Trouble in Trolla

Orko's attempt at a disappearing act goes sideways in front of the entire royal court, and no sooner has King Randor called for a moratorium on magic tricks than Orko's own Magic Pyramid delivers unwelcome news from home: his uncle Montork has been ousted as head of Trolla's Academy of Magic by a younger wizard named Snoob. Certain there is more to the story than a fair contest, Orko returns to Trolla with the messenger Dree Elle, and Prince Adam asks the Sorceress to send himself and a reluctant Cringer along as He-Man and Battle Cat.

In Trolla, Orko learns that Montork's magic failed him mysteriously during his duel with Snoob, and sneaking into Snoob's home turns up the real explanation: Snoob has been teaching Trollan magic to Whiplash, who wants to improve his standing with Skeletor and arranged to drain Montork's power from the shadows so that Snoob, indebted to him, would take the academy instead. Whiplash's Kroom soldiers capture Orko and Dree Elle before they can expose the scheme, and only He-Man and Battle Cat's arrival, alongside Montork himself, creates the opening for Orko to free himself and reluctantly give Snoob, mortified at what he has been part of, a chance to make things right.

When Whiplash unleashes a giant Scarg against the heroes as a last resort, neither Orko nor the chastened Snoob can beat it alone, but Montork's experience shows them how to combine their separate spells into one attack that shrinks the creature down to nothing. With Whiplash defeated and locked away for the trip back to Eternia, Snoob apologizes to his uncle in earnest, and Orko, after some token reluctance, forgives him. The visitors decide they have time to stay for one more Trollan feast before heading home.

Orko: "Hi, in our tale today, Snoob learned a very important lesson. He found out that when young people and older people work together, they can accomplish a great deal. You see, older people have experience that can help young people if they're willing to listen, and that's why you should always respect older people and pay attention to the advice they give you." Man-At-Arms: "Well, Orko, for once you're right." Orko: "Aren't I always?" Man-At-Arms: "Until later."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam and Whiplash

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

Linda Gary as Teela, the Sorceress and Dree Elle

Erik Gunden as Orko, King Randor and Uncle Montork

Erika Scheimer as Snoob

Orko: "I never thought I'd see the head of Trollan Academy of Magic dealing with villains. You should be ashamed of yourself, Snoob." Whiplash: "That's why I helped this wimp beat your uncle." Snoob: "What do you mean? I won the duel with Montork myself." Whiplash: "You never could've beaten Montork without me."

Snoob: "I was wrong, Montork, I know that now. I guess in my desire to be important I forgot how much experience is worth. I'm very sorry." Orko: "You oughta be." Montork: "Now, now, nephew."

Every wizard who appears in Trouble in Trolla fails first and gets taken seriously second. Orko opens the episode by making the entire throne room disappear instead of Prince Adam, the one trick he was actually trying to pull off, and the episode spends the next twenty minutes watching him rage at a Trollan sorcerer for doing something close to the same thing. That is the spine Larry DiTillio's script keeps circling back to: magic in Trolla is not a measure of power so much as a measure of whether anyone bothered to listen to the person who already made the mistake before.

Snoob is the clearest version of the problem. He beats Montork in a public contest, takes his job at the Academy, and only slowly, as Whiplash's involvement comes out, admits that the win was not really his. The scene where Whiplash spells it out, telling Snoob flatly that he never could have beaten Montork without him, lands harder than most villain gloats in this show because it is not a boast about Skeletor's plans. It is a boast about exploiting somebody's insecurity, a smaller and meaner kind of villainy, and Whiplash plays it with real relish rather than the usual snarling.

Orko, by contrast, gets to be right about everything except himself. He calls Snoob out for consorting with Skeletor's warriors with the same righteous fury he never turns on his own magic, even though the episode opened on his trick backfiring in front of the entire Eternian court. DiTillio does not make the parallel explicit until the closing message, where Orko tells the audience that Snoob's mistake was failing to respect an older generation's experience, but the groundwork for that line is laid an episode earlier, in a cold open that has nothing to do with Trolla at all. It is a small bit of structure doing real work. A viewer who treats the Eternia opening as a standalone gag will miss it entirely.

The episode's back half settles into a more ordinary Filmation rescue plot. The writing loosens once it does. Once Dree Elle is captured and He-Man arrives, the Kroom soldiers guarding the fortress exist mostly to be fought, and one of them gets a strange beat of crying when cornered that the show never does anything with. It plays as a joke that forgot its own punchline. The Scarg fares better: Whiplash sends it after He-Man as a last resort, and that gives Montork a genuine reason to matter in the climax, since neither Orko nor Snoob can beat it alone and the old wizard is the one who knows you combine the spells instead of doubling up on the same one. That is the episode's best trick, a magic battle solved by cooperation rather than brute force, and it earns the dinner-table ending more than the Kroom fight does.

Whiplash is a strange choice of villain for a story about an academy of magic, since he has no magic of his own and spends the whole episode riding on Snoob's. But that is close to DiTillio's actual point: the Evil Warriors do not need their own power when they can find somebody's insecurity and lean on it instead. Snoob gets his apology and his second chance, and Whiplash gets locked in a chest, a fittingly undignified ending for a villain whose whole plan was borrowed power to begin with.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved March 23, 1984. This story was edited into the direct-to-video movie Skeletor's Revenge, designed to promote the 1985 batch of episodes, together with The Cat and the Spider and Day of the Machines.
2. Continuity: The animation model of the octopus was previously seen in The Remedy and will be used again in She-Ra: Princess of Power episode Friendship. The animated sequence of Whiplash striking out at He-Man would be seen again in Fraidy Cat. The Trollan delicacy Roast Gooble will be mentioned by Beast Man in Orko's Return. The Kroom leader has a facial resemblance to Imp from She-Ra: Princess of Power. Both characters were designed by Charles Zembillas.
3. More continuity: The Crimson Council briefly seen during Montork's flashback would have a bigger role in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode The Greatest Magic. The character model of the Scarg will be used again as a worm-like creature that grabs Hordak in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode titled Into the Dark Dimension.
4. Animation errors and goofs: Every time Uncle Montork turns his head, his beard doesn't turn with it but remains hanging from the front. When Montork says "This place gives me the hoppin' hoobies", for a few frames his scarf disappears, leaving a big black hole.
5. Subtitle sourcing: the episode shipped with a matched subtitle track in episodes/_subs_by_slug/trouble-in-trolla.srt (subdl.com He-Man S02 Netflix WEB-DL season pack, matched by title text). The closing moral was corrected against it: the stub's existing text read "that hcan help young people" where the real line is "that can help young people," and the exchange is spoken by Orko to the audience with Man-At-Arms (not King Randor) delivering the "for once you're right" line, both verified on screen at 21:40 and 21:50.
6. Orko returns to Trolla for a magical emergency. Spikor's introduction in the Filmation continuity.