Tally-Hawk Returns

In the Mob's lair, Mon*Star decides that Quicksilver's soft spot is his trust in Tally-Hawk. Steal the wrist control that commands the bird, and Tally-Hawk can be ordered to destroy his own master. Hardware grumbles at being handed the job, and Mo-Lec-U-Lar is brought in to help. At Hawk Haven, Commander Stargazer wants Tally-Hawk's overdue 50,000 Limbo-mile checkup finished, but the bird is out on patrol, and Quicksilver tells him not to be hasty, since Tally-Hawk is only flexing his free spirit.

The Mob gets the control, tunes in Tally-Hawk and gives him the destruct command. Hawk Haven comes under attack, and when Tally-Hawk is ordered to report for his checkup he wrecks the command console instead. Stargazer tells Quicksilver to get the bird under control. Quicksilver goes hunting for his little buddy and pleads with him, but Tally-Hawk attacks, the voice on the Mob's side boasts that the bird belongs to them now, and Quicksilver is forced down and radios a mayday.

The Steel twins, Bluegrass and the Copper Kidd head out with their Fighting Hawks. The twins find Quicksilver and pull him clear, then run a football play, the Red Dog Blitz, sending Stronghold and Rayzor after Tally-Hawk. Once they have him, they look into his mind and learn that the Mob has his control panel. When Hardware and Mo-Lec-U-Lar come to finish the job, Stronghold grabs the control unit, Tally-Hawk turns on the Mob, and Hardware and Mo-Lec-U-Lar run for it.

Back in the lair, Mon*Star hears that Quicksilver got away, threatens Hardware, and has Yes-Man prepare the Transformation Chamber. The transformed Mon*Star chases the team home, but Hawk Haven's warp shield goes up as they arrive. The twins reprogram the wrist control to shut down whenever Quicksilver is not wearing it, Tally-Hawk is finally sent for his checkup, and someone asks Stargazer whether he is not overdue for one himself.

Hardware plots to kill Quicksilver by stealing the remote control that orders Tally-Hawk, and ordering the bird/weapon to attack its master.

"He's not your pal anymore, Quicksilver! He's mine!"

Steelheart: "Let's see what's on his mind, Will."

Is Tally-Hawk Quicksilver's friend or his equipment? Stephanie Swafford's script puts the question in its opening scene, when Mon*Star names Quicksilver's soft spot as his trust in the bird. Tally-Hawk obeys a wrist control, so a stolen control makes the friend into a weapon,[1] but the scheme only works because the man on the other end of it trusts his bird without a second thought. Hardware, handed the job of ripping the control off Quicksilver's wrist, answers with a sulky "Easy for you to say." and is told that Mon*Star wants action, not lip. At Hawk Haven, meanwhile, Tally-Hawk is thought to be out on patrol.

We see that trust before anything has gone wrong. When the overdue checkup comes up, Quicksilver defends the missing bird as a free spirit, and he keeps defending him long after the evidence runs the other way. The villains mistake that friendship for a weakness and turn it into a weapon, and Quicksilver gets his bird back. The best scene in it comes when Quicksilver goes looking for Tally-Hawk in open space and talks to him as he always does, telling his little buddy to quit the nonsense, only to hear a voice from the Mob's side answer for the bird: "He's not your pal anymore, Quicksilver! He's mine!" The animators help, giving Tally-Hawk a head-on dive with narrowed eyes and a gaping beak, and for a moment the familiar bird is frightening.

The middle of the episode belongs to the Steel twins, and they are a delight. Their rescue is run as a football play, the Red Dog Blitz, complete with a count of "Hut one, hut two" and a special team sent in to take Tally-Hawk,[2] and when they have him they settle down to read his mind: "Let's see what's on his mind, Will." "Second the motion, sis." Stronghold seals it by snatching the Mob's control unit, and the play-by-play congratulates the bird on a nice play.

The weakness is that the title character has no part in his own return. Tally-Hawk comes back because another bird takes a box away from Hardware, and the lasting fix is technical: the twins reprogram the wrist control so that it shuts down whenever Quicksilver is not wearing it. The episode asked whether Tally-Hawk is a friend or a piece of equipment, and the ending treats him as equipment. The transformed Mon*Star's chase home, ended by a warp shield, is tacked on after the story is already settled. The likely reason is the premise itself. A remote-controlled bird cannot choose to come back, so the script cannot give him the moment, and a twenty-two minute slot still wants a last chase with the boss in it.

The small moments still work. "That's enough, pal. We've got them running," Quicksilver says, with the bird back on his arm, and the closing scene turns the checkup into a joke at Stargazer's expense.[3] The Mob could steal the wrist control, but at the end Quicksilver is still calling the bird his pal!

1 ^ The opening narration says Mo-Lec-U-Lar turns into Tally-Hawk to steal the wrist control. We see him spin his Frisbee to change, and somebody congratulates "Moe" once the goods are in hand, but the theft itself is not in any published frame.

2 ^ The Fighting Hawks the team flies out with were introduced in The Fighting Hawks; here Sideman is told to lead the way while his partner follows.

3 ^ Tally-Hawk was due his 50,000 Limbo-mile checkup before any of this began. The closing joke asks whether Stargazer is not supposed to have one of his own every five hundred years or so.

1. The Mob's target is the wrist control through which Quicksilver commands Tally-Hawk; with it they tune in the bird and give him the Destruct Command.
2. Tally-Hawk is overdue for his 50,000 Limbo-mile checkup with the Steel twins; it is raised in the first Hawk Haven scene and finally ordered in the last.
3. Stargazer opens his first scene by ordering an ID check on every ship touching down on Fence, a place he calls crawling with perpetrators.
4. Mo-Lec-U-Lar is called "Moe" twice, when the goods arrive and when he and Hardware make tracks.
5. The Steel twins run their rescue as a football play called the Red Dog Blitz and send Stronghold and Rayzor in as the special team; the Fighting Hawks were introduced in The Fighting Hawks.
6. Mon*Star calls for the Transformation Chamber to go after Quicksilver himself, and the chase ends when Hawk Haven's warp shield is activated.
7. After the rescue, the wrist control is reprogrammed to shut down whenever Quicksilver is not wearing it.
8. The closing quiz is on the night sky: about two thousand stars visible to the naked eye on a clear, moonless night, twinkling, and the Sun as the star we cannot see at night, for twelve points on 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.