Episode 054 – Game Plan

In which He-Man plays a computer game.

Happy Boxing Day to you all. I hope you all had a great Christmas. As you sit there finishing off your turkey and stuffing and plum puddings and what have you, spare a thought for me, please, because I’ve had to waste my time watching Game Plan. To make matters worse, it’s not an even slightly Christmas-themed episode. I hope your hearts are bleeding for me.

Anyway, as the episode opens, Adam borrows Man-at-Arms’ new invention – a beam ray – to create a sculpture of Orko. I have no idea why he would want to do this, and clearly the writers don’t either, giving Adam only the excuse that “it’s a surprise”. Naturally, the beam ray can also be used as a weapon, and equally naturally, a loony called Negator wants to nick it.

Orko: “You look a little different from your Tinder profile pic.”

Negator is a computer games obsessive looking for a living subject to insert into his latest game. Concluding that Teela and Man-at-Arms are ideal participants, he doesn’t bother to try to actually put them in his game. Instead, he invites Man-at-Arms to work for him, and then destroys a dam for no readily apparent reason. Luckily, He-Man is on hand to stop the ensuing flood, and Negator disappears, vowing to return. I for one can’t wait.

Once back at the Palace, Negator disguises himself as a guard and knocks on Teela’s door, informing her that Prince Adam wants to meet her out in the desert, and didn’t say why. Teela, being the massive moron that she is, doesn’t think to question this, and trots off, while Negator takes time out to smirk evilly at the camera. Once Teela is safely captured, Negator contacts Man-at-Arms to repeat his employment offer, and this time, Man-at-Arms is forced to accept. He heads out to the desert to meet Negator.

Man-at-Arms: “All right, Negator, I’ll work for you. But there’d better be an on-site gym and a decent pension plan.”

Quickly deducing there’s something wrong, He-Man decides to go to the desert too, taking Ram-Man with him. Once in the desert, the episode takes a momentary turn for the weird when He-Man allows himself to be eaten by a giant cloud with teeth, which whisks him off to join Teela in Negator’s hideout. Ram-Man and Battle-Cat enter the hideout via more conventional means, using an air vent, which is eminently more sensible.

Teela and Battle-Cat are quickly captured, but He-Man and Ram-Man successfully make their way to Negator’s control centre. Negator, however, finally gets to the point and inserts He-Man and Ram-Man into his computer game. The game is a hugely boring maze, which occupies our heroes for the remaining five minutes of the episode as they navigate its none-too-interesting traps.

He-Man: “Ram-Man, can you see this thing too, or am I off my tits on LSD again?”

Once they find the exit to the maze, He-Man and Ram-Man emerge back into Negator’s hideout. Unsure of how to wrap the episode up, the writer opts for a slightly deranged conclusion in which He-Man blows up Negator’s computer, Negator converts himself into pink glowing energy and disappears, and Battle-Cat complains that he’s hungry. Genius.

 

In today’s adventure…

Not unexpectedly, today’s moral is all about games, and how it’s natural to want to win. I thought that this would be a sensible point about not being a sore loser, or not cheating, both of which are things that Negator did. Instead, He-Man advises us not to be so eager to win that we injure ourselves, which is a rather strange direction for this moral to take.

 

Character checklist

I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to you to learn that this week’s offering grants us sight of Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man, Battle-Cat, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Orko, Ram-Man and Negator. There’s also a pair of weird hooded beings, in case you’re interested.

Negator: “Right, time to relax and watch Homes Under the Hammer. Oh, Christ, what’s Man-at-Arms doing on Homes Under the Hammer? Where’s the remote?”

 

Excuse given for Prince Adam’s disappearance

He-Man shows up while Adam is trapped in a tunnel, courtesy of Negator. Consequently, the excuse is readily to hand: “Don’t worry, he got out the other end of the tunnel,” He-Man explains to the credulous Teela.

 

Insults

Eager to remind us not to ram things with our heads like Ram-Man does, the writer has Battle-Cat call Ram-Man “dumb” after he rams the air vent open. Elsewhere, He-Man informs Negator that he is going to be “the big loser”, which is probably fighting talk rather than an actual insult. Meanwhile, Negator very oddly calls He-Man and Ram-Man “pigeons”, which just seems odd.

