Cyberchase. Don’t be put off by the fact that this is an educational animated series: on the one hand, it does not treat viewers as fools, on the other hand, it provides the educational part as creatively and plot-wise as possible.
If you haven’t watched this animated series, but love something light and funny, adventure, with charming heroes and interesting villains, then I'll be happy to introduce it to you. If you have already watched Cyberchase, from this article you will find out what happened to Hacker and everyone before the first episode, as well as such surprising theories as Dr. Marbles sabotaging the repair of Motherboard, how specifics of the computer world cleverly explain some silly cartoon tropes, what would have happened to the kids if they hadn't returned from Cyberspace, and how the virus storyline should have ended.
The intro there is very impressive, and explains the plot well, but for some reason, before this, at the beginning of many episodes, some kind of trailer is added, which redundantly explains all the same things. There is also a moment in the intro that never happened in reality of the show: all the main characters in identical T-shirts are flying on jetpacks. When in fact they are provided with the bare minimum of equipment.
Among the main characters there is no roles assigned, such as: the smart one, the strong one, and the charming one. They are all equally capable of solving problems, and in the plot they are quite interchangeable. How are they different from each other then?
Inez understands difficult words, is strong in driving, is witty in her expressions and owns a cat. She likes to quote all sorts of catchphrases, so the others began to use these quotes against her. She also sometimes stands on her head when she thinks.
Matt is knowledgeable about mythology, reckless, plays many sports, and lives on a farm. He likes to dramatize, presenting situations as hopeless that they will solve in the very next scene, but at the same time makes fun of Jackie when she does the same. When he thinks, he plays with a yo-yo.
Jackie is good at puzzles, loves to dress up, plays the piano, is squeamish and free-spirited. At first she couldn’t swim, but then learned to swim faster than anyone else. In different episodes, she can be either highly organized or thoughtlessly active, but most often she’s something in between. When she thinks, she needs to walk and also she needs some visual material.
One episode they mention that to solve problems, Jackie needs to think everything through, Inez needs to discuss everything, and Matt needs to try everything, but they don't always stick to this. And for some reason, Inez is the most popular of the main group.
Usually in the story, when children go to cyberspace or any parallel world, they get some kind of superpowers or cool gadgets, but here there is nothing like that. They were given only Skwak Pads – something like early prototypes of smartphone, that hadn’t yet been invented at the time of the first season of the animated series. Plus, in the episode about the snow-covered island of Solaria, warm clothes were created for them. For a long time they could not even be given a normal aircraft where they could all fit.
So the children have to rely mostly on their mind power. Superpowers, in theory, shouldn’t have interfered much, they did not prevent WordGirl from being educational, she just needed intelligence to use them correctly. But in this fantasy world, for the sake of variety or realism, they decided that children could make it through with the same things they had in the real world. And they really do. The educational part in this animated series is presented much better than what I have seen in other shows.
Well, it was reasonable to give such heroes a not very threatening villain. The Hacker is often defeated due to his carelessness or laziness, as well as unwillingness to cooperate with other villains. And although he can catch the main characters and any other characters, he usually does this by grabbing them by the hand, by the collar, or by taking them under the armpit. Compared to villains who have laser cages, force fields and electrical bonds, this is somehow underwhelming. One of his sidekicks, Delete, can extend his arms so that he can wrap them around his captives. It's a little more effective, but Digit says he can easily deal with Buzz and Delete. No one has checked how strong he and Hacker really are, because in such cases no one actually fights. Children always win only through cunning, luck, or the help of other characters. However, in the wild west site, Sensible Flats, the Hacker was easily arrested, and he didn't resist.
In the episode "Sensible Flats", Judge Trudy and Sheriff Judy easily put him in jail, from which he can’t escape. Moreover, he gets there for a completely ridiculous reason, which also turned out to be the only wrong one when Buzz and Delete listed his real crimes. But if it's so easy, then why isn't anyone really trying to arrest the Hacker for everything else he's already done? Even if he was already punished once, since then he has managed to mess up things even more. Why do others even help him, like the robot who repaired his Recharger Chair in the episode “Below the Zero”? Like it won't affect their lives for the worse? They are not afraid of Hacker in most cases. In the second season, everyone even recognized his right to vote and be elected. In general, everyone has a very relaxed attitude towards the Hacker, despite the fact that they ultimately want to destroy him.
However, the Hacker isn't your typical villain loser, and he poses a rather ambiguous threat. He is quite intelligent and capable of extremely well-thought-out plans, although he often does obvious stupid things. Sometimes he’s good at really unexpected things. For example, he can almost instantly escape from his own traps. It doesn't matter if he's buried under rocks in a hole or falls into an underground cage under a pool, the kids won't be able to get very far before he'll give chase. The reason for this is revealed by Digit: the Hacker makes “secret switch for everything”. He also knows all the right combinations or always guesses them correctly, and can also quickly adapt to any existing cipher. So, the Hacker can be expected to be successful in hacking rather than in typical cartoon villainy.
Digit appears to have received similar variable powers from him. Sometimes he is a jack of all trades, and sometimes he is helpless at simple things. There are always unexpected necessary things in his chest door, and he just can’t do anything with his beak. However, he gets his beak stuck in a cactus, drowns in a muddy puddle, cannot fold his wings to squeeze through a narrow passage, and gets into other ridiculous troubles from where he has to be pulled out. He is also afraid of heights, despite two ways of flying - on wings and on a tail propeller. Sometimes it is obvious that Digit cannot do something purely because otherwise the plot could be greatly shortened, as was the case in the series about the Solsphere. He also knows a lot of useful information about the Hacker, because he used to work for him.
Digit was his “most effective operative”, as the Hacker admitted, which is not surprising. Now Digit says he's not proud of it. Why then was the first season full of hints about the possibility of his return? In the first episode, when Digit scolds Hacker, but finds out that he is standing behind him, he begins to praise him. And in the episode “R-Fair City”, Hacker asks him if he wants to reunite with the forces of chaos, to which Digit, with a hopeful face, asks if he will really take him back. The hacker answers, “never,” so it’s not clear why there was such a start to the conversation. But Hacker can scoff because in the first episode he said that “he alone decides who comes and who goes,” and Digit left against his decision. Digit continues to playfully treat Hacker as in "Day at the spa", when he imitates the beauticians, or in "All the right angles", where he pretends that he wants to return and so heartily hugs Hacker when he agrees giving him another chance makes Buzz and Delit jealous. Digit also has some fairly villainous moments, for example, at the end of the episode “Clock like an Egyptian,” he, albeit temporarily, still finished off the Mummy simply because they could no longer waste time. Could it be that at such moments his original nature comes through? Since the Hacker created him, he made him for his evil deeds, and Motherboard "rescued him" simply because he had the potential to become good. Later Digit distanced himself from this affection, but then in season 6 he almost allowed Hacker to reprogram him again.
If the Hacker goes to do something personally, he is usually accompanied by Buzz, and Delete remains to look after the ship. It would be more logical to do the opposite, because Buzz is more responsible, and Delete can grab enemies with his outstretched arms. But for some reason, Hacker prefers exactly that combination, as can be seen in the episodes “Zeus on the loose” and “Secret of Symmetria”. Probably because Buzz is less likely to do things wrong, and Delete, when left alone, oddly enough, becomes more reliable. But in the episode "Time for cooking", it was Buzz who ruined Hacker's invention. And it’s not obvious whether the Hacker takes him with him because he didn’t notice anything, to give him a chance to improve or simply because he always chooses him. Hacker only chose Delete in the episode "Chaos as usual", as if he was going to use him according to his name to delete data. But Delete can't actually delete anything.
Buzz has the ability to repeat complex explanations of Hacker's plan, which he is pleasantly surprised by every time. However, it’s not obvious whether Buzz actually understands it. On the one hand, Hacker is never shown to explain the technical details that Buzz later gives to the children or Delete, and he feels very confident with the knowledge. On the other hand, he never uses that information except to show off his intelligence or bluff.
