J. Brynne Stephens

Bill Reed

Orko, desperate to impress visiting Prince Dal with the wonders of Eternos, makes up a lie about a rock he found, leading to other and worse lies, and causing all kinds of trouble.

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

N/A

Eternian robot servants, Prince Dal, random Eternian children, torcs, night spiders, Dyperian soldiers, Uncle Stefan

construction equipment

Orko, whose heedless and immature antics will once again provide the driving force for this episode's plot, starts us off by finding a sparkly rock among some messy rubble that somehow ended up in the palace courtyard. Judging the rock to be pretty, he tucks it away in his head - remember this, folks! It will be important later!

The Trollan is then drawn by a nearby conversation, as Teela and Prince Adam are showing a young visitor the impressively massive construction site for the city's new water purification system. We learn along with Orko that the visiting fellow is Prince Dal of Dyperia, cousin of Adam and son of Adam's Uncle Stefan, ruler of the kingdom by the sea. Dal has been sent to Eternos for his own safety while some fighting goes on back home. He's homesick for the beauties of Dyperia, so the captain and the Eternian prince have been showing him the wonders of Eternos. Orko jumps on board immediately, eager to prove that his hometown is far superior to Dal's, the name of which he is insultingly incapable of pronouncing. Orko takes the visitor off to a pretty garden with lovely water features. When Dal still insists that his city boasts even more beautiful sights, Orko counters that Eternos is greater due to its powerful magic. When pressed for proof, the Trollan produces the sparkly rock he just found, which he claims is called the "Star Crystal" and will protect its owner from any harm.

Intrigued, Dal wants to test the crystal, so goes to stand under a nearby waterfall (under the dubious assumption that "not getting wet" falls under the remit of the crystal's protective powers). Anxious to not be found out, Orko casts a quick spell to deflect the path of the waterfall, and Dal is convinced. However, there are instant negative consequences to Orko's deception, as the redirected waterfall has to go somewhere. It ends up flying over to a nearby palace courtyard, where two of the youngest Eternian toddlers we've ever seen are sitting around being babysat by Adam, Teela, and Cringer. Seeing a flood approaching, Adam runs off with his tiger to make a transformation, and - as He-Man - grabs a huge curved pipe from the nearby construction site. While Battle Cat carries the kids and Teela to safety, He-Man directs the water out to sea through the pipe. The danger ended, Detective He-Man tracks the path of the flood back to its source, where he finds Orko and Dal still standing around under the bent waterfall.

Since the falls are just a Man-at-Arms-made water feature, He-Man is able to turn them off by closing a valve. When he asks the pair what happened, Orko forestalls Dal's crystal-based explanation and claims it's a mystery to them both. Once He-Man leaves, Orko lies again, telling Dal that He-Man wouldn't let them keep such a powerful crystal if he knew about it, and taking the rock back. Worried about the hole he's digging for himself, Orko decides he's going to sort it all out in the morning and goes to sleep; but in the night Dal sneaks into the Trollan's room and snatches the crystal, determined (as we learn from his muttered monologuing) to get the artifact to his father and help end the Dyperian conflict.

Orko awakes to find the young prince vanished and his crystal gone, and realizes he's in deep doo-doo. Determined to solve things on his own so his friends don't find out about his lies, he lies again, this time telling Teela that Dal went off towards some caverns. The magician then floats off towards Dyperia to find Dal himself and make things right. Teela meanwhile heads off in the wrong direction, along with her father, He-Man, and Battle Cat. They quickly run into trouble in a cavern when Teela is ambushed and tied up by night spiders. He-Man rescues her from a rapid web job, but then the heroes are attacked by a band of torcs (the creatures that King Stefan has been fighting back in Dyperia). All our friends succumb to the torcs' sleep gas, and are taken prisoner! Awaking in a rock-cut cell, the heroes find they have been disarmed, and must resort to subterfuge to make their escape. Battle Cat distracts the guards with some affectionate licking through the bars of his cell door, while He-Man digs a tunnel and takes their captors by surprise. Retrieving their weapons, the heroes then lock their captors into the cell they just escaped from and block off He-Man's tunnel. They're free!

Let's return to Dal and Orko now. Orko catches up to the prince, who explains his reasons for running off. Orko is just trying to finally come clean about his own disingenuousness, when the pair are threatened by their own band of torcs. Rather than surrender, a deluded Dal (convinced he is invincible) challenges the attackers, forcing Orko to improvise. He's able to use a plant frond he was holding to wave the sleep gas spray back onto the attackers (thus coming out much better than He-Man and friends did in a very similar situation!), and the pair move on. Still having failed to actually inform the Dyperian prince that he's been lying to him about the Star Crystal, Orko somehow loses track of his dupe as well, and instead stumbles upon a newly escaped Man-at-Arms and friends. He admits to them that the prince has run to join his father, and they all go to see what's up (leaving more detailed explanations of Orko's malfeasance for later).

