Countdown to Zero

Monotone, the central computer of Automata, has her transistors in a twist, and Commander Stargazer sends the Copper Kidd, his computer expert, to unscramble her circuits. Mon*Star likes the Mob's answer to that: Mo-Lec-U-Lar will take the Kidd's place so that Monotone lets him in, then open the door for Zero the Memory Thief, who will suck out her memory and hand the Mob control of Automata and its factories.

The Kidd is ambushed on the way and taken, and Mo-Lec-U-Lar lands on Automata in his place. Monotone asks her visitor to fix assembly line number four, has him step over, and knows him at once for Mo-Lec-U-Lar of the Mob. The alarm comes too late. Mo-Lec-U-Lar silences her, signals Zero in and locks the Kidd away while Zero starts draining her memory banks, and Mon*Star gloats that Automata will soon be as quiet as the dark side of the sun.

The Kidd's Space Racer turns up empty, spelling out S-O-S, and Hotwing is sent to Automata. He frees the Kidd with a magician's patter, but Zero has finished, and all of Monotone's memory is on his master disk. Cornered, Zero escapes inside the computer, and when word reaches Mon*Star that the SilverHawks have attacked, he calls for the Transformation Chamber.

Hotwing follows Zero into the computer, a space of green grid lines, where the transformed Mon*Star also turns up, and he is trapped there and told there is no way out. He finds one anyway, though he admits it is a little off the wall. Monotone gets her memory back, feels intruders in her works and orders every system to expel them, and Zero is flung out down a spiral. Afterwards Hotwing gets the Kidd out of his skates and promises him a trick for the trip home to Hawk Haven that magicians call the rope trick.

Mon*Star sends Zero to infiltrate Automata and drain Monotone's computer memory.

Monotone: "You are not the Copper Kidd. You are Mo-Lec-U-Lar, a member of the notorious Mob."

"There is a way, but it's a little off the wall."

Hotwing: "We magicians call it the rope trick."

A computer that cannot be fooled is a hard thing for the Mob to beat, so Chris Trengove's script has it forget instead. Monotone, the central computer of Automata, sees through Mo-Lec-U-Lar's copy of the Copper Kidd the moment he steps up to her: "You are not the Copper Kidd. You are Mo-Lec-U-Lar, a member of the notorious Mob." It is a nice reversal of the shape-changer's usual luck! The plan never rested on fooling her for long; it only needed the door open long enough for Zero the Memory Thief to walk through it.

The Mob says what it wants in plain words. Mo-Lec-U-Lar promises that "Monotone won't even remember her own name," and Zero, leaning over her, tells her that "in a few hours you won't even know what galaxy you're in." Monotone is what she remembers, and the story is a fight over the disk that holds her memory.[1] The Mob wants her empty, because without the memory there is nothing left to guard Automata.

Zero stands in the Mob's line-up with a pair of reel-to-reel tape spools set into his chest, so he looks like a tape recorder before he says a word, and the inside of the computer is a green field of grid lines running off to a vanishing point.[2] It is an economical drawing, a few ruled lines on a flat colour. But it gives Hotwing's gold armour something to shine against, and it turns Zero's expulsion into a fall down a spiral.

Hotwing gets the showman's lines, and they suit a story about memory. Freeing the Kidd, he waves the trouble away with "Nothing to it, kid. Just part of the act," and when he is trapped he allows that his way out is "a little off the wall." A magician works on what an audience sees and then misremembers, and a memory thief works on what his victim forgets. Setting the one against the other is a neat piece of casting! The scene that lands hardest belongs to Monotone, though, when she gets her memory back and her first act with it is to notice "intruders in your works" and throw them out.

The weakness is the Copper Kidd. He is sent to Automata as the computer expert, the one SilverHawk who could put Monotone right. Then he spends the episode ambushed, locked up and rescued, and we never see him do the thing he was sent to do. The restoration falls to Hotwing instead. The likely reason is that Hotwing was still new, having only arrived in Hotwing Hits Limbo, and a short slot has room for one hero to carry a rescue. It leaves the Kidd as the reason the story starts and little more.[3]

It resolves where it should, on Monotone. Once she remembers who she is she needs nobody to tell her who does not belong, and the alarm that failed at the start works at the end. It is a small episode with a clear idea.

1 ^ The Mob has come for Monotone with a disc before: in The Fighting Hawks Hardware fits one into her so the factories will turn out Sky-Shadows.

2 ^ Mon*Star calls for the Transformation Chamber when he hears the SilverHawks have attacked, and his transformed self turns up inside the computer, hurling energy down the grid lines.

3 ^ The Kidd's return journey is played for a gag: Hotwing gets him out of his skates and promises that he will not have to skate all the way back to Hawk Haven.

1. Zero the Memory Thief returns from Zero The Memory Thief; as there, what he steals ends up on a disk, this time a master disk holding all of Monotone's memory.
2. Monotone, the central computer of Automata, returns from The Great Galaxy Race and The Fighting Hawks; here she is called 'her' and 'lady' throughout.
3. Monotone asks her visitor to see to the broken assembly line number four before she recognises him as Mo-Lec-U-Lar.
4. Hotwing, who arrived in Hotwing Hits Limbo, talks like a stage act throughout, from 'Now, for my next trick' to the rope trick at the close.
5. The Kidd's empty Space Racer is found spelling out S-O-S, and that message sends Hotwing to Automata.
6. Zero's design puts a pair of reel-to-reel tape spools in the middle of his chest, visible in the Mob line-up at 3:44 and again as he is thrown out of the computer at 18:44.
7. The inside of Monotone's computer is drawn as green grid lines receding to a vanishing point, and her expulsion of Zero as a spiral.
8. The closing quiz is about the Saturn V at Cape Canaveral: its name, its height in stories and its fuels. The Copper Kidd finishes on fourteen points for the day.

3 names enter the series in this episode.

• Volt-ure
• Zero's Conjured Lifeform
• Computer Room

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.