David Wise

Lou Kachivas

Man-at-Arms vows to resign if he can't figure out how to get his all-powerful remote-control computer to work; so Skeletor decides to force an early retirement by sabotaging the computer with a virus, in the form of an electrical monster called Byte. Our heroes will have to get small to solve this problem!

Man-at-Arms, Orko, Prince Adam (He-Man), Teela, Cringer (Battle Cat), Sorceress (Zoar)

Skeletor, Trap Jaw, Beast Man

the mallabeast (Byte)

Man-at-Arms's control chair, sky sleds, Attak Trak

In the courtyard of the palace, Man-at-Arms is playing with a remote-control rocket while Orko, Prince Adam, and Teela look on. The rocket is part of a larger-scale invention which could potentially remotely operate almost every mechanical device in the palace. Duncan must be feeling very mellow today, because when Orko asks him whether he can try, the weapons master unreservedly agrees. While Orko is steering the rocket via the joystick controller, the invention malfunctions (but this time through no fault of Orko's) and makes a wild and unpredictable excursion that ends with it colliding into a tower nearby, which Duncan, aghast, identifies as the "royal chamber." Fortunately the royal couple were not currently in residence, but if they had been Duncan could have added "regicide" to his list of titles. Frustrated and feeling defeated and guilty at the near-disaster, Man-at-Arms threatens to quit his job. Only the heartfelt encouragements of Adam and Teela convince him to give his invention another try; but he vows to actually resign if he still can't get the thing to work.

It's at this point that we discover the villainous Skeletor has been listening in to Duncan's despairing speech, and like any good bad guy, he thinks of a way to make things worse. As Trap Jaw looks on, Skeletor fetches the nastiest creature from his dungeon menagerie, a sort of werewolf/bear thing called the mallabeast, and stuffs it into a tube. He then generates an electrical copy of the creature, and has Trap Jaw zap the thing with a miniaturization ray to make it small enough to cup in his palm. Dubbing the tiny terror Byte, Skeletor sends it along a spy beam he has pointed at Duncan's lab, then remotely directs Byte into the Eternian central computer. The creature rips out the main control circuit and hunkers down in its place, ready to cause mischief throughout Eternos.

Meanwhile, our determined weapons master has checked over his computer and decided he is ready to try the remote-control system again, this time with a sky sled. Not realizing that Byte is actually in charge, the heroes are dismayed when the vehicle immediately goes wrong and charges at them. In the commotion, Prince Adam is able to sneak off with Cringer and effect a transformation, and He-Man then appears to leap and grab the rear end of the sled to bring it down. Everyone returns to Man-at-Arms's lab to see what the problem is, but they find the door to the computer unexpectedly shut. He-Man pries his way in but is chased off by Duncan's cool octopodal control chair, which has armed itself with laser pistols. Teela decides all this trouble is too sinister to be her father's fault and tells He-Man she wants to sneak over to Snake Mountain to check on the Evil Warriors. Since none of the vehicles are trustworthy now, He-Man loans her Battle Cat for the journey. He then gets distracted disabling an uninhibited and involuntarily violent Attak Trak, and misses the fact that Man-at-Arms has lured Orko into a weapons testing chamber, safe from the machine interference outside, so that Orko can shoot Duncan with a shrinking ray (yes, everyone has shrinking rays in this episode! It ain't no thang).

Determined to brave any danger to solve the problems that he thinks he's responsible for, mini-Man-at-Arms has his Trollan assistant carry him into the computer room so he can wander inside the machinery. While he's exploring this technological wonderland, Teela makes her way to Snake Mountain and overhears Trap Jaw explaining the whole "Byte" situation. Armed with this important information, she returns to relay it to He-Man. Our beefy blonde has no idea where Teela's father got to, and Orko is not around to explain, so He-Man independently decides he also needs to get small and go walking around in the computer. Being additionally ignorant of the location of the Eternian shrink ray (Teela has only a vague idea of its existence), He-Man decides his only recourse is to visit the Sorceress. She happily agrees to his request, magically shrinking him and, in the form of Zoar, clutching the mini-He-Man in her talons and dropping him off back at the computer.

