Nitpicker’s Guide
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7. Zoology 101: On the other side of a black hole, in an alternate universe, Sagar is a world teeming with exotic, sometimes dangerous alien life, shit you couldn't imagine without the help of some powerful psychedelic drugs.

Right?

No, not quite.

Most of the characters are basically humans with different skin tones, and all of them speak perfect English. Moreover, none of them seem to have any difficulty understanding Blackstar's abundant use of Earth euphemisms and other figures of speech. No one ever stops our boy John in mid-sentence to ask what the hell he's talking about. They just give him tolerant looks and let him blather away. Whatever makes him happy, as long as he's willing to help them blow the shit out of the Overlord.

On the surface at least, the alien females appear to be sexually compatible with humans, because Our Hero wastes no time getting cozy with them. Either that, or he just isn't that picky.

Filmation's idea of native animal species in this series is little more than the result of playing Mr. Potato Head with preexisting Earth species. Take a shark, slap some batwings on it, and you've got a shark-bat. Wow! Now there's some weird, wonderful alien life for you! Once is passing, twice is annoying, but constantly is unforgivable. In "City of the Ancient Ones," the Trobbits ask Klone to turn into a monkey-bird; in "Spacewrecked," Katana is snatched up in the claws of an eaglelion and nearly devoured by a mantis-dragon. Warlock is a dragon-horse.

(The air whales in "The Air Whales of Anchar" can be excused on the grounds that the episode is obviously a nod to Herman Melville's Moby Dick).

A dragon-horse? Warlock is a mount, you ride him like a horse, but physically he's a Dragon; he's got a Dragon's wings and he breathes fire. And anyone familiar with mythological animals knows when you mix an eagle with a lion you get a Griffin. The question is: why didn't Filmation just go with the simpler mythological beasts such as the Dragon or Griffin? For fear that kids just wouldn't get it, or were they instructed to do so by CBS? Remember, the studio's original design for the Trobbits called for a trio of blue-skinned creatures that resembled the Morlocks from The Time Machine. Either this is a case of the network once again sticking its collective nose into the creative stew, or just plain laziness on the part of the writers. It is probably a bit of both, because to be fair to Filmation, some truly unusual creatures do surface in the Blackstar series.

Goofy as they might appear, the lava locs have a cool ability to morph seamlessly into the rock around them, and their worship of the Overlord is just plain creepy. The vampire men don't seem to be affected by the sunlight that renders their Earthly counterparts nocturnal, and their wings make them even more menacing. And the cloudcats have a feral, transparent appearance; it's too bad we only see them through Klone's transformations.

Still, from what we saw in "The Lord of Time," we have to ask: how did a Tyrannosaurus Rex make it into Sagarese prehistory?

8. The Wild Discovery Nature Cam: Since we're already on the subject of Sagarese animal life, we have to ask what the deal is with all those sappy wildlife shots. You know the ones: those charming views of Nature's creatures, usually some mother bird and her chicks, that seem to make it into every episode.

Here on the bottom left we have part of the opening scene from "Lightning City of the Clouds," in which a pair of mated cardinals orders takeout while freezing their feathery asses off. Huh? The Overlord is up more of his wretched villainy, Rif has a head cold and the animators pause to show us this?

Oh, but we're not done yet. In "Crown of the Sorceress," we have a whole series of misadventures involving an evil jewel and the local wildlife. The Trobbits, entrusted with said jewel, promptly lose it to a mother bird looking to feed her chicks, then she loses it to a similarly hungry squirrel that mistakes it for an acorn. Blackstar's been brainwashed, demonfire is about to be unleashed upon the world and yet we must pause for the obligatory Sagarese Nature Cam.



If we've learned one thing at all from watching this series, it's that Sagar's wildlife never gets enough to eat.

9. The Coin Has Only One Side: If the series is any indication, Sagar is a rather sparsely populated world. You have Blackstar, Mara, Klone, the Trobbits and their Tree, the Overlord and his Vizir, maybe some lava locs and a few small cities populated by, say, no more than twenty people--and that's it. Census time must be a blast. We never see any ordinary people going about their business. No farmers, craftsmen, traders, tax collectors or the like. Where is the labor force needed to build and maintain those cities? Who does the Overlord's interior decorating? In other words, whom exactly is Blackstar trying to save from oppression, other than himself and a few sunburned little trolls?

It isn't until She-Ra that Filmation's writers really get into the effects of a tyrant's rule on a world's people. The Evil Horde's presence is everywhere. They squeeze the people for taxes, appropriate goods as they please and even force citizens to work in the Mines of Mondor. They run Etheria's propoganda machine, only permitting approved Horde rhetoric to be taught in schools and burning books that don't adhere to their ideals. In short, they have the Etherian population so traumatized and ready to cooperate that She-Ra sometimes has problems getting the support she needs.

Other than the fact that the Overlord is a real bastard in the personality department, there's no evidence that he's a bad ruler. Sure, he goes on the offensive against those whom he perceives to be rebels, but we only get the rebels' side of the story; the Overlord might feel perfectly justified in what he does.

In "The Zombie Master," Blackstar initially has a difficult time persuading Prince Dal to join the rebellion. Dal wants time to consider the matter, and we get the sense that if Shaldemar and his floating city of zombies hadn't shown up just then, destroyed Dal's city and enslaved his consort, Princess Lowena, the Prince would have politely blown Our Hero off. And why not? Gondar seems to be a peaceful, prosperous city. Sure, they haven't felt the grip of the Overlord and it's only a matter of time, as Lowena says, but what exactly does that entail? Higher taxes? Will the people be enslaved and shipped off to work camps? Will the Overlord's ugly mugshot have to be displayed in every home and public building á la Lenin? For all we know, life under the Overlord might actually be pretty good. Look at it this way: you've got stable leadership, steady employment, a strong military. Okay, so he might blast you into a pile of rubble if you disagree with him, but on the other hand, exactly what benefits has Blackstar laid out on the table? Some of the Sagarese, like the desert dwellers in "The Quest," have heard of him and really like him, but surely there are some who think he's just stirring up trouble. After all, he's the guy with the Starsword, Number One on the Overlord's Shit List whether he intended to be or not. When you consider it from that angle, the rebellion is no longer about personal freedom and a better standard of living, it's about some offworlder trying to save his ass from extinction. (Based on an idea submitted by Wulfgar Wolf)

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