- by Owen Morton
Oddly enough, boys and girls, it’s time for another He-Man episode review! We haven’t seen one here since The Cosmic Comet back in November, so really, this is way overdue. Because, as we all know by now, I am irredeemably sad, I have been buying the He-Man DVDs as they come out. (Just nine days till Volume 3!) And so, tonight, we view and review (or rather, I view and review: you read my review of my viewing) one of my new favourite episodes, The Time Corridor, taken from Volume 2! In its favour are such treats as possibly He-Man’s stupidest ever threat and the stupidest ending to a moral segment! So here we go!
The Time Corridor opens with a pointless and rather over-extended panning shot of Snake Mountain. By this point in the series, I’m sure even the most imbecilic of viewers has managed to figure out what Snake Mountain looks like without having to be reminded of it in such excruciating detail at the beginning of every episode. At any rate, I suppose it does serve to inform us that we are shortly to be subjected to yet another of Skeletor’s brilliant plans. In this, The Time Corridor does not disappoint. As soon as we cut to the interior of Snake Mountain, we see Skeletor drumming his beautiful bright blue fingers on his throne, obviously waiting for something. Also present are Tri-Klops and some sort of sky blue lizard baddy who I’ve never seen before and suspect I will never see again.
Suddenly, a bright pink teleporter effect appears in the corner of the room. A disembodied voice calls out, “I have it, Skeletor!” and a box floats through and approaches Skeletor’s table. Who this voice belongs to goes totally unexplained. All that happens here is that the box comes out of the teleporter and flies over to Skeletor. It doesn’t even look like it’s been thrown by the person on the other side of the teleporter, which would make vague sense. I mean, really. Would it have been too much to have, say, Beast-Man walk through and present the box to Skeletor? It just makes no sense.
Anyway, Skeletor opens the box and begins cackling immediately. He explains that this is the Wheel of Infinity, to which the blue lizard says, “It has great power!” though his knowledge of the subject clearly ends there, after asking whether it has enough power to destroy Castle Grayskull. Skeletor responds by saying that when the Wheel is in the right spot, there won’t be a Castle Grayskull, and therefore he will be able to rule Eternia, which is a pretty damn disturbing suggestion, if you ask me. Tri-Klops cleverly points out the flaw in each and every one of Skeletor’s plans – “What about He-Man?” Skeletor gets a little too cocky at this juncture, and announces, “Where we’re going, even He-Man won’t be able to stop us!” As is later demonstrated, this is a transparent deception, but for now, we are left with the tantalising explanation that this interestingly random party of baddies is going back in time to before there ever was a Castle Grayskull. Quite how Skeletor intends to gain the secrets of said castle by preventing it from ever being built is perhaps a matter for discussion on another occasion.
Before things get too scary for the average viewer, the programme cuts to show Adam, Cringer, Man-at-Arms and Orko out for a nice picnic. Orko decides to attempt to make the occasion truly memorable by performing a pointless magic trick. He selects a chocolate cake and casts a spell to make it twice the size. It doesn’t really work, in that the cake does indeed get bigger, but a bit too big. Fortunately, it doesn’t grow outwards, only upwards, so our intrepid heroes are left with a massive cake tower, which Orko then knocks over onto Man-at-Arms. The comic potential presented by food going all over Man-at-Arms is simply never exhausted in this programme. I don’t know how they come up with so many equally witty variations on this theme. Eggs, chocolate cake, you name it, Orko will have covered Man-at-Arms in it.
Anyway, these little frivolities come to an abrupt and merciful end when Zoar shows up to ruin everyone’s day, summoning the four of them to Castle Grayskull. Once there, she turns back into the Sorceress and shows them what Skeletor is up to in the past. He is apparently building a castle to protect the Wheel of Infinity. The Sorceress explains that the Wheel will spin faster and faster, and get bigger and bigger, and eventually destroy Castle Grayskull. She sends the four of them back in time to stop Skeletor, destroy his castle, and presumably the Wheel as well. She then says that the language of the Ancient Eternians will be strange, but Orko will know what to do. I bet five million pounds he doesn’t. Anyway, the little group (now including He-Man and Battle-Cat rather than Adam and Cringer) head for Eternia’s past.
On arrival, He-Man and co. are met by a party of Ancient Eternians, who don’t understand them. Orko then casts a spell to make their language become clear (so, okay, I lose my bet, but he did take up a good ten seconds trying to remember it). The woman then accuses them of being friends with “Ghost Face”, which Man-at-Arms instantly deduces must be Skeletor. Personally, I’d have thought “Skull Face” would be more appropriate for Skeletor, but that’s just me being weird. He-Man then addresses the Ancient Eternians, and does so in a very patronising manner – talking very slowly, with very simple sentences. Though I suppose that might just be all that He-Man himself is capable of. They’re not convinced by his friendly overtures, though who can blame them? Were I approached by a man wearing little more than a pair of red furry underpants, I’d be naturally suspicious too.
