Nitpicker’s Guide
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10. A Simple Plan: At the beginning of "Tree of Evil," Blackstar tells the Overlord: "Your latest plan almost worked, but we've really got to go." We're never told what the plan was, but you can be sure it was probably more complicated than your basic HTML code.

While watching some of the episodes, stop for a moment and think about the Overlord's latest plan to get the Starsword and conquer the world. Consider this plot from "The Quest": the Overlord knows Blackstar will do anything to help the Trobbits out, so he goes to all the trouble of poisoning a local pond with the hope that at least one or all of the annoying little mites will decide to go skinny-dipping there. Of course, the only cure for the Poison of the Pond is the Healing Stone, which Blackstar will absolutely need to get and which for some reason Our Favorite Bad Guy can't just walk in and take, so he sends one of his minions out to do the deed. Once the Overlord gets the Healing Stone, Blackstar will show up at the Ice Castle, Starsword conveniently in hand, and the Overlord will be able to get his property back with minimum effort.

Are you still following along? Okay, so where in this tangle of twisted logic did we lose you? Was it the fact that the Overlord can't just march in and take the Healing Stone from the desert dwellers?

Let's break this plan down by numbers:
1. Dump the Poison of the Pond into local fishing hole.
2. Hope the Trobbits decide to go fishing. Since the Trobbit diet seems to consist mostly of fish, this is a likely bet.
3. Get a nasty water-serpent to capsize the Trobbit boat and hope none of them can swim.
4. Hope at least one of the Trobbits swallows the poison and is fished out before he drowns.
5. Anticipate Balkar consulting his Book of Spells, with the patented Sagarese Surgeon General's warning: this spell is cool and pure, but the Poison of the Pond it cannot cure.
6. Count on Balkar knowing about the Healing Stone.
7. Blackstar will be in the neighborhood, and will insist on going for the Healing Stone and bringing it back. Note: the plan is no good if he decides to take Poulo with him and heal him on the spot.
8. The Emerald Knight will show up at exactly the same time as Blackstar. She will give him her employer's business card and make off with the Healing Stone.
9. Blackstar will rise to the bait and come to the Ice Castle.


If the Overlord had been a little smarter, he could have dropped items 7 and 8 and simply seized the Healing Stone himself. Well, we know Our Favorite Bad Guy isn't stupid, so what's stopping him? All the desert dwellers really have in the way of defenses are a pair of guards with crossbows mounted on their arms, nothing the Overlord or his Vizir couldn't easily deal with. Then the plan is simply one where if Blackstar wants the Healing Stone, he forks over the Starsword. Problem solved.

All right, so the Overlord already tried this in "Kingdom of Neptul" and it didn't work. And speaking of that episode, there's another convoluted plan to consider:

Again, by the numbers:
1. Cause flooding in the valley of the Sagar Tree.
2. Count on Balkar not having any firefruit in stock.
3. Again, count on Blackstar being in the neighborhood to help with the fruit picking. After all, what else could he possibly have to do on a rainy day?
4. Get Blackstar into the raging flood and sweep him out into the Magnetic Sea.
5. Amp up Neptul's powers, send him out to collect the Starsword and hope he doesn't fuck it up.


This plan is slightly more plausible than the first one, but doesn't quite work out. Blackstar doesn't feel like cooperating with Neptul and, for all his enhanced powers, Neptul's a screw-up. So now it's onto Plan B, which involves taking the Trobbits as hostages. If this had been the original plan, it might actually have worked. Mara probably wouldn't have shown up, which means no Starsword illusion, Blackstar wouldn't have met the Firefolk and Aquaria would have gotten by without having to spend millions to repair its cracked dome.

In "Tree of Evil," the Overlord laments "Must I do everything myself?" Well, if he's learned anything by now, it's that most of his minions just aren't worth a shit; in fact, the goofy lava locs and the Vizir are the only ones that consistently come through with the goods, though we suspect the slick Vizir has some ulterior motives up his sleeve. As for the lava locs, they openly worship the Overlord and aren't bright enough to get any ideas of their own. When the Overlord tells them to get the Starsword, and later, in "Spacewrecked," to get Katana and her ship, they follow his orders to the letter.



All of this, however, begs the ultimate question: if the Overlord wants the Starsword that badly, why doesn't he just gather his forces, march down to the Sagar Tree and take it? The Tree doesn't exactly have any fortifications, and really the most the Overlord would have to deal with is some Trobbits throwing a couple of firefruit grenades at him. It's nothing the man can't handle. Put a couple of lava locs in the front lines as cannon fodder, torch the Sagar Tree and dump Blackstar in the poisoned pond. It's simple, it's direct and it's absolutely guaranteed to work.

Right?

11. By Jove, And Other Cultural Gaffes: While the writers were busy thinking up intelligent dialogue to put into their characters' mouths, they apparently forgot that an alien world means an entirely new bag of cultural references. If any of you have, for example, seen the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok," you know exactly what we're talking about. The phrase "Darmok and Jhalad at Tanagra," used by an alien race that expresses everything in cultural metaphors, refers to a bond of friendship created through mutual struggle. Of course, it takes Jean-Luc Picard a while to figure it out, but once he does he picks up rather quickly and even starts adding a few Earth metaphors to the alien cultural stew.

On a more mundane level, try explaining English figures of speech like "hit the road" to someone whose native language isn't English. They just give you a confused look and wonder if you really want them to punch the concrete.

We're not here to debate why the Sagarese even speak English in the first place, as this is just an accepted convention of most TV science fiction; even the ultra-cool aliens of Farscape have their translator microbes.

When putting clever Earth colloquisms into Blackstar's mouth, the writers forgot that their hero is the only one who is to be allowed such license. If Blackstar wants to blather on about giving Kadray a time-out or make inane sports references in the middle of a battle, that's fine. Incredibly lame sometimes, but acceptable. The kids eat this crap up, anyway. If he wants to use every cuss word known to the English-speaking world when confronting the Overlord, let the man have his fun, even if it earns him some bemused and tolerant looks from his alien companions. Yeah, sure, they must be thinking, John-boy might be the biggest retard this side of the black hole, but that Starsword kicks ass and he looks mighty fine in furry underwear.

Blackstar can have his fun, but nowhere should any of his companions start getting in on the act. In "Search for the Starsword," Terra asks the wood-chomping Carpo if he's building an ark. Where exactly did the Trobbits pick up a reference to Noah's Ark? Okay, you argue, in the absence of comic books or really good porn Blackstar entertained them with fifty of his favorite childhood Bible stories, but it's one thing to enjoy a foreigner's story and quite another to add it to your cultural lexicon.

Of all the characters, Klone is probably the worst offender in the cultural gaff department. In two episodes ("Search for the Starsword" and "Lightning City of the Clouds"), he swears by the god Jove; these episodes were both written by Tom Ruegger, so we can only assume he was asleep during the plausibility development of these two scripts. For those of you who don't know, Jove is another name for the Roman god Jupiter (or, if you prefer, the Greek god Zeus). Unless by some amazingly improbable coincidence there actually is a Sagarese hero or deity named Jove, where in the world did the resident shapeshifter develop this little verbal quirk? Easy, you might argue, he probably got it from Blackstar. Haven't you ever imitated the speech and mannerisms of someone you admired?

But if that's true, where are Klone's corny one-liners, and when was the last time you heard Blackstar swear by Jove?

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