SilverHawks Sunday XII: Bat-Month

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Batjet:

Released in 1990 as part of Kenner's toyline tying into the 1989 Batman movie, the Batjet sported spring-loaded pop-out wings and a launching Bat-shaped nosecone/missile. It was a pretty cool vehicle, all things considered, but it didn't bear much resemblance to anything Batman used in the movie. It's worth mentioning that it was also made by Kenner, who were notorious for reusing molds (to the point where the Robin Hood figure from the "Prince of Thieves" line has a "G" on his belt...because he used to be a Super Powers Green Arrow figure). So it's not entirely surprising to find:

The Sprint Hawk--which, contrary to the box art, was primarily Quicksilver's ship. Released in 1987, the Sprint Hawk features spring-loaded pop-out wings and a launching beak-shaped nosecone/missile. It even sports a perch on top for one of the SilverHawks' companion birds to hitch a ride!

I'm not sure why Batman's Batjet has a perch on top. Maybe it's cheaper than putting another seat in for Robin. Hang on tight, chum!

SilverHawks Sunday XI: Odd Cyborg Out

All the SilverHawks have individual quirks--Quicksilver controls Tally Hawk, the twins have a telepathic link, Copper Kidd has his cool frisbees--but they all had the same basic abilities: wings, boot jets, heel talons, shoulder lasers, face masks, etc.

All except Bluegrass. He has no wings, he never uses a mask like the others, he doesn't have shoulder lasers, and I don't recall him ever displaying boot jets or heel talons. Heck, his name doesn't even fit the scheme; while every other SilverHawk has the name of a metal in his or her codename, Bluegrass gets a variety of plant. Of the original SilverHawks characters, only Commander Stargazer shares these different attributes, and that might be due to his status as an earlier model.

Bluegrass, naturally, has individual traits to make up for these differences. I mentioned his weaponized guitar and sound system, Hot Licks, which seems to be a considerably powerful, if overly stylistic, weapon--at least as powerful as the SilverHawks' shoulder lasers. He is the team's pilot, which means he does most of his flying in the Miraj, or in the Hot Seat, the Miraj's detachable cockpit (and I believe it houses or interfaces with the Hot Licks system). He's no slouch, but he's perhaps a little overdependent on external devices for his abilities.

I can't help but wondering why he has these differences. Looking at a list of typical U.S. police rankings, and assuming they have some application to the police force of the distant future in another galaxy, it would seem that Colonel Bluegrass is the highest ranking member of the SilverHawks, likely just under Commander Stargazer. This is in line with Stargazer's comment in the second episode, though somewhat odd given Lieutenant Quicksilver's position as de facto team leader and general protagonist. It's possible that ranks become fluid in the mean streets of the Limbo galaxy and Bluegrass recognizes Quicksilver's natural leadership skills, or that Quicksilver is a field leader despite being a lower rank. Or something else; it's pretty unlikely that there'll be a canonical answer.

Given all that, though, it's possible that only the lower-ranking officers are the ones issued the personal weapons and modes of personal transport. This isn't entirely unreasonable; aside from some adventures that we never (as I recall) see, Stargazer basically has a desk job. Bluegrass sees his share of action, though, and they sent him to Limbo knowing what part he'd be playing on the team, so it's not as though he was being groomed for a desk job himself.

On the other hand, it's possible that the powers that be deemed that Bluegrass's de facto position as heavy weapons specialist (given that he's the pilot and the only one with specialized weaponry) made built-in weapons and flight capability unnecessary. This makes sense at first, but it seems to me like giving a soldier a bazooka and not a pistol. Sure, his guitar is pretty cool, but if he ever happens to not have it for one reason or another, he's kind of out of luck. Whatever organization is behind the SilverHawks must be operating on a pretty thin budget if they can't afford a set of just-in-case lasers for guy who's piloting their most advanced spacecraft. Then again, they're staffing an entire galaxy with a police force of six people and a bird (apparently a five-person increase from the previous assignment), so that might actually be the case. I'm not entirely sure that I'd be willing to entrust my body, my health, and the next few hundred years of my life to an organization that's so eager to cut corners.

There's also the possibility that something about Bluegrass's construction is designed to enhance his piloting abilities or to give him some kind of connection to Hot Licks. This is the most charitable explanation for the SilverHawks' parent organization, but I'm not sure how well-supported it is by the series. It'll be interesting to see if other characters pilot the Miraj or operate Hot Licks ever, since that would give us some idea about the validity of this theory.

The good news is that Bluegrass isn't totally alone in his situation...at least, not permanently. Eventually we'll meet wingless Condor, who has his own jetpack. In the meantime, Bluegrass remains our little anomaly.

SilverHawks Sunday X: Memories

With the week I've had, It's going to be a short installment. But, given that we're ten weeks in--and I haven't missed one yet!--it seems like a good week to take a time out. So, to those countless thousands who've been following this series, I ask a question:

How many of you watched this show?

I don't mean it to be confrontational, I'm just curious if this series is nostalgia bait for anyone else. Whether you watched it on Cartoon Network in 2000 or in syndication in '86, I'm curious how many people are coming to this series with a background in Limbo Studies.

SilverHawks Sunday IX: Journey to Limbo

The second part of the SilverHawks opener begins with a brief recap of the previous episode's events--namely Mon*Star's escape and Stargazer's call for backup. After the theme song and title card, we open with the Miraj--and the SilverHawks inside--just about to arrive at Hawk Haven. Quicksilver mentions that it's going to be their home "for the next few centuries," which means that these cybernetics impart some pretty serious life extension.

It brings up some interesting questions about the reasons for the SilverHawks' cybernetics. We know from the first episode that unaugmented humans can't survive the journey to the Limbo galaxy, but we're never told why. Is it because of the various hazards of space travel--stellar radiation, micrometeoroids, cosmic rays, hostile aliens, extreme temperatures, vacuum conditions, prolonged exposure to microgravity, etc.? Or might it be because of the time necessary? We don't get any indication of how long it takes to get from the Milky Way to Limbo. Even with translight travel, it might have been months or years since Stargazer sent his request. Now, I seem to recall that later episodes have travels between the planets that don't take that long, so it's certainly possible that the backup is swift, but it's an interesting thing to think about--especially when the pilot of the show's spiritual predecessor centered around the long timespans involved in interplanetary travel.