It turns out it's a good thing He-Man took this course, since by this time Duncan has gotten himself trapped in the computer's memory grid, requiring some insect-sized He-Man haymakers to get free. Duncan leads the pair back to Byte, who he spotted earlier and believes is a product of his own mistakes; but He-Man explains to his friend that the malfunctions have not been his fault, and the culprit is some particularly nasty Skeletor-designed malware. The pair shake Byte loose from the central computer, but it flies off and Duncan must employ his knowledge of technology so the pair can track it down again. They finally corner the beast and subdue it with a lasso made of electrical cables. The day - and Duncan's job - are safe! Once the shrink ray has returned our heroes to their usual sizes, Man-at-Arms's friends buck him up to ensure he won't get discouraged like this again, and his loving daughter gives him a nice big hug.

End with a Joke: It's not quite the end of the episode, since the wrapping-up scene I described above is the real conclusion; but I think it still counts as an ending joke when Duncan (acting on He-Man's suggestion) sends Byte back along Skeletor's spy beam and into Snake Mountain. We see an exterior shot of the fortress being periodically lit with flashes and explosions, while Skeletor exclaims and shouts at the damage being done inside.

• Man-at-Arms: I've done my best but it's - it's not good enough. It's time for me to quit.
• Skeletor (said in the most derisive, clearly sarcastic way possible): Poor Man-at-Arms. His remote-control computer has been giving him so many problems! (laughs) I think we should help him out, Trap Jaw! / Trap Jaw: H-help him? Why would you do that?!
• Man-at-Arms (basically describing the system that built the Terminator): There's no room for error; this computer can control anything: from this drill to the palace defense system.
• Trap Jaw (to Skeletor, conveniently explaining the whole plot for an eavesdropping Teela): I-i-incredible! With that little electronic demon of yours running Man-at-Arms's computer, you control the whole palace - and just about every machine in it!
• He-Man: So, will you make me small enough to fight this demon, Sorceress?
• Man-at-Arms (coming to He-Man's side after he was knocked over by a zap from Byte): He-Man, are you all right? / He-Man: Let's just say I got a "real charge" out of that guy.
• Orko: As He-Man always says: / He-Man and Orko (not quite in unison): When you do your best, you're never a failure.

• Skeletor shakes his fists, three-quarter view: Excited at the prospect of Man-at-Arms freaking out when his machines break down
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands from disabling a sky sled; and later, Teela lands in a corridor of Snake Mountain
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: Directing Battle Cat to carry Teela to Snake Mountain, and again later when noting that he lost track of Man-at-Arms
• Teela jumps on the back of Battle Cat: In a rare change-up, Teela appears on Battle Cat in the same position that He-Man usually occupies in this loop (without the jumping-on part)
• Man-at-Arms from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: Again an interesting variation on a loop usually reserved for He-Man, this time showing a miniature Duncan entering his computer
• Sorceress spreads/unspreads her wings: To transform into Zoar
• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: Using the much more typical loop to show He-Man entering the same part of the computer
• He-Man punches the viewer: To break Duncan out of the memory grid

One full

Brought to you by Teela
Teela advises us to own up to our mistakes, and to do something to help fix them, just like Man-at-Arms did. Even if a problem turns out to not be your fault, don't waste time playing the blame game. Don't rag on poor Byte for wrecking your computer system; he's only an exact duplicate of a mindless mallabeast!

Skeletor summons a monster: Perhaps a bit of a stretch since you could argue that the mallabeast is not "summoned," but Skeletor does create Byte.
Teela does something dangerous by herself: Not entirely by herself, since Teela gets to Snake Mountain by Battle Cat; but still, no one asked her to go there, and she goes inside without the cat.

