Bob Forward

Ernie Schmidt

Hordak can hardly wait to grab rebels with his grabber - a gadget that's basically a mobile arcade claw machine. But he can't grab rebels out of their base in the Whispering Woods unless he can gain the magical ability to see within the protected forest - and for that, he'll need to kidnap Peekablue!

Peekablue, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Cringer, Orko, Prince Adam, Bow, Glimmer, Flutterina

Hordak, Shadow Weaver

Peck, Horde soldiers, birds, Keeber

glonders, wagons

From out of an outlet pipe on the dreary edges of the Fright Zone staggers a ragged prisoner. He's managed to escape the fortress prison after six years, thanks to what he thinks was the carelessness of a Horde guard who forgot to lock the cell door. He's anxious to get home and rejoin his wife and son, and is worried they won't even recognize him after his long incarceration. Little does he know that his escape was all by design: the cruel design of the wicked Hordak, who wants a loose prisoner as a test subject for his new "grabber" machine. Hordak is watching the escapee by video screen, Shadow Weaver at his side, and sets his grabber after the poor guy. The machine is a little flying dome with a pincer coming out the bottom on a hinged arm, and it's meant to live up to its name.

Clearly the Horde commander doesn't spend much of his leisure time playing video games, though, because he's not very skilled at remotely controlling the grabber and makes several missed attempts at swiping his target. The fleeing prisoner manages to hide himself under a broken metal pipe, out of sight of Hordak's screen, and for a moment it even seems as if the man will get away; but it's not to be. As soon as the prisoner tries to leave his hiding place, he's nabbed by the grabber and flown back into the dungeon, his piteous requests for mercy going unheeded. It seems Shadow Weaver's magic helped Hordak find the hidden man. (We incidentally learn from Weaver and Hordak's conversation that the recaptured prisoner was given 20 years in Hordak's dungeon for the meager slight of having accidentally splashed a soldier with mud from his cart.)

A successful test! The excited Hordak can hardly wait to start flying grabbers into the Whispering Woods to pick up all those pesky members of the Great Rebellion; but Shadow Weaver points out that he'd be flying blind if he sent grabbers into the rebels' arboreal base, since her magic can't see past its enchanted foliage. There is someone who can see in there, though: Peekablue. She has farseeing magic vision that could spy on just about anyplace - the only problem is, she's an ally of the rebellion. Confident he can overcome this loyalty conflict, Hordak immediately orders his robot soldiers to fly off in great numbers to go find and capture Peekablue.

Currently this popular peacock lady is just outside her home enjoying a visit from rebellion leader Princess Adora. For Adora's amusement, Peekablue is viewing and describing the antics of Prince Adam off in Eternia. It seems his attempt to bathe Cringer is getting messy due to the "assistance" of Orko. Adora thanks her friend for this valuable chance to check in on her distant family members. She wishes that Peekablue could relocate permanently to the rebel base in the Whispering Woods, because then the girl would be available to give up-to-the-minute status reports on the Horde; but Peekablue is afraid to make the move. She's happy, however, to check on the Horde position right now: but what's this? When Peekablue looks for the Horde, she sees a vision of herself and Adora.

That's because the Horde is here, now! The fleet of Horde soldiers on their glonders has arrived on their mission to snatch up Peekablue. Adora tells her friend to hide, then hops in a bush where she can discreetly change into She-Ra. The golden-haired heroine does her best to fight off the invading robots, but while she's busy smashing some, the others track down Peekablue in her house, grab her, and fly her away. Cursing the fact that she didn't have Swift Wind with her today, She-Ra changes back to Adora so she can return to the Whispering Woods and report the kidnapping to her fellow rebels. They're all upset, but also confused: what could Hordak want with Peekablue?

They don't have to wait long to see the results of the capture, because soon enough the grabbers are swooping into the Whispering Woods under the remote command of poor Peekablue, who has been magically compelled to obey Hordak through the wicked mind control of Shadow Weaver. The rebels do their best to evade the machines, but in the end both Bow and Glimmer get grabbed and taken away - with Adora given no chance to make a transformation, and unable to stop the grabbers, even with Bow's dropped bow and arrows.

