Don Heckman

Ernie Schmidt

Skeletor has a plan: hold Captain Teela and Orko hostage until King Randor agrees to surrender his kingdom. But rather than stash his captives in Snake Mountain, the villain ships them off to the cursed kingdom of Moragore - home to a hideous monster of a man! This might remind you of a fairy tale you've heard - but don't expect any French candelabras to sing a song to these kidnap victims!

Cringer (Battle Cat), Sy-Klone, Prince Adam (He-Man), Teela, Orko, Sorceress

Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, Whiplash, Beast Man

storyteller, children, spider robots, Eternian guards, Monster of Moragore (Prince Moragore), Morabot, Moragore's guards, bees

Collector

This episode asks the hard-hitting question: can fairy tales come true? The answer is, of course they can - in cartoons! As we begin, the Storyteller last seen with the blind boy Loos and fellow children in Eternos's marketplace is now in the palace courtyard, just finishing up the tale of Beauty and the Beast for some little kids. Nearby, an appreciative Teela recalls hearing the same story when she was little. Orko points out that fairy tales aren't real, but Adam demurs, claiming that sometimes they are. Their musings are interrupted by the sound of an alarm! A fleet of Skeletor's spider drones are attacking! The prince advises Teela to run off to the perimeter defense tower with Orko. The newbie hero Sy-Klone, who was nearby, runs off to help as well, giving Adam the brief private moment he needs to transform himself and his tiger.

He-Man and Battle Cat help smash up some robots with the twirling and whirling Sy-Klone. Afterwards, surveying the pile of scrap metal he's created, He-Man wonders how Teela and Orko are doing. When he heads to the defense tower to check on them, the guards inform him the pair has vanished! He-Man immediately suspects what we already know: Skeletor has kidnapped them. In fact, old Bonehead arrived with minions Evil-Lyn and Whiplash and froze the captain and the Trollan. Rather than ship his hostage popsicles back to Snake Mountain, however, the villain stuffed them in torpedo tubes and launched them to some other location. Teela and Orko awake and defrost, finding themselves in a mysterious palace with a huge banquet spread before them. Their host is a very tall green fellow with bat wings coming out the sides of his head, who introduces himself as the "Monster of Moragore" and admits rather guiltily that he serves Skeletor. It's a nice prison - but the heroes are clearly still prisoners!

In the meantime, He-Man has rushed off to Snake Mountain on his tiger to confront Skeletor. He dodges some flung rocks from Whiplash and climbs inside the mountain's snaky mouth, only to be presented with the holographic floating head of his nemesis, who informs him the hostages he seeks are not there. Skeletor won't release the hidden captives until he's been paid - with the kingdom of Eternia! Obviously He-Man is not about to cough up the kingdom; but our disappointed blonde oaf needs a clue to help jumpstart his search, so he turns back into Adam and heads for Grayskull. At the mystical castle, the Sorceress senses her friend's distress but needs him to explain its cause. On being informed, she uses her magical ESP to reach out into the ether, and is able to detect her daugh- I mean, is able to detect Captain Teela, who's in great danger - of overstuffing herself at the Moragore buffet.

The Sorceress tells the prince that he's going to have a difficult journey to a dangerous, cursed kingdom, and the only way to get inside the castle where the hostages are being held is through an underground maze which no one has ever completed. To aid him, she provides a little ball that contains (among other things) a lock of Teela's hair, and will act as a direction finder as he navigates the labyrinth. Transformed back into He-Man and headed for Moragore on the back of Battle Cat, the hero is espied by the villains in Snake Mountain. Skeletor makes a call to his monstrous servant, instructing Sir Moragore to re-freeze the hostages if He-Man shows up; but the Monster, already feeling ambivalent about his duties, doesn't want to harm his harmless charges any further. It takes a threat from Skeletor of cursing all the Monster's citizens with the same ugliness he's been cursed with to get him moving.

That's right: as Moragore explains to Orko and Teela, he and his kingdom are under a curse, directed by Skeletor and cast by Evil-Lyn, which made him the Monster he is and keeps his realm constantly dark and gloomy. He has no choice but to do as Skeletor says. Spotting He-Man's arrival, the Monster takes the heroic hostages to another room to prepare them to go back into their freeze chambers, but Teela stalls for time, trying to buck up her captor and telling him to grow a backbone and defy his master. After all, evil actions are far uglier than any physical features - right?

