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He-Man & The Masters of the Universe Primer
716 Plays4 years ago
Brian V. Klein & special guest Dale Morris join J. Scotty to cover the original 1980s Filmation cartoon in preparation for Kevin Smith's new series Master of The Universe: Revelations releasing on Netflix
TOP 10 Essential Filmation MOTU Episodes
Diamond Ray of DisappearanceS1 - E1The intended pilot for the show, sets up the formula for the series and manages to introduce a bunch of characters (or new toys for Mattel), while also setting up future character traits like Prince Adam being a disappointment to his father.
Teela's QuestS1 - E2Paul Dini written script, features some great action while also establishing the relationship between Teela and the Sorceress.
Prince Adam No MoreS1 - E15More Paul Dini writing showing that he really gets the main cast of characters
A Friend in NeedS1 - E16A fun episode showing the trickery of Skeletor, the only appearance of Ileena, and a good moral at the end.
The Dragon's GiftS1 - E18This is the story that got Larry DiTillio the job as staff writer and was even adapted into a minicomic. Feature’s the first appearance of Granamyr, lots of action, and He-Man showing wisdom and compassion, not just brute strength.
Double Edged SwordS1 - E22Also adapted into a minicomic, this is the anti-violence episode, good moral.
Origin of the SorceressS2 E12Written by J. Michael Straczynski, fantastic story, only appearance of Stridor.
BattlecatS2 E33D.C. Fontana written story, features Melaktha, and will make you appreciate Cringer and Battle Car for more than just comic relief.
Teela's TriumphS2 E43More great writing for Teela, sort of a sequel to ‘Teela’s Quest’, and Skeletor actually sits on the throne of Castle Grayskull.
The Problem with PowerS2 E 45Huge concepts and story ideas for this episode, serves as a natural finale to the Filmation series in my head cannon.
TOP 10 Essential Filmation MOTU Episodes
Diamond Ray of DisappearanceS1 - E1The intended pilot for the show, sets up the formula for the series and manages to introduce a bunch of characters (or new toys for Mattel), while also setting up future character traits like Prince Adam being a disappointment to his father.
Teela's QuestS1 - E2Paul Dini written script, features some great action while also establishing the relationship between Teela and the Sorceress.
Prince Adam No MoreS1 - E15More Paul Dini writing showing that he really gets the main cast of characters
A Friend in NeedS1 - E16A fun episode showing the trickery of Skeletor, the only appearance of Ileena, and a good moral at the end.
The Dragon's GiftS1 - E18This is the story that got Larry DiTillio the job as staff writer and was even adapted into a minicomic. Feature’s the first appearance of Granamyr, lots of action, and He-Man showing wisdom and compassion, not just brute strength.
Double Edged SwordS1 - E22Also adapted into a minicomic, this is the anti-violence episode, good moral.
Origin of the SorceressS2 E12Written by J. Michael Straczynski, fantastic story, only appearance of Stridor.
BattlecatS2 E33D.C. Fontana written story, features Melaktha, and will make you appreciate Cringer and Battle Car for more than just comic relief.
Teela's TriumphS2 E43More great writing for Teela, sort of a sequel to ‘Teela’s Quest’, and Skeletor actually sits on the throne of Castle Grayskull.
The Problem with PowerS2 E 45Huge concepts and story ideas for this episode, serves as a natural finale to the Filmation series in my head cannon.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to He-Man Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to Animation Deliberation, the podcast where we take action animation and cartoons seriously, but not too seriously. On this special episode, we are covering a classic action animated series. That's right, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in preparation for the upcoming Masters of the Universe revelation due to drop on Netflix very shortly. All of that right after these ads, we have no control.
00:00:25
Speaker
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Jay Scotty as He-Man
00:00:54
Speaker
I am Jay Scotty, Prince of Animation Deliberation, Defender of the Secrets of Castle Grayskull. This is Kringer, my fearless friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, by the power of Grayskull, I have the power. Kringer became the mighty battle cat, and I became He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe. Only three others share this secret. Our friends, Brian V. Klein, Dale Morris,
00:01:24
Speaker
Together we defend Castle Greyskull from the evil forces of Skeletor.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yeah, changed it up on this intro. It is a special episode here, so I didn't do my usual intro. I did my best John Irwin. I don't know if I hit all the inflection there, but he's quite a talent, so I'll be lucky if I held a candle to him. But that's right. I am Jay Scottie St. Clair, your host of Animation Deliberation. And with me, I have a frequent contributor and a big Masters of the Universe fan, Brian V. Klein. Welcome back,
Nostalgia and Memories of He-Man
00:02:08
Speaker
Brian. How you doing? Good. Thanks for having me. Talking about a show that was my childhood, pretty much.
00:02:14
Speaker
Of course, of course. Very excited to have you here. And I have to thank you for bringing in our very special guests. He's going to be the resident expert of all things He-Man. And he actually curated the list of classic He-Man episodes that we're going to be talking about today. And that's Dale Morris. Dale, thanks for being here. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Of course, of course.
00:02:37
Speaker
So let's just get right into it, guys. Let me know, Brian, you kind of led the horse there a little bit talking about how this was a show that was near and dear to your childhood. Just tell me what exactly is your guys' exposure to this show and your familiarity with it going into Revelations.
00:02:55
Speaker
Well, for me, this was one of the shows that reminds me of my childhood coming home from school because it would air in syndication at like four thirties on Monday through Friday. So you'd get five new episodes a week.
00:03:10
Speaker
There was He-Man, there was G.I. Joe, there was Transformers, there was Thundercats a little later on. So you'd always have, you know, people don't realize this show was on for two seasons and there's 130 episodes because they had 65 episodes a season, but it was only like three months long.
00:03:26
Speaker
but it was five episodes every week.
He-Man's Creation and Toy Line
00:03:29
Speaker
And that was just how, that's how, I know some places got them a little differently, like the airing, but mine was I'd come home from school, get a snack, and I'd watch one of these shows. And He-Man was one of the first ones, I think it was the second one that came out after GI Joe, I believe. They all came out on the same time, 82, 83.
00:03:45
Speaker
And it just is firmly entrenched in my head as growing up, coming home from school, watching these and just getting the toys. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Dale, He-Man was pretty much the cartoon was designed to sell the toys. Correct. It was a deal where Mattel went to Filmation and said, hey, we've got this toy line we need to promote.
00:04:11
Speaker
information said, Yeah, I think we can handle that. But we want it to be more than a 30 minute commercial, we want it to have some lessons for kids. So they brought in child psychologists to help with some of the storylines and the morals and things. So it was, while it was trying to, you know, promote something in the toy store, it was also helping bring up your kids, I guess.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, I came into this series with a lot of preconceptions and a lot of notions about what He-Man was, and I have to say, it was a show that I did not watch growing up. I felt like it was always out there in the ether, always in the zeitgeist, and I thought I knew what He-Man was.
00:04:54
Speaker
I am really excited to have got to visit this series for the first time and get exposed to it for the first time, especially in preparation for a modern day adaptation like Revelations, because I can understand now why it is so near and dear to so many people. I mean, it is a kid's show, and it's a little formulaic, and we'll get into that, but it really is heartwarming. And I noticed the fact that they include a child psychologist in the credits. That definitely stuck out to me. And it is a very heartwarming show.
00:05:24
Speaker
just really very imaginative. And it's kind of surprising to hear that. I mean, I knew that it was based on a toy line, but just given the imaginative nature there, it's kind of surprising that it wasn't the other way around. It's pretty impressive that they were able to take a product and make such a rich world with it. But I guess that goes to speak to the original toy designs there.
