J. Brynne Stephens

Ed Friedman

Jarvan the Sorcerer, having escaped the prison mine, exacts his revenge on Randor and He-Man by hooking young Ileena (a visiting friend) on a potion, then forcing her to steal her father's transmutator. With the transmutator, Jarvan can turn anything into... anything else! How can he be stopped?!

Teela, Prince Adam (He-Man), Orko, Cringer (Battle Cat), Man-at-Arms, King Randor, Queen Marlena

N/A

Ileena, Zikran (her father), Jarvan the Sorcerer

air car, robot horses

Young, fearful Ileena and her father Zikran arrive at the palace just as Jarvan the Sorcerer, an old enemy of Randor and He-Man, escapes from the prison mines. Teela, unconcerned, takes her friend Ileena out to a geyser field for a relaxing ride on their robot horses. Unfortunately they happen to have chosen the very geyser field where Jarvan is plotting his revenge in a diabolical monologue. Not wanting to be found, Jarvan works some geyser-related magic that leaves Teela down for the count and Ileena calling for He-Man. Jarvan spies He-Man during the rocky rescue and stealthily follows the party back to the palace.

Guilty and ashamed at her poor showing, envious of Teela's bravery, Ileena becomes an easy target for Jarvan, who (in the guise of an old woman) gets her hooked on some juice that takes away her fear. Jarvan leaves her with a ring and a set of magic words to summon him again when the need arises. Jarvan runs off and the new brave Ileena flips off a wall to prove to Teela she is fearless.

In the hangar of the palace, Teela and Ileena join other onlookers as Duncan demonstrates the abilities of Zikran's transmutator, the invention which was the cause of their visit. We learn that Ileena's ring also allows Jarvan to spy on the heroes; he sees the capabilities of the transmutator and decides he must have it for himself. Fortunately he already has a hooked fish that can assist him. Ileena comes down from her first dose of juice and calls up "the man" for the next dose. Having taken it, a reckless Ileena decides to take Adam for a ride in her father's air car, which apparently does not come equipped with seatbelts; Adam is flung out of the car and has no choice but to turn into He-Man to save himself. He also saves Ileena by catching the air car.

This time when Ileena comes down from her high, Jarvan's old lady pusher refuses to supply another dose and asks for the transmutator. Only Ileena, we discover, can "pass the voiceprint" to get into the room where the transmutator is stored. Ileena doesn't want to steal the device, but thinks she can deal with the old lady once she gets the potion. With Orko's help (he levitates the transmutator), Ileena betrays her father, but Jarvan does not pony up the juice and runs off with the MacGuffin, having revealed his true identity to Ileena. Ileena collapses. When the other heroes find her (having just discovered the transmutator is missing), she must finally come clean about everything. This triggers the big battle between He-Man and Jarvan, who is armed with the transmutator! Jarvan comes right to the palace and starts zapping his gadget at He-Man, trying ice, fire, and stone. He then tries to shrink the entire palace! He-Man, having dodged or defeated Jarvan's attempts to stop him, runs inside the palace and somehow holds off the shrinkage long enough to overload the transmutator, destroying it.

Jarvan teleports off in classic Skeletor style; but fortunately the heroes have a way to get him back, as Ileena explains. She uses the magic words on her ring and Jarvan is summoned and quickly defeated - with help from a drug-free but-still-brave Ileena, who jumps on Jarvan's back and slows him down long enough for He-Man to step in. It's back to the mines for ol' Jarvan!

End with a Joke: N/A

• Ileena: Oh father... I've done something awful!
• He-Man: Maybe if I can hold the center of the palace I can stop the whole thing from shrinking.
• Orko: Might over matter, right?
• He-Man (to Ileena): He made you dependent on some kind of drug.
• Jarvan: You haven't heard the last of me, He-Man! / He-Man: Aw, you mean you'll write to me from the prison mine?
• He-Man: The only way to feel good, is to first feel good about yourself.

• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Without the jumping part
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: Multiple times, to the right and left, as he plugs geysers
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: Earlier in the episode and, as usual, in the PSA
• He-Man runs at the viewer, bug-height
• He-Man runs away from the viewer
• He-Man swings sword overhand: To deflect bolt
• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man drops down in front of Jarvan

One full; two partial
First partial: While Adam is falling through the sky, having been flung from an air ship. The usual magic words are played while we are shown only the tip of the energized power sword.
Second partial: just the Adam-to-He-Man part (cuts off just as He-Man is beginning to move his sword to point at Cringer, who is not there)

Brought to you by He-Man
Predictably, He-Man advises us that taking drugs (at least ones not given to you by your parent or doctor) is bad.

Use of a transformative device
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1

