- by Owen Morton
In light of the good news I reported recently about the recent screening of a brand new series of He-Man in the US, I felt it was only appropriate that I review an episode of the original series so we can remember what it is the new series is attempting to recreate. The episode I chose this time is the first episode of the original series, Diamond Ray of Disappearance. As opposed to the previous two He-Man episode reviews I’ve done on this website, I actually watched the episode in question immediately prior to writing the review, so I might have a slight bit more knowledge of what I’m talking about than last time. I’ll do this review in the usual format: plot summary, then discussion of anything particularly stupid that happens to catch my attention.
The episode, instead of trying to establish how He-Man and Skeletor came to be mortal foes in the first place, merely takes the form of yet another of Skeletor’s stupid plans to unlock the secrets of Castle Grayskull. On this occasion, he has found the lost Diamond Ray of Disappearance, which – as he explains to his group of villains, which includes Beast-Man, Trapjaw, Tri-Klops, Evil-Lyn and Mer-Man – has the power to make anything that sees it vanish. Just to prove he’s not lying, he makes a small red creature disappear. With this diamond in his service, Skeletor cries slightly over-dramatically that he can finally rule Eternia.
We then cut to see what it is Skeletor hopes to be ruling over. The first scene featuring the goodies is a fairly typical one: King Randor, Queen Marlena, Prince Adam, Man-at-Arms and Teela are watching one of Orko’s famed egg magic tricks. As is only to be expected, they go all over Man-at-Arms, who rather pointedly (and ironically, given that later in the episode, Orko is one of the only goodies not to disappear) suggests that the only magic trick he wants to see is Orko disappearing. Adam seems to find this deeply amusing, much more amusing than the comment warrants, and gives a full-bodied laugh which actually seems to echo. This laugh in itself is far more amusing than the actual joke.
But of course it’s not all sweetness and light and pelting Man-at-Arms with eggs in the Palace today; Trapjaw suddenly starts attacking the Palace using some kind of strange flying vehicle. Teela immediately goes to get a similar flying vehicle of her own and chases after Trapjaw out into the wilderness. Meanwhile, Adam displays intelligence for one of the few times in his secret-keeping tactics, and leaves the Palace to turn into He-Man. He-Man then says, “Let’s go and give Teela a hand!” and says this with such glee that it sounds like he intends it to be a sincerely amusing joke. Perhaps his sense of humour is as underdeveloped as Adam’s evidently is. It’s funny, really; even after the very badly written pilot episode that this is, He-Man retains this strange idea that pretty much anything he says is prime material for stand-up comedian shows. I mean, remember the moral at the end of Disappearing Dragons? ‘Treat the animal with kindness; that’ll be more fun for you, and for the animal!’ I don’t think there’s a punchline there, but it’s delivered as if it’s so very very funny.
Anyway, off he goes to give Teela a hand, and just in time. The tables have turned and Trapjaw is just about to shoot her with a silly gun on the end of his arm. Once He-Man arrives, however, Trapjaw prefers to attack this much more demanding opponent, and shoots at He-Man with the gun instead. He-Man deflects the energy bolt with his sword, commenting, “Guess they just don’t make energy bolts like they used to!” which is another example of an attempt to be amusing. Trapjaw then starts attempting to fit another gun into his arm socket, presumably one more capable of shooting through He-Man’s sword, but He-Man interrupts, grabbing the gun in question and twisting it out of shape, while speaking the line, “Let me give you a hand!” I’m not making this up. Within the first two minutes of his initial appearance – ever – He-Man has said something about giving people a ‘hand’ twice. I’m sure the writers wanted to portray him like this, but why? Just to emphasise the point that He-Man helps people? If so, it misfired badly, because it only gives the impression that He-Man is mentally challenged.
