Story - J. Brynne Stephens, Teleplay - J. Brynne Stephens, Arthur Browne Jr.

Lou Zukor

Randor and He-Man must mediate as the Cave Dwellers and Tree People battle over possession of a weapon of mass destruction: a little girl!

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

N/A

Starchild, Palos and the Cave Dwellers, Willen and the Tree People, ogre, tickle trap, leaf monster, tangle tree

N/A

Adam and Cringer are lounging around the forest when they witness a little girl being pursued by two different groups of grown men - never a good sign. Cringer is robbed of what was surely going to be a really wonderful nap when a transformed He-Man zaps him into Battle Cat, and they leap into a very large and obvious hole that the girl has fallen into. Starchild uses magic to save herself from an ogre that's bothering her down there, but the effort leaves her sleepy and in danger from clinging vines in the Old Vine Jungle. He-Man rescues the kid, who is named Starchild, and having established that she has no parents and no clear guardian, decides to take her back to the palace.

At the palace, He-Man introduces Starchild to Orko and Teela, and their warm greetings elicit a pleasing glow from the kid. It's clear that she has some level of magic, so He-Man takes her to the king and queen. They are met there by Palos of the Cave Dwellers, one of the pursuing dopes from the beginning, who claims to be Starchild's caregiver and depicts the other set of dopes (Willen and the Tree People) as interfering villains. The Starchild clearly wants nothing to do with Palos and runs off. He-Man and Teela pursue her through the palace, so Starchild uses her powers to shut off the electricity (or whatever Eternians call their light energy). While He-Man goes down to the basement to start the generator running again, Palos explores Teela's bedroom and learns that she likes shiny crystals. A reunited He-Man and Teela discover Starchild, but are trapped in an energy field she generates, forcing He-Man to smash through the floor to escape.

Regrouping in the throne room, our heroes meet Willen of the Tree People, who pleads a similar case to that of Palos. The two guys almost come to blows, but Randor shuts them down and tells them to get back to searching for the kid. Palos takes the opportunity to butter up Teela with compliments on her beauty and bribes of a rose and shiny gem. It works, and she agrees to help search with him. They find Starchild, but the girl traps the pair in a big orb that floats to the top of a very high atrium, and He-Man has to show up to rescue them.

Meanwhile, Willen tries his own buttering up, helping Duncan to construct a sensor that will track Starchild. The pair join forces to search, but are immediately pinned down by a suspiciously malfunctioning laser defense system - again He-Man must show up to rescue them. Free to continue their search using technology, Duncan and Willen wander off; but He-Man has a different idea. Why not just put himself in the mind of a little girl? What would she do? The idea pays off at once, as He-Man locates Starchild crying behind a curtain. They have a heart-to-heart and He-Man is able to coax her back to the throne room.

It's clear that Starchild is a dangerous weapon and the Cave Dwellers and Tree People are fighting over her to gain military supremacy in their conflict. Starchild and He-Man accuse the two parties and Starchild runs off once again, this time finding a handy sewer grate that leads back to the Old Vine Jungle. A chastened Palos and Willen join forces and assist in the combined search, using their knowledge of the plants and caves to rescue Starchild and bring her once again back to safety in the throne room. Palos and Willen confess their desire for Starchild's powers but both claim that it was only for self-defense and to live in peace. Everyone having safely learned their lesson ("It was all a misunderstanding," He-Man brazenly claims), Starchild agrees to be jointly parented by both clans and He-Man winks at the camera.

End with a Joke: N/A (unless you think He-Man's wink at the very end was funny)

• Starchild: You people, you're always fighting over something; me, or... (walks directly into a hole and falls down) Ahh! Help me!
• He-Man: Battle Cat! Use your muscles!
• Randor (of Starchild): Looking at her almost makes me wish Adam was still a child. / Marlena: Adam will always be my child.
• Teela (to He-Man, who has just gotten zapped by Starchild's force field): Are you hurt? / He-Man: No, just a little shocked.
• He-Man: Well, let's see; if I were a little girl - frightened - lonely - what would I do?
• Willen (of the Starchild): She has certain "energies," my queen. If she does not learn to control them, she could accidentally destroy us all. ... / Starchild: I don't need teaching; they do. If they had my power, they'd destroy each other.
• He-Man (summing up the episode in a disturbingly facile and inaccurate way): So you see, it was all a simple misunderstanding.

• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Just after transforming, and again a few minutes later
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands in the Old Vine Jungle, and after rescuing a floating Teela and Palos
• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: A couple of times while looking for Starchild
• He-Man swings sword overhand: To open up the ball enclosing Teela and Palos
• He-Man juggles his sword: As he prepares to destroy Duncan's laser defense system
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer

One full

Brought to you by the Sorceress
Ignoring the Cold War undercurrents of the storyline, the Sorceress instead yammers on about some kind of mystical invisible power you have, similar to Starchild's, called "love," which can make people like you. Having finished her talk, she bids us goodbye and then awkwardly stands up from her throne, perhaps as a further cue for her audience to get the heck out.

