Spike Showcase - July 2019

[StardustSoldier]

One thing I will say is that he still feels like an indispensable part of the Gang to me. Even in the first movie, it's hard to imagine it without him.

[StardustSoldier]

1) In the first film Spike is a hatching so it is obvious why he is not speaking during that movie.  In your personal head-canon does he still not speak due to the fact he is too young to do so, or do you think there is another reason for his lack of speech?

Belated response here. But I just watched "Through the Eyes of a Spiketail" yesterday and so I wanted to chime in with some new thoughts regarding this question. I was hoping that this particular episode might help better clarify things... but instead I feel more confused than before.

I speculated last time that Spike's lack of speech was due to him being too young and not fluent enough yet, but as he got older he'd be able to speak properly. But the TV episode shows that he thinks in perfectly coherent thoughts. In itself, this would cause me to speculate that either Spike has a physical inability to speak properly despite still thinking intelligently, or else he simply chooses to remain silent for whatever reason.

... ... except that the episode also shows that he apparently can't understand his friends' words. From his POV shots, he hears the rest of the Gang speaking unintelligible garble. Now this in itself would make me think that he speaks an altogether different language from everyone else. But then that theory doesn't really make sense because all the other spiketails can speak normally. And, as mentioned earlier, Spike himself has spoken the very occasional word in the same language as the others ("Ducky!" "Mother!"). So then why does he hear his friends speaking garble?

...

Yeah, I no longer have a clear answer to this question. Now I just get confused the more I think about it.

[RainbowFaceProtege]

@StardustSoldier Yeah...that was one of my least favorite episodes for basically all the reasons you just mentioned. I felt like they were meaning to use it to clear up some of the mysteries about Spike, but all they really did was just cause even worse inconsistency with previous depictions of him.

[StardustSoldier]

I thought it was a solid episode in itself. I certainly liked the core concept. It was unique and refreshing. I just think certain aspects of it could've been explained a bit better. It seemed like the writers hadn't watched LBT 4 & 8 in a while, and/or just forgot that Spike had brief speaking roles in those.