Antoni Zalewski

Bill Reed, Lou Zukor

A mysterious moving island seems to be connected to a series of Eternian ship disappearances. But who's moving the island? Could it be... Skeletor?! But even Skeletor wouldn't be so villainous as to crash his island into Eternia's newly inaugurated dam - would he?

King Randor, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Orko, Cringer, Prince Adam (He-Man), Buzz-Off

Whiplash, Mer-Man, Skeletor

white bird, Eternian citizens, weird green forest creature

Wind Raiders, Collector

It's a day of civic pride in Eternia - it's a dam celebration! And it's about dam time! A giant dam, designed by Man-at-Arms, is being inaugurated by King Randor. As the citizens listen to Randor's speech, Orko and Cringer get into a tiny bit of mischief and Teela expresses slight regret that the building of the dam necessitated the removal of a wildlife park. But sometimes you have to make way for progress - and Adam has to make way right after the opening to attend a royal meeting. Buzz-Off the bee man updates the prince and king on a series of Eternian food ship disappearances. The discussion reveals the fact that Buzz-Off flew over a small volcanic island that is not present on any maps; so Adam and Man-at-Arms (with an unenthused Cringer in the back seat) take out a Wind Raider to investigate.

The reconnaissance doesn't seem to reveal anything except Adam's penchant for reckless driving - until his flashy moves run him into a pinnacle of rock from the very island they've been looking for. Adam and his passengers are forced to bail out of the ship and into the water, where Cringer and Duncan are sucked into the intake at the base of the new dam. Adam does a quick He-Man transformation in the water and swims in to grab his friends; after leaping out of the dam and into the air, He-Man and his two rescuees are all plucked up by Buzz-Off, who neatly totes them to the mysterious island. The insectile hero was drawn by reports of the floating island, and Orko has also tagged along.

Buzz-Off drops the heroes off, then returns with Teela; the pair find He-Man gone and Prince Adam lounging against a tree. The team splits up, with Adam, Duncan, Orko, and Cringer going to explore the island while Teela and Buzz-Off scout from the air in a Wind Raider. Adam and Duncan find a mysterious message behind a waterfall: "HELLO CHUMPS." Then the chumps are sucked under the water through a trap door. Adam attempts to say his magic words, but the current is too strong and his sword is flung out of the water, its point burying itself into the ground on the nearby shore. In the underwater cave where they end up, Adam and Duncan find all the missing Eternian ships. They are then confronted by a more skull-like ship which rises from the deep, and they meet the mastermind behind all the evil doings: Skeletor, flanked by his cronies-for-the-day, Whiplash and Mer-Man!

Having restrained our heroes, Skeletor kindly tells them his evil plan: he will drive his mobile island into Eternia's dam, busting it open and flooding the entire countryside just set up for farming. In the wake of the catastrophe, and having left the Eternians short on food, our favorite villain will surely be able to take over! Man-at-Arms and Adam marvel at the dastardly scheme, but are for the moment helpless to prevent it. Elsewhere on the island, Orko has apparently gone to fetch Buzz-Off and Teela so they can search for the vanished Adam and Duncan. Instead of finding the missing pair, they first find the power sword (which Orko tucks away for later) and Cringer, who's been hiding in a hole in the bushes ever since his buddies got taken. Lucky for everyone, the hidey-hole is a ventilation duct leading into the inner workings of the island. It takes the heroes to the engine room, where Cringer spots Duncan and Adam imprisoned in a bubble underwater. Teela dives down to let them out and Orko hands back the prince's very important sword, but the reunited heroes become trapped when Skeletor locks the only exit. He's standing at the navigating controls of the island with a big yellow key that makes the whole thing work; and Whiplash and Mer-Man, who have been on the trail of the heroes, choose this moment to attack!

In the ensuing scuffle, Adam finds a quick moment to duck behind a machine and become He-Man, then hops back out to stop Skeletor. A disarmed Bonehead sets a collision course and smashes the key, then makes a break for it. He-Man has no option but to do what he does best: flex those muscles. He pushes over an important-looking rod, and the whole engine blows up, leaving just enough time before it goes off for all the heroes to leap clear. Hooray for a safe dam - and a new, local, scenic island!

End with a Joke: There are a couple of candidates; one is the memorable final scene with our villains, which has Skeletor using his two lackeys as a powered flotation device to get away. The other is when our heroes, gathered at the king's map table, come up with the idea of using the now stationary island as a wildlife preserve and vacation park. Orko suggests that he and Cringer can play hide-and-seek there, with the tiger pretending he's a vicious hunter going after game. The timid Cringer requests that his prey be small and unthreatening, to everyone's amusement.

• Skeletor: Well, well, if it isn't Prince Adam and Man-at-Arms. You're pretty deep in this one, gentlemen! / Mer-Man (doing his best to brown-nose): That's a good one, Skeletor. (giggles)
• Skeletor (referring to his second-rate minions): I have to be brilliant, just to make up for them!
• Skeletor: This is becoming a wonderful day for evil!
• Cringer: I hate heights - even when I'm on the ground!