• In the opening scene, Duncan refers to the remote-control computer he has built which can "guide real ships on hazardous missions with no risk to human life." He already did the same thing in the beginning of MU051 when he designed a seagoing vessel to be remote piloted.
• Skeletor says to himself, "First I need the most vicious and evil beast in all my menagerie." So he has a menagerie, then! Good to know. Then we learn that the winner of the Most Evil award goes to the "mallabeast," a werewolf-looking creature. We will catch Skeletor in the process of feeding the pets in his menagerie at the beginning of MU121's "The Magic Falls."
• We learn in this episode that not only are both Skeletor and the Eternians capable of shrinking living things, they do it as if it's no big deal! I guess it isn't that big a deal in an episode where Man-at-Arms has a Doc Ock chair and basically invents Skynet by accident.
• When watching this episode on my first run-through, I thought "Bite" was a rather prosaic name for a monster - for instance, that's also the name of the brand of toothpaste I use. Then I saw how Wiki Grayskull writes it - Byte - and realized belatedly that it was actually a clever pun.
• The workroom where Man-at-Arms is testing out his computer looks more like the radio room of MU047 or MU052 than it does his usual lab.
• The tube where Skeletor stuffs the mallabeast is the same one in which he captured Orko and Aremesh in MU048's "Return of Evil." It will also be used again as a sort of interrogation device in MU119's "Visitors from Earth."
• "I keep this spy beam permanently aimed at Man-at-Arms's lab," claims Skeletor, as he stands next to a man-high antenna firing a beam out of Snake Mountain's mouth. Oh do you? Then how come we've never seen it before, hmmm? (For instance, He-Man invaded Snake Mountain through its mouth in MU044 and had a fight with Trap Jaw right in the spot where the spy beam now stands - it definitely wasn't there.) This information would be kind of cool to consider as background for how Skeletor is always spying on the heroes, except for the fact that the beam is aimed only at the palace lab, and Skeletor has spied on the heroes from all over the palace and beyond - rarely, if ever, in Duncan's workshop.
• When leaping to catch a runaway sky sled, He-Man is shown with the same animation that's often been used to show him diving into water (for instance in MU028 and MU032), but more often lately to just show him leaping.
• Man-at-Arms introduces us to a metal chamber where he tests "new rays," so he can protect his shrinking ray from any subversion while Orko zaps him.
• This episode required a whole lot of random mechanical-looking decorations in its backgrounds; in the scene where Orko is seeing off a shrunken Man-at-Arms, we see a machine in the background, just above Orko's head, that looks oddly like an old-fashioned radio from the 40s or 50s. We will see this particular background reappear many times in subsequent episodes.
• When He-Man is forced to stymie an out-of-control Attak Trak, the vehicle sheepishly apologizes for its involuntary bad behavior - using the wrong voice. According to Wiki Grayskull, Trak is voiced by the usual person (Filmation's own Lou Scheimer), but it sounds different to me somehow. When He-Man finally rips out Trak's power and it tragically thanks him as it dies, I was reminded of the much more intentionally naughty computer HAL from 2001.
• Many of the backgrounds Man-at-Arms and He-Man run through inside Duncan's computer are reused from MU054's "Game Plan." Yes, Negator strikes again.
• Duncan eventually finds himself inside the "memory grid" of his computer, with a series of sparkly rectangular objects very reminiscent of the Transformers' energon cubes.
• Much of the "shrunken inside the computer" parts of the episode draw unavoidable comparisons to the movie Tron (1982), which is probably not an accident. Has anybody seen the movie Tron?!
• The Sorceress reminds us and He-Man of the fact that her "powers do not extend beyond the walls of Grayskull," a fact that is often conveniently forgotten for the purposes of plot.
• It's worth mentioning that He-Man has been shrunken by the Sorceress before, using a different method and for reasons that seemed a bit more forced: he had to fit through a tiny portal to Trolla in MU020, for which purpose the Sorceress gave him the Sphere of Size. For more hot shrinking action, see MU105's No Job Too Small."
• He-Man has long employed his power sword to deflect bolts of every kind, and even gouts of flame; but in this episode the tactic actually backfires on him a bit. Byte's electrical attack strikes his sword, but instead of bouncing harmlessly away, it gives He-Man a violent shock that flings him to the ground.

