A rainy day. A bored trenchman.com writer. A website that hasn't been updated in quite a while. And a DVD box set full of He-Man episodes just sitting on a shelf gathering dust. Sorry. This one was inevitable.

The synopsis included on the DVD and in the little booklet they stuck in the slipcase made the episode I'm writing about today ("Reign of the Monster") sound positively baroque; in fact, before I began watching the actual episode, I was a little worried that I might not be able to wring too many of my usual wry comments out of it. An epic battle to prevent the evil, horned Molkrom from assisting Skeletor in entering Castle Grayskull? A tragic attack on Stratos's realm of Avion by the evil Torgs? A powerful magical staff that may have fallen into the wrong hands? The story sounds rich, and at least somewhat coherent. What could possibly be in there for me to snark at?





Well, as it turns out, quite a bit. The synopsis I read sounded impressive; what I'd momentarily forgotten was the fact that synopses almost never tell you anything about execution, and I've yet to see a He-Man episode that wasn't at least a little absurd, puzzling, or unintentionally funny (even the vaunted "Problem With Power" episode suffers from these maladies). "Reign of the Monster" is no different, and may in fact be a cut above most episodes in terms of watchability: the always-amusing Skeletor spends much of this episode in the company of a screeching centaur-like beast that can shoot laser beams out of its eyes -- a definite improvement over episodes like "The Starchild", which featured as its main attraction a whiny little blonde girl in go-go boots and a couple of pasty, underdressed goobers.

We begin with Skeletor. He's in a cave populated by muscular dudes wearing red loincloths and silver bullet-shaped helmets, and is working some magic over a bubbling cauldron. When his magic fails to have the desired effect, he grumpily swats the cauldron away and complains loudly about it. What exactly is it that he's trying to do? We quickly find out, as the king of the red loincloth-wearers (I think his name was Von, or something; anyway, you can tell he's the king because he's wearing a crown and has a mustache) engages him in an exposition-laden conversation. Apparently, the loinclothers are called Torgs, and their "prince of destruction", a being called Molkrom, has been imprisoned in a big crystal in one of their caves for who knows how long. They want him released, and Skeletor wants him out too, because apparently Molkrom packs enough magic power to take on the Sorceress at Castle Grayskull. Unfortunately, Skeletor's attempts to release Molkrom with his own black magic have been unsuccessful -- see, Molkrom was placed in there with "elder magic", and elder magic is tough to crack, even for guys with bubbling cauldrons.

The Torg King has an idea, though: he knows of a magic that might break the spell on Molkrom's crystal. "Then get it!" Skeletor exclaims, sounding a bit exasperated. I'm with him. You've gotta wonder: if getting Molkrom out of the crystal is so important to the Torgs, why hasn't the Torg King already acted on this knowledge? What did they need to hire Skeletor for (aside from his obvious ability to entertain)?

Anyway, following this terse introduction, we cut to He-Man and his pals laughing it up in Avion, home of the "birdmen" (these "birdmen" all look pretty much exactly like Stratos, who is later referred to by Skeletor as the "king of the birdmen" -- besides a few feathers, though, I didn't see a whole lot of bird in these guys; they look more like chimps or something, and they fly around using jet packs rather than wings). At any rate, Stratos is standing on an altar waving around a golden staff -- according to He-Man, this magical "Staff of Avion" is only shown to the public once a year. "What does it do, Stratos?" Orko asks. Stratos answers his question by pointing it at the sky, which causes some fireworks to appear. The Avionese are all duly impressed.





But what's this? Avion is under attack! That's right; the cave-dwelling, loincloth-wearing Torgs have arrived in their sophisticated spaceship-like vehicles, and are attacking the peaceful birdmen. See, that's what I love about this show. The Torgs live in caves (without furniture or anything), wear virtually no clothing, are shown to be as dumb as bricks, and possess no evident tradition of scientific inquiry in their crude society...and yet they're depicted as cruising around in flying vehicles much more technologically advanced than anything we've got here on boring old 21st century Earth (these flying machines can hover in mid-air without rotors, stop on a dime, and don't have much in the way of wings, so the viewer is forced to conclude some exotic propulsion method is being utilized to achieve lift -- and that's to say nothing of the "heat rays" the aircraft can fire). Okay, okay, I guess it's possible that they stole these vehicles from somewhere -- but it seems to me that the ability to pilot and maintain an advanced aircraft isn't a skill you just pick up off the street. Or off the cave, as it were.