It's also worth considering that the SilverHawks are apparently expecting a multi-century tour of duty. We might not be too far out from space missions that require multiple years away from Earth, but hundreds of years is a somewhat more significant commitment. It must be prohibitively expensive to conduct this augmentation procedure and to send people to Limbo; otherwise, why only send a team of five to act as space police for a whole galaxy, and why require them to stay for such a long time?

The SilverHawks (except Bluegrass) leave the Miraj to "stretch their wings" and land in Hawk Haven's hangar on their own, followed by Bluegrass in the ship. Stargazer's voice over the intercom leads them up the turbolift, past the metallic main room, full of computers and equipment, down to Stargazer's office. The long metal hallway terminates in a plain wooden door with a smoked glass window, with Stargazer's name and title stenciled on in the style of a 1930s Private Eye office. That motif continues when we see his office, which has wood paneling and furniture, slightly stained walls and a tattered map of something behind an old wooden desk. The best detail is the normal office window, looking out onto the blackness of outer space, adorned by a crooked set of venetian blinds. The juxtaposition isn't subtle--nor is Stargazer's mix of suspenders and bionics--but it's a really clever touch. While I don't think it'll last, the show is set up to be a police procedural in space, and while "space police" isn't exactly an original idea, I've never really seen one done like a "Law and Order." If they revived SilverHawks as a movie or live-action series, I'd be interested in seeing this as the basic concept. And in casting Dann Florek or J.K. Simmons as Cmdr. Stargazer.

The introductions are (necessarily and thankfully) brief, and show off some of Stargazer's charm. He mentions that he's never been to the Planet of the Mimes, Copper Kidd's homeworld, and he says that Bluegrass seems a little young to be a colonel. Bluegrass replies that he's just naturally talented (with an "aww, shucks" to boot), but I think this is a nice way to tie in his relationship with Copper Kidd. If Bluegrass was particularly young as he made his way through the ranks, he probably got some flak and skepticism because of it. This puts him in a good position to recognize those same talents in Copper Kidd, since the Kidd's youth might make other people overlook his abilities. By taking Kidd under his wing and tutoring him, Bluegrass is providing the Kidd with a support structure that he might have lacked as he went through the process.

Stargazer begins the debriefing, using a viewscreen that's hidden behind a recessed bookcase, another nice touch (and reminiscent of "Get Smart," as I recall). He shows them Brin*Star, a planet (strangely enough) with a star-shaped hole in the crust, beneath which is the Mob's headquarters, which is nearly indestructible. This segues into a scene with Mon*Star and his snake-like henchman Yes-Man. With a name like "Yes-Man," I guess your career path is pretty much laid out for you from the start. Yes-Man informs Mon*Star that the SilverHawks have arrived (news travels fast in Limbo), and Mon*Star decides to give them a proper welcome. He heads to the transformation chamber, and it occurs to me that it's the first time we actually see it in the series. Yes-Man works the controls, which activate jets on the other side of Brin*Star, rotating the entire planet so that the star-shaped hole above Mob headquarters is aimed at the Moon*Star. Mon*Star's weird throne has some wicked claws that close in over his head as he begins the incantation, with some machinery focusing the Moon*Star's energy on him, and he begins the transformation sequence.

This suggests some interesting things about Mon*Star's power source. We saw in "The Origin Story" that he could transform without all this apparatus, but in that case, why build the machines? I suspect it has to do with the fact that the Moon*Star in the first episode was undergoing an energetic burst. That explains some of why Mon*Star was so desperate; if the burst is a rare or periodic thing, then it's not like any old glimpse at the star would give him the necessary power. Since he's going to need to transform more frequently than the Moon*Star bursts occur, he's built an apparatus to focus the energy, amplifying it to have the same effect as an intense burst. I'll be interested to see if the series is consistent on this implication; the ability to reuse this stock footage episode after episode suggests to me that they probably will, even if it's only by accident.

It's worth mentioning here that the transformation is quicker and not quite as impressive as the one in the first episode (probably because this two-parter was designed to be shown as one long episode on video and such, and that would have been particularly repetitive), and that he transforms Sky Runner from space squid to armored squid-based vehicle after the transformation as well. Mon*Star orders Yes-Man to "call all the boys together" and load up the weapons into the "space-limos" for the assault on Hawk Haven. I sometimes forget that this show is designed as a battle between police and Mafia analogues; maybe instead of a police procedural, it's actually "The Untouchables" in space. Sean Connery as Stargazer?

Tally Hawk, Stargazer's pet cyborg hawk (who I always thought was a bald eagle of some sort, but now I see the coloring's wrong for that), returns to Hawk Haven from space, and Stargazer introduces him. Like the SilverHawks, Tally Hawk is partly metal and partly real. Bluegrass asks if he does anything more than look mean, and Tally Hawk turns to the viewscreen, using his eyes to project footage of Mon*Star leaving to attack. Stargazer explains Tally Hawk's role: "He's a spy satellite, scout, interceptor," then gives Quicksilver the bracelet that has his control panel. Naturally, the red alert starts going off, as the Mob approaches and begins their assault.

Quicksilver sends Tally Hawk out first to counter the assault, and the bird does really well. It's clear that he's not just a remote-controlled airplane or anything; while the control panel has a button to "call him back," he's pretty autonomous (and effective) in combat. Could the SilverHawks program have evolved out of We3? Incidentally, the battle music in this scene is really cool.

With the full might of the Mob bearing down on them, it becomes clear that falconry alone isn't going to save the day. Quicksilver asks Bluegrass if he's ready. The Colonel replies, "Ready as a rooster in a henhouse!"

Now, I like Bluegrass, and I really would prefer not to make any off-color inbred hick jokes about him, but with a comment like that, I have to wonder...what exactly is he planning to do to the Mob?

