John Curtin

Richard Trueblood

Orko gets himself kidnapped and becomes the bargaining chip that buys Skeletor and his cronies entrance to Castle Grayskull! Will they delve into its mysterious and powerful secrets before He-Man can come to the rescue? Or do we really need He-Man after all?

Teela, Orko, King Randor, Prince Adam (He-Man), Man-at-Arms, Cringer (Battle Cat), Zoar (Sorceress)

Skeletor (Genie), Trap Jaw, Clawful, Kobra Khan

Jawbridge

fire shuttle, dungeon star (?)

Teela, Orko, King Randor, Prince Adam, and Man-at-Arms are all standing around in the palace courtyard - it seems so that they can all enjoy a lovely fireworks display that begins going off over their heads. But Teela quickly corrects Orko's (and our) misunderstanding, explaining that those fireworks came from Snake Mountain! They are transforming into the shapes of spiders, and wherever the magic spiders land, a fire starts! The heroes quickly assemble to fight off the attack, with even Randor swiping his sword at the arsonous arachnids. Orko tries a rhyming spell to summon buckets of rain, but unfortunately only spawns the empty buckets - one of which predictably lands over Duncan's head. An annoyed Duncan, extracted from the inadvertent head covering when Orko undoes the spell, is advised by the king to go fetch his new "fire shuttle" to put out the flames, so the man-at-arms rushes to the hangar to make some last-minute repairs. Orko follows him there, probably to offer some apologetic assistance; but Duncan has injured himself rushing to complete his repairs, and is even gruffer with Orko than he was back in the courtyard. He flies off in the ship, leaving a moping Trollan behind.

Back in the courtyard, a circumspect Adam wandered off with Cringer, and a heroic He-Man arrived moments later with his Battle Cat. The blonde wonder uses the power from his sword to turn some fountain water into steam, and the steam into rain, putting out many of the fires. Duncan arrives, apparently a bit later, to shoot the rest of the falling fire spiders with his fire shuttle. We witness this last bit through Skeletor's desktop spy dome, where he has been checking on the outcome of his latest evil scheme. It's been a failure, just like every single one of the other schemes. Skeletor does some futile raging; but he's soon distracted from his anger by the latest picture on his spy dome, of a very despondent Orko wandering through the Evergreen Forest. The Trollan bemoans his lot, complaining (as he has done on several other occasions) that no one loves him, and he might as well not hang around with the Eternians anymore. His eye is caught by a classic oil lamp, which looks just like the kind of thing you would rub to produce a genie. Excited at the possibility, Orko tries rubbing the lamp, but tosses it away when there is no immediate effect.

Skeletor, though, has been watching, and belatedly makes Orko's dreams come true by seemingly oozing out of the lamp in the form of a typical genie (albeit one with the undisguised voice of Skeletor). Rather than wish for money or power, as the Genie predicts, Orko requests that his friends love him; at which his supernatural friend scoffs, telling the Trollan that he doesn't need friends - they don't like him anyway - and should instead just take the dimensional portal back home. The easily-persuaded idiot speaks aloud a sad farewell to everyone he knows and is just about to step through the portal - when he's scooped up and taken away by Zoar! The falcon totes Orko right through the open Jawbridge of Castle Grayskull, then drops him inside and transforms into the Sorceress so she can explain to the Trollan what a moron he's being.

Actually, she very kindly tells him what he should already know: that his friends certainly do love him, and only get angry sometimes when he needs correcting or to learn a lesson. To support her thesis, she plays back several memories from Orko's past, the first of which has Duncan sending the magician to his room after a failed trick ends with egg on the man-at-arms's face. After Orko flies off, however, Duncan and Adam comment how much they like the little guy and would miss him if he were gone. Similarly, in a second memory the Sorceress reminds Orko of the time he first appeared in Eternia, when he saved a young Prince Adam and kitten Cringer on a stormy day in the tar swamp. Without Orko, the Sorceress points out, there would be no He-Man! A surprised Orko contrasts the Sorceress's advice with that of the Genie, and his friend gently explains to him that that weren't no genie - that were Skeletor.

