Nitpicker’s Guide
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1. The Starsword: For being one half of the most powerful weapon on Sagar, this acid-trip, abstract nightmare of a sword is surprisingly ineffective much of the time. Of course, this usually depends on who's writing the episode. In "The Kingdom of Neptul," the Starsword is used to break apart rock, seal a leaking dome and as a light source. In other episodes, such as "The Quest" and "The Lord of Time," you'll observe how often its bursts of energy simply bounce off the intended target.

On the other hand, the Powersword is capable of an entire range of action, leading one to speculate that the effectiveness of one of these swords depends on the capability of the user. With or without his sword, the Overlord is already a pretty powerful guy. In "Search for the Starsword," he clearly states that Blackstar's power is limited; whether or not this is an objective observation, however, is open to interpretation. Thoughts, anybody?

The swords really are ugly weapons. Yeah, I know that visually they're supposed to represent two halves of one whole weapon, but enough already. We get the idea.

It's amazing how often Blackstar seems to lose the Starsword, damage it, have it knocked from his hand, etc. Unless this guy gets a leash for his wayward weapon, or hooks it up to the Clapper, the Overlord isn't going to have to work very hard.



What is it with the strange enunciation on the word "Starsword" anyway? We saw the Introduction, we know what it is. Same goes for Our Hero's name. Gee, hit us over the head with it a dozen or so more times, why don't you? At every transition the animators give us either the above image or another, related one. Too bad the writers never followed suit and explained exactly how the Powerstar was split in two. Darn thing must be made out of Legos if it breaks apart so easily.

Notice that the Overlord wears his sword at his side, while Blackstar wears his in a shoulder scabbard. Sure, the shoulder scabbard is more impressive, but the Overlord has the tactical advantage here. A side scabbard is easier to reach, and doesn't open the torso and arms to attack.

2. Warlock: Warlock is probably one of the coolest looking animated dragons around, but we're never told how he ended up playing taxi to a flyboy astronaut fresh off the shuttle. He-Man had a Battlecat origin episode (named "Battlecat," of course, in which a young Prince Adam rescues then adopts baby Cringer. Awww, how cute!), but we never get the same here. Nor does anyone bother to explain why Warlock has reins but no saddle or stirrups! Just imagine the saddle sores from riding bareback at five thousand feet.

It's also odd that a dragon's fiery breath is so often ineffective. Of course, one can argue that Saturday morning just isn't the place for kids to see bad guys writhing in flames and screaming, which is probably also why Warlock never uses his claws or teeth.

3. Black Holes and Other Forms of Waste Disposal: You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know what a black hole is, or that your chances of surviving a trip through one are virtually nil. Basically what happens is this: once you get sucked over the event horizon (i.e. the rim), you either fall forever (black holes are thought to warp both space and time into a nonlinear form) or you're crushed into a strand of spaghetti, or both.

Black holes are collapsed stars, gone supernova and then fallen in on themselves to form a dense, compact mass. They are simply a hole in the fabric of space; the image one commonly associates with them, that of a swirling cloud with a dark hole at the center, comes when the black hole draws gases off a binary or companion star. They are not potholes, in which you can simply and unwittingly drop into one. Blackstar should have had ample warning before he crossed the event horizon, unless the gravitational pull affected his instruments. There is no logical reason why he should have gone through the black hole except that the writers thought it would be a cool and novel way to get him into an alternate universe. What they were probably after was a wormhole, which is basically a shortcut across the vast distances of space without all the gravitational hassle.

Even so, we could accept the black hole theory if it were a one-shot deal, if for example we were told that a higher power had saved Blackstar from certain death and made certain he landed on Sagar in order to give him the Starsword, etc. It's a deus ex machina situation, sure, and assumes that Blackstar is somehow set apart from the rest of humanity (by what, his talent for one-liners?), but at least it makes sense! Problem is, Blackstar's girlfriend Katana follows him through the singularity and finds him on Sagar (with a whole universe to search, no less! She must have this guy on a tight leash) without any significant damage to her ship.

The animation for the black hole in the episode “Spacewrecked” is truly awful. While the animators might at least have made some token attempt at an image of the swirling whirlpool of stellar matter that we all know and love, instead they give us a circular black cutout. It’s as if someone dropped a blob of black paint on the cel and said There, that’ll do. And if you think that’s bad, the inside of the black hole is worse. You know those colored vertical lines that sometimes run across your T.V. screen? Well, if this episode is to be believed, that’s actually a transmission from the inside of a black hole (below).



Except for the Introduction, we never see Blackstar's ship. If he's stranded on Sagar, it must be little more than a pile of wreckage in the forest; it must have made one hell of an impact, but then why does Blackstar emerge with so few injuries? No broken bones, internal bleeding, scars, post-traumatic stress disorder--just a slight concussion. Airbag technology must really be advanced. And that's a good thing, too, since NASA has obviously lowered its standards in hiring. If nothing else, you have to admit that Blackstar isn’t always the sharpest tool in the drawer, which is quite the opposite of reality. Real-life astronauts are pretty sharp, gutsy people who hold at least one advanced technical degree. Are we really to believe that John-boy here is to be addressed as Doctor? If Blackstar has a Ph.D in anything, it's for picking up chicks and making really bad puns; he's the guy whose college experience usually consists of stacking beer cans at frat parties.

Blink during the Introduction and you might miss that famous shot of Blackstar in the driver's seat of his ship. Strange, we didn't see anybody else in the cockpit with him. Since when does NASA send out one-man shuttle missions?

Blackstar never expresses any remorse about his past. What about his family, his friends? You'd think he'd have something to say, even if only to breathe a sigh of relief that Visa/MasterCard will never, ever find his new mailing address.

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