Don Heckman

Marsh Lamore

With Skeletor off on other business, Evil-Lyn steps up with a complicated plan of her own, which involves shrinking some captured Heroic Warriors and perplexing poor He-Man with a fiendishly balanced conundrum that renders his great muscles useless! Maybe he can make use of that wriggly muscle in his skull to solve this problem...

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

Whiplash, Beast Man, Evil-Lyn, Panthor

Michi, desert monsters

Eternian space shuttle, Basher

As Teela, Man-at-Arms, and Orko look on, Prince Adam struggles manfully with a giant sumo wrestler in the palace courtyard. It's not long before Adam is defeated by his opponent, who proves to be named Michi. The prince takes his loss in stride, because Michi is larger and stronger; but Teela points out that size isn't everything, and brains should be part of a fighter's equation. Adam brings up He-Man, who could surely have taken Michi, but this just annoys Teela. Adam tells Duncan that he doesn't know what he would do without He-Man, and his father-figure reminds him that he would still be Adam.

But what would Eternia's villains do without Skeletor? Over at Snake Mountain, we're about to find out. Their bony leader is not in residence, and Evil-Lyn is spying on the palace with Whiplash and Beast Man, using old Bonehead's desktop dome. They discover that King Randor is sending our heroes to Phantos on a diplomatic mission. Over the mouthy objections of Beast Man, who doesn't think they should make a move without the big boss, Evil-Lyn is determined to make the most of this opportunity and grab herself some valuable hostages. When Adam, Duncan, Teela, and Orko fly off to Phantos in a space shuttle, the trio of villains follow in the Basher. Before showing up at the scheduled meeting, Adam suggests the heroes make a stop at Phantos's beautiful Great Desert, a sandy expanse with tides just like an ocean. While the prince wanders off to admire the lovely fossils, the Evil Warriors strike! They activate the Basher's creature energizer, which summons up a pair of giant desert monsters from beneath the sandy waves. The aggravated creatures immediately attack our heroes with ice beams that shoot out of their third eyes. In the act of running for shelter, Duncan falls and twists his ankle, and Teela must pause to help him. Adam, already conveniently out of sight of the others, transforms to He-Man and pops out to tussle with the great beasts.

This was all part of Evil-Lyn's plan, however; for while the blonde beefcake is busy with the maddened monsters, she and her minions sweep in to kidnap his friends. They can't find Prince Adam for some reason, but Captain Teela, Man-at-Arms, and the court jester will have to do! They round up the Heroic Warriors at gunpoint and march them back to the Basher. By the time He-Man has tied the desert monsters' tails into knots and leapt back to where his companions were standing, they've vanished. Finding the tracks of another vehicle in the sand, He-Man suspects the bony fingers of Skeletor have been at work, and hops right into the space shuttle to fly to Snake Mountain and test his hunch.

When he busts in on the villains, he finds that he was mostly right, except that Lyn is standing in for Skeletor today. Lyn has shrunken his friends with her "reducto ray"! (Shrunken Orko tried to use his magic to get back at her but only ended up conjuring a mini rhinoceros, which Beast Man plucked up with one hand and placed in a tiny glass box for later.) Her scheme, which He-Man at first insults as being second rate, is complex and insidious. She has placed Duncan, Teela, and the Trollan in a duroblast cage, which is strung up close to the high ceiling of a chamber in Snake Mountain. The rope tied to the cage is counterbalanced by a boulder, which is suspended over the reducto ray. As a smug Whiplash and company explain it, everything is in balance: If He-Man tries touching the ray, it will automatically fire at his friends, making them microscopically small. If he tries yanking the cage, the boulder will fall, crushing the ray and any hope of restoring the hostages to their natural size. (Presumably if he messes with the boulder, the cage will fall and kill his friends; but this messy possibility is glossed over, lest tiny minds be traumatized.) Lyn happily tells an irate He-Man that there's no way to win, and demands the kingdom of Eternia as the price for the prisoners' restoration.