00:05:45
Speaker
Oh yeah, I mean it was pretty much the thing with all of them was it was based off of obviously the GI Joe side of it was the toys were out first and then it came with the comics and then the show where this one was, there was literally, and it was a lot different than even how it is now. There was times when I'd go to the store, I'd pick up a toy and they'd be like, oh, I got this character from He-Man. I have no idea who this is. And then like the next day he'd be on the episode and then you'd never see him again.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, it was like they stayed made it for one thing, but they it more of it was that if you didn't have the show, you got a kid's imagination to be able to decide whatever these stories that you want to have with them. And so it was basically the show was sort of like just a spark to get the people's kids imaginations going to have their
80s Cartoon Formula and Villains
00:06:29
Speaker
own stories. But
00:06:29
Speaker
The show in itself, like you were saying, is formulaic, but that's how pretty much all of these shows were in the 80s. The bad guys never got, like, Skeletor could be captured and in jail, and then the next day, the next episode, he's out for you again. Same with Cobra Command and Megatron. They never, nothing stuck in those cartoons.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, you brought up some names there, Skeletor. So let's just in case we do have somebody listening that doesn't know anything about He-Man or the world of attorney, let's just kind of break it down for him. Dale, can you just give me kind of a description of the series and what a typical episode kind of the beats there, what we could expect. Sure. So the title character He-Man is your protagonist, most powerful man in the universe. He has to have a nemesis.
00:07:17
Speaker
A really important location in the series is Castle Grayskull, and Skeletor is obsessed with getting the power of Grayskull. Basically, he wants to take over someone else's house that he thinks is going to give him greater power than he has right now. So in Formation Cannon, we don't get a lot of backstory for Skeletor. He's just this evil guy who is the main
00:07:47
Speaker
antagonist for less than half of the episodes. While he's a very memorable character, there's a lot of villain of the week kind of things that made for much more exciting episodes when Skeletor wasn't there. But the fun thing about Skeletor is he was the one that acted as a leader for a lot of the other main villains who you'd recognize from the toy line, I guess.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. A lot of frequent players there.
Character Exploration: Man-At-Arms and Teela
00:08:15
Speaker
We got off the top of my head. Beastman was definitely a frequent player. Merman shows up quite a bit. Trapjaw was one of those ones. Brian, you mentioned getting the toys. Trapjaw just seemed like he was made perfectly with the toy with the interchangeable arm that had the different
00:08:32
Speaker
parts there and whatnot but let's let's talk also about on the other side of thing the heroes obviously we have prince adam and he-man but we have you know the other title characters the masters of the universe brian uh can tell us about some of those guys
00:08:47
Speaker
Sure, we got man in arms, who is pretty much the man in arms. He is the head of the pretty much like the King's militia, for lack of a better term. His adopted daughter Tila, who is pretty much the foil of Oh, by the way,
00:09:05
Speaker
He-Man and Battle Cat have their alter egos of Prince Adam and Cringer, which that's the one thing that always stuck with me is that the Clark Kent syndrome where it's like, how did they not know that Prince Adam was He-Man? They don't even bother changing his hairstyle at all. He looks exactly the same except for his voice is a little deeper. He's wearing less clothes. And because Prince Adam in itself is a big buff guy. It's not like he's a scrawny kid.
00:09:34
Speaker
uh but that's you know besides the fact he's a little more tan too he is he is more tan his hair also gets a tan when he when he transforms yeah so it swooshes a little bit more um tila is prince adams like uh
00:09:52
Speaker
foil, I guess, they are like, she's always Prince Adam is a very like, I'll do what I want. You know, like he's a very like flipping character. And yeah, exactly. Like he's the prince and he wants to try to make it. I guess that's that's the reason why people don't associate with he man is because he's completely the opposite. And Tila is the one that she's trying to train him with everything train him and the
00:10:21
Speaker
fighting ways in combat and stuff. And so that's how they had their rapport. Then there's Orko, who is a magician. I don't really know what kind of, he basically is just this like three foot tall guy that floats that's got like a, he looks like a jawa almost, a floating jawa. The sorceress, who is the one that is the head of, she inhabits the Castle Greyskull. She can't leave, she becomes a falcon called Zoar.
00:10:50
Speaker
when she leaves Castle Grayskull, because she can't leave in human form. And, spoiler alert, she is the actual mother of Tila, which we find out early, but then she gets her mind wiped and says, we'll tell you about it. You'll know when you need to know. And then I don't know the rest of the series if she ever finds out again. But that's pretty much, I mean, you've got King Randor and Queen Marlena, who are Prince Adam's parents. We find out more about Queen Marlena in an episode in King Randor.
00:11:19
Speaker
And then you get the host of other guys, Stratos and Ram Man. And I'm trying to think of the other ones we've seen in this episode. Stratos popped up in a couple of episodes that we're covering here. I don't think he had a speaking role in his first appearance, but his design definitely stuck out to me. But he did get a speaking role in the second. Yeah, he's Birdman from Rick and Morty. Ram Man obviously is, I mean, he's the guy that thought like, oh,
00:11:47
Speaker
Oh yeah, I'm going to round my head and stuff, you know. He's one of those ones that like trap jaw. I can just see the toy design right there. It's just like you have the spring coil. Oh yeah. And them launching. It's just like, oh yeah, kids are going to have a blast. Lacks in place. He hit the thing. He jumps in the air and that's pretty much what he did.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, and then just I guess to give people an idea what like the landscape of Eternia is, you see in the episodes that we visit here, we get to see a fair amount of diversity, but usually it's kind of set on this like, gives me a kind of Lord of the Rings, otherworldly vibes, you can see a lot of mountainous stuff going on in the distance, but it kind of looks like a
00:12:23
Speaker
a barren wasteland, but there are jungle areas. Obviously, there's a lot of bright and vibrant fungal life. We have Castle Grayskull is obviously one of the prominent areas. We have the Royal Palace, where a lot of the episodes open at, and then there's also Snake Mountain. That's Snake Mountain, right? For Skeletor and his cohorts? Okay.
00:12:46
Speaker
And that was one of the things, first of all, you brought up the Superman comparisons. That was one thing I did not expect the vibes to be so strong in that regard. I knew that Prince Adam and He-Man were the same guy, but I didn't know that it was such a strong secret. So that was a little surprising to me in that regard, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I think it made Adam a little bit more, I think they do a better job with
00:13:16
Speaker
Adam being a likable and relatable character than some adaptations of Superman, but that's an entirely different conversation. I know where you go with that. But then the other thing was it does a good job of like...
00:13:31
Speaker
you have this fantasy almost like Conan the Barbarian vibe with the magic and the swords and the sorcery, but there's a lot of technology and it's almost like very futuristic and there's like some Star Wars vibes there as well.
Animation Style of He-Man
00:13:45
Speaker
It's like the movie Krell almost where there's a lot of technology but a lot of sword and sorcery because even the sense that you show in some of the episodes we watch you've got almost like a peasant feudal system with some of the villagers, but yet we've got
00:14:00
Speaker
laser guns and flying vehicles and stuff like that. Is that the one with Kevin Sorbo? What's that? Oh, no. No, no, no, that's Hercules. The movie you're talking about. Crow is... It was from the early 80s. It's very... I'm trying to think who was famous that was in it. There's a couple of people that have... Oh,
00:14:24
Speaker
Oh, crap. I can't think of his name now. The voice actor that does Savage O'Press. Yeah, who am I talking about? I mean, he's- Clancy? Yeah, Clancy Brown. Clancy Brown. It's one of those ones, it's very a combination of like, it's mysticism with some future stuff and- Okay, okay. This way, it's very like, it juxtaposes between the things where it's like, yeah, you've got some, like the one episode where they were looking to
00:14:51
Speaker
where they think the last one where... Oh no, the one with the origin of sorceress, everyone in her town was basically wearing burlap sacks. That was pretty much their design. It was very minimal, very feudal, middle age, while these guys that are flying around in these hovering, flying single man vehicles.
