Larry DiTillio

Bill Reed

Acting on the prophetic dream of Agho, king of the trolls, She-Ra attempts to stop the summoning of an ancient monster. On this journey she drags along Bow, Kowl, and Sprag the Twigget, so they can all learn a valuable lesson about unfairly judging trolls.

Bow, Kowl, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Swift Wind

Shadow Weaver, Scorpia

Twiggets (Sprocker, Sprag), Grox, various rebels, various trolls, Agho, Arrow, Duke Dreer, bone bats, the Spider of Crystal, villagers

wagons, Scorpiamobile

It's a sunny day in the Whispering Woods, with happy Twiggets Sprocker and Sprag hauling in a ripe crop of oogle berries while Bow tends to his arrows as friend Kowl looks on. But our rebel friends are being watched from the bushes by a hulking, mysterious stranger. When the Twiggets flush the stranger - a troll - into the open, the rebels spring to the offensive. Ignoring the troll's request to see Princess Adora, Bow rallies fellow soldiers and attempts to subdue the intruder. Their ropes have little effect against the troll's great strength, however, and he's just preparing to throw a hefty stone table at his attackers when Adora arrives. She orders everyone to calm the heck down and asks the troll why he's come.

The troll, whose name is Grox, explains that his king Agho desires an audience with She-Ra. She-Ra met Agho and received critical aid from the troll during her adventure in search of the Crystal Castle - a fact of which Adora must sternly remind the mistrustful Bow, Sprag, and Kowl, all of whom firmly believe every troll to be deceitful and stupid. Fed up with her prejudiced compatriots, Adora orders the trio to follow She-Ra on her mission to Spikeheart, so they can hopefully learn a valuable lesson that will coincidentally also benefit an immature 80s television viewing audience.

At the troll stronghold in Spikeheart, Agho recounts to She-Ra and crew a dream he had. He saw a vehicle uncover a door in the side of a mountain - a door marked with the ominous symbol of the Spider of Crystal. This arachnid was an ancient enemy of the trolls, which they were forced to imprison in the mountain to keep it from destroying all Etheria. Agho can tell his dream was an omen, and begs She-Ra's help in preventing the reawakening of the deadly monster. The mountain in question lies in Skull Path, home of the Horde supporter Duke Dreer - so that's where She-Ra and her friends will be headed. To guide our heroine - and to spread the lesson-learning further afield - Agho orders an understandly unenthused Grox to join the party.

Our disgruntled team ventures to Skull Path, where they're quickly detected by the evil Dreer - who seemingly has no other hobbies or occupations to distract him from his spying. The wizard sends a team of undead bone bats to harry his visitors. Their attack proves mighty effective: one bat destroys Sprag and Bow's arrows and grabs the pair in its talons. The brave Grox lassos the creature's neck and holds on until the straining beast shatters into its component bones. While She-Ra is busy (with some difficulty) defeating her own bat, the last one gets a hold of Grox and carries him off before his horrified companions have time to react. They're doubly dismayed because the troll, whom they've continued to treat poorly, still selflessly saved them before being captured.

A chastened Bow, Kowl, and Sprag huddle with She-Ra to plan their next move, and they decide to divide their forces: She-Ra will follow Agho's dream and attempt to forestall the summoning of the Spider of Crystal, while the others head for Dreer Keep to free their teammate. The three-person team infiltrates the castle through one open eye of its skull-like facade. Duke Dreer immediately confronts the trespassers, magic wand at the ready, but the trio nevertheless get the jump on him: Kowl steals his wand, Sprag sticks a bucket on his head, and Bow bundles him off behind a door. It's hard being the Plot B villain! With nothing else to stand in their way, our friends quickly bust into Grox's cell and apologize to the troll for how they've treated him, then make tracks to help She-Ra.

It so happens that She-Ra has been taking her sweet time in the interim. She dilly-dallied so long on her trip to the prison mound that Agho's dream came true: Horde members Shadow Weaver and Scorpia cleared the rocks away from the spider-marked entrance and broke into the Crystal Spider's prison. Weaver - exhibiting the heedlessness of many mad sorcerers before her - zapped a tiny crystal spider on a pedestal within, triggering the awakening of the full-size beast, which turns out to be Kaiju-level ginormous. Seeing that she'd meddled in dark powers quite enough for today, Weaver bounced, taking Scorpia with her, and leaving a just-arrived She-Ra to tangle with the Spider.

The Spider has just delivered a swift kick to Swift Wind and She-Ra when Bow and the others ride up. To beef up the party even further, King Agho (who has been watching the proceedings by crystal ball) teleports in as well. The trolls explain that there is just no way to defeat the risen Spider - all they can hope to do is imprison it again. They work up a plan to lead the creature into a narrow valley where She-Ra will be able to push rocks onto its head. With everyone working together (and freed from their spurious prejudices), the plan goes off without a hitch - Bow and the others lure the Spider over, She-Ra shoves some rocks, and Agho casts a spell of the ancient troll fathers to again seal the Crystal Spider inside a rocky tomb.

