Journey to Limbo

The SilverHawks arrive in the Galaxy of Limbo, where Commander Stargazer has been waiting for volunteers from Earth since Mon*Star escaped from Penal Planet 10. Bluegrass brings them in, the team flies the last stretch on its own wings to Hawk Haven, which will be home for the next few centuries, and enters by the door in the north wall. Stargazer tells Quicksilver to drop the formality, cuts the introductions short and greets Steelheart and Steelwill himself. He admits he had been planning a trip back to Chicago to be refitted until Mon*Star put an end to it, and shows the team Brim*Star, with the Mob's headquarters at the bottom of its star-shaped crater.

On Brim*Star, Yes-Man reports that the SilverHawks are here. Mon*Star decides to give them a welcome and orders the transformation chamber. At Hawk Haven, Stargazer introduces Tally-Hawk, partly metal and partly real like the team, a spy, satellite, scout and interceptor worked from a wrist panel. Quicksilver has to learn the panel fast, because the Mob is coming.

The Mirage launches with Bluegrass at the controls and his guitar on board. Windhammer, riding the Road Star, raises a galactic storm against the SilverHawks, and the Mob thinks it has them running. Melodia blasts a craft out of the sky and turns on its pilot as he bails out. On a rocky surface the Steel twins decide to give an opponent the old heave-ho, and Quicksilver directs Tally-Hawk from his wrist while Bluegrass plays behind him. When it is over, with Stargazer facing his team, the episode closes on a warning that Mon*Star and his Mob are still loose, and a welcome to Limbo.

The Silverhawks explore Limbo and attack Mon*Star, forcing him back to his stronghold Brim*Star.

Steelwill: "Where there's a Will, there's a way."

Bluegrass: "Ready as a rooster in a hen house."

"No, sir. He's partly metal, partly real."

In Peter Lawrence's second script, Commander Stargazer meets people who have given up their bodies to come and work for him, and the first thing he does is wave away the salutes. Quicksilver arrives at Hawk Haven all "Yes, sir", and Stargazer tells him the rank can go, because "We're gonna be working together too closely for all that"; a moment later he cuts Quicksilver off mid-introduction and does the honours himself, naming Steelheart and ribbing Steelwill as her little brother.[1] It is a short scene, but it tells us Stargazer would rather work alongside his crew than be saluted by them.

A first day at work is a sound subject for a second episode, and Lawrence spends this one on how a crew of strangers are going to talk to one another. The Origin Story built the SilverHawks on Earth; here they have to become a unit in a strange galaxy, in front of a boss who is himself overdue for a refit.[2] Nearly everything that works in "Journey to Limbo" is a conversation about who these people are, and the Mob mostly supplies the fight at the end.

The best of it is the introduction of Tally-Hawk. Stargazer shows off the bird, somebody asks whether he is a robot, and the answer comes back "He's partly metal, partly real." The next line is "Just like you guys." From then on the bird is counted as one of the team. Steelheart wonders whether she and her brother could build one, and Steelwill, addressed as "little Will", answers with the pun he has plainly used before: "Where there's a Will, there's a way." It is corny, and anyone with a brother has heard worse!

The design gets its moment on the other side. The episode takes its time over Mon*Star's transformation: first the untransformed face, all wild orange mane and a starburst over one eye, then the figure sprawled on the chair in the transformation chamber, then the spiked, faceted mask of the transformed giant looking down at us. The Mob's vehicles get the same attention; the Road Star, all toothed grille and stacked exhausts, carries Windhammer through his own lightning. Bluegrass gets the music, and his guitar gets a proper defence when someone asks whether he wants to leave "that toy" behind: "You ever seen a toy like this?"

Where it falls short is the Mob as characters. Melodia gets to shoot something down and Yes-Man gets his yes-boss routine, but once the fight starts, nobody else in the gang is so much as called by name, and the rest of the villains fight as a group.[3] The likely reason is the schedule of a premiere week. The Origin Story had only shown most of the gang in Stargazer's briefing, a full line of villains had to be put on screen somewhere, and a single episode that also has to land the heroes, the base and the bird cannot give each of them a scene.

It resolves where it started, with the team lined up in front of Stargazer and a line that is half warning, half welcome: "You've got your work cut out for you. Welcome to Limbo". Nothing has been won, and the Mob is still at large, but the five of them now know how to talk to their boss and to each other. For a first day, that is plenty!

1 ^ The Origin Story introduces them as twins, Emily and Will Hart, so "little brother" is either a joke at Steelwill's expense or a detail the show never explains.

2 ^ Stargazer had been promising himself a trip back to Chicago to be refitted, a "couple of laughs with the old crowd." In Save The Sun Steelheart reckons she and Will could bring his circuits up to date in a couple of hours.

3 ^ Windhammer is the exception on screen, if not by name: he is the one we see raising the storm from the back of the Road Star. Yes-Man, meanwhile, says yes to Mon*Star and then, just as readily, to Melodia: "Yes, Melodia. Whatever you say."

1. First appearance of Tally-Hawk, whom Stargazer presents as a spy, a satellite, a scout and an interceptor, controlled from a panel that Quicksilver wears on his wrist for the rest of the episode.
2. The team reaches Hawk Haven, called home for the next few centuries, through the door in the north wall.
3. Stargazer tells the team he had been promising himself a trip back to Chicago to be refitted before Mon*Star put an end to it.
4. Stargazer's briefing places the Mob's headquarters at the bottom of Brim*Star's star-shaped crater and calls Mon*Star's fortress just about indestructible.
5. Mon*Star decides to welcome the SilverHawks by sending Yes-Man to ready the transformation chamber, and the episode shows him before, during and after the change.
6. First appearance of the Road Star, carrying Windhammer as he raises his galactic storm at 10:40.
7. Bluegrass's closing quiz for the Copper Kidd is about asteroids, which the Kidd names and then identifies as stone and metal, finishing on seven points for the day.

9 names enter the series in this episode.

• Yes-Man
• Tally-Hawk
• Buzz-Saw
• Brim*Star
• Mon*Star's Fortress
• The Transformation Chamber
• The Zoomer
• The Limbo Limo
• The Road Star

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.