Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two (BFDI:TPOT)[2] is the fifth season of the web series Battle for Dream Island. There are in fact two iterations of this series, which are, in order of fame:
- The Power of Two[3] (TPOT) is the official, canon iteration. It is run by Satomi Hinatsu and Kenzie Bryant (also known as Pokey), whose careers in Jacknjellify began in BFB, the previous season. At the time of writing, there is only one episode of this version, because things such as animation, writing etc. take a lot of time and hard work.
- Fake TPOT (won'T let Pen win the whOle Thing) is the unofficial continuation of the series, which is currently being worked on at the same time as the canon version. It is also what this page will mainly focus on, as there is already a comprehensive article on the canon series on the Other Wiki. It is run by Yterbium, who has had no career in Jacknjellify aside from being one of their many supporters.
Of the two different versions of the series—which should not be seen as competing with each other—The Power of Two is the legitimate one, and it will continue to be so among the BFDI community. For the creator of Fake TPOT, the later episodes are simply headcanon, at least until new canon episodes come out. No rush!
Overview and development
The creation process of The Power of Two is probably one of the most contentious moments in BFDI's history. With controversies erupting seemingly every week within the object show community, that's saying something. Anyway, the infamous BFB–TPOT split is not exactly my story to tell (I was in a slump for most of that year, so I barely remember how I felt). But let's just say it was intense.
Nevertheless, all the drama surrounding the split didn't last long. Nearly every complaint under the BFB 16 video dates from late March or a few months after. It became clear that there was still another show going on, namely The All-New BFB. But eventually, TPOT came out just about on time, on 10 January 1973. And it was awesome.
Title card of The Power of Two (1973). By Coal Bones.
On 28 December 1972 and 10 February 1973, I had posted a few speculation posts about the future of TPOT, with the knowledge that I gained from reading some of the comments on the Other Wiki. In the latest post, I had predicted that the second episode of TPOT—the actual one—would be released on 21 May. Not to sound disappointed or anything (I wasn't), but that didn't happen.
I had a blog post here on the subject of Cary's then-latest video, in which he talked about how annoying it is when people complain about how long it takes for an episode to come out.[4] In that post I sympathized with him and also advised the impatient people to write their own fake episodes if they were not satisfied with the long wait.
Interestingly, I had seen a number of well-written TPOT-based spin-offs in the form of fanfics ranging from light-hearted to the emotionally heavy (lookin' at you, Its_Virgil). With wild predictions raging in my head, I had to join in the fun somehow. And what better way to do that than to write my own TPOT season?
Title card of Fake TPOT (after 1986, when it became a sitcom). Because this is the olden days, the aspect ratio is a bit different.
Well, it wasn't a season at first. "Fake TPOT 2" was more of a pilot episode that I didn't expect to be renewed (read: failed).[5] But the only reason for that was that I was working on another project, which meant I barely had time to write. That was finished around 2 July, and after that I could do whatever I wanted. The thing is, I didn't really want to leave this wiki for a second time, so I decided to devote my days to continuing this series, for which only one episode was written.
TPOT 3 came out on 28 June, quickly followed by 4, 5, 6 and so on. And the rest is history.
Episode structure
With minor variations throughout the series, this is the usual structure of a Fake TPOT episode. (Episode 1 is excluded from this, as it is a pilot.)
Cold opens, pre-credits scenes, pre-Cake at Stake scenes
Cold opens might seem like a free-for-all, as they can take place at any time and any place. They can be outside (e.g., TPOT 1), in a hotel room (TPOT 6), inside the EXIT (TPOT 7), in a makeshift city (TPOT 9) or at night, several months before the rest of the episode (TPOT 13). However, there are two caveats: The first is that any point that is made at the beginning of an episode must be relevant to the rest of it. The second is that the intro must be triggered by Two saying the word "two" or something phonetically similar.
Note that this was the original plan for the structure of the series before it was gradually reformed in the late 1970s. In 1977, anyone can now do the intro by saying "two" at a strategic point... In 1981, the intro starts with the person who says the word "two" first. By 1984, no one has to say "two" to let the intro play, and from 1986, the intro itself begins the episode.
Cake at Stake
The Cake at Stake ceremony (which, like in Inanimate Insanity 2, is meant to be watched by all the contestants) is always preceded by a Cake at Stake theme, which usually reflects the most popular music style of the time.
