- by Owen Morton
Oh dear. I very much wanted to be able to say something positive about this. ‘Night of the Shadowbeasts’ is the first episode of the new He-Man series that I have yet seen, and – as can only be expected – I was rather looking forward to it. I even got up specially at 7.45 this morning to see it, which is quite excitingly early, especially for a Sunday. Unfortunately, the new series of He-Man does not even slightly live up to the fine standards set by its predecessor (or ancestor, I suppose, considering the atrocity of the early 1990’s He-Man series).
The main problem I had with this episode (and, to be fair, it may not be a typical one – maybe I just caught a bad one) was that, unlike the original series, it seemed to be taking itself seriously. I always have had a vague feeling that the creators of the original series of He-Man were taking the piss somewhat, in that the ludicrous things He-Man did were way beyond the realms of the possible, even for a cartoon superhero. I call your attention to the recently discussed comet-wrestling incident in The Cosmic Comet, for example, or his stupid behaviour in trying to regain control of Man-at-Arms’ Amazing Melting Machine in The Toymaker. Admittedly, this episode does contain one particularly stupid feat on He-Man’s behalf, but … well, I suppose it just didn’t feel right. I must be getting old, I suspect. On the other hand, there were definitely no completely unfunny jokes made in this episode. One of the wonderful things about the original series was He-Man’s ridiculous comments – such as the classic “Let me give you a hand!” of Diamond Ray of Disappearance – that he always seemed to think were prime material for a long and successful stand-up comedian run at some national theatre.
Anyway, enough moaning. Let’s get on with this review.
‘Night of the Shadowbeasts’ begins – as so many He-Man episodes do – in Snake Mountain. This was a promising start. I fully expected to be treated to the now traditional sequence in which Skeletor details his cunning plan to anybody and everybody who happens to be wandering by. However, in a departure from this tradition, it turns out that the evil plan in this case has been composed by Beast-Man, which perhaps is a good indication of just how successful it’s likely to be. Skeletor complains that Beast-Man has dragged him and Tri-Klops all the way down into the depths of Snake Mountain, when he could be busy planning his next assault on Castle Grayskull. Beast-Man, however, counters him by showing him a cell which contains a beast. A Shadowbeast, more specifically. Beast-Man explains that these creatures are big, strong, generally skanky, but are afraid of light. He comes up with the sensible suggestion that perhaps they could be used at night, which just shows how well he’s thought this through. Sure enough, it takes about 0.0001 seconds for Tri-Klops to point out the obvious flaw in this plan – “what about moonlight?” This little snag, however, does not put Skeletor off. It merely inspires him to further heights of imbecility, decreeing that in order to use the Shadowbeasts, he will have to block out the sky itself. He then laughs, in what is obviously supposed to be a direct imitation of the wonderfully camp laugh given by the original Skeletor, who was marvellously voiced by Alan Oppenheimer (who, in case you’re interested, which you’re almost undoubtedly not, once had a guest spot in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, though unfortunately not as Skeletor). The laugh given by this new Skeletor, though, is just wrong. It is a pale imitation, which serves only to remind us of what we once had and what we have now lost (unless, of course, the series continues to be released on video and DVD, which I, for one, rather hope it does).
We now see how Skeletor plans to block out the sky. It’s what I might call a fairly stupid plan, but it’s nothing really to write home about, considering some of the other plans Skeletor has come up with in his time. Since this series is set before the original He-Man series, perhaps the idea is that Skeletor hasn’t yet got into his stride in the business of making stupid plans, and as this series progresses, his cunning ideas will get ever more ludicrous. Still, this one involves making his henchmen – Beast-Man and someone else, who I suspect is supposed to be Whiplash – knock rocks into volcanoes in an effort to make them erupt. Somewhat surprisingly, this actually works, and the volcanoes, instead of erupting in the traditional fashion, send only a cloud of brown smoke over the entirety of Eternia.
