I've reviewed a few He-Man episodes here in the past: the one about the Tar Swamp, the one about the She-Demon of Phantos, and, most recently, the "critically acclaimed" Problem With Power episode, which is usually considered to be the show's finest hour. All three of these episodes are pretty hilarious: besides being badly animated and weirdly voice-acted, they all feature Skeletor and his lackwit companions prominently, and each has a convoluted or (in the case of the Tar Swamp episode) merely asinine plot. Unfortunately, not every He-Man episode is as wryly amusing as these examples -- many episodes are just boring and bland (generally, you know you're in trouble if the episode you're watching doesn't have Skeletor in it) and aren't even that inadvertently funny. The junky animation techniques never cease to amuse me personally, but I imagine some folks might eventually stop finding them funny after a while, and the same goes for the voice acting and the numerous other ludicrous aspects of the show.





This episode, titled "The Starchild", is one such: there aren't any ridiculous villains at all in this outing (Skeletor and his cronies being notably absent), except for a few evil plants (giant Venus flytraps, mostly, which this show seems inordinately fond of) and generic monsters, and most of the action is just dull by-the-numbers filler crap. Consequently, I probably won't be able to get much of a review out of this thing, but I figure I'll give it a shot anyway (yep, you guessed right: bored again).

We start out with Prince Adam and Cringer wandering around in one of Eternia's many thick, vine-ridden jungles (this being a cartoon, the jungle consists mostly of twisted, multicolored flowering vegetation). What are they doing out in the middle of this wilderness? Who knows? The show never bothers to tell us, although I suppose it's possible they were just out getting a feel for the jungle's natural beauty, since Adam does make a comment that points in that direction. Anyway, Cringer lies down to take a nap, but before he can get comfortable, the two hear a commotion coming from some distance away.

A cursory investigation leads to the discovery of two groups of people fighting over a little blonde girl in an orange bathing suit and white go-go boots. Evidently, the girl is called the Starchild, and both the "tree people" (clad in green and wearing goofy hats) and the "cave dwellers" (clad in stupid purple outfits) want to capture her. The Starchild dislikes both groups, and manages to run away from them, but in her haste she fails to see the gigantic hole right in front of her, and falls in. The hole, we are told, leads to the "Old Vine Jungle", which is apparently replete with deadly vines. ("The vines are like snakes and will grab at anything," He-Man explains. Yes, that is the trouble with deadly animate vines, isn't it?) Anyway, we're also informed that the Old Vine Jungle is filled with menaces like ogres, which begs the question: why don't the vines ever try to grab at them?





In any event, Adam has seen enough. He transforms into He-Man, and he and Battle Cat jump down the hole to fight off any ogres that might be accosting the girl. Unsurprisingly, an ogre is already looming over her. After fighting off some vines ("Use your muscles!" He-Man inexplicably yells to Battle Cat when the vines are threatening to overpower him), He-Man rushes to the rescue, but the Starchild already has things well in hand. She's got some kind of weird light-emitting powers or something that can stop ogres in their tracks (did I mention that this particular ogre looks like it has gills? Whatever). He-Man makes friends with the girl, then takes her back to the palace...against the protestations of Palos and Willen, the leaders of the cave-dwellers and tree-people respectively, who are both laying claim to her.

At the palace, the Starchild makes friends with Teela and Orko, who tell her that she's adorable. This causes them to glow with a white light, because that's what happens when the Starchild likes somebody. Seems sort of inconvenient to me (the Starchild is gonna have trouble keeping her high school crushes under wraps in a few years), but hey. After these introductions, the king and queen meet with He-Man and Teela and the Starchild to decide what to do with her. Palos the cave-dweller (whose voice is obviously performed by the same guy who does Prince Adam) then appears and lodges a formal complaint. The guy wants the Starchild. We're not told exactly how the cave-dwellers came to know about her or her powers, or why they think they're entitled to her guardianship (her parents are AWOL), since she doesn't seem to be of the cave-dweller clan herself, which is indicative of the sloppy storytelling in this episode. Willen shows up later and makes the same dubious claim on her.

(This is incidental, but some of the character designs in this one really grossed me out. Palos is fat, pasty, and old, but he wears only a hood, a few narrow strips of cloth that only cover a portion of his girth, and some kind of purple kilt. Willen is in better shape, but who wants to see a half-nude tree-person in the first place? Practically no one in this show ever wears a whole shirt or a whole pair of pants; it's annoyingly disconcerting, especially when you see them whipping out the laser guns and hovering vehicles).

The Starchild doesn't want any part of either of these bozos (she's afraid they're going to try to use her powers to fight one another, since the two groups have been apparently warring with each other for a while now) and so runs away and hides somewhere in the palace. He-Man, Teela, Palos, and Willen spend basically the whole rest of the episode looking for her -- she uses her light-powers to keep them constantly at bay, creating impenetrable shields made out of light, and trapping them in giant floating silver spheres. Meanwhile, Palos hits on Teela, tempting her with jewels and flirting with her in an effort to get her to turn the Starchild over to his clan, or to at least put in a good word for him. Unbelievably, Teela reacts positively to this clear manipulation, which delights Palos, or so I deduced from the hilarious expression they gave him -- he looks as though he can't believe his own good luck. It can't be my beer belly or pasty skin, Palos probably thought, so it must be my cologne. Score one for Palos!





Willen, on the other hand, looks to manipulate Man-At-Arms, who's in his workshop doing whatever it is Man-At-Arms spends his time doing. Working on sensors and gizmos and whatnot, I guess. They sort of make friends, but the Starchild uses her powers to cause the "laser defense system" to shoot at them before any firm deals can be struck. He-Man comes to the rescue, batting the laser beams away with his sword like they're baseballs and frying the guns. Maybe Man-At-Arms should try putting his laser defense systems on the outside of buildings from now on, instead of inside where they can malfunction and shoot you dead while you're hunched over a table working on sensors and gizmos and whatnot.

Anyway, He-Man eventually finds the Starchild hiding behind a curtain and manages to calm her down, but after hearing Palos and Willen fighting over her again, she makes another break for it and somehow ends up in that damn Old Vine Jungle again (I wasn't paying much attention at this point, so I could be wrong, but it seemed to me there was a manhole-like entrance to the jungle in the basement of the palace). So He-Man, Teela, Palos, and Willen head down there to look for her. By now Palos and Willen have mellowed out a bit (an early exchange between the two ended with Palos self-righteously declaring "We [the cave-dwellers] are not evil! You are!") and are more interested in the Starchild's welfare than they previously seemed to be. Thus, after saving her from another ogre (with He-Man's help, of course; he threw it into a "tangle tree" and commenced to make a joke about how it was now "tied up") she decides that maybe they're not so bad after all. At another meeting with the king and queen, we learn that despite Palos and Willen's posturing, it was really all a big misunderstanding (!?!) and that neither of them wants to use the Starchild to fight the other. The Starchild accepts this, and both Palos and Willen start to glow. Yecch. The episode ends with the Sorceress (in her phony British accent) talking about love or something.





It's pretty uninspired stuff -- unintentionally funny at times, as with all He-Man episodes, but with a clumsy story, a whiny guest star(child), and a serious lack of fun Skeletorish buffoonery. It's hard to get very excited about He-Man fighting a bunch of hostile plant life and nameless colorful ogres in a humdrum jungle, especially when he's got a pair of pantsless fashion disasters following him around. I know I put forth the opinion in one of these reviews that all He-Man episodes are worth watching for the sheer glorious lunacy of them, but I was kind of exaggerating; unless you're a huge He-Man fan, you might want to skip this one.

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