Episode 1 – Even For Kings

In which it’s the end for King Randor.

If, like me, you’ve forgotten virtually everything that happened in Revelation, you might be hoping for a little recap. We don’t get one though, other than some very vague portentous spoutings, which are pleasingly punctuated by a disembodied Skeletor head laughing while superimposed over Castle Grayskull, just like in the Filmation credits. Love it. I would also be remiss if I didn’t suggest that Skeletor has literally laughed his head off.

He-Man: “Reckon this would look good on the back of some action figures?”

Christ – we’re not going to get anywhere if I write a whole paragraph about every 30 seconds of this episode. Let’s move on. The story begins in Subternia, where Prince Adam and Orko have travelled to beg Scareglow to allow the souls of Fisto and Clamp Champ to ascend to Preternia. Scareglow inevitably refuses this polite request, and this gives way to a big old barney with lots of cameo appearances from all manner of people, including non-entities like Rio Blast. Yeah, I had to look him up too.

Anyway, our heroes get what they want and escape Subternia carrying Fisto’s fist and Clamp Champ’s clamp, which I assume will allow them to head up to Preternia. We’ll all recall – and if we didn’t, Scareglow did helpfully remind us – that Evil-Lyn destroyed Preternia while on her little rampage, so I’ll assume the gang have a plan for that too. In the meantime, the celebrations are rather muted by King Randor suddenly collapsing. Uh oh.

King Randor: “Could you please stop He-Manhandling me?”

The prognosis is dire, and on his deathbed, Randor expresses his love for Marlena and for Adam, and then decides that now is the best moment to give Adam some dating advice re Teela. I suppose if not now, then when, but it still feels like an odd moment to choose. Anyway, he then rambles onto suggest that when Adam becomes King of Eternia, he’ll have to give up being He-Man, because kings can’t just “abandon their subjects for high adventure”. Randor seems to be ignoring the fact that he was along for the ride on the little jolly against Scareglow earlier this episode; I expect Adam or Marlena would call him out on this, but he continues with a rambling monologue that only comes to an end when he pops his clogs.

Over to Teela now, who’s trying to restore Preternia to ensure that Randor’s noble soul can get there. Unfortunately, her magic isn’t up to the task, so she pops down to Castle Grayskull’s basement, where she’s keeping the spirit of the old Sorceress. Perhaps keen to escape the basement, the Sorceress offers a hint: Teela will have to call on the magic of Zoar, Havoc and Kaa (presumably not the one from The Jungle Book). This will mean going to Darksmoke, a location which Orko remarks gives him the creeps. No doubt this is because – as we’ll all remember – Darksmoke is the home of Granamyr, who persistently arranges for Orko to be imprisoned inside large pots.

Sorceress: “Don’t think that just because I’m dead I’m going to stop dispensing pointlessly cryptic advice.”

We close at Randor’s funeral, where Adam is attempting to give a touching eulogy. He just about manages, though staggeringly it seems he hasn’t prepared anything and just does it off the hoof. Not really the time I’d have chosen to wing it, but hey, you do you, Adam. Anyway, the funeral is disrupted by a blue chappy who introduces himself as Keldor, Randor’s brother and the true heir to the throne. Before we can get any more deets, the episode ends.

In today’s adventure…

Orko is kind enough to explain that asking people who love you for help isn’t wrong, which is as plain a moral segment as I ever saw. I surely can’t be alone in wishing that these bits would come at the end of the episode, addressed directly to camera and followed with the cheerful gibberish “Until next time!”

Orko: “Say, Teela, is now a good time to ask whether you like my new outfit?”

Character checklist

It’s a real character bonanza today: we get Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man, King Randor, Queen Marlena (who’s now voiced by Gates McFadden rather than Alicia Silverstone, which is a far better choice), Man-at-Arms, Teela, Orko, the Sorceress, Ram-Man, Buzz-Off, Snout Spout, Rio Blast, Andra, Keldor and Scareglow. We also meet a doctor in the Royal Palace, who I think did get a name but which I didn’t catch, and Stratos gets a quick non-speaking cameo at King Randor’s funeral. Finally, there’s a brief check-in at Snake Mountain, where we see Two Bad and Tri-Klops, before there’s a grand entrance from Skeletor, who’s now been fully converted away from magic and onto technology, thanks to Motherboard, who is working for – who else? – Hordak. Got all that? Good.

Insults

Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, or maybe the scriptwriters were slacking off, but as far as I noticed, the only insults were “thieves” and “usurpers”, which is how Scareglow addresses Adam and Randor. I get why he’s calling them thieves, but usurpers seems just odd.

Scareglow: “I’m so scary I don’t have to make sense.”

Does it have the Power?

Yes, indeed it does. It’s a very nice little episode which really takes the time to explore the strength of the relationship between Randor, Marlena and Adam, just at the moment that relationship is coming to an end. Okay, so I’m not quite sure I agree with Randor’s deathbed conclusions that Adam will be unable to be both the King and He-Man, but there’s no question that the scene is well-written and animated, and touchingly performed by all the voice actors. Sad as I am to see King Randor go, it’s a great direction in which to take the storyline, taking us into almost brand new territory – especially given this last-minute intervention from Keldor, who presumably in this continuity is not Skeletor.

Prince Adam: “Is Owen going to have to learn to type ‘King Adam’ now?”

The opening action sequence with Scareglow is entertaining – though frankly I could have done without a return from this pound-shop version of Skeletor – and doesn’t go on too long, leading us nicely into the main story. Teela appears to be getting her own subplot, focussed on restoring Preternia: this smacks of the mystical sort of gubbins that I’m rarely interested in, but if it means we get a return from Granamyr after all these years, then count me in for now. We barely get any time with Skeletor today, but clearly we’re building to something with him and Hordak, and there’s enough going on in this episode for the brief scene at Snake Mountain to serve to whet our appetite without leaving us feeling short-changed.