Anyway, having uttered such profundities, He-Man decides he’s had enough of Trapjaw, and picks him and hurls him quite a long way in a random direction. Skeletor, watching from afar, reveals to the other baddies that he only sent Trapjaw to attack the Palace to lure Teela away so he could attack more easily. Though quite what he thought Teela could do to stop him getting in I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like she was even capable of defeating Trapjaw without He-Man’s help. But anyway, Skeletor and his other friends start making their way to the Palace. As if he somehow senses this, He-Man suddenly – with no evidence whatsoever – informs Teela that he thinks Skeletor must have lured them away from the Palace for a reason, and they start heading back.
Meanwhile, Skeletor appears in the Palace and promptly makes the King, Queen and Man-at-Arms disappear, as well as the Sorceress who is there to warn Man-at-Arms that Skeletor is in the Palace. Orko only survives this terrible fate because he has his head in a golden pot for reasons which are frankly too complex to go into here. He flies off out the window in search of a) He-Man and b) someone who can get the pot off his head. He achieves the latter when he hits a tree and the pot flies off. He finds He-Man mere seconds later and tells him what’s happened. In the meantime, Skeletor and his entourage head for Castle Grayskull to force entry. Fortunately, He-Man, thanks to Orko, knows that this is what they will be doing, and has got there first. Through a mirror, he manages to communicate with the vanished Sorceress, who informs him that to bring everyone back, he must crush the diamond. Then, aware of Skeletor’s imminent arrival, he decides to arrange “a welcome party”, as I believe he puts it.
Skeletor sets all his villains to work pulling the drawbridge of the castle open with a grappling hook, and in a surprising break with tradition, they actually manage it. However, they swiftly run into the welcome party which He-Man has arranged. This welcome party is rather lacking in any kind of subtlety, however, since it consists merely of He-Man sitting atop Battle-Cat and charging out at them the moment the drawbridge comes down. A grand battle between He-Man and the villains ensues, which gets ever better when Teela arrives with Stratos and Ram-Man to help He-Man out. Not that he needs an awful lot of assistance anyway. The next few minutes are concerned merely with He-Man and co. seeing off the baddies in a variety of amusing ways (and probably the uttering of the line, “Let me give you a hand!” several times as well), but we really begin to fear for He-Man’s safety when Skeletor lures him close enough to him to be able to effectively use the diamond on him. Sadly, something happens – can’t quite remember what – which makes Skeletor drop the diamond into a crack in the ground.
At this juncture Beast-Man makes the eminently sensible suggestion that, since they’ve now lost their secret weapon (and moreover, He-Man’s already made mincemeat of them anyway), it might be a fortuitous moment to make an exit (though obviously not using such big words, because Beast-Man is a total nitwit). Skeletor agrees, but “not without leaving He-Man something to play with”, as he puts it. To this end, he casts a spell on a large rock which becomes animated and attacks He-Man. Then the baddies bugger off back to Snake Mountain, thus setting the scene for the usual ending to He-Man episodes.
He-Man must now deal with this new threat, as well as find the diamond and crush it, all within the last three minutes of the episode! Well, what is he going to do? Firstly, he decides to sort out the rock monster, which he does quickly and easily, simply by punching it once. It hardly seems to have been worth Skeletor’s while to waste time creating the stupid thing in the first place, really. Seriously, the rock monster’s appearance takes up less than ten seconds of the episode. It is a thoroughly pointless creation, and doesn’t even have the saving grace of wasting some time so that the episode is the required length. Perhaps its presence was to display Skeletor’s power and show how capable he is of animating rocks, and also to show how capable He-Man is of beating everyone and everything up. But the latter point doesn’t need demonstrating, given He-Man’s performance in this episode so far, and the former point is somewhat muted given that no matter what Skeletor animates, He-Man will be able to destroy it with a single punch (except if it’s a living breathing organism, such as Skeletor himself, whom He-Man has an odd difficulty in killing).
Anyway, having attended to the intense danger of the rock monster, He-Man now has to crush the diamond. He climbs down into the crack where the diamond fell, somehow locates it without seeing it, then holds it between his hands and crushes it. This endeavour takes maybe thirty seconds, during which time he starts to disappear, but simply by remembering the Sorceress’ instructions to crush the diamond, he manages to avoid this fate. Once the diamond is crushed, the Sorceress, King Randor, Queen Marlena and Man-at-Arms all reappear, though, oddly enough, the little red creature which Skeletor had at the beginning of the episode does not. I can’t think of any logical explanations for this omission, except perhaps that the writers forgot about the red creature, which is not good and perhaps displays quite how much the writers really cared about their creation.
