- by Owen Morton
Well, I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome all of Heath the Rat’s devotees, and hopefully some new visitors to the website as well, to the year 2004. That does, of course, imply that the year 2004 is mine to welcome people to, which it isn’t, but I believe you probably know what I mean. Now, my resolution for 2004 – well, one of them, anyway – is to devote a bit more time to this website than has been the case lately, especially in the latter half of last year. The only problem is, this is my final year at York, and I’m actually beginning to do a bit of work now, believe it or not. I also have many other commitments, and consequently, Heath the Rat’s Silly Page being quite a long way down on my priority list, sadly, it sometimes will be neglected. I have always tried, however, to get at least one article each month, and there’s only been two occasions so far when I haven’t managed that. I did have a Christmas article in the making, but by the time it was finished, Christmas had long gone, so that’ll have to go up next year, if I haven’t lost it by then.
I think the best thing to do really is to start as we mean to go on, and begin the new year by looking at … He-Man! Now, as we all know, He-Man is one of my obsessions, and it is only recently that the rest of the world (or, at least, the rest of the sane world, that is, not people who run He-Man.org and the He-Man and She-Ra Episode Review Site) has come to realise the tremendous potential of this true classic. 2002 or 2003, I’m not entirely sure which, saw the launch of a new He-Man series which I am yet to be convinced by, though I have only seen one episode – but the better news is that late 2003 also saw the release of the original He-Man on DVD and video. As I explained back in my review of The Cosmic Comet, I do not have access to a DVD player – or, at least, I did not. Imagine my surprise on my return to Nottingham at the start of the Christmas holidays to find a DVD player in our house.
To cut a long story short, today I went out and bought myself Volume 1 of the He-Man DVDs. (Volume 2 will be out in February, for those who are interested.) Tonight, not having much to do, I thought I’d investigate my purchase and write a little website article about some of the special features contained on this DVD, and maybe, if I’m feeling really ambitious, review one of the episodes as well.
The best place to start is, of course, with the main menu. This contains three options – ‘Play All’, which would presumably let you in for a full six episodes, two hours’ worth, of He-Man goodness; ‘Episodes’, which is an option for the slightly saner, allowing you to choose one of the six to watch, and ‘Snake Mountain’, which is a trifle ambiguous, to tell the truth. There’s not a huge clue there as to what sort of trouble you might be getting yourself into if you select that one. And while you’re trying to make up your mind as to which of these all equally enticing proposals to go for first, the He-Man theme music plays proudly in the background. Over and over again. Now, the He-Man music is one of my favourite little tunes, but, really, over and over again isn’t really necessary, is it? It really does begin to drive you insane. You select one of the three options just to get away from that endlessly repeating, cheery, heroic music. As luck would have it, I chose ‘Snake Mountain’, partly out of curiosity as to whether the DVD’s creators had attempted to include a map of Snake Mountain, for reasons known only to themselves, as an extra on the DVD.
Well, selecting ‘Snake Mountain’ will let you in for the usual ‘scary’ Snake Mountain music, which – while annoying – is a positive point after the incessant theme tune we were subjected to a minute ago. Snake Mountain is clearly where the extras of the DVD are hidden, and, though it doesn’t include a map of Snake Mountain, sadly, it does offer the options ‘Commentary’, ‘Gallery’, ‘He-Man Profile’ and DVD-Rom Content’. I decided to start at the beginning, and selected ‘Commentary’.
This offered me the opportunity to view commentaries on two of the episodes on the DVD, namely ‘Diamond Ray of Disappearance’ (which we have discussed before, back in the day when the only way to get He-Man episodes was downloading them off the internet) and ‘Teela’s Quest’. Considering that I’d seen Diamond Ray of Disappearance before, I decided to view the commentary for that one, so I didn’t spoil any surprises that might be in store were I to watch Teela’s Quest. Imagine my surprise (and, it must be said, deep dismay) on discovering that these commentaries are given by the same sad people who ran the He-Man and She-Ra Episode Review Site before it shut down a couple of years ago. Now, on that website, they gave themselves pseudonyms (specifically, Busta Toons and Zadoc Angell), which is very intelligent, but here they are stupid enough to give their full names, which is just what people like me were looking for so I can find them and kill them. For anyone else with a similar interest, their names are James Etock and Dave Newman. Sadly for anyone who wanted to hear anything exciting about this section, I honestly couldn’t listen to them drivelling on for much more than fifty five seconds, at which point they informed us all solemnly that on the opening sequence Man-at-Arms, Orko and the Sorceress all look rather pleased with themselves for knowing He-Man’s secret, and a few seconds later they mention that “the opening sequence gets rather repetitive”. I couldn’t really see this section providing me with any interesting information, especially when at two minutes and fifty seconds, they described Evil-Lyn as “sexy” and “sultry”. And when, at three minutes and forty seconds, they tried to make their stupidity amusing by commenting that Trapjaw’s “curriculum vitae is a little under-established”. I’m writing this and listening to the commentary at the same time, and catching only a little bit of it – but they do acknowledge my point about the red lizard in the opening scene of Diamond Ray of Disappearance, that it doesn’t reappear when everybody else does!