Starchild episodes: That's right, Starchild will return! In an episode so much later than this one (MU125) that most viewers will have probably forgotten about her.
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1

• The "ogre" that menaces Starchild at the beginning of the story is clearly just a slightly shrunken Bakkull from MU006. Hi, Bakkull!
• The establishing scene at the palace with Orko summoning a ball on the steps is very reminiscent of his messing around while bored in the beginning of MU017's "Daimar the Demon" (an episode, incidentally, which was also written by J. Brynne Stephens).
• All the Cave Dwellers wear purple and all the Tree People wear green - for easy identification!
• Palos uses the interesting expression "By Eternia's heart" to express his worry over Starchild.
• He-Man pulls a "flash ball" out of... somewhere to light up a dark room. It's just what it sounds like. Palos - very appropriately, since he dwells in caves - uses a glowing crystal to light his way.
• The fact that the great majority of the episode is whiled away by having people blunder around the palace gives us a chance to see rooms that we've never seen before: He-Man visits the power generator, which seems to just be a giant wheel, Palos creeps around in Teela's bedroom and checks out her jewelry, and several characters explore a mysteriously high skylight, probably a lot more closely than they'd like.
• For more information about how power is delivered to all of Eternia, see MU042, "The Double Edged Sword," which introduces eternium.
• Orko's comment to the Cave and Tree leaders - "No fighting in the throne room" - puts me in mind of the memorable line from Doctor Strangelove: "You can't fight in here! This is the war room!" Believe it or not, there are other things about this story that remind me of the topics covered in that film - see my commentary.
• Palos is clearly voiced by John Erwin, since he sounds like a slightly whinier Prince Adam.
• Willen and Duncan are both voiced by Alan Oppenheimer, which means that Alan gets to talk to himself in the lab scene.
• In the scene in Duncan's lab, we once again get to see his incredibly exposed and unlocked armory, full of grenades and missiles, which Orko infiltrated to explosive effect in MU006.
• We also learn that Duncan isn't quite so careless as to leave his weaponry lying around completely undefended, since he has a laser defense system. It immediately backfires on him, of course... The lasers look just like security cameras.
• There is a lot of use of light and shadow when coloring the characters in this episode, which makes you realize how unusual that is. Most of the time the characters are filled in with flat colors to simplify the animation.
• We've certainly heard of the Crystal Sea before now, but at the end of the episode Queen Marlena references the Crystal Forest, which apparently is where the Tree People and Cave Dwellers live.

• Maybe Prince Adam hanging around in the Eternian jungle or forest is just like Batman lurking on rooftops in Gotham. It's where Adam seems to find all his plotlines!
• When Randor and Marlena get all nostalgic for babies while looking at Starchild and remember a young Adam, you'd think they'd instead recall his twin sister Adora... but I guess nobody's supposed to talk about her!
• Teela is inordinately amused at the fact that she mistakes He-Man for a threatening stranger while wandering the halls of the palace. In a later scene, Duncan laughs when he mistakes Willen for his daughter. I think Eternia is dying for a new tradition of stand-up comics to sharpen their senses of humor...
• I appreciate how, after having stomped his way to a lower level of the castle, He-Man immediately comments, "I'll fix the floor later." So few superheroes take responsibility for all the property damage they inflict - way to go, He-Man! Our hero will still be making notes to himself to fix the broken bits of Eternos in MU126.
• It's odd that even though the majority of the episode takes place in the palace, and Duncan was clearly in residence, we don't get to see him until a good thirteen minutes of the runtime have elapsed. He doesn't even appear in the background of the earlier throne room scenes.
• As Duncan is fiddling with his sensor at the desk, the coloring of his bracer flips from gold to green and back again.
• How did Willen of the Tree People, who presumably spends all his time hanging out in trees, become so experienced with technology that he can help Duncan complete his sensor?
• When He-Man overhears Duncan's call for help, he is hunched over in battle stance in the hallway. He turns to say something to Teela and Palos, his rotating upper body locked into its battle stance. It's an animation they've used many times before but somehow in this context it looks hilariously clunky.
• One of my favorite parts of the episode is when He-Man imagines himself as a little girl in order to find Starchild - and it works!
• According to my usual source for such things (Wiki Grayskull), Starchild is voiced by just about the only voice actor who does female voices on He-Man, Linda Gary. I actually think it's one of her best and most authentic performances. Even though Starchild is an irritating little thing, Gary does a very convincing job of conveying a frightened, innocent child. A particular highlight is her tearful one-on-one with He-Man near the end.
• I don't think I'm imagining the connection to the Cold War and the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) implied in this storyline. If you think of the Starchild as nukes (or some even more apocalyptic weapon) and Palos and Willen as representing the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it kind of works. This is probably as close as He-Man will ever get to dealing with contemporary political issues!
• You really wonder how the joint custody of the Starchild is going to work. Will she spend alternate weeks with her two dads?
• While the story presented here has some interesting implications and is somewhat thought provoking, I wish there had been more imaginative content than the repetitive chasing of Starchild through the Vine Jungle, then through the palace, and then through the Vine Jungle again, punctuated by occasional and seemingly random visits to the throne room. The story seems to go in circles, chasing its own tail, until the required amount of time has elapsed and we can safely claim that everyone has learned their lesson.