He-Man: “Even if I stand around gormlessly with my mouth hanging open, I still look at least five times more intelligent than Ram-Man.”

 

Does it have the Power?

This episode is all over the shop. Inserting living participants into a computer game is an interesting idea, and one that I suspect seemed very up-to-date in 1983, but the impression I get is that the writer didn’t know how to make this concept last the full 20 minutes, thus leading to the completely gratuitous scene at the start with the dam being destroyed, and to the 10 minutes worth of messing around capturing Teela, Man-at-Arms and Battle-Cat, until eventually Negator decides to get down to business and actually play the game with He-Man and Ram-Man in it. On the one hand, I should be grateful for this, because when they are actually in the game, the episode is really dull – but on the other, it’s equally dull before the game starts. In short, this is best described as a reasonable idea put into very poor practice, and I suggest you don’t concern yourselves with it.

Episode 053 – Dree Elle’s Return

In which Orko and Dree Elle bring the series to its most soul-crushing low point.

The opening scene of this episode is among the least promising in recent memory. It’s set on Trolla, where a Trollan guard is talking to Dree Elle (Orko’s love interest, last seen in Dawn of Dragoon), explaining that Trapjaw and a new baddy called Clawful have stolen the Horn of Evil, with intent to use it to conquer Eternia. Dree Elle resolves to travel to Eternia to warn Orko, and because she’s completely out of her skull, she decides to take her little brother with her. Her brother is called Yuckers, he wears a baseball cap, and he has a reputation for playing “dumb jokes”. Somebody needs to just shoot me now.

Dree Elle and Yuckers arrive in the Palace on Eternia to find Orko home alone. True to form, Yuckers immediately plays what is undeniably a dumb joke on Orko and then laughs his dreadful head off. Dree Elle makes him promise not to play any more jokes, which is precisely the sort of promise I can see being broken a mile off.

Yuckers: “As well as promising not to play any dumb jokes, I promise not to be the absolute worst character in the history of He-Man up to this point. Shall we see if I can keep my promises? Spoiler: I can’t.”

Once Orko learns of the Horn of Evil’s disappearance, he and his crowd head for Castle Grayskull, where they find that Trapjaw has blown the Horn and produced a cloud of black smoke, which has defeated the ever-useless Sorceress. Before they can open the jawbridge, though, Orko snatches the Horn and does a runner. But, of course, Yuckers plays two more dumb jokes which result in himself, Orko and the Horn being captured.

Dree Elle flees back to the Palace, where she raises the alarm, resulting in He-Man, Battle-Cat and Teela all heading to the rescue. Teela releases Orko and Yuckers, while He-Man wrestles with Clawful for an unnecessarily long time, eventually disposing of him in a mud puddle. Meanwhile, Yuckers plays a dumb joke on Trapjaw, at which I expect we’re supposed to cheer. I didn’t.

Clawful: “This is the face that literally everyone pulls when they see Orko and his idiot clan.”

With the baddies defeated, that should be the end of that, but since there was five minutes left on the episode’s run time, I didn’t for a moment think I’d be that lucky. Sure enough, thanks to yet another dumb joke, Yuckers accidentally blows the Horn of Evil, which results in everything in the surrounding forest turning evil and indulging in a spot of misbehaviour.

He-Man and Teela occupy themselves in battling off the various evil trees, rocks, giants, vampire bats and randomly mutated wallabies, while Orko and Dree Elle attend to the actual problem. They do this by singing the worst song I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t make out any of the words because of their dreadful voices, but it was the most hideous racket outside of a Steps reunion concert. The terrible effect of this song is even apparent on He-Man; the next scene shows him looking haggard with massive bags under his eyes.

He-Man: “That song is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The episode ends back at the Palace, where Orko plays a dumb joke on Yuckers, who instantly throws a tantrum and whinges that jokes aren’t fun when they’re on him. Boo hoo, Yuckers. My heart bleeds for you. To my huge relief, Dree Elle and Yuckers return to Trolla, where I hope they instantly get eaten by some giant dragon or something.

 

In today’s adventure…

Orko pops along to tell us that Yuckers messing about with the Horn of Evil resulted in all sorts of dreadful trouble, so advises us not to play with any knives or Horns of Evil we might find in our house. All well and good, but nowhere does Orko mention practical jokes, which was definitely the real focus of this episode. Obviously the writers trusted us to have grasped this bit of the message all by ourselves.

