To Walk With Dragons

King Randor is about to convene the first Council of Eternia, and Man-At-Arms has gone two nights without sleep building patrol vehicles. Skeletor plans to break up the meeting from the air with Beast Man's Serpintaurs, whose only natural enemy is the dragon, so he takes Stinkor on a ride to drive the dragons away with his smell. Man-At-Arms builds mechanical dragons to fool the poor-sighted Serpintaurs, but the swarm keeps growing. Orko, terrified of dragons, sets out to call the real ones back, and they arrive in time to drive the Serpintaurs from the palace.

"Orko is scared of dragons, and he's got good reason to be. Dragons can be dangerous beasts. Plus, they breathe fire. Fire can be dangerous. Remember, never play with matches or get too close to an open flame."

Skeletor: "Crashing, smashing, obliterating!"

Stinkor: "Not to brag, but dragons really hate my smell."

Orko: "No way! I'm scared of dragons."

Beast Man: "Uh, something must have come up."

Roboto: "Glad to be of service."

Orko: "But I'm still scared of dragons."

Most cartoon heroes get one nervous scene before the music swells and the fear is forgotten. Orko is scared of dragons from the first time he mentions them to the last, and "To Walk With Dragons" never asks him to grow out of it. He remembers the juggling balls that hatched into fire-breathing dragons, he answers "No way!" when the job of bringing the dragons back falls to a magician, and he is still scared once the palace is safe. It is an odd thing to build a He-Man episode around, and it turns out to be the right call.

King Randor is less than a day from convening the new Council of Eternia, Man-At-Arms has gone two nights without sleep building patrol vehicles, and Skeletor wants to break the meeting up from the air. Beast Man's Serpintaurs are the weapon, low and fast flyers that fear nothing and have only one natural enemy. So the plan starts by emptying the sky of dragons; Stinkor, pleased to report that dragons hate his smell, is taken for a ride over the swamp forest, and the dragons flee ahead of a yellow-green cloud.

This is an episode about fear as a weapon, and about who in the story is entitled to use it. Skeletor frightens off the dragons so the Serpintaurs can frighten the council. Man-At-Arms answers with machines built to scare the Serpintaurs, betting on the creatures' poor eyesight. Asked to evacuate the palace or move the meeting, the palace orders the ramparts fortified instead, since a change of venue would incite fear in the council. Everybody is busy managing fear in somebody else, and the one character who has it, out loud, is Orko.

Dean Stefan's script handles that idea with a light touch, and its neatest device is a running exchange with Roboto. In the thick of the battle he politely offers to be of service and is told "Not now, Roboto." A few minutes later a borrowed machine is running out of power short of the palace, someone remembers Roboto's backup unit, and he hands it over with "Glad to be of service." The help that matters comes from the one who was told to wait, and Orko's trip into the gorge makes the same argument with a lot more teeth.

The machines are the showpiece. Man-At-Arms's blue mechanical dragons stride through jungle clearings and between giant tree trunks, snap their metal jaws and breathe fire at serpents passing overhead. The real dragons are drawn as something else again, tusked and orange-eyed, one dipping its tusks into the water, others towering over Orko as he spreads his hands. The best image comes near the end: a dragon perched on the palace spire at sunset, guarding the building the machines could only just hold.

The voice cast has fun with the villains' side of the plan. Brian Dobson's Skeletor relishes "Crashing, smashing, obliterating!" Beast Man's hesitant report that "something must have come up" is the funniest villain line of the half hour. Gabe Khouth keeps Orko's fear sincere, and the episode leans on it.

The weak point is the council itself. The plot exists to protect it, yet the delegates are little more than strange faces in a golden hall: Randor calls them to order, moves to adjourn, and the members get a line or two about standing together at the close. In an episode this crowded, spending the time on hardware is understandable, but one scene of the delegates wavering would have shown us the confidence the palace was so keen not to shake.

Coming straight after "The Last Stand", this is a quieter, charming episode about putting things back together. In the last scene Orko is told that anyone without a healthy respect for dragons is a fool, and that a jester is no fool. He is still scared of dragons when it is over, and the episode is right to leave him that way!

1. Continuity: Orko's memory of juggling balls that turned out to be dragon eggs points back to season one's "Dragon's Brood", where eggs he found in a river hatched during his juggling show at the palace.
2. Continuity: The episode picks up from "The Last Stand", which the He-Man wiki summarises as ending with Man-At-Arms offering to resign over Skeletor's near victory and agreeing instead to help start a new council.
3. Toys: Mattel released a Dragon Walker in its 200X Masters of the Universe line in 2003, one of the few mechanised toys in that range and a nod to the original 1984 Dragon Walker. The He-Man wiki calls the episode's mechanical dragons Dragon Walkers.
4. Homage: In the 1980s Filmation series the Dragon Walker was also an invention of Man-At-Arms, and it could breathe fire on its enemies, just as his machines do here.
5. Voice cast: The He-Man wiki credits Scott McNeil with Ram-Man, Beast Man, Clawful and Stratos in this episode, and Paul Dobson with Trap Jaw, Tri-Klops, Man-E-Faces and Chief Carnivus.
6. Toys: Lord Dactys, one of the council delegates the He-Man wiki lists for this episode, became a Masters of the Universe Classics figure in 2013, renamed Dactus.
7. Production: He-Man closes the episode by turning Orko's fear into a fire-safety message: "Remember, never play with matches or get too close to an open flame."
8. Continuity: The He-Man wiki notes that Serpintaurs breathe lightning where dragons breathe fire. The episode's own description is that they fear nothing and have no natural enemies, save one.