Well, in any event, the Torgs attack, and He-Man and his entourage (Teela, Man-At-Arms, Ram-Man, Orko, Battle Cat, and the aforementioned Stratos) fight back. He-Man hops on a flying vehicle of his own that just happened to be parked in the vicinity (the pertinent question here is why do birdmen, who can fly under their own power, have flying machines sitting around in their capital?) and takes to the sky to combat them, while Teela and Man-At-Arms arm the nearby "photon cannon" and blast away. This isn't enough; He-Man is shot down, and Avion looks as if it might be in danger of being overrun, but the Torgs aren't interested in plundering the city -- instead, they use a silly retractable claw-thing to snag and abduct Stratos, who happened to be flying around with the fabled Staff of Avion. See, the Torgs plan on using the staff to break Molkrom out of the crystal (the staff is made up of a similar "elder magic", I guess).

Because one of the fool Torgs happened to mention the name "Molkrom" in the midst of the battle, He-Man and Man-At-Arms and the rest decide to go ask the Sorceress at Castle Grayskull if she's familiar with it. Delora, Stratos's sister, accompanies them.

Meanwhile, Skeletor menaces the captive Stratos in a Torg cave. He proceeds to use his magical hypnosis powers to turn Stratos against He-Man and the others, which is something, I've noticed, he does a lot of in this series: someone or other always seems to be fighting off Skeletor's mind control. I really wish the show would spend a little time quantifying Skeletor's powers; one of the reasons the show comes across as so sloppy, story-wise, is that he can pretty much do anything he wants with his magic -- whatever the plot requires. And then he forgets that he can do these things, and I'm sitting here pulling my hair out: "Skeletor, you idiot! Just teleport out of that prison cell! You just demonstrated that ability like two seconds ago!" and "Damn it, Skeletor, just use your mind control on that stupid Man-At-Arms!" You get the idea. Anyway, why Skeletor even bothers with this hypnosis bit is puzzling; as we'll soon see, he doesn't get very much out of it.





At Grayskull, the Sorceress fills the team in on Molkrom. Apparently he was a pretty tough customer back in the day: he ruled the Torgs, and had he thought to bother, he even could have broken into Castle Grayskull if he'd wanted to. Some ancient good-guys finally locked him away in the crystal prison untold ages ago (fortunately for the Torgs, these ancient good-guys were nice enough to place the entombed Molkrom in one of their own caves, so that they could continue to venerate him -- apparently just dropping his crystallized butt into the ocean or something didn't occur to them). We also get a few clips of Molkrom in action: he's like a centaur, basically, but with horns, a demonic, animalistic face, and snakelike arms (the arms don't even end in hands; it's actually kinda disturbing). Oh, and he can shoot beams from his eyes, and blow flames out of his mouth or something. But the really bad news is yet to come: the Sorceress explains that the Staff of Avion, if it is used for evil, will eventually explode if it isn't quickly used again for good. The explosion, she says, will destroy half of Eternia.

That's quite a blast. Assuming Eternia is roughly the same size as Earth, that's gonna have to be in the neigborhood of something like...oh, I don't know, maybe a million gigatons (the largest man-made explosion was the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which, in contrast, had a yield of only about fifty megatons)...and even a blast of that magnitude probably wouldn't literally, physically destroy half the planet. So basically Stratos was flying around with an explosive device of immense power -- thank goodness he never carelessly used the thing to shoplift a candy bar from the Avion 7/11. Nuclear winter could follow.

So it could be the Sorceress is exaggerating. He-Man and the others take her warning to heart, however, and immediately set out to retrieve both Stratos and the staff from the Torg caves (they all hop into a vehicle that looks vaguely like the Mystery Machine, except with tank treads). Their journey into the underworld goes well, except for their encounter with a large creature resembling a cross between a t-rex and an elephant. He-Man gets out of the Mystery Machine and smacks it around, and they continue on their way (the whole scene is just filler).

They soon arrive at the Torg lair, where they meet Skeletor. "Greetings, He-Man," Skeletor says, forgetting for once to go with something more cutting, such as "He-Fool", which is his usual custom. "Skeletor!" He-Man replies, although he actually sounds more amused than upset, worried, or confused. Having thus established to the viewer that yes, He-Man and Skeletor do in fact know each other, the show commences with another fight scene: this time our heroes are attacked by a squadron of Stratoses (Stratosi?) -- magical clones of Stratos made by Skeletor. Just to be malicious, Skeletor also sends the real, brainwashed Stratos out to attack his former comrades -- hoping, I imagine, that He-Man and the gang will accidentally kill him in the melee. Skeletor doesn't get anywhere with this particular plan, though, mostly because he stupidly warns He-Man that one of the Stratoses is the real one, and because it only takes about fifteen seconds for his influence over Stratos to fade, which in turn causes the magical clones to simply disappear (Delora helps out here: she implores the real Stratos to fight the mind control, and he does, by putting his hands to his head like he's struggling with some immense pain -- the usual cartoony way of indicating someone is fighting off mind control).