A rejuvenated Orko strolls back out of the castle, his self-esteem rebuilt; but he immediately runs into Skeletor and his goons, Trap Jaw, Clawful, and Kobra Khan. Skeletor hypnotizes the magician and forces him to explain how they can get into Grayskull; apparently, contrary to all previous evidence, it involves answering a riddle. A frustrated Skeletor, who admits to being terrible at riddles, has his minions toss Orko into a rocket-shaped prison in front of the castle and gets the still-hypnotized Trollan to give him the riddle's answer. The Jawbridge obediently drops down - and the Sorceress appears just inside the door! She's ready to defend the secrets of Grayskull - but there's someone she always calls for help at a time like this, and today is no exception. Prince Adam is interrupted from his casual perusal of a book in his bedroom by the Sorceress's psychic SOS, and quickly does his second transformation of the episode so he can rush off on tigerback.

At Grayskull, Skeletor threatens the safety of Orko and negotiates the Sorceress's surrender: in return for his not firing the Trollan off into space, the Sorceress agrees to let him inside the castle. The bony villain happily enters with Kobra Khan, leaving Trap Jaw and Clawful outside to guard the captive. The pair quickly screw up their one job, as Clawful goads his partner into pushing the remote control button and firing off the smart-mouth prisoner. Fortunately, He-Man arrives just in time to grab hold of the launching rocket. He breaks Orko out and they use an "old parachute trick" to glide safely back to the ground. He-Man worriedly assures the Sorceress by telepathy that he's just about ready to come and help her; but the Sorceress assures her constant protector that his services are actually not necessary.

Shackled to the wall just by a tower window, it seems the Sorceress has just been biding her time while Skeletor and Khan bustled around trying to find some secrets. She now breaks free, and all the decorations in the castle begin to come alive and make threatening faces and noises. Trap Jaw and Clawful, who were chivvied inside by Battle Cat and have come to inform their boss about the great thing they did, are also caught in the horror show, and all the villains flee in separate directions. None of them can find a way out, and aimlessly race through the hallways until they meet again, colliding into a giant pile at an intersection. The Sorceress neatly encloses them in a claw-like ball of curled ground and deposits them outside, instructing the villains to think twice before they consider infiltrating her place again. Skeletor, who wails "I hate this place!" seems likely to take her advice.

Back together on the ground, Orko and He-Man meet up with Battle Cat and the Sorceress, and Orko declares his intention to never again doubt his friends' regard (a promise we will have to see in action to believe).

End with a Joke: Orko goes on to say that he has just thought of a great magic trick, and is anxious for them all to return to the palace so he can show Man-at-Arms. "Haven't you had enough trouble for one day?" asks a weary He-Man; Orko decides this is a joke, but he doesn't seem to quite get it, since he just stands there and shrugs while He-Man and Battle Cat laugh.

• King Randor (modestly, after swiping a spider-shaped firework out of the sky): My sword has never rung truer.
• Skeletor: I want Eternia - all of it! - the entire universe! And I'm not one step closer than the day I started.
• Sorceress: So you see, Orko, without you there would be no He-Man. I shudder to think of having to battle Skeletor alone for all these years.
• Sorceress: Orko, each one of us is important. All our lives touch each other's, sometimes changing things in ways we often don't know about.
• Orko (to Skeletor): No one knows the secret of Grayskull!
• Trap Jaw: One push of this button and - zoom! you're off to another galaxy, twit. / Orko: At least I wouldn't have to look at your ugly faces! / Clawful: Do it, Trappy, do it! Let's see the little guy fly.
• Skeletor (of Grayskull): I hate this place! ... / Sorceress: In the future, perhaps you'll think twice before trying to invade my home.
• Skeletor (wriggling while hanging upside-down from a tree branch): What idiot started this whole thing, anyway? / His minions (in unison): You did! / Skeletor: I did not! / Minions: You did, too!

• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Just after transforming (both times)
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: To talk to Battle Cat just after mounting the tiger
• He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat: Arriving to fight the fire spiders
• Skeletor shakes his fists, three-quarter view: Enraged at another of his plots coming to nothing
• Sorceress spreads/unspreads her wings: Changing back from Zoar, later to command Castle Grayskull, and again when confronting Skeletor
• He-Man runs at the viewer, bug-height: In Adam's room, so he can jump on Battle Cat
• He-Man punches the viewer: To free Orko from his rocket prison

Two full
Variation - In the first transformation, just before being transformed, Cringer is cut in so he can grumble, "Wish I could talk the queen into getting Adam a new pet!"

Brought to you by Man-at-Arms and Orko
Just as he had to do with Orko in today's episode, Duncan discusses how your parents sometimes need to yell at you to punish or teach you; but this doesn't mean they don't love you. (Some exceptions he should have mentioned: The rule about yelling may not apply during times when your parents are drunk. Also, the divorce isn't actually your fault.) Orko shows up to agree, demonstrating knowledge he definitely didn't have during today's episode. A bucket then appears and falls on Duncan's head, and the man-at-arms decides it's time to go. Orko wisely bids us farewell and vanishes.

Main character flashbacks: Though it's hardly central to the story, we do get some flashbacks to Orko's past when the Sorceress is trying to convince him that Duncan doesn't hate him.
Skeletor manages to get into Grayskull: And discovers it's all for naught!
Landmark Episode: I feel almost dirty marking this episode as a landmark, because there are many things about it that annoy me; but on balance I think it has to be tagged for its addressing of the secrets of Grayskull.