• One gets the odd impression from the lengthy opening panning shot, which settles on a large cylindrical building, that this arena-type structure is the site of the oft-used courtyard location at the royal palace - clearly impossible, since the courtyard is very open to the air! Actually the opening pan into Eternos will often end up resting on this particular building, which is likely the complex housing the royal throne room, but seems to be an all-purpose "where our story begins" location.
• Based on what Orko's been getting into lately, you have to worry about Man-at-Arms's sanity when Orko asks if he can try the remote control rocket and Duncan's response is, "Sure!"
• "It hit the royal chamber!" Duncan exclaims when the haywire rocket crashes into a tall tower with a ring balcony. We've seen this tower before: in MU014, Man-at-Arms was standing at its balcony when he was turned to stone by the ray on Skeletor's Collector. It also seems to be the same place where Thad the royal page is bunking at the beginning of MU049. Now we are to believe it's where Randor and Marlena sleep - even though in MU046, when Darkdream was haunting everyone's dreams, it appeared that all the bedrooms in the palace were set along one long hallway.
• One would be forgiven for thinking that when Duncan says "It's time for me to quit," he's just talking about his remote-control rocket project. But as he affirms a few lines later, he really is contemplating resigning from his position as Man-at-Arms! It seems like a seriously contrived reason for him to give up his job. Is there something going on at home that you're not telling us, Duncan? Is it drugs? It's drugs, isn't it?
• Animation errors: Throughout the episode, Trap Jaw's customizable arm switches sides, sometimes appearing on the correct left side (his right) but more often, it seems, appearing incorrectly on the right.
• Skeletor calls the "Byte" form of the mallabeast "an exact duplicate" - which means he definitely needs to get his eye sockets checked.
• My first thought when I watched Skeletor talking Byte through his infiltration of the computer system was, "Why not Beast Man?" I always want to stick up for poor Beast Man, and his one talent, after all, is controlling beasts like Byte. However Skeletor is able to tell Byte exactly where to go to hook into the main control circuit, displaying knowledge of technology that even I have to admit Beast Man could never match. One has to wonder, however, just how smart a mallabeast is when it hasn't been turned into pure electricity; its tactics in directing Eternos's technology seem beyond the reach of a dumb animal.
• By the way, Beast Man does appear in this episode, in the scene where Teela has crept into Snake Mountain and is listening in on the villains; but he has no lines.
• When He-Man crushes in the rear end of the runaway sky sled, it shoots out a little puff of smoke that unavoidably evokes a fart. Heh heh... heh.
• Animation error: As has happened at least once before (see MU056), we see a closeup of Duncan's ostensibly gloved fingers when he tries to open the door to his lab; but we can clearly see the outlines of his fingernails as well. Those are some seriously skintight gloves!
• Folks, it's home invasion time once again! Somewhat arguable, but likely you can count Skeletor's data transfer of Byte into the lab as an invasion of the royal palace, which by any measure is quite successful in the amount of trouble it causes. In reciprocity, Teela takes it into her head to sneak over to Snake Mountain on the back of Battle Cat so she can spy on the Evil Warriors and figure out what's going on. It's a rare case of a stealth entrance that goes undetected (we don't see or hear of any alarms going off, as has happened in several episodes in the recent past, including MU066 and MU062). It's also a very rare case of the heroes slipping in and out of Snake Mountain without confronting any of its residents. You get a sense of just how often the heroes find themselves in their archenemy's hideout, when Teela remembers exactly how to get to Skeletor's "main control center" (though she gets there by use of a circular metal grate that I'm fairly certain we've never seen before).
• Continuity error: When Teela returns to the palace, she knows that the monster in the computer is "called Byte." However we witness the entirety of her eavesdropping, wherein Trap Jaw never once mentions the creature's name.
• Continuity error: Finding that the button to open the room to the central computer does not function, He-Man has to pry it open by force. However, when a Duncan-laden Orko later tries the button, it works just fine. Maybe Byte was too busy and distracted to lock it again?
• Man-at-Arms's nonsense explanation for how to make opposites attract by the classic sci-fi solution of "reversing the polarity" makes it sound as if the heroes are going to draw Byte to them, like a magnet. Instead, they hop on an energy beam and travel to the monster. Okay...
• You have to wonder what happened to the source mallabeast from which Byte was spawned. Is it still stuck in that tube? Is it an empty, soulless husk now?
• No doubt there was only a limited amount of screentime to work with in the episode, but it would have been interesting and fun to get a few scenes showing the king and queen or regular Eternian citizens having to deal with the fact that all their machines have gone crazy. Like Randor is trying to make some toast and the toaster tries to eat him. Right? Classic Randor. I could write this show...
• Let it be said: I love this episode. Having the heroes shrunken down inside of a computer, fighting an electricity beast? What's not to love! The idea is so compelling that it was apparently reused for several other popular cartoon series of the period (Transformers, TMNT, Ghostbusters). I love all the extra touches as well: some excellent work by Alan Oppenheimer vamping it up with Skeletor, Zoar dropping off a tiny He-Man in the workshop and then telling him he's on his own, Orko having to carry mini-Duncan around, and the hilarious ending with Byte shorting out Snake Mountain; it's tons of fun.