While this is going on, Skeletor - who's decided he really can't trust his Monster anymore - has flown over to Moragore along with some flunkies in the Collector. He barges in on the Monster to find him still chatting up the captives, not having frozen them as his master requested. Moragore argues that there's no need to do any freezing - no one has ever gotten through the maze, so why should that pinnacle of perfection, He-Man, be any different? Skeletor demands that they check on the hero's progress by video, and Evil-Lyn switches on the monitor. So how has our blonde oaf been doing? He-Man has been fighting his way into the castle and through the maze. He met a giant robot - the Morabot - at the maze entrance, and tricked it into zapping itself with the electric charge from one of its pincers. Within the maze, he encountered some territorial bees from which he had to flee. As the villains tune in, they discover the hero in the chamber directly below them, which just happens to be the "compressor room." Skeletor orders the Monster to turn on the compressor and crush He-Man; but the finally defiant servant refuses, and tries to stop the villains. Whiplash trips and wraps up the cursed fellow with his tail, while Beast Man flips the switch to turn on the moving walls. Skeletor then freezes the controls to keep any pansy good guys from interfering.

But a battle breaks out! Teela and Orko fight back, with the Trollan casting a blinding light that dazes the villains, while Teela defrosts the compressor controls and uses them to turn on a PA and inform He-Man that he's right beneath them. The hero promptly leaps up through the ceiling and into the room. Rather than hang around and try to battle it out, Skeletor and his minions just run for it. He-Man almost turns his pent-up fightin' energy on the Monster of Moragore, but Teela convinces him that the bat-winged guy is a friend, so our muscular hero runs off after the others. He arrives in time to grab hold of the Collector to keep it from flying off. The villains, trapped inside, see no other option for escape but to freeze themselves into torpedo tubes and launch their way back to Snake Mountain. It's an ignominious (and icy) end to their machinations!

On the terrace of Moragore palace, the Monster thanks Teela for convincing him to stand up for himself, and declares that he's going to try to be a better ruler than heretofore - but it will be hard, since his people won't like his ugly face. Teela assures him that he's not ugly at all - or at least, not on the inside - and gives him a little peck on the lips, which really seems to be what causes the Monster to transform back into his handsome, princely, human self. When the happy Prince Moragore makes this assertion to Teela, however, the captain tells him that it was really his brave actions that broke Skeletor's curse, and he should definitely not call her later. She does agree to join the restored prince and her friends for a celebratory meal, however.

With the story wrapped up, Orko flies out through the now happy, sun-filled kingdom and finds the Storyteller sitting on a log in a nearby glade. The Trollan lets the Storyteller know that, at the beginning of today's episode, Orko had believed that fairy tales can't come true, but he now knows different. A curious Storyteller asks for the deets, and Orko settles in to provide a recap of the plot - which presumably would sound exactly like the one I've just finished telling you.

End with a Joke: At a stretch, you could consider Orko's final conversation with the Storyteller an amusing little zinger.

• Prince Adam (to Orko): Sometimes fairy tales come true, little friend.
• Skeletor (to He-Man): Your friends are safe and well - but not here. They will be returned when Eternia bows to me as its new king. / He-Man (laughing): That'll be a long time coming. / Skeletor: But come it will.
• Monster of Moragore: My people run in fear when they see my face. / Teela: You blame too much on your appearance; your people run because they do not have a leader. Show some strength and character, and your people will follow you anywhere - no matter how you look!
• Teela: What does ugly mean? Doing something bad is far more "ugly" than what a person looks like.
• Skeletor: No one "gets" Skeletor! Away! (Flees, along with all his minions)
• Whiplash (complaining about having to freeze himself): Ooohh! I won't be able to snap my tail for a week!
• Monster of Moragore (to Teela): Because of you, I understand. I can now try to be the leader I should be. If only I didn't have to show them this-this horrible face. / Teela: I don't think you're ugly. When you fought to save He-Man, your courage showed how beautiful you really are.
• Orko: Some fairy tales do come true. / Storyteller: Very well then, friend; perhaps you can tell me a story: this story.

