ThunderCats Rewatch Episode 23-24 Discussion

[CENTER]Episode 23-24: Recipe for Disaster, The Soul Sever
[/CENTER]

Mumm-Ra hunts down the ThunderCats after taking on the form of an undead dragon-like demon named Sykalak, which allows him to fight even in the daylight.However, a supposed "Cure-All Elixir" Lion-O bought from a questionable Wolo salesman turns out to be an unexpected weapon against him. While trying to uncover the location of the next stone, the ThunderCats cross paths with a mad man, Soul Sever, who is trying to insert the souls of his long-lost family into machines. When Soul Sever steals the Book of Omens in pursuit of this goal, Lion-O risks being turned into one of his mechanical monstrosities

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Recipe For Disaster.
I liked this episode. Yeah some of the comedic moments at the start fell a little flat. But Mumm-Ra's transformation scene at the start was great. The scenes with Lion-O and Pumyra were nice. During the battle when they played the classic piece of music with Lion-O doing the movements of Lion-O from the original series intro was pretty awesome.
Overall this was a really enjoyable episode that I wish had come sooner in the series.
Tab Murphy should have wrote more episodes and been the head writer.

The Soul Sever.
Not a great episode but not too bad. The biggest problem with this episode is that is was soooooo predictable. Again an episode that could have come sooner in the series or been skipped altogether as it really does little to further the quest story line.
Personally I found it a little puzzling why Lion-O's old friend who was so familiar with technology bothered setting up shop in Thundera in the first place.

Again very familiar ground. Two hit and miss episodes. I am glad we are now at the finale. It really isn't a surprise why they decided to cancel the show.

Wow. These two episodes were both pretty good.

Recipe For Disaster - this has several obvious nods to the original show. The most obvious being in the fight scene where both music and animation sequences from the original were recreated faithfully, (to absolutely awesome effect!) but there's more - Ponzie for one, clearly the same Wollo that we saw most frequently in the original series, and was a sort of spokesperson for the race - although he never got a name back then. Part of me suddenly wants to call him "the Ponz". Also, at the start of the episode, the music in Mumm-Ra's pyramid/crashed ship is evocative of his theme in the original show. Elsewhere, there's again a James Horner-Star Trek feel to the music (no bad thing!).

The storyline was fairly obvious and generic, all the cliches right where you'd expect them, the dodgy "snake oil seller" Ponzie's "Miracle Elixir" saving the day, the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. For a moment I thought they were trying to recreate the Diamond Fly from the original "Queen Of 8 Legs", but not really. Oh well, doesn't matter. Tygra taking the love potion is a bit silly, but not too bad. Makes you wonder if would even have worked on Pumyra at all! And speaking of Pumyra, her face just goes back to normal with no explanation! Meaning the MacGuffin was a little iffy . . .

That said, Mumm-Ra as Syccorax was pretty amazing. Paved the way for some more interesting transformations in the second season, if they'd had one. Also, Panthro had some great lines here - "same Mumm-Ra, bigger bull's eye", you could imagine him saying that in the original. Or, in another of my favourite cartoons growing up, Defenders Of The Earth, you can imagine Flash Gordon saying something similar about Ming The Merciless.

The Soul Sever is a much more interesting episode. It continues this series' repeated device of presenting classic characters from famous 19th century literature. We've had Captain Ahab from Moby Dick in the form of Cornelius Tuna, and Fagin from Oliver Twist as Tookit. The Soul Sever himself is basically Dr Frankenstein. His angle is actually one we can sympathise with, even if it got a little warped, and developed into an Ahab-like obsession.

It's also an excellent morality question, about playing god, life and death etc. It's one of those questions with no easy answer, but of course had to be resolved this way for the sake of the younger viewers, rather like one of the best episodes of yet another of my favourite cartoons in the 80s, Visionaries - the episode "Horn Of Unicorn, Claw Of Dragon".

I was wracking my brains over Soul Sever's voice, then saw at the end, Jeffrey Combs, a name very familiar to Star Trek fans, as he played numerous different alien roles on the show, most notably Weyoun and Brunt in DS9 and Shran on Enterprise. It's the Weyoun voice that is closest to this character, at a guess - obviously Soul Sever's voice was put through a computerising effect.

One other point - does anyone else think the Necromechers in their original form looked like Jar Jar Binks?

As for the notion of having this episode earlier in the season and it not having anything to do with the main story arc - sorry Mark, but it does do a lot of setting up for the finale, although obviously we can't talk too much about that here because of spoilers. Sufficing to say, after intervening episodes have been focusing on the Sword Of Plundarr, this gets us back to the Book Of Omens and the stones, and the fact that the book is pointing up (of which there's been no mention since the initial one in The Trials Of Lion-O).

Overall, two pretty good episodes. No real surprises in the storyline, but it's a good setup for the finale . . .

"LiamABC, post: 111439, member: 25438" said:

Wow. These two episodes were both pretty good.

Recipe For Disaster - this has several obvious nods to the original show. The most obvious being in the fight scene where both music and animation sequences from the original were recreated faithfully, (to absolutely awesome effect!) but there's more - Ponzie for one, clearly the same Wollo that we saw most frequently in the original series, and was a sort of spokesperson for the race - although he never got a name back then. Part of me suddenly wants to call him "the Ponz". Also, at the start of the episode, the music in Mumm-Ra's pyramid/crashed ship is evocative of his theme in the original show. Elsewhere, there's again a James Horner-Star Trek feel to the music (no bad thing!).

