Warren Greenwood

Ernie Schmidt

A visiting all-powerful alien entity gets treated to an all-out war as Skeletor leads a goblin army against the palace of Eternos. Upset by the wasteful conflict, Om the alien butts his nose into other people's business and pits just He-Man and Skeletor against each other in a one-on-one duel for all the marbles!

Man-at-Arms, King Randor, Prince Adam (He-Man), Stratos, Ram Man, Orko, Queen Marlena, Teela

Skeletor

Om, schminivits, goblin soldiers, thunder lizard mounts, General Tataran, Eternian citizens, Eternian villagers, horned dogs (Gogol and Golgan), Eternian guards, pink flippery thing, tree monster, blob monster, snake, giant insect

goblin attack airships, Wind Raider, sky sleds, robot walkers

Man-at-Arms calls King Randor and Prince Adam to his lab to inform them (and only them - no press conferences on Eternia) that his space probe wandering around the solar system has contacted an alien being. In fact, Duncan's got the fella on the tele-viewer! The trio of heroes get an earful from the alien, who introduces himself as Om. He's a big glowing ball who has long advanced beyond the need for a physical form, and seems to spend his time wandering the galaxy and checking out everyone that lives there. Om offers to pay a peaceful visit to the people of Eternia; and though Man-at-Arms cautiously warns Randor about the potential dangers of letting a seemingly omnipotent being crash at your pad, Randor believes the risk is worth it and extends an invitation.

While the good people of Eternos are gathering and dressing in their best to meet the alien visitor, Skeletor is preparing a very different type of visit. He has teamed up with an entire goblin army recruited from the land of Myrrh, under the command of one General Tataran, and they're going to attack Eternos! He's had some troubles in the past cracking the old Eternian nut, but it seems that with the men and the firepower at his back, nothing can stop Skeletor now!

With unfortunate timing, the attack arrives just as Om is having a good chat with Randor and company about all the interesting things on Eternia, like mouthy Trollan magicians and skull-faced castles that hold all kinds of secrets. The goblins think the big glowing ball in the sky is some new Eternian weapon, and nothing to worry about. A huge all-out battle commences, with the Eternian villagers from the outskirts of the city forced to rush into the gates to find shelter from the goblins' strafing airships and galloping thunder lizards. The Eternian guard defends the palace, along with He-Man, Stratos, Ram Man, Duncan, and Teela. Orko manages to get a good spell in, and even Randor takes out a jetpack invader with a well-thrown mace.

Eventually, however, an aghast Om can't stand watching all the needless fighting anymore, and freezes all the combatants in place. He decides that, to save time and bloodshed (and make things easier on the animators), the entire battle should be decided by one fight between two chosen champions. Can you guess who those champions are? Yes, you're right, viewer: it's Skeletor and He-Man. Om sets up the pair on a mostly empty plain, with just a lone dead tree nearby (which Skeletor quickly turns into a monster). The battle rages back and forth, mostly consisting of spell after spell coming from the villainous sorcerer, and He-Man deflecting or defeating every one. Energy cages, angry trees, pink blobs, power balls, snakes - it doesn't matter, He-Man beats them all. Finally, Skeletor conjures a nasty looking insect, which he enlarges and sets on the hero. When the creature doesn't immediately succeed, he makes it larger, and larger again: Skeletor keeps feeding the bug more power, and feeding it more insults, furious at its inability to win the fight for him. Finally the magician's magic fizzles out, and the bug has had it with the verbal abuse - he goes after Skeletor. Seeing his enemy in dire straits, He-Man takes pity and grabs the insect, tossing it away.

It's at this point that the only spectator to the fight, Om, decides that it's over. He-Man's compassion for his enemy has proven him the winner. Om defrosts everyone and tells Skeletor to take his army and get the heck out. Not content to wait on the villain, he simply teleports the attacking army and its leaders away, telling the remaining Eternians that he has wiped all their memories of the night's events. He congratulates the heroes on their compassion and love and flies off, leaving Randor and the Eternian citizens to gather in the throne room and celebrate the fact that they look good to interstellar beings.

End with a Joke: Orko claims that if Om had given him the chance, the Trollan could have wiped the floor with Skeletor. He reenacts his hypothetical battle by conjuring a wooden sword and swiping it wildly, eventually backing into a curtain, which collapses over him. Everyone laughs at his shenanigans, and Teela even says: "Oh, Orko!"

