrily reprimanding Avocato for failing to retrieve Specimen E35-1, Gary arrives to save Avcoato. Realizing that Gary was the person that Avocato ratted out, the Lord Commander uses his powers on Gary which leads to Gary’s arm getting telekinetically severed from his body. Unfortunately for the Lord Commander, blood from the severed arm sprays into his eyes, disorienting him. The team manage to escape, and Avocato volunteers to surgically replace it with a robotic arm.

After being confronted by Lord Commander’s fleet once again, Avocato suggests that they hide Mooncake on a planet known as Yarno. Meanwhile, the Lord Commander goes to visit a group of alien beings named the Order of the Twelve to extract some information from these renowned “eyes of the universe.” One of the representatives of the group, Helper Hula, informs the Lord Commander that because he was continuously misusing his “light” he was edging closer to death. When Hula proved to be “unhelpful,” the Lord Commander uses his telekinesis to forcefully destroy Hula’s eight eyes. The Lord Commander learns of Mooncake being made to fight at a Colosseum and travels there to retrieve him. After fighting with Gary and Avocato, the Lord Commander reveals that Mooncake was the key to opening Final Space. The battle, however, renders the Lord Commander weakened, and he is last seen being beamed up by his ship.

As for Episode 4, there isn’t much to be said there. The only thing of note in this episode is that Little Cato is given a device and a chip by a mysterious helper which he uses to try to send a message to his father. The Galaxy One traces the gravitational disturbance to a bioluminescent planet. Gary speculates that the Infinity Guard is behind the disturbance only to be ignored by Quinn. However, Gary’s suspicions prove to be correct as the majority of the Infinity Guard had deflected to the Lord Commander’s side. It is revealed that the Lord Commander had overseen the creation of a laser, intending to use it to widen the breach in Final Space even though this would spell destruction to reality itself. The team meet a few obstacles, but they succeed in destroying the laser and the space station. Little Cato manages to send a message to his father only for the mysterious figure to reveal itself as the Lord Commander and that the whole thing was a gambit to lure the Galaxy One into his clutches.

The Galaxy One receives the message immediately afterward, and after some hostility between Avocato and Quinn, Gary agrees to accompany Avocato to a prison planet named Zetakron Alpha. The two friends face the Lord Commander who reveals that he had overwritten Little Cato’s mind and forces the possessed Little Cato into attempting to murder his father. As for Gary, the Lord Commander uses his telekinesis to forcefully read Gary’s mind since Gary would refuse to relent. The Galaxy One arrives to save the gang, the Lord Commander getting repelled by Mooncake’s laser blast. In an act of spite, the Lord Commander telepathically plants a sticky bomb on Little Cato’s back. Avocato notices the bomb and throws himself onto it, killing him (Avocato, NO!!!). There isn’t much to get into with Chapter Seven other than the mysterious backer of Gary and the team is revealed to be Quinn from a future timeline who goes by the alias “Nightfall.” According to Nightfall, in each dimension she traveled to, the result was always the same: The Lord Commander murders Gary when he tried to take him on by himself; Mooncake – in grief – goes on a revenge-filled rampage, destroying planets; this action would cause Final Space to open, thus allowing primordial alien entities known as the Titans to be released, and the subsequent destruction of the universe. As such, Nightfall opts to kill Mooncake before Gary could potentially get killed. However, Nightfall decides to give Mooncake a second chance due to Present! Quinn’s urging.

Episode Eight reveals that there was one benevolent Titan – Bolo – who had broken his ranking among the Titans and sealed the portal to Final Space from seeping into our universe. As punishment, he was sealed away in a cube. Gary is chosen to speak with him, and Bolo sends him into a closed time-loop. Gary ends up being on his father’s ship the day he died, but he was able to bond with his father. He also learns that the Lord Commander was formerly a member of the Infinity Guard as mentioned above. When Gary explains this to him, the two take advantage of the freezing of time and deliver a very satisfying beatdown on Jack. Unfortunately, Gary is made to watch his father detonate the anti-matter bomb, sacrificing himself to seal the breach in space-time. Before sacrificing himself, John informs Gary that there was another anti-matter bomb in New York. Jack awakens from the freeze in time only to become exposed to a wave of energy from Final Space.