- Act I (1973–1974): No consistent Cake at Stake theme
- Act II (1975–1976): R&B singer-songwriter
- Act III (1977–1978): Disco
- Act IV (1979–1981): Post-disco
- Act V (1981–1983): New wave
- Acts VI and VII (1984–1987): Synth-pop
- Act VIII (1988–1990): Dance-pop
Two things can happen at the ceremony itself: someone enters the show (either from a rejoin or a début) or someone gets eliminated. With the exception of a few very early episodes, the total number of voters and number of votes a contestant has received are not announced; they are simply replaced with a placeholder action with the word "number". In addition, contestants who are declared safe (i.e., not eliminated) are often given "cakes", which are usually items that can help them in the episode's particular contest. Only in a few episodes are they literal cakes.
Right after a contestant is eliminated, they can fall down a platform into the hotel (as in TPOT 1), their teammates can bid farewell to them before they are sent inside (TPOT 4–7), they can be flung onto the top of the building (TPOT 8), they can be sent into the crowd of spectators (TPOT 9) or they can be moved by Two to the Filing Cabinet, either by having them float there (TPOT 10–19) or by sending them through the roof (TPOT 20–present).
Post-Cake at Stake scenes, pre-contest scenes
Filler. Sometimes scenes of this type can be as long as necessary or just a few words long, depending on how much the plot needs to be advanced.
Contests (and contest preps)
Contest scenes are depicted in the same way as BFB. As in the prior season, attention should be paid to all teams, or at least what each team does for the contest should be known to the audience. Full detail is not necessary, especially in episodes where brevity is a priority.
Post-contest scenes
Filler. Sometimes scenes of this type can be as long as necessary or just a few words long, depending on how much the plot needs to be advanced.
Credits scenes (including the voting screen)
The voting screen is the special part of the episode that is necessary for viewers to see. It always goes like this: Two stands in front of a blank white screen with the contestants' pictures, their names and the letter one has to type in to vote for them. Two gives the standard instructions (Vote in the comments using the letter and square brackets for who you don't want to be eliminated! Vote for who you want to stay! The person with the fewest votes will leave the show!), which should remain unchanged since episode 1 and are only modified a little if it involves a double elimination, a début or a rejoining.
During this scene, the credits play at the bottom of the screen (unless it is the end of an act). Until 1981 and after 1984, the music that plays during this is that unknown happy electronic song from the end of TPOT 1. From 1981 to 1983, the song played during during the credits is an "80s TV show theme song" version of the intro, which would be slightly adjusted as the intro to Fake TPOT from 1984 onwards.
Post-credits scenes, EXIT scenes
Sometimes the post-credits scenes are much more light-hearted than the episodes themselves. They more often than not take place at night, like in BFDI. Depending on which of the two scenes is more dramatic or cliffhanger-ish, the "TPOT area at night" scene may be the first thing viewers see after the credits.
If that is the case, then the EXIT scene, which takes place more and more in the distant past as the series progresses, will be the last part of the episode. Unlike the rest of the episode, whose breaks between episodes often last months (and this is something hinted at in the series, as in TPOT 9), the EXIT scene in one episode can even take place directly after the EXIT scene in the previous episode. It is currently unknown what the endgame is for EXIT scenes... will they be there until the finale? Who knows.
At the end of an act, the full credits run here for all episodes in the act rather than in the designated credits scene.
Episodes
For more information about each episode of Fake TPOT (or if you want a quick spoiler), please click on the link here: Fake TPOT: Episode summaries.
In my last speculation post, I found that the average number of episodes TPOT would end up with (given the net change in the number of contestants in every episode since 1962) is approximately 52. In hindsight, I think this is something of a silly number, because when I did the calculations again, I ended up with 48, which is one standard deviation less than the average.[6]
So that's the number of episodes there will be of TPOT.[7]
Since 48 is a very high number of episodes for a series with a smaller cast than BFB, it was decided early on to divide the show into eight "acts" of six episodes each, in which certain character arcs could be elaborated. The gaps between the acts didn't serve so much as hiatuses (due to the still large gaps between episodes allowing for more creative freedom among the writers), but the differences between the acts would be so striking in the long run that TPOT 1 and TPOT 48 could be seen as completely different shows.
Out of all the 48 episodes, most are single-elimination, but there are also double-elimination, rejoining, debuting, nothing episodes, all wrapped up with a finale.