Delete loves animals, especially rabbits, and what starts out quite natural ends up being absurd. It all starts with the fact that in the episode “Of all the luck”, he catches a lucky bunny and becomes attached to it, and in the end he states that the condition for his return to work for Hacker is to get a bunny (which apparently was not fulfilled). This was later brought back in Season 3 episode “A piece of action” as a recurring joke about how Delete wants a pet named George, whether it's a bunny or a creature like Plankton from SpongeBob. And then it began: Delete is going to open an establishment where you can pet bunnies like a cat cafe, he collects a full box of bunnies, which always cause chaos on the Hacker’s ship, he turns into a giant bunny himself with the help of a transformatron, with which he also turns pebbles into bunnies and, finally, with the fairy's wish, he turns all the people of Cyberspace into bunnies! But his obsession doesn’t end there either, except that it manifests itself on a smaller scale, for example, he dresses up as the team’s green rabbit mascot. Buzz has a similar story with donuts: he eats them all the time, orders them in huge amounts, pretends to be a donut seller several times to make a diversion, and of course, turns into a giant donut, and also turns pebbles into them.
Dr. Marbles is also an unusual example of his archetype. I expected him to either be a mentor to the main characters or provide them with inventions. But he turned out to be neither. As a mentor, he can only compliment what the children came up with by themselves while saving him. And as an inventor, he, of course, invented a lot of things, but all of them were not for the benefit of children. Usually all his inventions are too easily reconfigured, and the Hacker uses them in his own way. Dr. Marbles mainly works on fixing Motherboard, and also prefers to travel alone, and therefore either gets into trouble or doesn't show up. It’s amazing how he manages to be such an important and insignificant character at the same time.
When I first found out that his name was Marbles, I immediately thought that there would definitely be a reference to the expression “I lost my marbles.” I thought that maybe that would be his favorite expression, but no. That phrase is said by Hacker in the first episode in the context that he lost Marbles when he had him captured.
And yet Marbles has strange favorite expressions. Sometimes he speaks completely normally, but sometimes he sounds like a computer program with commands like “stand by”, “message error” or “file closed”. He also rather clumsily puts the “backspace”, “page down”, “scroll down” and other key commands in ordinary phrases. By the way, about the computer keys. It seems that Buzz and Delete should have been named “Insert and Delete”, since these keys are usually located next to each other, but for some reason they changed it. Probably due to unwanted associations. But this led to that they have unmatched names, and Delete doesn’t correspond to his name at all.
Motherboard, rendered in old computer animation, looks a little bit creepy, especially because her differently shaped eyes framed in dark hauntingly resemble a black eye. Apart from this association, perhaps it was intended. This is also the case with Salmacis from “Shadow of the elves”, who is exceptionally kind but looks a little creepy because she is a supernatural spirit and the uncanny valley effect emphasizes her otherworldliness. Motherboard has at least one really scary feature. She can suddenly appear on any semblance of a screen and take children into Cyberspace in any moment. Usually she opens a portal, where they are immediately sucked in, without waiting for them to express their willingness to go. Of course, while the children are in Cyberspace, time in the real world will not pass, and they will return the same second from where they were pulled out, but in their experience, time will pass. If they were doing something important before, it may be difficult for them to switch back after the adventure. In some episodes, the adventure helps them do something that was difficult for them before, but they can’t always be so lucky. Can she pick them up while they’re eating or sleeping? Or worse: can she get them out of the bath or toilet? Or maybe she does have a sense of when it’s best to show up, since she almost always knows the moment to pick them up when there are no other people around.
Motherboard has no body because she exists everywhere at the same time and can be displayed on any kind of screen, like clock dials and windows. She is like an artificial intelligence inside Cyberspace, and in theory can control it like a deity. Although she is considered all-powerful, she often acts helpless in the animated series. It also makes her similar to Salmacis, who is expected to protect the fairy village, but in most cases she’s the one who needs to be saved. But if the power of Salmacis was simply overestimated, in the Motherboard’s case this is explained by the virus launched into her in the first episode. Judging by the references and her partially remaining abilities, she could open portals anywhere, including through any screen into reality, and even with this ability alone she could stop many crimes. She could also change the settings of Cyberspace, and reprogram its people (but somehow not the Hacker). She could also observe everything that was happening in Cyberspace at the same time, and could still quickly learn about everything important. However, this did not help her notice the return of the Hacker with his virus in advance in order to install the update earlier. Or did the update simply take too long to prepare? In any case, even when she was working at full capacity, Hacker got away with a lot even before he was sent to exile, so it seems that her powers wasn’t very effective even then.
The following contains spoilers for the main plot.
Based on the references and details shown, I tried to reconstruct the hypothetical backstory of the characters and the chronology of events that occurred before the start of the animated series. Including oddities from later seasons and official comics. It turned out chaotic, but this is a puzzle with such small details and so many white spots that there is no other way. Also, if the canon version is different, then I don’t know anything about it. I just collected facts directly from the animated series and old official site.
So, Motherboard has been around since the very beginning of Cyberspace. She either created all the sites, or humans created them, and she turned them into floating islands and planets, which she then populated with intelligent life. At some point, Dr. Marbles became her personal mechanic. He came from the Mount Olimpus site, from its main population not associated with mythology, since they all have common features – a light bulb on their head and unusual colored hair and skin. One day, Marbles realized that he couldn’t do it alone and needed an assistant. So, according to him, he created the Hacker to protect Cyberspace and gave him brain power equal to his own.
Initially, the Hacker was supposed to be a hacker in a good way – to look for vulnerabilities in the system and fix them, but he chose to abuse his abilities. Some of his first crimes were illegal downloading (for which Motherboard grounded him) and an attempt to double his gigabytes, which led to the collapse of the data storage center. Hacker looked different back then: as tall as Marbles and with a slimmer figure. He still looked like this when he began his path as a villain, and for a while he pretended to be good.
At the time, he collaborated with Coop, the temporary king of the site Radopolis, and together they invented the transformatron, which can turn anyone into anything. Although, it seems that it was not finished, perhaps, with the help of that technology, the Hacker changed his appearance.
Given Hacker's strong resemblance to many of the residents of Castleblanca site, I assumed that he might be from there, and that’s still possible, since he was also trying to create a new sidekick there – Gigabyte. He probably created Digit in a similar way when he wanted an assistant for himself, and he was his masterpiece. Buzz and Delete don’t have the same sophistication, so I doubt that Hacker created them too, and the point is not that he wanted to play it safe with them so that it wouldn’t turn out like with Digit – all three worked together for enough time.
It was Digit who built a spaceship for Hacker, the Grim Wreaker, on which he worked in the same team with Buzz and Delete for some time. During that period, Digit wrote his cookbook, and Hacker didn’t want to let him go on a book tour, but apparently he let him go anyway, otherwise Digit otherwise Digit wouldn't have said it like that. No one wanted to buy the villain sidekick's book, so it only became popular towards the end of Season 2.
But actually, Digit was created back in the period when Hacker was on the same side as Marbles and Motherboard. When Hacker started doing evil, Digit helped him, not realizing he was doing something bad until it was too late. But even then he has been a double agent, and secretly prevented Hacker from harming Motherboard and websites.
Hacker was partly inspired to take over Cyberspace by the story of the evil genie Warren, although he didn’t know him personally, he was closely acquainted with Coop, who defeated the genie. When the hacker revealed his plan, Coop refused to do anything for him, fell into debt, and had to hide from him. During all that time, the Hacker has committed enough evil deeds, and what is especially noteworthy is that he ruined 12 websites, which, let me remind you, are entire worlds with unique inhabitants. But the last straw was when he took the encryptor chip from Motherboard. For this, Hacker was disconnected from the general energy source, which made him the only one who needed to constantly recharge.
Marbles said that he could have simply deleted him, but instead decided to banish him to the Northern Frontier, unknown why, considering that Hacker even then said that he would return. Marbles sent him there by catapult in a capsule, where there was nothing but a machine through which the energy was drained out of him. However, Marbles was clearly in a hurry, and the procedure wasn’t completed, so Hacker was able to survive without recharging for a surprisingly long time.
Oddly enough, just before that he managed to stealthily capture Digit and sneak him into the capsule. Later Digit created the Recharger Chair for him. At that time, Digit helped Hacker only because he was afraid of what he could do to him. They were soon joined by Buzz and Delete.
Based on Buzz and Delete's mentions of the cheese factory, it can be assumed that they didn't like working there so Hacker took them to work for him. Or, if he did create them, the memories of the cheese factory could mean they were sent there when the Hacker was banished to the Northern Frontier.
In exile, Hacker wasn't in complete isolation: he managed to turn off the electricity on some unknown site. Digit sent a message to Motherboard that allowed her to fix the problem. Buzz and Delete noticed this, then Hacker found out that Digit switched sides. He put him in a cage, but Digit escaped with the help of his wonder beak to the Motherboard and from then on helped only her.