• Skeletor shakes his fists, three-quarter view: So excited about his hostage scheme
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: First to throw a spider robot corpse, later to throw an actual rock at the Morabot
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: To go figure out what happened to Skeletor after the spider attack, and to ride off after destroying the Morabot
• He-Man punches the viewer: Smashing a boulder
• Skeletor leans in close to the viewer: Assuring his minions that He-Man won't find out where the hostages are being kept; and later, once he discovers that He-Man has, in fact, found out where the hostages are being kept
• He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat: About to face off against the Morabot, and again after bursting up through the floor in the castle
• He-Man runs away from the viewer: Setting up his ruse for the Morabot
• He-Man runs at the viewer, bug-height: A continuation of the previous loop
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: At the end of the PSA, to tell the prince how great he is

One full

Brought to you by Teela, He-Man, Orko, and Prince Moragore
In an unusual departure from the more typical practice of speaking directly to the viewing audience, our heroes enact a sort of epilogue to today's story, as they have clearly retired to the lovely rooftop banquet the prince invited them to a few minutes ago. As they all sit around a table laden with food, the friends discuss what lessons they learned today. For Orko, it was the dubious claim that "sometimes, fairy tales can come true." Moragore more sensibly and realistically talks about learning to look past his own ugliness: "No matter how you look, you're only as ugly - or as beautiful - as the way you act." He-Man compliments the prince, claiming that he's learned his lesson well; but frankly, since the guy is handsome again, I don't know that it's going to stick.

Skeletor summons a monster: I've had a couple of near misses with this category lately, but I think this one finally qualifies; the "monster" of Moragore, after all, came about as a result of our favorite villain's curse.

