- by Owen Morton
Yes, boys and girls, it’s time for the fourth instalment in the ongoing chronicles of He-Man episode reviews! I know I said yesterday I’d probably be doing ‘The Cat and the Spider’ next, but that’s my video, whereas ‘Search For A Son’ is on Seb’s video, and since Seb won’t be around after this term, I thought I’d better review the episodes on his tape first, because next year I won’t have access to them. ‘Search For A Son’ is actually a pretty bad episode, largely because it doesn’t involve that classic villain, Skeletor, or indeed any of his men, instead choosing to go for a villain of the week, which is always less exciting.
All right, so I’ll do this in my usual inimitable style, describing the episode’s plot and insulting it as I go, possibly retaining some criticisms for later as well. This episode is probably the first one Mechaneck ever appeared in, as it explains why he has his stupid extending neck. It begins with Mechaneck playing frisbee in the Palace courtyard with some boy. He throws the frisbee, and manages to do it in such a way that makes it fly in random directions, prompting the boy to state that “no one throws like you, Mechaneck!” Whether this is a compliment or not is perhaps a matter for debate. Man-at-Arms appears and tells the boy that Mechaneck must be reminded of his son when he’s playing with the boy.
Obviously, the boy states that he never knew Mechaneck had a son, prompting a flashback sequence which features Mechaneck and his son Philip going for a trip to Dragon Mountain, which sounds pretty dangerous anyway. As it turns out, they aren’t attacked by dragons, but instead – after Philip demonstrates that he can play the flute (remember that, it’s important later on) – a tremendous storm blows up in a matter of seconds. Eternia seems prone to these bizarre rainstorms, given that another one happens in ‘The Cat and the Spider’ (though, as I recall, that one is actually provoked by He-Man), but the weather systems involved in making the sky turn from blue to dark grey and make it piss it down with rain in less than two seconds must be pretty damn unstable. Moreover, on this occasion, the wind is so strong that Philip is blown away. Once the storm finishes, Mechaneck goes looking for his son, but can’t find him. He eventually faints on the ground because he hurt his neck in the storm, and Man-at-Arms finds him there.
Man-at-Arms explains to the boy that he brought Mechaneck back to the Palace and gave him a bionic neck. Personally, if I’d been Mechaneck, I’d have insisted that Man-at-Arms hand me over to a doctor, rather than allowing him to operate on my neck. I mean, seriously, how did Man-at-Arms install this bionic neck? After undergoing this procedure, Mechaneck can extend his neck to a length of about ten or twenty metres, I would estimate. I’m sure that the operation to install the thing must have involved ripping his head off, which is usually fatal. On a side note, I really have to ask why Mechaneck was called ‘Mechaneck’ before he had this thing installed? It’s the sort of name you’d only have if you also possessed a bionic neck, but Mechaneck seems to have had it all his life. Also, before he had the neck installed, why did he still talk in his silly metallic grating voice? I’d kind of assumed that he talked like that because he had metal vocal chords, but he still spoke with the metal voice before he’d been subjected to Man-at-Arms’ hideous medical experiment. Perhaps all Man-at-Arms did was replace the bionic neck Mechaneck already had, but he seems quite insistent that he “gave” Mechaneck the bionic neck. And even if that’s the case, where did Mechaneck initially get the bionic neck? And why? And who on Eternia would be willing to sleep with this guy and give him a son? I mean, okay, this is Eternia, so there’s not an awful lot of option when you’re picking your partner, but I suspect that at the ratio of women to men there seem to be on this planet (roughly 1 to 10, I would estimate), no one would choose Mechaneck when there’s much more eligible people knocking about, like He-Man or Man-at-Arms. Or even Orko. Man-at-Arms explains to the boy that, being grateful, Mechaneck decided to stay at the Palace and serve the King and Queen. I don’t know about you, but if some lunatic came along and inserted a bionic neck into me, it wouldn’t make me become a servant of the royals, but hey, it’s Mechaneck’s prerogative.
Anyway, especially given the title of the episode, we begin to suspect that this little flashback hasn’t been inserted just to fill space. Not even He-Man is that random. Sure enough, the next scene sees Philip in a marketplace with the episode’s baddy, a fellow called Count Marzo, though we don’t actually learn his name till several scenes later (though I get the impression he’d been in an episode previous to this one, since He-Man, King Randor and Queen Marlena all later seem to know who he is). Marzo tells Philip that he saved his life when he found him – it seems Philip was lost and Marzo took him in. Now he wants repayment. Marzo’s ambitions are initially small: he demands Philip play his flute to enchant one of the market’s stall owners, thus distracting him while Marzo steals the money. Philip does so, but halfway through stops, shouting at Marzo that all he wants is to be with his father. It’s at this point that Marzo has a better idea than merely acquiring gold: Philip can be the bait for the trap that will make Marzo king.