00:15:15
Speaker
When you're a kid, you don't think about stuff like that. Right. When the toy line first came out, the original mini-comics that came with Wave 1, it was very basic as far as the barbarian man leaving his tribe.
00:15:30
Speaker
And then there was this evil power, but when it came to the Filmation series, that's when they came up with the Prince Adam and the dual identities and kind of expanded that and brought on just way more writers to kind of expand the mythos and having a whole series Bible and everything.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of the writers, some of the episodes that you picked out for us are featured, some of the early work from writers that would go on to be major players in some of the most iconic animated series out there. Paul Dini comes to mind for Batman, the animated series, and then also J. Michael Strudzinski did that.
00:16:09
Speaker
the episode what the origin of the sorceress that Brian just just mentioned that he did Babylon five but Paul Dini is pretty much like the godfather of 80s animation 80s 90s animation in the genre that you cover he did so many so it's just it's just like a if you want to learn how to do a genre based animated series just you could pick out any 10 Paul Dini episodes and it's like this is a masterclass
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm outside of Batman the Animated Series. That's just you watch that and you go holy crap. You know, this is a kid show that was on in the 90s. So it still holds up to I just rewatch that not too long ago. And it's like, man.
00:16:49
Speaker
Now, before we dive a little more deeply into the individual episodes, I do want to ask you guys, as you were growing up and watching this show, as it was airing, what characters resonated with you? What were your favorite toys? And has that changed as you've been a fan and become an adult? Or has it stayed the same?
00:17:07
Speaker
As I was watching, I was kind of like wondering, I was trying to put myself in that mindset of being a kid, what characters would have probably resonated with me. And it's funny, I think they probably would have been Skeletor, probably would have been one of my favorites. I'll be honest, Cringer probably would have been a favorite of mine. And then Orko for sure.
00:17:26
Speaker
No, I think I'd agree with you there. A He-Man coming on BattleCAD and Skeletor riding on Panther, those were always in the mix. Orko was a fun toy because he could spin around. He had a little top action feature. Besides being in a lot of episodes and being the comic relief in a lot of episodes, he was fun. As far as other villains go, the He-Man toy line
00:17:56
Speaker
had Hordak and members of the Horde, but they weren't actually in the He-Man series. That whole storyline and that villain, his characters were all in the She-Ra series, which was like a follow-up to this. So it was kind of funny as far as like knowing who those characters were, you could learn from the mini-comics, but you weren't going to actually see them at all in the He-Man show proper.
00:18:20
Speaker
I remember I had to get two or three Triclops figures because I would spin the eyes so much. And the Rammans because they would, you know, the pressing down and it would just end up breaking them. I played with them so much. The one, there was some, Mossband was cool because he was a basically a green guy that had felt as a figure. It was so, it had green felt on it.
00:18:50
Speaker
His name's Mossman? Mossman. Yeah, very descriptive names pretty much. Yes. So as far as the other toy goes, it was this exact same sculpt as Beastman. He was just painted green and then
00:19:06
Speaker
He was flocked and he smelled like pine saw. What kid doesn't want to play with a toy that smells like pine saw? That's awesome. Probably the kid that wants to play with the other toy that was going to bring up stink ore. It basically looks like it had the patchouli smell and he looked like a basically like a skunk.
00:19:28
Speaker
Same, but all the toys pretty much had like the same body style over, you know, like a musculature in the end. Yeah, using a similar mold and probably just swapping out something for the chess piece because you can see a lot of similarity even with like the animation like there's so what I'll say about the animation is I
00:19:50
Speaker
I wasn't alive at the time that this show came out, but I can obviously go back and watch shows, but I will say the characters themselves are pretty detailed in terms of like the musculature and the facial details. They do a good job of having a fair amount of detail there. There's not a lot of shading. Actually, I don't think there's any shading whatsoever on the characters themselves, but the backgrounds are
00:20:08
Speaker
are absolutely beautiful and there's a lot of attention to detail there. I do think the action that you do get to see is pretty fluid and solid, especially something for that time. But it's kind of funny that you mentioned the reusing of molds for the toys because if you watch enough episodes, you see some of the animations recycled for sure, especially the transformation scene.
00:20:29
Speaker
Oh, it's always recycled. It's indelible. I talk about it being formulated. So full transparency, when I watched the first episode and sat down, there was a moment where I was like, uh-oh. There might be a little bit of a disconnect for me trying to go back and watch something from this time. But very shortly, I changed my tune.
00:20:49
Speaker
It's that repetition, like, started putting a smile on my face. And when I heard that theme song start coming in. And then when you see the episode that has, there's the disco version of the What's Up, the Four Non Blond song.
00:21:09
Speaker
that they use all the He-Man coverage and it's most of it is like from one or two of these episodes so when you see He-Man doing the thing where it's like he's doing the little dance and it's just right it's the animation going back and forth and bit and there's other scenes where he's like doing the head throwback but like what you were saying too is I have a note on it too is there was one episode here where he does a transformation yep that's the one right there with him doing the the the the Jay Scott he's standing with the fist
Cringer and Ethical Transformations
00:21:35
Speaker
down
00:21:35
Speaker
And then the pose. There's one episode where he transforms from Prince Adam into He-Man while he's falling. And you don't hear it, or you don't see it. You just hear him do it. And then all of a sudden he's He-Man because every other scene he'd just be standing there in front of Castle Grayskull. It's like, he can't do that. He's falling.
00:21:53
Speaker
So I don't think they've ever, I don't remember them ever seeing a transformation other than the one that they always used through the series. It was always when he transferred, he would always, you know, do the sword thing pointed at Battlecat, even if he wasn't, like, because we get the how, the origin of how he did it for the first time is an accident.
00:22:13
Speaker
You know, but for the most part, that transformation scene was just the same, you know, there was a lot of recycled, um, animation. I mean, it was, it was all 2d. Don't forget. This was at the time when they were doing cells and they were doing the layering and doing the. The flip-by I mean, it's, it's early eighties. So it's still the original animation style. Yeah. As far as, you know, story-wise with, with human always transforming in the exact same manner, it would be kind of like if Clark Kent always had the same phone booth with him all the time.
00:22:44
Speaker
And no one picked up on that. No. Yeah. And then even in the set of episodes that we watched, I can't remember which one it was specifically off the top of my head, but we even did get a little bit of a change up where Cringer tried to go around the corner and then he
00:23:00
Speaker
aim the beam the same way but you saw the beam kind of bounce off the corner and then hit him afterwards. I appreciate that little change up there even though it ended up being the same sequence ultimately, they just added a little transition between. And I don't know if they ever really on that same note, if they ever really explain more of the fact of why Cringer hates being Battlecat.