 

Character checklist

We have the pleasure of seeing Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man, Orko, Man-at-Arms, the Sorceress, Trapjaw and Dree Elle, as well as the random Trollan guard. There are also debut appearances from Clawful and Yuckers, the latter of which I do not wish to ever see polluting my screen again.

Teela: “Remind me again why we have to associate with these imbeciles?”

 

Excuse given for Prince Adam’s disappearance

Despite two dramatic transformations into He-Man, Adam is unable to summon up the energy to give an excuse for either.

 

Insults

Clawful definitely leads the field this week, with some properly cutting remarks to Trapjaw, including “cowardly hunk of tin” and “Dim-brain”. He also calls Orko a “little runt”. Still, he gets what he deserves shortly thereafter, when Teela refers to him as “Crust-face”, which I assume is short for “Crustacean-face” rather than being an oblique reference to him having eaten all the pies.

Teela: “I understand, He-Man. I want to put these morons into a liquidiser too. But we can’t, because it’s before the watershed.”

 

Does it have the Power?

Yes and no. Mostly no. On the plus side, on the strength of his first appearance, you can chalk me down as a big fan of Clawful, Skeletor’s red lobster-inspired henchman. He’s incredibly rude to everyone, his animation and voice acting is great, and his behaviour and general attitude come across as genuinely evil (as opposed to most of Skeletor’s men, who only really achieve being moderately naughty). I’ll be interested to see if he retains this strong character, or if he quickly becomes a bumbling idiot like the others. I’m not holding my breath.

On the minus side, towards which the episode is very strongly weighted, there’s Yuckers. What were the writers thinking? Orko is infuriating enough; why did anyone think it would be a great idea to introduce a much more annoying version of him? Yes – I know he’s meant to be an annoying younger brother who learns his lesson, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch. His idiotic jokes and his dreadful voice were hugely grating.

And speaking of grating, there’s that song at the end. It was literally awful – relentlessly bouncy and cheerful and saccharine. And once it was over, He-Man invited Orko and Dree Elle to sing it again! Never have I wanted to join Skeletor’s side quite so much as when that was going on.

Dree Elle: “Hey, Orko! I’ve got a great idea! Let’s sing a song so bad that the lyric sheet starts to spontaneously combust!”

So in conclusion – watch the bits with Clawful in them. As soon as He-Man throws Clawful into a mud puddle, you can stop.

Episode 052 – Teela’s Trial

In which Teela reacts disproportionately to a simple mistake.

I think it’s only fair to inform you right now that if you’ve been lured to this episode by the title and are expecting 20 minutes of courtroom drama – Law and Order: Eternia, for example – then you are liable to be disappointed. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s proceed.

Man-at-Arms is back to his old tricks again, inventing things that already exist. This week he’s devised a teleporter. Now, in complete fairness, I can only ever recall the baddies using teleporters, so I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is the first teleporter possessed by the powers of good. Even if this is the case, though, it doesn’t explain why the ubiquitous Trapjaw, who is hanging around, is so eager to get his paws on the teleporter.

In the course of a fight with Trapjaw, Teela uses the teleporter to transport Man-at-Arms to a random location. Instead of making his way home, Man-at-Arms occupies himself picking up rocks and looking at them like a simpleton. This he does until Trapjaw finds him, kidnaps him and takes him to Snake Mountain, where Skeletor welcomes him unexpectedly politely and asks him to design a new teleporter.

Man-at-Arms: “I wonder what this is. I also wonder why I’m at all interested in it.”

Devastated by her mistake in using the teleporter on her father without fully understanding how it works, Teela resigns her post as Captain of the Guard and exiles herself to the Wastelands. Randor and Marlena make only nominal attempts to stop her, and Adam’s effort isn’t a whole lot more convincing. Teela therefore makes her way to a desert and melodramatically sighs, “Well, I guess this’ll be my home now.” I understand what the moral is going to be in this episode, but the idea that anyone could possibly think this is a sensible solution to the problem is beyond me.

Luckily, Man-at-Arms manages to get a communicator working and gets in touch with Adam, who becomes He-Man and arrives at the Wastelands just in time to save Teela from a stupid snake. The two of them head straight for Snake Mountain, where Skeletor is testing a new heat ray and complaining that he keeps on burning his walls. Em, maybe test your stupid weapons outside then, Skeletor?