The apparently impotent hero chews on this news for a while, then stalks out, promising major retribution should the villains harm his friends while he's gone. The trio of bad guys, overjoyed at their seeming success, traipse off to have a party and wait for Randor to hand over the keys to the palace. Meanwhile, He-Man paces outside Snake Mountain, working his brain muscle to try to come up with a solution. He decides that He-Man is not the person to solve this problem, and changes back into Adam. As the prince, he stealthily sneaks his way back to the prison chamber by prying open a grate and crawling through a secret tunnel (maybe a ventilation shaft?). After Man-at-Arms has explained the whole situation over again, Adam thinks really hard and finds what is perhaps not the most obvious or straightforward of solutions. Using a nearby piece of bric-a-brac as a makeshift stool, he sets off the ray and boosts himself up into its path, getting himself shrunk. Tiny Adam then nimbly climbs his way up to the cage, his reduced size and weight making him much less likely to trigger any parts of the trap. The partying villains, who think they've heard some commotion in the next room over the sound of their own raucous celebrations, send Panthor in to investigate; but the big cat doesn't notice tiny Adam up in the rafters, and departs. The prince is able to jimmy open the cage and let everyone down using the handy rope he brought with him. He then (somehow) resets the controls of the ray and enlarges Duncan, Teela, and Orko.

Just one last thing to do - get himself back to normal! While his friends run to safety, Adam turns on the timer and heads over to get into the path of the beam; but by this time, the villains are alerted, and just as the reducto ray fires off, Panthor runs in and pounces at the prince. Luckily for our hero, the ray makes Adam full size and turns Panthor into a kitten of an even smaller scale than his toy version. Adam places the kitty into the box with the rhino, so they can keep each other company.

Brains are all very well, but sometimes you just need to be He-Man, and this is one of those times. Adam transforms and is his tan and muscled alter ego by the time Beast Man and Whiplash burst through the door. He dodges their charge, then leaps over an attempt by Evil-Lyn to shrink him; the ray instead strikes the other two villains, who He-Man happily adds to the glass box. Lyn is horrified that He-Man is going to shrink her, too, but he instead opts to smash the reducto ray with the (now fallen) boulder, leaving the sorceress quite a lot of explaining to do when her boss returns.

Changed back to his princely self and back behind the controls of the space shuttle, Adam explains to his friends how He-Man saved the day, while an annoying Orko keeps repeating "He always does!" until Teela and Duncan angrily tell him to stop.

End with a Joke: Orko rather passive-aggressively suggests that the heroes should have left him at three inches high, so he wouldn't be able to bother them anymore. Adam supports this idea and points a tube at the Trollan, making very unconvincing throaty noises which I suppose are meant to imitate the operation of a shrinking ray. Orko begs him to stop, and a laughing Adam says he was just faking. Everyone assures Orko that they love him just the way he is, and he laughingly admits that he really just wanted to hear them say that.

• Teela (to Adam): Size isn't everything, you know; there is something to be said for - brains.
• Evil-Lyn: Unfortunately, Skeletor is not here; but perhaps I - / Beast Man (interrupting): Eugh, perhaps you what? We have strict orders to make no moves while Skeletor is - / Evil-Lyn (interrupting the interruption): Enough, you fool! Do you think I can do nothing without Skeletor? Ha! Think again.
• He-Man (tauntingly, to Evil-Lyn, as an initial reaction to her trap): Ah, you make it too easy; Skeletor would have done better.
• Evil-Lyn: So He-Man, those great, gorgeous muscles of yours are totally useless - ha ha ha ha ha!
• Beast Man (to He-Man): We'll turn you into muscle pie!

• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands from a needless leap after taking care of the desert monsters
• Evil-Lyn, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: After telling Teela she won't need to diet; and again later, at Orko's mini-rhino
• He-Man punches the viewer: To knock open a wooden door in Snake Mountain

Two partial (both missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by Man-at-Arms
We come across Duncan casually perusing a book on a bench in the palace courtyard. Since we're here, he brings up the lesson in today's story: that while it's nice to be big and strong and (gulp) throbbingly muscular, like He-Man, there are other (less sexy) traits that are good to have, like - I don't know, imagination and reading books or something. But hey, keep exercising.

Skeletor (or another villain) plots to capture Prince Adam: This time Evil-Lyn adopts Skeletor's idea while old Bonehead is out of town!
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 2: Though he's mentioned several times, the Evil Warriors' "fearless" leader does not appear
Evil-Lyn power punches the glass ceiling: A classic "Skeletor is on vacation" Evil-Lyn plot. And delightfully convoluted, as well!