At any rate, once He-Man has performed this particularly useful task, someone (can’t quite remember who) tells him, “You saved us all, He-Man!” At this point, Man-at-Arms (whom, you will remember, has spent the majority in the alternate dimension where he was sent by the diamond) turns directly to the camera and winks! I simply cannot understand why. Okay, so he knows that He-Man is really Prince Adam, but no one has even mentioned anything about He-Man and Prince Adam being entirely different people. The wink really serves only to imply that Man-at-Arms is intending to take all the credit for He-Man’s achievement. Though quite how he intends to do this, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this anyway – maybe the wink was just a momentary lapse of reason on the part of the animator. But anyway, it’s probably time to stop harping on about this now.
The episode ends with everyone gathered back at the Palace, with the exception of He-Man and/or Prince Adam. It is here – right at the beginning – that the tradition for ending an episode with a good joke (or, at least, a joke; saying ‘good’ may be overdoing it a little) is established. King Randor wants to know where Prince Adam is, complaining that he’s always late. Teela announces that there is good news and even better news: Prince Adam is on his way, and he’s found the King’s lost vehicle (can’t remember what the vehicle in question is, but it doesn’t really matter, especially since I imagine the vehicle does not appear again, given what happens next). King Randor says that that is good news, to which Teela replies that there is a little bit of bad news: Adam has broken the directional control. At this point, Adam drives the vehicle through the wall of the Palace, thus demonstrating the afore-made statement. King Randor says, in a quite interesting tone, “Adam! You’ve destroyed the wall.” He doesn’t say it crossly; he just says it as if he’s imparting some mildly interesting information, as if Adam might not have noticed that he just flew a rather unwieldy vehicle through a solid brick wall. Orko then chimes in with the punchline, “But at least he’s destroyed it on time!”
And everyone laughs.
The interesting thing about this is that … well, actually, there’s a number of interesting things about this. Firstly, of course, Adam isn’t destroying the wall on time, because the wall wasn’t scheduled to be destroyed at all. Secondly, if the wall were scheduled to be destroyed, and if Adam destroyed it at this point in time, it still wouldn’t have been destroyed on time, because – as we will recall – King Randor was mere seconds ago complaining about Adam being late. So, if you actually stop to think about it, this whole thing doesn’t make any sense and I think it should be struck from the annals of He-Man history.
Sadly, the edition of this episode which I have does not include the moral, since I downloaded it from x-entertainment and didn’t video it off the telly. Particularly obsessive He-Fans might note that there are, I believe, eight full-length He-Man episodes available for download from x-entertainment, as well as the hour and a half length cartoon movie which establishes where She-Ra came from in the first place (which I admit I have downloaded, though, in my defence, I haven’t actually ever watched it). Anyway, the original point of this paragraph, before I got sidetracked, was that I couldn’t here repeat the moral of the story and insult it, though if I had to guess, I would say that the moral was probably something along the lines of, “In today’s adventure story, Skeletor learnt that throwing his secret weapon into a crack in the ground was a really bad idea! If he hadn’t done this, he might have been able to defeat He-Man once and for all, but then, of course, there wouldn’t be a TV series and we wouldn’t be able to sell you all sorts of ridiculous action figures and make a hell of a lot of money which we can use to make even more figures and sell them to you and make even more, until we are extremely rich men.”
I seem to have done something mildly unusual in the composition of this review and said pretty much all I need to say in the process of writing the episode summary. However, I will add that if this seems a little too harsh, you should bear in mind that this is the first episode ever written and thus allowances should be made … what am I saying? This deserves every criticism I level at it: every episode was just as stupid and this is a fairly accurate representation of what the rest of the series was to turn out like. Quite why a further 129 episodes – and a spin-off series – were commissioned, I have no idea.