"Spike at Your Service" is the ninth episode of the third season of

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

television series ''

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic ''My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic'' is an animated children's television series based on the fourth incarnation of Hasbro's ''My Little Pony'' franchise. The series follows a studious unicorn (later an alicorn) pony named Twilight Spark ...

'' as well as the sixty-first overall.

Plot

When Applejack saves Spike from a timberwolf attack in the Everfree Forest, he insists on helping her around the farm in order to repay a life debt that is customary to dragons in their "Dragon Code". His efforts only make trouble for her and the other ponies, and they set up a fake timberwolf attack for Spike so that he can save Applejack from, thus making him feel satisfied with his debt. Their ruse draws a pack of real timberwolves, which Applejack easily crushes, but the pieces form into a single giant beast and she gets caught in a rockslide. Spike causes the timberwolf to fall apart by throwing a rock down its throat, and frees Applejack. Afterwards, Applejack convinces Spike to give up his debt.

Background

"Spike at Your Service" was directed by James Wootton, with Jayson Thiessen supervising, and written by Merriwether Williams, based on a story by

Dave Polsky David Polsky is an American film and television screenwriter who created ''The Buzz on Maggie'' and co-wrote ''Scary Movie 2''. He has also written episodes for '' My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic'' and '' Hanazuki: Full of Treasures'' among ...

. According to Polsky, though Spike is shown to know very little about being a dragon in "Dragon Quest", the Dragon Code felt ... credible he'd taken initiative to learn about his dragon heritage since". In the first treatment, Spike owed Rarity a life debt. Because Rarity was so cruel to Spike, it was changed to Applejack. The Timberwolves are dogs made of wood. According to Mary Jane Begin, author of ''My Little Pony: The Art of Equestria'', their threateningness mostly comes from their size, machine-like structure, and sharp geometric shapes. They were modelled and animated by layout supervisor John Cantlie; instead of the planned

Flash animation Adobe Flash animation or Adobe Flash cartoon (formerly Macromedia Flash animation, Macromedia Flash cartoon, FutureSplash animation, and FutureSplash cartoon) is an animation that is created with the Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) ...

, the wolves were animated using

Autodesk Maya Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya ( ), is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interac ...

Broadcast and reception

The episode aired on December 29, 2012, on The Hub. It was viewed by 432,000 people and garnered double-digit year-to-year delivery gains in all demographics except kids aged 2–11 and 6–11, which gained one-digit gains. Daniel Alvarez of ''Unleash the Fanboy'' gave "Spike at Your Service" three and a half out of five stars, calling it " t great and perhaps the weakest episode of the season, but enjoyable nonetheless".

Home media

The episode has been released as part of the ''Friendship Is Magic'' season three collections, in Region 1 by

Shout! Factory Shout! Factory is an American home video and music company founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases include previously released feature films, classic and contemporary television series, animation, live music, and comedy ...

and Region 4 by

Madman Entertainment Madman Entertainment Pty. Ltd., also known as Madman Films, is an Australian distribution and rights management company headquartered in East Melbourne, Victoria, specialising in feature films, documentaries and television series across theatr ...

References

External links

* {{My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes 2012 American television episodes 2012 Canadian television episodes