Switch

A cosmic hurricane of matter and antimatter is building near Limbo, and Stargazer's sergeant at Hawk Haven warns that it has a reversing effect, turning good people bad and bad people good. Quicksilver, out in the Sprinthawk with Tally-Hawk, finds his craft dragged towards it, and Bluegrass tries to tow him clear with his Lariat Special. The storm catches them anyway, and the SilverHawks come out of it nasty, insulting Stargazer and refusing to come home.

The storm moves on to Brim*Star and reverses the Mob as well, who turn apologetic and polite. The SilverHawks, meanwhile, get Lord Cash to lower Dollare's force field for a shipment he was not expecting, clean out the bank, and go to spend the money at the Sini*Star Diner. The reformed Mob arrive to arrest them for robbing the bank, and when the SilverHawks fight back, Timestopper stops them, the straitjackets go on, and they are sent to the penal planet.

The effect wears off, but Warden Lock-Up will not accept a hurricane as an alibi, and he turns down Stargazer's plea to release them. The Copper Kidd, who was out on patrol and missed the storm, is told by Stargazer not even to think about a jailbreak, and then told not to take Mayday, who could jam the radar on the way to the penal planet. On Brim*Star the Mob are villains again, and they turn their attention to the Kidd.

The Kidd breaks the team out, and they get back in time to put the Mob in its place, with Stargazer telling them it is about time they showed up. The warden agrees to suspend their sentences for it, but Stargazer rules that a crime committed under the storm's influence is still a crime, and gives each of them 200 hours of community service.

A cosmic storm reverses everyone's personalities, leaving the SilverHawks bad and the Mob good.

Warden Lock-Up: "You did the crime. Now you've got to do the time."

Commander Stargazer: "It's too bad we're the good guys. If we were the bad guys, we'd just march right over there and bust them out."

"No need to repeat it. We hated it the first time."

Can anyone be blamed for what they did when they were not themselves? Beth Bornstein and J.V.P. Mundy's script asks it of the SilverHawks after a cosmic hurricane. The storm turns the SilverHawks into bank robbers and the Mob into the politest arresting officers in Limbo. Warden Lock-Up has heard it all before: "You expect me to believe that a hurricane made you rob the bank?"

The script sets up the reversal early, with a joke. Before the storm arrives, somebody at Hawk Haven is heard promising to have a word with "the old man", and Stargazer, within earshot, asks for a little less of the old man. His sergeant tells him to think of it as a term of affection.[1] Once the hurricane has done its work, the insults come back without the joke: the Commander is "Chrome Dome", an "iron fossil", told to go recharge his aching old batteries "if you can walk that far". The animation puts a smear of red-orange around the eyes of every reversed hero.

The Mob's side of the switch is played for comedy. Somebody on Brim*Star turns affectionate, somebody else hopes to be forgiven, and at the diner the reformed villains tell the SilverHawks "We hope you'll come peacefully," adding that they would hate to fight.[2] The Mob are doing the right thing only because a storm made them.

The SilverHawks plead the storm, and the warden answers with "You did the crime. Now you've got to do the time." Stargazer argues the other way, telling him the galaxy is in jeopardy with the team in jail. When that fails, he tells the Copper Kidd "It's too bad we're the good guys. If we were the bad guys, we'd just march right over there and bust them out", forbids a jailbreak, and then mentions that Mayday can jam radar. Stargazer bends the rules to get the team out, but he still agrees with the warden: "Even if you were under the influence of that cosmic hurricane", the team pays for the bank.

The weakness is the last act. The Kidd, who talks only in whistles, has to break his teammates out of the penal planet and get them home in time to save Stargazer from the Mob. The rescue is rushed through in a few quick shots, and the reversal wearing off, for the heroes and the villains alike, is never shown at all.[3] The likely reason is the half-hour slot. The switch is the premise, so it gets most of the running time, and the rescue gets what remains.

It ends with the five SilverHawks lined up in front of the Commander, their sentences suspended and their debt still owed. Stargazer claims he could have handled the Mob himself, takes a ribbing for it, and then sentences them to community service all the same! Nobody chose to rob Dollare, and they all pay for it anyway.

1 ^ The sergeant explains the storm as matter and antimatter and cites "Fosgate's theory" for its reversing effect. Who Fosgate is, the episode never says.

2 ^ Timestopper, the title villain of Stop Timestopper, works with the Mob here. He is the one who finally stops the SilverHawks at the diner.

3 ^ The SilverHawks tell the warden "the effect has worn off" and that is all we get. The Mob are villains again by the time they are gloating over the SilverHawks being on ice, with no scene of the change.

1. The storm is described as matter and antimatter, with a reversing effect that the sergeant at Hawk Haven attributes to Fosgate's theory.
2. Bluegrass tries to tow the Sprinthawk out of the storm with his Lariat Special.
3. The reversed SilverHawks are drawn with red-orange shading around the eyes, and later tell the warden "we were glowing red, and we just couldn't help ourselves".
4. Lord Cash lowers Dollare's force field for what he takes to be a SilverHawks shipment, remarking that he does not see any shipments due that day.
5. Timestopper, the title villain of Stop Timestopper, works with the Mob and stops the SilverHawks at the diner.
6. The Copper Kidd misses the storm because he was out on patrol, and Stargazer points out that Mayday can jam radar.
7. The warden suspends the team's sentences because they put the Mob in its place, but Stargazer still sentences each of them to community service.
8. The closing quiz is about NASA and the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the Kidd scores twelve points.

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.