Gold Shield

The Mob steals the Disintegrator, lock, stock and barrel, and a call to Hawk Haven brings the SilverHawks to the armory. The thieves came through the main gate and the main scanner shows nothing, but a backup scanner inside has recorded Timestopper, who can make time stand still. The Disintegrator makes inanimate objects fall apart into their component pieces, and with it Mon*Star can wreck everything in the galaxy.

The Mob then attacks Vehicle Nine and its scheduled shipment of gold bars for Dollare. Seymour brings Dollare's scanner tape of the attack to Hawk Haven in his Space Hack and is not paid the fare. The Steel twins have found no flaw in the weapon's spec sheets. Mon*Star, gloating to Yes-Man, talks of holding the Artificial Sun to ransom but decides first to turn Hawk Haven into a junk heap, and orders his transformation.

With Mon*Star heading straight for Hawk Haven, the tape gives up the answer: in the wreck of Vehicle Nine everything fell apart except the gold bullion. The twins want to rig a gold shield, but there is no gold on Hawk Haven until Commander Stargazer produces the gold spare parts he brought with him from Earth. It is not enough for the movable, computer-controlled shield they planned, so they melt it all into a shield that only protects its carrier head on. Quicksilver asks to borrow the Copper Kidd's Space Racer to intercept Mon*Star, but Stargazer takes over, reasoning that Quicksilver is made of silver and he is made of gold.

In the fight the Disintegrator ends up taking care of the Mob, and the SilverHawks find Stargazer on their scanners, falling, and catch him in space. He turns down the twins' offer of wings of his own and asks for his spare parts back. Seymour's cab has broken down, and the SilverHawks offer to fix it, for a price.

The Mob sets out to steal the Disintegrator, a weapon that makes inanimate objects fall apart.

Mon*Star: "They're nothing but a bunch of glorified spare parts"

Commander Stargazer: "But I'm made of gold. It can't harm me."

Commander Stargazer: "Just give me back my spare parts."

Mon*Star has a name for the SilverHawks. They are "nothing but a bunch of glorified spare parts", he tells Yes-Man, and once the Disintegrator has done its job they will be silver scraps. It is the sort of boast a villain makes in every episode, but Bruce Smith's script builds its ending out of it. By the end, the fight has been settled by a box of spare parts after all![1]

The setup is brisk. Timestopper walks the Mob in through the armory's main gate while time stands still, so the main scanner records a blank and only the backup scanner inside catches him. The thieves take the weapon, and the Steel twins spend the middle of the episode going through its spec sheets without finding a flaw. The answer arrives by taxi, on a scanner tape from the Mob's raid on a gold shipment bound for Dollare. It is a good one: everything in the wreck fell apart except the gold.

Commander Stargazer is the one member of the team who is not made of silver, and the story turns on the discovery that the gold in him is the one thing the weapon cannot touch. There is no gold on Hawk Haven until he produces the spare parts he brought out from Earth, and the twins melt every piece into the shield. Then, when Quicksilver asks to borrow the Copper Kidd's Space Racer to carry it out to Mon*Star, the Commander stops him. Quicksilver gets no further than "But, Commander" before the reply: "You're made of silver. With one shot, the disintegrator will turn you into dinnerware." Then comes the line that settles it, "But I'm made of gold. It can't harm me." It is the best exchange in the episode, and the character design has been hinting at it from the start. Stargazer's skull is gold down one side, his neck is gold and one hand is a gold gauntlet.

The Mob's half of the story is funnier and thinner. Mon*Star, still untransformed, turns over his plans with Yes-Man agreeing to every word. The best of them, threatening to disintegrate the Artificial Sun unless everyone in the galaxy pays him not to, is dropped in favour of flattening Hawk Haven first.[2] What we see of the Mob's attack is Timestopper at the gun, Buzz-Saw clinging on with both blades out, and a shout to get out fast.

The weakness is the plot's central coincidence. The most powerful weapon Earth has ever had turns out to have a single flaw, and the flaw is the metal that the Commander, and only the Commander, happens to be made of. The spec sheets do not seem to mention it, and the twins learn it from a tape delivered by cab. It is a contrivance, but a twenty-two minute slot all but asks for one, because the story needs to find its answer in the second act and spend the third on the man who carries it. The Commander's ride is over almost before it has begun, and we learn how it went from the SilverHawks finding him on the scanners, falling.[3]

It ends where Mon*Star started, on spare parts. Stargazer turns down the twins' offer of wings, saying he does not plan on being airborne again, and asks for his gold back: "Just give me back my spare parts. An old guy like me might need them someday." Seymour, who spent the opening grumbling about his fare, is paid back in kind when the SilverHawks offer to fix his broken cab and he is told "this is gonna cost you".[4] Gold Shield is a small episode with a neat idea.

1 ^ The pre-title narration gives the climax away, telling us that Stargazer rides out to retrieve the Disintegrator and that Mon*Star blasts him into deep space. The Backroom opened by giving away Stargazer's trip into deep space in the same way.

2 ^ The Artificial Sun was last in the Mob's sights in Save The Sun.

3 ^ The scanner reading is "15,000 feet and falling", an altitude in feet for a man falling through open space.

4 ^ It pays back the opening, where Seymour delivers Dollare's tape and is told the fare will need a requisition because it is official business.

1. Timestopper returns after his first appearance in Stop Timestopper; the armory's main scanner records nothing while he holds time still, and only the backup scanner inside catches him.
2. The Disintegrator is described as making inanimate objects disintegrate to their component pieces, and with it in Mon*Star's hands, the SilverHawks are told, he can wreck everything in the galaxy.
3. The scanner tape of the attack on Vehicle Nine, the gold shipment for Dollare, is what shows the SilverHawks that the Disintegrator does not work on gold.
4. The shield is made by melting down all of Commander Stargazer's gold spare parts, which he says he brought with him from Earth; the twins had wanted a movable, computer-controlled shield and there was not enough gold for it.
5. Stargazer takes the Copper Kidd's Space Racer in Quicksilver's place, on the grounds that Quicksilver is silver and he is gold; in the rescue shot at 18:48 he wears a gold helmet and goggles.
6. The team talk their way through the problem in football terms, fourth and ten in their own end zone with the playbook empty, as the twins did in Magnetic Attraction.
7. Seymour's catchphrase, "You know what I mean?", is turned back on him at the end, when the offer to fix his broken cab comes with a bill.
8. The closing quiz follows a meteoroid into Earth's atmosphere, where it becomes a meteor, better known as a shooting star, and the Copper Kidd finishes on ten points for the day.

5 names enter the series in this episode.

• Bedlama Armory Security
• Vehicle Nine Crew
• Bedlama Armory
• The Sprinthawk
• Vehicle Nine

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.