Marzo’s plan seems to be fairly simple: he’s going to offer Mechaneck the chance to exchange his son for the King and Queen, then Marzo himself will become king. Marzo has, regrettably, got one little detail wrong: in the event the King and Queen went missing, it’s most likely Prince Adam would be the one who became king afterwards. Royalty’s like that: it tends to pass titles from father to son. Marzo, even though he is a count, probably is quite far down on the list of People Who Could Be Made King. But we all know Marzo’s cunning little plan isn’t going to get past Stage 1 anyway, so no real problem.
The next scene has King Randor and Queen Marlena preparing to go on some form of trip. I didn’t actually catch where they’re going to be going to, but I think it had something to do with Buzz-Off; that’s the only way I can justify his later appearance. Mechaneck and Man-at-Arms are to be going along, and Adam wants to know if he can come, to which Randor only says, “We’ll see.” I always rather get the impression Randor doesn’t actually like Adam.
Anyway, we then see Mechaneck in the courtyard, and he says something like, “Oh, my son, it’s so difficult without you,” which is a thoroughly unnecessary monologue, and merely makes the episode totally cheesy (as opposed to the high quality drama it was previously offering) because at that very instant, he sees a vision of Philip. Then Marzo appears in a flash of light and makes his offer: Philip for the King and Queen. Mechaneck refuses, and Marzo disappears, threatening that Mechaneck will have to take him up on it soon anyway.
Mechaneck then evidently goes and tells Man-at-Arms, because the next scene has Man-at-Arms explaining to Adam and Cringer that they’ll have to come along to keep the King and Queen safe. This makes sense from the point of view that Man-at-Arms knows Adam is in fact He-Man, but Randor and Marlena don’t know this, so quite how Man-at-Arms explains this “keeping safe” thing to them, I don’t know.
Still, we then get a scene in which the intrepid party of King Randor, Queen Marlena, Adam, Cringer, Man-at-Arms, Mechaneck, Teela and Orko go across the desert in a variety of excitingly improbable vehicles. For some reason, the standard He-Man action music is playing in the background at this point, even though nothing exciting is actually happening. At this point, someone (I think it’s Adam, but I can’t remember) gets inordinately concerned about the fact that there’s a pile of rocks on the track ahead of them. The obvious solution is to go round them, but instead Mechaneck is sent ahead to scout out the situation. Being a moderately intelligent sort of fellow, he also opts for the going-round-the-rocks plan, and finds on the other side a ruined fort with an oasis inside it. He decides that this is a stroke of luck, and returns to the others to report their good fortune, suggesting that they stop at the oasis for a rest. Everyone agrees that this is a good idea, so Mechaneck takes the King and Queen inside, while Man-at-Arms, Teela and Orko, for some reason, remain skulking about in the Attack Track, as I believe it’s called, and Adam and Cringer stand about philosophising. Adam states that he doesn’t remember there being an oasis here … or a fort, come to think of it. The big question is, of course, if he knows what’s here anyway, why was he so insistent that Mechaneck go to check it out?
As is probably rather obvious, Count Marzo has something to do with this fort, and as soon as Mechaneck has gone in with the King and Queen, he shoots white energy out of his fingers and causes a rock-fall which blocks the entrance-way to the fort. Mechaneck, King Randor and Queen Marlena are trapped inside! This of course prompts the speedy recital of the line, “By the Power of Grayskull!” from the esteemed Prince Adam, and a useful transformation into our hero occurs. He-Man then knocks down the wall of the fort and stands there looking rather stern, just as Marzo is detailing his stupid plan to his captives. He explains that he used an illusion to create the oasis, and now makes it disappear. Oddly enough, he doesn’t make the fort disappear, indicating that it always has been there, thus suggesting that Adam was wrong about there not being one there. Anyway, Marzo produces Philip, but he’s not inclined to give him back to Mechaneck now. Instead, he summons a light blue baddy, who grabs the King and Queen, and runs out through a gap in the wall with them. The gap then closes when He-Man attempts to follow. Marzo then vanishes, taking Philip with him, but not without leaving He-Man something to keep him occupied.