• Man-at-Arms: I have made contact with an alien being.
• Om: I am Om. I am of a race much older than yours; a race that has long since shed the fragile shell of a physical body. We are older than many planets, and our origin stretches to a time that would hold no meaning for you. We are born in the fiery belly of stars, and pass away into the frozen black holes at the end of the universe.
• King Randor: Of course, Duncan, there are always great risks in the pursuit of knowledge; but they are risks that must be taken.
• Om: I see that one of your rank is different. Who is the little creature? / Orko (indignant): "Little creature"? I happen to be one of the greatest magicians in the land of Trolla. / Om (possibly amused): I see. How - fascinating.
• King Randor (in the middle of explaining important Eternian history to Om): ...And the ancient ones stored their secrets in the Castle Grayskull. The Sorceress is the guardian of... (interrupted by goblin strafing attack)
• Orko: What do you know? My magic worked!
• Om: Instead of all this fighting, I will select one single warrior from each side - the most powerful and representative warrior. The winner will decide the conflict, and I will decide the fate of the losing side. I have spoken.
• He-Man: You haven't invented the trap yet that can hold me, Skeletor.
• Skeletor: Ooohhh, He-Man, how you vex me!
• Skeletor (speaking to the insect he's conjured): Attack He-Man, you filthy beast!
• He-Man (probably realizing he's seriously buttering up Om): Even though Skeletor is my enemy, I couldn't allow him to perish. I believe in the sanctity of all life.
• Om (speaking to the collected heroes of Eternia): You have something more powerful than mighty warriors or destructive weapons: you have compassion. You know that there is something more important than strength. It has many names. Some call it - love.

• Skeletor leans in close to the viewer: Speaking with General Tataran about his attempts to conquer Eternia
• He-Man juggles his sword: After disarming Skeletor; the loop is played in reverse, ending with He-Man sheathing the weapon
• Skeletor shakes his fists, three-quarter view: Enjoying the fact that he has trapped He-Man in the grip of a tree monster; and again later, after throwing a snake at He-Man
• Skeletor laughs, head back: At the fact that he has trapped He-Man under a pink blob
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands after jumping over the giant insect
• Adam laughs, head back: At Orko's antics

Zero (!)

Brought to you by Man-at-Arms
Our master of weapons reminds us that the huge conflict in today's episode was ended by a single act of compassion. Even though a good half of this episode was one long battle, he advises us (as our heroes have done before in this part of the episode, for instance in MU060) that "sometimes it takes more courage not to fight."

Games and gladiators: I suppose Om isn't much of a gamesman, but he certainly turned a war into something a lot more like a gladiator show; and the episode is called "The Arena," for crying out loud!