Prince Dal has found King Stefan and his gathered army, and conveyed Orko's tale about the powers of the Star Crystal. Convinced he can end the war, Stefan approaches the torcs on his own, the crystal raised high. He-Man spots him doing this and Orko has to tell him that the king mistakenly believes he cannot be harmed, so the hero rides up on Battle Cat to rescue Stefan. The Heroic Warriors are now forced to join in battle against the torcs to help defend Stefan and his soldiers. The fight goes well enough, but the heroes are outnumbered; so they shift tactics, devising a new plan to trap the torcs. Stefan and Dal make a show of looking vulnerable, lying just inside the entrance of a cave, and drawing the entire torc army inside. At the last second, Orko levitates the royal pair free and He-Man smashes the ground to cause an avalanche, sealing the torcs off in the cave.

Their problems now over, a stern He-Man demands an explanation from Orko, who shamefully admits to his chain of stupid lies. "There's no such thing as a little lie," He-Man lectures, and Orko agrees. Having apparently learned his lesson - again - the chastened Trollan promises that he will never lie, ever again. Uh-huh. Sure.

End with a Joke: N/A, unless you count Orko's last abashed line of dialogue, about always telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, from now on.

• Prince Dal (to Orko, unintentionally twisting the knife): Whatever it is, I'll listen, because I know I can trust you completely, and I know you'll forgive me for taking the Star Crystal. You're my friend.
• King Stefan: I have heard there is a powerful magic in Eternos. After all, isn't that where He-Man is from?

• Teela, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: As has been done before, only the hands on hips part of the loop is used for some close-up dialogue
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: To try to stop King Stefan from getting creamed by torcs
• Teela from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: Heading in to fight some torcs
• He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat: Signalling to Orko to start the next step in his sneaky plan

One full

Brought to you by Teela and Orko
You'd be forgiven for thinking that a PSA segment was unnecessary for the ending of this story, the PSA message having crept out to take over the episode proper. But Teela and Orko are here to give us one anyway, hammering home the already tired message that lying is bad. Teela is (rightfully) doubtful that Orko will keep his promise to never tell a lie from now on; we'll just have to wait and see!

Appearance of cousins of Adam
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 2

• Things that go into Orko: A "beautiful rock," which the Trollan places in his head.
• The Eternians are employing little floating robots to help build their water purification plant, a form of labor we haven't seen before (though we've seen Teela sparring with a similar floating robot a couple of times, in MU026 and MU061).
• We meet another cousin of Prince Adam's: Prince Dal, son of Adam's Uncle Stefan. Though a tad credulous, he's much less annoying than the other royal cousins we've met - the self-centered Lady Edwina of MU018 and that little prick Jeremy from MU021.
• Some of the heretofore-unmentioned sights of Eternia: its water purification system (currently under construction) and its underground caverns.
• Dyperia, kingdom by the sea ruled by Uncle Stefan, is presumably a part of Eternia that is not under Randor's direct rule - unless Stefan is a sort of baron or earl. The tug-of-war over whether Randor governs the whole planet or not continues... (Compare MU087, where Skeletor seemed to be implying that Randor ruled all of Eternia, and MU086's "A Trip to Morainia," featuring the competing ruler Boreas.)
• He-Man once again must redirect a flood. We've had ample evidence of his expertise in hydraulic engineering (see my non-exhaustive but still exhausting list in the lore section of MU065), most recently when he redirected a potentially crop-smothering flood at the end of MU082.
• We find ourselves back in Orko's bedroom, which we haven't seen since Orko went to mope there in preparation for running away from home, in MU071.
• Dal is visiting Eternia so that he can be safe from Dyperia's war, which turns out to be against the "torcs." We've met orcs (see MU022, MU042, and MU059), we've met Torgs (MU016), and we've met ogres (MU063), but torcs is a new one! It's odd, though, just how much like MOTU's orcs these so-called torcs look (raises a single dubious eyebrow)...
• The night spiders that tie up Teela are completely black and shadowy critters, very simplistic, actually rather creepy, and unlike other giant spiders we've seen in the show.
• It's rare that any bad guys so thoroughly get the jump on so very many of our heroes as the torcs do on He-Man, Battle Cat, Teela, and Man-at-Arms. That sleep gas is great stuff! Also - doing an appreciably better job than Skeletor did when he captured the royal family in MU085 - the torcs actually think to disarm their captives, leaving He-Man without his power sword and Teela without her very long staff that she obviously wasn't carrying when she fell asleep (where does she keep the thing?).
• So I know that in my explanations of episodes I very often use the word "Eternos" to refer to the city where the royal palace resides, but it's actually very rare that the characters in the episodes ever say that name. In fact, it's possible that MU017, where it was first referenced, and the follow-up reference in MU018, are two of the only times the name was ever spoken aloud before now. I've noted previously the all-purpose and confusing use of "Eternia" and "Eternians" to refer only to the people in and around Randor's palace, which is what we usually get. However in this episode King Stefan several times says "Eternos" to differentiate the place he's sent his son from his own kingdom. Thank you, Stefan!
• King Stefan is clearly voiced by He-Man's voice actor, John Erwin; he just sounds like a slower, stupider He-Man.
• To get a good look at King Stefan challenging the torc army, He-Man and Duncan use some high-tech binoculars kind of like the ones Luke Skywalker used to spy on the Sand People in Star Wars.
• Thinking more quickly than he did in the caverns, He-Man uses his super breath to blow away some sleep gas aimed at him. He-Man had a run of about a half dozen episodes, starting at MU071, where he seemed to be using this power all the time; but it's been a while (MU078) since we last saw him blowing this hard.
• Stefan's soldiers seem to requisition their helmets from the same place as the royal guardsmen of Eternos. But they prefer blue underoos to green.

