The He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode "The Problem With Power" is widely considered to be the greatest, smartest, and most generally impressive episode of the series. It is constantly praised by He-Man aficionados for the depth of its story and for the intelligent way it deals with the moral dilemma that He-Man is faced with over the course of the story -- so much so that a VHS tape of the episode was included with certain He-Man action figures in the new toy line as a special bonus.

After watching the fabled episode myself, I'm inclined to agree with that overall assessment, but some caveats are in order: first and most importantly, "The Problem With Power", though somewhat unconventional and marginally more thoughtful than virtually every other He-Man episode, is still just that -- a He-Man episode. That means terrible animation, bizarre dialogue and situations, oddball voice acting, and general surreal incoherence. Additionally, because the episode is a bit more thoughtful than most of the others, it's also a bit more boring: goofy, hilarious action scenes -- the show's raison d'etre -- are necessarily sacrificed to make room for all the talking and plotting.





The episode begins on Snake Mountain, Skeletor's hideout. General Tataran, a pudgy, pig-like, pasty-skinned warrior-type wearing a horned battle helm, has been brought before Skeletor by his minion Trapjaw: it seems Skeletor has a plan to eliminate He-Man (no kidding!) and he wants Tataran's help in pulling it off. Before explaining the plan to the loathsome general, however (Tataran wants He-Man out of the picture too; he doesn't really need any special incentive to work for Skeletor) an odd exchange takes place between Skeletor and Trapjaw. "Trapjaw," Skeletor says, "the General and I have important business to discuss." Trapjaw, who is busily and obliviously affixing a series of weapons and tools to the place where his right arm should be (Trapjaw is sort of a cyborg, I guess, with interchangeable body parts), merely nods. "Yes master," he says. Skeletor impatiently continues: "It has nothing to do with you!" Trapjaw again replies: "Yes, master." Finally, Skeletor screeches at Trapjaw, telling him to get lost, and his minion finally gets the picture (why Skeletor wanted to talk with Tataran in private is never made clear). It's pretty funny.

Anyway, Skeletor's plan, as we'll see, is predictably complicated and implausible, involving as it does force fields, magical disguises, a dimensional gateway, and subtle psychological manipulation. Our first hint as to what Skeletor has up his sleeve comes when he pointedly asks whether or not General Tataran, being a Goblin, has a heart or a heartbeat. "No," Tataran affirms proudly, "we don't need them." What role could Goblin physiology possibly play in a convoluted plan to get He-Man to "defeat himself"? Stay tuned!

We cut to Prince Adam, Orko, and Man-At-Arms, who are reporting on some recent suspicious Skeletor activity to the King and Queen: it seems he's building a structure of some kind on the other side of the planet, near the Crystal Sea, and more specifically near the village of Zak. Apparently he's forcing the villagers to aid him in the construction of the mysterious structure. With the approval of the King and Queen, Man-At-Arms and Prince Adam and Orko head to Zak to check things out.

Before their arrival, Skeletor and Tataran hone their evil scheme to wicked perfection. Here's the plan: Tataran, wearing a force field-generating belt to protect himself and disguised as a human worker by Skeletor's magic, will pretend to have been killed by falling rubble after He-Man bashes his way through the booby-trapped structure that Skeletor is building. He-Man, after duly checking the disguised Tataran's pulse and discovering that he has no heartbeat, will assume that he is dead, be overcome by guilt, and will then simply give up being He-Man. Pretty ridiculous, I know, mostly because of all the presuppositions that are necessary for the plan to work correctly: how likely is it that He-Man will recklessly bash the structure and cause it to fall on Tataran? And even if that bit of it works, how likely is it that he will be so broken up over the incident that afterwards he will totally give up being He-Man? Might he not react in some other way?





We find out soon enough, as Prince Adam and his posse show up at Zak a moment later. Man-At-Arms complains that the right side of the structure that Skeletor is building (Adam correctly guesses that it's a dimensional gateway) looks unsafe, and Adam smells trouble, too, so he transforms into He-Man and walks down to the building area to confront Skeletor.

Here follows an utterly delightful scene. Priceless dialogue from He-Man: "Skeletor, why are you forcing honest men and women to do your dirty work? You should be ashamed of yourself." Ha! Perhaps He-Man has momentarily confused Skeletor, a creature of pure maniacal malevolence who hates him with every fiber of his being, with a truant fourth grader in need of some gentle correction. I mean, jeez. He-Man should be punching Skeletor's face in on sight, not initiating courteous conversations with him -- and he definitely shouldn't be bothering with lame appeals to Skeletor's conscience. Good grief!

But it only gets better from there. Man-At-Arms again voices his prior complaint about the dimensional gateway's structural stability (I'm guessing Man-At-Arms would land a job with OSHA pretty quickly if he ever ended up on Earth). "Your structure is unsafe," he informs Skeletor. "Someone may be injured." Ha! Does Man-At-Arms really think that Skeletor cares whether or not anyone is injured by his damn creations? Skeletor regularly goes around deliberately injuring people, often simply because he's in the mood for a little mayhem! Sheesh!

Skeletor's reaction to all this unprecedented civility, however, is equally weird: to Man-At-Arms' comments about the stability of the gate, he merely says "that's your opinion!" Then he dismisses them all with an effeminate wave of his hand, telling them to "go away" because he's busy. As if telling He-Man and his pals to go away could possibly deter them!

