The Running of the Herd

Gepple, Flipshot, Hydron and Sagitar set out on an expedition toward the suns to study a surge of solar flares. Sagitar grows dizzy, demands a change of course, and has to be stunned before he explains the running of the herd: once every 13 Telks his people on Equinos must return for the ritual or perish. The ship turns for Equinos, but Staghorn has gathered word of the ritual, and Flogg's Mutants seize the planet and hold General Niquor and Besquita to ambush the Guardians. Besquita extracts a promise to delay the attack, then warns He-Man anyway, and the Guardians beat back the Mutants at Niquor's house. The closing tip is not to run indoors.

Running is fun, but it is an outdoor activity, so for safety's sake do not run indoors.

Can a duty be a weakness? "The Running of the Herd" puts that question to its audience through Sagitar, a Galactic Guardian whose body is telling him to go home, and the Mutants answer it the way they usually do, by finding the soft spot and leaning on it. The setup is a research trip toward the suns, with Flipshot thrilled to be the one picked to investigate the flares and a scientist taking notes before the launch. The talk before the launch is light and the mission looks routine.

Then Sagitar starts to wobble, and the writing earns its first real sequence. He insists that the course must change, he accuses the crew of working against him, and the crew, after trying to calm him, stun him and wait for an explanation. It is a surprisingly sad scene for a cartoon of this kind, because the Guardians do the right thing for the wrong reason: they treat him as a patient, and he is in fact a man keeping an appointment. When he explains that his people were once horses on the plains, that they evolved into half-horse, half-human beings, and that failing to return every 13 Telks means death, the story finds its spine. In plain words, the episode is about loyalty to a tradition that cannot be skipped, and about how that loyalty makes a friend easy to trap.

Staghorn's report is what turns a private obligation into a military plan. Flogg praises him for learning about the ritual, and the Mutants are waiting on Equinos with troopers and an invasion force before the Guardians land. What follows is a pleasant surprise: Besquita, who greets Sagitar at the base, bargains with Flogg and asks that the attack wait until Sagitar has run with the herd. Flogg grudgingly agrees, on the condition that she tells no one, and she says she will honour her word. It is a small, tense negotiation in which a woman with no army to speak of buys one night for a friend, and it gives the story a second moral center beside Sagitar.

Her warning to He-Man is where the script stumbles a little, since she has just given Flogg her word and then turns up at General Niquor's house to tell the Guardians the Mutants have the place surrounded; Flogg works out who it was, and Slush Head, told repeatedly to wait for orders, answers each instruction with the same single word. That repetition is funny, and it gives the Mutants an unlikely comic engine, but it also shows how the villains' plan depends on one bargain staying secret. When the troops attack the house, the Guardians hold them off, and He-Man announces that the crystal fuel in a tank will explode with a single blast from his sword, which ought to slow the Mutants down. It is a satisfying use of the sword.

The weakness is the thread that disappears: the expedition to the suns, which opens the half hour, is dropped the moment the course changes, and a throwaway line asking who cares about a bunch of sunspots is all the closure it gets. We can guess the reason, since a 22-minute slot has room for one big idea, and the herd ritual is the better one. Still, a viewer who came for solar flares leaves without any.

The closing beat lands warmly, with a line about the beauty of a new day and the running of the herd, followed by a short exchange in which Gepple, hurrying along with a new invention, is told to slow down, and a tip about not running indoors.

Verdict: a modest, well-shaped adventure with a good dramatic core and a clear moral argument for letting people keep their rituals. It sits comfortably in the middle of the run, and its best scene is the one on the ship.

1. Homage: The He-Man wiki says Sagitar's need to return home to Equinos for a ritual every 13 Telks is taken from the Star Trek episode Amok Time, in which Spock must return to Vulcan for Pon Farr.
2. Homage: According to the He-Man wiki, Skeletor mockingly calls Captain Wilkin My Little Pony.
3. Edit history: The He-Man wiki lists an animation error: Captain Hydron's arms and legs are flesh colored instead of green when the Guardians leave the Starship Eternia on Equinos.
4. Continuity: Besquita, Captain Wilkin and General Niquor are listed on the He-Man wiki as first and only Jetlag Productions appearances.
5. Continuity: Prince Adam does not appear in this story, per the He-Man wiki.
6. Voice cast: Doug Parker is credited only for various voices and Venus Terzo as Besquita, according to the He-Man wiki cast list.