Coslough Johnson

Bill Reed

Some chances only come along once in a lifetime; like Hordak's chance to steal a witch's box of magic. The box is hidden in a town named Brigis, which only appears on Etheria for one day every five centuries. Guess what? That day is today!

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

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

Chief of Brigis, witch, Horde soldiers, Jarine, Arrow, various Brigisians, two-headed snake

Horde trucks, ground busters, Horde tanks

Hordak, Shadow Weaver, and Catra are looking at Hordak's giant throne room viewscreen, currently displaying an image of a seemingly empty valley. Empty, that is, except for a flickering blue glow. Shadow Weaver explains that the glow represents a source of strong magic: what they're looking at is the site of the legendary town of Brigis. Using a video reenactment as visual aid, Weaver relates the legend: hundreds of years ago, a good witch wanted a place to store her magical box of power. She cut a deal with the people of Brigis, promising their town eternal prosperity and happiness if they would keep the relic hidden. To protect the people and the treasure, Brigis would be hidden in time: destined to be invisible to the rest of the world, appearing only one day every five hundred years.

Well, good news for power-hungry dictators everywhere: the town and its hidden magical box have hit their 500-year anniversary, and are due to make an appearance today! Hordak is preparing to swoop in with his Horde forces and steal the witch's prized possession; and to give himself ample searching time, he plans to take advantage of a loophole in Brigis's enchantment. Should any member of the village be absent from the town at the end of the day, Brigis will no longer be able to disappear. So all Hordak has to do to ensure discovery of the box is kidnap one person out of the town!

Accordingly, Shadow Weaver sends out the two brightest lights of the Horde army: Mantenna and Grizzlor. They're on hand to watch Brigis magically fade into being before their eyes. The pair move in and quickly spot the ideal target for kidnapping: a young village girl out alone in a field, collecting flowers. Mantenna lures the girl outside the boundaries of the town, promising her a spot filled with even prettier flowers; but when they arrive, the only thing there is Grizzlor, who jumps out from behind a log. Grizzlor demands the girl come with him and his multi-legged, stalk-eyed companion, but she sensibly refuses and runs away. To discourage pursuit, she rolls another handy log down a hill, flattening both Hordesmen. Well done, men!

The girl continues to flee, calling for help, and stumbles upon the most helpful people she could have encountered: it's Princess Adora and Bow. Bow was busy showing off some trick arrow shots with the help of Madame Razz and Broom, who were flying a target for him. Introducing herself as Jarine from the town of Brigis, the kid tells the two rebels of the "monsters" that are chasing her. Adora and Bow soon have visual confirmation of just who those monsters are, when Mantenna and Grizzlor come rushing up, having now decided that Adora is a better prize than any little girl. Bow volunteers to delay the Horde while Adora puts Jarine up on Spirit and rides the girl into the sheltering trees of the Whispering Woods. Ditching Jarine there in relative safety, Adora and Spirit retire to a secluded spot and make their transformation. She-Ra and Swift Wind are then available to match wits with Mantenna, Grizzlor, and a few robot soldiers. She-Ra handles the bad guys by cutting out the patch of ground they're standing on and rolling them up in the sod.

These embarrassing proceedings are witnessed by Shadow Weaver, monitoring remotely from her throne in Horror Hall. Fed up with her minions, Weaver decides to do the job herself. She teleports directly next to Jarine (who we have to conclude has disobeyed Adora's advice and wandered out of the shielding branches of the Whispering Woods in a misguided attempt to walk back home), grabs the girl by the hand, and teleports away again, leaving behind Jarine's flower basket. This handy evidence is discovered by Adora, who returns a little later along with Bow and Razz to the general area where she left the girl. Speculating as to their rescuee's whereabouts, Bow and Adora decide they should check at the town Jarine named as her home. It's weird, because neither of them can remember ever hearing of a town called "Brigis." Madame Razz can, though! She's heard the same tale Shadow Weaver related at the beginning of the episode, and repeats it for the heroes (and Kowl) as they all head towards the magical valley where it was said to be.

Sure enough, when the heroes come over the hill, they find a town sitting in the valley where there was no town this morning. (It's a good thing no one paved over the site with a parking lot in the intervening 500 years!) Within the town, they find a whole population of villagers, who are very dismayed to meet strangers carrying the flower basket of their beloved, absent Jarine. Adora and Bow explain what happened, and the villagers explain the terrible danger if Jarine is not returned to them before the day is out. In fact, they have a huge hourglass in the village square, its falling grains ticking away the moments until the enchantment will be broken. As if they didn't have enough problems, Kowl then swoops in to warn everyone that the Horde is coming!