• In the opening scene, Man-at-Arms has called the king and his son into his computer room, with backgrounds featuring prominently in MU068's "Day of the Machines," among others (we get a lot of looks at that piece of machinery that looks like an old-timey radio). The heroes also walk past the metal table on which Duncan built his He-Bot in MU003.
• The reaction to Duncan's discovery of a being from another world is interesting, as it seems to imply that the Eternians aren't in regular contact with people from other planets - even though past episodes of the series would seem to belie that. For instance, in just the previous episode (MU080), the impression I got was that the inhabitants of the Dark Moon were not colonists like those of the Bright Moon, but indigenous peoples. We also met the queen of the moon of Phantos back in MU005 - were the Phantosians colonists as well? And certainly our heroes have been to other "dimensions" in the past, in MU019 and MU045, and met beings from other dimensions (recall MU069's "The Gamesman"). And let's not forget Trolla!
• Om knows Randor's name already at their first meeting and identifies him as the ruler of "your planet." I think this is arguable. There seem to be other kings on Eternia who don't know much about Randor. Perhaps Om is not as well-informed as he thinks he is. Randor more modestly and less specifically says he is "the leader of my people."
• Though they are drawn just a trifle differently, with slightly pointier head stalks and slightly furrier bodies, the pink creatures that pan past during Om's cosmic back story are the same schminivits that He-Man encountered during his wacky amnesia trip to Trannis in MU019.
• In an atypical occurrence mimicking what happened in the recent MU079, Adam changes to He-Man off-screen, bypassing the transformation sequence. Duncan then needlessly endangers He-Man's secret identity by muttering to He-Man about the transformation amid a crowd of people who aren't supposed to be hearing that stuff. Interestingly, Duncan actually calls He-Man "Adam," an unusual conflating of the two personalities which contradicts my cherished theory that He-Man and Adam are different people.
• We will see the character of General Tataran used again in the very special episode MU110, "The Problem with Power."
• This is the third episode in the series to have no He-Man transformations. It comes very soon after the last one, which was MU079. The next time this will happen will be MU109.
• The story in general, like other recent scripts (see MU079's "Disappearing Dragons"), gives off a very strong Star Trek vibe, with its all-powerful aliens and lessons about humanity and war. (I didn't know how right I was about this! See my addendum at the end of this section.) For another plot about an all-powerful alien choosing two champions from Eternia for a good-vs.-evil contest, see MU128's "The Games."
• We get a tantalizing fragment of Randor explaining the history of Eternia to Om, in which he mentions the "ancient ones" who "stored their secrets" in Castle Grayskull. We've certainly heard of the ancients before (see MU067 or MU073), as well as the "elders" (see MU007 or MU016), and it's likely we're meant to understand those as being two names for the same group of ancestors from the deep past; but I'm not sure we've ever directly been told that these smarty-pants guys were the ones who established Grayskull. Also, the fact that Randor is spouting all this information clearly means that he understands the importance of Grayskull - something I had cause to question way, way back in MU002.
• Stratos shows off an interesting wrist beam which seems to encase his enemies in Lucite. It looks like the hapless goblins caught in the ray are wearing the bulky shields donned by the Atreides soldiers in 1984's Dune.
• The militant Randor, forced in the extremity of the battle to defend his own parapets, is seen wielding the Evil-Lyn-like mace that he used to smash robots in MU029's "Prince Adam No More."
• The "robot walkers" that the goblins wheel out in the later stages of the battle (which I've listed as "vehicles" even though they are unmanned) look very much like the invading alien vehicles of War of the Worlds.
• He-Man is shown firing lasers from the hood ornament of the Wind Raider, something I don't recall it having been able to do before. One particular sequence with him firing lasers and hitting a goblin ship, which crashes, and is then crossed by a group of goblin foot soldiers in the foreground, is used twice during the battle.
• Orko's magic: he transmogrifies a goblin thunder lizard mount into some goofy-looking pink flippered beast, whose face is disturbingly reminiscent of Jar-Jar Binks.
• Skeletor's conjuring of a big pink blob to drop over He-Man is surely one of his stranger magical attacks. He-Man dispels the creature with a blowing gale generated by a lot of sword twirling.
• "I've fought your snakes before, Skeletor," He-Man comments when Skeletor sets a red constrictor on him; perhaps he's remembering the much larger snake Skeletor revealed that he had living in his basement, in MU062's "The Golden Disks of Knowledge." Oddly enough, this smaller, magical snake turns into a plain log after He-Man tosses it away - I suppose to show us that our hero didn't just smoosh a living snake, but it reminds us of what would happen to Batros's magic snakes after he was done with them (see MU072's "The Great Books Mystery").
• We've seen Skeletor teleport himself out of trouble many a time at the end of an episode, but it's rare that someone else does his teleporting for him! This time it's Om unceremoniously seeing our favorite villain off.
• Queen Marlena has appeared sitting next to Randor in a few recent episodes, but I believe this is the first one for quite some time in which she actually gets to speak a few lines.
• As I was entering this episode into the database I thought it seemed very Star Trek-like, as noted earlier. It so happened that, later, I was re-watching the original series with my family, and we stumbled across an episode with an incredible number of similarities to this He-Man story. I asked my son, "What's this episode called?" and he replied, "Um, 'The Arena.'" They didn't even change the title! Well in fact the Star Trek episode (Season 1, Episode 18) is technically titled just "Arena." In it, an all-powerful alien race (in this case called the Metrons) disrupts an armed conflict between the Federation and the Gorns, then pits Captain Kirk against the Gorn captain in a one-on-one duel on an otherwise empty planet to decide whose ship will survive. Sound familiar? It seems a little shady that Warren Greenwood, this episode's writer, gave no credit to the writer of the Trek episode, Gene L. Coon - who ironically almost got into trouble himself when it was discovered he'd (perhaps unintentionally) poached the idea off a short story by one Fredric Brown (trivia taken from Wikipedia). There are certainly some differences in circumstances and characters between He-Man and Trek, but as you see the basic events are identical - even the ending of the story shows Kirk winning the battle with the Gorn but refusing to dispatch his enemy, earning the respect of the Metrons in the same way that He-Man's compassion towards Skeletor impresses Om. There's a definite difference in tone, though, as the Metrons are quite disparaging of both the Federation races and the Gorn, and at the end of the episode only grudgingly concede that in a thousand years, they might be willing to speak with Kirk's people again. Quite a wide deviation from Om's glowing final report! (The Metron character, when he appears, bears an uncanny resemblance to MU079's Darmi.)