Skeletor: “Looks like the heat ray works after all. Probably don’t need Man-at-Arms, frankly.”

Outside, He-Man decides that this week he can’t be bothered to go in through the usual entrance of Snake Mountain, so instead he’s going to punch a hole in the wall. Once inside, they quickly locate Man-at-Arms and prepare to teleport out – but the teleporter has only sufficient energy for two people. There is of course much discussion over who will be left behind, but it’s noteworthy that while both He-Man and Teela volunteer, Man-at-Arms pointedly does not.

He-Man decides that now is the time for a lesson in life skills and insists that Teela set the controls on the teleporter, informing her that just because she got it wrong the first time, that’s not an excuse for not trying again. Eventually, Teela agrees to give it a go, and wow, she gets it right. She and Man-at-Arms return to the Palace.

He-Man jauntily saunters out of Snake Mountain and is immediately greeted by Skeletor, sitting in a ridiculous tank-like vehicle. Skeletor has supreme and ill-judged confidence that this tank will put pay to He-Man once and for all, which is quite decidedly not the case. It takes He-Man less than a minute to hang the tank from a rocky outcrop, and he departs Snake Mountain making comments that make literally no sense: “Mind that first step, Skeletor, it’s a lulu.” What does this mean????

He-Man: “Don’t try to pretend you didn’t see this coming, Skeletor.”

 

In today’s adventure…

I was right. As predicted above, the moral this week – delivered by Man-at-Arms – is that stopping trying or running away when you make a mistake is no way to behave. It’s another sensible moral, tied into the storyline effectively. It would seem the writers are getting the hang of these.

 

Character checklist

There’s very little amusing I can say about the fact that this episode features the all-too-standard line-up of Prince Adam, He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Orko, King Randor, Queen Marlena, Skeletor, Beast-Man and Trapjaw.

Prince Adam: “With Teela in exile in the desert, I can probably get away with watching Deal or No Deal for ten hours straight.”

 

Excuse given for Prince Adam’s disappearance

The transformation today occurs when there’s no one nearby, and so once again, there’s no excuse supplied.

 

Insults

With Skeletor on the scene, there’s an average number of insults, none of them too imaginative. Man-at-Arms calls Skeletor a “bonehead”, while He-Man refers to Beast-Man and Trapjaw as “goons”. Skeletor himself calls his comrades “fools”, and reserves “muscle-bound oaf” for He-Man.

Beast-Man: “My underpants are a little too tight.”

 

Does it have the Power?

I did enjoy this episode, though I’m a sucker for any episode which involves He-Man breaking into Snake Mountain. This incidence isn’t as much fun as The Region of Ice, but it’s still entertaining. The point about Teela making mistakes and then being upset about it is perhaps a bit overlaboured, but it’s not too irritating, and it’s a worthwhile topic to explore on this cartoon. All in all, it’s a good solid entry.

Episode 051 – City Beneath the Sea

In which our heroes meet some walking fish.

A shipping merchant arrives at Eternia’s Palace to inform King Randor and Man-at-Arms of the disappearance of six ships over the course of the last month. Before a sensible answer can be given, Prince Adam blunders in, playing blind man’s buff with Cringer and two ladies of easy virtue, both of whom are laughing like rabid hyenas. Adam earns himself a stern telling off, but manages to inveigle himself onto the missing ship investigation.

Girl on left: “I am either laughing or having a spasm. Also, please check out my beautiful earmuffs.”

This week, Man-at-Arms’ brand new invention is radar, which in fairness I don’t think we have seen on Eternia before, so he’s clearly getting better at the inventing game. As he, Adam and Cringer sail to the site of the disappearances, the radar picks up an image of an entire subsea city, encased in a protective dome. A whirlpool forms, sucking the ship down to the city, and Adam decides it’s time for a swift transformation.

The next scene finds He-Man, Battle-Cat and Man-at-Arms in a room in the city, concluding that this place must be the legendary underwater city of Aquatica. They are greeted by some walking fish, who whisk them along on a conveyor belt to meet a vaguely less fishy gentleman wearing a conch on his head. This man informs them that the ships have only been attacked in self-defence. The plot thickens.

He-Man: “Isn’t it nice on the conveyor belt? I feel like someone’s buying me at Sainsbury’s.”

