Marc Scott Zicree

Steve Clark

The staff of Avion, and Stratos, are stolen by Skeletor so that he and the Torgs can awaken the evil monster, Molkrom. It has the power to destroy Grayskull! But there's something even worse! The staff is also a bomb!

Stratos, Man-at-Arms, Orko, Teela, He-Man, Ram Man, Battle Cat, Sorceress (Zoar)

Skeletor

King Von, Torgs (Von's people), Molkrom, Birdmen (citizens of Avion), Delora (Stratos's sister), cave beast (unnamed)

fighter air ships (unnamed), sky sled, photon cannon (it has wheels so I can totally call it a vehicle), Attak Trak, Battle Ram

Skeletor is deep in a cave, trying all his magic to wake an upsetting looking monster known as Molkrom from a stone prison - to no avail! His Torg allies admit that they know something that might help. It turns out it's a staff owned by Stratos, King of the Birdmen, who just happens to be using it to make fireworks in a once-a-year display to which He-Man and his friends have been invited. The Torgs crash the party in their fighter ships, and after a full-on battle manage to grab Stratos and the staff. The good guys overhear the Torgs on their inefficient ship-to-ship PA system mention "Molkrom," so with this information they go to the Sorceress. She lets them know that Molkrom is serious bad news: a monster with the power to destroy Grayskull, imprisoned by the Elders of Eternia after the Torgs used it in the past. Even worse: the staff which awakes it, if used for that level of evil and not quickly used for good, will explode - taking half of Eternia with it!

The heroes, accompanied by Stratos's sister Delora, venture into the Torgs' cave system in Attak Trak. They quickly encounter a giant cave beast; after He-Man tosses the critter away, they abandon their vehicle for reasons that are not explained, and stumble across the Torgs, Skeletor - and an army of Stratos clones. As Skeletor explains, "One of them is the real Stratos, but all are under my spell!" Skeletor and the Torgs take a hike, leaving the heroes to their Stratos-filled conundrum. Fortunately they have Delora, who with a few encouraging words undoes Skeletor's magic and reveals the real Stratos, causing all the fake ones to vanish. The heroes barge in on Skeletor just in time to witness him freeing Molkrom with the staff.

At Skeletor's command, Molkrom blows the heroes away and imprisons them in stone; they are able to overhear as Skeletor hands off the staff to the Torgs and relates his plan to ride Molkrom to Grayskull. Then they overhear Von, leader of the Torgs, prosaically planning on where to store the staff and how he's going to patch up the hole that Skeletor and Molkrom just made in his house. He-Man does his usual rock-smashing thing, then instructs the heroes to split up: Ram Man and Duncan will help him at Grayskull, and everyone else will go after the staff.

The concluding scenes interweave the exciting, tension-filled battles at Grayskull and in the caves. While Ram Man and Duncan get tangled up in Skeletor's magic and He-Man holds back Molkrom with Battle Ram, Orko and his pals distract the Torgs and Teela sneaks into the vault, only to be waylaid by Von. Molkrom wrecks the Battle Ram and sky sled, and whaps Zoar a good one, while Skeletor slowly lowers the Jawbridge. Meanwhile, Orko and Delora hijack a fighter ship to take out the Torg soldiers, and we find that Teela has happily tied up Von and acquired the staff. As Sorceress and Skeletor battle over the position of the Jawbridge, He-Man receives the Staff of Avion from Stratos, but Molkrom makes him fumble it. The thing is about to blow! As a last-ditch solution, He-Man grabs the staff and throws it up into space, where it detonates harmlessly and falls back to earth, still intact. Fortunately, the explosion somehow re-imprisons Molkrom in his crystal.

But Skeletor is still at it! He wins the game of magic Tug-of-War with the Sorceress and lowers the Jawbridge - just a little too late. He-Man grabs him from behind, and the bony villain decides it's time to do his teleport thing.

End with a Joke: With all the problems taken care of, it's time for the festival at Avion to finally get underway; but wait! Orko is being chased and shot at by a tiny Torg fighter ship, remote-controlled by a naughty little birdboy.

• Teela (to He-Man, who just crashed his sky sled): Are you all right? / He-Man: Just mussed my hair.
• Sorceress: There's something even worse . . . Once the staff is used for evil, it must be used quickly to undo that evil, or it will . . . explode, and take half of Eternia with it. / Orko: Couldn't we be on the other half?
• Skeletor: Molkrom! I, Skeletor, have freed you. Now, vanquish my enemies.

• He-Man spins the cave beast in a circle
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: After tossing the cave beast, and again after breaking out of the cave
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: During the Stratos clone battle
• He-Man punches the viewer: To break out of a rock prison
• Sorceress spreads/unspreads her wings: As she appears in the tower of Grayskull, and also later as she transforms into Zoar
• Teela, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: Only the beginning pose, used for some close-up Teela dialogue
• He-Man laughs, head back: At the ending joke

Zero (!)