00:23:20
Speaker
Because he's named Cringer because in his origin story, he's very timid. But when he's Battlecat, he's a badass. It's like I'm almost trying to be the badass, man. You get bigger. I mean, maybe he doesn't like getting written on by He-Man, but I don't know.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's still fun. He's wearing a helmet, so he's very confident in his safety. He's wearing a helmet so they don't know it's cringer. It's black in his face because there's no other green striped tigers in the whole area. Talking about that, yeah. I know Matthew Fox of the Superhero Ethics Podcast. There's probably the ethical question there of
00:24:02
Speaker
Is Cringer a willing participant to these things and forcing it upon him? Well, every time it happens, he's like, oh no. I mean, who's he going to bring it up to though? Because there's only like three people that know it. He's really, you know, think of him more, you know, like a partner with
00:24:24
Speaker
Prince Prince Adam because when he's in just as cringer, you know Prince Adams keeping him fed so and then Then he's more of a partner when he becomes a battle cat in the origin of sorceress episode with with Strider That's actually something they address is this thing that you thought was a mechanical horse. Oh now he's got the ability to think on his own and he's saying he wants freedom and right and so I
00:24:54
Speaker
they decide right away, you know what, give this guy his freedom. It's not right for us to hold him down. And I guess in my mind when I see that and I thought of it too is you got to think they cringers on the side going.
00:25:06
Speaker
That's an option? What? Come on. And then like you said, he's like, oh, I guess it's true that I don't want to be in the wild because I get fatted. He seems like when he's cringy, he's sleeping like 90% of the time anyway. Right. To his credit, he steps up to the plate at least a couple of times. I know there was one instance where he said something to the effect of, you better point that sword quick before I change my mind.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he's a great, he's very much, there's a lot of comic relief, him and Orko in this show, but it's not like to their detriment. It's just their, they're strong characters, they're important characters. Not as much as like that one episode where they pretty much crapped all over Beastman, where it was just like, when they exile him at the beginning, I'm like, I totally forgot about this, that it was, I forgot exactly why he banished, Skeletor banishes Beastman for,
00:26:02
Speaker
like messing up one too many times. It's like you had to banish everybody then. Right. It's not even for a specific thing because the other henchmen are like, what did he do? And Triclops is like, I don't know.
00:26:16
Speaker
I think he has a line like, ah, Skeletor is just tired of getting his butt kicked by He-Man, so he's having a bad day. Yeah, he's taking it out on a beast, man. I love that episode. That was the one where they capture King Randor, and they bring him back. And Merman was the only one left at Stink Mountain. And they're like, yeah, Skeletor's in space.
00:26:37
Speaker
Like, really? These guys, again, they're space fair. We knew they're space faring people because that's how we learned about Queen Marlene's backstory with her being a human astronaut that crash lands there and just stays. But it's just like, just typical skeletons out there. What's he doing? No, he's on a space mission. Yeah. Like, OK. Sure.
00:26:56
Speaker
It is what it is. The other big through line of that episode in particular that you bring up and Dale I have to imagine it's one of the reasons that you pick this episode in particular and on the character of He-Man and Prince Adam we did talk about normally he's doing his best to kind of
00:27:13
Speaker
keep up this facade that he's just kind of this, uh, a little bit of an airheaded, lazy kind of guy. He means well, but he's late to things and usually not where he's supposed to be. But in this episode, you kind of find him yearning for his father's approval and he actually hesitates. He doesn't call upon the power of graceful when he's supposed to. And that's what allows King, it's King Randor, right? King Randor to be captured by Beastman in the first place. So.
00:27:42
Speaker
I definitely appreciated that aspect and getting a little more nuance to the character of Prince Adam and it definitely helped me endear me to that side of He-Man as well. Yeah, and it's something that they've done in different forms of media too, like further animation or comics or
00:28:01
Speaker
comic strips where they've used Prince Adam in a way that he can't transform or he doesn't want to reveal his secret identity to protect his friends and family. So you can get some interesting story ideas out of that concept.
00:28:18
Speaker
Certainly, certainly. When we were talking about Stridor as well, and just the subject of like, respecting a living creature, I couldn't help but also be reminded of one of the standout episodes for me, which was the dragon's gift, which presented a nice moral dilemma, and again gave you know, he meant the opportunity to
00:28:41
Speaker
showcase a little more of his character in that it doesn't always have to result to violence and that he found a way to not only save the living creature, which was the sky tree, but also honor his deal with the dragon Grinnemere. He shows up again in the shows.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was one thing about it too, is that the moral lessons in the show, but sometimes we're at the end of it, it could be sometimes heavy handed. This one was violence isn't always the answer. And at the end of the day, Granamir, the one that gave him the, said, I need you to basically kill this guy. So this tree, because that makes Granamir the oldest person on, or oldest living thing on,
00:29:25
Speaker
Eternia, when he comes back, he says he couldn't do it. He goes, okay, I respect how much humans have evolved.
00:29:31
Speaker
to be able to use that as an option instead of using it as violence. So, your quest is still fulfilled. So, it's always not the brute force, which is what he man's, that's his MO. It's he decided that, no, I can't take a living thing just to save. And it was to save another, it was to save banded arms. So, he needed to get dispelled. Granite was the only one that would be able to give him the
00:29:56
Speaker
the spell to re he got frozen. It seems like a lot of these things where the bag it's basically they either send the heroes to another dimension or they freeze them in stone or nice or something. That's just a way to get them out of the picture instead of just sending them on a fool's quest or something. It's like, no, we're going to turn them into stone. And you want to animate too many characters in this scene. So someone's got to get put on the sidelines.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah. Or gets sent to another, they get sent to another dimension. And then He-Man goes to save them. And they get sent to the other dimension, too. It's like, oh, crap. Now who's left? Tila. OK, this is her story now. But it ends up being a good way to isolate. I think this was one of the earlier shows, too, that sort of had a strong female. Like, Tila's character was a strong female.
00:30:49
Speaker
not, she was driven, but wasn't, for lack of a better word, bitchy. Like you always think that people that are, are strong headed women can come across as being, but she was like, no, she wanted her stuff done. She did it a certain way. She wouldn't, um, take crap from anyone else. And she, you know, she was pretty much almost like a male character at that time that a female had, uh, they, they used instead and it worked. And.
00:31:16
Speaker
I always liked that about that aspect too, where it wasn't always like the damsel in the stress. There was times when they needed to be saved, but there was also times where she needed to save He-Man too, so works both ways.
00:31:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point you bring up and I'm glad you bring up the character Tila because we spent two episodes in particular with these curated episodes that focus pretty heavily on her. And the first one was Tila's quest in which we learn, you know, her parentage being the sorceress and whatnot, but it is one of those first opportunities that we see.
00:31:48
Speaker
She's not, I don't want to say that she's forbidden or anything like that, but she is warned against going out to the crystal seas, but she decides to do it anyway. So she is very headstrong, but like you said, she's not an unlikable headstrong. She's a very likable and capable character. There are times where she gets taken out a little bit easy to kind of set up He-Man for that moment. But I mean, it's called He-Man, the masters of the universe. Everybody wants that moment where He-Man has his moment.
00:32:15
Speaker
I do think it's a little of the time and maybe it's not the fact that she's a female character per se. I wonder how much the fact that it's like a kid's show and maybe they're trying to reinforce the message there, but I don't know if it's necessarily a good message, but with the whole T-list quest thing, it's like, why can't she know that she's destined to be the sorceress? It just seems like just a little bit of a weird thing to be like,
00:32:39
Speaker
will tell you for right now that you have to forget until a later time. And you just have to trust me on this." And it kind of feels like that's the parent in the room. It's like, listen to your parents. What they say doesn't always make sense, but you should listen to what they say anyway, because it will make sense to you one day. Right. It's almost as if
00:33:00
Speaker
And Tila and Adam are supposed to be on the younger side, like late teens. Tila's maybe early 20s still. So while it kind of seems like she's ready for the hero's journey, the series kind of sets it up that, hey, we need her not to be in charge of things yet. She's a captain on the Royal Guard, but we don't want her story to get too big and move on to becoming the sorceress quite yet. Sure,
Tila's Strength and Development
00:33:27
Speaker
sure. That's fair. That's totally fair.
