Story - John Berwick & Teleplay - David Wise

Ed Friedman

The convicted criminal Zanthor wants a second chance - a chance to make up for his past horrendous crime of handing the treasured Golden Disks of Knowledge over to Skeletor. His bid for salvation involves retrieving said disks - and he has a golden-haired, muscular mook as champion and helper! I think you know that mook's name.

Cringer (Battle Cat), Prince Adam (He-Man), Orko, Sorceress, Zodac

Skeletor, Beast Man, Evil-Lyn, Trap Jaw

Zanthor

N/A

Adam is having a relaxing day painting and picnicking out in the country (though even this idyllic scene is insufficient to smooth the wrinkles on Cringer's brow - someone slip a Xanax in that tiger's tuna!) when he is interrupted - first by the backfiring hijinks of Orko, then by a psychic message from the Sorceress. The Sorceress is so freaked out by something going down at Grayskull that she's afraid to even leave and visit him as Zoar! Adam raises his sword aloft and He-Man and Battle Cat (with Orko tagging along) show up at the castle, which is putting on a freaky light show. He-Man has to force down a jabbering Jawbridge to let everyone into the interior, where a series of wild ghostly hallucinations are flickering all over. He-Man's suggestion that something is trying to get the Sorceress's attention gives her the idea to try a spell on her magic mirror, which reveals the phantom presence of Zanthor.

Zanthor - as we learn along with He-Man, who has never heard of the guy - is a convicted criminal, sentenced to banishment in the Phantom Dimension by the Council of the Wise for handing the treasured Golden Disks of Knowledge over to Skeletor. It's a terrible crime, since many of Skeletor's past shenanigans were made possible by the knowledge stored on the Disks (collected from some of the greatest minds in the universe). But Zanthor means to atone for his crime, and has focused his mind on good, thus gaining the power to act in the world of men and contact the Sorceress, to beg for the chance at atonement. The Sorceress decides that the only person to give him that chance is the last surviving member of the Council that sentenced him: Zodac. The cosmic enforcer is summoned and duly arrives. He hears Zanthor's story and the vocal support of He-Man, who is the champion of second chances. Zanthor's second chance lies in the fact that he claims to know where Skeletor has hidden the Disks, and he proposes to retrieve them for Zodac. Zodac approves the plan, pulls the phantom Zanthor out of the other dimension, and teams him with our trio of heroes for a mission to infiltrate Snake Mountain.

At Skeletor's fortress, Zanthor reveals a secret entrance behind Snake Mountain's waterfall, and the team sneak inside. They break into the vault Zanthor points out and find what looks like the Disks - but the gilded platters prove to be phony decoys! Skeletor appears on a screen to laugh at the duped heroes, and traps them in a force cage. He didn't reckon with his prisoners' abilities, however, because Zanthor's phantom form allows him to pass right through the field, and Orko can magic himself out. He-Man cleverly gives Zanthor the idea to use his hallucinatory visions as a distraction for Skeletor, while Orko sneaks over to the throne room controls and turns off the energy beam. He-Man and Battle Cat are freed! But they have to face off against Skeletor's goons, Beast Man, Evil-Lyn, and Trap Jaw, who show up en masse. Luckily for our heroes, just when He-Man and his cat are cornered by the villainous trio, Skeletor chases the meddling Trollan away from his desk and turns his prison beam back on - in time to trap all his lackeys within it.

The team of would-be thieves reunite and Zanthor shares a new idea: perhaps Skeletor hid the real Disks just under the fake ones! Their shot in the dark proves to be a hit, since when He-Man smashes through a few sublevels, they find the authentic Disks stacked up on a raised platform. But Skeletor shows up again, this time in person, and he has one more obstacle for them to face: the real reason he named his base Snake Mountain. That's right: it's a giant snake! It doesn't prove much of a problem, however: He-Man jumps on the critter's head and keeps it busy while Zanthor grabs the Disks. Skeletor then tries to tempt Zanthor again to make a deal, the same thing that caused the guy's fall in the first place; but this time Zanthor defies him, and the heroes hightail it, leaving a vindictive viper to chase after its own skeletal master.

Back at Grayskull, a redeemed Zanthor returns the Disks to Zodac, who even smiles for once. In return for the good deed, Zodac decides to not only release Zanthor from the Phantom Dimension, but also appoint him as a cosmic enforcer trainee, complete with matching Zodac armor and helmet. The pair zoom off into the cosmos to spy on people and not do anything about what they see (it's unclear just what level of "enforcement" these cosmic perverts are employing!), leaving the Sorceress with He-Man, Battle Cat, and Orko at the gates of Grayskull.

End with a Joke: Orko manically and rapidly recites all the events of the day, ending his recitation with "And what I want to know is this: how come I never get any credit?" The Sorceress and He-Man laugh in reply.