Additional measures were taken against the Hacker. Buzz and Delete were probably sent (back) to a cybercheese factory, and Hacker was placed on top of a Mount Wayupthere. Somehow a touring circus of parallinis rehearsed tricks there, and they, not knowing Hacker, helped him down, so in the future they blamed themselves for a long time for his return.
Afterwards, Hacker somehow reunited with Buzz and Delete. Perhaps they weren’t taken seriously at the cheese factory, so they didn’t stop their escape. Buzz and Delete brought the Grim Wreaker to the Hacker, and it happened quietly enough that nothing foreshadowed their return for the others. The Hacker set up a permanent base on the Northern Frontier with a hangar for his ship, and, in fact, became the ruler of that site, since there is no one else there, and the sign representing the site says “Northern Frontier – The Home of The Hacker".
He hid for a very long time so that everyone would stop expecting a threat from him, and many would completely forget about his existence. He prepared for his return by creating a virus and waiting for the opportunity like the moment when the schoolchildren accidentally caused a breach in the system. But he was also lucky to launch the virus at the very moment when the antivirus update for Motherboard was just about to install. This is where the animated series begins.
Next – the interesting things I noticed in the episodes.
For main characters, while they are in Cyberspace, time doesn’t really pass. At the same time, time also moves differently inside Cyberspace. In the first episode it’s mentioned that the Hacker was banished "eons ago", which you might think is simply an analogue of "a long time ago", but in other episodes eons are also used as a unit of time. So they count time in epochs, which can be any length and are replaced quite often? How do they get so many significant events to name an era after them? Perhaps this is because computer technology is developing very quickly, and no matter what is new, it’s a separate era. But they also measure time in years. In the episode "Sensible Flats", Hacker's cellmate said that he has been in prison for 40 years and has another 35 left, to which Hacker says that he can’t spend 75 years there. But the fact is that 40 years ago in reality (since the release of the animated series, that is, in the 1960s), no Cyberspace could exist – computers were much more primitive, and the very early version of the Internet appeared only at the end of that decade. So their years should pass faster than human years. In addition, they don’t have a common rotating planet by which to count years, so it’s not clear by what principle they count them. Days pass on the southern border island in the first episode, and each time at sunset the site is reformatted. Maybe that's how they measure time.
What would have happened to the main characters if they hadn’t managed to get away from that island? For some reason, the Hacker believes that it’s impossible to survive, both in the first episode and in “Find these glimmers,” although he and his sidekicks remained on the island in each of these episodes, and nothing happened to them. That is, in the first episode they were frozen in an iceberg, but it didn’t harm them. Real kids, if they remained in their physical form, would certainly not get off so easily.
They disappear from the real world when they travel, so it’s not their virtual counterparts who travel. So what would happen to them? The options are: they would return to the real world as if nothing had happened; would return with consequences, even dead; died there and wouldn’t return; would survive, but would become virtual forever. Or, most likely they would inevitably be saved at the last moment, no matter what.
In the episode "Castleblanca", main characters describe Hacker to random people, asking if they have seen him, but their descriptions are always very vague. First they describe him as “tall guy in a cape” and using this description they find Dracula, and then they find out that many residents of horror-themed site fit that description. Then they add to the description that he has green skin and a long pointy chin. They never remember the important details that really distinguish Hacker from anyone else: a disproportionate body – the large upper part and small legs, the “puce” colored cape and the opera singer hairstyle. Because the way they described him the second time actually still matches the appearance of Dracula. The funny thing is, when they ask Dracula if he has seen someone with such a description, he points on the map to his castle again!
You know that typical cartoon trope when one doesn’t recognize another in a primitive disguise? In "R-Fair City", Digit initially doesn’t recognize Buzz and Delete, although they are wearing only a few clothes and pigtailed wigs. Unless robots of this type existed elsewhere in such numbers that they could only be differentiated by differentiate by small appearance details, he should’ve recognized them. Especially after they recognized him. Then Hacker appears in the guise of Madame Incognita, and neither Digit nor the Cybersquad recognizes him, despite describing him to everyone in the previous episode. He could still be recognized by the same green skin and prominent chin, or by his face and figure in general. But in the end they recognize him by another trait – unfairness. In another episode "Day at the spa" Digit dresses up as several beauticians, swapping glasses and wigs. The Hacker doesn’t immediately recognize him, but every time he thinks that there’s something familiar about him, like a beak or wings, the only thing missing is the propeller tail sticking out from under his robe. So in the end, even if Digit hadn't been caught wearing the wrong combination of glasses and wig, Hacker would still recognize him by other things.
Back in "R-Fair City", Digit tells Buzz and Delete that he once ran a beauty salon so they would fall for his wig trick. In that episode, it seems he made it up. But then in the episode "A day at the spa" he portrays several beauticians quite masterfully, so there may be at least some truth to what he said. It’s possible that he actually had a salon during Hacker’s exile. Maybe he worked part-time in the salon shown in the episode “Size me up.”
In the same spa episode, it’s interesting that the spa was a beauty salon for villains. It’s strange that they have such a thing at all, and openly, without hiding it in any way. But it’s even stranger that in the episode “Of all the luck” it turned out that they also have an entire employment service for evil henchmen. Also in the game show episode "Find these glimmers" it’s mentioned that the Wreaker 2, a replica of the Grim Wreaker, was made by “Cyber crafts for bad guys”. It would seem that there aren’t so many villains there to organize something like that. And would the Motherboard allow this during the times of her full power?
I have two versions. The first is that they are all the planned villains, the existence of which is implied by some sites like those with horror-themed, wild west and fairy tale characters. They aren’t as malicious as the Hacker and do not threaten the very existence of these sites, so Motherboard could allow them to organize so as not to turn them into real outcasts who could become much worse than is acceptable in Cyberspace.
The second is that they very quickly managed to take advantage of the fact that the Motherboard doesn’t have full power due to the virus. Perhaps many of them wanted to become real villains and were just waiting for the opportunity. Many also already knew each other at least by hearsay, so they didn’t have to look for each other for long to get organized. This would explain why they only began to appear over time, after the virus was launched, because it’s not obvious whether they were active with their organizations before that.
However, I am inclined to the first version, because the villains are indifferent to Motherboard’s fate and Hacker’s affairs, as if it didn’t affect their lives at all, and not allowed them to come to light.
The episode “The Poddleville case” was probably made as a pilot, as can be seen from the graphics, which is noticeably different from the other series. All characters are drawn with thinner outlines, without additional silhouette outline. The design of the characters is also slightly different. In addition, Jackie behaves especially drastic in this episode.
By the way, how do the eggs in the carriages control the shape of the houses there? Why is it that as soon as you pull them out, all the shapes are immediately distorted? If these are the site's children, shouldn't they hatch at some point?
In the pyramid episode "Clock like an Egyptian", the water clock that lowers the stove was plugged with plugs that popped out when Binky pressed the button. But the plugs didn’t disappear, so why didn’t the Cybersquad try to put them back? Even if Binky knocked them out again, someone could stay to keep putting them back, buying extra time for the others. If they did this, they wouldn’t know the exact amount of time, so the educational part wouldn’t take place, but it would still be logical. They could at least show why the kids were unable to put the plugs back in, like, the plugs might have self-destructed.
Also, it’s not true that if the door drops, they will be sealed in the pyramid forever. Dr. Marbles entered the pyramid through the top, and the others could do the same. There were enough large things in the treasury to be collected in a pile on which one could stand, or Digit could bring a rope with a hook.
At the end of that episode there was the dumbest case ever when they lost the encryptor chip. Seriously, why did they all suddenly leave without even trying to look for it? The last scene showed that the chip was right on the surface, and somewhere nearby. Let's say the kids were tired of the adventure, but Marbles could stay and find this chip using the same navigation device that brought him here in the first place. Or if he had stayed, would he have been captured again? Why couldn't the Cybersquad stay just a little longer? In their world, time still doesn’t pass, and the chip could be discovered quite quickly. And why didn’t Hacker stay to look for this chip, since he arrived there anyway? He didn't do much in that episode, so why not do something really important at the end?
By the way, although Dr. Marbles claimed that he was what Hacker wanted more than anything, here Hacker showed that he wanted the encryptor chip more. Buzz and Delete didn't even think twice about whether to grab Marbles or the chip – they chose the chip, and Hacker also instantly changed plans, approving their choice. Why didn't they decide to grab Marbles along with the chip? I assume because in that case he could have time to throw the chip to the kids, and they would have found a way to give it to Motherboard.