Stargazer, clearly talking about Bluegrass's guitar, asks, "Wanna leave that toy behind, Colonel Bluegrass?" Bluegrass responds, "you ever see a toy like this?" Why, yes I have. Two, in fact. He then demonstrates his guitar's ability to shoot...something or other. It's clearly a musical staff, but it behaves like a cross between a normal beam weapon and a Green Lantern ring. This sets up a nice bit of dialogue, though:

Steelheart: What was that, sheriff?

Bluegrass: E-flat, lady. E-flat major.

Steelwill: She's a sergeant, Colonel.

Rimshot!

Now, I haven't pulled out my chromatic tuner, but I'm pretty sure that Bluegrass played more than just an E-flat...assuming he played that somewhere in the screeching hair metal riff that he played. You know, I'm not sure which is worse: that Bluegrass took the opportunity to fire his weapon in the main computer room, or that it didn't do any damage. You're right, Bluegrass, it's not a toy. It's a laser rock show.

The Mob is really starting to do some damage to Hawk Haven, and the Hawks join the fray in the Miraj. The Mob initially thinks they're retreating, but then the individual Hawks release from the Miraj and show off their maneuvers. They fire on Sky Runner, then scatter when Mon*Star fires back. Tally Hawk fires some eye beams at Mon*Star and actually knocks him out of his seat. Kind of bad for the main villain to be beaten by the team mascot in the first fight.

Tally Hawk was apparently just getting Mon*Star out of the way so he could go after Sky Runner. They fire at one another, then collide in a pretty big explosion that leaves them both smoldering and...uh, falling. Okay, they're pretty close to Hawk Haven, maybe they're caught in its gravitational pull. Still, I'm pretty sure smoke doesn't behave that way in space.

This little mini-fight is interesting, suggesting that Mon*Star and Stargazer's pets have the same kind of rivalry that their masters have, but I can't help but feel a little bad for Sky Runner here. In the first episode, he fought Mon*Star, resisting servitude, which paints him as a victim of sorts. Now, these aren't human animals like, say, Battle Cat, but at least Tally Hawk develops a pretty distinct personality over the course of the series. This is a nice character moment between two beings for whom characterization would be moderately unexpected.

The space dogfight continues, bringing us to the series' first battle of the bands. Bluegrass already introduced Chekov's guitar (part of his weaponized sound system, "Hot Licks"), and now we meet his rival. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Melodia:


Two-tone green hair, music note-shaped sunglasses, pink thigh-high boots, fingerless gloves, and a laser keytar. I love the '80s.

They fire music at each other ("You wanna jam, lady? Let's jam!"), with some spectacular results:

But eventually the feedback causes an explosion that sends Melodia's space-limo spiraling. The SilverHawks clearly have the upper hand, as both limos are crashing onto Hawk Haven's rocky exterior. Buzz-Saw tears a pretty big gash in the bottom of the Hot Seat, and Bluegrass retaliates by shooting the robot with his guitar. The beam pierces right through Buzz-Saw, and blows him up. I take back what I said about the laser rock show--it just killed one of the main villains! Sure, he's a robot, and will likely be the villains' equivalent of Red Tornado, but that still seems unexpected and bold.

The battle continues, each of the SilverHawks taking on one of the Mob (more or less). Copper Kidd shows off his electric frisbees (a topic for a future post), and Mon*Star chases Quicksilver in circles. Eventually, Quicksilver lets a smokescreen out from his boot jets, and Mon*Star flies into it. The SilverHawks all fire into the cloud, and eventually Mon*Star calls for a retreat.

Stargazer strolls out and says "Nice try, SilverHawks." This comes as a bit of a shock initially--"villains retreating" is kind of the gold standard for victory in '80s cartoons--and Bluegrass says as much, but Quicksilver says that Stargazer's right: Mon*Star and the Mob are still free. The SilverHawks, remember, aren't your average '80s cartoon superheroes, fighting the villains until they give up and run back to their base. They're the police, and they just let the criminals escape. What would have been a victory for G.I. Joe or He-Man constitutes getting their shiny metal asses handed to them in light of their job, which is to capture the Mob. This presents an interesting situation; in these cartoons (as in most things), status quo is god. But in order to maintain the status quo, where our heroes are continuously chasing after the Mob, the heroes must consistently fail in their duties. This either sets the Mob up as the most competent villains in the '80s cartoon pantheon, or the SilverHawks as the most inept heroes, and I'm inclined to go with the former. The SilverHawks, by the nature of their positions, have the bar for victory set significantly higher than your average cartoon hero, and that presents a very interesting situation.

The episode ends, as most (if not all) of the subsequent ones will, with Copper Kidd and Bluegrass's training session. The Kidd is in a simulator shaped like the Hot Seat, practicing his flying. He narrowly avoids hitting a perfectly spherical crater-ridden object (I guess this is a holographic simulator), and Bluegrass asks him to name it. Turns out it's an asteroid, and while I wouldn't be entirely surprised by that, most asteroids in popular depictions are more elliptical. According to this article, older asteroids tend to be more spherical, so it's possible that this asteroid is just particularly ancient. Bluegrass then asks the Kidd to identify what asteroids are mostly made of, between stone, dust, metal, and ice--and he helpfully notes that there's more than one correct answer. Copper Kidd correctly picks stone and metal. So far, so good; I hope the subsequent ventures into science fact are as uncontroversial and straightforward as this one.

SilverHawks Sunday VIII: Getting a grip

This is the Miraj:

This is the underside of the Miraj.

That black strip? It does this:

It has a handle. Now, it's not alone in that (after all, the villain vehicle/space squid Sky Runner has one too), but it's among very few toys I know of where the handle is recessed and...well, optional. Most action figure vehicles don't even think about handles, and most of the ones that do either try to make them inconspicuous by making them part of the design (like He-Man's Blasterhawk) or throw inconspicuousness to the wind and just slap a handle on it (like He-Man's Talon Fighter).

