- last updated 24th October 2009
Well, you’ve all been waiting for this for five and a half years. This is the first He-Man episode review I’ve done since The Time Corridor, all those years ago. Bearing this in mind, I wanted to review a good episode. Unfortunately, this being He-Man, this was a pretty tall order. I carefully selected one that has all the ingredients for success: Skeletor, Beast-Man, Trapjaw, a rescue mission into Snake Mountain, and lots and lots of nonsensical insults.
It all starts merrily enough, with King Randor and Queen Marlena on a ski-ing trip in what one presumes is the Region of Ice, given the episode’s title. Queen Marlena is really good at ski-ing; King Randor isn’t, and after falling over quite a lot, he comments that Marlena will “eat snow”. Fortunately, Marlena is spared this indignity by her sudden disappearance, at which point everything takes a more sinister turn. Randor starts wandering around aimlessly shouting, “Marlena! Where are you?” Man-at-Arms hears him and asks whether there’s anything wrong, seemingly unable to detect that Randor is obviously looking for Marlena. He cottons on eventually, and he and Teela join the hunt. However, they all disappear pretty smartish as well.
Meanwhile, Prince Adam and Orko are waiting at the bottom of the hill for the rest of the royal party to show up. After some hilarious jokes from Orko, at which Adam gives his patented too-loud echoing laugh, they figure out that the others should be there by now. They trek off up the hill again, where they discover that there are four sets of ski tracks all leading to the same point. Making no comment on the fact that for this to have happened, their four friends must all have been ski-ing directly towards each other with intent to collide, Adam says that he has a bad feeling about this. Orko offers to do some magic, to which Adam gives an extremely emphatic, “NO!” suggesting instead that it might be time for He-Man to put in an appearance.
But, to our manifest surprise, although Adam does manage to draw his magic sword, he doesn’t get as far as saying, “By the Power of Grayskull!” before he himself disappears! Naturally, the camera is on Orko at the point he disappears, so the viewer still doesn’t know what’s happened. At this point, the viewer gets the sinking feeling that the episode is going to be all about Orko, and while this conclusion is indisputably correct, it’s surprising in that Orko is rather toned down and manages to not be too annoying.
Anyway, Orko investigates the spot where the four ski tracks meet. It is now patently obvious that this spot is a trapdoor made of ice, and Orko decides to open it using his magic. The viewer now naturally expects a range of hilarious magical misfires from Orko, perhaps culminating in an awful lot of eggs smashing on Orko’s head. But no, the writer confounds expectations by having Orko’s magic actually work. (You get the impression from this episode, in fact, that the writer didn’t understand Orko’s character very well – he’s not annoying, his magic works, and shortly he’s going to defeat a giant spider in a pitched battle, none of which really fits with any other episode.)
The trapdoor opens to reveal a tunnel sloping downwards, which Adam and the others have presumably all gone sliding down. Orko descends this too, peculiarly complaining about the lack of stairs. Why should he care? He couldn’t use stairs even if they were there, so what’s his beef? (I wonder if the writer had even seen an episode of He-Man before. Maybe he had merely been given a list of characters to use and, not unnaturally, assumed that they all had legs.) Anyway, once Orko reaches the bottom, he takes a look around, and sees a gentleman in a Viking helmet and some fur armour, instructing the afore-mentioned giant spider to imprison the royal family in oversized ice cubes. This gentleman is talking, allegedly to the spider, to the effect that the royal family will remain his prisoners until He-Man comes to rescue them.
Well, here we happen upon one of the oft-repeated dilemmas in He-Man, don’t we? How can He-Man show up to rescue an imprisoned Prince Adam? Orko rightly points out that this gentleman has a long wait coming, but then – with a stroke of pure genius – hits upon the idea of pretending to be He-Man. A great idea, if he thinks he’s capable of actually rescuing the royal family. Not such a great idea, if – as is more likely – he’s simply going to end up trapped with them.
Anyway, Orko introduces himself as He-Man, which the Viking man thinks is pretty laughable, and challenges him to prove it by defeating the giant spider. Orko responds by sending fire bolts shooting absolutely everywhere, managing to totally miss the spider. The spider freezes Orko inside an ice cube, but luckily (and a trifle improbably) one of Orko’s fire bolts starts a rockfall which buries the spider, and another of the fire bolts somehow rebounds off the ceiling and smashes open the ice cube trapping him. The Viking thinks that this is sufficient proof and begs “He-Man” not to continue fighting him, but instead to help him.
