J. Michael Straczynski

Steve Clark

The evil Negator has returned, and he has a plan to steal the energy from a recharging Sunstone and become the most powerful man in the universe! He-Man is nearby to potentially foil his plans, but Negator gets lucky (he thinks) when the heroes inadvertently set loose an irritating Trollan entity nicknamed the Prankster, who provides magical practical jokes for Negator to co-opt and make even worse.

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

Negator

Keepers of the Temple, Vola-Ree, robot spider, Prankster (Wokrapanwooki), Blinker, butterflies, wolf-bats, voguls

Attak Trak

We open in the arid and sun-drenched Sands of Time, and pan over to the Temple of the Sun (which MOTU scholars will remember from the helpfully named episode, "Temple of the Sun"). Inside the temple, two formally dressed fellows have an audience with an old man, who requests the power of the Sunstone of which they are the keepers. The keepers perform a test, demanding that the man (whose name is Vola-Ree) surrender his lands in return for the Sunstone's powers. When Vola-Ree refuses, citing the need for retaining his lands to bequeath them to his descendants, the keepers reveal that he has passed the test by proving he is not entirely selfish, and give him a good zap with their stone. After the zapping, though, the Sunstone flickers, showing it is in need of its once-in-a-century recharge. The keepers discuss the need to call the greatest force for good on Eternia, so they can be present for the recharging ritual. Can you guess who the guest of honor will be, viewers?

Cut to Prince Adam and Cringer, who are hanging out alone in the palace courtyard and have clearly already gotten the message from the keepers. Adam wastes no time transforming himself and Cringer into He-Man and Battle Cat, and the heroes hop in the Attak Track for the long and (according to the tiger) boring trip through the Sands of Time. Joining them are Man-at-Arms, Teela, and Orko. The monotonous desert trek turns interesting when the Trak encounters a mysterious artifact sitting in the road: it's a giant glass bottle, which the heroes get out to investigate. With no thought to the consequences (and none of his compatriots attempting to dissuade him, apart from a suspicious Battle Cat), Orko casts an opening spell to remove the cork in the bottle, finding a pictorial message inside ironically instructing him that he shouldn't have done that.

The main contents of the bottle, it turns out, are a Trollan trickster who identifies himself as Prankster, and his robot sidekick Blinker. Orko recognizes the creature as coming from a region of Trolla called Karadania, which is peopled with practical jokers who clearly have none of the more typical Trollan taboos against showing their faces (and feet) to others. As Blinker accidentally reveals, the only way to get rid of the magical pest is to trick him into saying his own name ("Prankster" being an alias). Prankster quickly shows off his talents by giving Battle Cat a long, flowing mustache; when Orko removes it from his friend, the facial hair transfers to himself, in the form of extensive eyebrows.

Our heroes probably think they have troubles enough, just having to deal with this distraction on their journey; but what they don't know is that an even more fiendish force is watching their progress (through means of a robot spider), with intent to impede them. It's the villain Negator! He's out to steal the powers of the Sunstone, and doesn't want any He-Men getting in his way.

Most of the rest of the episode is devoted to the journey to the temple, punctuated by magical pranks from Prankster that get perverted and subverted by the watching Negator. First it's a poor pun from Prankster, who upsets Attak Trak by putting butterflies in his trunk. Negator turns the insects into wolf-bats, which He-Man must blow away. Then Prankster tries annoying the heroes with a swarm of voguls, locust-like creatures which Negator enlarges and makes hostile. Teela must distract and provoke the stinging bugs while He-Man hacks out some stone walls to enclose them.

Finally reaching the temple, the rest of the heroes walk inside while Orko extracts a promise from his irritating countryman (who the heroes believe is solely responsible for all their troubles) to cause no problems inside the temple. Hewing to the strict wording of Orko's request, Prankster decides he can happily work mischief outside the temple, and quickly does so by draping Orko in a coil of vines. An annoyed Orko shakes the spell off and joins the ritual, leaving Prankster behind. The beginning of the ceremony goes well enough, with the keepers of the temple going through their spiel and Prankster hovering above the building, discussing with Blinker what his next ploy should be. But when the keepers open the protective chamber that usually surrounds and secures the Sunstone, in order to let the sun shine through the opening in the temple roof and recharge the gem, Negator strikes! Having scaled the building, the villain leaps in through the sun hole and grabs the Sunstone, taking its solar power into himself and growing huge. Any beam attacks that the heroes attempt on the oversized Negator merely seem to add to his energy; and He-Man can't breach Negator's self-generated force field to try hand-to-hand combat.