The recessed handle is a really smart move. It recognizes the need for play practicality--kids have small hands, space opera dogfights are hard to do with awkwardly-weighted plastic ships full of figures, you have to set it down in order to fire the missiles, etc.--while also recognizing the importance of aesthetics and the fridge logic that might result from slapping on a handle ("Who does He-Man expect to be holding his ship, and why would he accommodate them?). A lot of times, functionality and form are at odds with one another, but I think this strikes a great balance that maximizes both. It's a small thing, but it's worth pointing out and commending, at least.

SilverHawks Sunday VII: Partly metal, partly real

I've never really given much thought to it, and I wouldn't actually call myself a "transhumanist," but I really don't have a problem with transhumanism. Using technology to improve ourselves and our abilities isn't a very controversial idea to me, but then, I wear glasses.

There are ethical concerns, to be sure, but I'm not certain how much they actually apply to things like cybernetics and bionics. We are already increasingly electronic; how many of us carry around smart phones and Bluetooth headsets*? I think we're a long way away from implants and replacement parts, but these attachments and accessories are a pretty close approximation. I'm not sure how much advantage there would be to a Bluetooth implant (for instance), aside from perhaps greater speed, but I know such concepts are in development (and there are some--like that sonar sensor--which do seem quite useful). And I'd be hard-pressed to see the significant difference between bionic limbs and some of the prostheses we have now. Sure, they're more advanced, and they may eventually mimic things like sensation, but morally and ethically I think they're pretty equivalent.

The real risks come from genetic modification, because there's a slippery slope toward Gattaca and similar eugenics nightmares. That being said, I'm a major proponent of GM with respect to crops and research, and I don't see any problem with the basic concept of applying it to humans in order to eliminate debilitating congenital defects and diseases and to extend and improve the quality of life in general. Obviously there would be details to hammer out, and there would be people who would abuse or try to abuse it, but the minor sorts of modifications that would be realistic and researched would, I think, present very little in the way of ethical issues.

Regardless of the realities, though, the idea that such modifications would result in a loss of humanity (and further, that such a loss would be generally undesirable) is very common in sci-fi, and particularly so in cartoons. I suppose that it's so common in children's stories because it's not only easily understandable, but it's also fairly uncontroversial (largely because it's fairly unrealistic, always a few decades away from any real relevance). It's hard to find stories involving cyborgs or other transhumans that don't either paint the modified characters in a negative light or explore the "machines dehumanize" moral. The only cyborgs I can remember in ThunderCats were the villainous Capt. Cracker and the Berserkers. He-Man had a few (Snout Spout, Mekaneck), but never even acknowledged that they were cyborgs in the cartoon** (as far as I can recall). Examples of this happening in the minicomics (Extendar is a notable example) were generally presented in the same negative, dehumanizing light. She-Ra's protagonists were almost universally the agrarian Rebels, while the only arguable cyborgs (such as Hordak) were members of the industrial Horde. This has always been an aspect of Cyborg's character, so naturally it was dealt with a few times in Teen Titans. Coldstone in Gargoyles suffered from this (also, he was a bit of a Frankenstein's monster), and there were similar sentiments in the Pack when Hyena, Jackal, and Wolf went in for cybernetics and gene splicing. This trope even shows up in some pretty unexpected places--like Transformers. I'm specifically thinking of "Autobot Spike," where having his brain downloaded into a robot body (albeit again, a pretty Frankenstein's monster sort of one) makes Spike violent and crazy. Even more bizarre is how this trope was a bedrock theme in Beast Machines. This one-sidedness is made all the more strange by that other staple moral of kids' sci-fi, that robots are people too. Just about the only

So given the generally negative attitude sci-fi, and children's sci-fi in particular, takes toward cyborgs, it's refreshing and surprising to see SilverHawks turn the trope on its head***. Not only are all the heroes cyborgs, but for the most part, only the heroes are cyborgs. Of the villainous leads, only Mon*Star could reasonably be called a cyborg, and that's only when he's powered up by the apparently mystical energies of the Moon*Star.

I don't know if the "dehumanizing" theme ever comes up in the series, but I doubt it--the series' belittling tagline (quoted in the post title) notwithstanding. I seem to recall the twins' bionic hearts coming up once more later on, but I don't think it's in that sort of negative context. "The Origin Story" treated the bionics as a routine necessity, not entirely desirable, but also not ethically troubling. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on this theme as I continue this series, but it's interesting to see a kids' cartoon--from an era where depth wasn't exactly their strong suit--bucking the general trend of popular science fiction.

---

*I don't, but only because I don't want to be turned into a Cyberman.
**This may make He-Man, then, one of the most progressive shows with regard to transhumans--that their conditions are unremarkable, except inasmuch as they give them superpowers. Alternately, it could just be that Mekaneck and Snout Spout in their ilk were very minor characters who only appeared in a tiny handful of episodes.
***The only other series I can remember that had major cyborg heroes were Bionic Six and C.O.P.S.--with only one hero (as I recall) in the latter case.

SilverHawks Sunday VI: Another hit

As I mentioned last week, I was kind of surprised by the depth given to Mon*Star's character in the series' first episode. It was odd enough that they'd spend the entire first act introducing us to the villain; the way he was introduced, though, was even stranger.

Let me remind you a bit about the state of cartoon supervillains in the '80s: they weren't deep. The vast majority of them were evil for no apparent reason. When Skeletor explained his motivation for doing bad things (in "The Christmas Special," where his holiday-induced character derailment actually represented some decent character development), he said "I like feeling evil." Megatron's motivation was apparently the acquisition of power and energy, no matter what the cost. At least Galvatron was crazy. Cobra Commander was a straightforward megalomaniac. Even Mumm-Ra only wanted the power of the Eye of Thundera...it took most of the series before his character developed beyond that. Their characters are almost universally defined in the broadest of strokes: insulting the protagonist, devising elaborately doomed schemes, retreating effectively, vowing revenge. Lather, rinse, repeat, until cancellation.