And then the plot thins again, with the entirely unsurprising entry of Mer-Man. Mer-Man details his plan, which is nicely vague: “I’m going to keep on sinking ships until Eternia is mine.” Er, care to elaborate on the middle step there, Mer-Man? At any rate, He-Man decides that enough is enough and starts attacking the walking fish, which is something he’s been itching to do for the last five minutes, having been making ominous comments like, “We come in peace … for now.”

Once He-Man defeats the fish, Mer-Man reveals his trump card: the Pearl of Power. This little trinket allows him to tie up our heroes in bonds that they cannot break, and that should be the end of that. Unfortunately, Mer-Man makes an amateur error: putting He-Man in an arena, removing his bonds, and making him fight a giant crab. Obviously, He-Man defeats the crab in about 3 and a half seconds, and then does a runner.

Man-at-Arms: “Once He-Man’s finished with this dude, I’ll take him to Loch Fyne.”

Our heroes shortly thereafter find themselves surrounded by walking fish, but are rescued by the man with the conch on his head. He helps them onto a shark-shaped submarine, where he reveals that Aquatica’s true ruler is Princess Nami, who has been captured by Mer-Man and hidden in the Coral Caverns. Mer-Man has blamed her disappearance on the surface-dwellers of Eternia, and the Aquaticans have needed little prompting to go on the offensive.

If you guessed that He-Man now goes to the Coral Caverns and rescues the princess, you’d be absolutely right. If you also guessed that this involves a tedious fight with a boring monster, it’s a relatively clear indication that you’re as familiar with this cartoon as I am. And if you further guessed that He-Man puts Mer-Man out of action and everything is set to rights with the return of Princess Nami to Aquatica, then well done. I’m proud of you. However, if you also guessed that He-Man concludes matters by making the whirlpool explode, then I must conclude that you’ve seen this episode before.

The episode’s writer: “I don’t know how to finish this episode, so I’ll just make a whirlpool explode. That can happen, right?”

 

In today’s adventure…

Man-at-Arms draws the sensible conclusion this week that we shouldn’t judge people by appearances, which is allegedly what the Aquaticans did. These morals have been quite sensible of late, rather disappointingly.

 

Character checklist

Contrary to last week, there’s a very large cast list. We’ve obviously got Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man and Battle-Cat. Then of course there’s Man-at-Arms and King Randor, and Orko’s around for the moral. Mer-Man is also present, and one-shot characters include Princess Nami, the man with the conch on his head, the fishy guards, and Prince Adam’s floozies.

Mer-Man: “I have this feeling it’s not going to work out for me.”

 

Excuse given for Prince Adam’s disappearance

Yet again, nothing.

 

Insults

Early on, Adam calls Cringer a “big coward”, though I don’t think it’s meant unkindly. We then get nothing else until right at the end, when He-Man unimaginatively refers to Mer-Man as “Fishface”.

 

Does it have the Power?

I enjoyed this episode, though it’s no classic. The early mystery behind the missing ships was well-drawn, and I liked that it was only gradually revealed who was really behind it: at first, it’s the Aquaticans who are the baddies, then we finally learn that Mer-Man has been the puppet master. I think I like Mer-Man episodes more than they really deserve, because I can still remember as a child seeing his face in the opening sequence every week, always wondering whether he’d be in the actual story, and he never seemed to be – so it still feels like a bit of a treat when he does show up. But anyway, this episode is well-constructed and pretty sane, as far as these things go. I’d recommend it, so long as you don’t go in expecting amazingness.

Episode 050 – Temple of the Sun

In which I begin to suspect that Man-at-Arms has recently suffered head trauma.

Our story opens with a ragged man called Nepthu crawling through the desert towards the Temple of the Sun. Once he gets inside, he engages in a frantic search for a piece of gold called the Sun Scarab; when he finds this, he uses its powers to transform himself into a strong powerful individual, and announces his intention to rule the universe. As a demonstration of his power, he captures the Sorceress, who happens to be flying around in falcon form. It’s a typical Thursday on Eternia.

Nepthu: “I’m sure this will end well.”

