Misty Stewart

Lou Kachivas

With the insidious Darkdream freed from his rocky prison, and a magical eclipse shedding nightmarish darkness over all of Eternia, He-Man has but one option left: to declare war on the moon!

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

Evil-Lyn

slime monsters, Darkdream, netherbats, Tavor

sky sleds, photon cannon, Battle Ram, Attak Trak, Wind Raider

Prince Adam and Cringer, lost in the hallways of Snake Mountain and lacking the power sword, are being pursued by hungry slime monsters! Walls appear in front of them - there's no way out! Fortunately, it's all just a bad dream; but, as Cringer and Adam soon discover, they were both having the same dream. All around the palace, everyone else is having nightmares as well, which we realize have been caused by Darkdream, a villainous creature who was previously sealed in a Chamber of Darkness, but seems to have escaped somehow. Our heroes learn this because Darkdream helpfully tells them himself: he appears personally in both Randor's and Duncan's dreams to boast and threaten them.

Awake and assembled the next day, our heroes pool their knowledge and try to decide how their enemy could have gotten free. Cringer accidentally awakes Orko, who's been sleeping the morning away. He complains that explosions in the distant Crimson Valley have been keeping him awake at night. The heroes realize that the Crimson Valley is just by Darkdream's chamber, so the explosions might have broken the seal on his prison. Teela and Adam rush off to the valley on sky sleds to investigate. On the way there, Darkdream's power takes hold of Teela again and she falls asleep - in mid-air! Adam is forced to land his own sky sled and turn into He-Man to rescue her. Turned to Adam again, he and a safely grounded Teela find the cracked rock in the valley, confirming their suspicions. They return to the palace to confer with Man-at-Arms.

In the meantime, that nasty Darkdream has assembled his magic helpers, Evil-Lyn and Tavor (a helmeted, elfin fellow with a very full beard). His prison may be (mostly) open, but Darkdream needs it to be nice and dark outside so he can work his evil. The problem is, Evil-Lyn isn't strong enough to cast eternal darkness over the planet, and Tavor has had his (sometimes error-prone) powers curtailed on Eternia by the Sorceress. The pair put their heads together and realize that Tavor can safely cast spells on things that aren't on Eternia. They come back to Darkdream with a plan to move the moon so it permanently blocks the sun. Darkdream gives the OK and Tavor, with Evil-Lyn's help, does the magic. Full-time darkness means Darkdream can slither out and do whatever he likes - go shopping, visit some museums, even take over Castle Grayskull!

The first intimation our heroes have that something is up is when they go up - up to the ceiling. Everyone floats around Duncan's workshop. Then they fall to the ground and are hardly able to lift themselves up. Gravity is having mood swings! A look out the window shows them the cause: a magic eclipse of the sun. What's more, the moon seems to be getting closer and closer! It's headed straight for them! This kind of trouble calls for a visit to the Sorceress. Unfortunately, the Sorceress has her own problems. In Grayskull with Stratos (were they having tea?), she sees the skies darken and turns into Zoar to investigate, a solicitous Stratos following at her heels (er, talons). Zoar spots the freed Darkdream and his cronies approaching, but they spot her, too, and she is soon nabbed by Darkdream's netherbats. Stratos attempts to assist but only manages to get himself caught as well.

This is when the cavalry shows up, in the form of Adam, Duncan, Cringer, and Teela. They give Darkdream the bad news about the impending moon crash. Adam and Duncan are the only ones who realize that the villains have actually captured the Sorceress in her bird form, and she psychically swears them to secrecy, urging them to find a way to stop Darkdream and the approaching moon that doesn't require her magical assitance. They decide to make use of the same substance, nodroxine, which was used to blast open Darkdream's chamber - this time to push the moon back into orbit. But to get the explosives close enough, they'll need He-Man (and Battle Cat)!