And to be honest, I don't recall Mon*Star ever rising above the bar set by those contemporaries. It's certainly possible, but I think his prime motivations were still the acquisition of money and power, and revenge on Stargazer. But for that first act, there sure seemed to be some fantastic potential. Mon*Star doesn't begin the series with some grand show of power. The Mutants nearly committed genocide in the first episode of ThunderCats, and even though He-Man never had an origin episode, the first aired ("Diamond Ray of Disappearance") still features Skeletor defeating the Sorceress and nearly banishing our hero to another dimension. Mon*Star starts the series in a jail cell. He comes across as nothing less than desperate, bribing, threatening, and even begging the guards to allow him to see the Moon*Star burst.

That isn't the behavior of a terrifying supervillain, that's the behavior of a junkie.

Imprisoned in Penal Planet 10, it's been a long time since Mon*Star had his last fix. When the guards seal his window, he pounds at it relentlessly, shouting "No! This may be my last chance!" When he finally cracks the barrier, letting a sliver of light fall onto his eye, he quivers for a moment, then says "Yes! Yes! Give me your power, your energy!" Since he first appeared on screen, he's been throwing himself at the bars against his window, clawing at the guards through the bars in the door, and moving continually, frantically. When that light hits him, for the first time since he showed on screen, he calms down. In fact, the camera (such as it is) goes to a slow motion effect as the countdown nears its end and the starburst nears its apex.

Mon*Star speaks the power chant and transforms--and let's consider that chant for a moment. On first glance, it's pretty much exactly what Mumm-Ra's incantation is in ThunderCats--imploring some external entity for its power, which transforms the summoner into a more powerful form (incidentally, now that I think of it, this was an interesting reversal of the He-Man/She-Ra model, where the hero is the one with the transformation sequence--in both SilverHawks and ThunderCats, only the villains seem to have Prince Adam-esque alternate forms). Mumm-Ra's is slightly different; he wants to transform from "this decayed form" into "Mumm-Ra the Everliving." It was years before I realized that the "Everliving" part was actually significant. Sure, he's still Mumm-Ra when he's in the red robe and bandages, but he's not Mumm-Ra the Everliving any more than all the Voltron lions together-but-unconnected are Voltron, or something.

There's no such honorific with Mon*Star. When he summons the power of the Moon*Star, he asks it to give him "the might, the muscle, the menace, of Mon*Star." I'm sure I'm reading a bit too far into this at this point, but the implication is one of incompleteness. The Moon*Star's power doesn't change him from Mon*Star into Mon*Star the Omnipotent or Mon*Star the Destroyer, it just changes him into Mon*Star. It's the children's sci-fi equivalent of the people who take drugs to feel "normal" or "more like themselves," to fill some personal void.

When Mon*Star transforms, he nonchalantly, casually, almost mechanically, tears the wall off his cell. The guards open the doors to stop him, and he merely turns around calmly, implacably, while the robotic one shoots at him. The blast is apparently absorbed and redirected, though Mon*Star stays motionless and aloof, hitting and destroying the robotic guard. He then leaves his cell through the hole where the window was, proclaiming his freedom to a distant Stargazer.

And then we see him effortlessly re-tame his giant space squid.

I remember mentioning that '80s cartoon supervillains, when introduced, tended to get some major demonstration of their power, to show that they actually pose a threat to heroes (so perhaps we can suspend our disbelief for the next 129 consecutive defeats). Watching Mon*Star go from neurotic and desperate to destructively and mercilessly cold over the course of a single act is particularly effective at doing just that. We didn't even need to see him interact with the protagonists at all, Mon*Star acts as his own point of comparison. If the Moon*Star is powerful enough that it can turn a sniveling convict into Darth Vader, then our protagonists are in for an uphill battle.

If there's one thing that all '80s supervillains had in common, it was a desire for power. Mon*Star is the only one I remember who made that desire into a literal addiction. Mon*Star is a power junkie, empty and impotent without the influence of the Moon*Star's energy, but brutally effective with it. If the show followed through with this (and I don't remember it doing so), it would have been downright brilliant. Regardless, this was a magnificent introduction to the character, and in a single act, it provided us with more characterization than most of his contemporaries received over entire seasons.

SilverHawks Sunday V: "The Origin Story"

"The Origin Story" is the first episode of SilverHawks, and watching it again for the first time in a decade or so reminds me of how odd and unconventional it is--and makes me glad I started doing this series, because it ought to make for some interesting posts.

While origin stories tend to be the norm in comic books, movie series, and pretty much all other literature and media, children's television shows often bypass that whole process. Part of the reasoning, I imagine, is due to the way kids' shows are syndicated; having a loose continuity or none whatsoever allows episodes to be broadcast continuously in any order, while progressions of events might lead to confusion or other problems. I imagine the way kids' shows tend to be written (with many episodes being developed at any given time) and other aspects of the production process have some bearing on this as well. Lots of series just relay the origin through the opening or theme song and call it a day.

SilverHawks' origin episode stands out for other reasons, though. After the theme song, the titular characters don't actually appear until halfway (or later--I wasn't watching the clock) through the episode. The entire first act is actually more of an introduction to the villains than the heroes. We begin with Commander Stargazer contacting some central authority to notify them of a breakout on Penal Planet 10 and to request backup to deal with it.

This flashback sets the stage for quite a lot of the show's key elements. We learn that the year is 2839*, and that Mon*Star is imprisoned on the Penal Planet in the Galaxy of Limbo (where the vast majority of the series' action takes place), put there by Stargazer himself (after his last escape).

The Penal Planet is located relatively close to the Moon*Star, a red celestial object that undergoes periodic bursts. There's another planetary object in between the Moon*Star and the Penal Planet, keeping it eclipsed. What would make the most sense** to me is if that object were the Penal Planet's moon, which perpetually eclipses the Moon*Star from the planet's perspective, except for periodic occasions when the moon moves out of its way. We first see the Moon*Star in eclipse--a crater-ridden planetary object with a red halo around it, so that would make the name sensible at the very least. It's worth mentioning, too, that the Penal Planet is apparently artificial, or at least largely artificial, since it looks like a brown version of the old JLA satellite. That would remove some of the ridiculous odds it would take to create this cosmic dance where the moon perpetually obscured the star from the planet's point of view, and we can just assume that the Penal Planet is mechanized enough that it maintains a somewhat variable orbit.