00:33:30
Speaker
And then I guess I didn't realize how young they were supposed to be. Early 20s makes sense to me because we did get the one flashback when we got Battle Cats origin, I believe is when we got to see a younger version of Adam as well. And I did notice that basically John Irwin is just basically he goes from human to Adam to younger Adam. He just like his voice gets a little higher and a little nasally for every version. Yeah, that was kind of you could just tell it's like an adult trying to sound like a kid.
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's the same voice actor, but it works. It would be different if he would have been like that episode of the Bad Batch, the first episode this season where Freddie Prinze voices Caleb, and he has the same voice as a 12-year-old as he does as a 30-year-old. It's like, that sounded weird. A 12-year-old's not supposed to sound like this.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's besides him being here with Prince Adam, he's pretty much just a little higher and whinier. And then with the kid, it was just like, you know, him trying to be a kid. So another one of my favorite episodes that we focused on here was the the double edged sword in which I guess so I did watch the the additional episode, the House of Shikoti.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. I feel like, I feel like Ram man having a hard time. I want to say shapoopy or something like that instead of the actual name. But, um, in that episode as well, we got the character Stanley. So I'm assuming given the fact that it's a kid's show, it was probably like a recurring thing that sometimes they would have these like stand in.
00:35:12
Speaker
child character that participate in the proceedings as well. But that was very much a part of this episode, the double-edged sword as well. And we were just kind of talking about how a lot of times the show moves away from the violence, but this was kind of one of my favorite ones where we actually did kind of get to see He-Man go all out against one of his nemesis, nemesis, nemesis. And that's when Trapjaw got to eat the Eternium and get really powerful for a little bit and get to go toe to toe.
00:35:38
Speaker
with Heman. I really appreciate that and I also like that aspect of getting a little bit more of the world of attorney and getting to see some of the other residents and such. The kid's name was Chad and I don't think his grandpa was given a name.
00:35:54
Speaker
No, but like you said, with that being an episode where there's that much fighting between the two of them, it was an anti-violence episode. Exactly. Exactly. Where the grandfather was just like, no, I'm not going to, you know, he's not going to shoot somebody. So because of what happened in the war or when he was in the army. So it's like, there's the name of the episode, double edged sword. Exactly. Violence is used here because you have to because it was just like,
00:36:22
Speaker
And on top of that too, you've got such a serious aspect of that with Trapjaw going, Oh my God, I could turn into this powerful thing. But then you also got, uh, what was the thing's name? The Furby? The Burby eats the Eternium and he gets sick and he gets, it's just like this little furball. Oh, so then they take it like, so you got, it's such a dichotomy of.
00:36:45
Speaker
like goofiness and seriousness, but that's just what a lot of the show was too, so. Yes, you're right on the goofiness because some of Chad's lines there are just, you know, watching it as an adult are like, this is really cheese ball. But oh, I think he's dying. Like, no, you're it, kid. He just ate eternium. This little rock that's going to power the whole planet for centuries
00:37:12
Speaker
this little animal eat some, yeah, you'd think he'd be sick. It'd be pretty much like eating like a plutonium rod or something. Yeah. Yeah, so that's a good one because, yeah, you get to see Murman, but really, yeah, Trapjaw kind of going toe to toe with He-Man. And then you touched on the sword. So the action figure, You know, He-Man had a sword, he had a shield. But you'll notice in this entire series, you can go through all 130 episodes.
00:37:40
Speaker
human sword he does not like swing it like a traditional sword he uses it as a shield it's always like in defense you know and i think other franchises that had a similar thing you know when superman goes into a fight he usually knows he's the toughest guy in the fight he doesn't have to bring his a game he can just play defense for the most part
00:38:04
Speaker
Certainly. Certainly. No, that's a great point. Yeah. The one that you see mostly doing all the fighting is Tila. I mean, Tila is using her sword. I mean, she's pretty much like the aggressor in a sense. And they've actually had for the time, too, there was some shots with her fighting, especially where they had a couple overhead shots with it.
00:38:25
Speaker
And it was like, it was a really weird design. I remember as a kid going like, that's a weird shot. And now you realize it's such an innovative style. Even though the animation of the fighting was kind of like almost like action figures playing with each other doing it. It was kind of blocky, but it was still a cool shot. And it was just the sense that this is the main female protagonist as far as like on the action side is doing the, the fighting like that.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, usually what I feel like those sword fights they were they're really well done as far as the anatomy and the accuracy there goes but that was another one of those ones where I felt like I started getting used to seeing especially Tila's particular parries because I think she did that against Man at Arms in a training sequence as well as Prince Adam and then maybe one other character
00:39:14
Speaker
But it's it's still really well done. So I appreciate that. With that in mind, you guys, should we talk a little bit about man at arms? I feel like he's kind of been in the in the background of a lot of things we talked about. We haven't talked about him too much. I mean, he's not only is he Tila's adopted father, but he's, you know,
00:39:34
Speaker
basically for a lot of the intros to the episode, he's kind of the foil to Orko and kind of gives you an idea of what to expect as far as the moral lesson there's
Man-At-Arms' Mentorship and Humor
00:39:47
Speaker
going to be. I mean, the very first episode we watched the diamond ray of disappearance, you get the whole egg gag where he winds up with the egg on his face.
00:39:58
Speaker
I just, I just give him crap because he doesn't know how to, he's a really good inventor and in the lab, but just put a lock on the door because that will go out probably, or at least no, because I told you not to go in my lab. He goes to the lab and something happens. Just get him his own lab with like a junior set or something like that, or like a safety set.
00:40:19
Speaker
Orko does it's always just like because the one time he's I forgot what he was making and man in arms comes in and he's like Well, that's poisonous and that's explosive. I don't know what the hell you're doing. But why are you doing this? Get out of my lab, right? And then they just walk away and they're like, well, I told him not to touch anything else So he's probably gonna listen
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah, and then explosion. But like I said, it's a comic relief. Man in Arms is a good character because he is sort of the, it seems like he's used more than not as the guy that's getting frozen or, you know, turned into stone or something like that. But he is the, you know, he's the head of the Royal Guard, right?
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, and, and he's also a part of that, you know, very small group that's, that's in on the secret, you know, it's only supposed to be Man in Arms, Orko and the Sorceress that know about He-Man's double identity. So they use, they use him a lot, because he, he knows what's maybe going through He-Man's mind, and helping steer his decisions when he's both He-Man and when he's as Prince Adam.
00:41:27
Speaker
And he's also one of the only ones that knows, cause he was the one that, what he was the one that found and rescued Tila from why he's, why he's her adoptive father from the episode. So he knows that Tila is the source of his daughter too. And so there's only a few people in the attorney that know that as well. It seems like it's the same people that know that he, man is, uh, there's Adam too. So it's pretty much the same brain trust. You get rid of those and no one's going to know anything. Yeah. It's, it's that 1%.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah. Happens on attorney. He doesn't really take credit for it, but he's also pretty integral to Kringer's recovery initially, you know, in terms of providing the medical care there. He says it's Adam's care and attention that helps him pull through in the long run, but there are a lot of people in attorney that are indebted to Master at Arms and yeah, he's got the best mustache in attorney as well. Tom Selleck animated.
00:42:22
Speaker
But in pretty much two words, just like when they were talking with Granimere, where he mentions Man in Arms, and he's like, oh yeah, there's always a Man in Arms. It's like a title, but it's also like, it's like, what's his name? Like Joe? Or? Duncan. Oh, that's right. It's Duncan. Yeah. Which made me think of Duncan Idaho having recently read Dune. I think as a kid, it always reminded me of Duncan Yo-Yos.
