Michael Kirschenbaum

Marsh Lamore

He-Man spends an entire episode trying to keep mole people from stealing corn. That's it. Enjoy kids!

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

Skeletor, Beast Man, Trap Jaw

Agar (master farmer), Garda (Agar's son), Belots, Subternius, armed guards, Eternian villagers

corn-stealing tank, other tanks, sky sled, Dragon Walker, harvester

Teela and Orko are in the vast farmlands of Eternia, admiring a burgeoning crop of food. They meet with master farmer Agar and his son Garda, to thank the farmer for his big yields this year. Agar is modest but requests a favor for his young son: a magic trick. Orko obliges by juggling some berries and making them disappear - by eating them. He offers to make even more delicious food disappear, but Teela drags the magician away.

On their way out of the fields, the heroes stop to pluck some ripe corn, but are interrupted by a tremor and a loud noise. The corn is being sucked underground! Row after row of the precious ears are yanked away. The heroes decide to flee, but Teela is caught in a suddenly formed rift and vanishes! She falls down a shaft and finds herself in a large open cave. Exploring the underground, Teela happens upon a group of cave dwellers, busily gathering the stolen corn and loading it into a train of caterpillar-treaded haulers. Accidentally revealing her presence, the captain is swarmed by the corn thieves and restrained before she can defend herself.

Meanwhile, a panicked Orko has flown off to fetch help, finding likely assistance nearby in the form of Man-at-Arms, Adam, and Cringer. The prince appears to have been teaching Duncan how to relax by fishing, but at word of Teela's disappearance, they all rush back to the fields - which are now completely bare. Adam transforms himself into He-Man and Cringer into Battle Cat. Even though there are no landmarks left on the stripped fields, Orko finds the spot where his friend vanished, and Battle Cat digs at the weak ground, quickly falling through the hole himself. He-Man advises a distraught Man-at-Arms to stay above ground to be able to coordinate help from up there, and hops after his tiger.

In the caves, He-Man triggers a trap door but manages to climb his way out while Battle Cat scares off some approaching mole people above. The heroic pair encounter further resistance in the form of a domed tank like the ones that were hauling corn earlier. This one zaps the ceiling with a laser, causing a shower of rocks that buries our heroes. But rocks are He-Man's specialty, so he quickly kicks his way out, then disables the tank with a well-thrown power sword. He hops on Battle Cat and charges his way to an underground castle. In the throne room he finds King Subternius, leader of the thieving mole people (who are actually known as Belots). Beside the king is the handcuffed Teela - the pair have been watching He-Man's approach on Subternius's crystal ball.

He-Man is ready to punch everyone and everything to rescue the Eternian captain, but she dissuades him; she's been chatting with the king and has decided that he's not really a bad guy. Subternius has revealed his mistrust of all surface dwellers, but Teela thinks she can learn more and change his mind. Convinced by Teela's determination, He-Man leaves, promising some extreme repercussions for Subternius if he harms the hostage in any way. After He-Man's departure, Teela learns that the king's mistrust is born of an experience in his youth: his starving people ventured above ground to seek help, but had the bad luck of dealing with Skeletor, who seemed friendly enough for a guy with a skull face, but betrayed and enslaved Subternius and his people. It took a planned rebellion to escape, and he has vowed never to live on the surface again - or trust anyone who lives there. Now Subternius's people are hungry, and he's going to get them food by the most expedient method: stealing it.

Back at the palace, He-Man has some definite explaining to do to Teela's father ("She told me not to, honest!"), but must quickly rush back out to the fields to prevent further raids on the corn and chivvy the Eternian villagers to safety. Sure enough, when Battle Cat calls him to the fields, our hero finds more tanks among the silos (which look like big glass bell jars, or - if you know your retro technology - vacuum tubes), vacuuming ears of corn into themselves. It's tank smashing time! He-Man and Ram Man join forces to fend off the various forays from the Belots, and eventually Man-at-Arms shows up as well on the new Dragon Walker; but all their efforts seem to do little, since the Belot vehicles keep coming and coming. Man-at-Arms examines one of the tanks and finds that it has no internal power source; he theorizes that all of the machines are remote-controlled through a generator underground. Giving He-Man an electro-compass that can help lead him to the power source, Duncan sends him off while he holds down the fort on the surface.