Anyway, the Moon*Star is undergoing a burst, and "this time" it's pointed at the Penal Planet. Over the next several scenes, the moon moves out of the way, allowing the full brunt of the burst to shine onto the Penal Planet.

The guards seal off the window to Mon*Star's cell in order to keep out the light from the Moon*Star. Mon*Star insults the guards, then tries to bribe them, then begs (!) with them to let him see it, even going so far as to say that they could trust him. The guards won't fall for it; they know Mon*Star isn't allowed to see the light from the Moon*Star, and they know what happened to the last guard who trusted him (which, it's implied, led to his last escape). So, um, not to second-guess the warden or anything, but if it's that dangerous to let Mon*Star see the Moon*Star, then why not give him an interior room?

As the star burst nears its apex (we know, because there's a voiceover countdown through the prison--again, don't you think it might have been a better idea to keep Mon*Star in the dark about this?), Mon*Star desperately punches at the metal plate covering his window, denting it pretty impressively. Eventually, he cracks it, and the red light of the Moon*Star shines in onto his eye...patch? I've never been entirely clear on Mon*Star's facial anatomy. The star burst countdown reaches zero, and Mon*Star does his transformation chant ("Moon*Star of Limbo, give me the might, the muscle, the menace, of Mon*Star!"). This turns him from a mostly furry guy with Lion-O's haircut into...well, this:

He proceeds to tear the wall off his cell, then destroy the robotic guard (with its own reflected laser blast).

Mon*Star escapes into space, where he almost immediately ends up in a Darkness video. He encounters Sky-Runner, his pet/mount, which is a giant laser-shooting space squid***.

I'm reminded once again why I loved this show.

Sky-Runner has gone feral during Mon*Star's time in the pokey (or just doesn't want to be pet to an evil intergalactic mob boss anymore), and so it attacks its former master. Eventually, Mon*Star subdues it with the "Light Star," an energy shuriken from his eye (no longer a patch, but with the same star-shaped pattern) which encases the squid's body in the mechanical armor that forms his seat.

We cut back to Stargazer's transmission, where he explains that Mon*Star returned to the Penal Planet and freed his henchmen, collectively known as "the Mob." Stargazer gives a capsulized bio on each member (something I'll be doing in future posts), then reiterates his call for help.

The second act begins with the narrator (who I'm pretty sure is Larry "Lion-O" Kenney, doing his best impression of the Super Friends narrator) bringing us back to Earth, where a team is being formed to assist Stargazer. A General who looks like he'd be at home in Gundam or Robotech and a Professor who looks moderately Vulcan are meeting to discuss the new team. They give the brief overview, mentioning the real names of the various SilverHawks for one of the very few times ever in the series--and as far as I know, we never do find out what Bluegrass or Stargazer's real names are, or if the Copper Kidd even has one. The general laments that they can't just send the team as they are, and the Professor replies: "One day we'll be able to send an ordinary person one hundred light years into space, General, but right now we can only send one who is partly metal and partly real."

If you listened to the theme song a few posts ago, theh you'll recognize that last phrase as one of the show's taglines. It's always bugged me a bit; I mean, metal is just as real as flesh and bone. I get the point, and I understand the need to rhyme, but it seems to undermine a bit the show's commitment to bionic heroes.

I digress. Immediately after this SilverHawk introduction, the Professor does a diagnostic check on their upgrades. During this check, the twins' (Emily "Steelheart" Hart and Will "Steelwill" Hart) have some kind of heart malfunctions. This causes tension and suspense for all of a second, until the Professor nonchalantly says they'll be fitted with mechanical hearts, and that they'll be fine. The General remarks that this makes their new codenames particularly fitting

Now, the diagnostic scene is very well done, with some top-notch animation. But they go through the shoulders, arms, heels, and left hands**** on the wireframe representation, and I'm not seeing a whole lot of flesh, bone, muscle, or anything else that would benefit from blood pumping. The SilverHawks are, outwardly, mostly metal, with only a face and one arm each to suggest that they're not completely mechanical. I suppose that would require some further underlying organic tissue, but I can't help but wonder how much their hearts actually do. I honestly don't know if this detail ever comes up in the series again, though I suspect it plays a role in the second episode, which an unspoken "part 2" to the series intro.

The next scene is a test run of various aspects of the series' technology--the SilverHawks' individual abilities (retractable wings and flight/gliding, boot jets, shoulder- and heel-mounted lasers) and their spaceship, the Miraj, in particular. It's a good introduction to the core concepts--each Hawk has his or her own pod in the ship, with Bluegrass as the pilot in the "Hot Seat." The winged hawks can launch from the pods, and the Hot Seat can detach from the main ship and fly solo. The main ship can become invisible (hence the name--"mirage"), but I think it may only be once the Hot Seat has detached, making it a pretty ineffective cloaking device. Regardless, the toy was freaking awesome.

The scene is pretty standard, with the SilverHawks destroying a combat training drone and demonstrating some of the standard combat techniques for the show. What is notable is that the only member of the main group to have any substantial dialogue is Bluegrass. The entire rest of the team--the stars of the show, who have only just now shown up in their introductory episode--has a grand total of two lines: each counting off and saying "release" when they launch from the Miraj. And that's it, for the entire episode.

So, like I said, an unconventional first episode. There are some good moments of suspense and action (the prison break, the combat training) and some more tacked-on ones (the artificial tension about the artificial hearts), and it really does a good job of laying out the exposition without too many huge infodumps. We learn where and when (roughly) the series will be taking place, who the main cast members are, what our protagonists' abilities are, and so forth. The bit where Stargazer is explaining who got sprung from the Penal Planet feels like it was lifted right out of the Series Bible or something, but other than that, they did a good job of building the universe. The animation is very good; ThunderCats was one of the bar-setters with animation on '80s TV, and this is clearly in the same style. I didn't really notice until the fight scene, but I'm about 95% certain that the background music is pulled directly from ThunderCats. I'm sure the fight/chase music is, and I think the Mon*Star transformation and Mumm-Ra transformations might be using the same cues as well. To hit a more meta point, there are already quite a few details I'd like to unpack about the show, and I'm curious to see how they pan out in future installments.