Anyway, some form of dragon then attacks them. Man-at-Arms tries to shoot it, announces, “My blaster won’t work!” (surprise, surprise), then helpfully suggests, “Look out, He-Man!” The dragon then attacks the Ancient Eternians, who have somehow managed to fall into a deep pit. He-Man runs along to help by keeping the dragon occupied, while Man-at-Arms produces a rope ladder from somewhere and helps the Ancient Eternians out. Once the pit is clear, He-Man puts into motion his sophisticated plan. He and Battle-Cat stand at the edge of the pit (He-Man shouts, “Back, Battle-Cat!” but Battle-Cat ignores this instruction, on account of the fact that if he had obeyed, he’d have fallen into the pit himself, so quite what He-Man was thinking, I don’t rightly know), then He-Man waves his sword at the dragon. This, for some reason, so incenses the dragon that it advances on them, and He-Man and Battle-Cat cleverly dart to the side. The dragon then falls into the pit, somehow forgetting that it is capable of flight. He-Man then uses his time-honoured solution to each and every problem: throw a rock at it. He manages to bury the dragon in an avalanche, which makes us all so very happy.
The Ancient Eternians, now convinced of He-Man’s goodwill, tell him some details to further the plot. Basically, Skeletor has enslaved the Ape Clan, who are building him a fortress. He-Man asks to see this fortress, and claims that with surprise on his side, Skeletor should be easy enough to defeat. Skeletor is, of course, watching the whole thing on one of his many spy screen things, and orders the leader of the Ape Clan to gather his warriors to attack He-Man.
Having arrived at the fortress, Man-at-Arms says, “It’s too quiet,” to which He-Man responds, “Then let’s make a little noise!” He leaps onto Battle-Cat’s back, and utters what is probably his most intimidating threat ever: “Open up, Skeletor, or we’ll turn your castle into toothpaste!” Skeletor is clearly unable to resist responding to this little taunt, and shouts down from the battlements, “Let’s see you try it, fool!” Battle-Cat growls his stupid head off at this insult to top all insults, and cries, “Let’s get him!” Our heroes then attack the castle, in what proves to be an intensely stupid battle, involving He-Man knocking rocks about by using his sword like a baseball bat. He then leaps up the battlements from the outside and jumps down inside, offering his standard ‘joke’: “Mind if we drop in, Skeletor?” Skeletor sadly fails to live up his usual level, and offers only “Get them, Ape-Men!” by way of retort.
The first Ape-Man He-Man comes across has a big club. On noticing it, He-Man says, “That club would make a fine toothpick!” By this point, I was getting a little confused. What with this and his comment mere seconds earlier about turning the castle into toothpaste, He-Man certainly seems to be a little on the obsessed side when it comes to teeth in this episode. I was preparing myself for a moral on the necessity for always cleaning one’s teeth, but sadly, it wasn’t anything of the kind. Anyway, He-Man helpfully throws the Ape-Man into a well.
Meanwhile, one of the Ancient Eternians is sneaking up behind Skeletor, who is looking out of the castle. This is fairly pointless, given that his enemies are now inside the castle, but no one ever said Skeletor had a brain. Unfortunately, the Ancient Eternian’s sneak attack doesn’t go too well: Skeletor knocks her out and teleports her to Dragasore Isle, then announces to our heroes that now they have a choice: save Castle Grayskull or save the woman. This clearly puts He-Man in a moral quandary, but they elect to save the woman. The heroes make a raft and row all the way across the sea to Dragasore Isle, where Tri-Klops sees them arrive. He goes and reports this fact to Skeletor, who has clearly done absolutely nothing since we last saw him. I mean, how long must it have taken for He-Man and co. to have got to this island? Surely in that time, Skeletor could have done something to further his plans? Oh well. It’s up to him.
As He-Man and his friends head through the jungle, a big blue plant grabs hold of them with its tentacles. He-Man opts for the obvious solution and cuts the plant’s tentacles off. This, for no readily apparent reason, makes the plant explode. This doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me, but then Eternia’s plant life has also been somewhat on the unusual side. He-Man offers some intelligent hints about being careful, at which point a big red scorpion thing digs its way out of the ground. It attacks He-Man, who picks it up and throws it. Sometimes, this programme is just too intellectual. Orko then makes a joke which I’m not even going to repeat here, and the heroes continue on their merry way.
