Frustrated by his failed attacks on Castle Grayskull and his henchmen's incompetence, Skeletor decides to strike the palace instead, hoping to capture the Royal Guard's leadership and press their trained soldiers into his service. Watching Teela lead a Sky-Sled joust with the guard, Queen Marlena suggests an old Earth flying maneuver, the Immelman turn, which Teela brushes off after losing the match.
Later, King Randor finds Marlena visiting the Rainbow Explorer, the NASA spacecraft she piloted before crash-landing on Eternia years ago, and the two reminisce about how she chose to stay and marry him rather than return home, even though she sometimes misses her old life among the stars. When Randor, Adam, Teela, Man-At-Arms, and Orko set out for a beach picnic, Skeletor ambushes them aboard the Collector, catching the group in a freeze ray that keeps Adam from reaching his sword to transform.
With the palace's leaders captured, Skeletor demands unconditional surrender and mobilizes his fleet. Marlena, drawing on her old tactical training, insists their best chance is to meet Skeletor's forces head-on rather than wait for a siege, and she personally suits up to lead the counterattack in the Rainbow Explorer. Her fleet catches Skeletor's armada by surprise outside Snake Mountain, and the Rainbow Explorer frees Adam first, letting him transform into He-Man and turn the tide: he commandeers the Basher to take out the Collector while Marlena out-flies and drives off Skeletor himself with the very Immelman turn Teela once dismissed.
Back at the palace, Teela begins practicing the maneuver Marlena taught her, while Adam wonders why his mother chose to free him first back at Snake Mountain. Marlena simply tells him that a mother always knows her own son, and that she has always been proud of him.
Teela: "Your Majesty, I want to thank you for coming to our rescue and for teaching me more about flying." Queen Marlena: "You're most welcome, Teela. You'd be surprised at what we old-timers know. And we still remember what it's like to be young and think you've learned everything." Teela: "Well, not everything! And speaking of learning, I was wondering if you would teach me to fly the Rainbow?" Queen Marlena: "I'd be glad to, but only if you teach me to fly the Sky Sled." Teela: "You've got a deal!"
* This is an unusual instance of the characters not speaking to the audience during the moral, instead talking to each other.
John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam and Beast Man Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor and Man-At-Arms Linda Gary as Teela and Queen Marlena Lou Scheimer (credited as Erik Gunden) as Orko, King Randor, Trap-Jaw, Lieutenant, NASA Control and various unnamed Royal Guardsmen
The broadcast end credits also list Erika Scheimer among the starring voices; the credit card does not break down her role by character.
"Adam, a mother always knows her own son, and what he is capable of doing. I've always been very proud of you, Adam."
- Queen Marlena
Prince Adam cannot become He-Man until someone comes to free him, and the hero who gets there first is not a knight or a wizard but his own mother, strapping back into a ship she has not flown since before he was born.
This hook is what Bob Forward and Leslie Wilson's script hangs everything on. Few Filmation episodes bother building one this sturdy. Skeletor's plan this week is almost sound: rather than keep throwing robot troops at Grayskull, he goes after the Royal Guard's leadership directly. He catches Randor, Adam, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Orko on an undefended picnic and freezes them before Adam can so much as reach for his sword. It is one of the few capture-the-cast plots on the show where the villain's logic survives a moment's scrutiny: take out the people who train the soldiers, and the soldiers are stuck.
The episode spends its first act earning the twist. Randor and Marlena's museum scene, narrated over a flashback to her crash landing, does real work. It establishes the Rainbow Explorer as more than set dressing well before the ship needs to matter. It also gives Linda Gary a second register to play, flight-suited and commanding where she is usually diplomatic and warm. The episode trusts that scene enough to let the lieutenant brief her directly, skipping Randor and Duncan entirely, a small but real sign the writers know whose episode this is.
Where the plotting gets lazier is the setup for the Immelmann turn. Marlena offers the maneuver early, in front of Teela, specifically so Teela can wave it off and the show can bring it back as a payoff later. It works as structure, but it is the kind of beat you can see the gears on; a version of this episode that trusted its own ending would not need to plant the turn's name twice before paying it off.
Once the fleet launches, we get the closest this season comes to real spectacle. The Rainbow Explorer's strafing run frees Adam's shackles and is shot with more sense of scale than the show usually bothers with. Splitting the aerial battle between Marlena in the Explorer and He-Man commandeering the Basher gives both halves of the rescue something to do, instead of parking He-Man in the frame while everyone else watches. Skeletor flees once He-Man corners him, and Trap Jaw and Beast Man are left bound on the ground; nobody learns a lesson, and the show does not pretend otherwise.
The closing beat changes the usual formula: Teela and Marlena deliver the moral to each other, with Adam nowhere in earshot. It is a nice break from the lecture to camera, but it also means the episode's real question, how much Marlena actually suspects about her son, gets answered with a wink and no scene to back it up. "A mother always knows her own son" is doing a lot of quiet work in a show that otherwise treats the Adam/He-Man secret as airtight.
"The Rainbow Warrior" is not trying to be a Skeletor episode or an Adam episode. It hands the back half of its runtime to a character the show usually keeps on the sidelines, gives her a real reason to be the one who flies, and mostly earns it.
- Behind the scenes: Script was approved April 13, 1984 and final script revision took place June 18, 1984.
- Continuity: An expanded version of the flashback scene from Teela's Quest depicting Marlena Glen's arrival on Eternia is featured. The dark skinned lieutenant of the Royal Guard will appear again in Mistaken Identity. This is the second story that hints at Queen Marlena's knowledge of her son's secret identity. The first being The Energy Beast. The Eternian beach background will be used again in Jacob and the Widgets.
- More continuity: The animated sequence in which Prince Adam is unsheathing his sword was reanimated for a scene in which Sea Hawk unsheathes Adora's sword in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode The Sea Hawk.
- Animation errors and goofs: In Teela's Quest, Queen Marlena's spaceship is called the 'Valiant', while in 'The Rainbow Warrior' the ship is called 'The Rainbow Warrior'. When Skeletor orders Trap Jaw and Beat Man to use the Basher and Collector, Trap Jaw's mechanical arm is on the wrong side.
DISCUSSION
Join the conversation.
Comments below are mirrored on the heman.org forum. Sign in once, post anywhere.