There were two other segments to this initial episode. One was an introduction, which I'd like to talk about in a future post, and the other is a different sort of introduction. As I mentioned in the first post, each episode ends with Bluegrass giving Copper Kidd a quiz about astronomical facts, much like the "knowing is half the battle" segments on G.I. Joe. These after-show moral segments tended to be largely disconnected from the series proper (even if they dealt with themes from the episode), so it was surprising to see this one build organically out of the story. Bluegrass comes back to the Miraj on the landing pad, and he sees Copper Kidd sitting in the Hot Seat, pretending to fly it. He asks the Kidd if he wants to be a pilot, and gets an affirmative response. He says that it's one thing to learn to fly the ship, but it's quite another to navigate through space, so he gives the Kidd a brief quiz about space, starting with Earth's solar system. After Copper Kidd passes the quiz, Bluegrass offers to train him in the simulator on Hawk Haven (the SilverHawks Limbo HQ), teaching him "all there is to know about the universe," and if he passes, he'll qualify for flight training. This is a neat development, and represents pretty much the only interaction we have between protagonists in the episode. I recall, in the misty depths of decades-old memory, that Copper Kidd's flight training does in fact come up within the plots of a couple of episodes at some point, which ties these segments into the episodes better than almost any other contemporary series I can think of.

And that's it for this week, squeezing in just before I can't reasonably call this "Sunday" anymore.

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*According to some galactic standard, in a different galaxy, and there are apparently 38 hours in a day, so whether or not this means it's 830 years into the future (or 850-ish, since this was made in the '80s) is unclear.

**Note that my inevitably futile and frustrating attempts to make sense of the astronomy in SilverHawks begin here.

***Hm...between the giant space squid and the guitars that shoot musical energy, I'm beginning to think that The Darkness were channeling SilverHawks for that video).

****It took me a little while to figure out why they would specify left hands, but I think it's because all but two of the Hawks have unarmored right hands. That's still only three of the five, so it seems like a more general statement would have fit the scene better.

Silverhawks Sunday IV: Diversity

Masters of the Universe, as a toyline, debuted in 1981. Clamp Champ*, the series' first black figure, was released in 1986, in one of the last waves of toys produced. The entire line had precisely three female figures. The story is pretty much the same for She-Ra--Netossa didn't show up until the last wave, although unlike Clamp Champ, at least she made it onto the TV series. Unless you count horses, the only males in the group were Bow and Kowl--though the shows had significant crossover appeal, the gender wall between the sibling toylines couldn't be more rigid. By contrast, though SilverHawks lasted for a brief two years' worth of figures, it included a woman (Steelheart) and a black character (Hotwing) in the first year's group of figures**.

I'll address the main cast of Silverhawks in future posts; I wrote this post mainly to reminisce a little about Hotwing. He was a magician, and his powers (at least according to Wikipedia--my memories of the show are still fuzzy) were derived from more magical sources. I recall him having some kind of hypnotic power, as well as some telekinetic abilities, and I think it's from his character that I first learned the term "sleight of hand." It's a shame none of this really made it to his action figure (though I'm not sure how any of it really would). Instead, his toy had a wind-up-and-spin torso, and he came with a companion bird named Gyro***.

While I always liked the main SilverHawks cast, my favorite characters as a kid tended to be the auxiliary team members--Hotwing, the magician; Flashback, the time traveler; Condor, the old soldier and bounty hunter (as I recall); and Moonstryker, the cocky kid. In another somewhat surprising turn for '80s toy lines, all those major heroic characters got the action figure treatment. The villains and supporting cast weren't quite so lucky; Melodia, Time-Stopper, and plenty of other prominent characters never even made it to the prototype stage.

Wow, this post is really all over the place. I apologize; hopefully with my schedule freeing up a bit, this is the last of these I'll have to do without having watched the show in years.

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*Incidentally, despite not showing up in much story material, Clamp Champ has always been one of my favorite characters, due largely to his cool design and weapon.
**G.I. Joe did the same, and shows a notable commitment among '80s toylines to ethnic and gender diversity.
***Who, incidentally, came with a companion named Tzatziki Sauce.

SilverHawks Sunday III: Sing-Along

Content-lite this week, because I think the theme song sings for itself.



I always thought SilverHawks had one of the best theme songs of '80s cartoons, right up there with M.A.S.K., Inspector Gadget, and Transformers post-season 2. I mean, how many minute-long usually exposition-driven cartoon themes had guitar solos?

SilverHawks Sunday II: The Toys

The SilverHawks toys don't represent any kind of watershed in action figure development the way some of their contemporaries did. He-Man was groundbreaking in developing a series based on a toyline (immediately after the legislation banning that was overturned) and including action features in each figure. G.I. Joes made serious leaps forward in articulation and accessorization, with countless vehicles and sprawling playsets like the U.S.S. Flagg. ThunderCats incorporated lots of early electronic technology, with light-up eyes and infrared sensors. Even lesser-known lines like Visionaries and Super Naturals experimented with holograms, and Captain Power had vehicles that interacted with the TV series. Most importantly, Transformers gave us giant robots that turned into other things*.

SilverHawks didn't have anything quite so innovative. Most of the figures had a standard five points of articulation (shoulders, legs, heads); there were several vehicles produced, a couple of role playing toys, and most of the main characters got a release before the line abruptly ended. Most of the heroic characters featured shiny metallic paint decos and some decent detailing. Almost all of the toys had action features of some sort, and the villains (at least) were particularly sturdy, hefty figures. I had several of the accessories break over the years--nearly every figure came with a companion bird of some sort, and the talons which held said birds to their owners' arms tended to be pretty brittle--but I've never had any issues with any of the bricklike villainous figures. The main characters' metallic paint had a tendency to chip and wear off in places, which is not only unfortunate, but is also a problem that persisted well into the late '90s (if not longer), as it was a major complaint about several waves of Beast Wars figures.