Determined to get back her many lost friends, Adora prepares to travel alone to the Fright Zone. To hold down the fort while she's gone, the princess taps the rebel Keeber, a generic-looking young man who's a fervid opponent of Hordak. Then all she has to do is wait: because, as Adora has foreseen, Hordak is keen to add to his rebel collection by nabbing its leader. In no time another grabber sweeps down and picks Adora up in its pincers. She's eventually deposited in the same cell as Bow and Glimmer by a gleeful Hordak, who is sure he'll be able to detect and trap She-Ra when the heroine inevitably approaches the fortress for a rescue attempt. (Hordak has sensibly not even attempted to use one of his grabbers on She-Ra, since we all know the "muscle maiden" would make short work of those gropy tin cans.) After he leaves, Adora is able to touch base with Bow and Glimmer, who have seen Peekablue and explain to Adora how their friend is being used against her will to control the grabbers.

Also in the cell with the three rebels is our miserable friend, the prisoner from the beginning of the episode, who introduces himself as Peck, and asserts his own intention to keep his mind free from the evil clutches of his captor. He shows the supportive rebels a tunnel he tried digging under the floor of the cell, which proved pointless as he was unable to dig a path out of the fortress. Adora volunteers to scout out the tunnel and maybe get help, and disappears beneath a pried-up floor tile. The tunnel doesn't have any easy way out, just as Peck claimed; but it's the perfect private place for a young lady to make a change. As She-Ra, our heroine can make an exit by tearing open a heavy iron door and smashing the guards stationed on the other side. She subsequently pops up out of the floor in the rebels' cell and organizes a jailbreak.

Aiding the prisoners' stealthy escape is the revelation that Glimmer apparently possesses the ability to turn herself and the other captives temporarily invisible. As they begin to sneak their way to freedom, She-Ra assures them she'll take care of rescuing Peekablue. She quickly tracks down the mind-controlled young lady, finding her in company with Hordak and Shadow Weaver, who have decided their slave's usefulness has ended and are about to add her to the other dungeon dwellers. She-Ra announces herself with a sassy jibe, drawing the magical attack of Shadow Weaver. An unwise move on Weaver's part; for it allows She-Ra to deflect the sorceress's magic back on herself, banishing her to "limbo." This has the happy effect of breaking the control over Peekablue. While She-Ra is fighting off Hordak, Peekablue is free to make one more use of the grabber control panel, this time nabbing the Horde commander and giving him a taste of his own grabby medicine. Now to make a timely exit!

Gathered around a fire later are Adora, Bow, Glimmer, Flutterina (who decided to show up to beef up the numbers in this last scene), Peekablue, Keeber, and Peck. Everyone's happy at how things turned out - except Keeber, who's still feeling bitter and angry. He explains to the others that his very personal grudge against Hordak stems from the loss of his father, who was unfairly imprisoned six long years ago (when Keeber was only 12 years old) for having splashed mud on a soldier with his cart. Peck turns to the young man and reveals that he's Keeber's long-lost father - I guess those six years really have made him difficult to recognize! The pair happily embrace, and Bow ends the episode with a desperate attempt to lighten the mood by telling a terrible joke about how much allowance Keeber is owed.

• Shadow Weaver: By the way, Hordak, that prisoner you recaptured - what was he arrested for? / Hordak: His cart splashed mud on a trooper. I gave him twenty years. / Shadow Weaver: You let him off easy. / Hordak: I know, I know; but I was feeling merciful that day.
• Peekablue: I wouldn't work for you in a million years, you cruel, evil, heartless tyrant! / Hordak: Oh, you say the sweetest things, my dear.
• Shadow Weaver: When I change someone's mind, it stays changed.
• Bow (to Hordak): You evil, vicious monster! You've enslaved her mind! / Hordak (indifferently): Some people need a bit more persuasion than others. / Glimmer (piling on the verbal abuse and descriptors): Ooh! You cruel creature!
• She-Ra: Fast thinking, Peekablue! Thanks; that was very brave. / Peekablue: Brave? Oh my goodness, She-Ra; I was never so frightened in my life. / She-Ra: (laughs, throwing her head back)

• She-Ra, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: At Peekablue's comment about never having been so frightened in her life

Two partial (missing Spirit/Swift Wind sequence)
Variation - In her first transformation, She-Ra does that thing she sometimes does at the end of the abbreviated version, beginning to twitch her sword towards the absent Spirit.

5:27 - There's something weird about Loo-Kee's appearance today, and it has to do with his size. We see him on the right side of the screen, looking off to the right while gripping some bizarre bluish extrusion of landscape that's dotted with multi-colored jelly-bean-shaped spots. Within a hollow of this structure is a bird's nest, where a mother bird is in the midst of feeding her babies; but the baby birds look to be the same size as Loo-Kee, if not bigger. See more about this in the lore section.
Did I spot him? YES!