You might also think that Marbles shouldn't have given the pyramid owners the idea to give him to the Hacker, when before that they didn’t know what to do with him. If he wouldn’t they could avoid losing the chip in the end. But in fact, it is obvious that Hacker in that case drew Binky’s wrath onto himself, and if not for him, she could have taken revenge on the main characters for the crumbling the pharaoh mummy and the result would’ve been the same.
After that the chip didn’t even return to the pyramid, since Binky didn't think to look for it either. Here the Cybersquad even talked to the Motherboard about how they wouldn’t give up and would still find the encryptor chip. When they could do it right now.
Dr. Marbles and Digit finally decided to look for the missing chip immediately at the end of the episode "Eureka", where Hacker once again showed that the chip was his priority, although there was nothing stopping him from capturing Marbles first. This episode ends rather strangely. The Hacker flies in space and wants to take revenge on the kids, but once again sees Marbles flying by. This immediately cheers him up and he says that revenge is at hand, so it made sense that he was going after Marbles again. However, instead, Hacker suddenly turns around and flies in the opposite direction. What would that mean? Of course, they are looking for the chip, but only because they think it is lost somewhere in Cyberspace. For some reason, no one thinks that the two-dimensional transition could really destroy it. It’s useless to look for something unknown where, when it’s not even clear whether it still exists. Unsurprisingly, that was the last time they looked for the chip in the first season.
When they returned to the pyramid in the episode "The Eye of Rom" in the second season, it turned into a new ridiculous way to lose the chip. Decide for yourself what was more stupid – not even trying to look for the chip or, without thinking, feeding it to the giant frog. Of course, it tried to eat Digit, but Buzz and Delete were also swallowed by the monster and nothing happened to them. Digit could force it to release him using the propeller on her tail. The kids also didn’t try to throw anything else to the frog. This episode must have been very confusing for them, with all the fair and unfair deals.
Actually, it’s as if they aren’t looking for better solutions in the pyramid episodes. The maze could simply be driven around, and without a GPS, Digit could look at it from above and tell them where the dead ends are. Instead of kidnapping the Hacker and exchanging him for the chip, they could have grabbed the chip right away, then they would’ve avoided at least one extra trouble.
In the episode “Secrets of Symmetria”, the symmetrizer is very easily changed from completion to destruction. It's not highlighted, but there are literally two switches that change it between these two modes. Why would Dr. Marbles make such a feature if he loves order and symmetry so much?
Also in the episode “A Battle of Equals”, his satellites that collect cyberstatic were easily reprogrammed to shoot it back. And these satellites accumulated cyberstatic without destroying it or recycling it, just asking for disaster. Moreover, the defense of their system shouldn’t have been based on mathematics, which the Hacker has no problems with, but on selflessness or humanism, or something else that he couldn’t imitate.
Marbles doesn’t seem to notice that he is giving destructive potential to his inventions. Even the creation of Hacker was such a case. When Glowla appeared as a humanoid bird of the same species as Digit, it showed that it’s impossible to create a completely unique creature in Cyberspace. As a basis, they must choose an already existing type of creature, apparently originally created by Motherboard. So making Hacker a Castleblanca type, which is usually associated with villainous tendencies, is an odd choice on Marbles' part. I have a theory that he unconsciously projected his dark side onto him. Everyone says that Marbles loves order to the point that he alphabetizes the food in the fridge, when actually he doesn't seem all that crazy. He probably has a craving for chaos, but feels that his job is too demanding for him to let it show. So Marbles gave this trait to Hacker so that he could complement him. Or simply unconsciously, as with other inventions. Naturally, everything went wrong.
However, although the Hacker himself decided not to be good, he still expects this from his henchmen (but not to his enemies, of course). Thus, he created Digit with the potential for good, also projecting his craving onto him. As a result, there were two whole generations of Frankenstein’s monsters who turned against their creators. Finally, Digit created a smaller and more primitive copy of himself – Widget, who didn’t change sides, so that cycle ended with him. But still, this could be some sort of secret reason why Marbles keeps leaving loopholes for Hacker/ Hacker obsessively wants to kidnap Marbles / Digit keeps messing with Hacker about getting back to him – they're still missing that part of themselves.
By the way, you can notice that Marbles, Hacker and Digit don’t recognize each other as parents and children. This is not surprising, because they weren’t raised from babies, but were immediately created in adult form with the appropriate starting set of knowledge. They also belong to different species. At the same time, those who are recognized here as relatives may also belong to different species. Marbles, who is a humanoid with a light bulb, has a nephew who is a triangular prism. Warren the Genie’s mother is a robot or cyborg. It seems that it’s not common here to have genetic relatives at all, and creators and creatures, who can be of any species, are not obliged to consider each other as relatives. However, they may have relatives who act as a foster family. It is possible to have biological children here, at least as can be seen from the residents of Poddleville with their eggs in strollers. But on other sites it’s not nearly as common as if it were the only method of reproduction.
In “Less Than Zero”, the site leaders hold a meeting and start by saying that Hacker is "getting more powerful by the day." It's funny that it was right after the episode "Trading places", where the Hacker shrunk, fell underground, got stuck in a bottle, and then was sold as an action figure into a collection.
By the way, since it wasn’t shown then, who do you think saved him in the end – the genie who returned (while his mother wasn’t looking), Buzz and Delete who came to their senses, or maybe Hacker himself: he made something out of figurines, and maybe this meddling was enough for the lemonade seller to let him go? I understand that this was a good moment to end the episode, but sometimes it turns out that the most mysterious and intriguing things remain behind the scenes.
For example, how in the episode “Cool it” did the kids fly back if the cabin of their aircraft was filled with cryoxide? They would freeze if they tried to get inside too, but they couldn't fly outside either. Motherboard wouldn’t have opened the portal for them until she was cooled down. Unless they could send the aircraft on autopilot, if it was there and wasn’t damaged by cryoxide, and then Motherboard would teleport them. Also, how did Buzz and Delete get out at the end of that episode after they were swallowed by the monster from the castle moat, if before that it was such a problem for them to get out of the cryoxide tank?
There's clearly a cartoon rule here that behind the scenes they can do anything. For example, in “The Poddleville case” what did the kids, while in prison, use to make costumes of poddles, a stroller and an egg costume? How did they make a robot version of Hacker in “Secrets of Symmetria”? They had all the necessary parts for the Marbles robot, but they had to make the Hacker robot with a completely different design so that Digit could control it from the inside, and not using the remote control. Yes, it the episode “Trading Places” Digit turned out to be an excellent mechanic, but to build a ship, he always needed parts, which were quite difficult for Cybersquad to get. And here they managed to make a unique robot even before the Hacker arrived on the spaceship, being very close by!
In "Find those glimmers", if the Wreaker 2 was an exact replica of Hacker's ship, that means the Grim Wreaker is also powered by these electric butterflies. Doesn't Hacker have enough charging problems to use such an unreliable power source for his ship? In that episode they said that the glimmers are rare, and it seems that they don’t even live on that island, since they had to be released there.
Digit had the glimmer sensors in his beak, obviously because earlier the villains also had to catch them one at a time. And yet now they somehow do without them. Perhaps there’s a way to lure those glimmers with something. Perhaps they are breeding them. They had an insect incubator in the episode “Mother's Day”. Delete seems to specialize in it. The only difficulty is to make sure he doesn't get attached to them.
Besides, one of the three main villains has a clear talent for gardening. Not only did they grow a luxurious oasis in the middle of the desert in "Return to the Sensible Flats", but they even landscaped the entire desert site of Eureka in "True Colors". From simply seeded trenches, a really lush jungle grew there. And, although it was part of a big evil plan, this particular part was absolutely without a catch. Truly the greatest good deed they've ever done.
The main conflict in “Return to the Sensible Flats” was water shortage in the desert. There’s a particularly noteworthy moment when Digit showed the kids a photo from their last visit to this site... but in fact, then everything was different. In the photo they are standing among flowers and greenness and cacti don't stand out. Whereas in the episode “Sensible Flats” the desert was exactly the same, except in slightly greenish tones. There were definitely no flowers.
Dry season is normal for the desert, but at that moment it could be spring, when everything grows for a while. If it were always green there, it wouldn’t be a desert, but a prairie. But at the end of that episode, at sunset, everything stopped being green at all, so it wasn't grass, it was just a trick of light.