• The episode opens with a familiar face: the storyteller, a character last seen in MU101's "Not So Blind." This time, rather than gathering a bunch of kids in a little nook near the Eternos marketplace, the old man is telling stories to children in the oft-used setting of the palace courtyard.
• Also reappearing right after his debut episode (MU116) is Sy-Klone. This time the character has a different voice; still robotically modulated, but higher pitched than before. He proves himself very useful in deterring a spider robot attack.
• This episode takes a strong stance on the advantages of recycling. "Skeletor's" spider droids are also a character design we've seen before. They were the robots controlled by Trap Jaw that were attacking the fortress in the desert in Part One of the only MOTU two-part story, MU040 and MU041's "House of Shokoti." (We also saw a returned Negator make use of one in MU093's "Trouble's Middle Name.") As Trap Jaw's inventions, the creatures were entirely land-based; in this episode, they fly and have "energy webs."
• We learn two things about the palace defenses during the spider droid attack: they have a "general alarm" and they have a series of "defense perimeter" towers armed with laser guns. In similar air attacks on the palace (we can go as far back as MU004's pilot episode for an example - one that also featured a villainous distraction ploy), these things have not been in evidence, and the guards have had to hop into sky sleds. Perhaps some innovations from Man-at-Arms!
• Secret identity insecurity: Adam doesn't bother to do any kind of hiding before transforming into He-Man, instead performing his magic ritual in broad daylight, in the open air of Eternos. A second later the blonde hero confers with Sy-Klone, who we have to assume just happened to be looking the other way until then. The one concession Adam makes to secrecy is to convince Teela to run off to the defensive tower before he lifts his sword - and we see how well that suggestion pans out.
• Teela and Orko have an odd conversation about "aliens" just before Skeletor makes his appearance. Orko tells the captain that the sensors are detecting "an alien near here," but Teela comments that the only aliens she's seen are the spider droids. This is an odd thing to say, since there's an alien standing right next to her: Orko is a Trollan, not a native Eternian (in fact, if you cast your mind back far enough, to MU011, you'll find that Man-at-Arms even once referred to Orko as an alien). Then we discover that the "alien" in question is apparently Skeletor - suggesting the villain is meant to come from another planet (?), even though later-developed lore would suggest this is not the case. It's possible that both Orko and Teela are using the term "alien" in the more terrestrial sense of a foreigner, or someone not native to the area - an intruder if you will. (In this formulation we'd have to assume they're considering Orko to be a naturalized Eternian citizen - though it's hard to see how the sensors could detect his green card.)
• One of the backgrounds used to show Teela and Orko in the defense tower is a frequently seen painting first used as part of Duncan's computer room in MU068's memorable "Day of the Machines." Later shots of He-Man in the tower cobble together bits of Duncan's lab and backgrounds that have, in the distant past, been called the palace's "radio room" (see MU047).
• Skeletor and Lyn both demonstrate an ability to shoot freeze rays from their open palms.
• Skeletor's Collector vehicle boasts a feature of seemingly limited utility: people-sized torpedo tubes, which can fire frozen humanoid packages to a chosen location. I mean, I'd rather have a car that can parallel park itself, but okay.
• Teela, on waking in the beast's banquet hall, declares, "This place looks like the palace of the Star Kings." And just what, pray tell, is that? Her comment makes me think of Lord Todd's Castle Starg (or Star), seen in MU069's "The Gamesman" - but that's surely not what she had in mind.
• He-Man threatens (sadly with little chance of backing it up) to tear apart Snake Mountain to find his friends. He made a similar - and similarly empty - threat in MU094.
• Man-at-Arms is omitted entirely from this story, denying us the chance to see Duncan emote over his daughter's abduction.
• This episode features only one on-screen He-Man transformation, but we have to imply a second. This is because (rather nonsensically) He-Man changes back into Prince Adam to visit the Sorceress, then (after a cut) heads off for the location she gives him, again in the form of He-Man. Why did he bother to get changed?
• The Sorceress, she claims, has felt the "dark energy" of Adam's concern for his missing friends. So she didn't sense anything about them directly, eh? Even Teela? This recalls her similar lack of direct awareness of Teela's danger in MU083's "Into the Abyss."
