Stop Timestopper

Timestopper, a teenager who can stop time, freezes Mumbo Jumbo and Mo-Lec-U-Lar and drives off in their car, the Road Star. The stranded Mob hails Seymour's Space Hack to Brim*Star. At Hawk Haven, Stargazer searches Universal Criminal Records for a kid of about fourteen with a clock in the middle of his chest and finds Timestopper: he can stop time for up to one limbo minute and freeze anyone or anything during it, but he is afraid of the dark and cannot use his power there. Stargazer sends the Mirage out.

Mon*Star is impressed and offers the boy a job: steal a load of power crystals from the crystal mine on Automata and blow up the mine, so that everyone who needs crystals has to come begging to Mon*Star. The price is a place in the Mob, and Timestopper takes the deal. The Mirage tails the Road Star to Automata, a metal planet run by machines, and the SilverHawks follow the Mob underground while Bluegrass covers them in the Hot-Seat. They catch the Mob in the central mining complex, but Timestopper stops time for everyone except his friends. Mumbo Jumbo sets the bomb, the Mob steals the Mirage to sell on Fence, and Timestopper restarts time before his own clock can explode.

The SilverHawks reprogram an auto defence rocket and ride it out of the mine, only just beating the clock. Bluegrass chases the Mirage in the Hot-Seat, loses it in the Light Year Limit, and is led out by Tally-Hawk. On Fence, at the Sini*Star Diner, the Mob auctions the Mirage for limbo bucks until Bluegrass tells them it is not theirs to sell. Outnumbered, he fights until the rest of the team arrives. Mon*Star waits for the Road Star and the crystals and readies the transformation chamber, but in the end the crystals are left in safe keeping until Automata's machines can rebuild the mine.

The Mob invites a boy with an impressive power - the ability to stop time - to join their rebellion.

Timestopper: "Hurry up, Mumbo Jumbo. The limbo minute is almost up. I have to start time again."

Timestopper: "My clock explodes."

Mon*Star: "I'll let you in my mob. You be one of the gang."

In Lee Schneider's script, the first thing Timestopper does shows what a fourteen-year-old would do with a minute nobody else can use: he stops time, strolls up to the frozen Mob, drives off in the Road Star, and introduces himself: "Listen up pops. I said I'm Timestopper and it's time to roll".[1] It is a terrific introduction for a villain who is barely a villain at all, and Stargazer's criminal file fills in the rest[2] with a clock in the middle of his chest and a limbo minute of power at a time. The animation makes the power legible with one clean choice. Everything Timestopper freezes goes flat and grey, so the opening theft plays as a boy in full colour walking through a museum of statues, Mumbo Jumbo's horned head and Mo-Lec-U-Lar's gold spheres drained to the same slate. It is cheap to paint and it never needs explaining!

The idea underneath it is the best in the first week. Timestopper can stop the clock for everybody else, but he is the one person in the episode who is always running out of time. With the SilverHawks frozen in the mine on Automata, the bomb set and the Mirage taken, he turns to Mumbo Jumbo with "Hurry up, Mumbo Jumbo. The limbo minute is almost up. I have to start time again." Asked what happens if he doesn't, he answers "My clock explodes." The clock on his chest is what limits the power.

The recruiting scene is the sharpest writing here. Mon*Star opens with flattery, explains the power crystals and the begging that will follow, and when Timestopper asks what is in it for him, he offers the one thing a kid with a stolen car might want: "I'll let you in my mob. You be one of the gang." The answer comes back at once, "You've got yourself a deal, Mon*Star!" There is no talk of money at all.

The second half belongs to the Mirage. Once it is stolen, the story becomes a chase into the Light Year Limit, where Tally-Hawk turns up to lead Bluegrass home ("Hey, wait a cotton-pickin' minute. Tally-Hawk just showed up."), and then an auction on Fence. The Sini*Star Diner is a frontier saloon with swing doors, the Mirage is pitched as "In perfect condition, hardly been used.", and Bluegrass walks in to spoil it: "Hold it right there. The Mirage isn't yours to sell." He was made for this room![3]

The weakness is that the title character gets lost in all of it. Stargazer's file makes a point of his fear of the dark, and nothing in the dialogue comes back to it; after the mine, the boy with the best power in the show fades into the Mob around him. The likely reason is space. The Mirage plot takes over the back half of a twenty-two minute episode, so his power gets its scenes and his fear of the dark never does, and he was a villain the show would bring back in Gold Shield and Race Against Time, so perhaps the dark was being saved.

Everybody is racing a clock by the end, and the SilverHawks only get out of the mine because they reprogram one of Automata's own defence rockets in time: "we only just beat the clock that time." Timestopper is the one whose clock can kill him. He is a good villain.

1 ^ Seymour picks up the stranded Mob in his Space Hack and charges extra for the passenger's friend, a day after he carried Professor Power to Hawk Haven in Save The Sun.

2 ^ Stargazer's search passes a one-eyed, horned strongman sitting in a pot before it reaches the kid with the clock on his chest. The file never says who he is, and we would dearly like to know.

3 ^ The bidding starts at two million limbo bucks, goes to two and a half, and the seller wants cash: "So, pay me now. Cash, no checks."

1. First appearance of Timestopper. Stargazer's file describes a kid of about fourteen with a clock in the middle of his chest, who can stop time for up to one limbo minute and cannot use the power in darkness.
2. Anything Timestopper freezes is drawn in flat grey, including Mumbo Jumbo and Mo-Lec-U-Lar at the start of the episode.
3. Timestopper has to restart time before the limbo minute runs out, or his clock explodes.
4. Automata is a planet of metal with no people, only machines, guarded by auto defence rockets; the SilverHawks reprogram one of the rockets to escape the mine.
5. First appearance of Fence, where "They buy anything", and of the Sini*Star Diner, whose entrance has saloon swing doors.
6. Tally-Hawk finds Bluegrass in the Light Year Limit and leads him out.
7. The machines on Automata are expected to rebuild the blown-up mine in two days.
8. Bluegrass's closing quiz asks the Copper Kidd how many planets the solar system has, then offers its age as multiple choice, and the Kidd picks over four billion years.

9 names enter the series in this episode.

• Timestopper
• The Space Bandits
• Harry
• Automata
• Crystal Mines
• The Light Year Limit
• Fence
• The Sini*Star Diner
• Auto Defense Rocket

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.