Actually, that depresses me. It depresses me so much that I’m going to stop listening to this bloody commentary now, and move on to the next extra on the DVD, the Gallery.
This is not, as some might think, a night club in York (well, actually, it is, but this particular incarnation of the Gallery is not a night club, and – while I heartily despise the Gallery in York, this is even worse), but rather a collection of pictures. The first set is a ‘Production Gallery’, which shows us some original drawings from the opening sequence and also from Teela’s Quest. It really is very boring and I don’t think I need to say much more than that. The second set is worse, being a collection of drawings done by He-Fans. These vary between being very, very good (in which case, one is tempted to conclude that someone’s just got hold of an animation cel of the programme and just sent it in, pretending they’ve drawn it) and very, very bad (in which case, why is it even on the DVD at all?). Two of the most surprising inclusions are pictures of ‘Fang-Man’ and ‘Brainwave’, who, if I’m not very much mistaken, are not official He-Man characters at all, and consequently have absolutely no place on this DVD. This section ends with an exhortation to “send us your pictures!” so you can get them onto a future volume of the DVD. I for one am going to get drawing now.
The DVD-Rom Content section cannot be accessed from the DVD player; it instructs me to put the DVD in a computer to get that bit. I personally can’t be bothered. At any rate, the most amusing section by far is the He-Man Profile. This is, as those with brains may have deducted, a character study of the hero of this series, and it is presumably written by those nice people Busta Toons and Zadoc Angell (or, if you’ve forgotten their real names, James Etock and Dave Newman). It contains many fascinating facts, the sorts of things you’ve always wanted to know about He-Man and yet have never been able to find out, because either you’ve been unable to watch episodes to do so, you’ve not been able to find anyone to ask, or because people gag you every time you start talking about He-Man.
At any rate, the profile informs us that “He-Man was always destined to become the most powerful man in the universe” and also that his raison d’etre is to stop Skeletor from “tak[ing] over Eternia and secur[ing] the secrets of Castle Grayskull” (though what said secrets may be is, as always, left entirely unclear). The profile goes on to add that “He-Man is in peak physical condition, extremely skilled acrobatically and very agile.” It then goes through some examples of He-Man’s great strength, including the incidents of
- “lifting up and throwing Castle Grayskull” to which I say “including the foundations? Hmm? And just how did he manage that then?”
- “pushing the moon to control the tide” to which I say “and how did he breathe when he was in outer space, then? Hmm?”
- “lifting an entire Sallosian spaceship” to which I say “what the hell is a Sallosian spaceship?”
It then tells us that He-Man is really good at taking very deep breaths, which means he can hold his breath for a very long time, go for very long underwater swims, and blow at things very very hard. (I’m slightly paraphrasing now, of course, but I think it’s better to do that in this case rather than quoting huge great chunks of the thing.)
The profile then admits that He-Man’s powers are pretty much limited to “lifting, pushing, crushing, blowing, kicking, punching, throwing, spinning, dodging, and smashing”. The very epitome of the non-violent hero that we have all been led to believe that He-Man is. Apart from the lifting and the spinning (I’m not really sure what that refers to, but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t mean he’s good at using one of those spinning wheels that they used in 19th century clothes-making industries), all of that is used for violence, and the lifting is probably violent because I would guess that it’s usually a precursor to throwing, generally of one of the baddies. In spite of all this, the profile then tries to claim that He-Man tries to defeat Skeletor and his cronies non-violently, and implies that the way this is usually done is “comical”. “Comical” in He-Man terms means “throwing them into a puddle of mud”.
The profile then says that He-Man has “deep powers of goodness”, but I can’t be bothered to detail most of what it says on that page because it’s pretty boring really. The final page of the profile is all about He-Man’s sword, and the punctuation is really bad on this page. Apparently, “the sword has powers of it’s own” and “He-Man is extremely skilled at throwing his sword so that is spins around hits it’s target and returns to him”. That latter sentence in particular – well, I wouldn’t have written sentences like that when I was three years old. (What I did write when I was three years old was a Thomas the Tank Engine story entitled ‘Go Away!’ which was all about James the red engine, who had a shed all of his own and told anyone who came near him to go away, and that was frankly better than this.)
Right, I think I’ve said pretty much all I need to about the extras on this atrocity of a DVD, but I don’t really have time to watch and review an episode right now. I think I’ll leave you though, with the moral to ‘Diamond Ray of Disappearance’, which – as we may remember – I wasn’t able to quote in my review of that episode a year and a half ago. And while I’m fast-forwarding it (this DVD does look really funny in fast-forward, by the way), I’ll inform you that when you select an episode off the episode list, He-Man rises up from beneath the bottom of the screen and punches it! It’s so bad it’s funny. Oh, I laughed till I cried. Right. The moral of Diamond Ray of Disappearance.
The moral is that Skeletor was looking for a quick way to get ahead of the game, but those who work for what they want are those who get it. “The right way is always the best way,” He-Man says. And I suspect that, on that basis, the right way for me now would be to stop watching this DVD.