Story - Jeffry O'Hare, Teleplay - Jeffry O'Hare, Arthur Browne Jr.

Gwen Wetzler

The situation on Selkie Island is getting worse! Royal Historian Hovar and his son are running out of lasers and force fields to defend themselves from the teeming hordes of dangerous wild animals. Their only hope is the delivery of the VHO, a sonic device that will help them scare away the creatures - but is also a tempting treasure for the villainous Mer-Man! It's Teela and a certain stowaway prince to the rescue...

Man-at-Arms, Teela, Orko, Prince Adam (He-Man), Cringer

Mer-Man

horned cat, Hovar, Justin (Hovar's son), centipede, flying beast, Eternian sailors, kraken, razorfin robots

The newest, fastest ship in the Eternian navy (unnamed)

On the wild Selkie Island, Hovar and his son are being attacked by all kinds of unfriendly creatures. Their force field goes down and young Justin has to keep his finger on the laser button to keep the critters at bay. Hovar tries desperately to contact Man-at-Arms for aid, but his transmissions don't receive a reply. Back in Eternos, we see that Duncan has been getting the messages and has a plan. With the help of Teela, he has developed a gadget called the VHO (for Variable High-frequency Oscillator) that emits high-frequency sounds to scare creatures off. Adam, who overhears the machine being tested while out flying Orko as a kite (?!), arrives in time to hear that Teela is going to take to sea on the Eternian navy's best and fastest ship to get the VHO to Hovar (because for some reason the Wind Raider would be slower). The prince decides to stow away on board and have an adventure (and potentially provide support as He-Man).

Meanwhile, a very nosy Mer-Man has somehow learned about the VHO and wants to use it for his own evil purposes, to control all the animals on Eternia (and perhaps one-up his boss). He either gets very lucky or intentionally scuttles the ship via the use of a ginormous kraken. Adam turns to He-Man to try to help, but ends up finding an empty casing where the VHO should be, some aggressive robotic fish that he smashes to bits, and a blinking homing device floating on the surface of the water. Since the sailors have managed to rescue themselves and Teela is nowhere to be found (she got grabbed by the kraken during the transformation), He-Man puts his amazing swimming and listening skills to use and follows the signal of the homing device.

It leads him to an underwater cave, where a triumphant Mer-Man has the episode's MacGuffin - plus Teela, encased in a Teela-sized glass jar. Mer-Man summons that pesky kraken, who smacks He-Man around pretty well, until his flailing punches bring down the cave around him and Mer-Man orders him off. He-Man is then able to pretty easily take out his fishy opponent, reclaim a dropped VHO, and free Teela. The pair swim off but once again have to tangle with the kraken, now being ridden by Mer-Man. He-Man finally takes care of the beast for good by using the gadget and then heaving the huge critter (and its rider) off into the distance. He dives down into the water to retrieve the slippery VHO, which has once again been dropped; but he doesn't come back up again. Instead, Teela discovers Adam floating on a raft nearby, holding the gadget.

Our heroes, who hopefully were close to Selkie Island and so didn't have to paddle very far to get there, arrive in time to chase off the critters and rescue Hovar and his son, who had just run out of lasers and were preparing to get eaten. Justin, who had been getting mighty discouraged during the ordeal, reaffirms his commitment to being a junior historian, and vows to get right back to work. Teela and Adam find their way home and, discussing the adventure, Adam manages to screw up his story by saying that He-Man saved the VHO in the water instead of himself.

End with a Joke: As Adam stammers uselessly, trying to cover his clear betrayal of his secret identity, Cringer picks up on the fact that the heroes visited the ocean and expresses his gladness that he "stayed home this time."

• Justin: Father, what happens if Man-at-Arms doesn't come through for us? / Hovar: Man-at-Arms always comes through, son.
• Teela (having discovered that Prince Adam has stowed away): Well, now I have you to worry about.
• Mer-Man: At last! The oscillator is on its way! Once I have it, I'll be able to control every animal on Eternia; even Beast Man! And perhaps - Skeletor himself! (gurgling laughter)
• He-Man: That wasn't a real fish! It was a - it was a robot!
• Hovar: When we believe, anything is possible.
• Teela: He's gone after the Kraken! / He-Man: Then we'd better get "crackin"!
• Adam: Say, uh, can we go ashore? I mean all this swimming; I'm really bushed.
• Adam: Sounds like we got here just in time. / Teela: Sounds? Hmf. That's funny - I don't hear anything.