So – long story short, yes, this is a very good instalment, that leaves me very keen to see where the story goes next. It’s good to have the series back.

Series Summary

So here we are at the (presumed) end of yet another Masters of the Universe series, and that means that once again it’s time for me to try to come up with something profound to say about it. I think that in this case – which is that of the Netflix CGI series, if that’s not immediately apparent – it’s only fair for me to say little more than that it gets a hearty thumbs up. This series is pretty much everything I could have wanted from a modern update of He-Man – it takes the original concept, sticks closely to it in some respects, and gives it a completely fresh perspective in others.

Prince Adam: “So, what, I have to share the power with you doinks?”

Although one of my favourite aspects of the original series was the secret identity business – especially when it was utterly ludicrous, and only a brain dead idiot wouldn’t have been able to work out that Prince Adam was He-Man – I think it was a good move for this series to ditch that approach to enable what’s perhaps the most substantial revamp: the sharing of the Power of Grayskull between the whole team. This was a change that really allowed this series to develop the concept of friendship and shared responsibility, and upped the stakes when Krass took the wrong path.

As usual, of course, my favourite character was Skeletor: I think it’d be a very strange Masters of the Universe series that managed to topple him from his pedestal. Once again, he’s completely unhinged, with some of the series’ best comedic moments springing from his winning combination of desperate power-craving and magnificent pettiness. I’m sure some may cry “character assassination” in the episode in which he sulked because he was having a rubbish birthday, but I just laughed my head off.

Skeletor: “Happy birthday to me.”

Other characters were also fantastic: Cringer’s update gave him an adoptive parent role which reminded me of Giles from Buffy, but he also displayed a quite substantial amount of humour, particularly when – as happened more often than you’d expect – he was left in charge of driving various vehicles. Stratos, too, was hilarious: his overconfidence twinned with a complete lack of ability almost invariably made me chuckle.

Not every character was perfect, naturally – Duncan, given his pedigree as Man-at-Arms, tended to get on my nerves a bit, and Orko was generally his usual irritating self. Teela and Man-e-Faces didn’t do a lot for me, and neither did Beast-Man or Trapjaw. But the true low point was Gary the stupid butterfly, who added nothing to the series except a constant low level of tedium whenever he was on screen.

Evil-Lyn: “I could do us all a favour and send this clown to another dimension.”

But I expect what we’re all here for is my breakdown of favourite and least favourite episodes. Given there were only 26 episodes, choosing five standouts and five complete misfires would be a bit challenging, so I’ve decided to limit myself to three of each. Arguably I’m just being lazy, so feel free to chime in with suggestions for episodes that should have but didn’t make these lists.

Highlights

3. The Sword of Grayskull

The opening episode of this series remains one of my favourites: it’s such an impressive beginning, which establishes the series premise efficiently and entertainingly, making it accessible for both kids who are newcomers to the franchise and bitter old cynics like me. I can’t speak for the kids, but it won me over within seconds, and by the end I was seriously considering this the best He-Man series since Filmation.

He-Man: “Er, what just happened?”

2. Meanwhile…

Inevitably, my top picks are going to be Skeletor-heavy outings, and this one is perhaps his best showing in the whole series, perfectly capturing his delusions of grandeur and low-level pettiness. The whole thing is kicked off because Skeletor wants everyone to celebrate his birthday, which just shows how demented it is. Hilarious, despite the extended presence of Duncan.

1. Eternia 3000

I think it’s impossible to describe just how much I enjoyed this episode. As well as being a fairly important episode in the overall series arc, it’s a perfectly ridiculous story in its own right. The scene in which He-Man and Skeletor are forced to ballroom dance while being overly polite to each other is perhaps one of my favourite moments in the entire franchise. This one’s a real triumph.

Cringer: “Yes, yes, leave the driving to the guy without opposable thumbs. Sensible, sensible.”

Lowlights

3. The Haunting of Castle Grayskull

In my review of this one, I said there was nothing wrong with this episode, so it may come as a surprise to see it filling out the third slot. It surprises me too – basically, the quality of this series is so high that there were only two episodes which I thought were serious misses, which means the bronze medal has to be taken by an episode that was wilfully average i.e. this one.

2. Orko the Great

Long-time readers will be aware of my deep-seated antipathy to Orko, and his early episodes in this series didn’t do much to change matters. In fairness, his appearances later on weren’t nearly so annoying, but this one – in which he was introduced – reminded me of all Orko’s crushingly irritating features, while also contriving to introduce some new ones. Coupled with Duncan being really annoying too, there really wasn’t much to enjoy in this one.

Orko: “Hi guys! Miss me? … No, of course you didn’t.”

1. A Very Hungry Dragonfly

There was never going to be any other episode snatching this top spot: A Very Hungry Dragonfly is, in my book, the series’ only serious misfire. Gary the dragonfly never came close to being either engaging or amusing, and most of the episode consisted of pointless magic fighting which got really boring really quickly. To make things worse, Gary continued to recur in later episodes, which meant I couldn’t simply forget about this one.

Time for a revolution…

We’ve all heard that soundbite from the trailer, so I thought I might as well use it: it’s time for a Revolution. Specifically, it’s time for Masters of the Universe: Revolution, the long-awaited sequel to Revelation, which is premiering on Netflix later this week. It feels weird to finally be in a position where I can review episodes shortly after they appear. No promises as to how quickly I’ll do it, but I’ll try to have at least one of them up by next week.