Episode 11, "Will Son Goku Make It In Time?! The Fight Continues In Three Hours" 
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: The Saiyans wait three hours for Goku to arrive. Nappa keeps himself busy by killing onlookers. Goku arrives at King Yemma's station and Kami spirits him back to Earth. The three hours pass and Vegeta and Nappa prepare to continue the fight. Goku, back on Earth, heads off to the battle. Piccolo tries to take advantage of a Saiyan's natural weakness- their tail- but it doesn't work. Kuririn tries out a new attack, Kienzan, but Nappa dodges and takes him out of the fight. Gohan manages to fight back himself, but it only angers Nappa, who fires a finishing attack. However, Piccolo puts himself in between the attack and Gohan.
Comments:
More action in this episode, skipping over most of the "three hours" material (funny how those three hours passed so much faster than Namek's "five minutes" later on) by just having Nappa kill some reporters. Piccolo and Kuririn tried their best to put up a decent front, with Piccolo grabbing Nappa's tail and Kuririn using his disc attack (I can still hear Terry Klassen screaming, "DESTRUCTO DISC!" in my head, though). Gohan even managed to fight back, probably doing more damage to Nappa than any of the others had.
This is probably some of my favorite material in the series, actually. Still some action where not everything is just everyone shouting for fifteen minutes while they're powering up, and there's still tension in the combat, too. My only problem with the way it was presented here was that there seemed to have been no justification for Piccolo going for Nappa's tail. A plan was never discussed and Vegeta and Nappa didn't point out they worked through that weakness. So you just get Piccolo grabbing it, and it not working, and him being smashed.
I'm still not that fond of the music in the series, especially in some of these more tense scenes. When they cut back to Kaio's planet and they play that light-hearted tune, it just messes with the mood. The only piece I appreciated was the instrumental version of the new theme song that they used when Goku was back on Earth and flew off on the Kintoun.
Looks like next episode will be OVER 9000! Except it's actually over 8,000. 
Overall Score:
3.5 out of 5