• We get to watch - I believe for the first time - as the Sorceress uses her sorcery to reach out and try to locate Teela and Orko. We hear a lot about her detecting things or being aware of happenings outside the castle, but little direct evidence of her sensing it.
• The Sorceress is able to magically find Teela, and also has a lock of the Eternian captain's hair - the explanation for both things likely being her close relationship to the Heroic Warrior, detailed first in MU006 (no spoilers!).
• When Adam departs Grayskull, the Sorceress bids him farewell with the wish, "May the spirits go with you." This is an interesting expression that I don't believe we've heard before. There was a Spirit of Grayskull in MU108 - does she mean that guy? I don't think I need a big pink head following me around, thanks all the same.
• We see Skeletor and his minions making good use of the old desktop dome for spying purposes, and for communicating with the Monster.
• Moragore's reductively named "Morabot" is a cool enemy, a Gort-like giant that reminds me of the Darmi's even cooler robot champion, Bellatron, from MU079's "Disappearing Dragons." He-Man rather cleverly defeats the Morabot by tricking it into electrocuting itself - gotta hand it to the big oaf for that one!
• Moragore has some very barbaric and mean-looking guards, seemingly belying his otherwise peaceful demeanor and intentions. They also look very familiar; but I admit that I had to cheat and refer to Wiki Grayskull to find their original appearance in the series, which turns out to have been all the way back in MU005's "She-Demon of Phantos." They were the slavedrivers in Queen Elmora's suspiciously slavedriven factory.
• Your luckless friend and mine, Beast Man, shows up late in this episode. He has very little dialogue but is ordered by Skeletor to "switch on the compressor" and try to smush He-Man. I admit that when Moragore amazedly announced that He-Man had reached the "compressor room" in the maze, I assumed he was referring to some kind of functional machinery, like the part used to power a gas turbine, and not a set of moving walls for crushing people!
• In the final tussle between the heroes and villains, we see Teela utilizing her typical wrist blaster - though unusually, it seems to be set to "thaw" rather than "freeze" this time. Also in a somewhat rare occurrence, Orko effectively and flawlessly uses his magic, casting a blinding flash to stun Skeletor's lackeys.
• In order to set up the humorous and uncomfortable situation that the villains are forced to put themselves in at the end of the episode, Skeletor fails to escape by his more usual and magical method of teleportation. Instead, he and his minions flee on foot and into the Collector. I suppose we can assume that old Bonehead didn't want to lose yet another model of the vehicle. He smashed one into the pit of Grayskull at the end of MU043, and a previous teleportation escape at the end of MU099 forced him to ditch a Collector. However, in the end the villains are unable to take off and must fire themselves away as torpedo popsicles, leaving the heroes with yet another skull-shaped vehicle. Maybe Eternos will get another hospital out of the scraps, or at least a small urgent care facility!
• Teela's kiss, which seemingly (maybe? maybe not?) restores Moragore to his non-monster form, is of course an allusion to the ending of many a fairy tale - most obviously the one referenced in the episode's title, but also "The Princess and the Frog," "Snow White," "Sleeping Beauty," and so forth. But mostly it reminded me of Teela's play rehearsal with Man-E-Faces at the beginning of MU080's "The Shadow of Skeletor." It would be remiss also not to mention MU055's "Eye of the Beholder," which had a similar lesson about ugly people being beautiful on the inside - and eventually not being ugly anymore.
• The end of the episode proper brings us a strangely meta moment, along the same lines as the ending of the other Storyteller episode, MU101's "Not So Blind." You got the feeling in that previous episode that many of the Storyteller's audience were asking fan-mail-sourced questions about the series itself, and the ending PSA seemed to have Adam and the children critiquing that episode. Here, Orko closes out the story by beginning to relate to the Storyteller the events of today's episode.
• In a rare format, this episode's PSA is not addressed to the audience, and functions more as a continuation of the main story. We saw something similar happen in MU101, an episode I've had cause to mention several times already; and even moreso with the epilogue-type PSA of MU076's "The Ice Age Cometh." Both of those PSAs eventually turned into an audience-directed monologue, however, and this one doesn't.
• Once again we get the variant ending credits with the flat-painted Jawbridge.

