Phil Harnage

Ed Friedman

Skeletor successfully kidnaps Queen Marlena and lures He-Man into a trap featuring his robot bird, Screeech. So who will rescue the rescuer? It's up to the most unlikely pair, Orko and a very unenthused Cringer, who has to prove to everyone (especially himself) that he can rise above his instinctively cowardly ways.

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

Skeletor, Kobra Khan, Whiplash, Clawful, Mer-Man, Screeech

butterfly, giant seahorses, fish, mini-Mer-Men, ghost

Dragon Walker, Mer-Man's boat

In the conference room at Snake Mountain, Skeletor is holding one of those rare productive meetings. He has a "secret" and very detailed map of the inside of the palace of Eternos, and to the gang of toughs circled about him he details a dastardly plan to steal away the kingdom's queen and draw He-Man into a deadly trap involving his new pet bird, Screeech. It's such a lovely scheme, he has to pause to cackle about it.

All unaware of today's outlined plot, most of our heroes are gathered around the royal dining table, and Adam is anxious for lunch. Orko, one of the missing parties, has gone to the courtyard to fetch a napping Cringer. No one in the viewing audience needed any reinforcement of the fact that Cringer is a coward, but we get one when a harmless butterfly comes along and lands on his nose, causing a full-on freak-out and propelling the tiger inside. Orko follows (after reassuring the butterfly) and performs a magic trick for the assembled diners, which predictably turns sticky for Man-at-Arms. Eventually everyone realizes that Queen Marlena, who was also taking a nap, is still missing from the table, and Cringer is sent to fetch her. Instead of doing his job (because, appropriately enough, he's afraid to wake her), Cringer lies down next to the queen in her room and falls asleep.

While all this has been going on, Skeletor's lackeys (namely: Kobra Khan, Whiplash, Clawful, and Mer-Man) have been enacting old Bonehead's plan. They break into some tunnels beneath the palace and sneak their way to the dining room, where Khan stealthily sends everyone to sleep with his hood gas. When the baddies creep to the royal bedroom to get the queen, Cringer hears someone coming and bravely hides under the bed; he is overcome by the sleep gas without realizing an abduction is in progress. Their theft of the queen successful, the villains now break up: Mer-Man and Khan will head for Skeletor with the captive, while Whiplash and Clawful will cover the real trail and lure He-Man off to his date with Screeech.

The heroes awake to find their queen gone (Cringer is also missing, hidden under the bed, but no one seems to care), so Adam transforms into He-Man and rushes outside to track the kidnappers. Teela and Duncan join him and find some planted seaweed and footprints, and because time is of the essence they hop in the Dragon Walker to languidly and laboriously inch their way to the rescue. Cringer finally awakes and peeks out from under the bed, finding the queen gone; hoping he hasn't missed lunch, he wanders outside and finds Orko, who gives him the bad news. Crushed that his cowardice has led to this disaster, Cringer is in the midst of bemoaning his helplessness when he sniffs out the fact that He-Man and friends are following the wrong trail. His tracker's nose finds the real path of the kidnappers, leading into the Haunted Forest. Determined to make up for his mistake (and persuaded by a more resolute Orko), Cringer sets out to follow the trail with his Trollan buddy.

The pair quickly end up at a rickety footbridge across a watery gorge, where Mer-Man has been lying in wait. (His evil partner Khan went ahead to drop the queen at Snake Mountain and knock off early.) Apparently feeling peckish, the fishy foe bites through the bridge's rope supports and sends a hydrophobic Cringer into the water and down the inevitable waterfall. As the waterlogged tiger and Orko (who was dragged into the wet while trying to assist) pull themselves out of the pools at the base of the falls, they're further menaced by a disturbing little army of tiny Mer-Man spawn, who chase them into a dark rock tunnel that seals itself off. Cringer is horrified by the dark, but Orko sparks a magical light and reassures the big coward.

