Gateway to Trouble

Adora and Kowl trap two Horde Troopers in a hollow log, and She-Ra drops them into a tar swamp just before Adam and Cringer arrive from Eternia. Skeletor's assistant Modulok steals the gate-maker, a machine that opens gates between worlds, and carries it through to Etheria to sell to Hordak, with Skeletor tumbling through the closing gate behind him. He-Man and She-Ra catch Skeletor and agree a truce until the machine is recovered, and he walks away from it as soon as he can. Hordak makes Modulok part of the Horde, trades traps with Skeletor in the Fright Zone, and sends his fleet toward Eternia through the gate while Shadow Weaver and a line of tanks hold off the heroes. She-Ra and He-Man wreck the tanks, and when Shadow Weaver builds an Electroid from the power line, they put their swords together so that the surge short-circuits the gate-maker and scatters the fleet. Hordak demotes Modulok to cook. The Sorceress opens a gate back to Eternia for He-Man, and Skeletor refuses the ride and storms off.

Loo-Kee: "Hi, it's me again, Loo-Kee. Did you find me today? If not, look again. See me now? Here I am. Today's story was about a gateway to trouble. And when Modulok went through, he did find trouble on the other side. Getting into trouble is easy, but getting out is harder. Next time you think you're at a gateway to trouble, stop, don't go in. Bye, now."

Skeletor: "I wasn't even trying to hit you, Hordak."

Hordak: "Oh, don't bother me with details."

Skeletor: "Truce or no truce, I'm getting out of here."

What happens to a machine that can open a door between worlds? In Gateway to Trouble it is the most valuable object in the story, and every character who gets hold of it loses it within a few minutes. Skeletor builds the gate-maker, Modulok steals it, Modulok hands it to Hordak, and by the end it is smoking in pieces beside the man who carried it into the Fright Zone. The heroes spend most of the half hour a step behind all of this.

The cold open sets the pattern before the machine appears. Two Horde Troopers are searching for rebels in the meadow, Adora and Kowl decide to use a hollow log, and Kowl baits the troopers from inside it until each has an arm stuck in either end. The log walks across the meadow on trooper legs, She-Ra lifts it overhead and drops its owners into a tar swamp, and the Horde loses to its own chase. Skeletor's laboratory then repeats the joke with bigger props: he explains to Modulok that he wants to send the entire royal palace through a gate so that Hordak can worry about the Eternian royal family, and the test gate is barely open before Modulok, who knows what the machine is worth, decides to take it somewhere "where it and I would be appreciated", which means Hordak.

Here is what the episode is about: the gate-maker punishes whoever trusts it more than the people around it. Modulok turns on Skeletor and ends up a cook. Hordak waves away Modulok's one warning about the strain on the machine with "Oh, don't bother me with details", and the heroes win because they happened to be standing in the way of the consequence. She-Ra's plan is cleaner than it sounds: the Electroid Shadow Weaver conjures is only electricity, electricity has two poles, and two swords put together will short-circuit the gate-maker. The fleet, already halfway through the gate, goes wherever a broken gate sends it.

The best scene belongs to the villains. In a corridor of red pipes in the Fright Zone, Skeletor and Hordak meet, and each outmanoeuvres the other in turn. Hordak mocks the stray bolt from Skeletor's staff, Skeletor says "I wasn't even trying to hit you, Hordak" and brings the cables down on him, and then he stays to say goodbye, only for Hordak to burst free and order the gate-maker prepared. It is quick and nasty. Neither of them cares who loses so long as it is the other one. The truce with He-Man and She-Ra, by comparison, lasts until Skeletor says "Truce or no truce, I'm getting out of here", after a white-haired figure has pressed a bowl of spoo on him to the point of despair.

The weakness is that all the threat is described and none of it is shown. The Eternian palace never appears: the palace that was to be thrown through a gate is only a line of Skeletor's, Adam's visit is a scene about spending time with his sister, and when the invasion fleet is lost the script closes it with a joke about a couple of years and some nice friends. The stakes are a premise, not an event, and the episode would be sharper if the audience had seen the palace once.

Loo-Kee's tag says that when Modulok went through, he found trouble on the other side. That is true, and the trouble was Hordak. It is a Filmation moral drawn from the title rather than the plot. What the story really shows is Skeletor refusing a ride home from He-Man with "I'd rather walk", and a Horde that cannot hold a prize for ten minutes. It is a comic villain story, and it leans on its heroes only for the physics.

1. Continuity: Adora grumbles that Adam appears "all the way out here" whenever he visits from Eternia, and later he and She-Ra fight side by side.
2. Continuity: Skeletor calls Etheria "a thorn in my side for years" and says he dislikes Hordak almost as much as he does He-Man, while Hordak says he will invade Eternia and take his revenge on Skeletor at the same time.
3. Continuity: Shadow Weaver reappears in Hordak's service, creating the Electroid by tapping the electricity, while She-Ra's sword turns into handcuffs and a lasso on screen.