Meanwhile, over at the Palace, Man-at-Arms is demonstrating another of his miraculous inventions. This one’s called a “communicator”, and it works in exactly the same way as a radio. Eternia has been shown as possessing radios right from the very first episode, I’m sure. This is the second week in a row that Man-at-Arms has “invented” something that already exists. It’s entirely possible that at some point offscreen, he sustained a serious head injury, and this flurry of inventing things is just part of his re-education programme.

This fascinating and completely irrelevant scene is interrupted by Adam, who receives a telepathic communication from the Sorceress informing him that she is a prisoner in the Temple of the Sun. Cue inspiring music and the entry of He-Man – though curiously, Cringer demands not to become Battle-Cat and to come along in his usual form instead. This is an interesting idea, but unfortunately we only get about halfway through the next scene before Cringer decides to be Battle-Cat after all.

Our heroes arrive at the Temple without too much difficulty, where they are greeted by a whirlwind. He-Man employs a technique we’ve seen before and spins really fast in the opposite direction, which somehow enables him to throw the whirlwind into outer space. I feel the writers of He-Man should stay away from whirlwinds. It brings out their most mental side, which is saying something.

He-Man: “If I think hard enough, I expect I can come up with an insane solution to this problem.”

The next hazard to be faced is a giant scorpion, which He-Man defeats by rubbing the desert sand so much that it heats up and forms a nice big pane of glass, behind which the scorpion is trapped. This bit genuinely seems to be included simply so that He-Man can explain to the audience that glass is made from sand, which is nice to know but seems completely random.

Meanwhile, Nepthu has occupied himself in creating a bunch of sand monsters, which he describes as being “as hard as rock and completely invincible”. If you want to nip off to Ladbrokes now to place bets on whether these monsters will defeat He-Man, I’m happy to wait for you to get back. The Sorceress attempts an escape, but Nepthu turns her into solid diamond and laughs crazily.

Nepthu: “Snapped up a right bargain in Poundland today.”

Before Nepthu can be spurred to further mayhem, He-Man lets himself into the Temple and enters into a difference of opinion with the sand monsters. Once this is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction (except, obviously, Nepthu’s), Man-at-Arms manages to swipe the Scarab out of Nepthu’s hand. He-Man destroys the Scarab, returning the Sorceress to life and Nepthu to his ragged form. The episode ends with the revelation that Nepthu gets a job as a gardener in the Evergreen Forest.

 

In today’s adventure…

He-Man considers the take-home lesson this week is that Nepthu used power for his own selfish ends, and thus wasn’t a very good leader. He-Man reminds us that being a good leader takes a lot of responsibility, but then seems to remember that the target audience of this cartoon isn’t a symposium for CEOs of multi-national companies, and correspondingly adjusts the direction of the moral by informing us that it’s also important to be responsible when following a leader – i.e. don’t do something wrong just because someone tells you to. Sage advice, actually.

 

Character checklist

There aren’t many characters to entertain us today. It’s only Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man, Battle-Cat, the Sorceress, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Orko and Nepthu doing the rounds.

Prince Adam: “Unfortunately my head appears to be detached from my body, and Man-at-Arms doesn’t have a neck today.”

 

Excuse given for Prince Adam’s disappearance

The writers seem to have settled into a comfortable pattern of only including Man-at-Arms and Orko in these stories, thus negating the need for Adam to explain himself to anyone.

 

Insults

The only insult this week is Adam calling Cringer a “big furball”, and he sounds mightily cross when he does so.

Cringer: “How very dare you.”

 

Does it have the Power?

This episode is neither particularly good nor particularly bad – in fact, it’s almost wilfully average. The only part that’s even a bit interesting is the bit where Cringer refuses to become Battle-Cat and insists on helping by himself; there’s always a slight undercurrent of resentment from Cringer when he has to be Battle-Cat, and it was a fun notion for him to demand to contribute on his own merits. The problem is this is undermined almost immediately by him changing his mind shortly thereafter, before he’s had the chance to do anything. A bit of a missed opportunity, really.

Nepthu is not a very interesting villain, and without any background on him, his ambition of conquering the universe seems like it comes from nowhere and isn’t very convincing. The scenes of He-Man facing the whirlwind and the scorpion are nothing but time-wasting, as is the really odd scene of Man-at-Arms inventing the communicator. One nice touch was seeing Nepthu at the end of the episode actually happy with his lot, which is probably a first for a defeated baddy. On the whole, though, I wouldn’t really bother with this episode.