The kids obviously didn’t remember how everything happened that time, so they believed the photo. But where did that photo actually come from? It's somehow fake...
The reason why the rain was caused by fish dancing in that episode isn’t obvious. However, this is not ordinary superstition, as you might think. The dance didn't work as long as the fish danced in the water, and from the words of Deke (the old man with the banjo), they had been doing it for a long time. However, it started to rain just as the fish found themselves on dry land and danced there. It was as if the water was only preventing them.
Cyberspace is a computer world, so the site program appears to have included this instruction: if the fish are floundering on land, it’s time to turn on the rain. The way fish jump out of the water looks like a dance, so Deke interpreted the pattern in his own way. In fact, the behavior of the fish here is used by the system as an indicator of the presence or absence of water. And it’s possible that having figured this out, people of Sensible Flats could make it rain more often than when a mountain lake dries up.
The fact that most of the characters are virtual creatures can be a good excuse for such a typical trope as plot-convenient amnesia. The hitting the head just messed up the configuration, and then another hit fixed it. It's like some problems with a computer are solved by simply rebooting or turning it off and on. And the inconsistency is explained by a complexity, where sometimes something is buggy and when it’s not, it depends not on one obvious thing, but on a bunch of invisible circumstances. It’s not clear why in the episode “Trading places” a hit on the head made Buzz and Delete smarter. Apparently, there’s some kind of interference in their software that prevents those two from using their minds to the full potential.
This particular amnesia trope is shown in the episode "Raising the bar". Why they were in similar situations in many episodes, and only lost their memory in this one, of course, is purely convenient for the plot. But what’s interesting here is that the Hacker, having lost his memory about himself, but not about the world around him, behaves modestly and obediently. He reacts appropriately to everything that happens to him and never reaches the final straw that would make him a villain again. Maybe not enough time has passed, but if the authors wanted it to happen naturally, they would’ve rushed the event. So…
Is the Motherboard really sure that Hacker can’t be reprogrammed? Could it be that Marbles is interested in keeping him that way? Ultimately, the Hacker is performing his original function – looking for system vulnerabilities; and Marbles will be the one who fix them. I know they tried it in "Inside Hacker," but it was so flimsy, like Marbles set it up on purpose so they wouldn't think he hadn't considered it. Perhaps he wanted to convince everyone that even if they tried, it would be impossible.
In general, talking about the memory loss in “Raising the bar”, there was a lot of false expectations, and I don't know if it was a successful evasion of predictability or a missed opportunity.
Hacker is dissatisfied with his job, which Buzz entrusts to him. Hacker demands a raise for using his mind to complete a difficult task. And when he finds out that the bugs in Cybrary is his plan, Hacker asks why he is not the boss. At this point, you would think that he would regain the position naturally because he is clearly superior to Buzz in this role. However, he doesn’t. Despite all the hints, until the next hit, Hacker remains in the role of an overqualified henchman who usually doesn't strive for power. Another thing that could be expected is that in the end he’ll run out of patience, lose his temper and thus regain his role, and then his memory. That didn't happen either.
Finally, when Hacker did get his memory back, one would expect Buzz to face his wrath for how he used him. And he sincerely couldn’t understand the reason, because now he had lost his memory. Instead, the entire episode simply vanishes from both of their memories. The only one who will remember what happened is Delete, but of course he won’t tell them about it.
It's interesting how in the first two seasons, returning to places they had already been, the Cybersquad ended up in exactly the opposite stories. The first time in the Sensible Flats, the kids proved that the Hacker was innocent, the second time – that he was guilty. Similarly, the first time in Poddleville, the kids were falsely accused, and the second time, they investigated the false accusation. The first time in Castleblanca they were invited to a ball for free, the next time they had to deal with a greedy businessman. In R-Fair Coty, they first looked for villains who were disguised, the next time they still had to look for them, but they were undisguised and everywhere. Mount Olympus was wild and full of dangers the first time, but very cultured and civilized the second time. The first time they were captured in Shangri-La, the second time the site with its ruler was captured. In Pyramidia, the first time the kids saved Dr. Marbles from the pyramid owners, the next time they helped the pyramid owners kidnap the Hacker.
The kids in Cyberspace are called "earthlies" by everyone. They may not be the first earth people to travel there from reality. In any case, they are certainly not the only ones. Among all the bizarre characters, sometimes there are those who are indistinguishable from ordinary human beings. Many of the humanoids here can be very similar to humans, and yet they have some kind of trait that shows that they are still not human. The characters I'm talking about don't have such traits. These include the owner (or receptionist) of the spa for villains, Cy Clone the clone hunter, half the inhabitants of the Radopolis, Slider and his father, the hunters from the episode “EcoHaven CSE”, and Master Pi (minus his ability to levitate). Could this be a reference to the fact that it was at that time that more and more people began to master the Internet, and also spend more and more time in virtuality?
There is also the question of whether the people of Cyberspace can get into the real world? At the time of the episode “Secret of Symmetria”, where Jackie fears that the Hacker can get to the real world, I thought that it was definitely not. At most, he could drag something from there into Cyberspace using portals.
In the first episode, Digit appeared on screen to prove that everything was for real. Then I thought that this was the only way for them to interact with reality. But then in the episode "Mother's Day" Jackie brought home a flower from Cyberspace and gave it to her mother. The flower didn’t turn out to be hologram and didn’t disappear in the real world. And 3D printers hadn’t been invented at that time. Later, in the episode “Trick or Treat”, they even brought their Skwak Pads into the real world. At a time, when not every kid had simple cell phone. So it turns out that it is the kids rather than Hacker who are moving things from Cyberspace into reality.
In "The Tower of Attitude", Hacker forces many websites to surrender by endlessly replaying a recording of his speech from a giant statue of himself. So the kids of Cybersquad, like secret agents, sneak inside the statue to turn off the recording. The Hacker's tactics here could have two opposite results. Either constantly hearing that recording is really unbearable, as was shown, or you can get used to it and not notice it as ordinary street noise. The deciding factor seems to be that the recording was broadcast too loudly to be ignored. However, the Motherboard control central and the Grim Avenger were able to create soundproofing, so the site rulers should try to do the same before agreeing to the Hacker's terms. After all, he will still not turn off recording for each individual site, but will wait until all sites give up.
When the Cybersquad was inside the statue, they said they were in Hacker's stomach or mouth or nose - and that always disgusted Jackie. Interestingly, in the episode "Inside Hacker" it turned out that the Hacker’s real anatomy is not so different from what was inside the statue.
Some of the traps were quite illogical. Why does the lever, disguised as turning off the alarm, turn on a giant fan, which blows the intruders further into the statue? Why lower the wall so they can only continue to go up? Is it because there are much more dangerous traps higher up? The elevator could have crushed them against the ceiling. Later there were incinerating lasers. The tiled floored room had trapdoors leading into boiling oil and sliding walls. By the way, the distance between the tiles was sufficient to walk without stepping on any of them. If the kids hadn’t activated the one that moves the walls, they could’ve walked along the walls, since these tiles weren’t there at all.
In general, this episode, as well as one of the following, “Battle of equals,” would’ve been better as the finale of the first season than the real finale “Out of synch” – an episode about the destruction of Mount Olympus due to the lack of synchronized music. It wasn't nearly as epic as the two episodes in which the Hacker came particularly close to conquering or destroying Cyberspace. In the end, the only thing that indicates that the last episode is the finale is very similar to the finale of WordGirl’s first season: at the end of both, the heroes and villains tell each other that they’ll never stop doing what they’re doing.
In the episode "Size me up", Hacker sends a virus to Motherboard via email, allegedly from the kids. And she almost falls for it, despite the fact that the kids basically can't send her anything. They don’t have her email address; they usually always talk via video call, which most often she initiates herself; and if Motherboard can’t talk to them like that, then there’s no point in writing anything to her. Thanks to Widget's warning, she sends the letter with the virus back. And Hacker falls for it because he thinks she's giving up. But why would she, if the virus either attacks logic (as was originally intended) or simply blows up the computer (as ultimately happened)? If everything had gone according to his plan, she wouldn’t have been able to send anything to him anyway.