The tunnels where Mer-Man has chased the two in an attempt to keep them from rescuing the prisoner end up leading them directly to Skeletor's cells, where they rescue the prisoner. Marlena informs the pair of Skeletor's evil plan which he blabbed to her earlier: Screeech will attack from the sky (a place He-Man never bothers to look), grabbing the blonde oaf. Cringer bravely (if unenthusiastically) shoulders the duty of running off to warn He-Man, so that Orko can escort Marlena back to the palace. To buck the tiger up on his self-assigned mission, Orko gives him a "magic charm" amulet that is meant to give him courage. Cringer has need of the charm almost immediately, when he finds himself in a dark hallway and is menaced by a spooky guard ghost. The (obviously phony) charm gives the tiger the confidence to banish the spector and carry on, until he finds himself in the domed chamber where Screeech has been hanging out, awaiting Skeletor's command to strike.

It's at just that moment that Skeletor does command the bird to strike. Seeing no alternative, Cringer (with real courage this time, even if it is given to him by a delusional belief in his magic charm) leaps on the back of the giant bionic bird, riding it out into the open sky. His cries for help as he clings to Screeech are overheard by our trio of heroes on the ground. He-Man, Man-at-Arms, and Teela have spent most of the episode's runtime plodding their way to Snake Mountain in the Dragon Walker, and were hemming and hawing at the open doorway where Clawful and Whiplash led them because He-Man smelled a rat. Now alerted to the threat from above thanks to Cringer's yelping, they spring into action, infiltrating the evil fortress just as Skeletor crabbily recalls his tiger-topped bird. Teela and Duncan handle Mer-Man and Clawful while He-Man ties up Whiplash, then chases off Skeletor. (We assume that Screeech was disabled when it obeyed Skeletor's "return" command by crashing through the wall into Snake Mountain.) That wraps things up! Back to the palace, everyone.

With our heroes reassembled in the palace throne room (and Prince Adam back in place of He-Man), Randor presents Cringer with a medal for bravery. Cringer demurs, giving all the credit to his magic charm. He then realizes that he is no longer wearing it (the thing having disappeared, in a rare successful execution of continuity by the animators, at about the time he leapt onto Screeech), giving Orko the chance to admit that the charm was fake and the power for courage was within Cringer all along.

End with a Joke: Newly established as the bravest animal in all of Eternia, Cringer immediately ruins it by being terrified by the very same butterfly that terrified him at the episode's beginning - the insect having flown through the window to land on his nose. And they all laughed...

• Orko: And now for my new magic trick. / Man-at-Arms: I was afraid of this.
• Cringer: I shouldn't have hidden under the bed. Why am I afraid all the time, what's wrong with me?
• Skeletor (revealing his amazing plan): He-Man will never expect an attack from above!
• Skeletor: Something the matter with Screeech. (Checking his spy dome) It's that silly cat again!

• Skeletor shakes his fists, three-quarter view: Celebrating his foolproof plan to capture Queen Marlena, and again after having captured her
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: To close out the PSA

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by He-Man, Orko, and Cringer
He-Man and Orko discuss the importance of both courage and fear, two important concepts in today's story. Cringer comes along to remark that he started out being afraid of being afraid, and now he's just afraid of being brave. "Sometimes you just can't win," remarks He-Man. Good advice, dude; tell those kids the real, gritty truth about life.

N/A: The closest category I can think of is "Skeletor summons a monster," but only if you consider Screeech to be a monster, which, on reflection, I don't.