• This episode introduces Michi, a sumo wrestler who at the story's opening is sparring with the prince in the palace courtyard. It's his only scene, and he has no lines - he was also never made into a toy. I hesitate to put him fully into the category of "Heroic Warriors," because his part is so small, though he could share that category with other non-toy characters like Lizard Man. (I have to add the proviso that Lizard Man was "non-toy" only in the sense that Mattel didn't include him as a figure in their 80s line-up; he was eventually made into a figure for the MOTU Classics line.)
• Adam and Teela have an interesting exchange to start off the episode, when she gets annoyed with the prince for pointing out that He-Man would have easily defeated his opponent Michi in a wrestling match. "What about your abilities?" Teela retorts angrily. "Don't they count for anything?" Adam and Duncan then have a conversation in which Adam asks where he would be without He-Man - suggesting that he has come to depend pretty heavily on his alter ego. This dependence on He-Man's strength will of course be tested later in the episode. He-Man is a crutch, Adam! For other episodes where Adam is forced to rely on his human self to try to solve problems, see for instance MU061 and MU090.
• Randor tells Duncan and Adam that he's sending them on a mission to Phantos, a planet not heard from since MU005's "She-Demon of Phantos." "Our diplomatic relationship has been poor," says the king; possibly his way of remembering when He-Man and Teela had a magical battle against the planet's leader, Queen Elmora, while she was bewitched to think He-Man was actually Skeletor. Incidentally, the diplomatic outlook is not likely to get any brighter after the events of this episode, since the Eternians totally skip out on their appointment! We have to hope that they are headed to a belated meeting at the end of the episode to try to repair the situation, though that's never explicitly stated.
• Beast Man reminds Lyn that Skeletor has tried kidnapping Prince Adam before; he's right! See my category "Skeletor (or another villain) plots to capture Prince Adam," in particular MU003 and MU015.
• The last time the heroes needed to visit Phantos, He-Man just yelled "To the space portals!" and everyone marched on over to Castle Grayskull to borrow the Sorceress's teleporters. This time, they opt for the more independent and prosaic method of flying their own spaceship - one we've never seen before. The villains follow in the more familiar Basher, though it has been adapted to fly in space with the addition of a glass covering sealing over the cockpit. It's rare to see the heroes travelling through space; one of the only other occasions was when they rode an auto-piloted Doom Buster in MU080's "The Shadow of Skeletor." (We might also recall He-Man's brief and completely absurd venture into space in the unprotected Wind Raider, at the end of MU091; and of course Queen Marlena's memorable introduction to Eternia, recalled in MU006 and MU085.)
• According to Adam, the Great Desert of Phantos is "supposed to be bigger than the Caverns of Centauri." This is our first time hearing about either place.
• According to Duncan, Phantos has three moons, which all affect the tides of its sandy ocean. However in MU005, Phantos was called "the moon of Phantos," which suggests it was intended to be the orbiting satellite of some other planet - either that, or in the previous episode, the heroes were traveling to one of those three moons instead of the main planet.
• The recent film adaptations will probably mean that viewers have no trouble connecting Phantos's Great Desert with that of the planet Arrakis from Frank Herbert's Dune series. The first book in the series had been around since 1965; but David Lynch's film adaptation of that book would be released in December of 1984, a month after this episode aired - so I suspect it was in the forefront of this episode writer's mind, as well.
• Secret identity crisis: When He-Man shows up to fight the desert monsters, Teela wants to know where Prince Adam has gotten to, prompting some awkward assurances from Duncan. But it turns out Evil-Lyn would also like to know where the royal heir has closeted himself! Fortunately she doesn't have enough time to look into the problem in detail.
• Beast Man and Whiplash sport laser pistols that look very cool and spacey, though not very similar to any of Mattel's action figure accessories as I recall them.
• Evil-Lyn's plan involves the use of the "reducto ray," a cumbersome laser which shrinks the heroic prisoners. Trap Jaw had a much more portable miniaturization ray in MU068's "Day of the Machines" - it was one of his arm attachments. Lyn's invention looks more like the one Duncan has Orko use on him later in MU068.
• Apparently a shrunken Orko casts shrunken magic spells, as we conclude from his conjuring of a miniature rhinoceros. So I guess they have rhinos on Eternia?
• Beast Man makes an offhand comment about putting the tiny rhino in his "micro zoo." You have a micro zoo, bro? That's awesome! Maybe he makes microbrews, too...
• In addition to her (ostensibly innovative) reducto ray, Lyn also has a cage made out of "duroblast," which I assume is another in a long line of superlatively powerful Eternian materials that we've never heard of until now. Ironically, MU005, our last visit to Phantos, featured photanium, one of the first "strongest metals" that we encountered in the series.
• As Lyn is taunting He-Man that his muscles can do nothing to solve her problem, we get a rather majestic drawing of the hero from a low angle which isn't used very often, but was seen before in MU036's "The Search."
• For the first time in the series, we - almost - see He-Man turning back into Adam. Deciding his princely form is best for dealing with Evil-Lyn's "no-win" scenario, He-Man strides behind a boulder, we see some Grayskull power shooting out around it, and he walks back out as Adam. We'll see this process more fully in MU110's famous "The Problem with Power," and in slightly abbreviated form in MU127's "The Ancient Mirror of Avathar."
• The villains have themselves a premature and ill-timed celebration in Snake Mountain, giving Adam time to rescue their prisoners. Beast Man should remember how bad an idea this is, because he did the same thing with Mer-Man after having successfully kidnapped King Randor, in MU029's "Prince Adam No More." Interestingly, this was another episode in which Adam's relationship to He-Man was questioned, though sort of in the opposite direction.
• It's a unique episode for big cats! This is the only episode in the series to include Panthor but not Cringer or Battle Cat - more evidence, if any was needed, that He-Man's pet tiger is on the outs with the show writers. This is Panthor's eighth appearance in the series, and only the second this season. It will also, unfortunately, prove to be his last. Goodbye, sweet kitty!
• This is another episode, just like the previous MU104, that features the variant ending credits with a flat-painted Jawbridge in the background.