The heroes soon arrive at Skeletor’s new hideout, which is inside a very tall waterfall. Skeletor and Tri-Klops stand in the river at the top of the waterfall (which I’d have thought would probably sweep them down) and shoot energy bolts at He-Man, who runs up the helpfully placed staircase. The blue lizard man seen in Snake Mountain but who had since disappeared now makes a ‘welcome’ re-entry into the episode’s plot, flying a load of dragons to attack the goodies. Man-at-Arms actually does something right for a change, and disables two of the dragons, while He-Man disposes of the other one by throwing a dead tree at it and saying, “Here’s something to chew on!” thus keeping the totally inexplicable teeth theme going. Seeing his plans failing – once again – Skeletor runs up to the room where he has the Ancient Eternian in a cage, and casts a spell which he informs He-Man “will trap her forever between time and space!” It doesn’t, of course, because all He-Man has to do is bend the bars of the cage a bit to release her. The Sorceress then uses her magic to transport them all back to Skeletor’s castle. You’d think she could have helped in the first place by just transporting that stupid Ancient Eternian back, so then there wouldn’t have been a necessity for that stupid excursion to Dragasore Isle, but then the plans of Sorceresses are not for us mere mortals to attempt to fathom.
Upon noticing He-Man’s arrival, Tri-Klops spurs the Ape-Men into attacking. He-Man decides to put a stop to the whole thing once and for all, and leaves attacking the Ape-Men to Man-at-Arms and Orko, while he goes to deal with Skeletor. Man-at-Arms uses his blasters to destroy part of the castle, then chuckles and looks at them, commenting, “I thought my blasters might work again.” Quite why he thought this – and indeed why they did – is not satisfactorily, or even unsatisfactorily, explained.
He-Man and Battle-Cat easily locate Skeletor, who informs them that they won’t stop him this time. He-Man retorts, “You’ve had it, Skull Face!” evidently having taken into account my suggestion from earlier. He then somehow manages to trigger the Wheel of Infinity into spinning very fast, a circumstance which sends Skeletor into paroxysms of helpless laughter. He-Man grabs hold of the Wheel, trying to stop it, but this merely has the result of making Skeletor laugh even harder. Honestly, I’ve never seen Skeletor laugh so much. He also utters the phrase, “At last I’ve won!” which is so sad, you almost feel sorry for him (especially considering that by the end of the episode, he’s almost certainly going to be banished back to Snake Mountain again with only his resident band of no-hopers for company). At any rate, he tells He-Man that the Wheel will spin forever, getting faster and faster and larger and larger until eventually it explodes, destroying Castle Grayskull. I don’t know why it would destroy Castle Grayskull. Surely He-Man can contrive to put it on the other side of the planet – or better yet, on a different planet.
Actually, what He-Man comes up with is better than this. With a stroke of sheer genius, he says, “Maybe I can’t stop it – but I bet I can speed it up!” Skeletor, ever the master of subtlety, cries, “No!!!” which only prompts He-Man into doing just that. The Wheel goes faster and faster, though curiously enough, it does not get larger and larger. It begins to explode, and Skeletor – sensing imminent defeat – creates one of his famous teleporter portals back to Snake Mountain, and ducks through it. He does not take the time to save Tri-Klops and his lizard friend, which might explain why we never see the lizard again, though I’d bet Tri-Klops shows up in one or two episodes after this one. He-Man then punches the Wheel, which makes it fly out of the castle, via the roof, and explode harmlessly in the sky. Doing this, interestingly enough, makes Skeletor’s castle shimmer out of existence. Unless I misunderstand this episode – which, frankly, I don’t believe I do – the castle was independent of the Wheel. Destroying the Wheel shouldn’t have made the castle vanish. I can’t be bothered to discuss this in detail, but take it from me, it doesn’t make sense.
On their return to Castle Grayskull, the Sorceress tells them they’ve all done well – though she’s probably just being nice to everybody except He-Man – and furthermore tells He-Man that he has the thanks of Castle Grayskull, which makes He-Man smile in a very silly way. She then flies off to make sure Skeletor can’t try the same thing again, though quite how she thinks he could, given the destruction of the Wheel of Infinity, is another of those things about He-Man that I shall forever remain unsure about.
The moral is delivered by He-Man, and, while it’s not about keeping your teeth clean, it is the next most obvious possible one. He tells us that though no one can change the past, we can all learn from it. Most enlightening. What is good about this bit is that he finishes with the rather unusual phrase, “Until next time, this is He-Man, wishing you good health, and good luck.” As far as I’m aware, none of the other morals are finished like this. I don’t really understand why he says such a thing. All it does is make him sound very, very stupid indeed.
So until next time, this is Owen, wishing you good health, and good luck.