• Orko's magic: he can talk to butterflies, teleport, make juice temporarily disappear from jugs, and levitate paper towels.
• Finally the first appearance of Screeech, Skeletor's pet bird, which had been in Mattel's toy line since their second wave of 1983. Even though Filmation was thus given plenty of time to mimic the toy's look, they decided to go for something different, showing an obviously robotic bird (you could describe it as "bionic," which is the word Marlena uses, since it has feathered wings and talons to go with its metallic head and torso) that is at odds with the toy's lifelike design. Though Skeletor mentions the bird early on, we don't get to see it until about halfway through the show, on his video dome; it's only when the bird attacks, and Cringer leaps on its capacious back, that we realize the other big difference between the animated version and the toy: scale. That's one hefty robot bird!
• Personal trivia: for some reason, though we never had the corresponding heroic bird toy (Zoar), as kids my brother and I did own the Screeech toy. We also had a real pet dog, who was not particularly discerning when it came to what he put in his mouth; and when we carelessly left Screeech on the floor one day, the bird ended up with its nose chewed off. A worse fate than that of the animated bird!
• We get a brief look at the royal bedroom and the hallway where all the palace's main bedrooms seem to lie, in keeping with how they were presented at the beginning of MU046's "Eternal Darkness." The interior decorating of the bedroom has changed, however; the king and queen still have separate beds (very Dick Van Dyke Show), but we don't see the interesting wall pattern that was behind the beds in the previous episode, and they have been set much closer with a constructed divider between them, punctuated by a kind of newel post. The bedroom is also shown to have a fantastic view, through several large open windows. It's good to be the king (or queen)!
• Though in MU046 we actually got a chance to see our main characters sleeping in their pajamas, in this episode Marlena has lain down for her nap wearing her daytime attire - including her crown!
• What an impressive villain count in this episode! We get six bad guys, including one we've never yet seen. As he has done in other episodes (see for instance his debut in MU079), the recent addition Kobra Khan seems to have set himself up as a higher-ranking minion than his fellows, ordering them around on several occasions. Oddly, Khan vanishes well before the ending battle, perhaps having taken a half-day. He delivers Marlena to Skeletor at almost exactly the halfway point of the episode, and is never seen again.
• In a similar situation to when Orko ran away from home with Cringer in MU071's "The Rarest Gift of All," and the only missing person anyone asked about was Orko, Adam awakes from his enforced nap to find both his queen and his pet are missing - but he only worries about the queen. (He does mention the missing Cringer once or twice at first, but loses interest after that.) To be fair, that's his mom, but: wouldn't you be curious about your tiger, too?
• The second appearance of the hilarious Dragon Walker (see my ridiculing of the thing in its first appearance in MU082), whose ludicrousness is emphasized when the animators cram three people into its cockpit. In the wide shots of the vehicle, everyone seems packed in like sardines; in the close-ups, He-Man seems to have some comfortable personal space to separate him from Duncan and Teela.
• Mer-Man very uncharacteristically bites through a rope with his teeth to try to stop Cringer from crossing the footbridge, an odd behavior which seems to suggest Trap Jaw was the original intended villain here. But then there's those little mini-Mer-Men...
• We already knew that Cringer dislikes water (see his performance on a sea voyage in MU051), but we learn here that he also can't swim - though he can float! Incidentally, given his proven love of fish, you'd think he'd be more pleased to have accidentally swallowed one on his way down the waterfall; but for some reason he just spits it out. Bad timing, I guess!
• Skeletor, working remotely in this episode, is able to spy on his lackeys' doings through his desktop dome.
• While Skeletor has had Queen Marlena at his mercy before (I'm thinking of his brief but successful palace takeover in MU018's "Creatures from the Tar Swamp," when the royal couple were thrown in the dungeon), this is the first time he has made her imprisonment the center of a plot.
• Things that come out of Orko: In a very similar gag to one in the previous episode (MU083), a third sleeved hand holding a piece of cheese comes out of his hat (the arm having misheard Orko's request for "keys"). Then we get the intended keys, on a ring; and a little later, a "magic charm for bravery and courage."
• Skeletor has a ... ghost? In Snake Mountain? I guess?
• Skeletor's plan seems to evolve as the episode goes on; when he boasts about the scheme to Marlena, it seems to involve having Screeech simply grab He-Man and deliver him. When Skeletor actually commands the bird in the last quarter of the episode, he wants Screeech to toss He-Man into the "Lake of Oblivion." We are left wondering what that is, and what it would do to our hero if he were dropped in it! Perhaps it would function like Count Marzo's Well of Forgetfulness (see MU058), thus affording us yet another episode for our "Amnesiac He-Man" category...
• In the ending battle, Teela uses a pistol to freeze Mer-Man into a block of ice, instead of using the wrist freeze ray she's had in other episodes.
• As has happened before (see for instance MU009), Skeletor is forced to flee from his own hideout at the end of the episode, this time opting for an escape through a conjured portal. We are left wondering, as we often are in these cases, just where he's escaping to. Does he have an even more secret base that the heroes actually don't run in and out of all the time?
• Instead of handing out a peerage or a knighthood to Cringer, as has been done to other vaguely brave characters in previous episodes (Orko was knighted in MU048, and Moak the adorable giant mole in MU069), Randor only gives him a medal.
• This is the first of only two He-Man scripts given to us by Phil Harnage, who as it turns out (according to Wikipedia) is actually a prolific TV writer of the 80s and 90s. In the 80s, among many others, he wrote for She-Ra and one of my other nostalgia triggers, GoBots (the poor man's Transformers!). Harnage's next MOTU story will be for MU095.

