Larry DiTillio

Steven Clark

Why is Hordak so interested in a bunch of space rocks that landed in the Valley of the Lost? She-Ra and the Great Rebellion would like to find out. The answer, as they say in the clickbait world, may shock you!

Kowl, Bow, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Madame Razz, Broom, Spirit (Swift Wind)

Catra, Imp, Hordak, Mantenna, Grizzlor, Leech, Scorpia, Shadow Weaver

Rock People (Stonedar, Rokkon, and Granita), monitor guy, Rigolo (mentioned only), King Liz, Horde soldiers, Agho

Scavenger

Exterior: Space. Amid the inky void, scattered with the dusty pinpricks of stars, float three unremarkable meteors. Unremarkable, that is, only to the casual (or, as Hordak would put it, imbecilic) observer; for, as the Horde leader, watching the space rocks from a video monitor deep in the Fright Zone, points out to Catra, normal meteors do not change direction. The three rocks are now on course to land on Etheria, and Hordak wants them in his possession. Accompanied by the taunting of his favorite winged spy, Imp, Hordak orders his feline force captain to take a squad out to the projected landing site of the rocks and fetch them for him.

Elsewhere on Etheria, in the Whispering Woods, rebel bigwigs Bow and Princess Adora are meeting to discuss the supply levels of the Great Rebellion, logistical considerations in their seemingly endless war against Hordak and his oppressive regime. Their conference is interrupted by the crash landing of the clumsy Madame Razz and her Broom. Razz brings a written message from an informant, who tracked Horde troops traveling through Pinetown to the Valley of the Lost, apparently in search of "rocks from outer space." Intrigued - and always ready to disrupt the plans of the Horde - Adora and Bow decide that a trip to the Valley of the Lost is required. Given the dangers of the place and the situation, Adora decides to enlist the aid of She-Ra, promising the golden-haired heroine will meet Bow, Kowl, Razz and Broom at the crossroads near the valley. Adora then slips off to a private glade with her horse Spirit to produce her alter ego and the winged Swift Wind.

Bow and the rest arrive early at the crossroads (the mustached Archer having apparently humbled himself riding behind Razz on Broom), and Madame decides to scout on ahead. The valley is mistier than she expected, however, and it's no surprise that the witch - who can barely complete an accident-free journey through perfectly clear skies - soon collides with a large object. What did they hit? The mist clears, revealing a towering and very angry dinosaur! It's King Liz, a spike-topped beast who's decided the encroaching rebels are on his menu. He's just pinned Razz, Bow, and the rest on a high, narrow ledge when She-Ra makes her fortuitous entrance.

To stop the immediate danger to her friends, She-Ra leaps to the ground, grabs hold of the monster's tail, and flings it away, the shattering impact causing a shower of rocks which further hampers the fallen creature. The infuriated dinosaur shakes himself free and stalks back over. Deciding King Liz is now ready for a well-mannered conversation, She-Ra uses her skill of communicating with animals to reason with the beast. They have a pleasant chat, not only defusing the conflict but providing the rebels with the location of Catra and her crew. So nice to meet new people!

The Horde, as we see presently, are in full force today: Grizzlor, Leech, and Scorpia stand with Force Captain Catra as she directs Mantenna in operating an excavating vehicle. The "Scavenger" digs into the ground and uncovers the three sought-for space rocks, which pulse with a mysterious glow. Mantenna is just about to commence grabbing them when the villains are interrupted by She-Ra and company. The two sides arrange themselves in lines and face off, clearly about to commence an impressive battle; but they're all startled when the three rocks begin to move. They unfold and stand, revealing a trio of Rock People!

Seeing that these rocks are just as interesting as Hordak predicted, Catra quickly orders Mantenna to grab one, which he does, using the Scavenger's large pincer arm. The predicted battle then takes place, and features plenty of fun action which I won't lengthen this plot summary by describing in detail (you'll just have to watch the episode - sorry!). Ultimately, Catra and Mantenna fly off with their rocky prize, the nearly abandoned Grizzlor, Leech, and Scorpia clinging to the back end of the departing Scavenger. She-Ra regroups with her side and approaches the two remaining Rock People. They introduce themselves as Stonedar and Granita, explorers from a planet named Geolon. They're on a critically important mission to find a new homeworld for their people, Interstellar style, since their planet's sun is set to explode in the near future. But their mission will have to wait until they can recover their missing comrade Rokkon.

