Battle Cruiser

Mon*Star complains that the SilverHawks have gained the upper hand in Limbo, and he wants out. Hardware is to build him a battle cruiser, a ship so strong it will be like a fortress in space, and the Mob will fly to Earth and take over the Earth mob in Chicago. For the firepower, Windhammer and Melodia will take Sky-Shadow, hunt down SilverHawk vehicles and strip them of their lasers.

At Hawk Haven, the Omega Space Station has blown its main stabilizer, and Bluegrass takes the Steel twins, Flashback and Hotwing on the long flight out to fix it, leaving Stargazer, Quicksilver and the Copper Kidd behind. Sky-Shadow runs down the Kidd, and when Quicksilver comes to help, a hit on his power drive leaves him defenceless while the Mob take his lasers, letting slip that Mon*Star is planning something big. Quicksilver turns up at Brim*Star, where the Mob is passing off the battle cruiser as an old ship as a cover, and he is caught and dropped into the crater. He survives, and Tally-Hawk is sent in to spy. Tally-Hawk overhears the plan for Chicago and gets away when Hardware opens fire on him.

With his team scattered and no contact with Quicksilver or the Kidd, Stargazer calls Earth for reinforcements. He gets Moon Stryker, a new graduate of the SilverHawk Academy and a crack laser marksman who can fly on his own, and Condor, an old friend who left the SilverHawks years ago to work as a private detective on Bedlama. The two go to Brim*Star as the battle cruiser takes off. Mon*Star transforms and gives chase, recognises Condor's laser talon, and watches his ship get away; Condor crashes it in the Light Year Limit. Stargazer asks Condor whether he can stand taking orders from him, and welcomes both of them to the SilverHawks.

Mon*star plots to go to Chicago and take over the Earth mob.

Commander Stargazer: "There's no one here in Hawk Haven but me."

Commander Stargazer: "Well, nobody's called me Gaze for years."

Condor: "Crashed it in the Light Year Limit."

Who does Stargazer call when his team is a day's flight away? Lee Schneider's script starts from an unusual admission on both sides of the war. Mon*Star opens by complaining that the SilverHawks have gained the upper hand in Limbo and that the Mob can hardly pull off a crime without them, so he means to leave for Chicago, where the local mob will be easier game. Stargazer, meanwhile, sends almost everybody he has to repair a distant space station, and hopes out loud for a quiet day from the Mob.

He does not get one, and with the regulars away he has to take whoever headquarters can spare. Earth sends one rookie and one retiree: Moon Stryker, fresh from the SilverHawk Academy, and Condor, who walked away from the service years ago to be a private detective on Bedlama. "There's no one here in Hawk Haven but me," Stargazer tells Earth, and we have just watched Bluegrass fly most of the team out to the Omega Space Station.

The best thing in the episode is Condor's arrival. There is no ceremony. He turns up in shirtsleeves, calls Stargazer "Gaze", and Stargazer answers, "Well, nobody's called me Gaze for years." It is a rare scene of Stargazer off duty with an old friend, and the animation lets him enjoy it![1] The payoff comes at the climax, when Mon*Star sees the laser talon before he sees the man and knows at once whose it is.

Moon Stryker gets the flashier introduction and less of a character. He shows off his marksmanship in Stargazer's office, spins up the self-propelled flight headquarters has given him, and turns down Condor's offer of a lift with "You're forgetting. I can fly on my own." The contrast is neatly drawn, since the veteran is the one who ends up leaning on a flight pack, but we learn nothing about the rookie beyond his marksmanship and his flight.[2]

The weakness is what happens to the regulars. Most of the team is sent off to the Omega Space Station early on and does not come back into the story. The Copper Kidd is ambushed and then drops out of the plot until the last scene, and Quicksilver's capture and escape at Brim*Star pass in a stretch whose dialogue is hard to follow.[3] It is plainly an introduction episode, and a twenty-two minute introduction for a pair of newcomers has no room for the regulars, but the design keeps them on screen: the split screen of the repair crew on their long flight is a lovely touch, their faces boxed in and out of reach while the plot happens elsewhere.

"Think you could stand taking orders from me, Condor?" Stargazer asks, and Condor, who has just crashed Mon*Star's battle cruiser in the Light Year Limit, says it will be his pleasure. The Mob went looking for easier territory because the SilverHawks were too good; the SilverHawks, stretched thin, find two more people to call on. Condor and Moon Stryker are both SilverHawks by the end!

1 ^ Condor's line is "I'm always available to help out an old friend, Gaze." The episode gives no detail of when the two served together.

2 ^ The opening narration says Moon Stryker "can fly under his own power", and Stargazer says headquarters is giving all new SilverHawks self-propelled flight ability. Condor, arriving from civilian life, uses a flight pack.

3 ^ From 4:38 to 8:00 the dialogue is hard to make out, so the details of the ambush on the Kidd and Quicksilver are uncertain beyond Quicksilver reporting a direct hit on his power drive.

1. First appearances of Moon Stryker, a new graduate of the SilverHawk Academy and a laser marksman first class, and of Condor, a former SilverHawk turned private detective on Bedlama.
2. Mon*Star's plan is to leave Limbo and take over the Earth mob in Chicago, in a battle cruiser meant to be like a fortress in space; the Mob calls it an old ship as a cover to get out of Limbo unnoticed.
3. The Mob arms the battle cruiser with lasers stripped from SilverHawk vehicles by Windhammer and Melodia, with Sky-Shadow doing the hunting.
4. Bluegrass takes the Steel twins, Flashback and Hotwing to repair the Omega Space Station's main stabilizer, almost a whole day's flying away; they are seen in a split screen with Bluegrass in an inset at 4:58.
5. Condor calls Stargazer 'Gaze', a name Stargazer says nobody has used for years.
6. Mon*Star recognises Condor by his laser talon before he sees him, and Condor ends the fight on a flight pack.
7. Stargazer's contact on Earth is addressed only as 'General'; he is not named in the dialogue.
8. The closing quiz is on galaxies and the Milky Way, and the Copper Kidd finishes on sixteen points.

3 names enter the series in this episode.

• Moon Stryker
• Condor
• Battle Cruiser

Appearance lists compiled from the episode articles on the ThunderCats wiki, checked against this site's encyclopedia. Names we have no entry for are shown without a link rather than left out.