Larry DiTillio

Gwen Wetzler

Ships of the Eternian navy have been mysteriously vanishing at sea. Man-at-Arms and Prince Adam put themselves in danger on the waves to solve the mystery, whose solution involves a legendary underwater city, a missing princess, several monsters - and Mer-Man!

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

Mer-Man

Eternian naval officer, giggling women, Aquatican soldiers and citizens, Shalandor, morbos, Princess Nami, unnamed monster

Eternian ships, shark-shaped Aquatican ship

We look on in horror as an Eternian ship is sucked into a swirling vortex of doom! Fade to the royal palace, where King Randor is listening to his advisor tell him about all the ships disappearing out on the seas. When Man-at-Arms tries to give his opinion, he keeps getting interrupted by feminine laughter. Two giggling ladies of the court are nearby, being chased by Cringer and a blindfolded Prince Adam. Adam blunders about and, ignoring the warnings of his pet, finally lays hands on someone's shoulders, crying "Gotcha!" What he has is a very disappointed and irate King Randor, who tells his son to get the heck out so he can try to do his kingly duties protecting Eternia.

Later, a more understanding Man-at-Arms (who knows that Adam's philandering is all for show - probably) explains the vanishing vessels that are vexing the king, and Adam proposes to accompany Duncan on a seaborne mission to get to the bottom of the problem (and, as it happens, the sea!). After convincing his father to grant permission, and over the strenuous objections of Cringer, Adam sets off over the Harmony Sea with his cat and Duncan on a mostly remote-controlled vessel that looks exactly like the last one we saw getting wrecked. The similarity proves prophetic, since just after spotting a beautiful underwater city on their sonoscope, the heroes feel their ship being pulled under by a whirlpool. Adam changes himself to He-Man to release Duncan from some wreckage that has him pinned, but the pair (along with Battle Cat) are nevertheless pulled under the waves!

They regain consciousness in an underwater chamber and are met by an unfriendly group of fishlike guards. The fish men have a double-seahorse crest on their shields which makes Duncan realize they are in the legendary city of Aquatica. Biding their time, the heroes allow themselves to be led at weapon-point through richly decorated and bejeweled halls to an impressive throne, where they meet a green-skinned old man who accuses these surface people of attacking the Aquaticans, necessitating the retributive sinking of the Eternian vessels. Before He-Man or Duncan can defend themselves or get any further explanations, a horn signals the arrival of the city's ruler - it's Mer-Man! It seems he has filled the governmental void left by a missing princess; and he has designs on all of Eternia.

Now usually, one minion of Skeletor would not pose much of a problem for He-Man and his friends. Unfortunately, with Mer-Man's position comes ownership of the Pearl of Power, giving him the ability to easily restrain the trio of surface dwellers. Mer-Man puts the tied-up Eternians into Aquatica's arena to face the morbos, a giant lobster with a zappy trident-tipped tail. Looking out at the sea of glazed Aquatican faces populating the arena, our heroes realize that Mer-Man is using the Pearl to put everyone under a hypnotic spell of obedience, and playing on their ingrained suspicions of surface men. The morbos proves a challenging enemy, but in the end is no real problem for He-Man & co. - they leave the critter on its back on top of a squirming Mer-Man and force their way out. They soon find themselves cornered by a pack of angry, armed fish men, however, and it seems there is nowhere left to turn.

Luckily, the wall they're backed up against squirts squid ink over the guards, and the elderly chamberlain Shalandor, who was watching the heroes in the arena and has decided to assist, sneaks them out through a secret door. He leads them to an underwater transport and explains that he needs their help overthrowing Mer-Man, from whose Pearl powers he is thankfully magically immune. To make the coup successful they will need to recover Princess Nami, who Shalandor happens to know was captured by Mer-Man and is being guarded by a powerful monster in a cave nearby. He-Man and Duncan agree to go face the monster while a swimming-averse Battle Cat takes a powder in the ship with Shalandor.

With the episode runtime getting on, He-Man makes quick work of the hulking monster, who has been lurking near the bell-jar-encased princess. Leaving the monster buried underneath the rubble of the collapsed cave ceiling, the heroes rush the princess back to Aquatica's throne room, knock down Mer-Man, and wrest the Pearl of Power from his fins. The fishy citizens are released from the spell and pleased to have their princess returned; all seems resolved, until Mer-Man makes a break for it! He runs for the whirlpool ray which has been the cause of all the ship sinkings, reverses the controls, and then destroys them with a blast from his trident. He-Man arrives and snatches the villain, but it's too late: the whirlpool will now destroy Aquatica! Time for the power of Grayskull to pull out a farcical fourth-quarter victory. He-Man grabs hold of the outer rail of the city and does laps, spinning the whole outer ring widdershins to the whirlpool, thus cancelling its effect. Everyone is saved! And He-Man is only a little bit dizzy. In a closing audience, the princess humbly apologizes to the heroes on behalf of her kingdom, for making assumptions about surface people and murdering all those sailors. Oopsie!

