The best thing about this particular episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is its clunky and weirdly contrived plot. Contrived, awkward plots are, of course, one of the hallmarks of this show, but this one struck me as especially egregious: it's full of dumb clichés and nonsensical resolutions. Needless to say, I liked it a lot.





The episode begins in Skeletor's hideout in Snake Mountain. He's just finished equipping his big flying ship, the Collector, with an "energy converter" that will, according to him, play an integral role in his latest scheme to break into Castle Grayskull. He boasts about it to Beast Man, and goes on to complain about Beast Man's slothful habits, calling him a "lazy creature" (in fact this episode is delightfully rife with scenes of Skeletor trash-talking and browbeating the hapless Beast Man: he mockingly calls him "Beastie" and "furbrain" and at one point threatens to turn him into a rug).

Next, we meet up with Prince Adam and his pals, who are hanging out at the palace like usual. Here, Man-At-Arms and Orko are playing chess, but the game is cut short when -- about fifteen seconds into this scene; they're getting right to the point with this one -- Skeletor shows up in the big flying ship we just saw him in earlier and starts firing his ray guns all over the place. The blasts from the ray guns turn whatever they hit into stone. Unlucky Man-At-Arms gets zapped before Prince Adam can finish transforming into He-Man. "You turned him to stone!" Beast Man exclaims to Skeletor. "Of course I did, furbrain!" Skeletor replies. Man, I could listen to these two all day. Anyway, Skeletor then proceeds to move another lever on his dashboard or whatever, initializing a different ray: this one brings stone things (statuary, mainly) to life, and apparently also imbues them with pro-Skeletor sentiment, since the first thing these various statues do upon being brought to life is attack He-Man and his friends. Orko and Stratos and Ram Man fight off a few of them (how's this for stupid: Stratos's sword shatters on one of the statues, but he manages to bring it down later by dropping a small potted plant on its head) while He-Man and Teela run Skeletor off. They drive him away, but by then the damage has been done: Man-At-Arms and a bunch of anonymous soldiers around the palace have been turned to stone.

The petrified Man-At-Arms is hauled away to the lab for analysis, where they hook him up to some machines or something. Unfortunately, the group doesn't know enough science to bring him back to life -- even Queen Marlena, a former astronaut with "Earth science training", is flummoxed. She is able to conclude, however, based on no evidence whatsoever, that if they don't change him back to flesh and blood by sundown, the transformation will become permanent (thereby clunkily adding a "race against time" element to the plot, since, hey, the episode needed one).





Prince Adam waltzes into the laboratory following the battle -- no one thinks to ask him where he was during the attack -- and asks what's going on (of course, Adam knows what's going on, since he's really He-Man, but he has his secret identity to think of). "My father's been turned to stone!" Teela wails. "We'll find the answer to this...my friend," Adam responds (his delivery is strange; click here to listen to it). Adam later transforms into He-Man and heads off to seek advice from the Sorceress, while Skeletor uses the energy he got in turning all those poor folks to stone to attempt to revive Colossor, an enormous red giant -- his goal, we learn, was not simply to turn the citizens of Eternia to stone, but to use the energy he gathers from the transformations to wake up Colossor and sic him on Castle Grayskull. Indeed, Skeletor has fallen back on that tried and true formula: the resurrection of some ancient magical creature that may or may not be capable of getting him into that damn castle. Anyway, Colossor needs a bit more energy, as it turns out, so Skeletor and Beast Man fly off to turn more people to stone.

Meanwhile, He-Man has been advised by the Sorceress to find some "fire jewels" -- these jewels, she says, will prove useful in bringing Man-At-Arms and the others back to fully-animated life. Skeletor, having figured that the Sorceress would probably direct He-Man to fetch the jewels, sends Beast Man out to stop him from getting them (this is where he threatens to turn him into a rug if he screws up), but because Beast Man is a clown who can't do anything right, he fails to stop our hero. (Here, again, the plot gets clunky. Why should Skeletor care if He-Man successfully obtains the fire jewels? All they're good for is bringing stoned people back to life, and the un-petrification of Man-At-Arms doesn't have anything to do with his larger plan to revive Colossor and bust into Grayskull. I suppose it's possible he's just being spiteful -- he is Skeletor, after all -- but the whole thing still seemed clunky to me).