She-Ra and Bow explain that the Horde has certainly taken Rokkon to the Fright Zone. The heroes warn that Hordak and his forces are evil people and won't give up the rock man without a fight. They offer the military aid of the rebellion; but Stonedar and his companion explain that they are peaceful people, with no interest in conflict - or in hanging out with people who resort to conflict. Thanks, but no thanks: surely a diplomatic discussion with Hordak can resolve this problem without fighting. She-Ra allows the poor saps to depart, but instructs her friends that they should follow behind and be ready to help the Rock People when their negotiations inevitably fail.

When Stonedar and Granita do arrive in the Fright Zone, they're quickly met by a huge troop of Horde soldiers and Catra, who escort them to an audience with Hordak in his throne room. The Rock People explain their neutral stance to the Horde leader and request the return of Rokkon (who is restrained to a pillar just nearby). As a ransom, Hordak demands the secret of the Rock People's ability to fly through space without vehicles. Stonedar basically shrugs his shoulders: there's no real secret to the process, it's just something they can do. But this isn't the answer Hordak wants, so he demands that the recalcitrant rocks all be taken prisoner.

The Rock People finally see that there's just no getting through to this planetary dictator; and they have no interest in being locked up while their species is on the verge of extinction. So they finally reveal their true power, a simple outstretched hand sufficient to deflect any attempt on the part of the Horde soldiers to physically subdue them. Politely apologizing, Stonedar and Granita stride over and easily release Rokkon from his bonds (while Rokkon also politely apologizes to his friends for getting captured). It looks like the Rock People are going to just walk on out of the Fright Zone unopposed; but Hordak then commands Shadow Weaver to do her stuff. The evil sorceress casts a spell that causes the poor Rock People to begin turning to liquid!

Time for the Great Rebellion to step in. With the aid of a flash arrow from Bow, She-Ra and her friends bust into the throne room and join the fray. While Bow and She-Ra battle the Horde forces (in another exciting action scene for which I'll avoid providing a blow-by-blow account), Madame Razz pulls a big save by reversing the melting spell on Stonedar and pals. Stonedar resorts to one more spate of rock-pummeling violence to keep Hordak from blasting an unaware She-Ra, and the rebels and Rock People make their escape.

Back at the Whispering Woods, and having presumably taken a moment between scenes to thank She-Ra for her aid, and maybe question their naive idealism, the Rock People turn their minds back to their main mission. They like the rebels, and appreciate She-Ra's (implied) kind offer to relocate their entire race to Etheria; but Stonedar just can't see his way towards living on such a war-torn planet. The question is, do they have time to find another, better option before their sun goes ka-blooey? Struck by sudden inspiration, She-Ra declares there is a corner of Etheria untouched by war, which would be just perfect for the Rock People. It's the land of Spikeheart, home of King Agho and his trolls - and Agho owes She-Ra a favor. The troll leader generously permits the immigration of Geolon's indigenous sentient species to his rocky territory, and, looking over the wasted, treeless expanse, Stonedar and his friends are happy to accept. She-Ra and Bow close out the episode with a brief contemplation of their duty to respect people's right to live in peace.

• Hordak: What do you make of it, Catra? / Catra: Rowr - they look like ordinary meteors to me. / Hordak: IMBECILE! Ordinary meteors don't fly in formation, or make sharp turns in space. / Imp (laughing): Old Cat-Puss is wrong again.
• Madame Razz: Oh, pish and tosh; I'm old enough to take care of myself. / Broom: You're old enough to take care of several people.
• She-Ra (stating the obvious, for the record): Why, they're people! People made of rock!
• Stonedar (very unimpressed so far with what he's seen of Etheria): All this fighting! What kind of world is this?
• Stonedar: You seem kind, but we cannot ally ourselves with you. / Bow: Why not? / Granita: You are too violent. Being with you will only cause more fighting. / Stonedar: We Rock People want peace more than anything else.
• Kowl (coming it a little high, considering his own proclivities): I think they're just cowards. / She-Ra: Well, not wanting to fight doesn't make you a coward, Kowl. / Madame Razz: I'm with She-Ra. Sometimes it takes more courage not to fight.
• Hordak (hitting the exposition surprisingly hard): She-Ra's so busy with my robots, she's ignoring me - and that will be her big mistake.
• Stonedar: You have been kind to us, She-Ra, but with the fight raging on this planet, my people would never be happy here.
• Granita: Your valley is lovely, King Agho: so gray and stony.

• She-Ra mounts Swift Wind and flies off: After transforming, and again as she heads off to rescue Rokkon

One full

3:49 - Loo-Kee makes a particularly brief appearance today, though he's pretty obvious for the moment he's on the screen. After Adora finishes a scene in the Whispering Woods and walks off the screen, Loo-Kee is seen to have been sitting among the bushes just behind her, looking off to the left.
Did I spot him? YES!