• He-Man punches the viewer: To smash some razorfin robots
• He-Man juggles his sword: As he invites Mer-Man to a duel
• He-Man runs away from the viewer: As he rushes to rescue Teela from her bell jar
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: The picking up part of the sequence is used to show him lifting the bell jar off Teela

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by Man-at-Arms
Duncan refers us to brave real-life explorers and pioneers who are similar to Hovar and Justin, without pointing out the main difference that Hovar managed to do all that exploring while also endangering the life of his son.

Historians, archaeologists, and digging up old cities
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1
Mer-Man's in charge!: By process of elimination (he's the only villain here).

• The centipede creature that attacks the camp in the opening of the episode is identical to the "crawler" that got Duncan in MU022. A flying beast that appears a few seconds later is identical to a tar swamp critter seen in both MU024 and MU018.
• Orko disappears himself out of the tangled kite line that's tied him up, but leaves his eyeballs behind for a moment. Eugh! When he reappears, as only a hat and ears, in Duncan's lab, he doesn't seem to know where he has teleported himself to, which raises some questions about how he translocates.
• VHO stands for Variable High-frequency Oscillator. It's simple!
• I was just discussing in MU031 how He-Man almost never disguises himself. In this episode we get to see Adam try on a disguise... and how!
• Adam introduces the kraken that attacks their ship as "the biggest sea monster on Eternia." I hope he's right - hard to imagine a bigger one!
• No Battle Cat in this episode; though Cringer appears in the opening, he does not accompany Adam on his stowaway adventure.
• In a rare segue from his transformation dialogue, after he's done saying "I have the power!" He-Man adds, "Now to see what I can do with it."
• We see He-Man dive into the water using the same animation from MU028. His swimming stroke was also seen before in MU028. We see the same diving sequence adapted for Mer-Man near the end of the episode. Teela also dives into the water horizontally, but I don't think He-Man's animation was copied for hers.
• He-Man's swimming sequence shows off his ability to hold his breath for extended periods - even through a commercial break! He also does a lot of internal monologuing while he's swimming around, which is unusual but logical, given that he can't exactly talk aloud to himself underwater.
• Hovar, we learn, is the Royal Historian of Eternia. In a later episode (MU040), we'll see a different character (Melaktha) in a similar position (Royal Archaeologist). Melaktha will hang around for much longer than Hovar, appearing in six episodes - five more than Hovar; this is his only MOTU showing.
• The kraken proves an impressively tough foe for He-Man; see especially the moment when it smashes him against a cave wall with its fist. That looked like it hurt! In their first battle He-Man has to let the kraken defeat itself by bringing the cave down around it.
• Mer-Man wields a laser-firing trident in this episode which was not included with his action figure.
• Interesting point: the characters make a big deal out of the fact that the VHO emits a sound that is in a range that only animals can hear; but Mer-Man clearly puts his hands over his ears when He-Man points the device at him. Also, the thing that draws Adam to Duncan and Teela in the first place is the very loud noise that he hears while they are working on the VHO. Wha?
• In the odd category of "taking too long to reveal the names of supporting characters," it takes a good portion of the episode's runtime before we learn that Hovar's son's name is Justin.
• Usually the PSA features some cut-in footage of earlier scenes from the episode, and this one does that as well; but it also features some clips of He-Man and Teela wandering around in what is apparently meant to be an unexplored wilderness, and which didn't come from the episode at all. The eagle-eyed archivists among us will recognize the mountain they gaze towards as the main geologic feature of Dragasaur Isle from MU008's "The Time Corridor."