Skeletor's go-nowhere plan does stall the good guys long enough for him to use the Staff of Avion to free Molkrom from the crystal, though. He-Man and the gang arrive just in time to see him released.





Skeletor immediately plays the "I freed you, so do my bidding" card with Molkrom, and the monster (I'd gotten the impression that Molkrom had a mind of his own, since the Torgs called him their leader, but the beast can't even talk; he's essentially just an animal) obliges, by blowing the good guys into a cave with super-breath and then sealing them in with what I think was supposed to be laser vision. Nice. This accomplished, Skeletor hops on Molkrom's back and gallops off to Castle Grayskull. The Torgs, having been completely ignored by their "leader" and by Skeletor, and having evidently forgotten that Molkrom was their meal ticket, try to pretend to themselves that they're still relevant by busying themselves with meaningless busywork: "First," the king tells his followers, "we'll put this staff in the vault. After that, you can come back here and patch up that hole [that Skeletor made] in the wall." Yeah, because fixing holes in the wall is a top priority, following the seconds-ago release after untold ages of your "prince of destruction".

Moments later, our heroes are able to escape from the cave Molkrom sealed them into. How, you ask? Why, He-Man simply punches his way out. A brilliant strategy, I'm sure you'll agree (don't know how they thought that one up). He-Man, Man-At-Arms, and Ram-Man proceed to Castle Grayskull to take on Molkrom and Skeletor, while Teela, Orko, Stratos, and Delora stick around the Torg cave to try to get the Staff of Avion back (remember, it's due to explode soon, because Skeletor just used it for evil). Orko uses some magic tricks to distract the Torgs (now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure their appearance is an homage to Conan; they all look just like Arnold) while Teela grabs the staff. There's more fighting in there, too, but it's nothing special -- just the usual hijinks.

At Grayskull, Molkrom shoots more lasers out of his eyes (like Skeletor's magic, Molkrom's eye-beams allow him to do whatever the plot requires; he's seen here actually extinguishing flames with them) and screeches like crazy until He-Man and the others show up to try to fight them off. He-Man deals with Molkrom (using a tractor of some sort to pull him away) while Man-At-Arms and Ram-Man confront Skeletor. "It's two against one!" Man-At-Arms warns. "Think so?" Skeletor cackles. He uses his magic to bring some plants to life, and these plants immediately entangle the two losers up in vines. Way to go, guys. That went well.

The Sorceress eventually emerges from the Castle to help He-Man fight off Molkrom, but gets swatted down. Fortunately, Stratos and the other team arrive seconds later, with the staff. Thing start to get a little sloppy at this point, however. He-Man tries to use the staff against Molkrom, but Molkrom knocks it out of his hand. Now glowing like crazy, the good guys realize they're out of time and that it's about to explode, so He-Man picks it up and tosses it into outer space...where it explodes. But what's weird is the light of the explosion encases Molkrom in his little crystal prison again. Wha? Why did that happen? The idea that Molkrom and the Staff of Avion are instrinsically linked in some way was never firmly established at all, much less that the staff's exploding would be necessary to re-seal him -- it was stated only that the Staff was an object of "elder magic" that could release him...perhaps one of many.





Anyway, the staff falls back to Eternia in one piece (!?!). Man-At-Arms, Ram-Man, and He-Man stand around staring at it for a while before remembering that Skeletor is still on the loose, and about to break into Grayskull even without Molkrom's help. So He-Man runs up to him and wraps him up in a bear hug. "Going somewhere, Skeletor?" he asks, presumably rhetorically, but you never know; He-Man's kind of a dim bulb. "Very well, He-Man," Skeletor says resignedly. "Another time?" And he teleports away.

Back at Avion, the "festival" (you know, the one where the deadly staff that nearly killed them all is shown to an adoring populace) finally gets underway. Whee. A juvenile birdman (a mini-Stratos) chases Orko around with a remote-controlled toy Torg spaceship, everyone has a good inexplicable laugh, and Orko delivers the obvious moral of the story: don't eat strange stuff around the house just because it may look or smell tasty.

All in all, it's a pretty funny episode, with plenty of ridiculous, poorly-animated fight scenes and a typically bizarre plot. Take it from me: you really can't go wrong on a rainy day with a good silly He-Man episode.

---

back to trenchman.com