In any event, Orko finally ruptures the inexplicably pleasant tone of the parley by calling Skeletor a name; Skeletor responds in kind by calling Orko "vermin" and shooting a little magical lightning bolt at him (which misses). Incensed, He-Man finally lets loose, chasing Skeletor around (and around and around) the dimensional gate. Just when you're thinking things couldn't possibly get any more juvenile, Skeletor actually says "Nyah, nyah, you fool, you can't reach me!" He-Man proves susceptible to such baiting, and does exactly what Skeletor had planned for him to do, punching through the wobbly structure to get to Skeletor and causing it to collapse on the disguised Tataran. He-Man subsequently falls for the whole act, hook, line and sinker. Skeletor, having wandered some distance off while He-Man and the others were distracted by Tataran's fake demise, greases the wheel a little by disguising himself as a bald old guy claiming to the "dead" Tataran's brother, and by inflaming the villagers against He-Man (though disguised, Skeletor's highly distinctive voice remains virtually unchanged, but no one pays this any attention).

(Strangely, He-Man actually uses the word "dead" to describe Tataran. I found the use of the word striking, considering that the much later Spider-Man animated series of the 90's was, to cite one example, utterly forbidden from using words such as "dead" or "kill", despite being a far more sophisticated series. Funimation's early DBZ dub was similarly plagued by this brand of absurdity; whenever anyone died in that series, the audience was euphemistically told that the deceased had "passed into another dimension" or some such tripe).





Anyway, He-Man walks off, all guilt-stricken. Orko tries to tell him that it was all an accident, but He-Man is having none of it; he says that because he acted without thinking, a man died, and that he is responsible for that death, even if it was an accident. He asks to be left alone, so Orko floats back to find Man-At-Arms and catch a ride back to the other side of the planet. On the way, though, he spots Skeletor and Tataran gloating about their little performance and realizes what happened. Unfortunately, Skeletor spots him, too, and captures him with a magic bubble of some kind.

We catch up with a remorseful He-Man next: he's standing on one of the parapets of Castle Grayskull, contemplating whether or not he's even worthy of being He-Man anymore. He ultimately decides not, and changes back to Prince Adam with his magical sword before tossing it into the Bottomless Abyss that surrounds the castle. This seemed like kind of a wimpy way out to me: I mean, even if someone really had died because of his recklessness, is that really a reason to quit helping people and fighting evil? Without He-Man around to thwart his various schemes, after all, Skeletor will probably end up conquering Eternia in no time flat (I wouldn't bank on Stratos showing up to save the day), and the result of that would be way more deaths, wouldn't it? Better to keep fighting the good fight, if you ask me, even if it means always carrying the weight of your past actions around with you every moment of the day.

Back at Snake Mountain, Orko is placed inside a magic-proof prison cell. Skeletor and Tataran basically give each other a high five, and Skeletor announces that it's time to use his other, completed dimensional gate to bring Tataran's Goblin army through to Eternia (not sure how Tataran -- who is from a Goblin world -- ended up on Eternia, now that I think about it; possibly this was dealt with in some earlier episode).

Prince Adam, King Randor, and Man-At-Arms somehow get wind of this, and fret about it. What can be done, they wonder? With He-Man out of the picture, who will stop all those damn Goblins? King Randor recommends that the Royal Guard attack the gate with their full force, but Man-At-Arms nixes this idea: apparently Skeletor has placed a bunch of "ray cannons" around the gate, and the Royal Guard would get fried if they tried a frontal assault (he's mainly against the idea, though, because he's afraid that the lives of the Royal Guard would be risked. Probably the members of the Royal Guard have a union, and a "no life-risking" clause in their contract). As King Randor seems to have no other army or allies, he's flummoxed. Teela appears then, and suggests that she take a "mesotronic" bomb to blow up Skeletor's gate. Everyone agrees that this is a smart move, even if, as Man-At-Arms says, "her chances aren't good."

Meanwhile, Orko escapes Skeletor's prison cell by shrinking himself down and slipping between the bars. Umm, right. At any rate, he makes it back to the palace and tells Adam about Skeletor's dirty trick. Adam decides to get his sword back, and so dives into the Bottomless Abyss to retrieve it. He finds it on a spider web some ways down, and manages to transform into He-Man before the spider can digest him. Then he takes off for Skeletor's gate.





At the gate, Teela allows some piggish Goblins to capture her so that she will be taken to Skeletor. Skeletor is happy to see her; he asks if she's come to surrender to him. She says no, calls him "evil-face" (even the heroes on this show aren't much for clever, cutting sobriquets) and threatens him with the mesotronic bomb. The Goblins flee at the sight of the bomb, and after He-Man shows up Skeletor takes off too. The bomb goes off and destroys the gate (He-Man picked Teela up and ran about nine hundred miles per hour to escape the blast, which is an ability I've never seen him use before, but whatever). The explosion buries them both in rubble, slightly injuring Teela, so He-Man picks her up and carries her off into the sunset, even though she insists she can walk (additionally, she says "Why, I didn't know you cared!" to He-Man in an arguably sultry voice, which seemed kinda out of the blue to me -- maybe he was copping a feel somewhere as he was cradling her).

That's the end (except for Man-At-Arms's tacked-on moral about safety, in which he warns that "fire can burn your toys, your home, your family...you.") For a He-Man episode, I'll admit it's practically Tolstoy, but compared to just about any other show it's barely intelligible nonsense with very few actual redeeming qualities (short of the various unintentional comedic moments, which make the show a real joy to watch, especially with like-minded friends). Great fun, if you can get into it...just don't get your hopes up too high. It's still He-Man.

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