Meanwhile, the bad guys have realized they are in real trouble with this whole moon problem, because Tavor has no power left to undo his mistake. Evil-Lyn makes the smart move and just teleports away. Darkdream, who apparently lacks this handy ability, decides he's going to steal the Wind Raider to make his escape; our heroes would naturally prefer to stop him. Darkdream zaps Teela with sleep rays again (she's going to be very well-rested after this episode), but a wily Man-at-Arms avoids the projectiles and blows up his own vehicle with a grenade. A newly appeared He-Man, on Battle Cat, scoops Teela up and takes her to the top of a nearby hill, where she awakens and assists him in filling a hollowed-out rock with the boom juice (she does the filling, He-Man does the hollowing).

Fortunately for all of Eternia, He-Man judged just the right amount of nodroxine and throws his rock in just the right way: the explosion pushes the moon back into place without any lasting damage, the aftershocks free Zoar, and the sun comes out again, neatly dissolving Darkdream, his netherbats, and Tavor (who I guess was also some kind of nightmare guy, or whatever).

End with a Joke: With the evil dispelled and the moon back in place, Man-at-Arms points out to his friends in the palace that it's a beautiful day and they should go out and enjoy it. Orko suggests a picnic, and a laden picnic basket emerges from his head. Unfortunately it is quickly followed by a rain cloud, which is magnetically drawn to the top of Duncan's head. The Trollan's attempts to conjure away the cloud end with Duncan trapped in a bubble. Orkooooooo!

• Cringer (dodging the swipe of a sludge monster's claw): Watch it - this is my only suit!
• Darkdream (endeavoring to be an inspiring boss to his minions): Impossible? Well, do it anyway.
• Orko: Well, a guy can't get any sleep around here, what with all the explosions.
• Darkdream: Well, what piece of priceless evil have you conjured up?
• Darkdream: The last time you cast a spell, Tavor, the Banshee Jungle turned into a desert. / Tavor: Well, everybody makes mistakes.
• Darkdream (reacting to the explosion on the moon): Who could have done that? / Man-at-Arms: Only one person: our last hope, He-Man.

• Adam runs away from the viewer: Fleeing slime monsters
• Sorceress spreads/unspreads her wings: To turn into Zoar
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: After transforming
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: Just the picking up part, as he prepares to hurl a rock at the moon

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence); One full
Variation - has an inserted Cringer shot and the line: "Oh, here it comes again!"

Brought to you by Teela
Teela assures us that while bad dreams might seem real, they aren't any more real than, say, cartoons, or cartoon characters - like her! (Actually she mentions stories and fairy tales, not cartoons, and advises us to talk over bad dreams with a loved one if they bother us.)

Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1
Evil-Lyn power punches the glass ceiling: Lyn is away from Skeletor in this episode. She's subservient instead to Darkdream; but I like her moxie at the end, when she ditches her male companions in favor of saving herself.