Bow explains to the somewhat uninformed townspeople that the Horde definitely mean them harm, and Adora supervises the town's complete evacuation, ensuring all the villagers are moved to safety in the woods. With the town empty, the princess can privately raise her sword once again and face the approaching Horde forces as She-Ra. She easily fights off the Horde's robot soldiers by removing the town's bridge and using it as a seesaw, shooting the Hordesmen into a log and twirling them away. Hordak, who's personally on hand to try to nab that magic box, tries turning into a tank to stop the heroine; but she just picks him up and tosses him away. The flying Hordak, clearly defeated for now, nevertheless vows to return, shouting that "Brigis is doomed!"

Our Horde commander regroups at Horror Hall, where Shadow Weaver consults a prophetic cauldron and assures her boss that his next attack on the town is sure to succeed. (Yeah. Right.) Meanwhile, after a very short break from being superpowered, Adora decides to turn back into She-Ra again and head over to where Jarine is being imprisoned (the location to which she somehow divined, using predictive powers that prove far more accurate than Shadow Weaver's). Since the girl is only being guarded by one dude, She-Ra doesn't tax herself overmuch with the rescue, and Jarine is soon happily reunited with her people in the village.

But wait! The danger isn't over yet. There are only a few minutes left to tick out in Brigis's hourglass, but Hordak and a whole fleet of Horde trucks and tanks are headed for the town, determined to decimate it. (Mantenna and Imp are there too, but they contribute nothing to the final battle.) She-Ra blocks their approach by digging underground and throwing up a big hill of rock that the tanks can't surmount. But Hordak has a backup plan: he orders some battering-ram tanks over to the nearby levee and has them knock it down, sending floodwaters coursing towards the village! She-Ra does some more quick excavating, this time digging a tunnel where the flood can drain off. The other end of the tunnel she places just under Hordak, sending him jetting into the air on a spout of water. Nyah-nyah!

With the Horde defeated again, She-Ra just has time to receive the thanks of the Brigisians (Brigites? Briggers? Brigivators?), and discuss with Jarine and the town's chief what everyone learned today about following rules and trusting strangers, before the town dissolves into history. Adora then gathers with the other rebels in the tank-strewn but townless landscape to contemplate the victory. Bow tries to inform Adora of what happened with the Horde while she was gone; when Adora says she's already been informed of the details of the fight, the archer then claims that the battle plan was all his idea. Given no support in his boasting lie by Razz, Broom, or Kowl, Bow then tries to play the whole thing off as a joke. Mm-hmm.

• Madame Razz: Oh! Brigis! Yeah, there is a legend about an ancient village named Brigis. It's supposed to have been in the valley near the old castle ruins. ... It seems that a good witch needed a safe place for her magical box of power, and ...
• Hordak (as he flies through the sky, flung by She-Ra): I'll be back! Brigis is doomed! The witch's power will be mine! (laughs)
• She-Ra (having torn off the door of a prison cell and stuck it over a Horde soldier's head): Sorry about the redecorating; but I do like the open-air look!
• She-Ra: You learned a hard lesson today, Jarine. / Jarine: I know. I put the village in great danger when I broke the rules. / She-Ra: It's not always easy to obey rules; but usually, there's a very good reason for having them. And that's why they shouldn't be broken! / Jarine: I'll never do it again: I've learned my lesson. / Chief of Brigis (muddying the waters, considering that the rule Jarine broke involved talking to strangers): And we've learned how kind and helpful strangers can be.

• She-Ra mounts Swift Wind and flies off: Just after her first transformation, and again later as she prepares for the last defense of Brigis
• She-Ra runs at the viewer, bug-height: Arriving to help Bow against the Horde

One full, two partial
Variation - Adora's first transformation of the day is the typical full one. Her second, in preparation for defending the Horde attack on Brigis, must be one of the shortest on record (if you can even really count it): the princess runs off screen, we see a flash of light, and she runs back into frame as She-Ra. We don't even hear any of her magic words being spoken! Adora's third transformation is a greatly curtailed one, and just has her raising the sword and saying "For the honor of Grayskull." The magical explosion of the sword triggers a scene transition that sends us elsewhere.