• Orko (reacting to the strange things happening at Castle Grayskull): Looks like the Sorceress is throwing some kind of far-out party.
• Zanthor: Thank you, Sorceress. It's such hard work trying to get your attention.
• Zanthor (providing some great back story): Long ago, He-Man, the wisest men and women in the universe came here to Eternia to store their knowledge on the Golden Disks. The Council of the Wise made me the disks' keeper. ... In a moment of weakness, I gave the Disks to Skeletor, who promised me great power in return. You can see for yourself what power I received, He-Man. ... For my crime, I was banished to the Phantom Dimension, doomed forever to travel throughout Eternia as an invisible phantom with no body.
• Sorceress: Skeletor is a constant threat to us because of the knowledge he gained from the Golden Disks.
• He-Man: You know what's best, Sorceress, but if there is enough good left in Zanthor to bring him this far back into our dimension, perhaps he deserves to be heard.
• Zodac: He-Man, why should you risk yourself by helping a known traitor? / He-Man: Because I believe everyone deserves a second chance. / Zodac: So be it.
• Skeletor (hunched over on his throne and cackling happily to himself): This is a treat! I've bagged all four of those do-gooders with one trap!
• Skeletor (to Zanthor): It was torture, wasn't it, to be invisible in the world of men - unable to touch anyone, to speak to anyone?
• Zodac: The overlords of the eternal dimension have decided that there are too many Skeletors in the universe to allow the Disks to become openly available. Therefore I, as cosmic enforcer, watcher of the universe, shall be their guardian. However, keeping watch over the universe is a big task for one man... Henceforth, you, Zanthor shall travel at my side - as a cosmic enforcer.

• Adam laughs, head back: At a paint-covered Orko
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Just after transforming, again when he leaps from the serpent, and yet again before leaving Snake Mountain
• He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat: Arriving outside of Grayskull
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands inside of Grayskull, and again when He-Man lands on the floor under the vault
• He-Man punches the viewer: To break into Skeletor's vaults
• He-Man juggles his sword: The unsheathing part of the loop is used just before He-Man smashes the floor with his sword
• He-Man swings sword overhand: To smash the under-vault floor

One full
Variation - just before his transformation, Cringer cuts in to say "Oh, dear."

Brought to you by He-Man
He-Man preaches a sermon of forgiveness, harking back to the slack he gave to Zanthor in today's episode: Everybody deserves a second chance. I wonder how many little kids watching this episode tried to use that line on their parents to avoid punishment for some infraction or other?

Everybody deserves a second chance: In fact, this episode was the one that prompted me to create this category.

• In MU054, we discovered that Prince Adam was an amateur sculptor. In this episode we see him painting. He's a regular renaissance man.
• Adam dubs himself "Adamo da Vinci," clearly referencing Earth's Renaissance painter, Leonardo da Vinci, who we can assume his mother told him about.
• Orko shows his ability to spawn inside paintings, and make himself invisible.
• The Sorceress has projected her thoughts to Adam from inside Grayskull many times, but this time she does it not just because she's lazy, but because she is afraid to leave the castle as Zoar.
• He-Man has to force the Jawbridge to stay open. He had to do almost exactly the same thing in MU017, when Daimar the Demon's dark dimension was screwing around with Eternia's magic.
• The Sorceress's all-purpose screen makes an appearance, this time being referred to as the "mystic mirror, all-seeing, all-knowing."
• The titular Golden Disks are called "Eternia's greatest treasure," in another instance in the theme of overusing superlatives.
• Zanthor's back story introduces us to a ton of new lore. There is a Council of the Wise, who apparently can make decisions that the Sorceress does not feel able to overturn, and Zodac is the last surviving member of said original Council (which, as Zodac eventually explains, disbanded at some point after Zanthor's sentence was passed). Most intriguingly, the Sorceress ties back much of Skeletor's successful meddling to the knowledge he gained by his possession of the Disks. Eternia again shows itself to be central to an intergalactic community, not just geographically (I'm thinking of the fact that it is literally the center of the universe, something we learned in MU036's "The Search," also a David Wise episode) but conceptually, since people throughout the universe came there to record their knowledge.
• The third episode of the series to feature Zodac, who previously made appearances in MU019 and MU036. Sadly, it will also be his last.
• "I have served the overlords of the eternal dimension," Zodac announces - something we haven't heard him mention in his other episodes. He reinforces the role he's been given in previous stories, as a watcher of human affairs only, unable to directly intervene. He explicitly dubs himself a "cosmic enforcer," the term that described him on his action figure card backing, and also one that was used in passing by the Sorceress in MU036.
• Zanthor is a new guy we've never met before, right? Because he looks suspiciously similar to Kor, the keeper of the Crimson Scourge from MU026's "Ordeal in the Darklands." Maybe they're brothers!
• Battle Cat does a lot of sniffing in this episode, first claiming that he smells a trap, later that he smells danger. Depending on your definition of those things, he's right on both counts!
• "Skeletor's chambers are at the top of the mountain," says Zanthor - which is interesting information. It makes sense that he would get the penthouse suite, but it's always been rather difficult to tell where in the fortress Skeletor's throne room was located. This does potentially conflict with Teela's infiltration of Skeletor's "main control center" in MU068, which seems to have her dropping down into a lower part of the structure; and with an interesting moment in the much later MU117.
• The energy field that traps the heroes (and later the villains) looks the same as the one that enclosed Duncan in Wise's MU052.
• Just as Zanthor's spooky show begins in the throne room, a camera pan once again shows us the "transport beam" used in the pilot episode (MU004) and briefly visible in the background of MU022.
• Evil-Lyn has a "freeze ray" that she shoots out of her finger.
• He-Man deflects the bolt of Trap Jaw's laser gun directly back at him, hitting the lackey square in the chest. It seems that either Trap Jaw's gun was on its lowest setting, or he cleverly designed it to not be effective against himself; because the only result of his having been shot appears to be that his eyelids lower slightly. In his following scene he appears completely unhurt. He has also decided, at some point during the cut away, to switch out his laser arm for a pincer arm.
• The serpentine creature that Skeletor releases from a hole deep under Snake Mountain, and which he claims is the reason for Snake Mountain's name, is identical in design to the much smaller water serpent that Prince Adam had to fight when first visiting Trolla in MU020, and the wastelands serpent that attacked Teela in MU052 (though that one was brown and this one is blue).
• Zanthor's phantom powers give him the ability to pass through Skeletor's energy prison and through solid walls, but he also gets to touch and carry things like the Golden Disks; not only that, but he can cause the things he holds to pass through substances as well, as he shows when he floats through the ceiling of Snake Mountain while holding the Disks! So what's so bad about being a phantom, anyway?
• PSA trivia: This is the only episode in which Zodac appears, in which he does not also provide the PSA lesson.

