Bob Forward

Lou Kachivas

Hordak's capture of a baby whale leads to an even greater crime - the theft of the merfolk's Power Pearl! She-Ra and Mermista will have to join forces to foil the Horde in this very moist and salty adventure.

Mermista, Princess Adora (She-Ra)

Hordak, Horde Prime (mentioned only), Shadow Weaver

various fishermen, various fish, gulls, baby horned whale (Baby), Horde soldiers, mermen guards, King Mercia, various merfolk, giant sucker clam, crabulus, mama whale

Horde destroyer, submarine

Ahh, those amazing fishermen of Etheria. Look at them standing in the waist-deep water, shoulders broad, eyes keen, muscles ever at the ready! These experienced anglers know just when to hurl their nets into the water to catch the most fish: that would be when Mermista has used her magic to summon all the fish and tells them it's time.

We see Mermista, standing with her legs (?!) spread wide upon the dock near Castle Bright Moon, doing just as I described. When Princess Adora, standing at her side, thanks the woman for her assistance in helping the rebels gather sustenance, Mermista launches into an entirely unnecessary explanation as to why: it seems her kingdom made a pact with the fishermen, that as long as Etherians do no harm to the sea, the merfolk will make sure they have enough fish. Adora, her brow slightly furrowed, asks if Mermista extends the same courtesy to the Horde. The blue-haired mermaid assures the blonde princess of Mermista's own sure support for the Great Rebellion, but adds that her father, King Mercia, has made no specific agreements with the oppressors of the planet, preferring to leave them alone and avoid any trouble.

Their conference is interrupted when Mermista bends over in dismay. It seems she's receiving a telepathic message from a distressed baby whale. The message abruptly cuts off, which could mean any number of horrible things. Determined to help straightaway, Mermista leaps into the air - her legs magically transforming into the usual fish tail at the apex of her jump - and splashes into the water, swimming off. Princess Adora decides some additional aid may be needed, and strides off into a quiet spot in the Whispering Woods so she can make her own transformation. As She-Ra, she returns to the dock and changes her sword into a diving helmet (with built-in air supply, naturally), so she can spend as long as she needs underwater, and quickly follows her friend.

Just what is going on with this whale? Well, it's a baby horned whale, and it's had the bad fortune to get itself stunned by Hordak. The Horde commander and his robot soldiers were just tooling around in their destroyer on a fishing cruise, and Hordak decided that a whale would be a fun present to give his boss, Horde Prime. (Hordak definitely needs to do some kissing up after the dismal job he did on Prime's birthday gift, in 67049's "For Want of a Horse.") The poor creature has been stunned insensible and roped up to the side of the ship by the time Mermista makes an appearance, yelling at Hordak and splashing him for his cruelty. She tries to free the beast but is struggling with the thick bonds when She-Ra makes a fortuitous appearance. The heroine assists, wrecking the destroyer's propellor and breaking the ropes underwater, where Hordak's blasters can't reach her. The two women then swim off, pushing their rescuee to safety.

With the baby successfully freed, Mermista decides the best course is to take it to her father's undersea kingdom of Salinius. Once they've healed the whale and it's awakened, they can help reunite it with its mother. Accordingly, She-Ra gets to visit the amazing underwater city, with towering coral-like buildings set under a huge glass dome. She also gets to meet Mermista's dad, who makes a poor first impression by remonstrating with his daughter for bringing a "dry-lander" into his place. When he learns Mermista's guest is none other than She-Ra, King Mercia changes his tune: he's heard tales of She-Ra and knows she can be trusted. It seems he's suspicious that any of the less famous surface dwellers will bring decadent, thieving habits with them.