• Skeletor leans in close to the viewer: To berate his lackluster lackeys
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands after an acrobatic jump, about to face off with Skeletor

Two partial, one aborted
Variation - In one of the more memorable variations on the partial transformation sequence, Adam is forced to change while afloat in the Eternian ocean. Somehow he manages to hold himself still and raise his sword aloft, but since he's chest-deep in the water, the full-body shot of him turning into He-Man and saying "I have the power!" is omitted. He just says "By the power of Grayskull" and the oft-used power sword scene transition glosses over the rest. Since Cringer is busy being sucked into a dam at the time, the Battle Cat transformation is also missing. (Adam will transform into He-Man while afloat two more times, in MU099 and MU102.)
Later, Adam attempts to transform again while in the water, but is sucked under and loses his sword before getting past "By the power of-."
The last partial transformation, which comes late in the third act, is just the usual one, only missing the Cringer/Battle Cat sequence.

Brought to you by Teela and Prince Adam
In a weird echo of the PSA from MU014, which featured He-Man and Teela going for a run and talking about the benefits of exercise, Adam and Teela are jogging and having a very contrived conversation about the value of untouched wilderness and parklands; though Teela points out that sometimes you have to knock down some trees to get a nice mall.

Skeletor (or another villain) plots to capture Prince Adam: Honestly Adam just falls into Skeletor's hands in this one, and kidnapping him is not a main part of the villain's scheme; but he nevertheless does capture Adam, so I'm going to give him this one.

• As he has done in other episodes, and as is only natural for a cat, Cringer shows a marked preference for fish. Orko tempts the water-hating cat to swim with the idea that "there might be fish." See MU051 as another example of Cringer's piscatorial mania. The interesting thing about this instance is that the episode was not written by Larry DiTillio, who is usually the one ascribing this preference to the tiger.
• This is the only episode of the series which credits two directors. Not sure why! It's actually Lou Zukor's last directing credit in the episode sequence, so maybe he was fired or quit partway through the episode and Bill Reed had to take over. Just a theory...
• There are a couple of interesting rotating establishing shots in the episode, one in space at the very beginning of the episode and another panning over Eternos a few minutes in.
• The first episode to feature Buzz-Off, one of Mattel's Wave 3 (1984) action figures. Bless poor Alan Oppenheimer, who (according to Wiki Grayskull) was forced to provide the incredibly irritating buzz-filled dialogue for the character. The animated character is quite faithful to the toy, even including the seemingly nonsensical helmet that Buzz-Off can wear to give him a pair of brown buggy eyes instead of a pair of greenish buggy eyes. The helmet apparently gives him the ability to see through things, as he shows a couple of times in this episode.
• At the royal conference with Buzz-Off, the participants gather at a fancy map table showing the land masses of Eternia. Unfortunately we never get a good enough angle to compare it to other maps of Eternia shown in the series.
• The opening plot device of Eternian ships disappearing, and a tense meeting with a concerned Randor, strongly recalls the events of MU051's "City Beneath the Sea." Fortunately in this story Prince Adam is dutifully sitting in on the meeting instead of disappointing his father by playing at blind man's bluff with a pair of floozies! He's even the one who points out the critical clue in the mystery.
• We get our most detailed look yet at the controls of the Wind Raider, which seem much more complex than has been suggested in previous episodes! We also hear the Raider emitting a computerized, female-sounding voice - though it does not at all sound sentient like Attak Trak and is probably connected to Duncan's tracking invention more than the vehicle itself. We will see the Raider's dashboard again, with a different setup, in MU098.
• He-Man demonstrates an absurdly powerful leaping ability, on par with Superman's leaping a tall building in a single bound, when he somehow propels himself all the way out of the dam's intake grate, out from under the dam, out of the ocean, and far enough up into the air for Buzz-Off to catch him - all while carrying Cringer and Duncan! (And let's not forget the strength of Buzz-Off, who manages to hold He-Man and He-Man's human-tiger cargo!)
• The episode's titular island looks identical to MU008's Dragasaur Isle, from ancient Eternia. That's where Skeletor made a base when he was back in the past, so I suppose it's only natural he would fashion his floating island the same way!
• Man-at-Arms repeatedly recites the line "I have a bad feeling about this," which is very nearly the Star Wars universe's oft-repeated tagline, "I've got a bad feeling about this." Teela also gets a "bad feeling" while on the island; maybe everyone is just a little psychic in this episode!
• This is also the first episode to feature the Wave 3 villain Whiplash. Hi, Whiplash! The character's first line is a high-pitched, lackeyish giggle at Skeletor's paltry pun. Both evil lackeys do a lot of kissing up here.
• Skeletor's vehicle, the Collector, reappears for the first time since MU043, when we watched it take a dive into Grayskull's bottomless pit. Here it shows off its ability to function as a submarine.
• Things that go into/come out of Orko: The power sword, and not for the first time! (See MU056.)
• Since he's away from Snake Mountain, Skeletor has to do his spying on the heroes using the Collector's video screen instead of his usual desktop dome.
• Skeletor doesn't seem to like identifying Orko by name. He has previously used various insulting phrases to refer to the Trollan (e.g., "pipsqueak" in MU036); in this episode he lists the other heroes by name but calls Orko "that silly little bag of wind."
• Teela has a very handy slim extendable light saber that pops out of a chamber on her forearm. Really helps when you need to cut your friends loose from an underwater prison bubble!
• In this episode Mer-Man and Whiplash sport some pistols that they say are freeze rays - a common weapon in He-Man which appears in multiple guises. Usually we see one on Teela's wrist, but there was also the fairly crappy one Man-at-Arms was trying to perfect in MU049, or the one on Skeletor's vehicular invention in MU052.
• In a rare choice of armament, Skeletor for a brief moment points a laser rifle at He-Man (before being inevitably disarmed with the power sword). The rifle looks similar to the Mattel plastic accessory rifle.
• Another episode, like the recent MU071, where Cringer stays Cringer for the whole story and we never get Battle Cat. It almost seems as if the writers of the second season don't see the point of Battle Cat, given that he either doesn't appear or gets supplanted by robotic horses (MU073)!

