Robert Lamb

Mark Glamack

All the members of the Great Rebellion, including Adora, have been frozen in time by a wicked device of the Evil Horde, and there's only one being left on Etheria who can save them - Loo-Kee! Yes, today the shy and retiring Loo-Kee will finally lend a hand... by fetching He-Man, who will actually solve the problem.

Frosta, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Bow, Spirit (Swift Wind), Glimmer, Broom, Madame Razz, Kowl, Light Hope, Prince Adam (He-Man), Cringer, Orko, Sorceress

Hordak, Imp, Mantenna, Shadow Weaver (young girl), Catra, Beast Man, Skeletor

various formerly enslaved Etherians/various rebels, Horde soldiers, Frosta's horse, various villagers, Arrow, Twiggets (Sprocker, Sprag), Loo-Kee, Etherian deer

Hordak tank, wagons

It's yet another battle in the long struggle of rebellion against the Horde! Today Frosta and She-Ra are attempting to get a group of former Horde slaves to the safety of the Whispering Woods, but they're blocked by Hordak, Imp, and the Horde's robot soldiers. Through the use of Frosta's slippery ice powers, the soldiers are bashed; and even Hordak changing into a battering tank doesn't stop She-Ra from tossing him away and leading the Etherian people to the freedom of the rebel camp.

Back on his throne in the Fright Zone, Hordak broods over his failure while Imp tries to comfort him. The Horde commander's mood is improved when he receives word that a package he's ordered from the Horde Catalog has arrived from Horde World. Opening the box he's handed, Hordak reveals a glowing gem which he tells Imp is called parthax. It will form the power source and complete the construction of his time-stop device. The Time Stop is like an oversized twenty-sided die, gray, dotted with black circles or buttons and decorated (as all Horde devices inevitably are) with the Horde logo. Having had Imp call in Mantenna, Hordak demonstrates the device on his minion, freezing Mantenna in the air as he attempts to scramble out from under the throne room trapdoor. The Time Stop does what it says: stops time in a localized area. Even when Imp opens the trapdoor under Mantenna, the hapless Horde soldier doesn't fall, immovable in the moment of his freezing. (Hordak toggles the device off to drop Mantenna in the drink, to his and Imp's great amusement.)

Imp sees the value of the invention against the Great Rebellion, but doesn't understand how Hordak can get the thing inside the magical barriers of the Whispering Woods. No worries: Hordak has a plan for that. He instructs Imp and Shadow Weaver, and the pair head off to a village near the rebel camp where the enemies of the Horde are known to come for supplies. Sure enough, overloaded with the influx of new mouths to feed, Glimmer is collecting more supplies just as Imp and Weaver arrive. (The pink-haired princess is wearing a cloak as a disguise, but just like Bow's cloak in 67009, it does nothing to conceal her identity from her watchers.) Shadow Weaver quickly disguises herself as a young girl and places the Time Stop - hidden in an unmarked box - among the other supplies in Glimmer's crowded cart. All unaware, Glimmer takes the ticking time bomb back into the rebel camp. Surrounded by the new refugees, with Bow strumming his instrument, Kowl fluttering nearby, and Razz making her usual careening entrance on Broom, Glimmer enlists the aid of the Twiggets in unloading the cart. She's confused when she comes upon the unfamiliar box holding the Time Stop, and, curious, removes the device from its container. Seeing the Horde logo on its surface, Glimmer makes a desperate attempt to fling the machine away, but - too late! The Time Stop is triggered.

Elsewhere in the Whispering Woods, our friend Loo-Kee is just waking up to another lovely day on Etheria, and wondering in what hiding place he should secrete himself during today's adventure. He's disturbed by a strange silence in the forest. Dropping from a tree branch and looking about himself, he finds fluttering leaves frozen in mid-air, deer arrested in mid-leap. Calling various rebels by name, he strolls into the center of their camp and is dismayed to find everyone frozen in place! Loo-Kee can't get anyone to move or answer his calls. Just as he's determined that he needs to find She-Ra, he's further amazed by a voice on the air, and the sudden appearance of a portal before him. The voice introduces itself as Light Hope, assuring the (understandably) distrustful elf that they are a friend of She-Ra, and urging him to enter the portal. With some trepidation, Loo-Kee obeys and finds himself face-to-beam with Light Hope in the Crystal Castle. Light Hope explains that everyone is frozen in time, including Adora. When Loo-Kee urges the entity to find She-Ra, Light Hope is forced to explain that Adora is She-Ra. Light Hope itself can barely speak, as the Time Stop's effects are beginning to freeze even that powerful entity. Their one chance to save the rebels is for Loo-Kee to travel to Eternia and fetch She-Ra's brother: He-Man. (AKA Prince Adam - so now Loo-Kee knows that secret, too.)

