Gangwar - Part II

With Melodia and Poker-Face gone and Hardware and Buzz-Saw locked up on Penal Planet 10, Mon*Star is reduced to scavenging the junkyard for parts. He means to rebuild the Sky-Chomper and use it to break them out. At Hawk Haven crime is at its lowest this century, but Stargazer is least happy when it is quiet, and he bets Mon*Star is figuring on a breakout. Tally-Hawk is sent to watch the penal planet and Sly-Bird to watch Brim*Star, while in their cell Hardware and Buzz-Saw bicker with a guard.

Sly-Bird finds the Mob rebuilding the Sky-Chomper, but Airshock, in hammer form, goes after him and he goes off the air before he can transmit. Quicksilver asks to take the team to Brim*Star and is refused: there is no crime to investigate, and Earth Command would have their wings. Mon*Star picks Yes-Man to fly the finished Sky-Chomper, with Mumbo Jumbo reading the manual, and Yes-Man gets it to the penal planet and frees Hardware and Buzz-Saw. The Mirage is out of commission, and nobody can stop him.

Mon*Star turns the Sky-Chomper on Hawk Haven. Its lightning electrodes blur its image on the scanners, so the station takes it for a leaky old freighter until it is almost alongside. It knocks Hawk Haven out of orbit and takes a mouthful, but its shields fail under the station's lasers and it starts cracking up and retreats, with Bluegrass and the Copper Kidd after it in the repaired Mirage.

The Mob gets away through an emergency chute, the Kidd is knocked cold, and Hardware wires Bluegrass up with an explosive charge and rigs the Mirage for remote control, meaning to blast it out of existence. The trap fails, the Mob swears to get Stargazer if it is the last thing it does, and the Copper Kidd flies the Mirage home with Bluegrass, as the team hears it, kind of tied up.

The battered Mob plots a comeback by building the Sky Chomper, a vehicle that devours its own kind. Second of a two-part episode.

Commander Stargazer: "In fact, when it's this quiet, I'm least happy."

Mon*Star: "Says yes to everything I say."

"Must be one of those old space freighters. I've never seen one that didn't have leaky electrodes."

What is a gang boss worth once the gang has walked out on him? At the start of William Overgard's second half, Mon*Star has lost Melodia and Poker-Face to their own scheme and Hardware and Buzz-Saw to Penal Planet 10. The most feared man in Limbo is picking through a junkyard for parts.

Without his cleverest people, what Mon*Star has left is junk, fear and Yes-Man. Nobody in what remains of the Mob follows him out of loyalty. They follow him because the alternative is worse, and the script plays that for comedy. When the Sky-Chomper is finished and somebody has to fly it, Mon*Star picks Yes-Man because he "says yes to everything I say", and the choice put to Yes-Man is whether he would rather fly the thing and probably smash himself to pieces, or refuse and have Mon*Star do the smashing. He flies it, with Mumbo Jumbo reading out of the manual and Yes-Man experimenting with the controls as he goes. Nothing else in the episode is this funny!

Over at Hawk Haven, the law ties the SilverHawks' hands. In the first half, the question was whether the law protects the lawless; here it keeps the heroes from acting until the lawless strike first. Stargazer can see what is coming ("In fact, when it's this quiet, I'm least happy"), but when Quicksilver asks to take the team to Brim*Star, there is no crime to investigate and Earth Command would have their wings. So the SilverHawks watch and wait,[1] with the Mirage out of commission.[2]

The attack on Hawk Haven is the standout. The Mob's trick is to use the Sky-Chomper's lightning electrodes to blur its image, so that the scanners see an old freighter lumbering through space, and the joke lands when the command deck dismisses the leaking electrodes as normal: "I've never seen one that didn't have leaky electrodes." The shark-jawed ship then comes in at the side and takes a bite out of the station.[3] It is a good sequence, and the leaky-electrode joke is why.

The weakness is the ending. Hardware readies an explosive charge for Bluegrass, the Mirage is rigged for remote control, and the countdown begins toward what the Mob calls one last concert in the sky; then the next thing we hear is the Mob cursing Stargazer and the Copper Kidd flying the Mirage home with Bluegrass "kind of tied up". How the Kidd, knocked cold minutes earlier, turns the trap around is left to the imagination. The likely reason is the slot, since the Yes-Man scenes and the attack take their time and the rescue gets what is left, but a two-parter that opened so carefully deserved a better last move.

Mon*Star ends the episode with Hardware and Buzz-Saw back, a cracked Sky-Chomper and a grudge against Stargazer. Yes-Man flew the Sky-Chomper because he was more afraid of Mon*Star than of crashing, but the ship still could not stand up to Hawk Haven's lasers.

1 ^ The rebuilt ship is spotted early by Sly-Bird, but Airshock, in hammer form, goes after him and he goes off the air before he can send anything, so Hawk Haven never learns what the Mob is building.

2 ^ The Mirage is fixed and fit as a fiddle by the time Hawk Haven is attacked, a little late, as the command deck points out, to have stopped the breakout.

3 ^ The bite knocks Hawk Haven out of orbit by 1.6 degrees, which the station calls easily correctable.

1. Mon*Star rebuilds the Sky-Chomper from junkyard parts, having lost Melodia and Poker-Face to their scheme in Gangwar - Part I.
2. Tally-Hawk is sent to watch Penal Planet 10 and Sly-Bird to watch Brim*Star; Sly-Bird is chased down by Airshock in hammer form.
3. Yes-Man flies the Sky-Chomper to the penal planet with Mumbo Jumbo reading from the manual.
4. The Sky-Chomper hides behind its lightning electrodes, which blur its image on Hawk Haven's scanners so that it passes for an old freighter.
5. Hawk Haven's defences named in dialogue include lasers whose name sounds like the Hawkshead lasers, a tracking system and close-range laser missiles.
6. The Mob's trap for Bluegrass is an explosive charge and a Mirage rigged for remote control, billed as one last concert in the sky.
7. Steelwill wears a red-and-white football jersey numbered 98 on the command deck, as he does in Junkyard Dog.
8. The closing quiz is about Mercury: smaller than Earth, pitted with craters, and without air or water; the Copper Kidd finishes on thirteen points.

2 names enter the series in this episode.

• Airshock
• Junkyard

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.