We now cut to the Palace, where some of the goodies are attempting to do something akin to training. Training for Mechaneck seems to involve him navigating his neck through a maze of hamster tubes – because this is of course a skill that one needs on a regular basis, especially if one has such an oversized neck – and having done this, Teela and Man-at-Arms turn their attention to Ram-Man. Now, I don’t like the new look of any of the new characters (apart from Evil-Lyn, who in the previous scene showed up to utter one line, looking almost exactly the same as she did in the original series – and it was so wonderful to see someone looking exactly right, I could have hugged her, and not least because she’s damn sexy), but Ram-Man really takes the biscuit. He’s indescribable. You can only tell he’s Ram-Man because he’s got a predilection for ramming things. He’s not short and squat, he’s got legs which make him capable of walking, not just bouncing, and he also doesn’t have that wonderfully stupid metallic voice which somehow managed to convey the impression of serious mental incapacity. Bring back the original He-Man!
Anyway, Ram-Man demonstrates that he’s pretty stupid by ramming a wall with no obvious provocation. Oddly enough, the wall turns out to be built over an old well. Now, call me stupid, but I’ve never thought that digging a well is done horizontally. But this old well is definitely not at 90 degrees, or anything remotely approaching it, to the ground. What’s also odd is that when he goes through, Ram-Man falls. It’s not that I misunderstood this bit; he definitely rammed a wall, not the floor, and therefore, he shouldn’t fall once he goes through it, really, should he? Anyway, he’s removed with use of a rope.
Meanwhile, Adam and Cringer are skulking about (both of them looking really stupid, I’m sorry to say – I don’t know what it is about modern animation, but I definitely feel that the He-Man characters of the 1980’s looked so much more realistic than these ones do) being ‘entertained’ by Orko, who – predictably – performs for them one of his famous magic tricks. It doesn’t involve eggs (the creators probably realised the pinnacle of amusing scenes involving eggs was already reached in the original series, and it would be pretty pointless to try to duplicate such hilarity), and if you ask me, it’s one of the worst magic tricks Orko’s ever done, because it doesn’t go wrong, but he, Adam and Cringer all act like it does. Basically, Orko announces he’s going to spin “a flower” (it’s blatantly not a flower, it’s a big stone structure, but we’ll let that pass), casts the spell, and the ‘flower’ does indeed spin. But Orko, Adam and Cringer all cower as if it’s doing something wrong.
It is at this point that the cloud of brown smoke arrives at the Palace. Orko immediately assumes that it’s something to do with his spell, but Adam quickly tells him it’s not, though exactly how he knows this is not entirely clear. When Man-at-Arms, Teela, Ram-Man and Mechaneck are attacked by a Shadowbeast, Adam heroically turns into He-Man and runs away to Castle Grayskull, leaving the others to battle off some of Skeletor’s forces, who are accompanied by a huge army of Shadowbeasts. Charging along the road to Castle Grayskull, riding Battle-Cat, He-Man suddenly is confronted by two Shadowbeasts. He makes some foolish comment about it being two on two, but suddenly he is surrounded by about fifty million more of them, and Beast-Man appears to advance threateningly on him …
At this point, with the tension really mounting – because we honestly can’t see exactly how He-Man’s going to get out of this one – the show cuts for a commercial break. And I’ll tell you something. I didn’t know exactly what time He-Man was going to be on, because my TV Guide merely said that ‘Up On The Roof’ was on at 8.25, including episodes of He-Man, Turtles and Yu-Gi-Oh. Therefore, I started watching at 8.30ish, about five minutes into the episode of the new series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a review of which may appear shortly, if I decide it’s worth it, though it’s probably not), and in the time it took to get to He-Man, I was treated to three commercial breaks, and another one after He-Man. In each of these commercial breaks, there was a reminder that there was to be a triple-bill of Yu-Gi-Oh after He-Man, a circumstance which I couldn’t really give a toss about, and then there was about ten bloody minutes of adverts for toys which – oddly enough – I really don’t want. (These toys included a game about the Tooth Fairy, which claimed to “make losing teeth fun”. I can think of ways in which losing teeth would be fun, though they would not, of course, be my teeth.) After the break, there was another little reminder about Yu-Gi-Oh, and then there was a short recap on what had happened in the first half of the He-Man episode, in case we were so monumentally imbecilic that we’d forgotten in the ten minutes since we’d seen it.