Using the last of their fading strength, Light Hope casts Loo-Kee across dimensions, determined to see the elf transported somewhere - anywhere - on Eternia. Unfortunately, the place Loo-Kee ends up landing is Snake Mountain. The elf flies out of a portal and lands right on Skeletor's head, observed only by Beast Man, who was standing nearby. After Loo-Kee pops into a hiding place (something he, after all, should be very good at by now), he overhears Skeletor's latest plot to sow confusion at the royal palace. The fiend's plan involves kidnapping Prince Adam and forcing King Randor to hand over the kingdom as ransom. To this end, Skeletor has obtained a crystal which will open a (one-time!) portal directly into Adam's bedroom. Seeing his chance, Loo-Kee hops into the portal as soon as Skeletor opens it, simultaneously ruining old Bonehead's day, getting himself exactly where he needs to be - and leaving Beast Man with some explaining to do.

Loo-Kee must rouse a sleeping Adam and Adam's fearful pet tiger to try to explain the situation. They're soon joined by Orko, who was wakened by the commotion. Once everyone is briefed on the trouble in Etheria, the Trollan opts to follow Adam and Loo-Kee to Castle Grayskull and the Sorceress, who can surely help them get back to the Whispering Woods. (Cringer opts to stay in bed and give this adventure a pass.) At the castle, the Sorceress explains that Loo-Kee's magical nature is what kept him impervious to the effects of the Time Stop. Orko won't have any trouble either, magician that he is; but while in Etheria, Adam will have to hold his magical power sword all the time or risk being frozen himself. And it wouldn't hurt if he turned into He-Man. Adam obediently raises his sword aloft, and He-Man, Loo-Kee, and Orko walk through the Sorceress's conjured portal and directly into the Whispering Woods.

The trio soon locate Princess Adora, frozen next to her horse Spirit, and He-Man puts her sword of protection in her hand and, touching the blade with his own, uses the power of Grayskull to waken her. After some quick explanations, Adora does her own transformation, and She-Ra and He-Man hunt down the Time Stop. Orko has already pointed out what any simpleton should know: that it's completely impossible to move any object that's stuck in time. But She-Ra and He-Man put the "possible" in "impossible." Changing her sword to a chain and wrapping it about the Time Stop, She-Ra joins her strength with her brother's and together they use all their effort to begin slowly towing the device away from the rebel camp. The power they must expend to achieve this feat is immeasurable, and it has some easily detectable consequences: a great wind springs up, the device is surrounded with crawling bolts of electricity, and over in the Fright Zone parts of the fortress begin falling down around Hordak's ears.

The twins decide they need to find a better way to stop the Time Stop, and use their swords to pry open a panel of the device. They find Hordak's mail-ordered parthax inside, and smash it to bits, finally deactivating the machine. It falls to the ground, and all the frozen rebels once more awaken. (Madame Razz, who was frozen in the air on Broom just inches from smashing into a tree, is amazed to find that a helping pillow has been tied around the tree trunk to soften her collision.) Pleased that the ordeal is finally over, She-Ra decides she's had quite enough of the Time Stop and punts it back to the Fright Zone, where the moronic Mantenna tries to help by repairing the device. As time begins to go haywire within the Horde fortress, Hordak promises some primo punishments for his hapless lackey - as soon as they figure out how to get time back to normal.

• Hordak (in tank form): Stand aside, She-Ra - or suffer the consequences! / She-Ra (sighing): Just looking at you makes me suffer.
• Shadow Weaver (feeling particularly cranky today): Bah! I never trust machines to do magic. / Imp (snickering): That's why you fail. / Weaver: You toad! I'll show you who fails!
• Light Hope (to Loo-Kee, haltingly and with great effort): Adora is She-Ra. You are the only one who can reach her brother, He-Man. That is why I am telling you their secret. / Loo-Kee: What?! Adora is She-Ra! That means that He-Man is - / Light Hope: Prince Adam.
• He-Man (grunting as he tries to move Time Stop): It won't budge. / Orko: Of course not; no one can move something that's stuck in time. Even I know that.