00:42:48
Speaker
Because Duncan was the big yo-yo company back then, and back in the 80s, yo-yos were like yo-yos, rubrics, cubes, that type of stuff. So he didn't know that many Dunkins. Not to diverge too much, but my mind goes to Duncan's toy chest from Home Alone 2 Lost in New York. I just think of Duncan Hines, Brownies. Duncan Hines, Duncan Donuts, Duncan, whatever.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Heavy Themes in 'Problem with Power' Episode, is He-Man Guilty?
00:43:20
Speaker
These were good. And again, that you had mentioned that Dale, this was a great set of 10 to pick from over the whole series because it gives you not well, not to be able to lead that. Okay, so the last episode we watched the problem with power. Sure. Talk about as a kid, a heavy episode.
00:43:39
Speaker
I mean, it's pretty much they fake a death and they make He-Man thinks that he killed someone on accident when he uses his power. And it's just like he gets so distraught that he just throws the sword away and he's like, I'm done. It's like, holy crap. It's like, that's a lot to throw on a 10-year-old kid watching this. And even as an adult, it's just like he's taking it like I took a life when I didn't need to. And then it still had the funny things too where they, yeah.
00:44:09
Speaker
Orko sees them do it. He's trying to tell, go back to tell Adam, and Skeletor traps, or kidnaps him and puts him in a cell. And then after like 10 minutes, he goes, I can't make the cell smaller, but I can make myself smaller. And he makes himself smaller, and then he just escapes.
00:44:26
Speaker
What is it? Like a lot of times when you're watching these movies and they're like, I can't escape this thing. It's like, there's two feet between the bars. Just go between the bars. It's a lot of room. There's a lot of room in there. And it also has probably the best ending.
00:44:43
Speaker
when they're walking away in the sunset and he's carrying Tila and she's like, you can put me down. And he's like, oh, you never know. You know, it's just the adventure between them, literally like walking into the sunset is hilarious. Yeah. And that's about as as romantic or as far as
Anticipation for Masters of the Universe: Revelations
00:45:00
Speaker
those two characters story got up until just within the last 10 years, DC Comics, you know, kind of gave them a little further story where they end up as king and queen and
00:45:11
Speaker
or King and Queen, that's also the sorceress. That doesn't happen until much later, but as far as filmation goes, that was like a very natural ending to that series. You know, He-Man and Teela walking off into the sunset together, finally. Yeah, it was nice to get a little bit of development there, even if it was very
00:45:32
Speaker
very, what's the word I'm looking for? Innocent. It's innocent as it should be. It's platonic as well. It's very much that they basically grew up together. Yeah. In this state, we're always around each other. I don't remember which, and by the way, this is the third major series. I'm not counting the new adventures, but they did a reboot in what, 2000?
00:45:55
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I know there was a series in the 2000s. And that was excellent. Man, there were two seasons. And from what I heard, what was supposed to happen in the third season, it was like bringing on, and then they canceled the show. Right. Man, it was just so good. I mean, it's a lot more
00:46:11
Speaker
adult animation. And it looks a lot less like I mean, I'm excited for this studio house that's doing revelations because they did Castlevania and Castlevania's animation is fantastic. Yeah, so this is a yes. This is kind of a good opportunity to go ahead and like transition to expectations for the upcoming series. And Dale, whenever you want to kind of like jump in here,
00:46:35
Speaker
The episodes that you did pick out, one of the things that kind of struck me as much as, like, Skeletor is toted as the big bad of Masters of the Universe, we did get introduced to a lot of additional villains. I mean, outside of his usual crew of Merman and Trapjaw and Beastman, there was Morgoth appeared in The Origin of the Sorceress. I wonder if that's a character we can expect to appear in any of the, you know,
00:47:03
Speaker
new adaptations or iterations, as well as the wizard's name that is escaping me, but the one episode that we got Aelina or Alina, a friend in need. Again, you pick that character because that was her one and only appearance in the series. Is that because you expect it's someone that could make a return or is that someone that was a popular toy?
00:47:23
Speaker
No, that was, Aelina was a one-off character and that was like the anti-drug episode. But in the new series, Aelina was a character that was on the very initial cast list. So when we first got the cast list with all these different characters that are going to be on it, Aelina was one of them that's going to be on there and she's being played by Kevin Smith's daughter.
00:47:49
Speaker
I don't know if it's just going to be a one-off or. That's the case. It's going to be, she'll be in it for probably like a second. Right. Just so she can have a credit with some of her stuff. You know, it's, that's, it seems like what he does. I mean, I'm sure that's like, cause Jason Muse is playing Stinko, I think. So I'm sure he'll be in it for a second because I can't imagine Jason Muse
00:48:13
Speaker
doing a voice other than his own for Stinkor. And that kind of is weird in my head listening to what Stinkor would sound like just going snoochie-boochie. That just doesn't... Doesn't fit. No. I mean, it's going to be hard to put any expectations to this show because we're only getting five episodes as a drop.
00:48:36
Speaker
So it's going to go by quick, you know, but if it's anything like the transformer series, you can get a lot done in five and six episodes. Do we, do we know the length of these episodes? Has that been information that's been provided to us? I would assume it's probably like in the 24 to 26 minute range each. Okay. I mean, I could be wrong. I know the first, the first season's 10 episodes, they're splitting it into fives. Okay. You know,
00:49:05
Speaker
Who knows, I've learned without anything lately with Marvel to temper your expectations. Because not that Marvel, it's just that you don't speculate too much because it just seems like that could get you more heartbroken than happy.
00:49:21
Speaker
It's fun to speculate sometimes, but don't put all your eggs in it saying, oh, I want to see this. It is daunting, though, when you have a five episode series and you do see the cast list and you do see the animations for this many characters. It's right. But then it could just be like it's a scene like you can't see it here on the it's an audio podcast, but like Dale's backdrop, it could just be these guys standing there. You see Merman, you see Beastman, you see Trapjaw, you see Roboto, you see whoever.
00:49:47
Speaker
They might not be in the show. They've got a person voicing them, and it could just be in the background going like, yeah, Skelly God, that's what I wanted to hear. Something like that. SAG has them on the payroll for that, since they said something.
00:49:58
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the nice thing about it being a streaming series and not debuting on traditional channels is they're not going to be limited to that 22-minute thing. So like we've seen with a lot of things on, say, Disney+, Marvel, and Star Wars shows, if it takes them 48 minutes to tell the story, maybe they're going to use 48 minutes to tell the first chapter.
00:50:24
Speaker
Now this new series Revelations looks to have a pretty star-studded voice cast here. I want to ask you guys, is there a particular
00:50:33
Speaker
performer, you're excited to hear their rendition of a classic character. I mean, Mark Hamill's Skeletor is obviously a standout there. But I'm looking at Chris Wood. He has pretty big shoes to fill there in terms of what John Irwin did. And my familiarity with Chris Wood is I know he's worked with Kevin Smith because Kevin Smith worked on the CWDC side of things with Supergirl and
00:50:59
Speaker
Chris Wood played the Superboy Mon-El on a couple of seasons of that. So I think he's a good choice based on the limited exposure I have to him. I could say this for myself, Masters of the Universe probably has the least amount of needing to be faithful.