The Power of Two
| # | Title | Airdate | Syllables[8] | Contestants[9] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | You Know Those Buttons Don't Do Anything, Right? | 10 January 2021 | 4.8 k | 42 |
Fake TPOT
| Title | Date published | Syllables[8] | Contestants[9] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Horseback Lightswitch | 21 May 2021 | 2.2 k | 41 |
| 3 | Start Spreading the News | 28 June 2021 | 7.0 k | |
| 4 | All Boxed In | 8 July 2021 | 6.2 k | 40 |
| 5 | So This Is Life | 11 July 2021 | 3.8 k | 39 |
| Two Rocks the Elderly | 12 July 2021 | 3.7 k | ||
| 6 | The Seekers Are Inn! | 16 July 2021 | 6.0 k | 38 |
| 7 | Canned Laughter in the Rain | 20 July 2021 | 4.8 k | 37 |
| 8 | The Switchgate | 23 July 2021 | 6.6 k | 35 |
| 9 | Eraser to Go(ne) | 26 July 2021 | 5.6 k | 34 |
| 10 | Little Hotel on the Savannah | 28 July 2021 | 3.1 k | |
| Press Two to Clear | 29 July 2021 | 4.0 k | ||
| 11 | Oratoria Polyglottica | 1 August 2021 | 7.0 k | 32 |
| 12 | The Heist Is Right (part 1, part 2) |
6 August 2021 | 9.9 k | 31 |
| 13 | File in the Cab! | 10 August 2021 | 6.1 k | 33 |
| 14 | The One Where No One Has Common Sense | 13 August 2021 | 6.8 k | |
| 15 | Can You Tell Me? | 17 August 2021 | 5.2 k | 32 |
| Oh, I Don't Know | 18 August 2021 | 5.2 k | ||
| 16 | Stewards of the Scenery | 20 August 2021 | 5.2 k | 31 |
| 17 | Block City Rockers | 23 August 2021 | 7.2 k | 30 |
| 18 | Like Game (part 1, part 2) |
26 August 2021 | 8.0 k | 28 |
| 19 | Laisser Tomber Les Balles | 28 August 2021 | 6.4 k | 28 |
| 20 | Teamwork (Take Six) | 31 August 2021 | 4.2 k | 27 |
| Pumping Iridium | 2 September 2021 | 5.4 k | 26 | |
| 21 | 45 RPM to Your Doom! | 8 September 2021 | 5.7 k | 27 |
| 22 | Shadows... in the Light | 10 September 2021 | 5.9 k | 25.5 |
| 23 | Alphabet Two-p | 13 September 2021 | 6.2 k | 25 |
| 24 | It Was a Very Good Year (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) |
22 September 2021 | 24 | |
| 25 | A Cheese Puff | 24 September 2021 | 23 | |
| Chocolate Solder | ||||
| 26 | The 20-Year Itch | 22 | ||
| 27 | Younger ≠ Better (Maybe!) | 21 | ||
| 28 | Security Blanklight | 22 | ||
| 29 | Twoevangelism | 21 | ||
| 30 | A Time to Let Go | 19 | ||
| Return of the Showrunner | ||||
| 31 | 17 | |||
| 32 | 16 | |||
| 33 | ||||
| 34 | ||||
| 35 | 15 | |||
| 36 | 14 | |||
| 37 | 14 | |||
| 38 | 12 | |||
| 39 | 11 | |||
| 40 | 10 | |||
| 9 | ||||
| 41 | 8 | |||
| 42 | 9 | |||
| 43 | 7 | |||
| 44 | 6 | |||
| 45 | 5 | |||
| 46 | 3 | |||
| 47 | 2 | |||
| 48 | 1 | |||
Characters
For information on the characters, please click on the link here: List of Fake TPOT characters.
Reception
The Power of Two was apparently trending on Twitter on the day of its release. For many members of the object show community, the wait between March 1972 and January 1973 took up a large part of their lifetimes, so people would naturally be eager for the fifth season of the most popular object show in existence.
Even after its release on 10 January, TPOT has not lost popularity. The YouTube video, at the time of writing (16 July), has 6,889,989 views, which is much more than when the author last checked about a month ago.
The popularity of Fake TPOT could not be any more different. Since only a few episodes of this series were released, it is impossible to say how successful or not it ultimately was. That doesn't mean it is unpopular, as there at least one person on the planet who is aware of its existence.
Other media
Cultural references
Fake TPOT has had a number of pop culture allusions over the years. There are many such references that could go over the heads of viewers if they are older or younger than the target age (the author is 20, which is like 103 in OSC years). To be fair to everyone, I have included a page listing all the (non-BFDI) cultural references.
I know it's not exactly good form to explain the joke, but hey, we'd better keep our minds sharp.
For more information, please click on the link here: List of cultural references in Fake TPOT.
Production music
As in BFB, the soundtrack of The Power of Two is very diverse in genre and electronickety. Many of the background songs were composed by the wonderful music stylings of Michael Huang, one half of the original Jacknjellify. But there are also other musicians who have taken the time to compose music either specifically for the series or for other things (but adopted by the series because it sounds good). For example, the theme song of the intro—the melody of which is used for the whole series up to the finale—is called "Gibberish!!" and it was composed by Coal Bones from YouTube.