Loo-Kee likens the mind control spell that corrupted Peekablue to illegal drugs: "they can mix you up so much that you can't tell the difference between right and wrong!" He advises us to say "No" to drugs - and not for the first time! Loo-Kee also warned us about the dangers of drugs in a very special PSA at the end of 67039's "Into the Dark Dimension."

MOTU crossover: This episode qualifies for this category at the most fundamental, if minimal, level, since it includes cameo appearances by MOTU characters - even if they have no bearing on the main plot.

• Now is as good a time as any to stop and talk about air dates for a moment. Unlike with MOTU, where air dates in general had very little logical relation to production codes, with POP the sequence of production codes has by and large matched the air date sequence. There was only one glaring exception in Season 1, with 67006's "Duel at Devlan," which according to production codes and the ordering on my DVD set should have come right after the opening five episodes that comprised the SOTS storyline, but according to the air dates listed on Wikipedia was actually the season finale (airing December 6, 1985). In Season 2 there were a pair of outliers in terms of air dates (67070 and 67071), but otherwise again the codes and the air dates have run in tandem.
• What has really changed with POP's second season - something I touched on in passing in the commentary for 67079 - is the frequency of episodes. The entire 130-episode run of MOTU and the entire first season of POP were intended as daily shows, with an episode airing every weekday for 65 consecutive weekdays, starting in September and running into December. With POP Season 2, episodes now air only once a week (if that!), on Saturdays. Because there are so many fewer Saturdays than weekdays in the months of September to December, by Episode 14 we have already run through the year 1986. This episode, which begins the second half of POP's greatly abbreviated second and final season, is the first to air in the year 1987. So it's a kind of a mid-season premiere, if you will.
• This will make the thirteenth POP script given to us by the great Bob Forward.
• The first character we meet today, stumbling out of a Fright Zone prison in rags, looks very much like Glimmer's dad Micah did when he escaped the Horde at the beginning of 67046's "Micah of Bright Moon." This Micah clone will remain unnamed until late in the episode, when he'll finally introduce himself as Peck. (Given what is revealed about Peck even later in the story, the similarity of his character design to one of the series's many long-lost fathers is very likely not an accident!)
• We find Hordak monitoring this prisoner via a Fright Zone surveillance screen that's not his more common throne room projected screen. Today's screen is one we've seen minions lower down the Horde ladder using in the past: Catra used something that looked identical, though it was on Beast Island (67071), and we saw Grizzlor monitoring the same screen at the beginning of the infamous 67057's "Jungle Fever."
• Shadow Weaver points out that her "magic cannot see into the Whispering Woods." This is a logical enough statement which helps put today's plot into motion; but I have to wonder whether it's contradicted by any previous stories. I can't think of any specific time where she's broken this rule, but we've certainly seen Hordak and company spying on the rebels in various places and situations, with no obvious cameras in place. You could interpret a scene in the recent 67076 as showing that Weaver could teleport into the woods, though I think it was just poor editing giving us this idea.
• Hordak communicates to all his soldiers via a wrist communicator we've never seen before, which seems to be connected to the Fright Zone's PA system. In the past for similar purposes Hordak has made use of a communicator that extends out of the arm of his throne (see 67049). Other Horde minions have talked to Hordak via their own wrist communicators (see 67041, 67032).
• Note the position of Loo-Kee as described in the "Where's Loo-Kee" section. I can think of several possible explanations for his apparent tininess, as follows: 1) Loo-Kee has the magical ability to shrink, which for some reason neither he nor any of his people have demonstrated in the past, even though it would have been very useful; 2) the birds are incredibly large; 3) Loo-Kee is much farther away than he looks, and it's all just a trick of perspective.
• This episode marks the rebel Peekablue's fourth appearance in the series (not counting the Christmas Special, where she did have a useful, if brief, part to play). But in fact it's only her second real speaking part in an episode, since two of her previous three appearances were walk-on parts with no lines. The last time she did more than just show up was 67066's "One to Count on," where she rather underwhelmingly did a poor job of using her powers and then got captured. She'll be getting captured again today!