• In the opening nightmare, Cringer says, "Battle Cat, where are you when I need you?" - another case of a character speaking about their alter ego as though it is a different person.
• Based on the camera panning in the opening nightmare sequences, all of the heroes' bedrooms are arranged along one side of the same hallway in the palace.
• I've noted in previous episodes (especially MU044) the fact that our heroes never seem to change their clothes, even for the most sensible of reasons (for instance, if they're entering an icy region where they might perhaps feel more comfortable if their legs weren't completely bare). In this episode, I get my come-uppance, as we see almost all of our main repeating characters dressed in their pajamas! We also catch a glimpse of all their bedrooms (we've seen Teela's and Adam's before, but never the king and queen's, and never Duncan's). Randor wears a fetching Victorian sleeping cap, complete with tassel (note also that, in 50s sitcom style, the king and queen sleep in separate beds! We will see the royal couple's bedroom again in MU084). Duncan (as I theorized in MU044) does, indeed, look very strange without his helmet on. Adam, of course, is in his standard white wife-beater, with Cringer sleeping at his side - as we saw them both most recently in MU043. Teela wears a revealing pink number which seems to split open just below her chest.
• Note that while the decoration behind Teela's bed looks very similar to the one we saw in MU033, it is not quite the same; and her bed appears to have changed.
• We get some fun back story for our main villian's minions in their first scene together. Tavor, the elf-like magician, has had his powers taken away to some extent by the Sorceress. Also - and more exciting from a lore standpoint - Darkdream threatens to return Evil-Lyn's wand "to the black pool from which it came." This seems to suggest that Darkdream was somehow instrumental in getting Evil-Lyn her powers!
• Duncan claims that "Orko can hear a pin drop in the Tanglewood Forest," an ability of his that we've never had the slightest inkling of before. It seems like this incredible sense of hearing might have been useful on some other adventure... Unless I'm mistaken, we'll never hear about this super hearing of Orko's ever again.
• When discussing the explosions Orko overheard in the Crimson Valley, the heroes consult a big map of Eternia on a screen. Though this version of the map looks like a poorly photocopied sketch, it is essentially identical to the prettier, full-color map we've already seen in MU040 and MU034. This one is cut off at the top, so we can't see the Ice Mountains; but it is wide enough to show us the full name of the "Evergreen Forest," which was cropped in the other versions. Though Crimson Valley is not labeled on the map, when the heroes gesture at the screen we get the idea that it is located somewhere to the west of the palace.
• We learn of the existence of "nodroxine," which (in the typical heedless He-Man love for superlatives) is described by Duncan as "the most powerful explosive on Eternia."
• In a similar shot to the one we were granted at the beginning of MU029's "Prince Adam No More," we see a fleet of vehicles parked at the base of the palace, including many sky sleds, Battle Rams, and Attak Traks (they don't have a garage?). Also, at the very beginning of the pan, we catch a glimpse of the photon cannon last seen defending Avion in MU016's "Reign of the Monster."
• In MU035's "The Sleepers Awaken," Teela was able to prod Adam to continue their sky sled patrol by challenging him to a race (though we learned in an aside that Adam was just faking his competitive spirit). In this episode, when she tries something similar, Adam refuses to rise to the bait, saying indifferently, "I'm afraid I'm not quite the pilot you are."
• He-Man has a couple of chances to demonstrate his full-out run in this episode, most excitingly when he is racing to catch Teela's pilotless sky sled.
• Speaking of maps - when the heroes are coping with the fact that Eternia's moon seems to be on a collision course with their planet, a map of Eternia's star system is shown behind Duncan. There's not much to get out of it since the map is unlabeled, but we see several planets with their satellites orbiting a central sun.
• In this episode we learn an interesting thing about the Sorceress's falcon form, which seems fairly obvious in retrospect but which has never been stated explicitly before: namely, Zoar is a secret identity and no one is supposed to know that the falcon is actually the Sorceress. In fact, according to the Sorceress, this secret is so important that it can't be revealed even at the risk of Eternia's destruction. Self-important much? And by the way, if this was such a big secret, you'd think the Sorceress would help keep it by - oh, I don't know - maybe not wearing a big bird hat everywhere she goes. The secret of the Sorceress's bird form will work against her in MU050 and MU108.
• Things that come out of Orko: a filled picnic basket and a tiny rain cloud.

