Melodia's Siren Song

At Hawk Haven, Commander Stargazer asks for the report on the freighter heist, and the story unfolds from there. The space freighter Argo, loaded with gold for Dollare, picks up a distress call. Her Number Two wants to deliver the cargo as ordered, but the officer in command overrules him, because the first law of space is never to ignore a distress call. The call is Melodia's signal, and the Mob is waiting: Windhammer summons a red dust storm that forces the Argo down on Asteroid 889.

The Argo's own call for help reaches Hawk Haven, and Stargazer sends Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk to check it out. Hardware, Windhammer and Melodia are loading the gold into the Zoomer, and Hardware calls Brim*Star to tell Mon*Star the haul is bigger than anyone expected. When Quicksilver arrives, the Mob brings him and Tally-Hawk down and ties them up. Quicksilver tells Hardware that the SilverHawks are a team and will come for him, and Hardware promises to grind them to dust.

With no word from Quicksilver, Stargazer sends Hotwing, who brings Gyro, the Fighting Hawk the Steel twins have just finished for him. Gyro breaks up the loading party, Windhammer and Melodia are knocked out of the fight, and the Sound Smasher flies apart. Hardware gets the drop on Hotwing, though, ties him up aboard the Argo with Quicksilver and the crew, and then dares Mon*Star to come and collect the gold himself. Mon*Star, furious, orders Yes-Man to the Transformation Chamber.

By the time the transformed Mon*Star arrives, the prisoners are loose, and he promises brute strength this time rather than magic. The Argo's thrusters are barely working and her electrical system is gone, so her engines have to be fired by hand, and Hotwing and Quicksilver set to work. Back at Hawk Haven, Hotwing will not tell Stargazer how he dealt with Mon*Star, because magicians do not reveal their tricks.

Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk race to rescue a hijacked freighter, but are forced to crash-land during a dust storm.

"The first law of space, Number Two! Never ignore a distress call."

Quicksilver: "The SilverHawks are a team, Hardware."

Hardware: "Somebody's got to be the brains of this outfit."

"The first law of space, Number Two! Never ignore a distress call." The officer in command of the Argo says it over the objections of his own crew, who have gold to deliver and orders to deliver it. Lawrence DuKore's script builds its trap out of that one rule. The siren song of the title turns out to be a distress signal, sent by Melodia and backed up by Windhammer's red dust storm, and it works because the Argo's commander will not ignore a distress call.

The Mob's plan relies on the Argo stopping, and once the freighter is down, every call for help brings another SilverHawk to the asteroid. The Argo's own cry for help brings Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk, and their silence brings Hotwing. Before long a gold robbery on a bare red asteroid has two SilverHawks and a freighter crew roped up on the Argo's bridge! Answering a call is the one rule the good guys never break, and the Mob, which uses that rule to bring the Argo down, never expects the SilverHawks to keep it for each other. Quicksilver, roped on the ground, warns Hardware that the SilverHawks will get him for this, and Hardware answers with honest bafflement: "And what makes you think they'll come?" "The SilverHawks are a team, Hardware," Quicksilver tells him, and Hardware promises to grind them all to dust.

Hardware is the comic centre of the episode. He stands about while the others load the gold, and when someone points out that he is not helping, his answer is "Somebody's got to be the brains of this outfit." Later he dares Mon*Star to come and collect the gold himself, which draws the best line of the episode back down the channel from Brim*Star, "Oh, I'll get my gold! Then I'll cram it in Hardware's ear!" Nobody in the Mob comes when called unless there is gold or a grudge in it; the SilverHawks come for each other with nothing in it at all.[1]

The animation gives us one terrific image in the middle of all this. When Gyro breaks up the loading party,[2] Melodia goes tumbling head over heels while the keys of her Sound Smasher burst away around her. Hotwing's arrival is played for a laugh: he reaches the command centre before Stargazer has quite finished calling him, and puts it down to the speed of the hand, a magician's boast that the episode then has to live up to.

It does not quite manage it. The climax runs almost without dialogue while the Argo's engines are fired by hand and the transformed Mon*Star comes and goes.[3] When Stargazer asks how Mon*Star was dealt with, Hotwing refuses to say, because magicians never reveal their tricks! It is a good joke and a frank dodge, and it leaves the one confrontation the plot was building to off the page. Melodia suffers most from it. Her name is on the title, but after sending the signal she has little to do but stand beside Windhammer and take her tumble. The likely reason is that this is really a showcase for Hotwing, still new to the team, and a short slot has room for only one newcomer to shine.

Hardware hears the answer to his own question and never understands it, because nobody in the Mob can see why anyone would come. It is a slight episode, but a tidy one!

1 ^ Hardware's call to Brim*Star asks Mon*Star to send every vehicle he has for the extra gold; the boss's answer is mostly shouting.

2 ^ Hotwing credits the Steel twins with finishing his Fighting Hawk, Gyro, just in time. The Fighting Hawks were first presented to Stargazer in The Fighting Hawks.

3 ^ When the transformed Mon*Star finally arrives, he promises brute strength instead of magic. The last we hear of it is Hotwing's refusal to explain.

1. The episode is framed as Hotwing's report to Stargazer on the freighter heist; it opens straight after the titles and closes with Hotwing refusing to explain how he handled Mon*Star.
2. The Argo is carrying gold bound for Dollare when she comes down on Asteroid 889.
3. Hotwing says the Steel twins have just finished building his Fighting Hawk, Gyro, following the Fighting Hawks presented in The Fighting Hawks.
4. The Mob's getaway car is named in dialogue as the Zoomer, when the order is given to start loading it with gold.
5. Stargazer calls Quicksilver by his rank, Lieutenant, on the Hawk Haven channel.
6. Mon*Star orders Yes-Man to the Transformation Chamber after Hardware dares him to come for the gold, and Yes-Man answers "Right away, Planet Master!"
7. The closing quiz is on comets: the Kidd names the coma and Halley's Comet, then misses the ten-point question, since the material in the comet's tail would fill only a small suitcase, and he stays on ten points for the day.

5 names enter the series in this episode.

• Space Freighter Argo crew
• #2
• Gyro
• Asteroid #889
• Space Freighter Argo

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.