• Adora from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: As she enters the rebel camp
• He-Man punches the viewer: The beginning frame of this loop is used for a closeup of the beefy blonde, as he attempts to undo the Time Stop

One partial (missing Spirit/Swift Wind sequence)
We also get a partial He-Man transformation today (missing only the Battle Cat section), which actually comes just a bit before the She-Ra sequence.

8:38 - The time stamp represents the first appearance of Loo-Kee in the episode; but in a unique case for the series, today Loo-Kee is not hiding. He will have a speaking, central role in this story, and he demonstrates that as soon as we see him, by moving and declaring that it is another lovely day on Etheria.
Did I spot him? Does Loo-Kee go in the woods? YES!!

"Today I know you found me," Loo-Kee announces to open his ending spot, "cos I was part of the story!" Loo-Kee also makes himself part of the ending lesson: he points out that even though he's a little guy, he was able to help He-Man and She-Ra save the day; similarly, his tiny viewing audience can do helpful things, even if they don't have superpowers.

MOTU crossover
Landmark Episode: Given the huge character list and the singular events of today's story, I feel this tagging is warranted.
Gotta get back in time: This is the first POP episode to which I've applied this category, and unfortunately it's probably the least valid, since I intended to use this tag for episodes that feature time travel. If anything, today the problem is that our heroes can't travel in time. But whatever: in my book, the stopping of time makes for a time travel plot. (I later went back and tagged an even earlier episode with this category, possibly with better justification - see 67022.)