• I suppose Adam's struggle with the mostly naked Michi could qualify for the old "homoerotic undertones" sub-category. It's been a while since we've had call to mention that!
• Teela said it! You heard her! "Size isn't everything." (For some reason a lot of suggestive topics are coming up early in this episode!)
• Beast Man gets no respect from anyone: Evil-Lyn instructs Beast Man, who is piloting the Basher, to "switch on the creature energizer," which riles up the critters under Phantos's sand. But... he's Beast Man! His one ability is to control beasts! Why does he need to resort to a creature energizer??
• Adam wanders off from the others to more closely examine some fossils - the kind of lame excuse he would usually use when he wanted to get away to turn into He-Man. Only he uses the excuse before the need for He-Man arises! Perhaps the prince had a premonition of impending doom...
• Before Adam leaves his friends, he invites them all to take the opportunity to "get sandburned." Obviously the prince is just making a paltry joke; but I suppose it's possible that light from a nearby star could reflect off the sand and create some intense rays. I hope everyone put on some sandscreen!
• The attacking desert monsters of Phantos, who unfortunately remain unnamed in the episode, don't look much like the sandworms of Dune, but are nevertheless a very cool monster design: sort of like Godzilla if he had a third eye in his forehead that could shoot freeze rays.
• As Adam's friends are running from the monsters, Man-at-Arms says "Look out!" twice, in exactly the same intonation, and with just as little need each time. I'm sure when giant green monsters come to call, the people next to you don't require instructions to watch out, Duncan. Ironically, he doesn't heed his own advice, since he's the one who ends up twisting his ankle.
• Home invasion! Just as he did in the recent MU103, He-Man once again finds himself breaking into Snake Mountain, as usual with very little difficulty. This time he's much less stealthy about it, and his smashing into the interior is overheard (and felt) by the Evil Warriors from several rooms away. So no need for an intruder alarm, though one does not seem to be in evidence. Since He-Man's brazen entry doesn't work out for him as well as usual, Prince Adam later also has to find a way into Snake Mountain - he does it stealthily by opening a round grate and slipping through the circular hole behind it. (Teela did something similar when she had her own very successful sneak in MU068.)
• He-Man seems particularly angry with the villains in this episode - I suppose with justification, since they've kidnapped several of his friends. "I haven't got time for foolish conversation," he says sternly to Evil-Lyn: "must I tear Snake Mountain apart?" You know what, why don't you, He-Man? Why don't you?
• Evil-Lyn tells He-Man that Skeletor is away on "diplomatic business." Is she telling the truth? It would make a nice parallel with the plotline of the heroic characters; but who has Skeletor got to be diplomatic with?
• It's very fascinating how, when Adam comes on the scene, he appears very believably ignorant of the entire balanced situation that is keeping his friends trapped, and has to have Duncan warn him not to touch the reducto ray. Is he feigning just for the sake of verisimilitude, and to hide the fact that he already knows the whole story since he had it explained to him as He-Man? Adam usually evinces such a careless attitude toward protecting his secret identity that this level of acting seems unlikely. One is prompted to wonder again just how connected Adam is to his alter ego.
• When Panthor walks in to check on the prisoners, we see that he's fully saddled up, which seems cruel and unusual of the other Evil Warriors. Why leave his uncomfortable saddle on when there's no Skeletor around to ride him? Oddly, when Panthor reappears to pounce on Adam later, the saddle has vanished. Continuity error?