The second half of this televisual feast opens with He-Man still facing the Shadowbeasts, and Beast-Man saying something along the lines of how much he’s going to enjoy killing He-Man. He-Man looks as if he’s about to make one of those trademark unfunny jokes of his, but lets us down and simply chops down about a million trees instead. This blocks the Shadowbeasts’ path, and lets him run off to Castle Grayskull. This is something the original He-Man would never do. He was always meticulous about not doing environmental damage (though Man-at-Arms was less scrupulous, as I recall, given his little antics using his Amazing Melting Machine to melt hills left, right and centre in ‘The Toymaker’), and it’s a sad state of affairs that it is suggested to children these days that it’s perfectly acceptable to cut down trees if you’re trying to escape from Shadowbeasts. But anyway, let’s move on.
Back at the Palace, the fight is continuing. Not a lot appears to be happening, other than Man-at-Arms accusing Ram-Man of being afraid of the dark, and Ram-Man breaking down and admitting it, until we get a random cut to a volcano erupting. There are no volcanoes anywhere near the Palace – or at least, I’ve never seen any – yet this produces earthquakes severe enough to create huge cracks in the ground. Teela and Ram-Man stand there stupidly and watch as a crack opens right below their feet, and they fall down it. As far as I can tell, they fall a long way, but escape completely unharmed. Ram-Man explains that he’s all right because he landed on his head (he must have loads and loads of cotton wool or something equally soft inside that helmet – though I will ignore the fact that he did not actually land on his head), but Teela – who wears next to nothing – should be dead.
Meanwhile, He-Man arrives at Castle Grayskull, where he discovers Skeletor hovering around in some sort of stupid vehicle. He has a pointless fight with Skeletor, in which he is nearly defeated, while a bunch of Shadowbeasts crawl all over the walls of Castle Grayskull and try to scratch the doors down. Inside, the Sorceress casts some stupid sort of spell that sends rays of light everywhere, making all the Shadowbeasts bugger off (i.e. fall into the chasm surrounding Castle Grayskull). He-Man (as far as I recall – I only watched it three hours ago and I already can’t remember …) punches Skeletor with the customary strength, and sends him flying off back to Snake Mountain. Skeletor’s parting cry is something akin to the traditional “I’ll get you for this, He-Man! Eternia will be mine!” To be fair, Skeletor is written exactly right – he’s pretty much the only character who’s written in the same way he originally was – but the animation and the voice is completely wrong. It’s just a sad reminder of what was and what can never be again. He-Man is at this point well pleased with himself, but the Sorceress tells him to go and stop the volcanoes erupting, because otherwise Skeletor will just try again.
Teela and Ram-Man are meanwhile wandering round in a load of ancient tunnels beneath the Palace, having a number of fights with Shadowbeasts, and giving Ram-Man an opportunity to confront his fear of the dark. This is obviously the moral of this episode – confront your fears – and I will admit it’s much more subtle than the original series, but I always thought that that was the point: being completely unsubtle. At any rate, it was much more amusing. Anyway, eventually, Ram-Man grabs Teela and somehow manages to use his head to propel them both all the way up to the surface, where they are met by a joyful Man-at-Arms and Mechaneck.
He-Man has by this time made his way to the volcanoes we saw earlier, and decides to try a previously untested method of stopping a volcano erupting. He climbs right to its summit (a place which, as my friend Anton helpfully pointed out, is not a great place to stand), and then uses his sword to cut a great big slit down the side of the volcano. This is, of course, the ludicrous feat that I mentioned earlier, and I will admit that it is the sort of thing that the original He-Man would do, but it didn’t seem right here. Probably the problem was the lack of snide comments on He-Man’s part. At any rate, Eternia is saved, and the Shadowbeasts retreat from the Palace as soon as the sun breaks through the clouds.
I believe there was some form of conclusion at the Palace, probably involving Ram-Man having confronted his fears, but I can’t really remember. However, I do remember the bit in Snake Mountain: Skeletor is fuming about how he didn’t manage to take Castle Grayskull, and then addresses Evil-Lyn, Trapjaw and someone else, saying, “Oh, well. At least I managed to destroy the Palace. Or … is there something you’d like to tell me? Oh, well – I’m sure it can wait till morning.” He then goes out, slamming the door behind him and plunging the room into darkness. He then calls through, “Night night! Don’t let the Shadowbeasts bite!” and we see several sets of red eyes glinting in the dark. This is actually a perfectly He-Man-esque conclusion. If only it had been an episode of the original series, I actually think this could have been really quite good.