Down underground, He-Man gets to the generator and, at the same time, is confronted by Subternius. Teela is there as well, being a good little hostage. While the Belot leader helplessly looks on, He-Man smashes the machinery, stopping all the tanks on the surface. The angry Subternius gets desperate, and grabs a convenient nearby bonus hostage - Agar's son Garda, who really wanted to help He-Man. Turns out he does end up helping, since his angry rant at the Belot king about being a crappy farmer, combined with some coaxing by Teela and He-Man, finally helps change the guy's mind. Unfortunately, it comes a little too late, as Subternius has already sent a command to his people to flood the Eternian crops (under the "if I can't have it, no one can" principle). Floods, however, are He-Man's specialty (right after smashing rocks); he hops above ground and crumbles a boulder down on the approaching water, blocking its attack and sending it running away to the sea.

Later, Adam and Teela meet again with Garda (somewhat sheepish from having gotten nabbed, though he ends up getting a compliment on his bravery from Teela) and Agar, who believes he can recover from the great loss of corn caused by the Belot raiders. He has some help to do it: the former raiders themselves, who at the rueful Subternius's urging have changed their ways and agreed to help work in the fields (presumably in return for a cut of the crops).

End with a Joke: Sure, Agar has plenty of new farm workers in the Belots; but he has one worker he would rather wasn't there: Orko. The little Trollan eats four berries for every one he picks. Everyone laughs to see Orko stuffing himself on the produce of Eternia.

• Subternius: I vowed never again to be tricked by the lying above-grounders. ... When we are finished, there will be no more Eternia.
• Ram Man (having been saved from a tank): Duhh, tanks Man-at-Arms.
• He-Man: Freedom is our greatest gift. / Teela: Listen to them, Subternius; can't you see they're telling you the truth? / Subternius: Perhaps you're right, Teela. In my heart, I know the boy isn't lying ... I judged you by what those other people did to us, so long ago. And now it's too late.

• Teela, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: As seems to often happen lately, just the hands-on-hips pose is used for some close-up dialogue
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands in a lower cave after having fallen through a trap door
• He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat: Looking impressive as he dashes into the underground castle; and again later, this time without a sword, as he arrives to stop further corn thefts
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Leaving the Belots, and again, three more times, when preparing to defend against a Belot attack
• He-Man punches the viewer: Trying to break down a protective force field
• He-Man juggles his sword: About to stop a corn harvesting machine

One full

Brought to you by Teela and Orko
Teela decries the wrong-headedness of Subternius, who decided to mistrust everyone just because the first people he met on the surface betrayed him. Orko compares it to throwing away a barrel of good apples because of one rotten one. Don't be like Subternius! (Read: Racism bad.)

Teela does something dangerous by herself: Because, even when He-Man has showed up to rescue her, she opts to stay with her kidnappers and try to convince them to change their minds. That Stockholm syndrome kicked in quick!
Everybody deserves a second chance: The Belots seem pretty evil throughout the episode, but have turned it around by the end.

