Burning Tide

Burning Tide
Season 2, Episode 24 and 25
Air date	Part 1: January 11, 2014 Part 2: January 18, 2014
Episode guide
Previous The Twelve Days of StarCrafts	Next Valentine's Day Special

Burning Tide is the two-part episode and season finale in the second season of StarCrafts. Its second part is the fiftieth episode overall.

Plot

Part 1

The episode starts with medivac dropship carrying three marines including Sgt. Patches, and a marauder. Terran squad are unloaded on the main protoss base, shooting off probes and nexus. Inside the nexus, Obnoxious Executor appears pressing a probe button repeatedly. He looks at the screen during the rumbling structure, that its shield and health bars are decreasing, and the nexus is destroyed.

When Bob the Ragelot and stalker rushes into action, the terrans spin and pose before loading into medivac with gravity tube (and marauder is shown stuck on its opening). The medivac dropship speeds off the course using ignite afterburners. Bob is outraged at their escape, and as the phoenix is warped in from stargate, he throws its pilot out and hijacks phoenix to chase after the terrans exasperatedly.

Medivac's afterburners are stopped after being used up. Inside, Sgt. Patches and his squad take a pizza break. However, they are chaotically tossed around when Bob uses ion cannons from the phoenix until the medivac dropship explodes. Survived from the blast, Sgt. Patches falls. Bob uses graviton beam to levitate Patches up in front of him. Seeking a dark revenge, he presses "Pew pew" button rapidly, but it doesn't fire cannons because of graviton beam still in use. Patches waves hello at him sarcastically.

When the graviton beam is depleted, Sgt. Patches fall, missing the ion cannons. Bob opens the cockpit and decides to attack him at closer combat on the ground.

However, the volcano erupts. and lava level is dangerously rising. Three races are alarmed to depart the land. Zerg units and spine crawlers run away, protoss units retreat as their buildings have been soaked under lava, and terran structures lift off. Sgt. Patches climb up on the last barracks lifting off to safety, separating from reactor add-on. Bob the Ragelot jumps from reactor to reach the barracks at its foot. Patches tries to shoot him off the ride.

A fleet of interceptors fly by and destroy the barracks, causing Patches and Bob to fall. Both land on the battlecruiser facing against the carrier.

Part 2

The next episode fades in with bird's eye view of starport whose battlecruiser inflates out of its deployment roof. The battlecruisers face against the carriers. Meanwhile, the archon grabs marauder by the arm, but both see the battle of two massive air units. Engaging in an aerial attack, carrier releases interceptors like bees and battlecruiser fires lasers. Both attacks do nothing to their opponents and archon and marauder are bored. Battlecruiser charges up its yamato cannon and blasts the carrier away. Marauder applauds but archon punches him. Tempest drops its energy sphere onto the battlecruiser, breaking it in half.

After watching the aerial battle, Sgt. Patches and Bob the Ragelot continue to fight. Patches prepares gauss rifle and combat shield, and Bob turns his psi blades up.

Next scene cuts to last three protoss units, archon, stalker and immortal, running away from the lava. The trio found themselves stuck by Derpfestor's fungal growth dropped from higher ground. Archon and immortal seal their fate as lava reaches them, but stalker has used blink at Derpfestor and he shoots him. Derpfestor uses neural parasite to mind control a battlecruiser, slamming it at the stalker.

Zerg units evacuate via overlords, and one of the overlords put zerglings and drones in his mouth and holds the remaining drone and zergling using claws. Disheartened, queen tosses two out of four drones at the overlord (other two unfortunately soak into the lava) and bids farewell.

Three vikings fly over the battle, but they meet flock of mutalisks. A mutalisk grabs an unlucky viking pilot and hammer him onto his ship. The vikings flee while one of them launches missiles at incoming mutalisks. Corruptor rushes through the carrier and destroys it.

Bob the Ragelot and Sgt. Patches continue their battle. Patches evades from Bob's attacks and runs away. He flips and shoots to distract Bob, and he sharply throws his shield at his face. He hears a humming sound from the side, and it turns out tempest charging its powerful ball of kinetic energy sphere at the battlecruiser where he is standing. Inside the battlecruiser's bridge, the admiral notices the beeping radar, signifying the inbound icon of death. Knowing that massive units' attacks are weak to basic units, Sgt. Patches sprints and leaps from the ship, turning himself into a human shield against the deathly ball. The ball explodes in contact with the marine who is tossed back to the ship's platform, successfully saving the battlecruiser without a scratch.

However, he is immediately kicked off the edge by Bob. Thinking that he killed Sgt. Patches presumably, he screams in victory. He then sees Patches being elevated by medivac dropship, much to his astonishment. Its entrance opens to reveal Crackhead aiming his rifle at the zealot and shooting him off in retaliation. Patches climbs aboard and medivac speeds away.

