Dragons Review - "Heather Report Part 1"

Hiccup and the gang discover a mysterious girl washed up on the shores of Berk.  Holy mackerel!  It's a girl!  Given how rare those are on this show, Astrid is immediately suspicious.  According to the girl, whose name is Heather, she was shipwrecked while trying to escape pirates who have captured her parents and are threatening her island.  Heather and Hiccup hit it off right away, but it seems Astrid's suspicions may not be unfounded.  Heather immediately takes a big interest in the dragons and how they are trained.  Is she up to no good?  Wouldn't this be a really uninteresting episode if she wasn't?

This episode wastes no time in revealing that Heather isn't just the helpless shipwreck victim she appears to be at first.  Like many of the episodes, the pacing suffers from the short length of having to fit into about twenty minutes.  Even with this story split into two parts, the plot still zips along a little too fast.  Fortunately, thanks to the plot breaking some new ground (it's not Mildew!) it manages to feel relatively fresh.  It's also nice to see Astrid get a bit more of a starring role at last, given that she really hasn't had much to do on the show thus far besides antagonize Hiccup from time to time.

Ultimately, this episode isn't much more than a set up for Part 2.  Heather is a reasonably interesting character, but she "turns to the dark side" so fast that you never really get a chance to care about her before she simply becomes another bad guy.  But "Heather Report Part 1" does set up a few interesting plot threads to be resolved in Part 2 that should be fairly interesting to see play out.  It's not among one of the better episodes on its own, but I do look forward to seeing the rest of the story play out next week.

Also, chicken makes dragons fly faster.  Who knew?