The Air Whales of Anchar



"What a beautiful day," says Mara, admiring a prime example of sappy Sagarese birdlife. What could possibly go wrong?" Well, Touched By An Angel this ain't, so plenty. Showing the odd bit of perception, Blackstar sums up this episode, which is an amalgam of Moby Dick and a Greenpeace recruitment ad, most succintly when he says, "So many threats, so little time." We hear ya, dude.

When the Vampire Men attack (why you ask? Maybe they didn't like the garlic in Rif's cooking, who knows?), the Starsword gets zapped by some bad karma and will go thermonuclear if the poison isn't purged by the song of Warhoun, king of the Air Whales. It seems rather odd that the all-powerful Starsword should be vulnerable in this way, but okay, we'll play along.

It's too bad that Blackstar has such a short memory where Mara's doom-and-gloom predictions are concerned, because it gets them into a whole heap of trouble. "It will explode and take half this world with it." How could you not remember that one, flyboy, especially since the Starsword now has an ominously purple glow? Don't bother asking, because Our Hero inevitably forgets and tries to rescue a young Air Whale that comes under attack by the evil pirate Nihilis.
 
Get out your Geiger Counters! The Starsword goes thermonuclear (left). Nihilis is one cool, evil bastard (right).


Nihilis is one of the series' cooler villains, with his sneering voice, intimidating facial design and mechanical wrist stump. He also has a rabid obsession with Warhoun, who took his hand off earlier; as apeman slave Grogan later puts it, he's one angry guy. Of course, he doesn't believe Blackstar's story about the thermonuclear Starsword and impending doom and all, and wants to have Our Hero executed.

At this point, we meet Nihilis' delicious backstabbing daughter Leila (pictured below), who pleads for clemency. So instead of dying, Blackstar gets to slave away in the engine room, shoveling coal into a furnace. He isn't there long when he saves a fellow slave from being crushed under a badly-secured pile of rocks. Making new friends is just so simple in the Blackstar universe, isn't it? Grogan looks like an extra from Planet of the Apes and likes to refer to himself in the third person ("You have saved Grogan. Grogan now your friend.") He's also a real goldmine of information on Nihilis and Warhoun, and we would have liked to hear more but Blackstar has company on the deck above.

In her sultriest purr, Leila tells Our Hero she can make things easier for him if he agrees not to be such a pain in the ass. In other words, she's got the hots for him and wants to give him, ah, preferential treatment. The problem is, Blackstar is real stubborn in that department. Nihilis works for the Overlord, and besides that he's a real jerk, so no deal. Leila admits she doesn't agree with her father, and the two now share some common ground. Things might have gotten real interesting from this point on, but in their usual predictable fashion, the Trobbits botch a rescue attempt and get tossed hither and thither by the soundwaves of a mind-controlled Air Whale. Blackstar tries to intervene, but Nihilis' laser-shooting wrist stump and then a surging Starsword quickly put him out of action.

We have a real problem with the scene in which Blackstar regains consciousness after being hit in the head. Notice that when coming to, he murmurs for Mara. Why her? Wouldn't a more logical choice have been Katana? This scene only complicates the exact nature of Blackstar's relationship with Mara. He flirts with other women, as any red-blooded young guy would do on a world full of gorgeous, scantily-clad females, and clearly respects Mara, but the "Spacewrecked" episode makes it clear that his feelings lie with the woman he left behind on Earth.

The writers apparently forgot about Katana when writing this scene. Then again, we think everyone over at Filmation tried to put the wildly improbable "Spacewrecked" out of their minds.

The Trobbits find Warhoun by accidently landing on his back. He isn't too thrilled with having a windship tickling his dorsal fins and starts to get testy until Mara breaks out the telepathy, with the glowing yellow eyes we all know and love. Once he understands the situation, he calms down and agrees to help.

It's inevitable that Nihilis and Warhoun are going to have some sort of confrontation. Trouble is, it isn't as exciting as its Moby Dick counterpart. Nihilis really deserves to be caught in his own harpoon and sucked down into the deep like Captain Ahab, but here he just loses his ship. What a letdown!

Apparently Blackstar is good for something in this episode, tinkering with the ship's controls so it loses altitude and crashes. Notice he isn't the one who rescues Nihilis from the fire, but Mara, who obviously doesn't know what a first-class jerk this guy is.

Would Blackstar have done it? Maybe, maybe not. He was perfectly content to watch Brillirant squeeze the pulp out of the Overlord in "The Overlord's Big Spell" until he realized he needed the guy's help. Seeing as how this is a Filmation cartoon, and seeing how Filmation loves its moral endings, Blackstar probably would have acted the part of the good Samaritan, but he would have hated every minute of it.

There's a bit of a continuity error when the crew is running from the burning ship. In the first meeting between Nihilis and Blackstar, there is a row of hooded figures, presumably clerics of the Overlord or something, in the background. We never learn who they are and they're never seen again; the only crew members we see running to safety are Nihilis, Leila, Grogan and Nihilis' acid-trip mechanical first officer.

Leila is repentant, vowing to make her father see the error of his ways. Nihilis says nothing. It's a nicely ambiguous touch, because for all we know, he's still an evildoing bastard, and could have made a comeback appearance had the series lasted another season or two.

Warhoun might be the king of the Air Whales and one formidable dude, but he's not above playing chase with Gossamer. Another cloying moment made even more nauseating by one of Blackstar's tacky one-liners and everyone else laughing like it's the funniest damn thing they've ever heard.

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