• Note that the episode is at pains to point out that Hovar and his son are not hurting the creatures by shooting lasers at them, just scaring them off. I guess Hovar took his son along to the incredibly dangerous wild island so that the kid could shoot guns. Yes - sounds very ethical!
• The napping Cringer in the kite scene has no eyebrows. By the way, I love that Adam is using Orko as a kite, presumably with Orko's agreement.
• I think it was pretty cruel of Teela to demonstrate the VHO on poor Cringer. He didn't do nothin!
• Over a long period just before deciding to create this database, I (re)watched all of the old episodes through, and there were some particular moments that stuck with me very strongly. This episode has one of them, when Prince Adam disguises himself as an Eternian sailor. Well - "disguise" is perhaps overstating the case; though the ship's captain seems to initially mistake Adam for a regular swab, the prince is just wearing his usual pink and purple outfit topped off with a sailor cap. Is it unfairly stereotyping to point out just how gay he and the actual members of the navy (whose uniform includes a sleeveless, midriff-baring top) appear in this sequence? I suppose it is, but at the least, can we agree this is a strong candidate for my non-categorized category, Homoerotic Undertones?
• The kraken is probably the best of several very fun monster designs in this episode. It's only vaguely reminiscent of the same-named beast from 1981's Clash of the Titans (a movie I've had call to mention before, in MU006) - Filmation's kraken is more chicken-like in the head and more dragon-like in the body, and is colored in fiery and pink hues instead of the film's muddy green ones. It also - rather dubiously, given its aquatic environment - sports a pair of wings. However, it does have an extra pair of arms, just like the one in Titans.
• The newest, fastest ship in the Eternian navy remains unnamed and apparently is sunk on its maiden voyage. The next one could use a supply of kraken repellent! (We will see this ship design used again in MU051; though the next iterations will manage to avoid krakens, they will nevertheless all meet similar fates to this first one.)
• I like how this episode reminds us that Beast Man already has the power to control animals, in an oblique reference made as Mer-Man somewhat unusually plots to supercede all his evil friends - even Skeletor. One would have thought that Mer-Man at least had some influence over creatures of the sea; but apparently not, since he has to build robot fish to attack He-Man! This seems like an odd thing for a lord of the sea to do, and I suspect it was done more so that the writers could happily let He-Man smash those razorfins to bits. (Mer-Man does seem to have control over the kraken, if nothing else; and we will see him definitively controlling sea creatures in other episodes, notably MU042.)
• He-Man explores the sunken ship, ostensibly to find Teela, but doesn't seem to do a very thorough job and gets distracted by the razorfins. He finds the homing device and follows it on what seems like a whim, without any real idea that it's going to lead him to Teela. He's darn lucky that plot armor kept her from drowning!
• I'd like to know just how He-Man is able to "follow the signal" of the tiny homing device that he somehow finds floating in the wide open ocean. Does he have a sonar machine inside that tanned head of his? (Later, it appears that he uses a hot/cold system with the device, watching for it to glow when he's pointed in the right direction.)
• There are a couple of moments that show characters floating on the water, but somehow sitting in place as though they are standing on dry land. They don't even need to paddle to stay afloat!
• Mer-Man wants to control animals with the VHO, and is clearly unable to do so without it, since he has to use robotic razorfins. So, how do we explain the initial appearance of the kraken? Mer-Man seems to use the VHO to control it later; but what made it attack the Eternian ship in the first place? The dubious homing signal? Later, after Mer-Man has lost the VHO, he is able to get on the kraken's back and ride it around. So I guess he and the kraken are bosom buddies already - maybe they went to school together.
• Thrill as He-Man stuffs the VHO into the back of his hairy underwear! Fortunately it falls into the water later, ensuring it has been rinsed off.
• Pretty much everyone who holds the VHO drops it at least once. Maybe Duncan should add some non-skid grips to the handle.
• When the rescue party finally arrives on Selkie Island, just in the nick of time, Justin says, "Father! It's Teela!" Hovar adds, "And.... and... Adam!" as though he's had to really struggle to come up with the prince's name. It wouldn't be surprising - he's a pretty forgettable type of guy!
• In this episode Adam/He-Man does a particularly poor job of hiding his secret identity. He-Man appears on the Eternian ship in the middle of the open ocean, just as Adam is nowhere to be found. But no one questions his seemingly miraculous appearance, and Teela never worries or asks about where her royal charge has gotten to. Just after the kraken has been disposed of, He-Man goes down into the water to retrieve the VHO and then Adam reappears clutching that very device - and Adam's stammered explanation that "He-Man gave it to me" is very unconvincingly delivered. He then raises Teela's suspicions at the end of the episode by clumsily letting slip that He-Man "saved the VHO." His attempts to explain himself are so flimsy as to be worse than useless; we just have to hope that Cringer's remark about being glad he missed out on the fun is enough of a distraction for Teela to forget about the whole thing.
• By the way, given that they managed to sink the best ship they had, one wonders how Teela and Adam managed to get back to Eternos. Maybe Duncan sent a rescue ship for the rescue ship?