Brought to you by Orko
Forsaking any connection to the events of the preceding story, Orko reminds us not to just randomly eat stuff that we find lying around. Apparently under the impression that his viewers are members of the armed forces, he gives us a farewell salute.

Skeletor summons a monster
Landmark Episode: Because of the juicy Stratos lore and the fun monsters in this episode, as well as the fact that it does not feature Prince Adam.

• Skeletor mentions "the power of the Elders" at the beginning of the episode, tying into Evil-Lyn's reference to "the Elders of Eternia" in MU007 - which just happens to have been written by the same guy (Marc Zicree). Not coincidentally, Stratos's fireworks staff also comes from the Elders. As I noted in MU007, I suspect these Elders will later become supplanted in MOTU lore by the "Ancients."
• Our first time seeing Stratos's hometown, Avion (first mentioned in MU009), and the Birdmen who live there (who look a lot like Stratos, except they appear to have peach-colored skin while his seems to be all gray - or he's wearing an all-gray bodysuit because he's the boss? Unclear). We also definitely establish that Stratos is "King of the Birdmen" and that he has a sister named Delora.
• In the opening attack, He-Man's sky sled gets shot in the ass and he goes down, hard. But all it does is muss his hair. He really is the most powerful man in the universe!
• Another nice view of the Sorceress's throne room in Grayskull, and her giant viewer screen which sometimes acts as a time corridor.
• Apparently Skeletor has hypnotic eye beams of some kind, which he uses on Stratos to put the guy under his control. He also demonstrates his ability to create an army of Stratoses. It seems like these powers could have been useful in previous episodes... We see later in the episode that Skeletor can also bring trees to life and grab people - though this may possibly have been Molkrom, as the trees vanish when Molkrom is imprisoned.
• When the heroes encounter the cave beast, we clearly see He-Man stop Attak Trak by stomping on a brake pedal. Just interesting that it functions like an Earth car!
• To make the cave beast drop them, the heroes electrify the Attak Trak. This trick was actually used before (and according to He-Man several other times which we don't get to see), against the lava beast in MU007.
• For once, He-Man's bolt deflection trick fails him, as he is overwhelmed by Stratos beams and knocked from Battle Cat. This clears the way for Delora to reason with Stratos.
• Molkrom has high-powered breath and very handy eye beams that seem to be able to melt and create stone and put out fires.
• Battle Ram, appearing for only the second time in the series (MU009 was the first appearance), has tentacle-like cables that restrain Molkrom and definitely were not included with the toy. We do get to see He-Man actually detach the sky sled part of the Battle Ram, which is fun; but the remainder of the ram appears to fall into Grayskull's bottomless abyss, so I guess Duncan is going to have to build a new one! (By MU029 there will be fleets of Attak Traks and Battle Rams, but it's unclear whether they existed yet here.)
• The only episode of the series where we never see Prince Adam: He-Man is He-Man through the whole story. As a consequence, we also never see Cringer.
• We get no wisecracks at all from Attak Trak, and it appears to be entirely ditched in the Torgs' caves. I hope somebody goes back to drive it out of there!

• One of the things that I really love about the show is its sometimes illogical blend of sword-and-sorcery imagery with science fiction technology. An extreme example of this clash can be seen in this episode, when the half-naked barbarian Torgs fly around in high-tech fighters that have heat rays and grabber arms.
• Far be it from me to criticize the mighty Elders of Eternia; but why exactly did they choose to imprison Molkrom right next to the guys who want to use it for evil? Couldn't they maybe have put it in the next cave over, at least?
• This is a fantastic episode for monsters. There is of course the evil Molkrom, a sort of long-haired centaur with horns, a rather equine (but ugly) face, and tentacles for arms. But there is also the giant cave beast that our heroes encounter, with an elephant's trunk and a great big horn. We will see the cave beast character design used again, along with a lot of other critters, in the final episode of Season 1 (MU065); and as a "tracker" beast for some space pirates in MU090.
• I love the idea that the Staff of Avion will just blow up if it's used for evil. It's just so crazy that even as Sorceress is explaining it to the heroes, she sounds kind of embarrassed.
• Stratos, and all of his clones, can shoot beams out of the palms of their hands. I believe the only other time he's demonstrated this ability was back in MU003, when he scared away some wolf-bats. Stratos seems to have wildly varying abilities and levels of competence, depending on who's writing the character. In some episodes he has wielded a sword (to no effect) or been baffled by a single robot minion; in this one he seems rather formidable.
• The vault of the Torgs has a bunch of fun treasure and booty in it. Clearly they've been doing all right for themselves even without an ugly centaur monster to help them.