cereal:geek TV - "Battlecat" EPISODE COMMENTARY - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 

Yeah, this episode shows you WHY they're best friends...and that final shot at the end is just PERFECT! :)

@@cerealgeekTV Agreed on that final shot! Love it!

It's such a wonderful scene! :) - Honestly, I still get goosebumps when we see Prince Adam with the Sword of Power raised with Cringer looking on...it's SO unique...and in a single frame sums up a powerful moment in the history of Eternia! :)

I shall do my best! :)

One of my earliest orders on Amazon.com back in the nineties was that Star Trek sound effects CD...not because I was a Trek fan...but because I wanted those He-Man sound effects! :)

Well, Cringer does speak in the flashback during "Creatures From The Tar Swamp"...thus is just kind of surprises me that he seems mute throughout much of this episode until he witnesses the power of Grayskull! :)

Thank YOU for the very kind words - They are GREATLY appreciated! :)

My pleasure - You should definitely watch it without me talking over the top of it! :)

I have yet to see Revolution...but I DO look forward to that reference! :)

@cerealgeekTV Episode 2 of Revelation my friend. 😀 I'm hoping when you do watch Revolution, you will still be free of spoilers. I fell off of my sofa a couple of times 🤣🤣 What a great time to be a Masters fan.

Oops...that demonstrates how much I recall of Revelation... - Although I DO remember thinking that Cringer was portrayed rather well! :)

David Wise would frequently recycle his scripts from one cartoon series in other cartoons. Wise would recycle his He-Man episode "Day of The Machines" in whole or in part in various cartoons including Transformers (parts used in multiple episodes, including one also called "Day of the Machines"), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Defenders of the Earth, The New Adventures of Speed Racer, and The Mighty Ducks. (I witnessed the Transformers and TMNT reuses myself, but the other cartoons in the list come from TFWiki.) It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd waited longer between his reuses, long enough so the kids who'd seen the one version of his script would have grown up before the next reuse. But I immediately recognized a scene from Transformers ("Microbots") reused almost word-for-word in TMNT, which aired only a few years apart. The TF episode involved some Autobots shrinking to enter Megatron's body to remove a powerful energy source. The TMNT episode was in the opening 5-parter, where the Turtles enter a now giant Krang's android body to knock out the component that allowed it to be giant size. Both episodes have the characters exiting the other character as the size change is wearing off where they say, "Uh, excuse us!" (I haven't seen He-Man in a long time, but the TFWiki article says that the same scene was also in He-Man's aforementioned "Day of the Machines".)

Yeah, I forget that David Wise worked on the animated Star Trek - I NEVER forget his association with this show - I met him back in 2006, he was a lovely and funny fellow...and he just seemed to love that he had gotten to work on all of these shows! :)

I remember David Wise talking to us when we were making the BCI documentaries for the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe DVD sets, and I d brought up his story reuse - He smiled and said that his other favorite reuse was "the object that appears to be one thing, but is in fact another"! :)

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure how RU-vid notifies subscribers - Just know that every Saturday a new video will appear! :)

Yeah, this episode aired as part of the 1985 batch, alongside the first season of She-Ra - And yes, THAT ending is just one of the most beautiful moments of the series...:)

Yeah, the ending of this episode is just utterly perfect! :)

@@cerealgeekTV I can't disagree with that. Never. :)

Yeah, origin stories often earn a bonus point, because they delve into some past that we're all intrigued to see! :)

@@cerealgeekTV For you what's the best origin story you have seen?

It's a tough one, because there are more than a few - I do love Teela's origin, revealed to her in "Teela's Quest", because it's SUCH a powerful, beautiful, and memorable one! :)

@@cerealgeekTV I agree with you there and for me the first one I really remember.

There's no real connection - Fontana wrote this episode in 1984...Battle Cat's color scheme had already been put in place by Filmation in late 1981, based on Mattel's toy! :)

It's a fabulous tale! :)

So, on terrestrial TV, adverts did not interrupt cartoons - But here's the catch...numerous shows shown in the 4:20pm spot were subject to having scenes removed to make room for the adverts either side of the episode - It wouldn't be until the late 80s that this policy appeared to change! :(

Like James said, ad breaks usually didn't interrupt kids shows (for the most part) however there still needed time to air those adverts, so episodes of kids shows still needed to be edited. Though it also depends on who is airing these shows. The BBC didn't have adverts, but ITV did and He-Man was one of their shows, so sadly episodes were edited for time.

@@David315842 I think what's getting me is the "4:20" start time that James mentioned. It's very rare for shows in the US to start at times other than the top of the hour or half past the hour, thus making the assumption that the shows are being run within a 30 minute slot with ad breaks after each "act" of the show. It sounds like they were edited down to 20 minutes or less with ads book-ending, rather than interrupting, the show?

@@AintNobodyAtAll 4:20pm was actually a very common timeslot for cartoons on Children's ITV. They just aired an episode (often trimmed) but with no ad breaks from start to finish. That was usually the norm for other terrestrial TV channels to air cartoons. Channel 4 in the UK also did the same thing sometimes, though usually with fewer to no edits, when they aired full cartoons on early weekday mornings or on Saturday and Sunday mornings, with ads being aired only in-between shows. This is why stuff like US cartoon break bumpers were never aired on UK tv as the shows continued. The only major exception would be satellite TV in the UK which would often air these shows with ad breaks in-between acts, or at least at a halfway point in an episode.

@@AintNobodyAtAll US shows (as far as I'm aware) always started on the hour or half hour in the 1980s. In the 1990s some networks started staggering shows so they would start at X:05, to discourage people from switching to another network that started their shows at normal times, having already missed part of the other networks' show. And one cable channel did this, too. In the answering machine message that Mike Judge got on which the King of the Hill character Boomhauer was based, the man was complaining about shows starting at weird times. The man was very hard to understand and Mike Judge thought he was complaining about the content of Beavis and Butthead and that the man was calling the show by the wrong name ("Porky's [an orifice that sounds somewhat similar to Butthead]*, but the man was actually referring to the Porky Pig "That's All Folks!" scene at the end of cartoons that he was seeing after the hour, when he was expecting another show to have started. I visited Japan in 1995, and some shows there also started at weird times. ALF reruns started at some weird time like 4:45 PM. * Don't want to get CerealGeek in trouble in case the actual word is on RU-vid's naughty list.

He's awesome! :)

That's the problem with having multiple writers and a fast production schedule. Sometimes, the nuances of certain characters get overlooked. R2-D2 is one of George Lucas's favourite characters, so he made sure he was always portrayed correctly.

Even as a kid (the intended "target" for Orko), I despised his role as comic relief. I didn't need that, and it was kinda short-sighted for Filmation to assume I did. But as an adult I do appreciate his presence, because in my head I've removed his clumsy bumbling

The worst version of Orko was when he was written to explain something "complicated" on-screen for the benefit of we the audience - For example watch the action scene towards the end of "Trouble's Middle Name"...Orko literally narrates what is happening...ugh...

Thanks, John! :)

@@cerealgeekTV your welcome James.