Also, why did Ivanka the Invincible’s treasure map was send to the villains? In "All the Right Angles" Motherboard wanted to send it to the kids, but her language circuits didn’t work, so the letter was sent to both everyone on the “buddy list” and everyone on the “baddy list”. But shouldn't this problem have corrupted the message rather than sent it where it shouldn't? Even if the problem was that the list names sounded very similar, this could easily be avoided. First, don't name the lists the similar way. Secondly, don’t send anything using a voice command when it has already been clearly stated that the language circuits isn’t working well. In the end, Motherboard simply had to call the children through the portal and give the only copy directly into their hands. She was going to call them anyway. Moreover, they never sent anything by email to the kids. Why, if Motherboard can contact them anywhere and at any time? This seems to be another moment where Marbles is playing both sides.
By the way, in the same episode, he also gave up searching for the encryptor chip too soon. This time the chip was discovered by Motherboard but Marbles simply immediately said that there was nothing on the spot except the treasure map. But the search was set specifically to the encryptor chip, and not to anything valuable. It could still be there, he just had to check under the rock.
In the episode “Totally Rad”, the kids always agree to unfair terms. The right to change the field perimeter was at least stated in the rules. There I thought that they would notice that although the area was becoming narrower, it was also longer and they could use this in their tricks. But apparently it was necessary to use only those ramps and other objects that can’t be moved. In the end, they turned this to their advantage only because Inez came first in the last round, while the other times it was always the robots who came first. Apparently, because at that time the kids were a losing team and they were given a head start to maintain intrigue.
But as for the unfair terms in case of victory and defeat, they are very disproportionate: if the kids lose, they will never return to Cyberspace, and if the Hacker, he’ll just leave Radopolis alone. And even then, as is known from the episode “The borg of the ring”, he won’t leave it. When they increased the stakes, things got even worse: if the kids lose, Inez will become Team Hacker’s cheerleader, and if he loses, he'll never take over any sites again. But it’s obvious that he won’t fulfill his promise, and the kids had no reason to agree to this. Just as he won’t be able to drive them out of Cyberspace, because if he could, he would have already done it. As for the cheerleader thing, the demand is quite vague since Team Hacker only exists for the competition, but the Cybersquad thought that this meant Inez would have to join Buzz and Delete on Hacker's team and stay in Cyberspace forever. Even if they lost, they could simply not comply with Hacker’s demand. They wouldn't have to prove anything. Everyone would forget about this when the kids continued to help them, because it’s in no one's interest that they never return to Cyberspace.
It’s typical for Cyberspace to conduct elections for the site ruler in dubious ways. In the episode "Creech who would be crowned" the ruler of Tikiville is chosen by winning in car races. As if the ability to drive and navigate are the main qualities needed by a site leader. And the reward there seems to be comparable to the Radopolis’ wish-granting crown, which was ultimate reward for saving Cyberspace in "Borg of the Ring". It’s unknown what restrictions on wishes were on the light bulb hat, but no one considers it to be as dangerous as the ring crown.
And for some reason it was never used again, although it could have been very useful in the episode “A Tikiville turkey day” to restore nature or at least protect the egg. And by the way, since a similar light bulb is part of the head of the people of Mount Olympus (on the one head you can even see where the wires stick out from), is this a reference to scalping? Even if no one remembers it now, perhaps the first local chief was defeated in this way, and part of his head became passed down as a crown.
There were some pretty unexpected participants from other sites in that race. For example, Zeus who is already the ruler of the site Mount Olympus. And, judging by the episode "Out of synch", he doesn't really care about it when the site starts to collapse. Also there’s Sheriff Judy, who is apparently tired of sharing power with her sister Judge Trudy. But who then will be the sheriff in Reasonable Flats? And also there’s Ivanka the Invincible, despite the fact that she is a ghost and also has her own site. And also there's somehow repainted (or disguised) King Dudicus. Maybe he doesn't like that his site doesn't allow him to skate, but despite being the king, he somehow can't change that.
Finally, the most questionable elections were in the episode "True colors", where it turns out that the position of Motherboard is suddenly also an elective one. Moreover, elections can be called by anyone at any time. But how can they take Motherboard's place if she is a completely different type of being, and whoever they choose won’t have the same abilities as her, nor will they be able to perform her duties. It's like choosing a human to take the place of a deity, provided that there’s also a real deity with powers that that human doesn’t have.
Whenever Hacker tries to destroy or disable the Motherboard, I wonder if this means that all of Cyberspace will be destroyed? It's like those villains who want to destroy the world, but haven't figured out what they will do without it (if they want to die, that's another thing). And how is Hacker going to take the place of Motherboard? Does it mean he can leave his body and upload his personality to the control central? These questions are partially answered in the third season finale "Snelfu Snafu". It turns out that the Motherboard's personality is not an integral part of the operating system, and can be compressed into a zip folder. And the Hacker can create his own virtual projection on the screen, while simultaneously remaining in his body. However, either because he didn't leave the body, or because he didn't try, or because the Motherboard couldn't be replaced after all, Hacker didn't gain her abilities.
He could only appear on the screen in the control central and be in two places at the same time (one of which is fixed). He couldn't open portals or see where things were going on through any semblance of screens. He still preferred to do everything in his body, and took almost no advantage of what he had always strived for. So it remained unclear whether his plan was even possible, or everything would simply fall apart if he managed to completely destroy Motherboard.
The two-part episode “Snelfu Snafu” really felt like the beginning of the end, and is followed by equally uncomfortable episodes where the kids always owe a huge amount of money to Hacker and be extremely frugal with all their spending. I understand that handling money is one of the main purposes of a math kid’s show, but it's done a bit wrong here. All episodes about money are quite painful, they rather teach that no matter how hard of how much you work, all the money you earn ends up going to someone who doesn't deserve it. Realistic, but somehow depressing. And, after all, why, if the kids do so much for Cyberspace, can't they make money from it? Why do they still have to take extra jobs in this episode? Also, if they had figured out how to refill cryoxide in Slider’s workshop earlier, they would have earned much more in the same time. Of course, in both cases it was completely in vain.
Next, why didn't they ask Creech for help when they were in Tikiville? Perhaps at that moment she was still the site ruler and could have been of great use with her magic crown. The crown that wasn't used anywhere else after that racing episode. If the crown only granted one wish, it would be stupid to waste it on a toy dinosaur for Inez. But remember, in an episode about money there should be no easy solutions to a problem! And they just couldn’t let for Creech to interfere with the love triangle, because then there simply won’t be any triangle! And if her appearance wasn’t expected, then why was it not any other location?
Back to the love triangle between the kids is just another reason why I thought they were getting worse in season 3. There was already a tedious back and forth villain love story. Thankfully, Romantic Plot Tumor of the series didn’t happen, except for that soap opera where Hacker and Wicked stupidly prove over and over again that they aren’t right for each other. I just don't think Hacker could ever realistically pull off an equal relationship with a strong, independent woman, and she should stop trying to make him the powerful, yet submissive ideal man.
And of course, what’s really disappointing in “Snelfu Snafu” is the ending of the encryptor chip storyline: the chip is destroyed, and they decided not to use another, so it wouldn't turn out the same way again. Or, according to a strange wording, there was only one encryptor chip, and all the others, which were clearly not the same, were as if they never existed. Here the Cybersquad simply accept that Motherboard will never get better. And Dr. Marbles is now looking for another way to destroy the virus, so he has disappeared from the plot even more thoroughly. Looking ahead, when he finds such a way, it’ll still lead to nothing. This storyline’s becoming increasingly unsatisfying.
The only thing that I liked was that Slider's dad didn’t become too important a character, despite all the hints in the episodes with Slider. I'm just tired of these ubiquitous plots where someone is looking for their father, who, of course, is a very big shot with some brilliant discoveries, the salvation of humanity or just a treasure (seriously, once you see it you find thousands of them). I was afraid that it would be the same here, but no: they don't look for Koop for that long, they find him quickly, and after that he almost never appears. He doesn't even return to the place of the king of Radopolis. But this meant that the entire Transformatron story arc was not nearly as impressive as it was pumped up at the beginning and in the descriptions. I expected the sites to be transformed. Well, or anyone at anything, not only once and only at their will.
In the New Year's episode, "Starlight night," the kids must simultaneously organize the production of some equipment for the stars and save Archimedes from Hacker. Digit says he doesn't like it when they split up (even though it happens in most episodes) and immediately sighs with relief when Matt says he'll go with him. It’s not clear why, because whether Matt will do something calmer or more risky is always 50/50. In this episode he actually takes on a calmer task while the girls go to rescue person who was kidnapped by the Hacker, just like in "Time for cooking". But in other episodes, it is Matt who goes to the most dangerous places and often gets stuck there, like in “Fairy borg father” or motivates his less courageous companion to do brave deeds, like in “Crystal clear”. So, it's unclear why Digit is so happy that Matt chose him, even before he said he would stay in the workshop. And as for the fact that Digit doesn’t like to be separated, back in the first season in the episode “Zeus on the loose”, The figure explained this by saying that in horror films, the worst thing always happens when the group splits up. They really didn't spit up in that episode. But overall, the main four don't have a clear preferred combination as to how they split up. So in different episodes Digit remains without problems with both Jackie and Inez.