• Agar, Eternia's "master farmer," looks a whole lot like Eternia's royal archaeologist, Melaktha. By the way Teela talks about him, he sounds like the only farmer on the planet, solely responsible for feeding Randor's people. In the second half of the episode, he appears to change voices.
• Voice actor Linda Gary provides an impressively intense scream for Teela as she falls underground!
• Teela gets out her wrist zapper to use on the mole people (okay yes, they're called Belots, but they're clearly mole people). It's been showing itself to have multiple uses, so there's no telling what could have come out of it; but she allows herself to be swarmed before we get to find out what it will do.
• This episode adds to the copious evidence throughout the series of Adam's love of fishing. We saw him fishing via memory projector in MU006, planning to fish in MU056, and actually fishing in real time in MU058.
• Showing himself up to getting out of pretty much any situation, He-Man punches himself a ladder out of solid stone to get out of a hole. Gotta love him!
• Just to change things up, He-Man kicks at a caved-in pile of rocks instead of punching it. Don't skip leg day, kids!
• Subternius shows that Skeletor isn't the only guy on Eternia who spies on people through magical means: he has a kooky crystal ball like the Wicked Witch of the West, which he uses to check out He-Man.
• Skeletor and his lackeys appear in the episode, but only in Subternius's flashback story, and have no dialogue (and since Subternius never describes them or calls them by name, there's no way the heroes can actually know who he's talking about). Oddly, the enslaved Belots are shown being guarded by some armed soldiers, wearing some familiar helmets and masks which I can't quite place but not looking like anyone Skeletor has employed before (their uniforms may match those of Aridon's guards from MU059).
• We all know that Battle Cat can speak English, right? We can hear him say a few things in this very episode. But for some reason there's a scene where he walks up to He-Man and just roars, and He-Man is able to understand this as meaning that the Belots are about to attack. So He-Man can understand tiger in the same way Han Solo can understand Chewbacca?
• This episode features the first appearance of the Dragon Walker. Just... just see my Commentary notes about this.
• He-Man's stopping the Belots' fleet of vehicles by smashing their power source reminds me of Anakin destroying the droid control ship in Star Wars: Episode I.
• He-Man stops yet another flood aimed at crops. With a rock. Ho-hum. More hydraulic engineering from our plumber/hero.

• Down at the fishing hole, Duncan is shown with ungloved, flesh-colored hands. Not necessarily an animation error, but they are usually green.
• Subternius is an awesome name. Just wanted to mention that.
• In Subternius's flashback, he tells how long ago, their crops failed and they had to go above ground for food. Um, I think I know why you were having problems, bro; you can't grow crops underground!
• Based on Subternius's story, he and his people were enslaved by Skeletor for literally years; but this appears to be the first time any of the above-grounder heroes have encountered the Belots. So I guess Skeletor had a private farm plot out of sight somewhere that his slaves were working, so Trap Jaw and Beast Man could have fresh corn when they wanted it?
• Now I know I've complained about the lack of communication between Mattel and Filmation in the past: Mattel's inability or refusal to take advantage of the great character and vehicle designs from the Filmation show, and Filmation's sometimes highly inaccurate interpretations of the Mattel products. In the case of the Dragon Walker, Filmation faithfully reproduced the toy - with hilarious results. Don't get me wrong, it was a very cool toy, and I'm sure it was fun to watch your little action figures being pulled along by the big swinging bottom half of the thing; but seeing it in a "realistic" setting just emphasizes how completely impractical it is as a transportation device. One of my strongest memories from rewatching the show as an adult is the look of grim determination on Duncan's face as he laboriously crosses a field, propelled by the lumbering gyrations of this embarrassing contraption.
• Speaking of vehicles, I do love the little bubble-headed tanks the Belots drive around. So cute!
• This episode showcases yet another instance of enemies not taking advantage of having Teela as a hostage. We saw this happen with Trap Jaw in MU047 and with Skeletor and company in MU015. Here, Subternius has but to threaten Teela's safety to stop He-Man from smashing his stuff, yet he fails to act (instead opting to try that game with Garda a few minutes later). At this point, Teela must be starting to feel a little insecure: isn't she worth it? Isn't she a valuable prisoner?
• This is the only episode credited to writer Michael Kirschenbaum; and no offense to the guy, but I think we should all be thankful for it. We get some fun-looking vehicles and characters here, but the story doesn't have much going for it. Subternius's stubborn refusal to see reason, even when he's a reasonable guy, seems contrived and pointless; and the events of the plot seem repetitive and padded, not to mention lacking in interest (how fun is farming, really?).
• Usually the rash actions of Garda in wandering underground and getting himself kidnapped would be a set-up for a moral lesson that the wayward child was meant to learn. In this case, it becomes a set-up for Garda to teach his elder (Subternius) a lesson. What a switcheroo!