• Adam seems to be claiming that he's using watercolors for his painting, but the fact that his paints are in big buckets seems to contradict that.
• I love all the crazy creatures and designs we get to see in the hallucinatory visions flashing inside of Grayskull (and later in Snake Mountain). Fun stuff.
• Zodac comes riding in to save the day, within a flaming comet on his Space Recliner. Yaaassss!
• Oh look, another case of Eternian home invasion. The last time someone broke into Snake Mountain, it wasn't our heroes at all, but Monteeg and his interstellar ghost warriors (MU057). The last time the heroes got in was MU052, another David Wise script. In that instance He-Man opted for a less-than-stealthy approach of punching his way into the vaults. This time, He-Man seems to assume that the best way in is to climb to the top, presumably to enter via the snake's mouth, as he did in MU044. However, Zanthor reveals to He-Man a secret entrance hidden behind the mountain's falls - we will have to wait and see whether the heroes remember this on the inevitable next occasion they break in... (Spoiler: They don't! See MU066.) As in MU052 and several previous instances of infiltration, Skeletor has a detection system that alerts him to the presence of intruders - and in this case, He-Man is aware of its existence, though we don't get to see how it works.
• The heroes do not appear to get into any vehicle to make their way from Grayskull to Snake Mountain; He-Man opts to travel by tiger. We can assume that Zanthor, as a phantom, can't get sore feet - and Orko of course floats. But still, seems like a slow way to go!
• For my money, Zanthor's spooky hallucinations would have been much scarier if he didn't reveal himself to Skeletor right away.
• The animation of He-Man batting away Evil-Lyn's freeze ray is one of the best-looking uses of his sword deflection skill. Nice job animators!
• "You're about to find out why I call this Snake Mountain!" yells Skeletor, about to unleash the serpent creature that he's been keeping in his basement. So wait... it wasn't because the mountain was shaped like a snake? So... that was just a coincidence?
• We learn that Skeletor keeps the real Golden Disks of Knowledge at the very foundations of Snake Mountain. It's just lucky for MU011's Demos and Tyrella that Skeletor didn't accidentally stumble upon the Sword of the Ancients while he was digging down there!
• The real Disks of Knowledge, which are all stacked up in a glowing column instead of being set tantalizingly on display, for some reason kept making me think of a great big stack of pancakes. Mmmm, pancakes. It's possible we were meant to associate them with LP records.
• We've never seen that serpent that Skeletor keeps underground in his fortress, and it really does seem as if old Bonehead has been neglecting the creature, given the way it chases after him at the end of the episode! That's what you get for not feeding your pets, man. (This could have been a good subject for an alternate PSA!)
• It's cool and all that Zodac offers Zanthor a job, and clearly the fact that they both have "Z" names makes him perfect for the position - but couldn't he have given him a choice about it? It comes across very much as a "You're doing this now" rather than a "I'd like to offer you an exciting position as a cosmic enforcer..."
• You don't realize just how very pale Zanthor's skin is until you see the acres of flesh revealed by his skimpy cosmic enforcer uniform... (shudder). You have to wonder how he tucks all his flowing locks into that tiny helmet! It's possible he got a haircut before leaving Grayskull: his goattee seems shorter also.
• The clearest indication that there is a ladder to climb in the department of cosmic enforcers? Zanthor hasn't yet earned his Space Chair! He has to stand next to Zodac's recliner as they both become flaming balls and float off into space.
• A great episode with some cool lore. I love a Zodac story - the appearance of the cosmic enforcer always seems to lend extra weight to the plot. I also like the idea of Skeletor having cheated to gain the arcane knowledge that has allowed him to plot against the good guys: for instance, maybe it was the Golden Disks which allowed him to discover the location of the lost Diamond of Disappearance from way back in MU004!