Fake TPOT is a little bit different in its approach to its soundtrack. As with Pencil 2.O and the author's fan-made song inserts for the first two seasons of BFDI, most of the songs have been composed by Kevin MacLeod or by composers whose music was featured on the APM Music website and/or SpongeBob SquarePants. Thus it is not surprising to a traditional "object show song" (e.g. "New Friendly") to be followed by a song that's never been heard on either show (e.g. "Selling Scherzo"), followed by a mid-century recording of an Indonesian melody (e.g. "Serenading the Night"). That is not to say that the soundtrack of the first episode doesn't show up, as many Michael-made tracks still feature heavily, especially where music would enhance the emotional aspect of a scene.
Original songs
Don't be fooled; this isn't just the background music. Unlike previous seasons, TPOT features a number of vocal songs. Songs have been tried in many an object show in the past [10], but never in BFDI.
I've wondered why they haven't done it yet. In 1972 and '73, there were a number of random music releases ("Jingle Bell Rock", "Just Push Through It"), and even in the show characters like Purple Face, Gelatin and the Announcer sang some really short songs. But there was no such thing as an ear-invading tune within the series... until TPOT.
In order to get some attention from the music world, a record company (whose name we do not yet know) released eight albums of original and cover songs from the series from 1974 to 1989. These soundtracks were released at the end of each "Act". Note that many of the songs on the records sound different from those on the show, as session musicians and singers were included in the final release.
Other other media
They have plushies of two characters in the series: Pen (a contestant) and Firey Jr. (an EXITer). When the show was really gaining steam around 1982, an entire line of TPOT action figures was released.
Certification
In the United States and Canada, TPOT is rated TV-PG or TV-14, depending on who's applying the rating. While the amount of violence and profanity is consistent with the rest of BFDI (i.e., lots of killing, no swearing), there is a bit of an adult edge to this season (especially Fake TPOT, and especially any episode after TPOT 9). Non-asexuality is implied in many characters[11] and such actions are sometimes implied through subtle or not-so-subtle innuendo. In the object show community, this is tantamount to TPOT being rated MA or X or whatever they call it these days, but it's fine, as long as the reader is mature enough to understand the context. You people watch Family Guy, don't you?
In the United Kingdom and Brazil, TPOT is rated 12, while in Denmark, it gets a yellow logo. This makes sense, as the people in these countries are not as prudish as the Americans, who make up the bulk of the OSC.
Based on what was described on the Let's Write Sherlock! blog on Tumblr, I believe The Power of Two would be rated General Audiences, and Fake TPOT Teen and Up. On Fanfiction.net, they would be rated K+ and T, respectively.
Credits
For the credits of Fake TPOT, please click on the link here: Fake TPOT: Credits.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Hey, they said it, not me.
- ↑ A guide to abbreviations: Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two and TPOT will be used when referring to the series (in general). The Power of Two is the canon series, while Fake TPOT is, quite obviously, fake. When spoken by the characters, the show is known as either The Power of Two or TPOT, but the title will always show the series' canonicity.
- ↑ I didn't know it was just called The Power of Two, no extra punctuation needed. That's why on episode review posts like this there are two exclamation marks after the title.
- ↑ I deleted it because it was obviously written on a whim, and I cringed the hell out the second time my eyes hit those words.
- ↑ It was also released on 21 May, the same day I thought the real episode 2 would be released.
- ↑ In hind-hindsight, that's not such a strange number after all. At the time, episode segments were counted separately (BFB-style: 13 and 14), whereas now I would enter them as parts of the same episode (BFDIA-style: episode 5).
- ↑ I'm happy with this number because of its significance. While BFDI and BFB ended with an episode number that is a multiple of five, TPOT (which I know will try and be different in every way even without the fake series) will end in 4 (2×2) and 8 (2×2×2).
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Number of syllables uttered in this episode.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Number of contestants remaining at the end of the episode.
- ↑ Inanimate Insanity tried it out in the middle of the last decade, Brawl of the Objects and this other show with a lock had a talent competition with singing in it, there was even a show with a pear or something and it had really cute assets (forgot the name), but they did a full-fledged musical episode in 2013!
- ↑ Not to say that allosexual people are inherently dirtier than aces are (that would be stereotyping and an oversimplification), but I've always assumed that the BFDI characters are all asexual... It's the romance part of the relationships that would be homo-, a-, bi-, pan-, hetero- etc., and that's good enough for a show that mostly kids watch.