Loo-Kee echoes the earlier words of Madame Razz - and Man-at-Arms (MU081) - and, for that matter, He-Man and Randor (MU060) - by advising us that "it takes more courage to walk away from a fight." We shouldn't think we have to fight people to show how brave we are. Okay, cool-cool-cool... But: didn't fighting solve all of today's problems? Didn't we learn from the preceding story that sometimes peace is not the answer? You're giving us mixed messages, Loo-Kee.

Landmark Episode: I've decided that, due to the debut of the title characters, this episode deserves the landmark tag. I may or may not come to regret this.
Changing hearts and minds: I initially chose to omit this category tag, under the impression that the Rock People's pacifist ways had not been swayed by She-Ra or the traumatic events of today's story, and having noted their own professions of having no intention of joining the rebellion against the Horde. However, later events (see 67054) proved me - and possibly Larry DiTillio - wrong on that score, so I guess we can mark this as the day these peaceful people turned to war.

• We're back with Larry DiTillio again for this script; he's spit out another one for his pile of writing credits!
• There's a tech-enhanced, robotic-voiced man monitoring the viewscreen in the Fright Zone. He's not named and doesn't correspond to any action figure - very mysterious.
• Our featured Rock People, however, are very much a product placement! As we eventually hear, the three meteors which provide today's title, begin the episode, and are the driving purpose behinds its plot are named Stonedar, Rokkon, and Granita. The first two were part of Mattel's Wave 5 of MOTU toys - apparently not feminine enough to be attached to the Princess of Power line. Sadly, "the girl one," Granita, would not get a figure until the much later MOTU Classics line, in 2018 - a particularly disappointing state of affairs, seeing as how her animated debut was on what should be a feminist program.
• Some more amusing carping between Catra and Imp, like what we saw in 67041, with only Catra receiving a reprimand from Hordak. I'd thought there was a specific animosity between Shadow Weaver and Imp (see lore for 67040), but it's starting to look like none of the Horde minions can stand Hordak's little favorite! Unluckily for them, Imp is fast becoming a regular on the series: this is his fifth consecutive appearance.
• Madame Razz - and the rebellion - apparently have a friend named Rigolo, who today passes information to the rebels. My DVD captions transcribed the name as "Bigelow," but I'm deferring to Wiki Grayskull's spelling.
• Another use of the confusing Etherian location, the Valley of the Lost. Back in 67003, the claim for this place was that anyone who went there would never return. In 67020, when our heroes did actually venture there, they had no problem returning. Today, it's just a dangerous place where, according to Bow, "no one goes." For more contradictory depictions of this valley, see 67048's "Birds of a Feather."
• Bow is clearly angling for some romantic alone-time with She-Ra this morning, though it doesn't work out as he planned. But what if it did work out as planned? It would be pretty weird if Adora was going out with Sea Hawk at the same time that She-Ra was dating Bow. Talk about having your beefcake and eating it too! This is not a very ethical situation to imagine - I blame Filmation for putting this in my head.
• Though it's oddly not shown on screen (you wouldn't think our writer or animators would pass up on the chance to show something so goofy-looking), it seems we're to infer that Bow arrived at the valley by riding pillion on Broom (or to put it more vernacularly, "riding bitch").
• Valley of the Lost? More like the Lost World! In this iteration of the valley, our heroes immediately "run into" a spiky-headed T-rex-looking dude, by the similar (given that the translation of Tyrannosaurus Rex is "King Lizard") name of "King Liz."
• She-Ra tries her animal communication skills on the King Liz, but oddly only after she's flung it by the tail and showered it with a pile of boulders. Not very politic! I suppose the way it was roaring at her friends called for instant preventative action, rather than a chat. For this instance of animal whispering, we get to hear at least part of the telepathic dialogue, something we're usually not privy to. The last similar occurrence I can think of was her psychic discussion with a fluffy red bird at the beginning of 67013's "King Miro's Journey."
• A new Horde vehicle today, and thankfully it's not another in their long line of confusing and inexactly named tanks! In fact, this one gets a specific name before we even see it: it's the "Scavenger," an excavator vehicle with a bubble cockpit and the typical Hordak-face hood ornament. And it can fly!
• As Stonedar explains during introductions, his people are "explorers from the planet of Geolon." They're on a fairly important mission to find a replacement planet, since theirs is about to explode. Pretty heavy material for today's story! And somewhat reminiscent of the apocalyptic situation in MU119's "Visitors from Earth." For another very similar set of circumstances given to another debuting action figure character, see 67085's "Sweet Bee's Home."
• Appropriating an oddly biblical unit of measurement, She-Ra notes that the Fright Zone is "about 50 cubits to the east" of her present location in the Valley of the Lost. It's convenient that we'll likely never hear this unit used again, and therefore get no concept of how much distance that covers.
• A very high character count today! We're missing some of our secondary rebels (Glimmer, Angella, Frosta, etc.), but boy are there plenty of Horde guys - not to mention the new title characters!
• "I thought a flash arrow might stop Shadow Weaver," declares a smug Bow; "she hates bright light." Oh, does she, Mr. Mustache? I'll just file that away... (We'll see bright light again acting as a potent weapon against our evil sorceress in the stellar 67047's "The Price of Power;" also see 67084, or 67077.) Bow also uses an "oil arrow" to great effect, in a portion of the final battle which I omitted from my plot summary (for brevity's sake, because I'm all about brevity).
• Madame's Magic: the Rock People owe their continuing existence as solid objects, and not puddles, to Madame, when she manages (after a false start apparently involving a frog-based spell) to reverse Shadow Weaver's nasty melting spell. Nice one, Razzy!
• Hordak transformations: He opts for the tried-and-true arm cannon again today. Pretty typical.
• A surprise cameo at the very end of the episode from the troll king himself, Agho! We've seen this guy already in 67022 and 67034 - clearly a cherished DiTillio creation, given that he's thus far only appeared in that writer's scripts.
• The Rock People will return! We'll find them upending my expectations (and seemingly turning Mr. DiTillio's intentions for the characters on their head) by joining the rebels' fight in 67054's "The Light of the Crystal."