And the plot thickens. It turns out that the Viking is the Ice Lord, who is actually a goody, but Skeletor has captured his daughter, and has promised to release her if the Ice Lord hands over the royal family. It’s another of those demented schemes that Skeletor so often hatches. First off, it relies on the royal family going anywhere near the Ice Lord, which admittedly they have done, but there was no way in hell Skeletor could have known they would. Second, why does Skeletor want the royal family anyway? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the royal family has sod all to do with Castle Grayskull, which is what Skeletor is actually interested in.
But anyway, the Ice Lord asks Orko to rescue his daughter, and then he’ll release the royal family. Orko promises to try, on condition that the Ice Lord release Prince Adam in advance, as a token of good faith. The Ice Lord wonders why Prince Adam, to which Orko responds that Adam is his assistant. The Ice Lord releases Adam, who has somehow miraculously heard the entire conversation, despite being encased in ice, and says, “Thank you, He-Man.”
Orko and Adam leave the Ice Lord’s little cave, and Orko suggests that Adam can now turn into He-Man and rescue the rest of the royal family. Adam tells him that no, actually, they’re going to go and rescue the Ice Lord’s daughter – Orko did promise after all. You can see the moral coming a million miles away here. Adam does, however, concede that to do that, they’ll need He-Man, and undergoes his miraculous metamorphosis. They then get into the Wind Raider, fly off to Snake Mountain, and land nearby, after He-Man makes a few snide comments about being Orko’s assistant.
And from hereon in the episode becomes one of those delightful slapstick adventures that we all love from He-Man. Deciding not to punch a hole in the wall of Snake Mountain like he usually does when he wants to get inside, He-Man says that they’ll be going in through the mouth of the snake. He does this largely, it seems, so he’s able to make a dramatic statement just before the commercial break, but nonetheless, it’s what they do. They then climb onto the top of the snake’s head and remain there for about four minutes (out of a twenty minute episode) while they give Skeletor, Trapjaw and Beast-Man the opportunity to trade insults.
Trapjaw is on look-out duty in the snake’s mouth. Skeletor summons him on the intercom to ask if there’s anything happening yet. Trapjaw says there isn’t. We then cut to Skeletor’s throne room, where he is impatiently waiting for the Ice Lord to get in touch. Skeletor details his little plan again for the benefit of viewers who have only just joined after the commercial break and confirms that his ultimate aim this time is only to capture the royal family. He then gives a short, truncated but nonetheless completely mental burst of laughter, and waves his fists around just to make sure we get the idea. Beast-Man then asks, “But what if the Ice Lord doesn’t give you the royal family?” Skeletor has total if misplaced confidence that the Ice Lord will deliver the royal family, then says, “Shouldn’t you be guarding the princess, Beast-Man?” which did rather catch me by surprise. If Beast-Man was indeed supposed to be guarding the princess, then why on earth was Skeletor letting him skulk about in the throne room?
Beast-Man wanders off, voicing the extremely random complaint that, “Every time something goes wrong in this place, I get the blame.” That may be true, but in this case, nothing has gone wrong (yet), and Beast-Man hasn’t been blamed for anything. I really wondered whether this was a line from another episode erroneously pasted in here, because it made absolutely no sense.
Meanwhile, Skeletor is whinging that the Ice Lord has done something to Skeletor’s magic viewscreen (you know, the one in which he can see absolutely everything, except important plot points that would prevent his defeat) and he can only see “... snow!” Now, call me stupid, but is it not plausible that the Ice Lord has in fact not done anything and it simply happens to be snowing in the Region of Ice? I think that’s a more intelligent explanation. Anyway, Trapjaw then makes an inarticulate noise through the intercom, and Skeletor tells him to get back to keeping a look out. At which point we cut back to He-Man and Orko, still on top of the snake’s head.