It turns out the narrow-minded royal is a bit more accurate than he has any right to be, because (as we in the audience saw earlier) Hordak planted a tracking device right on the baby whale's forehead as it was being towed away, and he is even now making his way to the site of the treasure-filled kingdom. Thanks to the "limpet spy," Hordak overheard King Mercia mouthing off about his people's awesome Power Pearl, an ancient relic that strengthens their connection with the sea. Mermista eventually spots the listening device and She-Ra crushes it in her hand, but too late to make any difference: for Hordak has arrived! Swooping in with his submarine, he makes a quick dash at the top of Salinius's dome and snatches the all-important Power Pearl from its perch at the pinnacle (try saying that five times fast).

Horrified, Mercia explains that without their pearl, his people have no ability to switch between legs and fins (which, as we just learned this episode, they can apparently do). They can still breathe underwater; but since they're all in their leg form right now for walking around the city, they'll be only passable swimmers if they go out into the water. So catching up with Hordak in his submarine is a no-go. Even worse, the removal of the pearl has cracked the top of their city's dome, and seawater is seeping in by the gallon, sure to damage all the books in their bookstores. By now, though, little "Baby" the whale is feeling better, so She-Ra and Mermista decide to make use of the unaccompanied minor for their rescue mission.

To seal the dome, the ladies find a nearby giant sucker clam. She-Ra's animal communication skills allow her to politely convince the clam to move his sucking spot to the top of the city, where he neatly blocks up the cracks in the glass. Then it's off to Hordak's destroyer: since She-Ra tore off its propellor in their last confrontation, she knows Hordak and his men won't have gotten very far. Sure enough, that's exactly where our villain is, all excited to try out the magic of his new opalescent orb. The only trouble is, he has no idea how to use it; so he calls up his magic-user, Shadow Weaver. Though (once she's teleported herself on board) she meekly argues that she's not rated to drive Power Pearls, he crabbily sets her a one-hour time limit for figuring out how to use the thing to command the creatures of the sea.

By the time She-Ra and Mermista have arrived, Weaver has (impressively enough) managed to figure out the basics, since she summons a giant tentacled crabulus to grapple with the heroes. She-Ra's animal-talking abilities are no use against the power the pearl is exerting on the creature, so she's forced to tie its tentacles to some rocks to stop it. When Hordak becomes impatient with Weaver's Pearl summoning and fires a good old-fashioned freeze torpedo, She-Ra is forced to untie the crabulus again to save it, and gets herself momentarily frozen for her troubles. She-Ra soon busts out of the ice block; but Mermista realizes that their only hope of winning the fight is to recover the pearl. So she and Baby make a thrilling leap, out of the water, over the deck of the destroyer, and at just the right height for Baby to snatch the pearl in its teeth as they pass.

Hurrah! Hordak and his crew have lost their advantage! The destroyer still has its normal set of weapons, like stun charges; but Mermista, now with the pearl, has an advantage of her own, which she makes excellent use of. Touching the Power Pearl, she changes her legs to a tail and calls out to the sea for the perfect person to help. It's Baby's mom, and boy is she pissed! The behemoth leviathan rises out of the sea, dwarfing the Horde destroyer and opening its jaws wide. Hordak and Shadow Weaver just have time to make their own separate getaways (he as a rocket, she in a puff of fog) before the vessel is drawn into the whale's gullet. Aw, yeah.

Back at Salinius, King Mercia awards She-Ra with a medal for saving his city, his pearl, and basically doing his job for him. Baby gets its own baby-whale-sized medal, which is only fair; and the king reveals that proud Mama whale, who "wouldn't have missed" the ceremony for anything, is hovering massively outside, peeking her gigantic eye in at the dome.

• Mermista (to Adora, in a bit of a case of TMI): Long ago, my people made a pact with the fishermen of Etheria: so long as they do nothing to harm the sea or its people, we will help them catch all the fish they need.
• King Mercia: The Power Pearl was created when the oceans were formed. It is the source of all the merfolks' power.
• Random Merman: Do you think they will be successful, Sire? / King Mercia: They must be - or Salinias is doomed.
• Shadow Weaver: Ahhh, the Power Pearl. Long have I wished to see this. With it, one can command all the creatures of the sea.