• When we meet Peekablue, she's busy spying on things in Eternia and providing a running commentary for Adora. This gives us what I've decided I have to consider a MOTU crossover, since we not only hear about but also catch a glimpse of Prince Adam, Cringer, and Orko. Interesting trivia: This is the only episode of MOTU or POP to feature Prince Adam without also featuring He-Man.
• Peekablue identifies her powers as coming from her "vision tail," AKA the big fringe of peacock feathers on her back. We also establish, conveniently enough for today's story, that Peekablue doesn't choose to live with the rest of the rebellion in Whispering Woods. See commentary.
• Adora seems to carelessly put her secret identity at risk today. She hops into a bush before making her transformation, and the Horde definitely see her doing it, since one soldier directs another to that very spot in an attempt to capture the princess. The pursuer finds no one in the bush but She-Ra, which should lead the soldiers to only one logical conclusion - but it just doesn't. I guess robots that regularly run into each other when trying to follow orders can't be expected to make intuitive leaps of this nature.
• In a rare show of temper, we see She-Ra getting mad enough at the loss of Peekablue to throw her sword of protection violently into the ground.
• Bow comments that the grabber has "a grip like a crabasaur," which is likely an Etherian creature we wouldn't like to meet in a dark alley. By the way, while we're on the subject of the grabber, I might as well mention that this name has been used by Filmation before: He-Man battled a giant beast named "Grabber" in MU123's "Mistaken Identity."
• Adora takes a crack at using Bow's bow. We saw She-Ra wielding her own bow - and even borrowing one of the archer's own arrows - in 67067's "Return of the General." She was a better shot last time!
• A close-up dialogue shot of Glimmer in the Fright Zone uses a background that includes the power meter from Hordak's old Magnabeam device. Remember that? Hordak powered it up with He-Man juice all the way back in 67003. The background using the meter shows up a few additional times in later scenes.
• Hordak transformations: Talking about blasts from the past... In order to threaten Shadow Weaver, the Horde commander changes his arm into a miniature old-fashioned cannon, complete with spoked wheels and a lit fuse. He used this same transformation when infuriated by the inscrutable Orko, back in 67033's "A Talent for Trouble." We'll see it showing up again in the episode's final battle.
• To continue the reminiscences, Hordak uses his arm cannon here to blast to bits an abstract sculpture on a plinth with the inscription "OBEY." We've actually seen him destroy this exact same sculpture on two previous occasions: 67001 and 67015. It also appeared again, miraculously undestroyed, in a panning shot of 67032. Clearly Hordak has as many copies of this sculpture as The Office's Michael Scott has "World's Best Boss" mugs.
• By the way, Hordak's threatening of Weaver means that Mom and Dad are fighting again! It's been a while since Hordak so thoroughly cowed his clever, efficient sorceress. We see no sign of the feistiness that led Weaver to betray her master back in 67056.
• Hordak's plan to kidnap Adora in order to draw She-Ra has a built-in little ironic twist that mimics some of Skeletor's more labyrinthine schemes. There's a whole category in the database for MOTU episodes where bad guys plot to capture Prince Adam, not realizing they're simultaneously impeding the appearance of He-Man.
• You can tell that with only the loss of Bow and Glimmer, Adora is already scraping the bottom of the rebellion barrel, since she's forced to put some guy in charge that we've never heard of before: it's Keeber, a generic male who has a "debt to settle" with Hordak. (We'll eventually discover that the introduction of Keeber is not just desperation on Adora's part, but an important continuance of a subplot.)
• Hordak tauntingly refers to Glimmer as "Sparkle Head." Heh. Heh heh. He seems to have incisive knowledge of the pink-haired princess's light powers, since she's the only prisoner of the three rebels whose hands get manacled. This, as Glimmer explains, makes her unable to use any of those sparkles.
• Yeah, speaking of those light powers... today we discover that Glimmer can use them to... make herself invisible?! And not just herself, but the two people standing next to her as well. You'd think a useful talent like this would have come up at some point before the 80th episode...
• And by this point, Shadow Weaver should really be trying to come up with some kind of defense for having her magic deflected back at her. She-Ra has beaten the sorceress numerous times with this trick, notably in 67049, and she does it again here.
• Ending credits variation: The background painting continues to be that of Castle Bright Moon.