20:01 - Loo-Kee made me very nervous today, waiting until the very last scene to make his appearance. There is only one episode in which he appeared later: 67061's "Darksmoke and Fire." Here we can spot him looking off to the left while standing against a short Loo-Kee-colored plant, during a panning shot of the post-battle landscape.
Did I spot him? YES!

Loo-Kee warns us against breaking rules, like Jarine did today. It can put us in a lot of danger! As a real-world example, he suggests "to cross the street against the stoplight." The difference being that only you would be put in danger by such a transgression, whereas Jarine managed to endanger her entire village! She was really reaching for the stars. With distressing vagueness, Loo-Kee concludes: "Sometimes rules aren't that clear - but there's a very good reason for having them!"

Wayward child learns a valuable lesson: Though it's hard to smear Jarine's character with the "wayward" label, since she was mostly a very good and innocent little girl, she nevertheless "learned a hard lesson today," as She-Ra pointedly notes in the episode's conclusion.

• Today's writer holds a special place in my heart, because even though this will be his one and only POP script, and he only gave us one MOTU script, that one script - for MU054's "Game Plan" - brought us the absurd villain Negator, one of my favorite B-list bad guys.
• Hordak is again using his big projected screen, last seen in just the previous episode (67075) - and looking extra-wide today.
• The episode's title village that only appears for one day every 500 years is clearly a reference to Brigadoon, the old musical/movie about a Scottish town that only appears once every 100 years. Oddly enough, I've already had call to mention Brigadoon once before on this database, in connection to the magically disappearing/reappearing island in 67040's "Treasure of the First Ones."
• In the case of today's town, Brigis (see what I mean about the Brigadoon connection?), the reason for its people's reclusiveness is that their chief agreed to hide a witch's box of magic there, and in return the witch charmed the village to be mostly hidden in order to safeguard the box - and, incidentally, its people, who get "continued happiness and health" and presumably immortality out of the deal.
• There's some odd work with accents today. Based on the story's inspiration, I expected the characters to sport Scottish brogues; but in the opening flashback scene which Shadow Weaver somehow conjures, the witch sounds like she's from India, and the chief's accent is some kind of unidentifiable Eastern European mush. When we meet Jarine, the little girl from Brigis, she also has an indistinct, maybe-Indian, maybe-something-else accent.
• The witch, by the way, uses the typical "old lady disguise" character design that we've seen evil sorcerers and sorceresses (particularly Evil-Lyn) using throughout MOTU. See MU007, MU010, or MU021. Later shots of the various Brigis villagers show many other familiar character designs.
• In a quick opening scene to establish what our heroes are up to today, we find them performing very much to character: Bow shows off a trick arrow shot made behind his back (the "backup shot"), and Madame Razz - who was flying on Broom trailing Bow's target on a line - crashes into a tree.
• Today sees our Horde minions reaching new heights of incompetence. Mantenna and Grizzlor's only job is to kidnap one person from the village - and they choose what should be the easiest target, a naive little girl. To give him his due, Mantenna does manage to lure the girl to a secluded ambush spot with the promise of showing her pretty flowers. But he fails to capitalize on his advantage: when Grizzlor hops out from behind a nearby log, neither minion grabs Jarine, and she simply runs away. More than that: she then succeeds in flattening the pair under another log! That's two veteran Horde soldiers defeated by a child who hasn't yet learned that you shouldn't talk to strangers.
• To compound their stupidity, a few minutes later Mantenna and Grizzlor stand by slackjawed and allow She-Ra to slowly carve a square-shaped outline in the ground around them, then roll them and a couple of Horde robots up into a turf burrito. (We've seen She-Ra roll up the ground like this before, in 67037's "The Anxious Apprentice" and 67071's "Loo-Kee's Sweety.") Guys. Next time? Just move!
