Paul Dini

Steve Clark

Skeletor successfully traps He-Man, wipes his memory, and sends him to another world - with bird ladies and bunny men! How will he ever get back home and remember who he is? The Sorceress will need to call on an even higher power for assistance...

Man-at-Arms, Teela, Prince Adam (He-Man), Orko, Ram Man, Stratos, Sorceress, Cringer (Battle Cat), Zodac

Trap Jaw, Tri-Klops, Skeletor, Evil-Lyn

schminivits (hoppy pink critters), Gleedil (chicken lady), cat creature (Gleedil's pet, unnamed), Plundor the Spoiler, Plundor's droids

sky sleds (evil), Wind Raider, Battle Ram

Trap Jaw and Tri-Klops are making a sky sled attack on the palace! To stop them, Adam turns into He-Man (Cringer must have been taking his nap) and hops into the Wind Raider, where Orko appears as moral support. Ram Man successfully smashes Tri-Klops's sky sled with the help of He-Man's distraction, and the Wind Raider demonstrates a new gadget which sends Trap Jaw unceremoniously to the ground. Turns out it was all a trick from Skeletor! Trap Jaw lures He-Man through a stone ring, where he gets stuck in a pink glow; Skeletor recites a spell that takes away He-Man's memory and sends him across universes to some other world.

Having achieved what he came for, Skeletor teleports off along with Evil-Lyn, ditching Trap Jaw and Tri-Klops (they go to the palace dungeon). Our heroes go to the Sorceress for help, but it seems even she will be hard pressed to find He-Man. Instead, she calls on the mystical Zodac - who must have just been passing by their solar system, as he immediately lands in a white ball of light in his sweet space chair. Zodac explains that he can't use his powers to help the heroes, but he hands Orko a special wand to help "guide him," and decrees that Cringer and Ram Man should come with. (Man-at-Arms is told to stay on Eternia, presumably in case Skeletor decides to raise a ruckus.)

Meanwhile, He-Man wakes up very bemused and confused on a strange planet, where he meets a lot of strange creatures. The only sentient one is Gleedil, a chicken lady who reminds him of a bird lady he knows from somewhere else, and who (after an initial misunderstanding that leaves his power sword stuck in a stump) decides to help him and takes him back to her place. We see that Gleedil and the muscular newcomer are being spied upon by this planet's Skeletor, Plundor the Spoiler, who is a very muscular pink bunny-man.

With a lot of coaxing of the very unenthused Cringer, our trio of chosen rescuers hop into the swirly vortex of the Time Corridor, with a hint from Zodac to remind He-Man of home. Fortunately Orko's wand works as advertised and they land right where He-Man did (on what we learn is the planet Trannis), finding the power sword. Cringer sniffs the sword and is able to use it to track He-Man.

At Gleedil's house, she is giving him a run-down on how Trannis was polluted and ruined by Plundor. As she shows him a sort of museum of natural history she has set up in her house, with a row of now-extinct indigenous species, Plundor's robots break in knock them out with gas before He-Man fully realizes just how strong he is. One droid carries off He-Man and Gleedil, leaving Gleedil's disconsolate cat to wander off and bump into Orko and company. Fortunately Cringer speaks the cat's language, and they are led to Plundor's evil lair, where he is busy trying to convince He-Man to join him while he sells the life force of the planet and becomes very rich.

Orko and friends, contemplating a surprise attack, are surprised themselves by a robot and end up smashing their way into Plundor's fortress. He-Man has no idea who they are, so Orko tries reminding him of home - namely, Castle Grayskull (even though he most definitely doesn't live there). The Trollan hands the big lug his sword and tells him the magic words to say, and just like that, He-Man is back to himself. He zaps Cringer into Battle Cat and together they wipe the floor with all the bad guys. Plundor tries to shoot his life force goo off in a rocket (stamped with his own pink bunny logo) so no one can have it, but He-Man forces the rocket into a crash landing; the resulting explosion releases the life force and magically (and very conveniently) restores the entire planet.

End with a Joke: With the planet restored and Plundor sentenced to forced labor, the heroes are all ready to return home and deal with Skeletor; but Ram Man is too busy hopping around with those little schminivits: "I'll say one thing for these guys - they sure know how to have fun!"

• Skeletor (to He-Man): Your mistake will cost you dearly, old enemy. I'm about to rid Eternia of your hated presence forever!
• Cringer: You mean we have to depend on Orko's magic? We're doomed!
• Ram Man (spotting the power sword): Hey guys, look at that swell back-scratcher someone lost.
• Gleedil: You'd destroy a whole world just for wealth and treasures? / Plundor (rubbing his hands together): I'd do anything for that.
• Plundor (to He-Man, very suggestively): I could use those muscles of yours.

• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands in the Wind Raider; and again at the end of the episode, after jumping off a rocket
• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: To prepare to fight Trap Jaw

Two partial
Variations - the first transformation is as usual, just missing the Battle Cat transformation;
the second transformation, in which He-Man regains his memory, doesn't include Adam holding up the sword since he's already He-Man; it includes the Battle Cat transformation, but there is an exchange between He-Man and Orko inserted before it

Brought to you by Zodac
Zodac gives us an environmentalist warning - protect your planet! Don't pollute it and drive animals to extinction like that pink bunny guy. Good call, Zodac. Any tips on how we can wean ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels? No? Oh, well.