• It's rare that we get to see King Randor in action (beyond sitting on his throne and passing out edicts), as we do here when he swipes his sword at fiery magic spiders. Some other times Randor did some fighting: MU081's "The Arena" and, more thoroughly, MU029's "Prince Adam No More."
• He-Man shows off a heretofore unknown power - he can make it rain! Calling on the power of Grayskull, the hero dips his sword into a convenient fountain, causing the water to almost instantly boil. The boiling water creates a cloud of steam, and another zap of the raised power sword turns the steam into a rainshower. The last time He-Man summoned up a storm, he needed lots of salt crystals to do it (see the end of MU066). I think we can count this as another in a long line of cases of our hero engaging in hydraulic engineering.
• This episode introduces a new heroic vehicle, the "fire shuttle," a snazzy-looking jet with a whole lot of nozzles. You'd think the red nozzles would shoot water or some kind of fire retardant, but when we see the ship in action on Skeletor's desktop spy dome, it looks as if it is destroying the magic spiders with lasers.
• "Have you forgotten - the dimension portal?" Skeletor's Genie asks of Orko. Um...yes? Certainly magical characters such as Skeletor have been creating portals for almost as long as the show has been airing; but I don't recall there being one specific dimension portal with a "the" on the front of its name. Orko turned out to be the keeper of a "dimension sphere" (shh! It's a secret) in MU048's "Return of Evil," and it had the ability to open a portal; but I'm not sure that's what Mr. Genie is talking about. That sphere's ostensible power was to allow travel back and forth between Eternia and Trolla, which seems to be what the Genie is offering here. The sphere itself was a very desirable item, indicating that it was rather difficult to make such a portal, and something beyond Skeletor's unaided magical abilities (traveling to and from Trolla is a task of remarkably varying difficulty from episode to episode, as one can discover by going back through the Orko-specific lore category). Of course, this is Skeletor, so he could easily just be lying about the whole thing: maybe the portal he's opened just goes to a dungeon in Snake Mountain.
• The first memory that the Sorceress shows Orko, of "the first time you did your egg trick" (which she displays on her big multi-purpose window, though its frame is missing the usual claw-like corner decorations), is reminiscent of a trick Orko pulled way back in the pilot (MU004) - which also ended with Duncan covered in eggs. However, oddly enough, it's not identical (a relief to anyone starting to worry that this was going to turn into a clip show), because it ends with Duncan sending the Trollan to his room and the man-at-arms and prince having a conversation about how they actually really love Orko. In the pilot, Orko's trick was interrupted by a villainous attack on the palace.
• The second memory the Sorceress shows Orko does seem to be identical to the flashback we saw in MU018's "Creatures from the Tar Swamp," and relates the memorable occasion on which the Trollan first arrived in Eternia and immediately saved an endangered young Prince Adam and Cringer.
• After showing her second flashback, the Sorceress makes a startling assertion: that without Orko, there would likely be no He-Man. If we consider young Adam's peril in the tar swamp to have been life-threatening, I suppose we have to concede her point; but it's hard to admit that the salvation of Eternia rests on that Trollan troublemaker's shoulders!
• Skeletor instructs his minions to throw Orko into "the dungeon star," which apparently is what he calls the rocket in which Orko is subsequently imprisoned. It's a hefty object, so we'll have to assume that Trap Jaw used the remote control device he's later seen holding to land the rocket in front of Grayskull.
• For the first time we hear Castle Grayskull (or at least its Jawbridge) speak! It tells a riddle, which I have to admit is actually pretty good: "What goes through this door, yet never enters or ever leaves Castle Grayskull?" The answer: the keyhole. However, one small issue: there is no keyhole visible in the door! (Ironically, Mattel's Grayskull playset did have a keyhole.) In a later episode (MU108), we will meet the Spirit of Castle Grayskull, but I don't think that's the same entity speaking here.
• Despite its multiple missteps, this episode does manage to avoid a problem of many previous episodes: that of villains not leveraging their valuable hostages (examples abound, among them: MU015, MU047, MU048, MU082, MU085). Here, Skeletor gets a lot of bang for his kidnapping buck by bargaining Orko's life for entrance into Grayskull.
• When the Sorceress calls to the prince using her telepathy, we see again Adam's bedroom, and we again catch him reading a book! He was reading a book when a panicked Cringer came to fetch him in MU071, and he was very pleased with the unicorn book that Orko got him for his birthday in MU072. The last time we saw Adam's bedroom was in MU092.
• On previous occasions when Adam has had to change to He-Man in his bedroom, we've seen him retrieve his sword from behind a secret panel (see MU043 and MU092); on this occasion, even though he was casually reading in his room, we find that he already had the sword strapped to his back.
• In an oral flashback, He-Man reminds Orko of the times the magician used to "help me fly when I was a boy." They then re-enact "the old parachute trick," which involves a falling He-Man grabbing hold of the bottom hem of Orko's robe, which poofs out into a makeshift parachute. For god's sake He-Man, don't look up, whatever you do!
• During the ending sequence when the Evil Warriors are running around the inside of Castle Grayskull like evil chickens with their evil heads cut off, Clawful and Trap Jaw come across a double door with skulls decorating it. This is the very important door to the "inner chamber," which an evil-ized Uncle Montork almost got into in MU027, and which Skeletor didn't know he was standing right in front of when he was trying to raid Grayskull in MU075. To Clawful and Trap Jaw, it simply proves to be another scary thing that scares them. We will see the door again in MU108.
• Even though this episode features two complete He-Man transformation sequences, which means that Battle Cat necessarily appears, the tiger contributes nothing to the story beyond a form of transportation for He-Man and a threatening roar that sends Trap Jaw and Clawful running into Grayskull (where they honestly probably would have gone anyway). So I'd still argue this episode gives further support to my theory that Cringer and Battle Cat are given short shrift this season.
• This episode features the variant ending credits with the flat-painted Jawbridge, last seen in MU097.
• Today's story was brought to us by John Curtin, whose only other He-Man script was MU087's "Things That Go Bump in the Night." As in that episode, I enjoyed the dialogue and thought this story had some humorous villain moments. But Curtin shows a distasteful tendency to lean on Orko's disaster-prone character traits; and as you'll see in the commentary, there are several issues here with established lore seemingly being cancelled out. Something similar happened in Curtin's MU087, when Adam demonstrated the dubious and unlikely ability to transform into He-Man without holding his power sword.

