Limbo Gold Rush

At the Sini*Star Diner on Fence, the Space Bandit pays Harry for a round of drinks in gold and lets slip that he and his partners jumped an old geezer's claim on Automata, warning Harry to keep it to himself. Out in space, Bluegrass is singing aboard the Hot-Seat when he meets a runaway robot space mule. He calms it down and reads its plate, Prospector One, and Commander Stargazer identifies it as belonging to a prospector licensed to explore Automata. The mule looks as if it has been shot, so Stargazer sends Bluegrass undercover to bring in whoever did it.

Harry passes the news straight to Brim*Star, insisting that it is for Mon*Star's ears, and Mon*Star sends Melodia to take charge of the claim. Bluegrass lands quietly on Automata, leaves his cowboy self behind and turns up at the claim as a stranger called the Marauder, offering to help work it. The outlaws, one of them called Cyclops, decide he can carry their gold and that they will blow him away once he has, and Bluegrass ends up blasted down the mine shaft. At the bottom he finds the old prospector, who was shoved down the shaft when his claim was jumped, and Bluegrass sends Sideman to fetch the SilverHawks.

At Hawk Haven, Stargazer decodes Sideman's message: Melodia and three space outlaws have Bluegrass trapped on Automata. With their pilot gone, the team has no one to fly the Mirage, so Stargazer tells the Copper Kidd that Bluegrass has been teaching him for weeks and that now he has to fly it. The others tell the Kidd they trust him, and he takes the controls and flies them to Automata.

With the outlaws dealt with and Melodia's wings clipped, the SilverHawks head for Hawk Haven. Bluegrass offers the Kidd the reins for the flight home, saying he has earned them, and the flight home ends in song.

Space Bandit jumps a gold claim on Automata, setting off a fight between the Mob and the SilverHawks.

Bluegrass: "Easy, fella. Ain't no one gonna hurt you."

"You don't think this is the first time I've fell down a mine shaft?"

"Ah, you can never have too much gold Cyclops. It's a contradiction in terms."

SilverHawks has a cowboy on the team, and sooner or later somebody was going to write him a Western. Steve Perry's script brings everything: a saloon on Fence where the drinks are paid for in gold, a gang of claim jumpers, an old prospector left for dead, a runaway mule with its owner's licence on its plate, and a stranger riding in under a name of his own invention: "they call me the Marauder". The mule is a robot and the saloon is the Sini*Star Diner, but the shapes are the old ones, and Perry plays them straight. Bluegrass even gets a cowboy song of his own, sung aboard the Hot-Seat before the mule turns up.[1]

Under the Western, the team has to learn to trust a pupil. With Bluegrass at the bottom of a mine shaft, the SilverHawks have lost their pilot, and the team's answer is to put the Copper Kidd in the chair: "Bluegrass has been teaching you how to fly the Mirage for weeks."[2] Stargazer does not ask the Kidd whether he is ready, and the others follow him with "Sure we trust you, kid." and "You have the best teacher in space." The plot is a rescue, and the Kidd gets the whole team to Automata at the controls of the Mirage.

The Western is best in its small scenes. Bluegrass talking the frightened mule down, "Easy, fella. Ain't no one gonna hurt you.", is a good scene, and Harry, having promised the Space Bandit that he can keep a secret, is on the line to Brim*Star with the news a few minutes later. The disguise is simple and it works: "Exit Bluegrass. Enter the Marauder.", and in the frames from the mine the hat is gone. The hat is the first thing anyone would know Bluegrass by, so taking it off is most of the disguise!

The standout is the business at the bottom of the shaft. The old prospector takes his fall with a shrug, "You don't think this is the first time I've fell down a mine shaft?", and when he points out that the real question is how they get out, Bluegrass tells him not to pay that no never mind, because he has friends who can do that, and sends Sideman off to fetch them. It is the one scene where the episode slows down, and the old prospector and the cowboy in disguise treat being stuck at the bottom of a mine as a nuisance.

The weakness is the Mob. The claim jumpers are villain enough for a Western, and Mon*Star sending Melodia to take charge of the claim piles a second set of bad guys on top of them without giving either much to do; when we see her on the claim, Melodia stands among the outlaws like another member of the gang.[3] The likely reason is that a SilverHawks story was expected to feature its Mob, and twenty-two minutes cannot give full weight to both a gang of outlaws and Mon*Star's crew.

It closes on the teacher handing over. "You want to take the reins, kid?" comes on the way home, followed by "I reckon you earned it.", and then the flight home ends in song, with all five SilverHawks sharing the screen. The Kidd has earned the Mirage, and Bluegrass says so.

1 ^ Bluegrass's guitar in his song aboard the Hot-Seat is red and white with a pointed headstock, not the white Hot Licks of the opening titles.

2 ^ When Stargazer orders the team to Automata, the first reply is "How, sir?", and a teammate has to translate: "She means we've got no pilot."

3 ^ Mon*Star's orders to Melodia for anyone who objects are to "Give them a bash of the Mon*Star Mash!"

1. The runaway robot space mule's plate reads Prospector One, and Stargazer finds that it belongs to a prospector licensed to explore Automata.
2. Harry serves the Space Bandit at the Sini*Star Diner on Fence and passes his secret on to Brim*Star, where Yes-Man answers the call.
3. Bluegrass goes undercover on Automata as a stranger calling himself the Marauder, and is seen without his hat.
4. One of the claim jumpers is called Cyclops.
5. Sideman carries word from the bottom of the mine shaft to Hawk Haven, where Stargazer decodes it.
6. The Copper Kidd flies the Mirage for the rescue; Bluegrass has been teaching him for weeks, and offers him the reins again on the way home.
7. The closing quiz covers supernovas, pulsars and black holes, and the Copper Kidd gets every answer right for twenty points.

3 names enter the series in this episode.

• Prospector 1
• Robot Mule
• Claim on Automata

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.