Hurrah! To conclude the episode, the victorious heroes (including Agho and Grox) return to the Whispering Woods, where they meet Princess Adora for a celebration. A very satisfied Adora looks on at Agho's side as Grox and Sprag make up and shake hands (or, anyway, Sprag's hands shake one of Grox's giant fingers). We've solved racism on Etheria, people! Thank goodness that will never come up again.

• Kowl: Hmm. Flying Twiggets. How unusual.
• Princess Adora (really throwing her weight around): Listen, all of you. I gave an order, and if you don't like it, you can leave the rebellion once and for all. And that's my last word on the matter!
• Agho: I have had a dream, She-Ra: a most disturbing dream.
• She-Ra: The Spider of Crystal? / Agho: It was a monster from another world which came to Etheria long ago. / Grox: It lived only to destroy, and its power was great.
• Agho: But it is not just a dream, She-Ra - it is a warning. I have had such warnings before, and I know.
• She-Ra (dripping with irony): Help Grox? But Sprag, he's just a troll. Why would you want to help a troll?
• Sprag: Grox, I - I wish there was something more I could do to prove how sorry I am. / Grox: There is no need; that there is an end to the hate between us is more than enough, my little friend.

N/A

Zero (!)
Adora's one transformation this episode occurs off screen.

2:16 - Loo-Kee pulled a very stealthy, high-difficulty move today, appearing very briefly in the upper right corner of the screen, and turned away from us. He is sitting in the high branches of a tree in the background of an action scene in which a pair of Twiggets are about to pounce on a troll intruder. It's a moment of high tension that would distract all but the most seasoned of Loo-Kee hunters from their quarry. And I say that in all modesty. Super modestly.
Did I spot him? YES!

You'd really think that Loo-Kee would help hammer home today's main lesson about not pre-judging an entire group of people, as the rebels did with the trolls; but no. Instead, he draws from Agho's dream the barely pertinent lesson that sleeping is very important, and that the viewing audience should make sure to get a good night's rest. I guess race relations are just too heavy a topic for a stealthy little elf creature.

Hordak-less episodes in Season 1: Though this story has all the hallmarks of a "Wayward child learns a valuable lesson" episode, it lacks the crucial wayward child necessary for qualifying - the only people learning a lesson today are the supposedly mature adults. So we'll just have to settle for the old Hordak-less tag.

• This is the second consecutive episode written by Larry DiTillio, record-holding prolific MOTU writer and co-creator of the She-Ra series. He will make it a hat trick by providing us the script for the next episode as well (67058).
• Bow mentions that Adora has gone to Thaymor, the site of our introduction to Etheria in 67001 - and of the harvest festival that began 67023's "The Crown of Knowledge."
• The Twigget crew enters the scene carrying several baskets of "oogle berries" (or something like that), a fruit sure to remind one of the giggleberries of 67021.
• Giving us a new Etherian expression to admire, Bow exclaims "Galloping grimbies!" when he spots the troll intruder in the rebel camp.
• The troll, who proves to be named Grox, is of the same trolls of Spikeheart that She-Ra went searching for during her quest to find the Crystal Castle, in the aptly named 67022's "The Crystal Castle" (also a DiTillio script). Adora's later dialogue to her fellow rebels recaps the plot of that very episode, for the benefit of those who might not remember - and because it will have bearing on today's story.
• Grox has what I will charitably conclude is a belt around his middle, made up of square patches that are exactly the same color as his skin - thus making it look as if he's showing random parts of his belly.
• In 67022, the troll king Agho (who we'll be seeing today) complained that the humans of Etheria have always mistrusted the trolls; the rebels' reaction to the troll in their midst very much supports his complaints!
• Though our writer and animators could very easily have killed some screentime by showing Adora's transformation to She-Ra before her trip to Agho, they curiously opt to omit the usual sequence. Because of this omission, we don't see Spirit at all today, only Swift Wind. Thanks to the fact that she started the series unable to transform at all, Adora has already racked up more zero-transformation episodes than Adam did in his entire MOTU run! As of this episode, her total stands at six, the last being in 67029.
• Agho's dream, which we have the privilege of being able to view, features a familiar vehicle: it's Scorpia's Scorpiamobile, seen for the first time in 67025's "Small Problems." This vision will prove remarkably prophetic.
• Our dream-sourced plot gives us some classic sword-and-sorcery back story, reminiscent of first-season MOTU and one of my favorite episode categories, "Skeletor summons a monster." Today's object of summoning is the "Spider of Crystal," an evil critter who we're told came from another world and was imprisoned in a mountain by the trolls - a classic non-solution for dealing with MOTU monsters, since any creature imprisoned in a mountain (a la MU067's "The Energy Beast") is sure to break loose again.
• After hearing the tale of this crystalline arachnid, we're quickly introduced to several additional characters and locations, because the Spider's prison is "in the shadow kingdom of Skull Path," ruled by one Duke Dreer. She-Ra calls the duke a Horde supporter, and Bow later gives him the title of "Horde governor."
• The further back story Grox gives on the Spider of Crystal sounds even more like an old MOTU script, with the Spider being summoned by an evil magician who found that he was unable to control it. This sounds very much like the plot of MU075's "To Save Skeletor."
• I like Kowl's expression, "I've got a hooting bad feeling," where in common Earth parlance the word "hooting" could easily be replaced with a much stronger epithet.
• Grox helps out our heroes by explaining that Duke Dreer's bone bats "aren't alive; they're just bones given movement," making it expressly OK to smash them to bits.
• Bow again shows off his "magic" tricks - a talent we've seen in previous episodes, such as 67028 - with a little red ball that makes a disorienting flash.
• As we know, Bow is not just a magician - as his name suggests, he has some skill in archery as well. Today he shows off a grappling line arrow and a "blast arrow," among other, simpler projectiles.