In the end, ironically, Prankster saves the day by finally deciding that a rainstorm would be the best way to hamper the heroes. The cloudy weather blocks Negator's energy flow, and the recharging Sunstone, without the sun from which to draw its power, decides to suck it back from the villain instead. Negator slowly shrinks, going past his normal size and down into microscopic range - finally being absorbed entirely into the Sunstone, all while declaring his intention to return and get revenge some day. Before disappearing, Negator selfishly decides to shoot off the Sunstone's power into the clouds, making an energy storm and risking the stone's magic being lost forever. To restore the stone, He-Man jumps in, allowing himself to be drawn up into the sky by the winds of the storm, then directing the power of Grayskull (and the energy swirling in the storm) through his body and into the Sunstone. Whew! That ended up being a more interesting ceremony than anyone expected!

Afterwards, our heroes return to the royal palace, but they still have Prankster hanging around, ready at any moment to continue spreading his special brand of deviltry. A cunning Prince Adam tells the tricky Trollan that they are planning to establish a new Eternian holiday in Prankster's honor. In trying to forestall Blinker from pronouncing the trickster's real name for the purposes of accurately designating the special day, Prankster accidentally says it himself (curious? spoiler alert: it's "Wokrapanwooki," though the second "w" is apparently silent) - and promptly vanishes.

End with a Joke: The Prankster safely expelled, Orko boasts of his own part in containing the creature's many practical jokes. Wiggling his fingers in magical flourishes, he claims there wasn't a single spell of the Prankster's that he couldn't take care of. Adam questions Orko's twiddling - it turns out with good reason, since the Trollan's gestures conjure back onto his body the long eyebrows and vines from earlier in the episode. "Well," says a shrugging Orko, "I never said I was perfect."

• Man-at-Arms: You know, He-Man, I never get tired of visiting the Sands of Time. / He-Man: There's something relaxing about all this sand.
• Battle Cat (commenting on the fact that Orko was blasted away by the opening of a giant bottle): I always said he'd go far one day.
• Prankster: Maybe I'll cook up a big storm to annoy He-Man and his friends. / Blinker: Good idea, Master! / Prankster: Oh, no... it's too dull. / Blinker: Bad idea, Master! / Prankster: You know, you're not much help. / Blinker: Right again, Master!
• Negator: Power, He-Man, power! More than enough to take care of you once and for all. / He-Man: I've heard that before.

• He-Man juggles his sword: The unsheathing part of the animation is used as He-Man prepares to deal with some giant voguls; and again later, as he faces off against Negator
• He-Man swings sword overhand: Breaking up a stone
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: In this case a slab of stone, which he uses to wall in the voguls

One full

Brought to you by Teela
We aren't surprised to hear Teela warn us about the dangers of practical jokes, like the ones Prankster tried that "got out of hand" in today's episode. They could hurt others or you, so think twice about doing them - and then don't. Basically, just don't do them. Clearly Teela is not going to be binging Impractical Jokers anytime soon. Man-at-Arms gave us similar (but a bit more graphic) advice against pranks way back at the end of MU007.

Negator episodes
Orko-specific lore: For its revelations about Karadania, the Trollan land of practical jokers
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 2

• The episode opens at the Temple of the Sun, a location we've seen used (and under the same name) in MU050 and MU072. Things have changed at the temple since Nepthu showed up to steal the power of the Sun Scarab, or since Batros was storing all Eternia's books there. Now there are some stuffy, serious-looking keepers, who have cleared out all the clutter inside and are looking after a Sunstone (apparently no relation to the Sun Scarab). The fact that they have to recharge their stone once every hundred years suggests they've been established at this temple a while, the previous episodes notwithstanding.
• We further establish that the Temple of the Sun still lies in the Sands of Time, since our heroes pointedly mention the name of the desert while on their journey. There was a run of episodes (from around MU040 to MU050) when we seemed to be visiting the Sands of Time... all the time. But the last time we can reasonably claim to have been there was MU072, during our previous visit to the temple.
• Negator is back! The fun villain of MU054's "Game Plan" is still in his video-game-themed lair, even though we seem to remember He-Man blowing the thing up during their last meeting - maybe he had a really good insurance policy. Instead of his power-providing little nerb servants, who seemed to be drained dry at the end of his last episode, Negator makes use of one of the robot spiders that Trap Jaw built for MU040's "House of Shokoti (Part 1)."
• The Prankster who Orko so thoughtlessly releases from the bottle is also from Trolla we learn, though he hails from a region of practical jokers called Karadania. Apparently it's a part of Trolla where people don't mind exposing their legs, feet, and faces to the general public.
• The Prankster character is yet another instance of writer J. Michael Straczynski pulling inspiration from the Superman comics. We saw him using a Phantom Zone-like prison back in his first MOTU episode, MU073's "Origin of the Sorceress." This episode's Prankster is clearly modeled after Superman's wacky foe, Mr. Mxyzptlk. Both are incredibly powerful magical trickster beings from other dimensions, who cause trouble and can only be dispelled when they speak their own name (though for Mxyzptlk, the more challenging requirement is that he say his name backwards). Blinker, the floating robot that hangs around with the Prankster and off of whom he bounces his ideas, reminds me of another, obscurer DC Comics character: Skeets, the put-upon, sarcastic robot companion of the bumbling time traveller, Booster Gold. The problem with that theory is that Booster Gold was not created until 1986 - after this show's airing. Maybe creator Dan Jurgens was inspired by Straczynski!
• Negator turns Prankster's butterflies into wolf-bats - a creature we've seen before, though not since way back in MU003. We'll see the pesky things again, controlled by the Chimera, in MU112.
• To dispel the wolf-bats, He-Man creates a whirlwind by waving his sword around - something he's done before, notably in MU025 and MU030.
• In this episode we see Teela use her wrist zapper, which in past episodes has been given different functions based on the needs of the story. Sometimes she would have a freeze ray (as in its most recent incarnation, MU090) and sometimes not. Here, it is used both as a basic laser gun (when she draws off the giant voguls) and as a freeze ray (when she directs it at Negator, saying "Let's see how you take a bit of a chill"). This feels a bit like a retcon, but it's nice to have the suggestion that the weapon has multiple settings.
• We've seen He-Man use his walling-in method for containing giant monsters before, actually during a previous visit to the Sands of Time (MU050), when he imprisoned a giant scorpion by rubbing sand into glass panes and tossing them into place. This time we are spared the science lecture.
• The keeper notes that they secure their Sunstone inside a block of "corithium" - another in a long line of superlatively strong substances used in MOTU. The last one to come up was the Widgets' coridite, billed by Trap Jaw as being the strongest metal on Eternia (see MU091).
• At the end of the episode, in the midst of his ploy to trick Prankster, Adam helpfully lists a bunch of Eternian holidays: Eternia Day, Festival Day, Truth Day, and King Day. (Note, he doesn't mention the proposed "He-Man Day" from MU067 - either out of modesty or because it was never officially approved.) We will have the chance to celebrate Eternia Day in MU121's "The Magic Falls."