• She-Ra, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: At the fact that a baby whale splashed Mermista

One partial (missing Spirit/Swift Wind sequence)

3:15 - Loo-Kee is stretched across a vine-wrapped tree branch, looking down from the top-center of the screen, as Adora steps away to a private spot of the Whispering Woods to make her transformation.
Did I spot him? YES!

Reminding us of the lost condition of today's baby whale, Loo-Kee points out that sometimes we members of the viewing audience might get lost, too. Should that ever happen, he advises us to find the nearest policeman, who will surely help us to get back home again. Just make sure to check your skin color first before trying this.

N/A: At the beginning of this one, I was expecting it to turn into a "Changing hearts and minds" story, with Adora and/or She-Ra having convinced Mermista's stuffy dad to join the rebellion by the end. But in fact that did not happen at all, and She-Ra didn't even try it, even though Adora pointed out that Mercia and his kingdom would make particularly powerful allies. What gives?

• Coming at us with his second consecutive writing credit (after 67071's "Loo-Kee's Sweety"), it's Mr. Forward again! This is his twelfth script on She-Ra.
• Oh hey, look! There's Mermista, standing on Bright Moon's dock next to Adora. ... What the heck is Mermista doing with legs?!?!?!? Based on her previous appearances in the show (67064, 67063, and the Christmas Special), I had no idea that she could grow limbs or a fish tail as needed. Later, we witness her actually transforming from full human to mermaid in mid-air, as she dives into the water. I guess she won't be mimicking the story of The Little Mermaid anytime soon.
• Mermista's helpful exposition at the beginning of the episode teaches us that she has a pact with Etherian surface-dwellers to aid them in catching fish; and also that her father, whose name is King Mercia, chooses not to get involved in the Great Rebellion for fear of facing the wrath of the Horde.
• Swiss army sword: Just like when she turned her sword into a space helmet for her out-of-atmosphere hijinks in 67018's "Horde Prime Takes a Holiday," today She-Ra changes the endlessly useful blade into a scuba helmet.
• Today's "horned whales" are like normal Earth whales, apart from two interesting differences. One of course is the horn, a stubby, rhino-like projection that is nothing like the long spiraling tooth of a narwhal. The second is the fact that these so-called "whales" have no visible blowholes. So are they mammals or not? Unclear.
• Hordak transformations: That's right, after a two-episode break, Hordak's back! And he's doing his old transforming thing. Today he makes the standard arm cannon, but this time it fires a rocket. The rocket has a little hatch in its belly, which eventually opens to drop out a tracking device onto the baby whale. Hordak calls the device a "limpet spy." (Why not just directly fire the tracking device? Who knows.)
• Mermista's people live in an underwater city (Salinius) that reminds me very much of Eternia's underwater city of Aquatica in MU051's "City Beneath the Sea." They don't look all that similar, apart from the fact that they're both underwater and both under domes.
• The fact that the merpeople draw their power from a big old pearl that sits tantalizingly at the top of their city reminds me of another, different Eternian city: Avion, the kingdom of Stratos's bird people. In MU078's "Betrayal of Stratos," we discovered that the bird people had a big golden egg at the top of their city, which gave them all the power of flight. It was also, just like the Power Pearl, a great temptation for evil guys.
• She-Ra uses her animal communication skills to talk to a clam. She has all the fish-talking skills of Aquaman, but she can talk to land critters, too! Take that, Jason Momoa!
• Hordak's chosen vehicle today is a destroyer, probably identical in design to those seen in 67012's "Prisoners of Beast Island" (though without any Catra goggles). Later, he hops into a submarine - but his use of it to steal the Power Pearl is dispensed with so comically fast that it's very hard to get a look at the vehicle. I did manage to grab a screenshot of it which proves it looks very little like the submarine he was using in 67036's "The Unicorn King." In the typical dizzying tendency of Horde vehicle variety, we'll find Hordak utilizing yet another type of underwater conveyance, the "clawdad," in 67085's "Sweet Bee's Home."
• We learn that apparently Hordak can just yell into the air to request Shadow Weaver's presence, and she instantly teleports herself to wherever he is. Dang! Whipped much, Weaver?
• Hordak transformations: Hordak briefly changes his arm into a cannon again to threaten Weaver; then wisely opts to use his typical full-body rocket form, to make a quick getaway from a very angry - and very gigantic - mother whale.
• Interestingly, though recent episodes (see for instance 67070) have had a tendency to play it loose with the accuracy when revealing Loo-Kee's hiding place at the end of the episode, today Loo-Kee's reveal is so close to how it was in the earlier part of the episode that it even includes the same animation of Princess Adora walking past in the foreground. The much more usual practice has been to omit any other characters who might have been included in the original scene.
• Ending credits variation: As has been the case for almost every episode of this season so far, the background painting is again that of Castle Bright Moon, rather than the Crystal Castle.