• This is Robert Lamb's sixth POP script; it will be his last. He also provided four scripts to MOTU.
• The episode begins with the somewhat rare situation of an already transformed She-Ra. This last happened in 67049's "For Want of a Horse," which - unlike this story - didn't feature Adora at all.
• Rather than transform himself into the helpful tool, Hordak has his little buddy Imp change into a "loudhorn" to broadcast a message to the rebels from afar. The loudhorn amusingly retains Imp's little snout, which speaks in time to Hordak's words; and it only ends up being a little disturbing that Hordak is essentially speaking into Imp's butt.
• Our ice empress Frosta shows up for the first time since her no-dialogue cameo in 67039's "Into the Dark Dimension." She shows off her ice powers to good effect in today's opening battle, just as she did so impressively in 67058's "Black Snow," which gave her the most screentime and dialogue of any episode so far in the series.
• Hordak transformations: In an interesting choice, the Horde commander basically turns himself into a destructo tank. It has the Hordak face (though with less white than the typical model) and a slightly longer cannon than usual, with a sort of suction cup shape at the tip which is used as a battering ram. Hordak will transform into an even more typical Horde tank during 67076's "Brigis."
• Today gives us the chance to see Frosta riding a horse, something we've never seen her do before; her horse has a blue-green color that puts it in an appropriately "cool" color family. The mount is never named in the episode and doesn't seem to correspond to any of the toy horses released by Mattel at the time. According to Wiki Grayskull, the horse should be named "Winter," but I'm not confident enough about that to actually use the name in my character list.
• Imp helpfully reminds us of Hordak's love of tossing people down his trapdoors, when the spy attempts to cheer up his boss. As he's doing this, we find Imp lounging on an old-fashioned TV set (complete with rabbit ear antenna) that we've never seen before, set up next to Hordak's throne. It's able to transmit video calls from his men. (It's an odd innovation, given that the Horde has held video calls on tiny wrist screens before, and we've seen Hordak use a giant projected screen on previous occasions.)
• Along with this old, boxy television, we are treated to another 80s-era phenomenon when we find that Hordak has ordered something from the "Horde Catalog," which apparently lists shippable items from Horde World.
• Hordak does eventually get his trapdoor fix, and we see further proof that Mantenna truly is the most miserable member of the Horde army, as he is not only the brunt of said trapdoor-ing, but also the guinea pig for the completed time-stop device. Oh, Mantenna. Have you considered other employment opportunities? (Mantenna also ends the episode by stupidly repairing the Time Stop, thus inverting the flow of time in the Fright Zone.)
• To plant the Time Stop in the rebels' wagon, Shadow Weaver very briefly resorts to a human disguise; something she did in the recent 67049 and also in 67020's "Three Courageous Hearts." This disguise doesn't quite match either of those other two, which were also distinct from each other.
• A couple of recurring themes rear their heads in the planting scene. First, we find Shadow Weaver and Imp carping at each other, something they've done in almost every previous episode where they've conversed. Next, we find Shadow Weaver complaining about Hordak's use of machinery over magic. We've heard this from the opposite side, with Hordak complaining about magic as being inferior to machinery. Both of these themes were on display, as one example, in 67017's "A Loss for Words."
• As you may have already discovered from looking at today's title or plot summary - or the "Where's Loo-Kee" category - today is a very special day, in that we get to see and hear the elusive elf Loo-Kee during the main episode. He is the only character somehow impervious to Hordak's Time Stop, and the only one capable of saving our heroes from being forever frozen. We'll therefore finally get the chance to learn a little bit more about our sneaky little friend.
• The pair of frozen deer-like creatures that Loo-Kee spots as he's slowly discovering today's problem are identical to the Eternian "spine deer" that a young Adam spotted while taking his wildlife excursion in the flashback of MU096's "Battlecat."
• Loo-Kee can teleport, a fact confirmed when he blinks down from his tree to the ground in search of a hiding spot for today's episode. A few moments later, we find him calling for the various heroes by name, adding "It's me! Loo-Kee!" This is a very odd thing to do, as it suggests (contrary to any previous evidence) that Loo-Kee is known to the rebels of the Whispering Woods, and has apparently spoken with them before.
• Light Hope reappears for the first time since 67051's "My Friend, My Enemy," and for the first time ever, the entity speaks to Loo-Kee and takes someone other than He-Man and She-Ra into their confidence. Interestingly, though Loo-Kee knows who everyone in the Whispering Woods is, he has clearly never met Light Hope before.
• Loo-Kee, we further find, is completely unaware of Princess Adora's secret identity, requiring Light Hope to reveal this very sensitive information. Loo-Kee's ignorance on this score is something that his various previous hiding places seemed to belie. We've seen him multiple times hiding just near where Adora was about to transform, or where She-Ra has just transformed, which seemed to conclusively indicate that he was aware of her secret. See 67015, 67040, 67046, 67047, and 67048.
• Beast Man reappears for the first time since way back in 67005; Skeletor reappears after his most recent showing in 67051. It's a crazy day for the character lists!
• Loo-Kee finds Prince Adam in a familiar location for MOTU fans: the prince's bedroom. Adam's bed and his pajamas (with golden wrist bracers) are familiar, and he has Cringer sleeping at his bedside as usual. We haven't seen Adam since 67029's "The Price of Freedom." He-Man appears for the first time since 67033's "A Talent for Trouble." We haven't seen Cringer since 67035's "Gateway to Trouble" - this time, we'll get only the cowardly cat and not his alter ego, since Cringer opts to stay in bed instead of accompanying Adam to Etheria.
• The gang is eventually joined by Orko, who for what I believe is the first time ever is wearing a nightshirt. And guess what? The Sorceress is here also! (67033 is the last time we saw both of them, if you were wondering.)
• It's an unusually late transformation sequence today, since Adora is frozen for a good part of the episode. She isn't able to raise her sword until the runtime is almost sixteen and a half minutes elapsed.
• Swiss army sword: She-Ra changes her sword to a chain as part of her and her brother's teamwork effort to dislodge the Time Stop.
• We'll get another chance to see Loo-Kee in action - and meet more of his kind - in 67071's "Loo-Kee's Sweety."