• Skeletor's opening attack gives us a quick example of home invasion, the second instance in two consecutive episodes of the villains getting into the palace (see MU116). Here we see that the palace defenses are operating to peak efficiency, but are still not enough to prevent the success of the Evil Warriors' clever, two-pronged incursion.
• Evil-Lyn throws out a comment about having magically distracted or knocked out any other guards who were in the vicinity of Teela and Orko in their defense perimeter outpost; but the guards who later talk to He-Man say that Teela and Orko were manning the tower alone. Are they trying to cover for their own dereliction of duty?
• Speaking of recycling (something that came up near the top of the lore section) - He-Man announces that the huge pile of wreckage left over from the destroyed spider droids can be used as "building material for the new hospital." So do you wait for a robot attack before bothering to build new, all-metal hospitals? Are there deathly ill Eternians secretly praying for droids to strafe the palace?
• In a case of revenge home invasion (just as occurred in MU116), He-Man heads to Snake Mountain after Skeletor has broken into the palace. And again - just as in MU116 - the enemies are alerted to his approach, and Whiplash uses his tail to fling boulders from on high onto the tiger-mounted hero. In contrast to He-Man's less-than-stellar performance against the boulders last time, however, this time the hero successfully avoids the attack - it seems he can learn from his mistakes!
• Speaking of learning from one's mistakes - Skeletor's plan today demonstrates several traits that buck his usual uninspired trends. For one, rather than hold his valuables in Snake Mountain for He-Man to break into and easily retrieve, old Bonehead has hidden them somewhere much more remote and secluded (the last time he did something like this, in MU078, He-Man somehow predicted Skeletor's gambit; this time, he's caught unprepared). For another, and more importantly, Skeletor's whole plan revolves around him actually making good use of his hostages - something the villains have famously failed to do in the past (see, as a few for instances, MU015, MU047, MU048, MU082, and MU085). Skeletor did successfully use a kidnapped Orko as a bargaining chip in MU104 - but then his minions hilariously and ironically defused the situation by launching an Orko-stuffed rocket.
• I am a huge fan of the band Genesis - in fact, if you go back to the main page of this website's domain, you'll discover my horrifyingly huge collection of Genesis live recordings, documented and reviewed in mind-numbing detail. I particularly like the 70s prog rock era of the band, when Peter Gabriel was lead singer and used to spice up the band's performances by telling wildly surreal stories and wearing strange makeup and costumes. One of his costumes, which he wore during the performance of their classic "Watcher of the Skies," featured a pair of bat wings that sprouted out the sides of his head - just like the Monster of Moragore.
• Some potential continuity errors: He-Man and Battle Cat appear rather abruptly within the mouth of Snake Mountain's snake, a feat which has in the past required some tricky climbing (see MU044). We've definitely been given the impression in the past that Skeletor's throne room with its desktop spy dome is located very close to the snake's maw (see Zanthor's comment in MU062 that "Skeletor's chambers" are at the top of the fortress); however in this episode, Skeletor - who is clearly standing in said throne room - has his ghostly head projected to He-Man in the snake's mouth, as if the two spots are a considerable distance from each other.
• Animation error (of a sort): The Sorceress uses her powers to try to find the hostages. She afterwards claims to have sensed Teela specifically; but the footage that's used to show what she's seeing begins with a clip of Orko tossing cake down his gullet. She further indicates that Teela is in "great danger," even though all we see in the animation is a lovely banquet.
• "You will do as I say!" Skeletor berates his monster - "Or the curse that now scars you will scar all your people." This seems like a very effective threat! It's also quite a departure from the fairy tale story we're supposed to be associating with this episode. The Beast's curse in the actual "Beauty and the Beast" already scarred all his people when it was first laid on him; it wasn't an extra threat hanging over him. Skeletor's ploy changes the Monster's actions into the reluctant ones of an already good man, forced to do evil against his will to save others. So while the Beast in the original story had to learn not to be vain and shallow, this Monster has to learn... what? To endanger his many citizens in favor of preventing slight harm to a pair of strangers, by disobeying his cruel master? It makes for a messy moral conundrum. Later in the episode, a conversation between Teela and Moragore seems to steer the situation into one of the Monster not being a strong enough leader because he feels his people won't listen to him in his ugly condition. This is slightly more like the motivations of the Beast in the original fairy tale; but it still doesn't explain away the danger of Skeletor's threat.
• Interesting that when Moragore is telling his hostages his tragic backstory, he specifically blames both Skeletor and Evil-Lyn for the curse, suggesting that the magic for it was cooked up by both of them - possibly it was Skeletor's plan and Evil-Lyn's curse.
• While we're talking about this curse, I'll just take a moment to question, as I often do, the reason behind Skeletor's actions. There often isn't any obvious one aside from the one Michael Caine's Alfred gives for the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight: "Some men just want to watch the world burn." It's hard to see what advantages Skeletor has gained by making this one guy ugly and turning his kingdom dark and dreary-looking, apart from an only barely submissive servant. Did he, in a ridiculously convoluted move, intentionally curse Moragore for the sole purpose of gaining a place to stash his kidnap victims where He-Man wouldn't find them?
• I suppose the bees that swoop at He-Man and Battle Cat in Moragore's maze are just supposed to have pincers on their faces, but it looks like they all have little Italian-stereotype mustaches. As the bees rushed by on screen, I somehow extended the black of their eyes and pincers to the tops of their heads, and imagined they were wearing berets - skewing the European stereotype towards France instead. Imagine the huge eyes as sunglasses, and suddenly He-Man and Battle Cat are being attacked by a swarm of Beat poets from the 50s. (Bee-t poets?)
• Continuity error: Teela tells herself that she's "got to reach the compressor switch," you'd think so that she could turn off the walls that are moving in to crush our hero. Instead, when she defrosts the control panel and pushes a button on it, it's to communicate with He-Man and tell him she's in the room right above him. As He-Man leaps up through the ceiling and into the room, we see the walls behind him, still closing in.
• Animation error: The control panel for the compressor seems to change in texture and form as the story proceeds. In some scenes it just looks like a wooden desk, with lines suggesting a wood grain texture. Other times it seems built of some firmer substance. By the time He-Man bursts up through the floor and the camera pans over to Teela, we see her standing behind an entirely metallic-looking control panel.
• You have to wonder at Teela's denial of what seems to be plain fact, when Prince Moragore transforms into a human directly after her kiss, and he says that she "brought me back to my true self!" "No Prince Moragore," Teela instantly retorts, claiming that the prince brought himself back through his brave actions, and that Skeletor's power was steadily draining off of him ever since. Are you sure that's it, Teela? Or do you just not want this guy turning into another Mallek? (See MU024.)