Larry DiTillio

Ernie Schmidt

A mishap during Orko's spell-casting causes his magic powers to disappear! The poor, bereft Trollan will need He-Man's help and a portal to another world to try to get them back. More important, though, is that he learn a lesson about how friendship is not bought with tricks and gifts...

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

N/A

bug, gronk, Eternian guards, Tick-Tock, three-eyed giant, Zalt, robot lions, rat-elk

pink bubble, Zalt's silver disc

Orko is in his room, whipping up a magic spell to increase his powers. It involves summoning the magic out of a many-sided crystal. You'd think that Orko wouldn't need any help to screw this up, but he gets it anyway, in the form of what we learn is called a "gronk." The two-legged, fluffy critter chases its bug-like prey into Orko's room and jumps in front of the crystal just as the spell is taking effect. A huge explosion results! It's loud enough that Adam and Man-at-Arms hear it and come running. They find Orko's room in ruins, and have to extract the bemused Trollan from a pot. Orko assures them he is unharmed and they leave him amid the wreckage, apparently so that he can clean it all up by himself.

Later, Orko is in the royal throne room with the mystic globes of Rama Stama, trying to show off some tricks. His rhyming magical words have absolutely no effect, however, and he runs off with a wail, proclaiming that his magic is gone. Adam, Teela, and Cringer follow him back to his room to console him, assuring the magician that they love him even without his magic, and he shouldn't feel he needs to win friends with tricks and abilities. Orko remains heartbroken. A compassionate Prince Adam has thought of a person he can ask for help: he takes Cringer and Orko off to Castle Grayskull to consult the Sorceress. She visually simulates Orko's accident and decides that all of Orko's powers must have gone into the gronk, and the gronk has gone into another world. She can open a portal for them into the correct world, but it won't stay open forever, so they'll have to be quick. Adam transforms himself and Cringer and the trio head through the portal.

On the other side, they find themselves in a land even more fantastical than Eternia, which they learn is named Omiros. The first person (or people) they meet is a two-headed, four-armed magician named Tick-Tock, who believes they are demons but is eventually placated enough to tell the heroes what they need to know. The gronk, it appears, was captured by an evil sorcerer named Zalt, who is using its infused magic to rule and do evil stuff. Tick-Tock helps our heroes out by conjuring a big pink bubble that flattens to a floating disc and carries them to Zalt's fortress, Castle Eckle.

He-Man makes short work of the three-eyed giant manning the castle's front gate, and our heroes get inside, where they quickly spot the gronk in a cage on a pedestal. The cage is electrified, however, and a wicked disembodied voice greets them. It's Zalt - who soon appears, revealing himself to be another many-armed human (though with only one head). He sticks the heroic trio into shielded cones that even He-Man can't escape; but our muscle-man uses his brain muscle and tricks the power-hungry Zalt into taking the power sword. When the sorcerer raises it aloft, He-Man shouts "By the power of Grayskull!" and Zalt gets zapped, causing the imprisoning cones to vanish and the gronk's cage to fall open. A ticked-off Zalt then tries to defeat the heroes with a pride of robotic blue lions; but smashing robots is He-Man and Battle Cat's specialty. Leaving the lions in a shattered pile of fragments and bolts, the good guys nab the precious gronk, heave up the portcullis, and hop their bubble back to the portal - with a furious Zalt in fiery pursuit!

Back out front of Tick-Tock's house, a last battle with Zalt ends with the sorcerer crashing through the tree Tick-Tock was hiding in. The heroes' successful return home seems assured; but that ding-dang gronk spots a weird rat-elk creature and decides to go chase it. Orko, desperate to regain his powers and heedless of He-Man's warnings, shoots off in pursuit, and the timed portal home vanishes before he can recover the gronk. It seems that Orko's selfishness has left not only himself but his friend and Eternia's protector stranded in this other world forever! Not to mention the tiger!

Fortunately for them, Tick-Tock is also a formidable spell-caster (for instance, he's slapped Zalt into a little cage), and was studying the portal. He can just about reopen it himself, and finally manages it with a little magical boost from the Orko-flavored gronk. He-Man gratefully gives Tick-Tock a many-handed handshake. Home again, home again! With some off-screen help from the Sorceress, Orko's powers are back where they belong, and he's free to return to the throne room and resume his interrupted magic show with those mystical orbs. It seems they hold gifts for the royal couple (a ring for Randor and a tiara for Marlena). Randor encourages Duncan to accept a gift as well.

End with a Joke: It's high time we get back to classic Orko hi-jinks; his attempt to give a hat to Man-at-Arms results in the old dousing-of-the-head-with-water gag. Adam: "Well, at least Orko's magic is back to - normal." Aahh, sweet, predictable familiarity.

• Duncan: Not that I'm counting, but that's the third "ka-blooie" this month! / Orko: Magic is tricky stuff. Hey - "tricky" stuff - pretty funny, huh? (Duncan grimaces in pain)
• Adam: You don't have to amuse people or give them gifts to be loved. You're a special person, Orko. / Cringer: Very special. Too special, sometimes.
• Giant (to He-Man): You broke my favorite club!

• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: Chasing after Orko and the gronk
• Adam smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: To make his final comment

One full
Variation - a quick cut to Cringer before his transformation, so he can say, "Uh-oh; he means me!"

Brought to you by Orko
Orko reminds us of the line from the episode, spoken by Adam, which covers the episode's lesson: you shouldn't have to bribe people to be your friend. But it's totally OK to sell toys to kids using a cartoon.