• Just noting, to return to the comment I made in the lore, that I enjoyed Imp's brief time as a "loudhorn" (AKA bullhorn or loudspeaker) - cute.
• It's odd that Hordak in his tank form seems to be able to enter at least the outskirts of the Whispering Woods. In previous episodes (see 67011 or more recently 67050), our enemies have been unable to breach the treeline thanks to the forest's helpful magic. Here, we find that She-Ra must manually expel the Horde leader. Later in this same episode we'll find Imp and Hordak discussing the very fact that the forest won't allow them inside, which makes the earlier occurrence doubly strange.
• The Horde Catalog gave me an unexpected dose of nostalgia on top of the already nostalgia-inducing experience of watching this series. Ah, the days when people used to flip through paper catalogs and order things by snail mail... things like He-Man toys. I remember flipping through Sears catalogs and the like when I was little to decide which toys I wanted for Christmas.
• I encountered a lot of difficulty in obtaining the name of the glowing gem that Hordak has to mail order to complete his time-stop device. It sounds as if Hordak calls it "parthax" (probably not "carfax," the website that gives you information about used automobiles), but the DVD captions were no help, as they incorrectly transcribed the word as "perfect." My usual go-to in such situations is Wiki Grayskull, but they were shockingly no help, as their entry for this episode does not mention the name of the material. I'm going by my own interpretation of the word, therefore - if anyone would like to correct me, feel free to contact me via my email link on the home page.
• Light Hope has to expend the last of their fading energy to transport Loo-Kee to Eternia. I have a couple problems with this. First, it's unclear why Light Hope would be affected by the Time Stop, since the powerful magic entity dwells way up in the Crystal Castle, which is a considerable distance (vertically, if nothing else) from the Whispering Woods. Hordak clearly didn't want to time-stop the entire planet, so his device shouldn't have that wide an area of effect - unless Light Hope's connection to Adora is somehow causing her time-stoppage to leak over. Secondly, Loo-Kee shouldn't need any assistance traveling to Eternia, because we already caught him hiding there once, in 67013's "King Miro's Journey." Let's not forget that Loo-Kee also somehow found his way to the Dark One's dimension in 67039's "Into the Dark Dimension." This elf should be fully independently capable of interdimensional teleportation.
• Since my commentary section is in danger of becoming a litany of nerdy criticisms, I'd like to insert here that it was great seeing Skeletor and (particularly) Beast Man again, back to their old tricks, with old Fur Face acting as his boss's doormat as usual.
• I'm willing to buy the Sorceress's explanation that Loo-Kee, as a magical creature, would not be frozen by the Time Stop. But there are many other potential problems with this plot contrivance. What about Frosta, whom She-Ra led to the edge of the woods in an earlier scene, and who has presumably returned to her Snow Kingdom by the time the device goes off? What about Queen Angella in Castle Bright Moon? Is her castle also in the blast radius of the device? And what about Castaspella in Mystacor? Did Mystacor also get frozen in time? Even if it did - isn't Casta pretty magical herself? And I know we haven't met her yet, but... what about Mermista? Does she swim in the Whispering Woods? What about Captain Sea Hawk, very likely off sailing in some distant part of the planet? Or how about the trolls of Spikeheart? The Rock People? Unless we're to believe that the entire planet, apart from the environs of the Fright Zone, has been frozen, She-Ra and her rebel friends have plenty of non-Loo-Kee allies who could have been called to assist. No offense to Loo-Kee - he did a fine job lending his little hand.
• Note that in order to put the sword of protection into Adora's hand, He-Man necessarily has to move her hand - something that is supposed to be impossible. We can explain this issue away, possibly, by imagining that Adora's physical contact with the magicked-up He-Man helps remove some of her time-rigor mortis.
• It's unclear why He-Man and She-Ra would have to move the Time Stop at all. She-Ra claims the towing has damaged the device, but their eventual solution - to pry open the thing and smash its power source - is much more logical, and seemingly could have been accomplished without moving it. It's also unclear why the movement of the Time Stop would cause the damage that it does in the Fright Zone - I suppose by that point it's disrupting the whole planet?
• I love the extra touch of Orko and Loo-Kee having carefully tied a pillow to a tree to soften the impact of Broom and Madame Razz when they are unfrozen. Likewise, it's hard to fault the logic of Madame's earlier argument to Glimmer that flying out in the open is very easy and presents no challenges, so the only way to practice not running into trees is to keep flying in the forest. (Given, however, that she's been alive and presumably practicing her broom-work for several centuries - per the hint dropped by Broom in the recent 67052's "The Wizard" - it may be time for Madame to admit that this old dog is not going to be learning any new tricks.)
• I've been waiting a long time for this episode to come along and give me that juicy Loo-Kee lore. Perhaps my expectations were too high, because for me this one was a bit of a let-down. I found myself particularly disappointed by Loo-Kee's ignorance of Adora's secret identity, in contradiction of my own theories and (seemingly) the show's own previous claims, and that hindered my enjoyment of the rest of the story. It was cool to see our little elf do his part for the rebellion, and fun to see all the characters in play today, but the story, though it had its amusing bits, felt contrived and clumsily handled. I would have liked more explanation of how Loo-Kee fits into the world of the rebellion and Etheria, and the plot would have benefited from a bit more explanation of how the Time Stop was supposed to work and the true extent of its effects across Etheria.
• It would have been interesting if the solution to the Time Stop, rather than just smashing it, involved the clock in the center of Etheria that controls the passage of time. Remember that thing? She-Ra had to tinker with it to solve an eclipse problem in 67022's "The Crystal Castle." Remember also that when time similarly was stopped on Eternia in MU115's "Time Doesn't Fly," the inhabitants of that planet had no trouble moving around, and they had a Keeper of Time to consult about the issue.