End with a Joke: N/A (unless you count Orko's humorous appearance and papal claim of infallibility at the end of the PSA)

• Adam (blindfolded and clutching his father, believing him to be a beautiful maiden): Ah, gotcha! / Cringer: The only thing you've got is trouble!
• Cringer (unimpressed by the readings of Man-at-Arms's sonoscope): Some adventure; call me when you've got something that catches fish.
• King Randor (nixing Adam's request to go to sea): But I'm afraid it's much too dangerous. / Cringer: Right. Absolutely right. / Adam: I think a prince should be ready to face danger to protect the kingdom. / Cringer: Wrong. Absolutely wrong.
• Cringer: I'm the Prince's best friend. / Adam: You're also a big coward. / Cringer: That's what I do best. (Yes it is, buddy. Yes it is. Don't ever stop!)
• Adam (enjoying the sea air): See, Cringer? Not as bad as you thought it would be, is it? / Cringer (trying to keep from puking over the side of the ship): It's worse!
• Princess Nami: If we had not mistrusted you surface people in the first place, Mer-Man could never have tricked us so easily.

• Adam laughs, head back: At Cringer's fish fixation
• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: Just the battle-ready part, to show him swinging his sword to save Duncan; later, part of the running sequence from this loop is used, again to show He-Man saving Duncan
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: Or in this case a metal beam; and later, again, to throw a column; and a third time, to actually throw a rock
• He-Man rolls along the ground: To get under the morbos
• He-Man spins the morbos in a circle
• He-Man runs away from the viewer: As he escapes the arena; and again, as he runs up to the princess's jar
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: To chase down Mer-Man

One full

Brought to you by Man-at-Arms and Orko
Man-at-Arms gives us the old "don't judge a book by its cover" lesson (see MU012's PSA), in this case referencing the Aquaticans' blanket suspicion of surface dwellers. Orko magically appears to add that it's what's inside a person that really counts. In a rare admission, Man-at-Arms tells the Trollan he is "absolutely right."

Mer-Man's in charge!: This episode is my strongest candidate so far for this category; naturally enough, since I invented the category based on this episode. But looking back, I was able to assign it to a couple of other episodes (the landmark MU006, which comes up a lot, and MU032, which has a somewhat similar plot and very similar ships to this one).
Games and gladiators: Though the sequence in the Aquatican arena makes up only a few minutes of the story's runtime, for now I'm considering that long enough to qualify this episode in the "Games and gladiators" category.
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1

• With some very slight design tweaks, the ship seen at the beginning of this episode and the one used later are other iterations of the ill-fated "fastest ship in the Eternian navy," from MU032. All the crafts meet very similar fates!
• Randor's exclamation at his son's misbehaving is "What in the name of the Ancients?" which calls to mind the Eternian Elders mentioned in MU007 and MU016, or more obviously the "ancients" of MU011's Sword of the Ancients or the ancient Eternians of other time travel and archaeology-themed episodes.
• Up until the beginning of this episode, I have had to make a lot out of some very subtle hints and facial expressions to pull any kind of romance or love into the show, particularly with regard to our main characters. He-Man and Teela have exchanged some glances and smiles that could be interpreted as sappy, and Teela once seemed jealous of Adam when he was strolling with the Singer Celice in MU022. MU024's "Wizard of Stone Mountain" brought us a romantic plot for Teela, but she didn't care for the lovesick (and frankly dickish) Mallek. It seemed like Princess Rhea in MU031 was mooning all over He-Man, but though he acted agreeable enough and promised to return, we haven't seen any evidence of him going back to Operon. The only similar suggestion we've had of Adam fraternizing with floozies before now was the reference to "Lady Amanda" in the beginning of MU034 - which, it just so happens, was also a Larry DiTillio script. Larry seems to be the only writer willing to attribute some adult lust to Prince Adam. Oddly enough, the only main character with a fully developed romantic relationship is Orko. (For some actual closeness between He-Man and Teela, see MU061, where Paul Dini wades into the romantic fray.)
• After disappointing us with some very C-grade inventions in the last couple of episodes (his malfunctioning and very redundant freeze ray or his unimaginative "communicator"), Duncan wows us here by rigging up a completely remote-controlled seagoing ship - and inventing sonar! Way to go, Duncan.
• We get another example of how much Cringer loves eating fish - enough to wake up from a nap upon hearing them mentioned! Too bad he hates the sea so much... (Cringer's almost maniacal desire for fish is a character trait emphasized almost exclusively by DiTillio.)
• The cowering Cringer in the wrecked naval vessel is identical to the one we see in every transformation sequence, and in the opening of each episode.
• "Aquatica? I thought that was just an old legend," says He-Man. Thank you, He-Man; thank you, for giving us another "I thought it was only a legend" episode (a sub-category most recently exhibited by MU049, but present throughout the series).
• Man-at-Arms recognizes they are in Aquatica by the crest on a soldier's shield. It's like knowing the national flag of Atlantis!
• The heroes find Princess Nami encased in a bell-jar-like glass tube in an underwater cave. Deja vu! Mer-Man did the same thing to Teela in MU032's "Search for the VHO."
• Princess Nami is voiced by the non-Linda Gary female voice actor, who I believe is Erika Scheimer. She provides a play-by-play explanation for He-Man's absurd solution to the reversed whirlpool ray.
• This episode is one of those rare, blue-moon occasions: a story without Orko. (Orko does appear, but only for a couple of lines at the very end of the PSA.) It shares that distinction with MU012, MU031, MU034, and MU041. Suspiciously, more than half of the episodes thus far omitting the royal magician (that is, the last three) have been penned by Larry DiTillio. Does he have it in for our Eternian comic relief? (The next Orko-less episode, MU060, is also a DiTillio script.)