• Let's get it out of the way, folks: that elephant in the room. The Rock People are clearly a Transformers ripoff. We've had other candidates in the series before now, since there are plenty of "transforming" things and creatures littering the POP screen (as I listed off in the commentary for 67041); and we'll have what is perhaps the most laughable version in the upcoming Christmas Special, with the Monstroids. In my entry for that movie, I derided the Monstroids' capabilities as transformers; but the Rock People's features are, if anything, even worse (sorry Stonedar). I mean: rocks? Really? I can hear the design discussion now: "Let's do our own Transformers, but instead of robots, they'll be people; and instead of having them turn into cars or planes, let's brainstorm something much less interesting."
• Poor toy idea or not, I think the Rock People as presented in this episode are pretty darn bad-ass. I love the way they fling Horde soldiers away with one hand, and Stonedar's brutal nailing of Hordak with his rock form is awesomely satisfying. I also enjoy the way they accompany all this behavior with a very Canadian abundance of apologies.
• However, the lesson this story seems to be trying to teach us through the Rock People has uncomfortable real-life applications. The angle the script takes is that pacifism is not a viable philosophy, and sometimes you just have to give up and kick some ass. I see the point, but it's a bit hard for the idealistic part of me to swallow. At the same time, the story ending hedges its bets, with Bow and She-Ra arguing that it's important to respect people's desire to live peacefully, and Loo-Kee reminding us that fighting is definitely not always the answer. As I've already noted, it's all a bit of a mixed bag, a bit wishy-washy. On the other hand, a challenging and thought-provoking topic in a She-Ra episode? (Makes chef kissing gesture) Mwuh!
• Continuity error: Or perhaps, a transportation problem. As I noted in the lore, an early part of the episode implies that Bow is going to be forced to ride Broom with Madame Razz to the Valley of the Lost. When the heroes travel on from their meeting with King Liz to intercept Catra, we see Bow gratefully hopping a ride on Swift Wind. However, when the heroes depart that next location for the Fright Zone, we clearly see She-Ra and Swift Wind flying off first, followed by Razz and Broom and the flapping Kowl. Bow is nowhere to be seen; yet he shows up somehow in the Fright Zone along with everyone else. How did he get there?
• So (spoiler alert) the three Rock People are going to settle in Spikeheart - along with the entire rest of the population of their doomed planet of Geolon (who we see pelting the planet's surface in the final scene). So.... how many Rock People is that, exactly? A thousand? A million? Eight billion? Did anyone think to compare the numbers and the available square footage first before ceding the troll territory over to them? It's also a tad presumptuous of She-Ra to assure interplanetary refugees that they can surely crash on her friend's couch.
• Though as I say this story was thought provoking, it didn't give me a lot of fodder for my commentary section. There was little to criticize or analyze, since the story was tightly plotted and filled with plenty of action, rather than convoluted or filled with holes; and there weren't too many animation or continuity errors. It had a solid message to impart and some fun new characters (and a vehicle). And as you can see, I've tagged it as a Landmark episode. So it's a keeper!