• It's hard to find any extenuating circumstances to forgive Adam his seriously reckless Wind Raider flying. His insistence on doing flashy loops and flips keeps him from noticing the entire island in front of him, leading to a collision and the necessity of ditching the ship. In previous episodes (see MU036) we've been told that Adam's flamboyant driving was all a put-on, but in this one it seems real - and stupid - enough!
• Cringer seems particularly and emphatically cowardly in this episode. He's already frozen in fear in the opening minutes, and does a lot of backseat whining in the Wind Raider; then resorts to hiding in a bush on the mysterious island.
• He-Man's chest harness, which as we learned in MU012's "Evil-Lyn's Plot" is made of the incredibly powerful material coridite, is apparently also very stretchy, as we see when Buzz-Off grabs hold of it. Far be it from me to question the detail-oriented writers of the show, but that seems just a tad inconsistent! Who knows, maybe He-Man has changed out his coridite armor in favor of MU072's elastium, which is strong and stretchy, as Skeletor explained.
• Another instance of doing a very poor job of hiding one's secret identity: Buzz-Off drops off He-Man, Duncan, Orko, and Cringer at the mysterious island, then leaves to get Teela. When he returns, He-Man is gone and Prince Adam is in his place. Adam's only explanation when Teela asks about He-Man is "He'll be back if we need him." Um, bro. WTH? Teela then breaks up the party into groups, very conveniently putting all of the people who already know Adam's secret into the prince's group.
• We only see it for a second, but on the other end of the trap door that sucks Adam and Duncan away is a totally awesome-looking stone face with a big gaping maw, which spits the water and our heroes out.
• I've noted previously some plot similarities between this episode and MU051: both feature disappearing Eternian ships. In the commentary for MU051, I pointed out a difference which made that episode by implication much darker: namely, that none of the missing ships were ever found again, leading us to presume they were lost with all hands. In this episode Adam and Duncan thankfully find all the missing ships, and we can optimistically infer that their crews are still alive and able to safely evacuate after the events of the episode.
• When the heroes stumble across it, Teela recognizes the power sword as belonging to Adam. It's true that Adam has (quite often to his great detriment - see MU003 and MU061) waved around the power sword from time to time. But shouldn't the weapon look even more familiar to Teela as the one He-Man constantly uses?
• Continuity error (possibly): "I'll check the waterfall," says Buzz-Off; "maybe that trap door is still open." Um, how did you know there was a trap door under the water there, pal? You weren't around when it opened before. I guess we have to assume that Orko somehow realized there was a trap door and informed the bee guy off-screen.
• In addition to being incorrigible bootlickers, both Mer-Man and Whiplash prove exceptionally incompetent in this episode. They are downed by a single tree branch that Teela flicks aside, trip over each other, and bicker constantly. Skeletor might want to think about trying a hiring service.
• Continuity error: Orko hands Prince Adam the power sword, and Adam runs up to a nearby doorway still holding it; but when the camera cuts to a close-up view, Adam is clearly empty-handed. That's one magical sword...
• Another continuity error: He-Man asks Skeletor for the key that controls the island. It should be in the keyhole where Skeletor last placed it, but in the ensuing shot of Skeletor, we see the blatantly empty keyhole next to him. In the very next shot, the key is again in the keyhole, and Skeletor plucks it out. (He also, in an impressive show of strength, crushes the cumbersome thing into powder!)
• Secret identity failure once again: Adam finds a private moment in the final battle to slip behind some machinery and turn into He-Man. After He-Man breaks the island's machinery and all the heroes leap to safety, Teela asks after the missing prince. "Oh I'm sure he's all right," He-Man breezes; "you know Adam!" A completely unsuspicious Teela agrees.
• It's nice to see all the different magical methods that Skeletor uses to escape, and you'd think he'd employ some variation on his usual teleportation trick to vacate the premises at the end of this story; however, then we would have missed the truly fabulous sequence where he rides off on the backs of a swimming Mer-Man and Whiplash. "Mush, mush!"