• Perhaps Mantenna and his furry pal consoled themselves with the notion that at least nobody else witnessed their blundering; but no. We discover that Shadow Weaver has been monitoring them from the comfort of her home in Horror Hall, and saw it all. We last visited Weaver's domain in 67070.
• By the way, the opening shot of Jarine with her little basket of flowers, about to be menaced by a pair of deformed monsters, is impossible not to connect with one of the most disturbing scenes in the original film adaptation of Frankenstein (1931).
• I talked in the commentary about how little things seem to have changed in the last 500 years, when we compare Brigis to other towns we've seen in Etheria. Hilariously, it seems that one of Etheria's institutions of hospitality has also been in business for at least 500 years; because the first building we spot in Brigis's town square has the familiar logo of the Laughing Swan Inn on its facade. We've been seeing this swan logo off and on ever since the series' very first episode (67001). It most recently turned up in 67066's "One to Count on;" see the lore there for a more comprehensive list of past appearances. We'll be seeing the inn again in the upcoming 67078.
• She-Ra's disposal of two Horde soldiers, each one stuffed top-first into an end of a hollow log, reproduces a trick she pulled (with Kowl's help) back in 67035's "Gateway to Trouble."
• Hordak transformations: With the promise that he's about to teach She-Ra "a lesson you'll never forget," Hordak changes his body into a miniature tank with a blue upper body and a pair of pincer arms. It's identical to a form he used in 67017's "A Loss for Words" - and She-Ra avoids it the same way, with a well-timed leap. (We'll see Hordak mining his transformations from 67017 even more thoroughly in the next episode, 67077.) Later, Hordak changes into yet another tank - this one indistinguishable from the usual "Hordak-faced" models often used by the Horde. The only difference is that this one talks with Hordak's voice.
• In the day's second visit to Horror Hall, Hordak is present - I believe making this the first time we've seen him there. Also present, to Hordak's annoyance, is a hissy two-headed snake. Hordak eventually intimidates the creature into Weaver's cauldron. I first connected the snake to the "darkstalker" Weaver was teaching young Arden about, in 67047's "The Price of Power;" but the darkstalker, though it showed up in about the same place, had many more heads, and was green instead of brown. In fact, this critter is identical to some that He-Man faced way back in MU095's "A Bird in the Hand" - interestingly enough, in a place called the Caves of the Wind. That's nearly identical in name to the broken-open "Cave of Winds" She-Ra just had to tangle with in 67074's "Above It All." Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
• It's a near-record number of transformations for She-Ra today (one full, two partial), though I don't think it can be counted with other high-ranking episodes such as 67066 (three partial) and 67050 (one full, two partial), since one of today's "partial" transformations occurs entirely off-screen, and so hardly merits the label. The third and final transformation also seems oddly unnecessary. Adora changes to She-Ra the second time to defend Brigis. That defense having succeeded, we cut to Horror Hall and see Hordak and Shadow Weaver plotting. Then we cut back to Adora, who apparently has changed back to her princess form after the attack. But the scene just shows her immediately changing into She-Ra again, to go get Jarine. She could have just stayed that way!
• As noted earlier, we see Hordak playing tank today in a couple of ways. The late and final attack on Brigis also sees the Horde deploying their regular Hordak-faced tanks, just like the one Hordak turned into. But they add a new model to the fleet, making for yet another in the long list of Horde tank varieties. It's a lighter gray and looks much like a standard Earth tank, except that the top cannon has been converted to end in a flat, round button that acts as a battering ram. We saw Hordak changing into tanks with similar projections in 67055 and 67056, though he doesn't try that today.
• The battering rams cause a flood, forcing She-Ra to perform another feat of hydraulic engineering. We've already seen her redirecting bodies of water a few times this season, in 67068 and 67070.
• Ending credits variation: The streak of the alternate background painting continues.