00:51:24
Speaker
Skeletor in itself you have to have a Skeletor have a certain cadence a certain sound to his voice Prince Adam King ran to everything It's not like with me were like if I hear if I'm watching transformers I want to hear Peter Cullen do an optimist prime I want to hear stars who came sound a certain way I want to hear Megatron sound a certain way with this he man can almost pretty much he doesn't have to have that exact same 80s sound to the voice, but he can't be like all of a sudden, you know having a French accent or speaking you know
00:51:55
Speaker
Pig Latin or something. I don't know. Sure. It doesn't have as much, but Skeletor is the only one it sort of has a, as far as my mind goes, a distinguished, or even like maybe merman with the little like warbling, like he's talking underwater sound. Sure. Other than that, it's just like, if they do a good performance, it's fine. Okay.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to Mark Hamill's take on Skeletor. I think that'll be pretty interesting. And the original voice actor Alan Oppenheimer, who was Skeletor and an arms cringer, you know, full range. Well,
00:52:35
Speaker
He's up there in years now. So he's going to be Mossman. But we don't know how big of a role Mossman is going to have. But perhaps the voice work for Skeletor would have been too much for him to take on. So I'm very welcome to Mark Hamill and hearing his take on the character, I guess. With a lot of them, it doesn't really matter to me.
00:53:02
Speaker
You know, you mentioned Jason Muse playing Stinkor or Tony Todd is playing Scare Glow. That's neat, but I think it's just neat to see more characters. This series is not called He-Man, it's called Master's Universe Revelation because I think we're gonna really delve into some of these side characters. So Netflix is also putting out a separate series called He-Man
00:53:30
Speaker
which is going to be aimed at a younger audience, which I feel that's going to focus more on the one most powerful dude versus this. You know, we might be able to put He-Man in the background for a few episodes and really dig into some of these other characters that have been around for almost 40 years.
00:53:48
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard almost that Tila is gonna be the focus on the first like five episodes like she'll be the main character that's focused on for the ones we see coming up in a couple days here. Yeah, so yeah having Sarah Michelle Geller as Tila and then Liam Cunningham as Man in Arms like that that should be an interesting combination there, you know both very good actors
00:54:16
Speaker
in live action. Let's see what they do with the animation, I guess, in the voice acting. Yeah, definitely. From the trailer we've seen, I think it looks pretty good and Kevin Smith has been pretty vocal as far as he's allowed to in terms of what he's allowed to share, but he definitely sounds pretty excited about it. I think it's in good hands and
00:54:42
Speaker
It seems like the initial, oh, is there some, I'm just joking because I love Kevin Smith. He's one of my favorite guys. He's seriously, but he gets excited about everything. That's fair. He gets like, he sees, I saw this and I cried. And then there's like, okay, you're starting to lose some of your credibility here jokingly. I mean, I listened to the fat man beyond and.
00:55:06
Speaker
Uh, you know, just listen to, I followed his career. I saw the clerks, original clerks in the theaters when it was out and I sort of fell in love with them. But that's almost in the same sense. It was with me too. He has my sensibility where I find it hard sometimes to not like, if I, if I don't like something, you may not hear me talk about it. Cause I just don't talk about it.
00:55:27
Speaker
same here you know except for if it's something like the fact that will judge like they never made a last airbender movie they never made a dark tower movie those don't exist but you know other than that it's just like okay I tend to find enjoyment with what I see
00:55:45
Speaker
And I'm so excited about this, though, because I just think that there's just too much talent across the board that if it was crap, that it would have been stopped way before it got to a certain point in production. They're not taking this. It's like you got one shot to do this and you're going to knock it out of the park.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think the way that they introduced it two years ago at PowerCon, like a couple days before the con, they said, oh, Kevin Smith's going to be there for a panel. He's going to be interviewing Rob David. And it was like, well, that's kind of interesting that they're bringing in such a big name just to be there for interviewing for one panel.
00:56:24
Speaker
And then their panel kind of delved into the announcement of this series and the room just erupted. It was, you know, definitely a highlight for me at that con, you know, seeing them there and what a big announcement that was at the time. What more could you ask for?
00:56:42
Speaker
outside of a live-action movie, which is never going to happen. It's been in development hell for 20 years. But we're finally getting this series. So I think it's really going to be exciting to see a new take on this universe, on these characters. And if Human isn't featured all that much, that's fine. They really went out and got what you could consider a dream cast with all these A-list actors.
00:57:11
Speaker
in the show. It's really, really exciting. I have a feeling the reaction to this, there's going to be some negative reaction. There's going to be some people that this isn't my He-Man, but I think it's going to go over a lot better than Netflix She-Ra series because the target audience is that longtime fan. It is the adult animation viewer. It's not aimed at younger audience, I guess.
00:57:40
Speaker
Oh no, like I said, they went with that Castlevania style, which is very adult R rated animation with just that style. So when they made it there, it's not going to be your cutesy, you know, haha type stuff. I'm pretty sure they still have those same elements as they've had always where it's
00:57:58
Speaker
the humor and the goofiness balances out with the seriousness, they're not going to make this into this, you know, like, Lord of the Rings epic, but even in Lord of the Rings, there's comic relief in that too, though. So I don't think they're gonna you're not going to mess with the formula, especially when I mean, if you got a franchise that has their own conventions, you don't sit there and try and reinvent it. You know,
00:58:22
Speaker
just like you don't put him in space. Oh, wait, that was the new adventures that he made. So yeah, in preparation for this, you know, we talked about just just watching some filmation, the original filmation series, which was 130 episodes.
00:58:40
Speaker
what you need to do to kind of prepare yourself for this new series. As far as this new series goes, you don't need to watch new adventures. Out of those 65 episodes, there's really only a handful that I would say are good episodes. And the animation style and the writing was just so
00:59:02
Speaker
different compared to the Filmation series. By the way, just to clarify, just to clarify the new Adventures of He-Man, it was the one that came out like in the late 80s. It was pretty much He-Man in Space. That's not the show we were talking about that came out in the 2000s. The 2000s one was another sword and sorcery. That was Mike Young Productions 2002. And it was kind of like a reboot, you know, it was telling the origin story again. And
00:59:29
Speaker
adding more to the mythos of that world. But I think the new series is going to kind of be a combination because what we've already seen from the prequel comic that's come out is they're not sticking to just the Filmation canon. They're going to take in a little bit more of how that universe has expanded over the years since then.
00:59:56
Speaker
Very good, very good. Well, Dale, I have to thank you for curating these episodes for us. Like I said, I had some ideas and thoughts about what I thought He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was, and I wasn't completely off base, but I was pretty pleasantly surprised in a lot of regards.
01:00:15
Speaker
I do thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. And with that in mind, was there anything else you thought people out there should know about these particular episodes that you picked or the comic series you talked about at all? I don't think so. So as far as these being essential, they're probably not the top 10 highest rated or most popular with fans. But I think
01:00:44
Speaker
they're gonna help put you in this universe and prepare you for the show. The new series, the best, I guess. So like the episode with Aelina, A Friend in Need, it's probably not gonna be your favorite episode, but it sure is memorable, I guess.
01:01:01
Speaker
Well, I've got it up here. Let's just run down the list of episodes that we've been talking so if anybody has been listening and you know whether or not He-Man and the Masters of the universe is near and dear to your heart or you kind of went in like me you're just excited for this new series and you know, you want this kind of
01:01:17
Speaker
nice selection to kind of pick from because it's two seasons of 65 episodes. So there's a lot to get through. But if you're anything like me, I'm kind of excited to go back and watch them all now because it really is a quality show. So the episodes that we watched in preparation for this episode and feel free to jump in at any point.