In this episode, there’s a strange moment: Buzz and Delete distract the workshop workers with donuts, and meanwhile Hacker comes to Archimedes. They talk quite calmly, then everyone comes back... and suddenly the workshop is in ruins, while the Hacker almost nicely leads Archimedes aboard the Grim Wreaker. So what happened? Buzz and Delete were busy and couldn't cause mayhem. The Hacker didn't have much time, and it seemed should have kept an eye on Archimedes. He couldn't just tell him that he would be the grand marshal of Starlight Night parade instead, then suddenly destroy the circuit boards, and then, as if nothing had happened, invite him onto his ship. Besides, Archimedes didn’t seem to know what the Hacker had done, before he told him. Otherwise, why would he continue to be so calm about him?
Yes, when Hacker kidnaps Archimedes, he treats him surprisingly well. He doesn’t restrict his freedom in any way (except for the fact that they are on a spaceship), shows him his inventions and shares his memories, and even tolerates all his statements about wasted potential without any problems. But why? Archimedes is very similar to Dr. Marbles, who is treated much worse by Hacker. Doesn't Archimedes remind him with his constant reproaches and talk about how he should do good instead? Isn't he the one who can create an encryptor chip to fix Motherboard? And wasn’t Archimedes, when he first met Hacker, so afraid of him that he decided to move into two-dimensional space? Probably Hacker was just in a holiday mood. Or maybe he likes this type of relationship; he just has deeper grievances with Marbles?
Also in this episode, the Hacker again shows the contradictions between his claims and preferences. He wants to darken the stars forever, which are the main source of light in Cyberspace, so that, as he explains, it will be "as dark as his heart." At the same time, the Hacker himself does not like to be in the dark, otherwise there would be darkness on his ship and at his home base. But his base is always light. And it's always light on his ship. Moreover, in different episodes he sunbathes or simply relaxes under the sun. This is just another case of him just wanting others not to have what he likes. Like in another episode, Buzz and Delete discussed that Hacker wants to wreak chaos everywhere, but there must be cleanliness and order on his ship.
When Baskerville first appeared in "Of all the luck", I didn't understand his shtick, and when he later turned out to be more than a one-time villain, I still don't. Why is he “evil and cheap”, at the same time a good servant and, moreover, without a catch? In his first appearance, the catch may be that he took credit for the deeds of Buzz and Delete, as well as the fact that he was only willing to serve Hacker as long as luck was on his side. And even then, for a catch, it’s somehow weak. However, when he returned in “EcoHaven ooze”, even that was not the case. Such characters usually need to show the main villain that he cannot find a better sidekick than the ones he already had. Usually they turn out to be traitors or use the villain in a non-obvious way, while the main sidekicks are truly loyal and selfless. And here’s another strange breaking of cartoon stereotypes: the only point of such characters in Cyberchase is to become the reason for the jealousy of Buzz and Delete, so that they show their worst side. This applies not only to Baskerville, but also to Gigabyte in the episode "Perfect fit", where Buzz did everything to stop Hacker from bringing him back to life, and not only got away with it, but was even encouraged by the plot.
The fact that Baskerville suddenly returned in season four and became a recurring character thereafter, as well as the fact that Ivanka the Invincible's role was expanded, reminded me of all those fascinating characters that ended up being forgotten.
Ava – after symmetry episode, she also appeared on the council of site rulers in the first season and that’s all. Was there really no role for her other than to admire symmetry? And is there really nothing more to the topic of symmetry?
Binary, the mermaid gatekeeper from Aquari-Yum – Hacker mentioned her among the guests he invited to the ball in honor of sending the virus letter to the Motherboard, but after that she wasn’t even mentioned again, and her role in the story was taken over by Crab Prince. She also had a shark named Fluff, the same name as the penguin more present in the series.
Glowla with her robot whale – Of course, I wouldn't want her to just be Digit's love interest, but she could certainly fill the role his sudden cousin in later seasons.
And even those who weren’t forgotten at first, like Lucky, Master Pi, Archimedes, Eukie and Reeka, later also stopped coming back. Although, what can we say if they lost one of the original main characters – Dr. Marbles?
Some long works have “early-installment weirdness,” when at the beginning the creators didn’t fully think through something and then forgot about it. So here it’s the other way around: there is nothing strange in the first season, but in the following seasons more strangeness appeared, as if it was forgotten what happened before.
For example, in later seasons, villains lose their previous abilities. In the first season, in the spa episode, they find an energy crystal among the ice by simply scanning the area, and then they take it out from under the ice by simply shooting it with a laser. A similar situation arises in season 4, only no one is trying to do that anymore. Instead, they spend the entire episode digging up a hill and have to almost guess the location to find the Prism of Penguia.
And in the episode about sizes, also in the first season, Delete flawlessly impersonates Motherboard in order to lure Cybersquad to an inaccessible island. It’s not clear how they achieved that then. Whether he could change his voice like Digit, or they made up a message from Motherboard's previously recorded lines, just like they recreated the perfect disguise for him, it was all much better than in season 6. There, Delete again impersonates the Motherboard, but in an extremely ridiculous and unconvincing manner, but for some reason everyone still falls for it.
They also begin to forget what things looked like. For example, cryoxide in the first season looked like a homogeneous blue liquid in a transparent container, in the third – like green slime in a tin can. Could they have confused the cooler with the pea soup it was replaced with in “Cool it”? And the same thing happened with magnetite. In season 3 it’s a blue crystal that is crushed to a powder, and in season 4 it is something red and grainy. Could it be that the magnetite was somehow confused with the rubies from the episode “Clock like an Egyptian”?
I associate a crystal that changes color from blue to red with lyrium from “Dragon Age” and its close analogue – prismere from “Kingdoms of Amalur”. Why, by the way, at the end of the episode “Measure for Measure” did Slider and his dad decide to mix another remedy without the help of Cybersquad? What about the fact that at the beginning of the same episode, the magnetite included in the remedy was harmful to both of them?
Well, there’s not a clearly stated, but implied feature that citizens of Cyberspace cannot change naturally over time: they will always be the age they were programmed to be. At first the pattern was broken when they showed a young version of the Hacker. But it's easy to accept him as an exception. He could change himself on purpose, it’s in his character.
Then there was the scene where Slider finds his father and doesn’t recognize him because “his dad’s not old,” as if he knew that he couldn’t have changed in all the many years of his absence. And so it turned out: Coop’s aging was caused by magnetite, but he developed a remedy and returned to his original age, in which he looked more like Slider’s older brother. Everything was fine with this too.
But was it necessary to show a younger version of Creech's dad in the episode “Father’s day”? How could he want to change for the worse? Or did the Hacker also give him something made of magnetite? Maybe he needs the remedy too, but no one realizes it? Hacker wanted to take revenge on him. Why not the same way?
Also, flashbacks in the first seasons were black and white, and later became color.
In the episode “A broom of one’s own”, it seems they forgot to explain the most important thing: how brooms and mind control are connected. Moreover, everyone in the episode clearly knew, as if it was in the plot, but in fact that part was cut out. Everything very suddenly changes from now everyone has brooms to now they are a mindless army and the Cybersquad already know which lever in the control central can fix it. I guess the missing information is that the mind control was due to the energy being sucked out by the brooms, the energy was also being sucked out of the people of Cyberspace which put them into a mind controlled state and to remove it the energy had to be returned to its original value which is what was done using the override switch. And the mind control didn’t work on the kids, either because they are humans, or because they were given less powerful brooms, specifically so that they wouldn’t discover the trick.
In the episode "Tikiville turkey day", it is revealed that the people of Tikiville worshipped the egg of a long-extinct bird for a thousand years and preserved its nest with a canopy made from extinct plants, until a Hacker ruined everything for his tan. By the way, why did he turn pale? It's just another weird situation that isn't explained, like why his chin shrank in the episode “Grapes of plath”.