• Who are these mysterious children that Adam and Teela are playing with when the flood hits? We don't learn their names or parentage, and they function only as an excuse for He-Man's rescue-focused appearance. Is Adam running a royal daycare as a side hustle? If so, he's not doing it all that responsibly, seeing as how one of the children (who can't be older than 4 or 5) is waving a sword around.
• I admit to finding heartwarming and adorable the tiny moment where one of the children places a flower behind Cringer's ear, and the tiger makes a long groaning sound which is equal parts embarrassment, resignation, and pleasure.
• Just how many times are we going to have to watch the thoughtless, addle-pated Orko screw up, necessitating a valuable lesson about not doing stupid things? Sorry, I think I've just been subjected to too many consecutive lesson-themed episodes, but I'm getting mighty tired of our Trollan magician being the focus of character improvement when he's ostensibly old enough to have a girlfriend and to know better... Let's all think back to MU071, when the Sorceress told Orko that he was much less trouble than he thought he was, and I enumerated the list of reasons why I felt she was wrong. The Trollan has racked up several more items in the "trouble" column since then. (It's worth noting that MU071 was also written by this episode's writer, J. Brynne Stephens, who seems to like writing "Orko gets himself in trouble" episodes - having also written MU017's "Daimar the Demon.")
• Adam turns into He-Man to rescue the children and then track the source of the flood; but He-Man is still around the following day to help track the missing Prince Dal. Perhaps somewhere in there he reverted to Adam, and we just missed an off-screen transformation; but it's fun to think about an unoccupied He-Man hanging around long enough to sleep overnight in a bed somewhere, presumably while still wearing his coridite power harness...It would be extra funny if he just slept in Adam's bedroom and no one noticed.
• He-Man and Battle Cat are so busy explaining to Teela why her feeling about being followed is hysterical and wrong, that they don't notice her being tied up and hidden by the thing that's actually following them. Even after having been proven so obviously flawed in their judgment, the unrepentant men continue to mansplain to Teela after they've rescued her, with He-Man and Duncan taking turns telling her fun facts about the night spiders that almost ate her. This is a particularly poorly chosen moment for an episode of Science Hunks, He-Man...
• It's true that the torcs take He-Man's power sword, but that's hardly his only weapon, and it shouldn't have kept him from very easily escaping his prison cell. Remember those things on the ends of your arms, He-Man? They're called fists, and you regularly use them to smash rock walls. Duncan claims they can't break the door down because they "don't have time to deal" with all the guards. But then He-Man ends up digging his way outside and grabbing the guards anyway. Just how necessary was your sneaky digging plan?
• It is amusing that the guards are kept distracted by an affectionate Battle Cat licking them through the cell bars. The time-honored method of guard distraction (aside from the "sick man" ploy) is to have a pretty lady prisoner work some seductive moves - but a friendly tiger does just as well!
• Since He-Man and friends managed to nearly single-handedly win the Dyperian-torc war, it makes you wonder why the Eternians didn't offer military aid to Stefan in the first place, instead of simply babysitting his son.