01:01:37
Speaker
Chime in. We've got Diamond Ray of Disappearance, which was, according to your notes, Season 1, Episode 1. And I know that's not necessarily the release order there. That's why I say according to your notes here. But then we've got Tealist Quest, which we talked about, Season 1, Episode 2. Prince Adam No More, Season 1, Episode 15. A Friend in Need, Season 1, Episode 16. The Dragon's Gift, Season 1, Episode 18. And that's the one that you say Larry D'Tillo got the job as staff writer for.
01:02:07
Speaker
What can you tell me about Larry DiTillo? So he worked on a lot of episodes where he was the main writer for and then I'm trying to think, what did he work on?
01:02:24
Speaker
He worked as far as like Granamere, like he actually brought Granamere into Masters Universe and the ice trolls were in that episode as well. Like that was something that he had written as part of like a role playing game. And then but he was able to develop them so well in this, you know, 22 minute story that Granamere became a reoccurring character.
01:02:47
Speaker
They used the same story as a mini comic that came with the toys. The big difference was, instead of a red dragon, they made him a green dragon. No idea why.
01:03:02
Speaker
Maybe the artists got tired of using red. We're running low on. Right. There was already a lot of other dragon-themed episodes and red dragons. So they're like, eh, what else? It's another Ohmias to Tolkien with the green dragon. Oh, I thought you were going to say Fin Fang Foom. I was waiting for it. No. Who debuted first, Grenami or Fin Fang Foom? I think Fin Fang Foom probably has a couple of years. Oh, Fin Fang Foom. Yeah, that was back in the 60s. Yeah. OK. OK.
01:03:28
Speaker
All right, well moving on we got double-edged sword season one episode 22, origin of the sorceress season two episode 12, which we mentioned that was J. Michael Straczynski getting a story credit there, battle cat season two episode 33, which was that
01:03:45
Speaker
Cringer origin story, Teela's Triumph, Season 2, Episode 43, and The Problem with Power, Season 2, Episode 45, which you said kind of serves as the natural finale to this series in your own particular headcanon. Right. So technically, there was a few that finished production after that. But as far as what we see on screen, it kind of wraps up, oh, maybe that's the end of the story for Human and Teela.
01:04:14
Speaker
End of the road for them. Which, by the way, the thing we didn't talk about, I don't even think we really talked about Teela's triumph much. That was another one where everyone gets sent to a different dimension because of Heemera Skeletor's ray. And I want to say, is this the only time that Skeletor sits on the throne in Castle Greyskull?
01:04:35
Speaker
I believe so, yeah. Yeah, so he gets in there. So it's basically Tila has to defend Castle Greyskull because He-Man, Vandalcat, and Sorceress all get sent to another dimension by Skeletor's raise. And she gets sent to defend, again, unbeknownst to her, they keep telling her, trust us, you'll know one day why you have to be the one that defends Castle Greyskull. And Skeletor goes in there and he's sitting on the throne.
01:05:03
Speaker
That's his end goal, is to sit on the throne of Castle Grace's goal, and he does it in this episode. Right. Now what? Now what do I do? Yeah. He comes back and kicks his butt, so. Yeah. Actually, Tila defeated him first. Okay. Yeah, Tila defeated him, and then they somehow... Every time they get sent to another dimension, they always end up with the same way of coming back, but they seem to forget.
01:05:25
Speaker
It's just like, oh, the diamond didn't crush the diamond. Here's the spell that undo the rocks. What's a different type of rock now? It's the same spell. It's plant armor, right? I defer to your guys' expertise in terms of that being the only time Skeletor sat upon the throne. But Dale did give us a couple of additional episodes, as Honorable mentions, if we had the time. And I did watch one, the Dragon Invasion.
01:05:48
Speaker
Even though you don't see Skeletor sit on the throne, it was a great display of him actually taking control of Castle Grayskull. And there was a moment where He-Man tried to rush in and was completely laid flat by a force field there. And it took the combined might of the dragons to take back over.
01:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of those things where you've got this big villain where you have to make him be pretty formidable foe for your hero, but also you can't do that every single week, I guess. Yeah.
01:06:27
Speaker
And by the way, for investors will be mentioned that Skeletor is sitting on the throne. It's the Castle Greyskull seat of power, not the throne that you would might think that someone sits on, you know? Skeletor is sitting on the throne.
01:06:44
Speaker
Hm, okay. I just have to clarify that. It's not that time of show. That's what we have. That's why we keep you around me. Not to be confused with the bone throne, which is his big chair at Snake Mountain. Which again is a chair. It's not something- A chair, not a toilet. Or it's not something else that a bone throne might be used for. It's a kid's show, guys. Get your minds out of the gutter. Come on. Right.
01:07:15
Speaker
Well, I think unless you guys have anything else you need to get off your...
01:07:21
Speaker
well-defined pectoral chess. We're reusing a mold for an action figure. Anyway, anything else you need to say, I think we'll bring things to a close here. So I'll say, in this episode of the podcast, the moral of the story was to watch He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the original series in preparation for the upcoming Masters of the Universe revelations due to debut on Netflix, July 23rd.
01:07:52
Speaker
If you don't have Netflix, ask your parents about getting you a subscription to Netflix. Or a password. And another moral to the story is go to all of your places where you find podcasts and search for source pages, which is the podcast I do with my friend, Haley Hobbs, where we discuss comics and novels as continuations and source materials and primers for our favorite TVs and movie shows coming up. We just did one today that should be dropping. Now, this is July 20th. It'll probably be dropping tomorrow.
01:08:21
Speaker
A primer on who is Kang? Who is Nathaniel Richards? Because when he popped up at the end of Loki, a lot of people were like, who is this guy? Well, we talked for 45 minutes about it to try to give you a reason. But we do a lot of that stuff too, a lot of anything that's out there in the geeky stratosphere that are in book form or comic form, we'll talk about it. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Instagram,
01:08:48
Speaker
SoundCloud and MySpace. And I'm just kidding about this last year. I don't even do their thing, but we're out there. Source pages, a reading collective, Spark for short. Yeah. Give them some love. Subscribe, like, drop them a review. They're a new show, but they've already really impressed me with their first couple of episodes. So great addition to the Stranded Panda family. And always great to have Brian be a regular player here and get his knowledge and his voice.
01:09:14
Speaker
But also, Dale, great to have you on. Did you have anything you want to let the people know about that you're involved in? As far as talking about Master's Universe, there's a million different Facebook groups for that kind of thing. If you want to go to one central source, you can always try the forums at HeMan.org. If you want to send me a private message there, I'm HeGuy on the message boards. Sweet, sweet.
01:09:42
Speaker
For myself, we're going to have some upcoming Benjers Assemble coverage for the upcoming James Gunn version of the Suicide Squad. So myself, Matthew Carroll of the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast, as well as Ashley Coffin from the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast. We're going to be tackling the 2016 version of Suicide Squad, as well as Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey. I was going to try and tackle that.
01:10:08
Speaker
original title, which was an entire mouthful, but I don't even think I can remember the full thing off the top of my head. So, look forward to that. Oh wait, that was Mariah Carey, never mind. That was way too long of a movie title, yeah. It was a great movie, but way too long of a movie title. Yeah, yeah. Other than that, obviously, Revelations is just around the corner, and then What If? is about a month away. So, very excited for that. Keep tuning in. That's T-O-O-N-I-N. He, man.
01:10:40
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Animation Deliberation Podcast, a proud member of the Strandepanda Network. If you would like to contact us, you can email animationdeliberationpodcast at gmail.com or follow us on Twitter at animationdelib1. For this and other great shows, you can visit strandepanda.com or join the great community that is the Strandepanda Chat Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash spchat. Tune in next time and remember, stay well. You're invited to take a vacation.
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