• We can hear the escaped prisoner Peck speaking to himself a lot in the opening scene, but his lips don't move, implying this is a healthy and perfectly normal internal monologue. However, the spying Hordak responds very much as though the guy is speaking aloud, or the Horde commander can hear his thoughts. To Peck's clearly internalized thought, "I must get home," Hordak retorts, "That's what you think, fool!" I don't understand why the animators would have created this problem. Were they just too tired to draw the guy's lips moving?
• It's actually quite funny to watch Hordak struggling with the controls on his grabber, exactly like someone trying and failing to win a prize with one of those arcade claw machines. But the prize's/prisoner's anguished internal monologue about wanting to go home to his family after six long years in the dungeon makes his eventual capture extra depressing! The later explanation from Hordak for why Peck was imprisoned makes the whole thing even worse. I suppose we have to assume this guy was sitting in a cell that She-Ra somehow missed zapping open when she was clearing the deep dungeons at the end of the previous episode (67079).
• I love the extra little touch of two robot soldiers rushing to obey Hordak's order to capture Peekablue, and instantly colliding into each other. Yep, that's some high-quality soldiering right there.
• There are some consistency/continuity problems with the position of Peekablue in today's story. Peekablue claims that she doesn't want to live in the Whispering Woods because she would "be afraid to be a part of the rebellion." But this is entirely at odds with the character she presented in her last two appearances, in 67066 and 67070. In 67070, we literally saw Peekablue hanging out in the Whispering Woods with her rebel buddies, showing she at least isn't afraid to make short visits. In 67066, she was one of the more rabid members of a rebel party who recklessly decided to try and steal back Queen Angella's stolen crown from the Horde, and had to be taught a lesson about depending too much on the powers of She-Ra. Even earlier in today's episode, we heard Shadow Weaver describing the girl as siding "with the rebels." This doesn't sound like someone who would "be afraid" to be with the rebellion.
• Thinking about Peekablue's hesitancy to move to the Whispering Woods started me down a rabbit hole consideration of our various rebels' geographical situations, and made me realize there are actually quite a few "rebel" characters who don't live in the woods with Adora, Bow, Kowl, Razz, and Broom. There's Castaspella, who has her own castle in Mystacor. There're Glimmer and Angella, clearly rebellion big-wigs but located in Bright Moon, which (as I've had to argue to myself a few times) can't quite be a part of the Whispering Woods, or it wouldn't have been under siege by the Horde so much. There's Empress Frosta off in her own icy region. You could probably consider Mermista's usual hangout at the Crystal Falls to be a part of the woods, even if she does seem to spend most of her time underwater; but who knows where Perfuma or Flutterina live, and we haven't seen Netossa and Spinnerella enough to know for sure whether they've relocated to the forest after their first "vacation" visit to Thaymor.
• Animation error: She-Ra's first transformation isn't cut off quickly enough and shows us a split-second of her moving her sword toward Spirit, who is not there. The second transformation does not have this issue.
• So Peekablue sees the Horde coming and runs off to hide - in her own house. Did she think the soldiers wouldn't look there?
• When Hordak's plot to use Peekablue was first mentioned, I pictured the Horde using her only to give them live visions of the Whispering Woods, not to directly control the grabbers. But given that Peekablue seems incapable of projecting her visions for others to see, I suppose it makes sense to just have her doing the whole thing. You do have to wonder whether she had some training time on those grabbers first, though; Hordak sure had trouble learning to work them!
• Hordak already has Glimmer and Bow, but decides he also needs to grab Adora before he can expect She-Ra to give herself up. But old "bat ears" already has past evidence which should convince him that She-Ra will give herself up in exchange for just Bow; she did exactly that in 67053's "Unexpected Ally" (which, now that I think of it, was also a Bob Forward story).
• Nevertheless, you've got to give it to Hordak today: his evil plot bags him the three main members of the Great Rebellion. Indeed, Hordak comes off as particularly cruel and wicked, what with his Jean Valjean treatment of Peck, and his mind control making Peekablue leak a constant stream of miserable tears. We hear evidence from the good guys that they've had to consult the thesaurus to find enough adjectives to adequately describe his villainy. Usually I like to point out Bob Forward's skill at writing humorous and goofy interactions for the members of the Horde, but our writer seems to have taken a darker route with this script.
• There is a funny bit during the scene where Bow and Glimmer are yelling at Hordak for being so evil. Bow is right in the middle of telling the Horde dictator what he thinks of him, when for no particularly good reason the camera suddenly cuts back to Hordak, who gives an abrupt and inapropos laugh. The weird editing made me chuckle every time I watched that scene.
• When She-Ra appears to rescue Peekablue from Hordak and Shadow Weaver, she adopts a casual pose, leaning back with her hands resting on the pommel of her sword. The weird part is, she's not leaning against anything - the only wall behind her is off in the distance. Did the animators use the wrong background?
• Continuity error: When Hordak is first grabbed by the grabber, his arms are pinned against him inside the pincers; in the shot immediately following, his arms are free, and the pincers are only around his waist.
• Another great Bob Forward story today, with some real depths of emotion and high drama. Bow's terrible ending joke about six years of back allowance can't quite lighten the mood on this rather grim but effective tale.