• I like the animation of Mermista switching from her legged to fishy form - this is a very cool ability! It also means there was really no reason for the royal family to have not invited Mermista to the pre-party party at the beginning of the Christmas Special, so shame on Marlena and Randor. I tried to do some research on whether the toy had this lower-half-switching ability - like, could you just swish off the fabric fish tail on the Mermista doll's body and reveal a pair of human gams underneath? As far as I can tell, the original doll didn't work like this, though the eventual Mattel Classics version did.
• Why does being from under the sea naturally lead to having a French accent?
• I love how the suspicious King Mercia, who's constantly putting his foot in it with She-Ra by expressing mistrust of "dry-landers," just leaves the entire saving of his people to She-Ra. He stands around while the heroine and his daughter fix the crack in his roof, and afterwards stands around some more, commenting, "Now we must pray that they can recover the Power Pearl." So you're not going to help at all, then? OK. You know, just because you lost the ability to make your legs into fish tails doesn't make you completely helpless. Surely you have underwater cars or something - right?
• There's an enjoyable dynamic today between Hordak and whatever Horde soldier happens to be standing next to him when he's plotting and scheming. The soldier (demonstrating a surprising degree of perspicacity) is constantly pointing out the downsides to all his commander's ideas: like the fact that Horde Prime probably doesn't have a tank to hold the baby whale Hordak plans on gifting him, and the fact that Hordak has no idea how to use the Power Pearl he's stolen.
• The idea that the magic of the Power Pearl is "very old" and therefore of a type with which Shadow Weaver is unfamiliar is a cool one. It reminded me of an important scene from the first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
• Continuity error: A slight one; when She-Ra very impressively busts herself out of her ice cube prison, we see her standing with each foot on a separate little piece of ice. In the following shot of her, she's standing on one solid block of ice.
• Yes, it's sweet that She-Ra can break herself out of the ice; but what might be even more amazing is the way she can still crack puns while she's in such dire straits. "Got to keep cool," we hear her telling herself. Groooaaan. (But you have no idea how hard I had to stop myself from describing this as "cool" ahead of the quote, even though I realized it would be stealing her comedic thunder.)
• The moment when "Baby" the whale makes its big leap over the Horde destroyer and snags the Power Pearl from the pedestal on the deck is every bit as exciting and emotionally rewarding as the whale-jumping scene at the end of Free Willy. Prove me wrong!
• She-Ra pointedly argues that Baby deserves its own medal for helping in the day's mission; but there's another person who was beside the two of them the whole time, aiding the whole time, who gets no support and receives no medal: Mermista! That's right: King Mercia stiffed his own daughter at the medal ceremony. What a chump.
• Continuity error: Speaking of medals... In one of the last shots of She-Ra in the episode, we find she has already managed to lose the medal that King Mercia just gave her. Oops!
• Loved this one! Just a very entertaining undersea adventure, with cute fishy characters, imaginative places and gadgets, and some great byplay between Hordak and his minions (a hallmark of Forward's scripts). Bobby, ya did it agin.