• Straczynski's second He-Man script is an oddly cluttered one, bringing together disparate characters and locations both new and existing. Why give us the Temple of the Sun, then pile on Negator and the Prankster? It doesn't end up feeling too confusing or overblown, and makes for a fun story; but it gives the impression of throwing darts at a storyboard. My main regret is the treatment of Negator, who spends so much time regurgitating the Prankster's ideas that we don't get to see him demonstrating any of the game-based gimmicks he had in his debut episode. It has the feel of someone writing a character that they don't know anything about - which, of course, is the case (Negator's previous appearance having been written by Coslough Johnson).
• The character of the old man in the opening scene - Vola-Ree - is one of those rare cases of the show giving us the name of a secondary character right away, even though - honestly - we don't really care. The guy gets his Sunstone juice and then we never see him again, so why bother introducing us?
• He-Man's voice is sometimes boosted with a reverb effect, and that's done to an extreme in this episode. It ends up sounding particularly odd during their trip in the Attak Trak, when no one else in the vehicle has any reverb except him.
• You have to wonder how Prankster ended up in the giant bottle in the first place. The first theory that comes to mind is that some previous victim of his annoying jokes found a magical way to imprison him, having despaired of tricking him into naming himself. But perhaps the bottle is a trap created by Prankster himself: he can only come to Eternia if people let him in, so he created the bottle as a tantalizing portal that curious passersby would be sure to uncork.
• We meet the voguls, a race of grasshopper-like insects. After Negator makes them grow larger, we see that they can shoot stinging rays from their antennae. You have to wonder whether the regular-sized bugs can do that, too; if so, that's quite an unpleasant critter! Like the kind of house pest you'd have to deal with if you lived in Australia.
• Man-at-Arms (in an unaccountably over-loud tone of voice) tells the keepers of the temple that the heroes are "Happy to return under more pleasant circumstances." Um, more pleasant than what? Is he referring to the Nepthu incident of MU050? The book theft of MU072? Or some other adventure at the temple that we don't know about?
• The heroes hold a conversation about how powerful the Sunstone is. "It draws its energy from the sun itself," remarks Man-at-Arms; "you can't get much more powerful than that." I know someone else who draws energy from the sun... Superman. (Am I reading too many Superman references into Straczynski's episodes? Maybe.)
• Negator, shrinking and finally being absorbed into the Sunstone, vows, "I'll be back, I promise! I'll...be...back!" Unfortunately he's wrong about this; this second appearance will be Negator's last in the series. Too bad! I think he's one of the better Filmation-invented villains. I love his deep voice, his megalomaniac tendencies, and his high-tech man cave.
• He-Man pulls a really bad-ass maneuver at the end of the episode, allowing himself to be swept up into the storm and using his magic words ("By the power of Grayskull!") to draw the Sunstone energy out of the sky, through himself, and back into the stone. He pulled something similar in MU066, when he directed lightning through himself so he could deliver a smackdown to the Grimalkin. It's rare that you see He-Man using his magic words as a sort of power boost, rather than just to transform himself.