Power Overwhelming

Power Overwhelming
Season 2, Episode 11
Air date	July 20, 2013
Episode guide
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Power Overwhelming is the eleventh episode in the second season of StarCrafts. It is the thirty-sixth episode overall.

Plot

Army of terran units with siege tank roll in to engage combat at protoss expansion base. The siege tank in siege mode bombs at the stalker seeking shelter behind the gateway. The gateway's khaydarin crystal is bombed and then the stalker's head is obliterated.

The dark templar then takes action, still in permanent cloaking. He jumps on a marine's head and leaps to slash the siege tank's turret. This immediately plants scanner sweep from orbital command onto them so that the marines can detect the attacker and quickly shoot at it. But the counterstrike results a friendly-fire at a marine on top of the turret.

Army of marines charge forth, but they are electrocuted by psionic storm cast by high templar. The regiment comes by, but the sentry casts on force fields to trap them within. The high templar then zaps them with lightning attack again, and he uses feedback at the medivac dropship behind him.

Lots of marines and a marauder marches in, being unaware of a dark templar rushing between them. The dark templar and high templar jump at each other, and they merge into the ball of powerful psionic energy. The marines are extremely pushed and flown away by its power. A particular marine who tries to resist the shock wave measures the energy on his visor, and it reads "9000+", until his helmet breaks and he is forced away.

The energy ball is finished to reveal an archon. He utters, "POWER OVERWHELMING!", before further empowering himself with psionic charge and lightning strength. A ghost is there, firing an EMP shot at the archon. The archon is hit, disabling the power and removing his armor naked. Embarrassed, the archon makes a run for it.

Characters

• High templar
• Dark templar
• Marines
• Siege tank
• Marauder
• Stalker
• Sentry
• Sgt. Patches (cameo)
• Crackhead (debut)
• Archon
• Ghost

Trivia

• This episode shows that both high templar and dark templar can conflate to become archon in StarCraft II. Unlike in original StarCraft and Brood War, two high templars merge to become archon, but two dark templars, however, fuse to become dark archon.
• Sentry involved with high templar in the episode to cast force fields is a reference to the high templars' former ability to cast force fields (including hallucination ability) during alpha development of StarCraft II.
• Episode's number title is shown to be "10" used in previous episode, but YouTube's annotation "11" overlaps it to correct this.
• At the scene where the dark templar attacks, there is a swarm of three mutalisks on the sky in silhouettes flying away to the left. These will appear in the next episode.
• This is the first appearance of Crackhead, Sgt. Patches' wing man and an official StarCrafts character. This episode reveals how he obtained a signature crack on his visor.
  • However, the marine's helmet is shown to be completely shattered after measuring archon's power. He wouldn't possibly be believed to be Crackhead due to helmet's obliteration. On the scene where the dark templar attacks the siege tank, marines accidentally shot the marine on its turret, which causes his helmet to be cracked only once. He may more or less be deemed as Crackhead.
    • Until the trailer part of zeroth episode of Season 7, the montage of this episode under "Heroes are born" reveals that Crackhead WAS that marine whose visor was shattered while measuring archon's power.
  • His cameo appearance at the epilogue of "You Fired" showed that his crack is bandaged.
• This is the second time a marine accidentally shoots a friendly marine. First was in "Zerg BM" where Sgt. Patches attacks his partner accidentally.

• Sgt Patches makes his cameo appearance in the episode who is holding on marauder's arm until flown away.
• The marine after measuring archon's power utters one of his death soundbites from original StarCraft.
• Archon stripped naked resembles the ones in original StarCraft. They will appear in "BroodWar Ep 2".
• This is the second time nudity is present in StarCrafts. The first is in "Zerg BM", where Sgt. Patches's rear end is exposed.
• Unit quotations from StarCraft II used:
  • Marine: "Bring it!"
  • High templar: "For Aiur", "Pity!", cutting the rest of the quote.
  • Archon: "Power overwhelming!"

In-game References

• Dark templar attacking a siege tank causes a scanner sweep to be heard that quickly. It is true that an A.I terran enemy in multiplayer battle automatically casts scanner sweep on a player's (or another A.I's) attacking cloaked unit if orbital command is available.
  • A marine whose head is stepped by a dark templar does nothing until the scanner sweep is cast. It is related to where roaches have passed under the marine using tunneling claws back in "Roach Approach."
• High templar casts two psionic storms (75 required energy each) and feedback (50 required energy). These abilities' used energies add up to 200 energy, the maximum amount that every high templar have.
  • In later patch 1.3 of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the Khaydarin Amulet upgrade that adds 25 to maximum energy is removed. (See "It's Nerfing Time" episode.)
  • Also, a sentry casts four force fields (50 required energy each), and the used energies multiply to 200 energy, the maximum amount that every sentry have.
• Ghost's EMP shot has a phrase on it, written as "PWN DA PROTOSS". Referring that ghosts can easily weaken archons' or other protoss units' shields.
  • "PWN" was a former internet slang used in forums and comment sections widely back since 2009, meaning that a challenger easily beats the opponent either luckily or unexpectedly (such as "PWN3D").
• At the end when the Archon's shields are whipped out, the Archon becomes exposed, a nod to how Archons have very low life.

Cultural References

• This episode contains references from Dragonball series:
  • The ball of psionic energy and archon's overblown power with storms is a reference to numerous Dragonball characters using super saiyan energies.
  • Marine measuring the power on his visor to show "9000+" is a reference to the famous scene of Vegeta who uses his visor to measure Son Goku's inactive energy. His quote "It's over 9000!" became a popular internet meme.
• Archon's quote and the episode title is a reference to the cheat code in original StarCraft. Entering the code enables god-mode (invulnerability of a player against enemies, but enemies are invulnerable to each other.)
  • The completion of archon and his spoken quote is inspired for the cinematic trailer of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void.

Video 

StarCrafts Season 2 Episode 11 Power Overwhelming