He-Man in Exile

With the Mutants reporting victories across Primus, Skeletor reminds Flogg of their deal and sends Terra Claws and Anadroids to hunt He-Man in the wilderness. The scientists go after a hover bus carrying prisoners to Levitan, the troopers are sent back to Denebria, and the freed prisoners ask to stay and fight. At the village of Zaphor, Nathan fears reprisals, and Adam is told by the Sorceress to show the villagers how to stand on their own. Skeletor surrounds the village with Terra Claws as bait, but the glassmakers cover their buildings with mirrors and the trap collapses. Alcon is warned to wear goggles at the close.

Alcon is caught holding a hammer without eye protection, and He-Man closes by telling viewers to wear protective goggles when working with hammers, nails or other sharp objects, because you only have one pair of eyes.

Is it enough to rescue people, or do you owe them the means to rescue themselves? "He-Man in Exile" puts that question to its hero in the middle of a village that has every reason to hide. Skeletor and Flogg have the planet, or most of it, with reports arriving of squadrons taking Titus and fighters winning in the sky, and yet Skeletor reminds Flogg of the deal: Primus for Flogg, He-Man for Skeletor, and the key to the shield bound up in the bargain. Their bickering supplies a sour kind of comedy, with Flogg grumbling that he had a planet to conquer and Skeletor answering that He-Man is the planet.

The first half belongs to the rebels in the woods. Prisoners are being taken to Levitan on a hover bus, the scientists go after it, the troopers are told to go back to Denebria, and the prisoners ask to stay and fight beside them; someone tells them the rebellion has begun, and that nothing worth fighting for comes easy. Flogg's puzzlement over how farmers and scientists beat better armed Mutant troopers, the fighters striking from nowhere, is the funniest sign of the shift. The gag about a machine that someone invented and cannot control, answered by a pointed exchange about who invented it, keeps the scientists in their usual comic register.

The spine arrives in the village of Zaphor, and in plain words it is this: courage is not given to people, it is shown how to be used. Nathan tells Adam that his daughter Veeta was nearly taken by a Terra Claw; Adam answers that the Mutants will never let the villagers be free whether He-Man is caught or not, and Nathan asks what happens when He-Man leaves, since the villagers will still be there to be punished. The Sorceress answers Adam's wish to help with the best advice in the half hour: show them how to help themselves, show them how to stand on their own. It is a worthy lesson for a cartoon hero, whose usual solution would be to fight the machines himself.

What follows is the better half of the episode. Nathan admits he is tired of being afraid, and He-Man tells the villagers that being glassmakers is their weapon. Skeletor calls for him to come out wherever he is, threatening to blast the village building by building, and gets the mighty hero's reply that he is here, waiting. The mirror line, we have covered the fronts of the buildings with mirrors, is a pleasing piece of problem solving, and Skeletor's recital of mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the evilest of them all is followed, a little later, by his complaint about having been made a fool of. The plan is announced up front and the payoff comes afterwards, with the mirrors left to do the explaining.

A smaller pleasure sits in the radar interference device, where the scientists are told all you need to do is throw metal debris into the air. The Mutants' instruments suggest that He-Man was not in the village, so the scientists are shown beating technology with junk, a decent echo of the villagers' own handmade victory.

The weakness is how much the middle asks us to follow. Skeletor's bait, the retreat that is too easy, the settling into the village, the council meeting, the ring of Terra Claws and the jamming device come in quick succession, and some of the plotting is hard to untangle. The villagers' conversion also arrives after a single speech.

Verdict: a solid, lesson-forward episode that trades spectacle for a good idea about leadership. It sits in the run as the point where Primus starts to fight back, and it says so plainly in the line the hero gives the villagers: the bravery was within you all the time.

1. Continuity: Wikipedia's episode list labels this as Part 3 of 5 of the occupation of Primus story.
2. Continuity: Per the He-Man wiki, Nathan and his daughter Veeta make their first Jetlag productions appearances here.
3. Fan observation: The He-Man wiki says Veeta's name is sometimes spelled Vita.
4. Homage: The He-Man wiki says the scientists bring down a speeder and a walker with logs, just as the Ewoks do in Return of the Jedi.
5. Continuity: Per the He-Man wiki, Hoove has a part here but fades into the background after The Battle for Levitan, and returns to a speaking role only in The Call to the Games when he gets the Too Tall Hoove figure.
6. Behind the scenes: In the safety moral, He-Man warns Alcon to wear a facemask while working with a hammer, according to the He-Man wiki.
7. Voice cast: Garry Chalk voices He-Man and Alcon, and Doug Parker voices Adam, Hoove and Meldoc, per the He-Man wiki cast list.