Galaxy One arrives to Earth in Chapter 9 to find the anti-matter bomb, however because the breach was absorbing the Earth, they had little time to retrieve it. Along the way, the team reunite with Tribore who had become the leader of a resistance group that formed when the Lord Commander infiltrated the Infinity Guard. The gang eventually find the bomb and manage to escape the Earth’s destruction. The Lord Commander sends them a transmission offering to let the team live if they were to hand over Mooncake to him. Naturally, the team refuse, so leads to the final confrontation.

In Chapter 10, the Lord Commander makes it his goal of preventing the Galaxy One from sealing the breach to Final Space as he believed that he was chosen by the Titans to release them so that he could become a Titan himself. His fleets proceed to effortlessly destroy most of the resistance, but Little Cato manages to get onto the Lord Commander’s ship and attempts to kill him. However, Gary propels the Galaxy One into Lord Commander’s ship, unwittingly causing Little Cato to drift into space. Gary tries to reason with the Lord Commander by bringing up his original name only to cause the Lord Commander to angrily use his powers to cast Gary adrift. The Lord Commander puts Mooncake into a painful laser machine, and successfully creates a portal to Final Space. A Titan’s hand emerges from the portal, but instead of granting him the godhood he expected, the Titan instead grabs the Earth and pulls it into the portal. Quinn succeeds at detonating the anti-matter bomb, but at the cost of her getting absorbed into the portal rendering no foreseeable ways of her returning. The Lord Commander is last seen edging closer to death, enraged that his feeble attempt at immortality failed.

Mitigating factors? Freudian Excuse?
Now at first glance, it is easy to disregard the Lord Commander especially when it delves into what little we have of his backstory. He was what you could consider a “Nice Guy” seeming affable enough around John Goodspeed, one time offering to take him out to eat taquitos when they finished up with their mission. Upon being exposed to the energy wave created from Final Space, it seems pretty evident that this would throw his moral agency into question. However, Chapter 10 clarifies that the Lord Commander believed that he was chosen by the Titans to become and as such, the Lord Commander actively discarded anything to do with his life prior to requiring this “purpose.” Lord Commander is very aware of what he was like before the accident, but he vehemently refuses to acknowledge it. When Gary tried to speak some sense to the tyrant, he enrages the Lord Commander by mentioning his former name, citing the That Man is Dead trope by claiming that the old Jack died the moment he was chosen by the Titans to release them. In addition, the Lord Commander harbors no love for John Goodspeed. When Gary informs him that he was John’s son, the Lord Commander seems to consider it for a moment, but ultimately decides to kill Gary anyway despite that knowledge.

As for any other potential mitigating factors, the Lord Commander is presented as a genuine threat to the universe. The threat of the breach opening is treated with upmost severity, especially when it’s revealed that Titans inhabit Final Space and they have the power to destroy the universe if they were ever released. Now, the Lord Commander does have some moments that can be humorous. For instance, in Chapter 3, as he was having a pity party for himself, the Lord Commander viciously strangles a subordinate to death…because the poor guy had the misfortune of giving the Lord Commander the wrong kind of snack. Or in Chapter 6, Gary and Avocato travel to the prison planet to save Little Cato. The Lord Commander tries to make the prison into some big presentation only to be met with little surprise by either two. The Lord Commander gets irritated by Gary and Avocato insulting his work, claiming that several of the inmates were murdered for the sake of the surprise. However, with these moments, rather than detracting from his villainy, they instead accentuate the Lord Commander’s insanity. Beyond that, they’re relatively minor and the Lord Commander returns to being dangerously serious. Heinous standard

Heinous standard
(WIP)

Conclusion
(WIP)