Sneak Attack - Part II

Mon*Star sits in a cell on Penal Planet 10, swearing revenge on Quicksilver, Hotwing, Seymour and Zeek the Beak, whom he blames for his capture. At Hawk Haven, Steelwill shows the Copper Kidd the Screamer and the Steamer, twin weapons he and his sister have just developed, and when Commander Stargazer warns that the Mob will be working overtime to free their boss, Steelwill and the Kidd take a constant watch on the scanners.

Hardware's plan is to capture the light of the Moon*Star in a special box, a power pack, so that Mon*Star can transform and smash his way out. Mo-Lec-U-Lar takes Quicksilver's form, tells Warden Lock-Up he has taken Hardware prisoner, sees him locked in a cell and signs out the Zoomer, saying it is going back to Hawk Haven to be broken up for scrap. Hardware slips his cell with a pair of Mark 7 trick handcuffs and reaches Mon*Star with the box. The guards move in, Mon*Star transforms, and once free he refuses a ride home to Brim*Star, because he has a score to settle with the SilverHawks.

The Warden calls Stargazer with the news, the scanners having missed the escape entirely, and Mayday is sent out to find Mon*Star. Meanwhile Seymour and Zeek, dressed in the fancy clothes Zeek talked Seymour into buying, are caught by Mon*Star, who brings them to Hawk Haven and opens fire. The SilverHawks cannot shoot back without hitting the pair, so Steelwill proposes the new weapons. The Screamer fails against Mon*Star even at double power, but the Steamer gives Sky-Runner the hot foot, and Mon*Star rides off promising to come back.

Mon*Star has got away, but Hawk Haven is saved and the two captives are safe. Seymour and Zeek fall to bickering over who will pay for the Space Hack Mon*Star smashed, until Stargazer offers Steelwill's services and Steelwill throws in a tune-up.

Mon*star seeks revenge on those who jailed him. Second of a two-part episode.

"Will you make up your mind Seymour? Whose side are you on?"

Commander Stargazer: "Mon*Star got away, but at least we saved Hawk Haven."

Somebody always has to live in the neighbourhood after the heroes win. In the first half of "Sneak Attack", Seymour and Zeek the Beak helped get Mon*Star locked away. The second half opens on the Planet Master in his cell, reciting the names of the people he means to punish, and a cab driver and his friend are on the list beside two SilverHawks.[1] Cy Young's script spends its first act on the jailbreak and its second on what Mon*Star does to Seymour and Zeek once he is out.

The jailbreak is a proper caper, and the best stretch of the episode. Mo-Lec-U-Lar puts on Quicksilver's face and radios ahead to Warden Lock-Up with a prisoner to hand over. He checks Hardware into a cell himself, then signs out the Zoomer on his way home, "to be broken up for scrap", with the Warden clearing him for takeoff! Hardware plays along with relish, telling the fake SilverHawk that with time off for good behaviour he will see daylight in a few thousand years, and the joke lands a scene later, when the trick handcuffs come out.[2] Nobody in the prison suspects a thing.

Once Mon*Star is out, Seymour and Zeek pay for having taken the SilverHawks' side. Mon*Star finds them in the Space Hack, wearing the fancy clothes Zeek talked Seymour into buying, and threatens to shake them until their bones rattle. At Hawk Haven they become his shield, since Stargazer cannot return fire without hitting them. At the finish somebody wants to know who will pay for the smashed cab, Seymour agrees with everyone in turn, and he is finally asked, "Will you make up your mind Seymour? Whose side are you on?" It is played for laughs.

The two halves are drawn differently. The breakout is close and dark, all bars and corridors, and the transformed Mon*Star gets one enormous close-up, his spikes filling the frame and his teeth bared. At Hawk Haven, by contrast, Steelwill lounges about in a football jersey beside the Copper Kidd, and Seymour's weary refrain, "You know what I mean?", gives the cab plot a comic rhythm that the fight never finds.

The weakness is the fight itself. The Screamer and the Steamer are introduced in the first act as the answer to Mon*Star, demonstrated on a pencil the Kidd is told to hold out. But the Screamer does nothing to him, the Kidd fumbles his second shot, and only the Steamer, turned on Sky-Runner, sends Mon*Star off, promising to break everyone into so many pieces they will need a map. The scanner watch the Kidd and Steelwill volunteer for comes to nothing as well.[3] Both are the cost of a two-parter that spends half its second episode getting the villain out of prison. The weapons needed a scene to fail in properly, and the showdown had no room for one.

Stargazer's summing-up is the right one: Mon*Star got away, but Hawk Haven is saved and the captives are home. Steelwill will fix the cab and throw in a tune-up. The heroes win the day, and the cabbie gets his car back!

1 ^ The opening narration names Quicksilver and Hotwing as the SilverHawks who put Mon*Star away, and his cell speech names them before Seymour and Zeek. Neither SilverHawk takes part in this episode beyond the recap.

2 ^ Hardware calls them Mark 7 trick handcuffs, guaranteed to bend any metal. The Warden, taken in by the disguise, signs off to the fake Quicksilver as "Lieutenant".

3 ^ Stargazer takes it in good part, asking only whether the two of them had not had the scanners covered.

1. The episode picks up from Sneak Attack - Part I; the opening narration recaps how Quicksilver and Hotwing put Mon*Star in the penal planet, and how Hardware means to free him with Moon*Star light caught in a power pack.
2. The Screamer and the Steamer are introduced at Hawk Haven as twin weapons that Steelwill and his sister have just developed; the Screamer is a sonic gun with a mouth on the front, and the Steamer is used to give Sky-Runner the hot foot.
3. Mo-Lec-U-Lar gets Hardware into Penal Planet 10 by taking Quicksilver's form and handing him over as a prisoner, then leaves in the Zoomer, telling the Warden it is going back to Hawk Haven to be broken up for scrap.
4. Hardware gets out of his cell with Hardware Mark 7 trick handcuffs, "guaranteed to bend any metal" by his own sales pitch.
5. Mon*Star transforms inside the prison with the Moon*Star light from Hardware's box, well away from his Transformation Chamber.
6. Mayday is sent to find the escaped Mon*Star on the grounds that he will find him faster than the team can, and he is called the sonic hawk in dialogue.
7. The SilverHawk who proposes using the new weapons is addressed as "Sergeant", and the Warden calls the disguised Quicksilver "Lieutenant".
8. The closing quiz is about America's planned space station and when it might reach orbit (the answer given is as early as 1993); the Kidd finishes on twenty points for the day.

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.