So, the kids replace everything missing for the nest with artificial things. Particularly noteworthy are the supports made from plastic cups, as well as a soccer ball instead of an egg. I don't even know if this is anti-environmental or vice versa. On the one hand, there is a serious intervention in nature (although this is not the real nature in Cyberspace), on the other, it’s the reuse and restoration of the destroyed environment. But this is not the most interesting thing. It’s the fact that breaking the egg turned out to be the right thing to do.
They worshiped this egg for a thousand years, not allowing it to hatch. No wonder the bird was thought to be extinct! There's just some kind of situation with Tabaluga, who hatched a hundred years after the death of his dad. They are simply a species of one long-lived specimen replacing another. At least in Cyberspace, a chick cannot die without hatching in time. Here, death or the lifeless state is more like a standby mode, as can be seen in the case of Gigabyte. If these creatures are not deleted from the system, they can always be reanimated.
In the episode “Change of art”, it becomes clear how portals are created in Cyberspace. They are made from some very rare purple substance that Hacker added to his sculptures for artistic purposes and accidentally discovered this feature. And, apparently, because the substance is so rare, he won’t be able to repeat the experiment. It explains how some other characters were also able to create portals, such as Master Pi at the end of "Problem solving in Shangri La". And also why sometimes these portals form on their own. Motherboard, however, apparently has access to or generates all of this substance. And her omnipresence allows the substance to be used anywhere, so accuracy depends only on the clarity of her mind.
She has also showed that she can destroy all selected portals at once. And she very impressively swallowed Hacker's ship at the end. We could have ended with this epic moment. It is not clear why Hacker not only remained completely fine after that, but did not even get stuck in the vortex, like the kids in the episode “Fraction of a chance”. Moreover, it could permanently dematerialize them! Really, why did the Hacker get off so easily?!
Well, I didn't try to cover everything this time. These are just the moments that I found most interesting.
"Step by step" is the last episode I've seen where they return to the main goal of fixing Motherboard. It turns out that Dr. Marbles has been missing all this time, experimenting with magmalux volcanic rocks. He was under the protection of Ivanka the Invincible, which explains how nothing happened to him before this episode. And in the finale of the third season, everyone had already forgotten that he constantly needed to be rescued, that they didn’t even think to look for him when he disappeared immediately after he found the encryptor chip.
In this episode, he manages to prove that those volcanic stones can destroy Hacker’s virus, but in the end, as always, it turns out that all the stones are destroyed. And the solution was very simple: when Digit was in the volcano, he had to use the protective material not to put on himself, but to wrap the stones and put them inside his chest. Marbles' experiment showed that they don't need many stones; in fact, even one may be enough. So if Digit had collected as many as he could, it wouldn't have mattered that the rest were destroyed in the eruption. It would be like in “Droids”, where although most of the roonstones disappeared in a frozen volcano, one was stuck inside R2-D2 and thanks to this they were later able to find roonstones on other planets. But here the authors didn’t do that simply because they can’t really finish the main plot!
After all, Marbles had tried to do without the encryptor chip before, back in the first season in the episode “Trading places”, where he discovered an electroroot that was expected to have the same effect. However, at the end it’s unclear what happened to that root. Either the monkeys didn’t want to give it back, or it simply didn’t work. But then it didn’t matter, because there were still so many seasons ahead. In the sixth season it looks different.
And although I didn’t watch that episode, I know from the list of episodes that in the season 10 they again returned to the idea of creating the encryptor chip. Moreover, for some reason a new character was required, and Archimedes, who had already done this, for some reason cannot repeat it. And, obviously, that time it didn’t work out for them again. On the one hand, it’s good that this storyline wasn’t abandoned completely, but then another ridiculous failure is already beginning to feel like a mockery.
Ultimately, the whole plot where they come close to fixing Motherboard but always fail in the end for stupid reasons is seriously annoying. Motherboard continues to insist that one day she'll definitely get better, and soon, but everyone knows that it’s not true. When you look at the big picture, although the kids win every episode, they never truly win. They can only always accept what they have and hope for the future. This is very depressing.
And it doesn’t have to be that if they restore the Motherboard, then she will inevitably destroy the Hacker, the Cybersquad will no longer have a mission and the continuation of the animated series will be impossible. It's easy to come up with another option. Motherboard may have reasons not to destroy the Hacker – she recognized his rights to vote. When she starts working in full force again, he’ll simply have to become more careful, stick to those sites with which her connection is weak (like the island of giants and little people, Ticktockia and others). This could refresh the main plot and show new interactions, and of course, give the authors a reason to show a bunch of new sites, which they already do. Many long-running animated series have the problem of stuck story, where they seem to have an ongoing plot, but they never seem to finish it. In the old She-Ra animated series, the main character has enough strength to finally win – she just doesn’t want to. There was also an option beneficial to everyone (demoting Hordak to the position of Skeletor), and the main problem would have been solved. True, in Cyberchase it’s circumstances that prevent the kids from finally winning. However, many of the mistakes that caused them to lose something important could have been fixed by simply trying again or working on the cause.
The most important thing is not to lose the goal, as in “World of Quest”, where the result was never in the first place. After all, unlike other such animated series, Cyberchase is still ongoing. Unfortunately, like all animated series that have become too long, this one suffers from the problem of being overcrowded with unnecessary stuff and the world endlessly expanding, although the potential of its known parts has not yet been exhausted. There are bland new sites and boring new characters popping up all the time that often turn out to be one-timed, but when they reappear it's even worse. Everyone suddenly has new relatives, which, however, with the Cyberspace’s system of “relatives” is not as illogical as if they were biological. Plot points are repeated, and the overall plot doesn’t seem like it’s going to go anywhere at all, except to stray as far as possible from the original idea. However, this animated series is no stranger to story arcs and long episodes, so there is still a small hope that when the authors find out that the next season will be the last, they will make a finale where they show that everything was not in vain.
I wanted to end here, but then I looked at an episode (“Clean-up on isle 8”) from season 14, the last one at the moment, and realized that everything was hopeless. The episode is unbearably long and slow, throughout it I kept wondering: is this still “Cyberchase”? Could it be that dreary season 7 of “WordGirl”? Or maybe “Primos!” meets “Twelve Forever”? Is this really what Cyberchase has become? Why did Inez suddenly decide to speak with a strong accent? Why do Matt and Jackie sound like their voices were forgotten to be properly processed in the studio? And we all know that Digit's new voice will never be as charismatic as Gilbert Gottfried's. But the voices are actually the least of the problems. The characters, the world and the plot, in general, everything got worse! You know what happens with series that don’t know when to stop. More and more new characters appear, until in the end you realize that you no longer recognize anyone, and even the whole world is no longer the same.
The last reminder that they are still in Cyberspace are an anthropomorphic whale and turtle, and even then they might as well be people in costumes. The trash they clean up is entirely human-made – no more allegories in the form of cyberstatic. No meaningful math topic, just a clumsy repetition of the episode where they invented a vacuum cleaner from scratch.
Neither Motherboard nor Hacker are shown or mentioned. You might even think that they destroyed each other behind the scenes without anyone noticing. Maybe that’s why the kids can now enter Cyberspace without portals and whenever they want. Buzz and Delete are fighting. Delete finally got the bunny called George, Buzz steals his carrot, Delete leaves, and Buzz realizes that Delete is happier working as a trash cleaner. The way Buzz is uncharacteristically willing to sacrifice his friendship with Delete for his happiness or become a cleaner himself inspires Inez to give the toy she didn't want to part with to her annoying little brother. The end! Where is their former creativity? Where is the charm of the characters? Where is the edutainment that leaves no room for boring morals? And their progressiveness was at its best from the very first season, why did they decide they needed more stereotypes? If I had started watching from the newest episodes, I would have stopped there, never knowing that this animated series was once good. But it was really good and the first 7 seasons are still worth watching.
Looking back, I feel strangely nostalgic. I didn’t grow up with this animated series, and I know it so little that I simply didn’t have time to be truly disappointed. Part of me still thinks it's something promising that awaits a grand outcome. That all this has really come to is not the real thing, and just the impact of the Hacker virus that will one day be revealed and everything will go back to the brilliant early days. Or maybe the real ending really was when Motherboard swallowed the Hacker. Then she digests all the information contained in him, was able to heal from the virus herself and allowed him to continue doing his part, without a real threat to her. That's why the new episodes lack excitement. However, the thought that Cyberspace was able to expand is a result of Motherboard's victory rather than an endless delay in solving the problem feels better. This might be the headcanon I'll believe.