• Teela seems oddly well-informed about the source of the spidery fireworks in the episode's opening. How did she gain this crucial intelligence? We don't get to find out.
• Animation error: For just a moment as he turns his head during the opening spider fight, Randor's eyebrows shift from their usual black into brown and back again.
• If He-Man can make water boil with his sword whenever he wants, he can easily make hot tea, coffee, or hot chocolate on command. This is mind-blowing! Eat your heart out, Starbucks.
• In what will be the first of several occasions in this episode where the writer seems determined to wipe out previous established concepts in the show, Orko apparently forgets the many times he's had to learn the lesson that the people around him really do care about him, regardless of all the horrible disasters he's constantly causing. He learned this lesson most emphatically in MU071's "The Rarest Gift of All," and seemed fully conscious of it when he advised bumbling guard Phillip in MU076's "The Ice Age Cometh." I guess all it takes is a few grumpy words from Duncan to wipe his memory and completely crumple his self-esteem... Just as in MU071, it's again the Sorceress who has to buck up the down-hearted Trollan, and she does it in a similar way, with visual aids on her giant screen that involve discussions of what life would be like without Orko.
• In the second occasion where we rewrite history, a hypnotized Orko tells Skeletor how to get past Grayskull's Jawbridge: you have to answer a riddle?! What in the wild world of retcons are you talking about? We've seen He-Man enter Grayskull's Jawbridge several times before, starting back at MU004's pilot episode, and he never answered a riddle to do it. He just raised his sword and said, "By the power of Grayskull, I command the Jawbridge - open!" In fact, Skeletor has himself seen He-Man do this very thing, in MU075's "To Save Skeletor" (after witnessing it Skeletor muttered "So that's how he does it!" so he was clearly taking note). Perhaps what Orko is telling us is that the riddle method is for those wishing to enter Grayskull who don't have power swords, and who don't turn into falcons; but it remains very hard to swallow given that we've never seen it happen before. As an entry method, it has all the security flaws of the one used to get into the Ravenclaws' tower in the Harry Potter books.
• Probably not really a continuity error; but it seems odd that in the first wide shot of Skeletor and the crowd of villains he's gathered to go after Orko, we see Clawful among the party; yet he's missing from a later shot where Skeletor is complaining about riddles. Clawful returns when the villains are assembled in front of Grayskull.
• Skeletor always likes to refer to Orko using strange epithets ("pipsqueak," MU036; "wind bag," MU048); in this episode he calls the Trollan an "insect" more than once.
• Perhaps the hardest part of this episode to swallow: the fact that Orko instantly knows the answer to the castle's riddle. He can't actually be that smart - he thought that Genie was real! Maybe he's heard this one before? Is it always the same riddle?
• I love the taunts that the evil minions and Orko trade back and forth in front of Grayskull - funny stuff. It's also hilarious that Trap Jaw and Clawful convince each other that it's a great idea to prematurely launch their hostage into space. That might be my favorite scene in the episode.
• Animation error: In one of the shots where the Sorceress is shown glowing and calling on the powers of her castle, the top of her headdress is incorrectly colored orange instead of white.
• We now come to the real rewriting of history in this episode: He-Man psychically assures the Sorceress that he's on his way to help her defend the secrets of Castle Grayskull (which, according to the opening of every episode, is his one job); but the Sorceress replies, "Don't trouble yourself; inside Grayskull, I'm more than a match for Skeletor." She then proceeds to use the magic of the castle to show the pack of villains a lot of scary things, and they all just panic and try to run out. ... Wha-wha-wha-whaaaa? So you're saying that all those other times when the Sorceress was desperately nagging He-Man via telepathy to come help her stop villains from getting into the castle ... were just a waste of time? What about when Evil Montork got inside - why didn't she try this trick on him? What about when Skeletor himself took Grayskull in MU030's "The Taking of Grayskull"? Why didn't she pull it on him then? If she always could have scared the hell out of anybody who invaded her home, what is He-Man really for? Is he just like having a pretty pool boy to walk around your backyard and flex his muscles? Is the Sorceress just playing with him? You'd think He-Man would start questioning his own usefulness after this episode, but he seems oblivious to the implications - just as, I'm sure, most of his viewers were. Though perhaps even the kids watching would have felt some tingle in the back of their minds after watching this, some indefinable sense that something wasn't quite right, and that they'd just caught a glimpse behind the flimsy curtain of what they thought was Eternia's solid reality. Scary.