This is admittedly slightly more imaginative than Skeletor’s usual rock monsters, in that Marzo’s chosen beasts appear to be something vaguely akin to dragons (I know Teela later calls them pterodactyls, but they’re most patently not those). They don’t seem to be capable of doing anything other than hovering around intimidatingly, though, and aren’t particularly fussed when He-Man futilely waves his sword at them. Then one of them gets imaginative and picks Mechaneck up, then drops him. Fortunately, He-Man catches him. Then – I’m not making this up – Battle-Cat roars at one of them, and they all get so scared that they fly off. He-Man remarks in a rather self-satisfied manner that that took care of them, though really, I’m at a loss to explain why it should have taken care of them. Anyway.
Mechaneck takes the opportunity to examine the wall where the blue monster took the King and Queen, and states that he can’t find any controls. He-Man then says, “Then we’ll have to make our own,” and accordingly punches the wall. You can probably guess what happens to the wall. Yes, that’s right, it falls down. I’d say that this isn’t making your own controls, it’s more sort of rendering such controls unnecessary, but I probably shouldn’t argue with a man who can knock walls down this easily. I do have to ask, though, why they didn’t just leave through the hole in the wall that He-Man made when he entered? I’ve always suspected that He-Man secretly actually likes knocking walls down, since he seems to do it at the rate of about five walls per episode.
Anyway, He-Man, Mechaneck and Battle-Cat rejoin Man-at-Arms, Teela and Orko at the Attack Track, and detail the problem to them. The rest of the episode is accordingly spent attempting to rescue the captives. He-Man rather confusingly states that Marzo’s headquarters have to “be around here somewhere”, though I don’t see why they should be, considering Marzo can evidently appear and disappear anywhere he likes at will, so his headquarters could easily be on the other side of Eternia. But the others don’t dispute He-Man’s logic, and they start searching.
At this point, I think, we are treated to a brief interlude where we see Buzz-Off being told by another overgrown bee that King Randor and Queen Marlena are late, and Buzz-Off decides to go off to look for them. If you ask me, they can’t be late. Think about it. This little episode with Marzo in the fort has taken about five minutes, so if the King and Queen were due to arrive at Buzz-Off’s place immediately after being at the fort, then they can at most be only five minutes late anyway. Moreover, it’s unlikely that they were expected this early, because if Buzz-Off’s place was right next to this mysterious fort, then it wouldn’t have seemed like such a good idea to bother stopping for a rest in the first place. But anyway, Buzz-Off flies to lend a hand.
He-Man, Battle-Cat, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Mechaneck and Orko are searching round a bit of the desert looking for somewhere which might be Marzo’s headquarters, evidently without success. While Teela is occupied in climbing a rock face to try and find a way in, Orko, frustrated, picks up a stone and says, “We’re never going to find it!” then throws the stone. As is extremely predictable, he happens to throw the stone in precisely the right direction to … that’s right, find the headquarters. The stone appears to go right through a rock, and on telling He-Man this, He-Man deduces that it must be another illusion. But they still need to get across a bed of cacti to get in. He-Man decides that he and Mechaneck will get on Battle-Cat who can jump across the cacti and straight into the illusion in the rock face. Man-at-Arms is left outside to “keep guard”, probably because He-Man realises that on an important mission to rescue the King and Queen, he really doesn’t need Man-at-Arms along to bugger things up.
Personally, I wouldn’t have jumped across the bed of cacti on Battle-Cat and straight through the illusion without first ascertaining precisely what was on the other side, since this could easily be a trap of some form, and there could be nothing at all on the other side except a large pit. Given Orko’s flying capabilities, I’d have sent him through first and then let him come back to say it was safe. As it turns out, of course, it is perfectly safe, and He-Man, Battle-Cat and Mechaneck land inside the cavern. I think Orko joins them in there, but I can’t honestly remember; if he is there, he doesn’t do anything interesting.
Meanwhile, Marzo tells the King and Queen and Philip not to try and leave the cave where he’s put them, otherwise a monster will get them. He does give this monster a name, but I can’t remember it (though I think it’s something like the Furduke). Outside, Teela gets to the top of the rock face only to be confronted by a ‘pterodactyl’, and in attempting to fight it, she falls off and starts tumbling to the ground. Fortunately, Buzz-Off shows up in the nick of time and catches her. After this point, I don’t believe either of them are shown in the episode again (apart from Teela in the moral bit), which renders this little sequence – and Buzz-Off’s entire appearance – utterly pointless.