• Not exactly an animation error, but in the lengthy panning shot that establishes the extent and number of the goblin army, you can see several spots where different paintings have been rather obviously stitched together, indicated by not-very-seamless vertical smears running through the background.
• This episode is the first of only two MOTU scripts written by Warren Greenwood. The dialogue has a distinctive and sophisticated flair to it which is a marked departure from the comparatively simplistic stuff we heard coming out of people's mouths in MU080. Skeletor's discussion with General Tataran about his army and attack plans is impressive and technical, and Om's speech about his post-corporeal race is mystical and cool.
• I really like the way Man-at-Arms is very circumspect and careful in managing the first contact with Om - suggesting to Randor that the unknown being could be dangerous, and making sure He-Man is present for the encounter. The audience is forced to see Om in an unsettling gray area that characters in MOTU rarely fall into.
• Skeletor tells General Tataran that he's going to pay each goblin soldier 10,000 gold pieces. There are 500 goblin infantry troops. That means Skeletor is about to shell out 5,000,000 gold pieces!! Where does he get all his cash?! Is he selling spy technology like his desktop dome to perverts around Eternia? (Of course, I wouldn't put it past Skeletor to just be lying, and planning to double-cross General Tataran after the battle; or maybe he's got Beast Man in the basement pressing fake gold pieces!)
• In this episode we see again the sometimes incongruous clashing of medieval-level fantasy technology with high-tech sci-fi accessories. The goblin army, who are seen gathering around fires and riding dinosaur cavalry mounts, also have very impressive looking airships that look like they could travel through space. The kingdom of Eternia, which has shown itself to be technologically advanced enough to contact other races by space probe, has hut-dwelling men dressed in rags just outside the palace, who alert their fellow villagers of danger through the time-honored method of whacking a bell with a mallet.
• Randor pacifically orders his defenders to not "harm" the goblin army, claiming they are "but innocent pawns;" but in the following scene, our heroes are firing all kinds of lasers at the attackers and making their airships crash into the ground. How is that not harmful to them?
• I like the little extra touch when Randor disarms an invader goblin and the two Eternian guards watching him give each other a look, one nodding his head as if to say, "Our king got in a nice one."
• The high-and-mighty Om's superior method for stopping all the combatants is to coat them in some drippy white stuff, which we desperately hope is ice.
• It's great to get a chance to see just He-Man and Skeletor face off against one another. It's very rare that you get to see this happen, since Skeletor tends to run off as soon as He-Man really gets going; which makes the bony villain's aggression and determination in this battle royale all the more surprising. The fight begins as you might expect, with He-Man deflecting bolts with his sword and very quickly divesting his enemy of the havoc staff. But then Skeletor gets very imaginative, conjuring all kinds of different cages, monsters, balls, and spells to try to stop the blonde oaf. The great Alan Oppenheimer also provides some fantastic trash talk for Skeletor during the battle (I particularly love the way he says "Attack He-Man, you filthy beast!"). Good stuff!
• I have some mixed feelings about the ending of the episode. Sure it's cool that Om complimented the Heroic Warriors about their compassion, and I suppose Randor can enjoy a brief moment to pat himself and his people on the back; but shouldn't everyone feel just a trifle... used? After all, no one asked to be frozen in whatever material Om was using, and no one asked to have the villains' minds wiped (what was that all about anyway?) and zapped away. Doesn't He-Man feel just a bit manipulated for having been shoved into a 1V1, as if he and Skeletor were two bugs in a jar, given a good shake?