• Another home invasion special in this episode! At the beginning of the story we see that Skeletor has managed to obtain a "secret map" of the palace, making it very easy for Kobra Khan and his associated lackeys to break through an outer wall, navigate some tunnels under the main palace, infiltrate the dining room and royal bedroom, and knock everyone out. Is there a mole on the Eternian guard?!
• In fact, Kobra's use of sleeping gas is so successful that it leaves us wondering why anyone else bothered to come to the kidnapping; the only other person who helps is Whiplash, using his tail to remove the villains' footprints. Heck, anyone with a leafy branch could have done that!
• King Randor finds Man-at-Arms' fruit-juicy predicament at lunch amusing, but his laugh sounds very odd - as though whoever provided it started out laughing in someone else's voice and tried to shift gears halfway through.
• Animation error: while covering his eyes in shame and sadness, you can see Cringer's eyebrows flickering between two different colors. When he uncovers them, his eyebrows have settled on the wrong color: orange instead of the correct black.
• Surely one of the most bizarre parts of the episode (which for some reason I completely failed to remember from earlier viewings, perhaps due to its short duration) is the appearance of Mer-Man's "little ones:" a collection of mini-Mer-Men with back fins and little fish tails, who pursue Cringer and Orko into a cave. After a very short chase a door seals our heroes off from the creatures, which we never see again. We're left wondering if it was all some kind of fever dream. Do we even want to know how Mer-Man "acquired" these critters? Has he been fertilizing someone's eggs in a fetid pool somewhere? ... Yeah, see, I don't think we really want to know.
• What with this episode being all about Cringer and featuring him rather prominently, you'd think the animators would have taken the time to give us some good poses and looks for our feline friend. Instead I noted several scenes in which the "Fraidy Cat" has a very strangely shaped head or unusually uncharacteristic face.
• "Hurry! They're getting away!" cries He-Man from the crowded back of the Dragon Walker, and the creaky thing plods onward, after foes who are escaping... on foot. I feel like the creators must have known what they were doing here, and were relishing the absurdity of it all.
• Skeletor's invasion of the palace prompts our heroes to perform a revenge home invasion on Snake Mountain to retrieve the kidnapped queen. Mer-Man, ostensibly attempting to impede Orko and Cringer's progress, instead chases the pair into a tunnel that leads directly into the fortress's dungeon and allows them to rescue the prisoner without setting off any alarms. (Our fishy friend had better hope this doesn't come up in Skeletor's post-mortem project meeting!) The other half of the heroic rescue party are invited to enter in more direct fashion, via an open doorway, since Skeletor actually wants to lure He-Man inside (perhaps he's turned off his alarms to set this trap). The only evidence we get of any defensive measures against intruders on Skeletor's part is the weird "ghost" who threatens Cringer.
• Cringer has met Orko before, so surely must realize that the charm the Trollan gives him is bogus. Right? No? Sigh... frankly I'm more disappointed in Cringer's gullibility here than I am in his cowardice.
• Animation error: Whiplash and Clawful rush into the throne room to give Skeletor some news, and get between his giant head and his desk; but their scale is off for the background. The desk with its spying dome is drawn as if it's much closer to us than they are.
• Though I think Cringer's character has been used to more comedic effect in other episodes, this is a fun story with a full set of characters that still manages to unfold logically. It was nice to see our tiger, who sometimes seems to get left in the lurch in He-Man plots, get a chance to stand in the spotlight for a change. Not bad, Phil!
• That being said, this episode does rather emphasize a trend I've noted in previous episodes of the season, of sidelining Battle Cat in favor of Cringer (or just leaving the cat out entirely). I feel like Battle Cat has become a bit of an albatross for the writers, as they don't know how to include him in fights or plots.