The storyline was fairly obvious and generic, all the cliches right where you'd expect them, the dodgy "snake oil seller" Ponzie's "Miracle Elixir" saving the day, the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. For a moment I thought they were trying to recreate the Diamond Fly from the original "Queen Of 8 Legs", but not really. Oh well, doesn't matter. Tygra taking the love potion is a bit silly, but not too bad. Makes you wonder if would even have worked on Pumyra at all! And speaking of Pumyra, her face just goes back to normal with no explanation! Meaning the MacGuffin was a little iffy . . .

That said, Mumm-Ra as Syccorax was pretty amazing. Paved the way for some more interesting transformations in the second season, if they'd had one. Also, Panthro had some great lines here - "same Mumm-Ra, bigger bull's eye", you could imagine him saying that in the original. Or, in another of my favourite cartoons growing up, Defenders Of The Earth, you can imagine Flash Gordon saying something similar about Ming The Merciless.

The Soul Sever is a much more interesting episode. It continues this series' repeated device of presenting classic characters from famous 19th century literature. We've had Captain Ahab from Moby Dick in the form of Cornelius Tuna, and Fagin from Oliver Twist as Tookit. The Soul Sever himself is basically Dr Frankenstein. His angle is actually one we can sympathise with, even if it got a little warped, and developed into an Ahab-like obsession.

It's also an excellent morality question, about playing god, life and death etc. It's one of those questions with no easy answer, but of course had to be resolved this way for the sake of the younger viewers, rather like one of the best episodes of yet another of my favourite cartoons in the 80s, Visionaries - the episode "Horn Of Unicorn, Claw Of Dragon".

I was wracking my brains over Soul Sever's voice, then saw at the end, Jeffrey Combs, a name very familiar to Star Trek fans, as he played numerous different alien roles on the show, most notably Weyoun and Brunt in DS9 and Shran on Enterprise. It's the Weyoun voice that is closest to this character, at a guess - obviously Soul Sever's voice was put through a computerising effect.

One other point - does anyone else think the Necromechers in their original form looked like Jar Jar Binks?

As for the notion of having this episode earlier in the season and it not having anything to do with the main story arc - sorry Mark, but it does do a lot of setting up for the finale, although obviously we can't talk too much about that here because of spoilers. Sufficing to say, after intervening episodes have been focusing on the Sword Of Plundarr, this gets us back to the Book Of Omens and the stones, and the fact that the book is pointing up (of which there's been no mention since the initial one in The Trials Of Lion-O).

Overall, two pretty good episodes. No real surprises in the storyline, but it's a good setup for the finale . . .

I was just meaning the story with the Soul Sever in general could have come earlier in the series. The little bit about the book and the mention of the ship etc just seemed to be really shoe horned into the story.
I meant to mention that I did enjoy Soul Sever a lot more this time around than when I last viewed the episode two years ago.

I was going to say, you've always been quite vitriolic about it!

Actually, something else that episode reminds me of is another Defenders Of The Earth episode, Flesh And Blood.

As for the shoe-horning, I still have to disagree - the whole scrapyard is a logical place both for Sever's army to attack and for them to get the Feliner at the beginning to the next episode (and I can say this safely as it's not a giveaway plot point). The episode works in this position.

The biggest black mark against the episode for me is the destruction of the Thundertank. Even though this tank isn't the same, the concept of its destruction . . . :cry

"LiamABC, post: 111492, member: 25438" said:

I was going to say, you've always been quite vitriolic about it!

Actually, something else that episode reminds me of is another Defenders Of The Earth episode, Flesh And Blood.

As for the shoe-horning, I still have to disagree - the whole scrapyard is a logical place both for Sever's army to attack and for them to get the Feliner at the beginning to the next episode (and I can say this safely as it's not a giveaway plot point). The episode works in this position.

The biggest black mark against the episode for me is the destruction of the Thundertank. Even though this tank isn't the same, the concept of its destruction . . . :cry

I can't help but think this episode really annoyed the people at Bandai. Destroying the Thundertank which was the flagship toy of the 2011 toyline, along with the new attachment which they had been working on a prototype for release in the next wave.
Speaking of toys Soul Sever design would have made a pretty cool looking action figure.

"Mark M, post: 111513, member: 5058" said:

I can't help but think this episode really annoyed the people at Bandai. Destroying the Thundertank which was the flagship toy of the 2011 toyline, along with the new attachment which they had been working on a prototype for release in the next wave.
Speaking of toys Soul Sever design would have made a pretty cool looking action figure.

You're right there - like the Duelist, there was a great toy potential in Soul Sever.

As for the tank, presumably they'd have got a new one from somewhere. Mumm-Ra's pyramid probably, he seemed to have plenty of spares.

"LiamABC, post: 111519, member: 25438" said:

You're right there - like the Duelist, there was a great toy potential in Soul Sever.

As for the tank, presumably they'd have got a new one from somewhere. Mumm-Ra's pyramid probably, he seemed to have plenty of spares.

How many episodes then up until now has the Tower of Omens been seen in? Two? Three at most? I am really puzzled it was made as a toy at all. Not to mention it was terrible...like one of the worst action figure playsets ever made LOL.

It was odd how Lion-O's friend seemed to know of the Thundertanks.

The more I thought about it, I just realised the seen with the butterfly and Mumm-Ra as the dragon monster thing was a bit like Godzilla fighting Mothra.