Bob feels defeated for the first time by the intervention of Crackhead and medivac dropship. He kneels in disgrace, breathing for energy, but he opens his eyes and decides for the next move. Outrageously, he breaks into the battlecruiser's bridge, knocking the admiral and killing off the remaining terran crew. This causes the battlecruiser itself to descend onto the lava and it detonates, amidst the departing orbital command, overlords and Derpfestor and his battlecruiser.

Epilogue

In the middle of rising lava, Mineral Drone desperately seeks evacuation at the overlord whom he offered a mineral pellet. Misunderstanding him, Mineral Overlord instead returns the same mineral that the drone had given and drifts away. Mineral Drone tries to call him back but the overlord ignores him. He is melted by the fiery death.

Characters

• Sgt. Patches
• Marines
• Marauder
• Medivac dropship
• Probes
• Obnoxious Executor
• Bob the Ragelot
• Stalkers
• Phoenix
• Zerglings
• Hydralisks
• Roaches
• Ultralisk
• Spine crawlers
• Archon
• Immortal
• Interceptors (debut)
• Carrier
• Battlecruiser
• Tempest
• Derpfestor
• Battlecruiser admiral
• Carrier captain
• Crackhead
• Mothership core (cameo)
• Mineral Drone
• Mineral Overlord

Trivia

• This episode is split into two separate episodes.
• Medivac dropship's gravity tube is punned as a long, flexible vacuum tube.
• This is the first episode where two main characters engage in head-to-head combat at each other.
  • This is also the first episode where Bob the Ragelot meets his enemy Sgt. Patches.
• An orbital command's satellite dish is seen again at the rising lava, appeared since the epilogue of "Reaping the Benefits."
• The is the first appearance of battlecruiser in the non-special episode.
• Battlecruiser's soundbite quote from original StarCraft, "Battlecruiser Operational", is used.
• This is the second appearance of corruptor since "Phoenix Down."
• This is the second appearance of viking since "Heart of the Swarm Opening."
• This is the second time a mutalisk hammering someone since "Mutalated."
• This is the first and only time a marine using combat shield.
• Bob the Ragelot unleashing his psi blades is reused from "The Twelve Days of StarCrafts."
• Derpfestor's ball of fungal growth can be visible as a reflection to the balance update of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, nerfing him to become projectile instead of being instant.
• This is the final episode of Derpfestor as the purple zerg character.
• Tempest's kinetic matrix hitting Sgt. Patches shows no results on him since tempests are weak against units below tier 3 (or sometimes tier 2).
• Most of viewers mistakenly thought that Bob the Ragelot had been deceased from inside when the battlecruiser explodes. However, mothership core is shown energized on the top right corner of the screen before disappearing. This indicates that she uses Heart of the Swarm's mass recall ability.
  • This incident will be proven wrong (and clearly) in the beginning of "PvP".
• This is the reappearance of Mineral Drone since "GL HF", and this is his final appearance.
• This is the first dramatic scene in StarCrafts series where the queen self-sacrifices to save her drones, Bob attacks to the death supposedly, and Mineral Drone is left unsaved by a friendly unit Mineral Overlord.

In-game Refrences

• Title of the episode is a reference of StarCraft II's multiplayer map, "Burning Tides."
  • Also, "Burning Tide" and surging lava are the reason that lava environment maps, "Burning Tides" and "The Devil's Playground", do the exact way as this episode plot does.

• Terran attack on the probes is a type of harassment tactic, recently used in "Roach Approach", "A Hellion of a Harass", "Spore Loser", "Undermine the Overmind" and "Mutalated."
• Obnoxious Executor pressing a probe button and "Queue is full, stop pressing 'E' plz" on screen is a reference to nexus producing probes using the hotkey "E".
• Graviton beam not allowing phoenix's regular attack is related to the scene in "UnaVOIDable."
• Reference to the weapons of the carrier and battlecruiser is shown as the battlecruiser only has a single laser, and the carrier has a "swarm" of interceptors acting like bees.
• If the tempest's weapon is not charged, then a marine like Sgt. Patches could survive the hit.

Cultural references

• There is a screenshot of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch incident on medivac's monitor.
• Nexus' screen shows "Nexus 98" with a Windows logo on the top, which is a reference to Microsoft's Windows 98, which was recently used in "Halloween Special 2012."
• Bob the Ragelot throwing the pilot out of phoenix is a reference to Grand Theft Auto series.
• The scene where Sgt. Patches is lifted up by medivac dropship, posing at Bob the Ragelot unexpectedly, and Crackhead foils Bob before they leave is a reference to Back to the Future II, where Marty McFly is saved by Dr. Emmett Brown's flying DeLorean and Biff Tannen is paid off by DeLorean's door before travelling back in time.

Video 

StarCrafts Season 2 Episode 24 Burning Tide part 1

StarCrafts Season 2 Episode 25 Burning Tide part 2