The Gamesman

Teela, Cringer and Orko race to King Randor's side certain he is facing some dire threat, only to find him calmly losing a game of chess to a visiting nobleman, Lord Todd. Orko's attempt to help ends with him scattering the pieces entirely, but the gracious Todd calls it a draw and hands out gifts to everyone in the room, asking nothing in return except Teela's company on a visit to his home, Castle Starg. Over Adam and Man-At-Arms' objections that they know nothing about their guest, Teela agrees to go.

While Cringer and Orko flee what they take to be a monster in the countryside, really only an enormous, half-blind creature named Moak who wanted their abandoned picnic because he could not see it was still being watched, Teela arrives at Castle Starg to discover its real purpose: a labyrinth of solid Eternium walls built around a Stargate, filled with a life-sized chess set assembled from beings Todd has collected on his travels. Todd intends to make Teela the final piece, the set's missing queen, and traps her in the maze when she tries to refuse. At Castle Grayskull, the Sorceress warns Man-At-Arms that a great evil has arrived at Castle Starg, sending him to find Teela while He-Man and Battle Cat deal with Moak.

He-Man convinces Moak that his tunneling is accidental rather than malicious, and the creature repays the favor by digging straight under Castle Starg's Eternium walls, letting the heroes bypass a maze too solid for even He-Man's sword to cut through quickly. Todd, revealed as a dimension-hopping spirit searching for new games to play, pulls Teela through his Stargate as it closes, and He-Man has to hold the gate open by brute force so Teela and Man-At-Arms can escape before it seals for good and erases everything Todd's magic built. Afterward, King Randor honors Moak as a hero of the realm, though the gentle giant is more excited about the new spectacles that will finally let him see where he's tunneling.

He-Man: "Today we met Lord Todd who appeared to be a generous and good person, and Moak, who looked like a monster." Teela: "But then we found out that it was Todd who was the monster and Moak who was kind and good." He-Man: "You learned that real goodness comes from the inside." Teela: "Remember not to judge people simply by the way they look. It's what they're really like inside that counts." He-Man & Teela: "Bye for now."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam and Lord Todd

Alan Oppenheimer as Man-At-Arms, Battle Cat/Cringer, and Moak

Linda Gary as Teela and the Sorceress

Lou Scheimer (credited as Erik Gunden) as Orko and King Randor

Erika Scheimer as Computer voice

"Most people's minds are blinded by fear, because of the way I look."

- Moak

"The Gamesman" spends its first act on a joke at the royal family's expense. Teela and Battle Cat sprint through the palace certain the king is facing "certain defeat," and the danger turns out to be a chess match. Orko and Cringer buy the gag again a few scenes later, fleeing an abandoned castle convinced a monster has eaten their picnic, when the monster in question is Moak, who only wanted the steak because he could not see Cringer standing next to it at all. Antoni Zalewski's script sets up its theme with those two false alarms before it ever states it. By the time He-Man meets Moak properly, the audience has already been trained to expect appearances to mislead.

Moak himself is the episode's best idea, and the character design earns it. He is enormous, blue, fanged, and introduced wearing a wrought-iron gate like a diving helmet after tunneling straight through a ruined castle wall; every visual cue says monster. Then he speaks, and the show does something more interesting than reversing the cliche. Moak is not secretly gentle in spite of his looks, he is lonely because of them: "most people's minds are blinded by fear, because of the way I look," he tells He-Man, and the line lands harder than the stock morality the show usually reaches for. It is Moak diagnosing his own treatment rather than He-Man delivering a lesson to him. Even Battle Cat, who should know better than most how easy it is to be misjudged on sight, stays grudging about Moak clear through to the rescue. The show lets that friction sit instead of resolving it with a group hug.

Lord Todd is the harder half of the theme to land, since the episode needs him to come across as plausibly gracious for a full act. He loses gracefully at chess, hands out a pendant, a steak, an apple, and a jeweled chess set, and only asks for Teela's company in return. The generosity is overplayed just enough that a rewatch catches the con, but a first watch is meant to be charmed, the same way King Randor is. Castle Starg, once Teela arrives, is the episode's other strong idea: a labyrinth built from Eternium with doors that open and shut to reshape the maze at will, centered on a Stargate Todd has used to collect pieces, Teela included, for what he calls "the most unusual game in the seven universes." The reveal that he is a spirit from another dimension rather than a man at all is a strange swerve for a Thursday-afternoon cartoon, and the show does not over-explain it. Todd states it, Teela recoils, and the plot moves on.

Where the episode runs thin is the mechanics of the rescue. He-Man and Man-At-Arms get free of Todd's robot guards and discover the inner doors are solid Eternium. They are saved from a protracted sword-versus-wall standoff only because Moak happens to be useful again, tunneling under the maze rather than through it. It is a tidy solution, but it is also the second time in one episode that Moak's digging solves the plot, and the coincidence of his showing up exactly when a tunnel is needed asks more of the audience's patience than the rest of the script does. The climax itself is a tense setpiece for the show: holding the Stargate open by brute force while it visibly fights to close is one of the few moments this season where He-Man looks like he is straining rather than merely posing.

The closing moral restates the theme almost word for word rather than complicating it. That flatness is the show's house style more than a defect of this particular script. What holds up is the choice to tell the lesson twice, once through a king fooled by a chess match and a grieving pair fooled by a stolen dinner, and once through the real stakes of Todd's labyrinth. By the time He-Man says the line out loud, the episode has already made the case twice over.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved March 20, 1984 and final script revision took place on April 4, 1984.
2. Continuity: The Star Wars inspired chess game also appears again in Colossor Awakes & Ordeal in the Darklands. Backgrounds are reused from the dimension inside the white hole as seen in The Taking of Grayskull. The animated sequence of Cringer trying to hide behind Prince Adam was animated by Tom Sito and was first used in The Huntsman. Many of the interior backgrounds seen at Castle Starg were first used on the Game Master's ship in the episode Pawns of the Game Master.
3. More continuity: The animated sequence of Man-At-Arms igniting his lightsaber, only to have it blasted out of his hand was first seen in the episode Diamond Ray of Disappearance. The footage of the Hover Robots charging at He-Man is reused from the episode The Curse of the Spellstone, including the use of the same background.