• The fact that it's so unexpected and so little in keeping with the usually puritanically chaste themes of the show makes Adam's blind man's bluff scene doubly hilarious.
• Larry DiTillio's writing is a cut above. I love his dialogue, and I feel this is a particularly funny Cringer story, with some great lines from "the Prince's best friend." What seems to be lacking here is the animation, as my inexpert eyes caught several continuity and drawing errors!
• Randor puts the Prince into Duncan's care; but what about Captain Teela, who in previous episodes has been billed as Adam's personal trainer and bodyguard? Maybe she was off on another mission in this episode. (I suspect the more likely explanation is that Linda Gary, who voices Teela and basically every other recurring Filmation female, was off that week; note that the only female character with lines in this episode is performed by a Scheimer.)
• In the first scene showing the readings on Duncan's sonoscope, the fish he detects are just a bunch of pricks of light on the screen. However when the scope encounters Aquatica, he gets a full-color video image. Hmmmmmmmm....
• I love fish men and this episode gives us some good ones, with a contrasting design to Mer-Man or other fish-type MOTU humanoids (for instance, Mer-Man's minions in MU006). It is odd that while most of the citizens and soldiers of Aquatica are very clearly fish men, the higher-up guy, Shalandor, is just a green-skinned human wearing a funny seashell hat. Princess Nami is just a green-skinned woman. Are they half-human, like Aquaman? Or do the royals get to be less fishy?
• Animation error: As He-Man arrives in Aquatica and travels to meet its new ruler, his power sword appears and disappears from its sheath (a fairly common error in the show: I remember it happening in MU034 as well). Being more attuned to its presence, I also noticed that when the sword is visible, it sometimes flops sides on He-Man's back, alternately appearing over his right and left shoulders.
• Continuity errors: In the opening wide shot of the arena, the silhouettes of the trio of heroes clearly show them unrestrained; in the subsequent close-up, they are still in their bonds. The morbos then enters by a wide door, hinged along the top frame (kind of like a garage door), which swings open and shuts behind it. When He-Man throws the creature onto its back, we see the door again in the background: drawn in both the open and closed positions, simultaneously! Soon afterwards, it appears that Mer-Man has jumped down from his raised viewing balcony or loge and onto the sandy ground of the main arena, because this is where He-Man crushes him under the thrown body of the morbos. However, in a subsequent scene, Mer-Man seems to have managed to squirm out from under the morbos and teleport back up into his loge box.
• Another case of a side character's name being very late to the party: the Aquatican chamberlain, or whatever his title is, is not identified as "Shalandor" until very late in the episode. He-Man uses the name, acting as if they've already been introduced during some off-screen conversation. Never mentioned at all is the name of the king's advisor in the opening scene, whom I've listed as "Eternian naval officer" but who according to Wiki Grayskull is "Orn" (an interesting choice since it's so close to Orm, the name of Aquaman's brother).
• Mer-Man claims to be "reversing the power" of his whirlpool ray - but the animation used is identical to the one used earlier when Duncan and Adam's ship was captured. Couldn't they have at least played it backwards?
• He-Man grabs Mer-Man from behind, by the arm, and Mer-Man turns his head - which is drawn far too small, as if he's had it shrunken by a witch doctor.
• We get another ridiculous He-Man feat, on par with his dispelling whirlwinds into space (see MU030 and MU050): he spins the entire surrounding rail of the city of Aquatica in the opposite direction of the whirlpool, thus cancelling doomsday for Aquaticans. Seems like he maybe could have just swum outside and smashed the thing!
• So Adam and Duncan set out on the sea to investigate the disappearance of multiple ships. They never find the ships or their crews, leading us to conclude that all of those ships are lost - with all hands. That's a lot of dead people for a cartoon, Larry!