Back inside the cave, Marzo is watching He-Man on one of those magical screens that all the baddies seem to have for watching the goodies. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – given the amount of time individuals like Skeletor spend watching the goodies, how long is it really going to take before they realise He-Man and Adam are in fact one and the same person, especially given how bloody similar they look? Anyway, Marzo, after crowing that He-Man will never find his way inside the cave, learns that He-Man is inside the cave, and consequently sends his blue monster to distract them. The monster appears in front of the goodies, and Battle-Cat displays great initiative in leaping forward and attacking the monster. Sadly, it disappears just as Battle-Cat would have hit it, and reappears in front of He-Man. He-Man then states something along the lines of, “You’re very good at getting out of the way. But how good are you at fighting?” Evidently provoked by this heinous insult, the monster emits a vowel sound of indeterminate meaning and then runs at He-Man, who knocks him over in a pool of water with very little effort. Then He-Man makes one of his trademark jokes that make no sense: “Let’s get out of here while he’s cleaning up his act.” Am I alone in not understanding this? Is there a hidden punchline in there?
Meanwhile, King Randor, Queen Marlena and Philip have disregarded Marzo’s advice and departed from their cave. Predictably enough, the Furduke or whatever it’s called turns up and starts chasing them. Philip says, in one of the worst pieces of voice acting I have yet come across, “Oh! What can I do?” This acting is so bad that it even tops Mechaneck’s “My son” monologue earlier. Philip then hits upon the idea of playing his flute, and puts the Furduke to sleep. He and the King and Queen then run out of the cavern as fast as they can – but tragedy strikes when Philip looks over his shoulder and then trips over a rock on the floor, falling straight down a chasm and landing in a web spun by something called something sounding very much like an Alamo, but I’m guessing it wasn’t that. The Alamo-thing, which looks like a giant wasp then starts advancing on Philip. I hate to point this out, but it’s spiders who spin webs, not wasps. It might have made more sense to use the Alamo as the Furduke, and the Furduke as the Alamo, given that the Furduke actually looked like a spider. But hey, who ever said He-Man made sense?
It is of course at this point that He-Man, Battle-Cat and Mechaneck (and possibly Orko) turn up, and the King explains the situation. He-Man can only think of one option, and that’s throwing his sword at a web which is above the chasm, which then falls down on top of the Alamo and sends it falling back down the chasm. Okay, there wasn’t an immediately more obvious plan in this instance, which is unusual, but I have to say that He-Man does seem to have done the best thing, other than perhaps throwing rocks at the Alamo. This doesn’t change the fact that the very next instant, when Marzo appears to shout about having failed, He-Man has his sword back in its sheath. How the hell did he get it back that quickly? Is it some form of boomerang sword? Anyway, Marzo gets rather philosophical about the fact that, as he has lived for thousands of years, he will outlive He-Man and eventually rule Eternia. He’s got a good point, and it’s the same point that Skeletor probably should realise. Anyway, Marzo then vanishes.
Mechaneck rescues Philip by extending his neck down the chasm and telling his son to grab hold of his neck. Besides the obvious physical problems of extending your neck straight down a chasm (he’d have to be standing on his head to do this, because his neck doesn’t bend, and you can’t stand on your head in the middle of a chasm, because you’ll fall – so basically, the only time you can extend your neck straight down is when you’re standing on your head on solid ground, when extending your neck will only have the effect of hitting your head on the ground), there is a psychological issue here as well, which is not addressed. I mean, I don’t know how long Mechaneck and Philip have been separated (I think it did say, but I can’t remember), but it’s clearly been a matter of months, if not years. If you lost your father, then the next time you saw him he was extending his neck to a length of about ten metres, I think you’d be a little concerned. So if I were Philip, I’d be asking questions like, “What the hell happened to your neck?” rather than just taking hold of it, then saying things like, “It’s good to be in your arms again, father!”
And that is where the episode ends, apart from the moral segment, which is delivered by Teela and is concerned with watching where you’re going, given that when she was climbing the rock face, she slipped and nearly fell, and also Philip tripped over that rock. Personally, I’d say that a better moral would be, “If you’re Count Marzo, it’s a better idea to wait until He-Man’s dead before trying to seize the throne.” Admittedly, this is rather specific and not much use to anyone who isn’t Count Marzo, but it’s much more entertaining than just “be careful”.
Right, I’m really quite disturbed by the fact that I seem to be perfectly capable of writing essays of 3671 words about He-Man episodes, yet I struggle to reach 2000 when I’m writing stuff for my History degree. But anyway.