Anchors Aloft, Part 1

Sea Hawk is carrying rebel supplies with Adora aboard when he admits to being a pirate for the gold, unlike his father the Falcon, who gave Horde plunder to the poor. He chases a fat Horde tax galleon that turns out to be Admiral Scurvy's disguised Dreadnought, and She-Ra beats off the robot Flyers, but the Sea Hawk's ship is wrecked. Sea Hawk sends his crew to safety in gravboats and sails the damaged ship away alone to draw the Horde off, then washes up on an island with a chest of sand. There a talking mouse named Davy Jones leads him to a hidden cave holding an old ship and a magic compass, while Scurvy captures the crew and Adora. A masked stranger challenges Sea Hawk, beats him with a photon cutlass and offers him gold to leave his men behind, and when the Hawk refuses, the stranger takes off his hood and says he is the Falcon, Sea Hawk's father.

Loo-Kee: "Hi, my friends! It's Loo-Kee again. Did you find where I was hiding today? If not, here's another chance. See me? Here I am! In today's story, Sea Hawk had to decide between leaving his men or getting a treasure chest of gold. He chose to be with his men, his friends. As you grow up, you, too, will find that friendship is more valuable than gold. Bye, now!"

Sea Hawk: "I'm a pirate to take gold, not to give it away."

Davy Jones: "You're the sorriest sap of a seadog I ever set eyes on."

Sea Hawk: "Some things are more important than gold."

Is a man who says he is in it for the gold telling the truth about himself? Anchors Aloft, Part 1 takes about twenty minutes to answer, and the answer arrives in a single line near the end. Early on, Sea Hawk and Adora stand at the wheel of his flying ship while the crew sing about plundering for profit until the Horde is overthrown, and Sea Hawk says the finest captain in the world vanished twenty years ago. Swen names him, the Falcon, a pirate who took Horde tax galleons and gave the money to the poor and was poorer than anyone for it. Sea Hawk says "I've learned better than that," and when asked if he knew the man, he says the Falcon vanished when he was very young, and that he was his father.

That is the spine: Sea Hawk's boast about gold is a boast against his father, and the episode exists to find out whether it is true. Someone asks why he is delivering rebel supplies for free, and he says he does it because he hates the Horde, but that if he sees a chance for plunder he will take it. Swen spots a Horde tax galleon in the next breath, and Sea Hawk calls it "loaded to the gunwales with gold." Admiral Scurvy, cuddling his one-eyed cat Squall, has built the whole thing around one fact: "He's always after gold." The galleon is a Dreadnought in disguise, the ship is wrecked, and the writing lets the hero pay for his boast.

She-Ra gets a good stretch out of it. Adora slips away and transforms, and She-Ra works out that the robot Flyers always fly in formation, so she harpoons them together with her sword and has Swift Wind pull. Scurvy loses his robots and his cannon and, in a rage, hits Sea Hawk's photon converters. The crew takes to the gravboats, and Sea Hawk goes back into the doomed ship to find Adora. The scene that earns the episode comes after that. Once she is out, he refuses to get into a boat himself: the Horde will come after the ship and him, so he will lead them away, and he says farewell to his men. The crew's quiet good-bye, "We'll miss you very much" with a sniffle, lands harder than any comedy around it. He has passed the test the Falcon is about to set without anyone calling it a test.

Then the script makes him pay in comedy. He washes up on a small island, finds his chest, and opens it to "eight solid years of plunder," which is sand. Davy Jones, a small mouse in a striped shirt who appears to know everything and tells him nothing, insults him all the way to a cave holding a mossy old ship and a magic compass he asks to show him where his men are. Davy's refusal to explain is funny the first time, and it also tells the audience that something is being arranged for Sea Hawk's benefit.

The weak point is the duel that follows. The masked stranger arrives by seven-league boots, then names his gear one piece at a time: a laser rapier is no match for a photon cutlass, whose blade glows red to cut and blue to stun, and an Impact Ring multiplies his blows a hundredfold. It is a gadget list with a fight attached, and since Davy has already hinted that a secret is coming, it carries little threat. The only live moment is the offer, "Gold, Captain. Gold." and the refusal that follows, when Sea Hawk says some things are more important than gold.

As a first half it is compact: the ship is lost, the crew is taken, and the stranger turns out to be the Falcon, which leaves Part 2 a father who has just been found. Sea Hawk's refusal of the gold lands because the farewell scene has already paid for it.

1. Continuity: The story continues in Anchors Aloft, Part 2, which opens with a narrator's recap of this half and picks up with Adora and the crew as Scurvy's prisoners.
2. Continuity: Sea Hawk is an ally of the Rebellion carrying rebel supplies; he also appears in The Sea Hawk and Return of the Sea Hawk. Here the story adds his father, the Falcon, who vanished twenty years earlier.
3. Continuity: Swen says he was part of the Falcon's crew for many years, and an old ship sits in the cave under the island.
4. Continuity: Adora transforms with Spirit's help in her usual way ("For the honor of Grayskull!"), and She-Ra uses the sword as a harpoon.