• Animation error: When, in his nightmare, Cringer turns to the camera and says "They're still coming!" his eyebrows disappear. In a later scene, now awake, his eyebrows are colored orange instead of black (a frequent coloring error in the series).
• I found it amusing that, while the other charactes all somehow convey that they are dreaming when they speak in their sleep, Duncan's sleep-voice sounds exactly like it does when he's awake. "You're under arrest!" he yells, sitting up in bed. Classic Duncan!
• Darkdream calls some evil magicians he knows to help him shroud all of Eternia in darkness; but Tavor and Evil-Lyn complain that they don't have enough magical power. "Why have you called me here?" Lyn sulks. I'm wondering, too; in MU025's "Evilseed," when a desperate Sorceress decides the most powerful magicians in Eternia - even the evil ones - need to be called together to defeat the title character, it's Skeletor they call up, not Evil-Lyn. Where is old Bonehead when you need him?
• Adam and Teela show significantly different postures while riding their sky sleds. Adam flies with his entire lower body thrust forward, giving a profile like a backslash character. Teela, on the other hand, seriously sticks her butt out, just like a less-than symbol.
• As happens often (see MU044), He-Man's solo transformation sequence doesn't quite manage to cut off the beginning of his sword swing towards an absent Cringer.
• The darkness caused by the eclipse seems to have been depicted by painting all the outdoors scenes as though it were daylight, and then just turning down the brightness. As a result, almost the whole second half of the episode has a lot of very muddy, difficult-to-distinguish exterior scenes.
• Um, so what was Stratos doing hanging out with the Sorceress in Castle Grayskull? Is there something we should know about these two? Is Teela going to have a step-dad? I guess they have a lot in common, since they're both (literally) bird people.
• This episode is, surprisingly, chock-full of interesting lore, but much of it seems dubious and potentially contradictory. Example: Evil-Lyn has her wand taken away, then claims, "My powers are weakening this close to Grayskull. I must have my wand!" First of all, we have the implication, new to this episode, that much of Lyn's power resides in her wand - a weapon she often doesn't even have in other episodes. In one memorable episode (MU015 - which I believe is the first appearance of the item), He-Man twisted the wand into a pretzel over Lyn's wrists to trap her. What did that do to her powers? Secondly, there's the idea that anyone would have less power when near Grayskull, which seems counterintuitive. In fact, in the before-mentioned MU025, the concern of the heroes is that Skeletor's powers will be at their peak when he's inside Grayskull.
• One of my favorite scenes in the episode is when Evil-Lyn sees how things are going with the moon about to crash into Eternia. "There must be a way to escape," says Darkdream. Evil-Lyn retorts: "There is - for me!" and teleports out of there. Skeletor would be proud!
• He-Man and Teela get a nearly romantic split-second interaction, when she wakes from her Darkdream-induced sleep to find herself being held by He-Man on Battle Cat's back, and he gives her a little smile.
• So when Eternia's moon collides with the planet, what everyone should be expecting is full-on apocalypse, right? Neither heavenly body is going to survive this. Therefore, Darkdream's idea of escaping in the Wind Raider is very short-sighted. It's an air car, presumably meant only for traveling around the planet's atmosphere. He could fly away from the main impact of the collision, but that is only going to give him, at most, a couple minutes of extra safety. Maybe he was hoping to fly the Raider to the nearest space portal?
• My preceding objections notwithstanding, it was pretty bad-ass of Duncan to blow up his own car with a grenade to keep Darkdream from getting away.
• When Duncan is dodging Darkdream's sleep rays, it occurred to me that now would be the perfect time for our man-at-arms to whip out the electro-shield he invented for MU039's "Trouble in Arcadia." Yeah; whatever happened to that thing?
• It hardly seems necessary to point it out, but... you know... this whole "let's move the moon back into orbit by throwing an explosive rock at it." I mean, really. The rock clearly changes sizes between when they are filling it with nodroxine and when He-Man picks it up. What were those animators thinking? So illogical! (By the way, if this instance of shifting the moon bothers you, maybe you should just entirely skip MU091, where He-Man executes some even zanier lunar shenanigans!)
• There comes a point when watching He-Man where you have to ask yourself whether it is futile to continue expecting logic and lucidity in plots. Obivously the show was developed in an age where no one felt a need to be sensible in a show that was, after all, only for children. Regardless, I intend to persist in my insane desire to point out these logical flaws. In our current case, having sailed past the "he blew up the moon" problem, I ask: if Darkdream is dissolved and banished by daylight, why was he imprisoned in the "Chamber of Darkness"? Isn't that the kind of place he would enjoy living? Why not just shine a light on him and have done with it?