"Mark M, post: 112875, member: 5058" said:
It's funny you should pick ''Song of the Petlars'' as that is a good example of the faults with the writing on the show. It did not feel like a Thundercats episode. The Petlars were the stars and most interesting thing in the episode. The presence of the Thundercats was irrelevant. It also did nothing for the ongoing story except having Panthro turn up at the end which could have been done at the end of the pilot or any other episode. The concept and story of the Petlars felt like a movie idea of the writer that was just shoe horned into a Thundercats episode.
A lot of the original episodes were basically written in Mad Libs style...Lion-O and the Thundercats face _____ threat, then in combatting the threat face mortal peril in the form of _______, Lion-O uses the sword (cue animation sequence) and defeats the threat, everyone celebrates in the Cat's Lair by standing in a circle and iterating the life lesson learned in that episode, Snarf says something idiotically funny (or funnily idiotic?), and everyone laughs.
So the quality of a "typical" Thundercats episode doesn't strike me as a good thing, or as a reason for why the new series (which is more serial in nature) is lacking.
"Song of the Petalars" essentially takes the Lion-O-learns-a-life-lesson-via-an-alien-creature storyline (frequently used in the original series), but infuses it with some bittersweet moments that, again, none of the original series episodes offered, as hackneyed as they were. I would argue that while the Petalars were interesting characters, they were there to Help Lion-O Learn Something (like the "Berbils" episode in the original series)...in this case, a weary Lion-O questioning the purpose of his journey. Unlike the "Berbils" episode, this one actually involves the death of the Petalar character, leading to a genuine moment of grief for the Thundercats, who find in that death inspiration for their ongoing struggle, and who decide to go down fighting...and then Panthro shows up to rescue them. So saying the Thundercats are "irrelevant" to this episode is completely missing the point, IMO.
Again, I don't think of either series as great art, but at least the new show moved me in one instance, and that counts for something.