Use of the Time Corridor (or other time travel methods)
Amnesiac He-Man

• He-Man again is able to whistle up the Wind Raider, as he did in MU014.
• Trap Jaw's strafing run on the palace is very similar to the one we saw him do in MU004's pilot.
• Ram Man comes equipped with a parachute! He uses it to save himself after bouncing up in the air to hit Tri-Klops. Tri-Klops has to settle for a relatively soft mud-puddle landing.
• The Wind Raider demonstrates a sort of grappling hook, with spinning rotors, which can be shot from its nose. This is vaguely similar to the anchor-like device on the front of the toy.
• Skeletor uses a rhyming spell to give He-Man amnesia and send him away - probably so that it's clear to the audience what is happening. Characteristically, Skeletor's spell involves declaring his own cleverness.
• This is the He-Man "gets amnesia" episode, which seemed to be a required plot for every television series in the 80s. In the case of He-Man, the idea was so nice they did it twice! The big lug will get forgetful again in MU031.
• In methods similar to ones they have used in other episodes, Skeletor teleports away from our heroes, and Evil-Lyn turns into a glowing ball and zooms off (as she did in MU012). However, they ditch Trap Jaw and Tri-Klops! This is the kind of inconsistent support you can expect when your boss is Skeletor; they really ought to unionize.
• Our brief glimpse of the palace dungeon shows it looking much as it did in the recent MU018, with those impressive hand-shaped supporting pillars.
• At long last, we finally get the first appearance of one of my favorite He-Man figures, Zodac! When the Sorceress summons him, she refers to him as a "rider of the cosmic space waves." Like the Watcher characters in Marvel's "What If...?" series, Zodac says that he can watch all things that happen in the cosmos, but cannot use his powers to interfere.
• This episode features a whole host of characters never seen before and never seen again on the show, and of which toys were never made. There's the disturbingly feminine chicken lady, her cat companion (because all heroes need a big cat companion), the pink hoppy things, and the seemingly homosexual villain and pink bunny-man, Plundor.
• When I said "toys were never made" of this episode's unique characters, I should have added the proviso, at least not by Mattel in the 80s. Believe it or not, I find that Plundor was actually made into an action figure around 2014!

• He-Man rather irresponsibly allows Orko to "tag along" during his air battle. He's just lucky the fight was short enough that no Orko-related disaster ensued.
• Trap Jaw is wearing his hook attachment in his chase with He-Man, which he refers to as his "Energy Hook" - which suggests a desperate attempt to make a hook sound more impressive than it really is. You could also consider there to be a continuity error here, since just a few seconds later Trap Jaw is wearing his laser gun attachment instead.
• I get the feeling that the writers at Filmation just didn't know what to do with Zodac, which is why we haven't seen him in an episode before now (and he'll only appear in two others: MU036 and MU062). As Dini writes the character, he is sort like the Sorceress's administrator, the person to whom she sends problems when she wants to kick them upstairs. If you thought the Sorceress had limited mobility and powers, check out Zodac! He can barely get out of his little space chair. I've always liked the look of Zodac for whatever reason, and the fact that he speaks all his lines in a pseudo-mystical mutter really adds to his charm. He even gets to do the PSA in this episode!
• Plundor seems... quite taken with He-Man, if you know what I mean. Combine that with his rather fruity-sounding voice and pink color and what do you get? Another entry in the "homoerotic undertones" category!
• Continuity error: When the trio are about to walk through the Time Corridor, Zodac is seen standing for a moment next to the other heroes; but subsequent close-ups of the cosmic enforcer show him seated again.
• Cringer says that he gets sick when he "time travels," which is odd, because it doesn't seem like they should be travelling through time. But it does give the characters an excuse to use the old Time Corridor again, which is nice.
• Cleverly ironic that Orko tries to calm Cringer down by predicting that "we probably won't meet anything more dangerous than a rabbit" - and of course, the big enemy they face is a rabbit.
• It's too bad that Cringer gets stuck with the job of having to track down He-Man, since we established in MU006 (another Dini-penned plot) that Battle Cat is the better tracker.
• She-Ra fans will see premonitions of the Fright Zone and Hordak in Plundor's polluted landscape. The back story of Trannis's pollution and the wildlife that is forced to leave is very reminiscent of Dr. Seuss's story The Lorax.
• Gleedil's pet is clearly a cat, but for some reason Orko refers to it as a "pooch."
• Cringer's attempts to talk to the other cat ("Uh, grr? Growl? Snarl?") are quite amusing. One wonders how Cringer asked after He-Man, given that he doesn't know his own name. How do you say "Have you seen a big muscly guy with a blonde bob?" in cat?
• Plundor identifies himself as "the rightful ruler of Trannis." "The rightful destoryer, you mean!" Gleedil replies testily - putting the stress on exactly the wrong word.
• In the ending pull-back shot, though the planet we're looking at is supposed to be Trannis, the planetary shot is clearly the same one that is used for Eternia in other episodes.
• You really wonder what Paul Dini and the folks at Filmation were up to with this episode. Why introduce this whole other set of characters? Perhaps they were hoping for a spin-off. Or perhaps they had a rejected pilot from some other cartoon sitting around and were able to repurpose here. If I googled this I might find some back story to explain it, but at the moment I'm trying to write these episode commentaries without being influenced by other people's ideas or trivia.