• Lyn's balanced, no-win plan to keep her hostages from being rescued is fun and makes a clever problem for He-Man/Adam to solve; but you have to admit it's pointlessly complicated. All she really had to do to gain He-Man's cooperation was hold Teela or Duncan (or, just maybe, Orko) at spell-point, and make it difficult for He-Man to reach her, and he would have been forced to do anything she asked. Adam's solution likewise includes some unnecessary steps, and is contrived for the purposes of getting more shrunken people into the episode (and to emphasize the lesson of muscles and strength/size not being everything). What was keeping He-Man from staying as He-Man, and just putting up a wall of stone between the ray and the cage? He'd then be free to deal with the other two parts of the equation without worrying about having microscopic friends. He could trigger the boulder and just catch the falling cage. He could just move the reducto ray, so it was no longer pointed at anything dangerous and no longer sitting under the boulder. Or - since we know that Duncan already has a shrinking ray, from the events of MU068 - he could have just let the boulder smash the ray and carry the tiny heroes back home in his furry, sweaty pocket, to be restored to full size in Duncan's lab.
• A couple of problems that arise during Adam's "smart" solution to the reducto ray problem: the first being all the amazing uses to which he puts his little length of rope. He's able to loop it onto the hook at the top of the cage and climb his way up; he then somehow releases it from the knot that was keeping it in place at the other end, and reuses it to let the prisoners down from the cage. It's unclear just what he's tied the top end of the rope to; it just seems to stay in place somewhere inside the cage (he could very easily have tied it to one of the bars, but we don't see any evidence of that). When the prisoners have finally escaped from the cage, the prince goes over and just resets the ray. But one of the whole reasons he had to think out a solution to the situation was because if he touched the controls of the ray, it would automatically go off, making its target even smaller. We don't see it do so at all. You can assume that he used up its one automatic shot when he shrunk himself; but it seems very short-sighted of Lyn to set the controls to only fire off once if interfered with, and then be perfectly usable. If that was how it worked, why bother shrinking himself at all? Why not just have his friends duck under the first blast, and then reset it and fire it off again, restoring the heroes and the cage to full size? (A suggestion is made later that a full-size He-Man at the controls of the ray would have somehow caused the boulder to fall with his thick, hammy fingers, but this seems unconvincing and unlikely.) Afterwards, when Adam times the beam of the ray to fire off and restore him to his own size, Panthor jumps in as well - and ends up shrunken, while Adam is back to normal. Huh? Shouldn't there be a giant panther about to eat him? Why did Panthor get scaled in the opposite direction as the other person under the beam?
• So as you can see, I took some issue with the logic employed in this episode; but it at least had the appearance of giving us a clever scheme. I like seeing Evil-Lyn working her ambitions, and it's always fun to see people getting shrunk. That tiny rhinoceros was absolutely adorable, especially when it hopped and pranced about. I even like the lesson part of the story, with He-Man having to find a non-muscular (even non-He-Man) way to solve a problem. I also enjoyed the very science fiction-y scenes on the surface of Phantos, though I wish we'd gotten a chance to see good old Queen Elmora again. No hard feelings for the snub, your majesty?