At any rate, after his run-in with Beast Man (the encounter clues our musclebound hero in as to who is behind all the mischief), He-Man rushes off, with Teela in tow, to a generic-looking cave, where he finds the jewels sitting, unattended, in a big ornate bowl. Free for the taking! He grabs a handful, stuffs them in a sack, and runs out, and then somehow also gets trapped by a lava flow that comes out of nowhere. It's non-stop, poorly-animated thrills!





Moments later, Skeletor appears in the skies above the palace once again, where he -- get this -- uses his ray gun to turn several more soldiers and random citizens to stone. He even nails Ram Man and Orko. So...let me get this straight. Following a debilitating aerial attack by a well-known madman on Eternia's center of government, wherein multiple people, including one of Eternia's most prominent citizens, Man-At-Arms, were turned into stone, the authorities were caught completely unprepared when that same madman came back mere hours later and attacked them again in exactly the same way? Why didn't they install some anti-aircraft weaponry around the palace? And would it have been too much to ask to give their soldiers and citizens some instructions on what do if Skeletor came back? ("Stay indoors so you don't get zapped by his ray gun," they could have informed them). Well, whatever. Suffice it so say, Skeletor succeeds in gathering up enough energy to wake Colossor. The giant, who had been sitting on a sort of giant throne, stands and demands to know who awakened him. Skeletor states his name (Skeletor) and occupation (Master of the Universe), which apparently satisfies the giant. An easily-led sort of fellow, Colossor goes on to do Skeletor's bidding, stomping off towards Grayskull. Skeletor follows in the Collector.

Back at the palace, He-Man crushes the fire jewels into a fine powder as per the Sorceress's instructions; the Sorceress then mixes some magic up with the powder to create a "ray infuser". This is a device shaped like two rings that have been fused together, which must be placed over the two levers on the dashboard of the Collector that Skeletor uses to fire his two different rays (the turning-people-to-stone ray and the turning-statues-to-living-statues ray). If properly placed, this "ray infuser" will combine the two rays into one: a ray capable of turning the stoned citizens back to normal. So all He-Man has to do is break into Skeletor's ship, slip the ray infuser over the two levers when Skeletor isn't looking, and then hope that Skeletor inadvertently aims and fires the resulting normalizer ray at Man-At-Arms and all the other people who have been turned to stone. Piece of cake! He-Man accomplishes the first two tasks easily enough (after a brief scuffle with both Beast Man and Skeletor), then sits back and watches as Skeletor un-petrifies Man-At-Arms and the rest with the new normalizer ray a few seconds later. It's pretty dumb. I mean, why would Skeletor fire the ray at the stoned citizens? These guys have already been turned to stone, so the turning-people-to-stone ray obviously isn't going to work, and I don't know what the turning-statues-to-living-statues ray would do on these characters. Probably nothing useful. And how did He-Man know that Skeletor would use it? And why would placing a device over a couple of levers have any effect on the qualities of the rays themselves? Good grief.





This isn't the end, though: Colossor is still headed for Castle Grayskull. The Sorceress turns into her bird form and flies out to distract him, and Teela and Battle Cat try taking him on, but he's too damn big (he looks to be about seventy feet tall). He-Man and the restored Man-At-Arms, Orko, and Ram Man succeed in taking him down, though (He-Man finishes him off by punching him in the foot, whereupon he crumbles). Skeletor skeledaddles after the Collector is smacked by He-Man, and that's pretty much it, except for the dopey joke at the end and the moral about how getting exercise is great.

"Colossor Awakes" isn't the best or funniest He-Man episode I've ever seen, and certainly it isn't the most original (it's almost as if they relied on a bad He-Man plot-generator to put this one together -- Skeletor uses a giant stone monster to try to get into Castle Grayskull; He-Man must save the day by going on a quest to fetch the legendary fire jewels from a cave, which is guarded by an evil lava), but it's still well worth watching: Skeletor's got a lot of great lines, and the sloppy storytelling is good for a chuckle. High marks.

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