• In an early scene, Ileena and Teela get onto robotic horses that look very similar to the eventual toy Stridor, released as part of wave 3 in 1984. It's unclear whether these horses were meant as a preview of that toy, or were just coincidental robotic horses. I think the latter is more likely, since Stridor gets its own explicit debut in a later episode (MU061 - and again, in a more toy-accurate version, in MU073), even though its MU061 iteration looks identical to these. (We'll see these specific robotic horses again in MU021.)
• The first episode in which Skeletor is not to blame for the nefarious goings-on, and never appears.
• The first of several episodes with an anti-substance-abuse theme. (See the much later MU112 for a very similar storyline.) Children of the 80s will not be surprised about this subject, illegal drug use being a bugbear of the era. Surely we all remember Nancy Reagan's inane solution, which was to "just say no."
• Jarvan, we learn, was in the "prison mine," first mentioned in MU003 (where Beast Man was destined for a stretch there). He was imprisoned "a long time ago," so one wonders how long his sentence was.
• Teela posits that Jarvan is "in another galaxy by now," again hinting at Eternian interplanetary travel. When Jarvan appears, he says, "Back on Eternia at last!" suggesting that the prison mine is not actually on the planet!
• Adam makes use of his "comlink" to talk to Teela (though he gets Ileena instead); it's a wrist communicator which we have never seen before. We will see it used again in MU048.
• The king and queen do appear in this episode, but only as part of the background crowd at the transmutator demonstration; they have no dialogue.
• He-Man uses the old "Adam is safe" line (first heard back in MU001) to assure Ileena that the guy she caused to fall out of a flying vehicle somehow didn't die but also isn't around anymore.
• It's very interesting that when Ileena invites Adam on the air car, he basically shrugs and says "why not?" When He-Man (who, for those of you who maybe missed an episode or two, is the SAME GUY) rescues Ileena, he tells her that it was really a very bad idea for her to fly an air car. This is intriguing and suggests something that we've had cause to wonder before - that Adam and He-Man are two separate personalities in the same body, who make different judgment calls.
• He-Man's final showdown with Jarvan takes place in a sort of garden courtyard of the palace that we've never seen before.
• He-Man is again stopped by a flash of light in this episode. (See also MU002 and MU005.)
• He-Man uses his breath to blow out a fire.
• A rare case of an episode that does not include a goofy laugh at the end.

• Ileena is very reminiscent of the heroines of Frank Frazetta's artwork. Frazetta was no doubt a strong influence on the animators and toy developers, as he is famous for Conan and Conan-esque fantasy paintings.
• It's not surprising that an action figure of Jarvan the Sorcerer was not forthcoming; with his lanky frame and pot belly, he lacks the muscular build and squat stance of the classic He-Man figure.
• Why do robot horses get scared?
• Jarvan has to follow He-Man to figure out where the palace is. This seems odd considering that he's apparently tangled with Randor and He-Man before. Just how long ago was it? Before Randor became king? Before the palace was built!?
• Ileena's father has the same goofy, bumbling tones we heard from the Comet Keeper in MU001.
• Jarvan's old woman disguise is identical to Evil-Lyn's old woman disguise from MU007.
• The character designs for Jarvan and Zikran will be reused for similar characters (with different names) in MU060.
• The magic words that summon Jarvan are "Em ot emoc," which those familiar with DC's Zatanna or fond of anagrams will realize is just "come to me" backwards.
• At the end of the episode we discover that apparently Jarvan is compelled to appear when the magic words are spoken - this seems like a major flaw in his plan. Couldn't he just decide not to show up? Admittedly the ring is being "amplified" through something Man-at-Arms cooks up, so maybe Jarvan is trapped by technology rather than being hoisted on his own petard.
• Zikran's "transmutator" can turn anything into anything else. It can literally turn base metals (or a potted plant) into gold, as Duncan demonstrates - causing all the failed, dead alchemists throughout history to spin in their graves. (Actually at heart it's very similar to the Shaping Staff from MU002.)
• The transmutator basically looks like a giant electric pencil sharpener. It has one single button on the top, which makes one wonder just how anyone manages to designate the target substance of the transformation. Perhaps it's...psychic? Also I take issue with the idea of shrinking being a valid ability of a transmuting device (but the whole part of the episode with the shrinking palace is highly problematic - see my later comments on that).
• The title of the episode seems to be based on the adage "a friend in need is a friend indeed," and has some pretty dark implications if you consider it from Jarvan's perspective. His "friend in need" is Ileena - she's in need of drugs. She becomes a friend indeed when she steals the transmutator for him.
• Adam is awful lucky no one saw him turn into He-Man in mid-air while he was falling to his certain death!
• When He-Man saves himself from a deadly fall by grabbing onto a ledge, we see his character's lips move, as though he is speaking a line of dialogue, but we hear nothing except the music.
• It's odd that Jarvan seems to know more about where the transmutator is stored than the viewers do; the detail of the gadget being stored behind a voiceprint-coded door has to be inferred.
• The voiceprint computer voice on the locked door sounds suspiciously like a slightly more robotic Orko.
• In another case of information not being clearly given to the viewer, we don't learn the name of Ileena's father until about two thirds of the way through the episode. This not telling us side character names will become a recurring fault of the series.
• It's quite ironic that Jarvan has and uses an incredibly powerful transmutator to try to stop He-Man, and in the end what hinders our hero the most is a flash of light which appears to be Jarvan's own magic, entirely unrelated to the gadget. The other thing he does which effectively stops He-Man is turn on a force field - again, probably Jarvan's own magic and not the transmutator.
• The idea that He-Man can stop the entire shrinking palace of Eternia by holding just two of its walls apart, and the further idea that doing this would somehow feed back to the transmutator and destroy it is...well: I was willing to believe the magic swords, and the sorcerers, and the green tiger, and the bird lady protecting a skull-shaped fortress; but this is very hard to swallow, my friends.
• It's interesting that in all of Ileena's explanations and confessions, she never tells her friends that Jarvan was in disguise when he tricked her. The way she explains it, it sounds like she just met Jarvan and went along with his plan to get her hooked on drugs.
• Quite frankly this is very much not my favorite episode. There are several clear examples of poor, sloppy writing, as well as plain old failure to communicate plot points like character's names or the location of the main MacGuffin. The fact that this episode also includes three He-Man transformations is an indication of an inability to properly fill the running time with story (let's face it, the He-Man transformation is just padding), something that never happened with earlier episodes.