• In Shadow Weaver's dramatic reenactment of Brigis's deal with the witch, only the town's chief and the witch are present. You have to wonder whether the chief cleared this bargain with his fellow townsfolk first before signing off on it: was everybody really OK with being lost in time forever, and only seeing the rest of the world once every 500 years? What if they want to go out to the mall? You'd better make sure you really like all your neighbors, too; they're the only people you're ever going to talk to. This reminds me somewhat of the populace of the title town in MU094's "Journey to Stone City," who had apparently all mutually agreed to be turned to stone for an untold number of years (which ends up being 200, though that seems to have been largely due to a mechanical error).
• Some of the rules behind Brigis's enchantment are a little hazy and become clear only over the course of the episode. For instance, Hordak's plan is to keep the town visible so he'll have time to find and steal the witch's box (and let's not make any crass jokes about witches' boxes, shall we?). To make that happen, all he has to do is kidnap someone out of the town - since, as Shadow Weaver helped explain, the enchantment is broken if anyone ever leaves Brigis. But it's unclear just how quickly the spell is undone in these circumstances, and I was left wondering whether all heck would break loose as soon as one villager put a toe over the border. As it turns out, there's only a problem if someone is out of bounds at the end of the day - something we don't learn until later.
• And while the town is invisible all that time, are the villagers conscious and going about their daily routine in some kind of nether region? Or do they see and hear nothing until the next day they appear?
• Another thing I wonder is just how long Brigis has been lost in time. Shadow Weaver only states that the deal with the witch was made "many years ago;" but since the town is set to reappear that day, the year total must be some multiple of 500. Is this their first time reappearing, meaning it's "only" been 500 years? You have to assume so, since the town and people look no different than any other typical Etherian village and villagers. Apparently fashion and technology evolve very slowly on this planet!
• By the way, if it has been five hundred years, then we have to conclude that Madame Razz might remember these people. Recall that in 67070's "Something Old, Something New," we learned that Razz was still kicking about 600 years ago, living in the land of Serenia. In the event, Razz does remember Brigis - but only as an old story. This sort of puts today's episode in the "only a legend" sub-category.
• Adora rides her new acquaintance Jarine off a ways and leaves the girl alone, telling her "The trees will protect you; but don't go out of the woods." We assume from this that the princess has safely planted Jarine in the Whispering Woods, where members of the Horde can't go. (As seen in episodes such as 67050's "Just Like Me," the magical forest will actively repel intruders. And in 67055's "Loo-Kee Lends a Hand," Shadow Weaver herself had to settle for planting the episode's time-stopping MacGuffin in a rebel cart, since she couldn't enter the Whispering Woods directly.) However, a few minutes later the fed up Shadow Weaver simply teleports right next to the girl and then teleports her away. What's up with that? Did Jarine step outside of the woods when we weren't looking? Or can Weaver's magic beat the Whispering Woods' protection? If so, why hasn't she taken advantage of this ability before?
• I find it odd that all the Horde members who interact with Jarine attempt to act friendly and reassure her. It makes sense that Mantenna would, since he's trying to trick her. But Shadow Weaver tries it as well - and even Hordak, after he's got her in the Fright Zone, tells Jarine "Don't be afraid." Why? You're evil, and she's already kidnapped - there's no need to put on the charm!
• Unless the residents of Brigis are somehow aware of things happening on Etheria during the 500 years they're invisible, they shouldn't have any idea what Kowl is talking about when he rushes up and cries "The Horde is coming!" Hordak hasn't been doing a great job of conquering the planet, but he certainly hasn't been trying and failing for over five centuries!
• After consulting a bubbling cauldron, Shadow Weaver makes a prediction that Hordak's next attack will be successful. I waited to see how this prediction would somehow come true while at the same time turning against the Horde commander; but in fact, it seems that Weaver's prophecy was just plain inaccurate. There's no way you can interpret his next attack as being successful. Maybe Weaver needs to buy a new cauldron; do they sell those on the same shelf as the Magic 8 Balls?
• In the latest instance of our heroes having unerring intuitions about their enemies' plans, when She-Ra flies off to rescue Jarine, she somehow knows to go directly to Horror Hall and not the Fright Zone. This is not the usual place for the Horde to keep their prisoners, and She-Ra had no idea Shadow Weaver was overseeing this kidnapping, so how did she figure this out? Recall that in 67069, our heroes needed to consult a magic mirror to discover the (at the time) surprising trick that a captive was moved to Horror Hall instead of the Fright Zone.
• You've got to hand it to that one robot soldier who's guarding Jarine, to remain so ornery in the face of She-Ra's demands that he unlock the cell. He had to know he was about to get trounced, right?
• Continuity error: Just after She-Ra has returned Jarine to the town, causing the entire village to erupt in celebration, the camera cuts to Bow so he can spout a quick line of dialogue. Behind him we can still see the Brigis chief and another villager, looking hang-dog and depressed like they were before Jarine showed up.
• I thought today's moral was going to be the blindingly obvious one about not talking to strangers. After all, Jarine is lured into danger by allowing herself to be swayed by the honeyed words of stranger Mantenna. Oddly, though, no one in the episode - even Loo-Kee - brings up this rule, and in fact anyone who does try lecturing us or Jarine does so with an inexplicable vagueness, just telling us to follow rules, even the ones that "aren't clear." Well, that's not clear. If you want to teach us a lesson, Filmation, you might try being a little more specific! I suppose in Jarine's case, the specific rule she broke was leaving her village. But even at the end of the episode, when She-Ra is talking to Jarine about what she did wrong, this isn't specified.
• Though Coslough Johnson's single POP script didn't bring us the endearing villain that his single MOTU script did, it was nevertheless a harmless and mostly enjoyable story, with some nice visuals and pleasantly goofy Horde antics - even if it did lean a little hard on the "lesson" lever.