• Larry continues the themes of discrimination and racism that he introduced in the first troll episode, 67022, with the rebels' frankly shameful reaction to Grox's intrusion. Pushy lesson episodes usually get my goat, but less so when they address important issues like this.
• Adora can hold Sprag up in the air by the hat, showing that the Twigget's hat is attached very firmly. Are we talking hairpins or glue here? Or is it sewn on??
• Though Adora has often been labeled as the Great Rebellion's leader (to the disparagement of its original leader, Glimmer, as I'll never tire of mentioning), it's quite rare that we're given any evidence of the fact, as we are today. Adora's frustration at her friends' bias against the troll prompts her to give a stern order that has all the hallmarks of a Mom lecture. This is a far cry from her retiring modesty in 67017's "A Loss for Words," when Bow has to try to convince a doubtful Adora of how inspiring a leader she is.
• I'm so thankful that Mr. DiTillio has returned to form with this script, giving us some good old fantasy adventure with a well-expressed message and some lovely Tolkien-esque dialogue from King Agho. Perhaps this story will wash away the indigestion caused by his previous effort, 67033's "A Talent for Trouble."
• A lot of new and very fun background paintings and character designs show up on our visit to Skull Path. The bony gateway our heroes travel through, with its spying skulls, is very cool; then we cut to Duke Dreer and his awesomely huge bone bats, inside a castle whose walls are formed of a rib cage and hip bones; then we cut to the exterior of his fortress, Dreer Keep, which could easily give Snake Mountain a run for its money. Great stuff!
• Kowl avoids capture: During the attack of the bone bats, every one of the heroes is attacked. Everyone, that is, except our owlish buddy, who just stands by and provides color commentary on the battle.
• To give Kowl his due, however, he does actually do a few helpful things in today's adventure - that is, after his sneezing has messed up Bow's first grappling arrow shot. The bird scopes out Dreer Keep for his fellow rescuers, and successfully plucks Dreer's magic wand from his slender fingers. Kowl then provides the suggestion that solidifies the plan to trap the Spider of Crystal. Nice job, bird brain.
• I don't know if it's his mealy-mouthed, unassertive voice or the fact that he looks like a cut-rate Hexon the wizard (see MU115), but I find Duke Dreer to be a very underwhelming enemy. If She-Ra doesn't even need to be involved to cause your defeat, you're clearly not on the villain A list! It's also kind of sad that he seems to live all by himself in his gigantic skull-themed castle - remind you of any bird ladies we've met? I wonder if he has to mop the place himself, like the Sorceress!
• Continuity error: Duke Dreer clearly informs Bow and company that the entrance to his dungeon is through the angle-topped door he's standing before; but the heroes throw their enemy through this same door, and then walk off in another direction to find Grox. So... he wasn't in the dungeon?
• Animation error: In the touching scene where Bow, Kowl, and Sprag admit their unfair troll bias and shake hands with Grox, Bow's shaking arm is incorrectly layered beneath his torso, making him look hideously deformed.
• The Horde forces play a shockingly brief part in today's story. True, without Shadow Weaver and Scorpia's intervention, the Spider of Crystal would never have awakened; but that intervention lasts about five seconds. As soon as Weaver sees what she's loosed on Etheria, she puffs herself and her lackey right the heck out of there, faster than Skeletor at a Christmas party.
• One seemingly loose thread in the story is the village which the Spider of Crystal casually changes entirely into crystal (a fact She-Ra narrates for us with some dismay). We never see the village again after its short, shimmery time on screen, so we're left wondering if anyone trapped in those buildings was also turned to crystal, and whether the re-imprisoning of the Spider undid this spell. Also you have to wonder what a whole village of people was doing living right next to the prison of the interstellar doom monster. Are they within Duke Dreer's domain, and does he take time off his busy spying schedule to regularly oppress these people? We'll never know.
• I have to say I was inordinately thrilled when Agho teleported himself over to assist in the final battle. Hells yeah! I was ready for some seriously bad-ass @#$% to go down. Agho does help, though his rock prison spell was a bit less action-packed of an assist than I'd imagined.
• This episode checked a lot of my favorite Filmation boxes, had a colorful cast of characters, and included some cool new locations. It even had a positive lesson to impart which, though conveyed a bit preachily, is one that's always worth imparting. Larry is back!
• By the way, I wonder whether Mr. DiTillio somehow was thinking of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech when he came up with the idea of combining a troll's dream with a story about racism. Just a thought...