Orko-specific lore: I suppose I will group this episode in this category, since it focuses entirely on Orko and his troubles; but it doesn't really tell us anything new about his character, his people, or his homeworld.
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1: On this one we can all agree.

• This episode affords us possibly the most detailed look at Orko's room, last seen in MU035 - though, oddly enough, his very unique bed is not in evidence in the opening sequence (we do see it later). When we do see his bed, it boasts a pair of very odd-looking bed posts at its foot (they look like blue olives on toothpicks) that I don't remember having seen before. Orko looks to have the classic "saw a lady in half" box, complete with inserted saw, which he is using as a piece of furniture.
• The Sorceress's all-purpose window makes another appearance, to dramatically re-enact Orko's magical mishap.
• We will see the character design for the "bug" that the gronk chases again, as "Pookie," in MU083. As for the gronk, we'll see that again, too, as the Eternian pet omaran, Ommy, in MU123. (Interesting choice of taxonomy there - omaran - as it sounds like the world of Omiros where the heroes track the gronk in this episode. This may or may not have been intentional, though it means very little since the gronk is clearly not native to Omiros.) Zalt and Tick-Tock's designs will also be reused along with many others as part of a menagerie in MU065.
• Another timed gateway into another dimension... world... universe? He-Man and Battle Cat have been through this before, in MU020 (another Orko-themed episode); though in that story they also had to shrink to fit through it!
• He-Man proves that, every once in a while, he can actually be fairly devious and clever, when he tricks Zalt into getting zapped with the power sword.
• The episode I'm most strongly reminded of after watching this one is MU019's "Quest for He-Man," where an amnesiac He-Man is sent to a bizarre alternate world full of a completely new cast of characters. Frankly, that episode's Plundor the Spoiler was a much more enjoyable villain than whiny, ineffectual Zalt.
• Orko's lesson here about not trying to buy friends is very similar to the lesson he already learned with relation to Adam's selfish cousin Edwina, in MU018. Though it does rather make one want to shake one's head in despair, it's not particularly surprising that Orko needs to learn the same lesson twice.

• Animation error: When Cringer covers his head in consternation at the prospect of travelling to another universe, his right eyebrow is colored orange while his left remains the usual black.
• The "gronk" (and the bug it chases into Orko's room) reminds me of classic fantasy critters I've seen before, but I'm not sure where... One similar design I was able to come up with was Jeff Smith's main characters in his much-loved Bone series. Smith didn't create those iconic characters in a vacuum, however. One likely source of inspiration is Dr. Seuss, who has surely drawn some gronk-like creatures in his time.
• Tick-Tock describes the gronk as having "spines down its back," but the animated version clearly doesn't. Sounds like a communication breakdown between the writers and the animators!
• The visit to Omiros gives Filmation's background painters their moment to really shine. There are some great fantasy landscapes in this episode, reminiscent of Roger Dean's album covers (if you don't know who that is, find some album art for the band Yes).
• Zalt sometimes has four and sometimes six arms. I'm willing to believe this is just the way he works, and not an animation error.
• Zalt's castle is, if you can believe it, not the first one we've seen in the series built to look like a spider (or many-legged creature of some kind). We saw this style of architecture before, and with more on-the-nose appropriateness, in MU023 with the evil witch Spydra's lair. Note the buildings are not identical, just similar.
• There is plenty of magic in this episode from Orko and from Zalt, but let's not forget about Tick-Tock! That guy (those guys?) managed to re-open the portal back to Eternia, which was a tough job even for the Sorceress! Don't let his name give you any unreasonable expectations, though: you'll get no sexy dances from this Tick-Tock.
• This episode has the feel of having been padded out. There are many long panning shots, including the opening establishing shot and the ending fade-out, and many pans in between. It's nice, as it gives us a chance to enjoy the exotic settings; but it's also an indicator that the story is somewhat light on content.
• Given my previous comment, it seems odd that we don't get to witness the Sorceress juice Orko's magic back out of that pesky gronk. Maybe the process wasn't very pretty!
• The idea of Orko without his magic had me thinking a little about Orko's relationship to magic. The show itself is at pains to present Orko as a bumbling, error-prone magician, who isn't very good at doing any of his tricks. But if you watch these episodes closely and look past his friends' wisecracks and his own bloopers, you'll find that while there are plenty of goofs from our Trollan friend, he is also a surprisingly successful and surprisingly powerful magical being. And that's the thing: it's not just his tricks but his actual body and existence that seem to constantly exude magic. Just look at the moment in this story right after the disaster that has ostensibly taken away his powers: Duncan and Adam have to get Orko out of the pot or urn he's been wedged into. They stretch him like taffy, but fail to release him. Duncan finally has to crack the pot like an egg, and Orko oozes out in a goopy puddle. That behavior seems pretty magical to me! Also there is my own sub-category, "things that come out of/go into Orko," which demonstrates amazing abilities that no one in-show bothers to single out. He is constantly pulling unlikely things out of his head, conjuring items out of nowhere, storing things inside himself, teleporting, floating, interacting with his own reflection - heck, in one episode he even effortlessly duplicated himself multiple times (MU009). (He also apparently has super hearing, according to MU046.) It's hard to imagine how Orko could ever truly lose all his magic, because that's who he is, regardless of this episode's lesson. What I'm saying is, when it comes to Orko, we should all be afraid - very afraid.