This is not to say that there weren't several nice things about Kenner's shiniest toys. First, they had some superbly detailed sculpting for that era and size. They don't exactly meet modern standards, but I know there are an awful lot of toylines that wouldn't have bothered with the same kind of detail that went into the SilverHawks' armor and facial expressions. Heck, I'm having a hard time imagining another toyline of the era where simple accessories like Tally Hawk could merit their own paint jobs. Heck, the Sword of Omens that came with Lion-O was just red with some silver paint on the blade and hilt; they didn't even bother painting in the Eye of Thundera. SilverHawks even had their tiny chest emblems painted on!

Due in part to that level of detail, they managed to avoid one of the major frustrations of cartoon tie-in toy lines: figures that look nothing like the characters on the show. Maybe it was just my anal retentivity, but I was always bothered by the fact that the toy Lion-O's claw shield was bright red instead of gold, and that there was no reduced-size Sword of Omens to put into it. It bugged me that if you tried to make Mumm-Ra's headdress fit him like it did in the show, he looked like an idiot. I didn't like that Man-At-Arms had no mustache, or that She-Ra's headdress wasn't smaller and bronze-colored. SilverHawks toys bypassed all this: they looked almost exactly like the characters they were based on, with very few exceptions. Most of those exceptions were with the villains--in particular, Windhammer and Hardware, who look fairly goofy--but those villains made up for the looks by being (as I mentioned) very durable and typically having extra articulation--knees!

I said that there weren't many innovations to the SilverHawks line, but one sticks out (especially since I did some research** for this post). By this point, every toyline and its brother included some kind of action feature to the figures, and the SilverHawks are no different. The basic figures all had cloth wings that attached at their backs and wrists. You push the arms down to the figures' sides until they lock into place, then squeeze the figure's legs, and the spring-loaded arms spread the wings***. Now, apparently someone along the way thought "you know, this action feature is cool and all, but won't kids want to occasionally have the figures, like, punch people?" This in mind, the designers made the arm socket in such a way that the figure's arm could rotate in addition to springing up and locking down--a rudimentary ball joint****, which would eventually become standard fare. You might think that's a small thing, but I've had much more recent toys with similar or the same action features that lacked this basic concept of motion along two axes (Masters of the Universe 2002 Stratos comes to mind, and I believe one of the Batman Beyond figures suffered from this). One consequence of this construction was that the arms were detachable (as was the leg which activated the spring mechanism) and could be reattached with minimal effort. There still aren't many toylines where dismemberment is such a minor inconvenience, but it's been a staple of Transformers toys since Generation 2. Most of the moving parts will pop off and on fairly easily, anticipating the kind of wear and tear children put on toys. I'm not sure how intentional this was, but it certainly made the toys more durable, and that's always a plus.

So while SilverHawks weren't really a pioneering line in most ways, they did achieve a pretty high standard of quality and detail. I'll talk more about them in future posts, to be sure--especially the vehicles and accessories.

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*Also, Go-Bots gave us robots that turned into other things. Some of those things were rocks.
**I went down to the basement and played with twenty-year-old toys. I was, frankly, surprised that they were in such good condition. Quicksilver could stand to be repainted and to have his joints tightened up, but pretty much everyone else is in fine shape.
***At least in theory. My research** reminded me that Copper Kidd's arms were very difficult to get into the locking position, largely due to his smaller stature (the wing fabric was bunched up in the smaller space between his arms and body).
****And admittedly, ball joints weren't necessarily new; G.I. Joes used them, but with a very different construction, and some He-Man toys (Sy-Klone, for instance) used a system that mimicked what most modern ball joints are capable of.

SilverHawks Sunday I

It's been awhile since this blog had any kind of regular recurring feature (mainly because Freakazoid! videos are pretty scarce on YouTube and I don't have the capacity to make my own right now). Since I'm finally getting back into comics and into a posting groove, and since I've been somewhat inspired by Kalinara's examination of Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, I've decided to revisit a different classic series from my childhood: Silverhawks. There aren't, so far as my searches have turned up, many fansites about the Silverhawks--nostalgia-wise, it seems to rank about the same as Bravestarr, another series I dearly loved. Most of the '80s fan energy seems to have been spent on Transformers, G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, and He-Man.

Silverhawks was essentially a more purely sci-fi version of ThunderCats, which usually leaned more toward sword-and-sorcery fantasy*. It featured the same voice cast, the same animation style, and even characters built on the same basic personality types, most obviously Mumm-Ra and Mon*Star, who both transformed from weak old forms into more powerful ones through an influx of external energy and recitation of similar incantations, like so:


Based on some of the stuff I've written, you'd probably think I'd hate Silverhawks. If you have any knowledge of astronomy whatsoever, the show puts a real strain on your suspension of disbelief, and I suspect that if I hadn't been inoculated with it at a young age, today it would set my rational mind screaming and clawing at the inside of my skull, desperate to get out. At the end of each episode, where G.I. Joe and He-Man would have a moral segment, Silverhawks would have a brief quiz about some facts about space or astronomy; this commitment to science education never quite translated to the actual show, where characters would routinely converse unaided, wander around unprotected, and fall in the vacuum of space.

Despite its scientific shortcomings, I have very fond memories of the show, and I plan to spend a little time each week exploring various aspects of the series, my experiences with it, and so forth, until I run out of ideas or interest.

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*Incidentally, what is it about the '80s that lent itself so well to meshing sci-fi and fantasy? I suspect it has to do with the desire to repeat the success of the Star Wars films (which had some fantasy elements, mostly due to cribbing heavily from fairy tales and epics), and some of the fantasy/sword-and-sorcery aspects certainly came out of Conan, but I'm curious what particular confluence of factors made barbarians with laser guns in one hand and broadswords in the other as successful a concept as giant robots that turn into cars, and why that zeitgeist seems to have passed us by almost entirely.