They have by this stage come up with an extremely convoluted plan to incapacitate Trapjaw. He-Man lowers Orko on a rope down into the snake’s mouth, at which point Trapjaw bites the rope in half and Orko takes the opportunity to fly round him really fast, thus winding the rope around him and tying him up. Then He-Man jumps down into the mouth, and Trapjaw makes the rather ambitious claim that he doesn’t need his arms to be able to beat He-Man. As if in proof of this statement, he half-heartedly bites at Orko and jumps over to the intercom. Once he gets to the intercom, he turns and looks challengingly at He-Man. Without making any effort to stop Trapjaw, He-Man says, “Don’t you dare do that, Trapjaw.” Trapjaw responds, “I’d like to see you stop me,” and then just stands there until He-Man does just that.
He-Man picks up a handy stick of wood and comments, “This is the ten foot pole I wouldn’t touch you with, Trapjaw.” Then he touches Trapjaw with it, thus contradicting himself within less than a second of making his statement. He then somehow contrives to get Trapjaw dangling from the mouth of the snake with the pole in his mouth, before he and Orko proceed further into Snake Mountain.
Orko wants to know where to find the Princess, to which He-Man responds, “We find Skeletor, we find the girl.” I’m not sure I agree. I just think He-Man wants a fight. But anyway, he and Orko soon come across Skeletor and Beast-Man threatening the Princess by telling her they’ll turn the heat up. They wait for the villains to leave, then enter the Princess’s dungeon, and He-Man introduces them as “He-Man and Orko”, waits for the Princess to ask which is which, then snidely says that Orko gets confused about that. He-Man can be a bit of a bastard sometimes.
He-Man bends the bars of the Princess’s cage and lets her out. The three of them then wander out into the corridor where they come across Beast-Man with a massive cauldron of water, which he has been heating for the Princess’s delight and delectation. When he sees them, Beast-Man decides to upend the cauldron and send a tidal wave towards the heroes, which might have been an intelligent plan if he himself wasn’t standing between the heroes and the cauldron. As it turns out, it’s all right because the Princess freezes the water before it can scald Beast-Man. He-Man then punches the wall of ice and puts the cauldron over Beast-Man’s head. As Beast-Man runs off in a panic, He-Man makes some kind of droll comment – in this case, I think it’s “He won’t lose that again” – and the Princess says, “I’d appreciate it if we could get out of here now please.” She sounds mightily pissed off, and He-Man rightly decides the time has come to leave.
The trio return to the snake’s mouth, where Trapjaw has just managed to free himself, commenting, “I never knew I could eat that much rope.” He is thus not too happy to see He-Man coming back, though he is a little reassured by Skeletor and Beast-Man coming up the corridor as well, especially since Beast-Man does not have the cauldron on his head anymore. Skeletor presses a button which allegedly makes the snake’s mouth close, though all it seems to do is make a few rocks fall down from the ceiling. He-Man picks Trapjaw up, the Princess turns the floor to ice, and He-Man throws Trapjaw at Skeletor and Beast-Man, who all fall over in a really amusing scene. He-Man then makes a valiant attempt to convince us that the snake’s mouth is shut and he has to force it open, but this concept seemed to be beyond the animators, so the mouth is wide open all along, making He-Man look like a first-class idiot.
Anyway, the rescue now complete, we return to the Region of Ice, where all the prisoners have been freed, He-Man is gone and Prince Adam is back, and the Ice Lord is apologising. Randor tells him, a little crossly, to just ask for help next time. I personally feel it would also have been nice if the Ice Lord had come to Snake Mountain himself and help to rescue his daughter, if she meant that much to him. But no one comments on this. The Princess then asks the royal family to thank He-Man for her. Teela jokingly asks, “Which He-Man?” The Princess answers, “Both my He-Men,” in the sort of sultry tone that implies she’d willingly have sex with either He-Man or Orko, and possibly both at the same time. But naturally enough, the episode doesn’t dwell on this.
The moral features Man-at-Arms cautioning the viewers not to make promises they aren’t going to keep, otherwise people will think you’re a nasty person. This is pretty solid advice, to be honest, and I might have paid a bit more attention to it if the animators hadn’t chosen to give Man-at-Arms some black antennae for this scene. I can only presume they’re supposed to be part of the background, but they genuinely look as if they’re coming out of his head.
Let’s be honest, this isn’t a classic. Episodes involving a break-in to Snake Mountain are usually a barrel of laughs, but here there’s not really enough time spent on pointless battles and trading insults. There’s rather too much set-up with the bit where the royal family are captured in the first place, and the giant spider scene is a bit boring.
Still, it was nice to review an episode again.