Window in Time

On Brim*Star, Hardware comes back from a spot of petty larceny on Bedlama with news that silences the Mob's complaints about Mon*Star's missing cut: he has found a window in time, gone through it, and seen the SilverHawks leaving Earth. Mon*Star sees the chance at once. Hardware can go back, sabotage the journey to Limbo and stop the SilverHawks before they ever arrive, and although Hardware was lucky to find his way out the first time, he is thanked for volunteering and sent off.

At Hawk Haven there is too much space traffic out by Brim*Star for anyone's liking, and Sly-Bird's look confirms that Hardware has found a galactic time warp. Stargazer thinks nobody can follow a man through time, but the Steel twins have been finishing Backlash for Flashback, a bird who can travel through time and track a scent. Given a laser blaster confiscated from Hardware, Backlash leads Flashback back to Earth.

It is half an hour before the first launch to Limbo. Bluegrass is fixing his amplifier, the young team is loading up, and Hardware plants an explosive charge timed to go off after blast-off. Flashback reaches Hardware, but Hardware slips aboard the Mirage, and after the booster is jettisoned he puts Bluegrass to sleep, takes the controls and sets a course for the Light Year Limit. In the pods, Steelwill takes the loops for turbulence. Flashback and Backlash follow, and when Bluegrass wakes with an aching head, sure he saw someone, the ship is back on course and the team lands at Hawk Haven, home for the next few centuries.

In the present, Flashback lets Hardware run for the time window and deals with the window instead, leaving himself the only time traveller in Limbo. Hardware has got away, but the SilverHawks made it to Limbo and history is unchanged.

A time window allows Hardware to go back to the time on Earth when the SilverHawks are leaving for the Limbo Galaxy.

Flashback: "Yes, sir. The SilverHawks made it to Limbo, and history remains unchanged."

"Funny, I could swear I saw someone."

"Or else I could end up with the dinosaurs."

Who thanks the man who stops something from happening? J.V.P. Mundy's script builds a small, clever episode around that question. Hardware, out on Bedlama doing a little freelancing that Mon*Star hears about with no pleasure at all, stumbles on a window in time and looks through it at the SilverHawks leaving Earth. Mon*Star would rather have his cut, until he sees something better: send Hardware back and stop the team before it ever reaches Limbo! It is a good premise, because it lets the series go back to the launch it showed in its opening episodes.[1]

What the episode does with that launch is the best of it. The Earth scenes show the team before any of them had met Mon*Star: Bluegrass fussing over his amplifier half an hour before launch and asking for his axe, Steelheart handing over the guitar and correcting him on her name, Steelwill boasting about his sister's strength as she lifts the amplifier. None of them knows that Hardware is on the field, and none of them ever learns it. Flashback is saving people who will never know they were saved. Flashback crosses centuries to keep the SilverHawks' history as it was, and when he succeeds, none of them knows he was there.

Backlash is built for the job. The Steel twins have been finishing him in the lab, and he is introduced as a time traveller and a tracking bird, "kind of a space bloodhound", and a laser blaster confiscated from Hardware gives him the scent. It is a tidy answer to the objection Stargazer raises out loud, that a man gallivanting through time cannot be found. The matching green of bird and owner keeps the pair readable in every shot, from the lab to the sky over the launch site, where they fly clear of a cloud of brown smoke.

The standout sequence is the hijack. Once Bluegrass is asleep, Hardware aims the ship at the Light Year Limit and throws it into loops, and the animation cuts from pod to pod to show how little the passengers understand. Steelwill winks and tells his sister it must be turbulence, and Quicksilver grips his handles and, once it is over, can only ask what is going on up there; the team rides out an attempt on their lives as if it were a bumpy flight! When Bluegrass comes round, nursing his head and half sure he saw someone, nobody on board thinks twice about it.

The weakness is the machinery. Hardware admits he has no idea how the window got there or how it works, and the script never tells us either.[2] How Flashback gets Hardware out of the Mirage is covered in a few hard-to-follow lines and a lot of flying, and the explosive charge Hardware planted on the launch field is never clearly dealt with on screen.[3] The likely reason is the twenty-two minute slot, spent on the launch and the landing, which leaves the rescue itself in a hurry.

Flashback ends by telling Stargazer, "Yes, sir. The SilverHawks made it to Limbo, and history remains unchanged." Nobody on the Mirage will ever thank him. This was a quiet one, and a clever one.

1 ^ The landing reprises lines from Journey to Limbo: Hawk Haven is again home for the next few centuries, and the north wall comes up as the team arrives.

2 ^ The only worry anyone voices about getting time travel wrong comes as the window opens, when its traveller hopes it takes him where he wants to go, "or else I could end up with the dinosaurs."

3 ^ When Flashback catches Hardware on Earth, someone tells him to "Catch this hot potato", which may be the charge changing hands, but neither the picture nor the dialogue settles it.

1. Backlash, Flashback's bird, is presented here as both a time traveller and a tracking bird, and the Steel twins are still making final adjustments when Stargazer first sees him.
2. Hardware finds the window in time by accident while freelancing on Bedlama, and says he does not know how it got there or how it works.
3. Hardware's charge is timed to go off sixteen minutes after blast-off, and he then hijacks the Mirage anyway, resetting the course computer for the Light Year Limit.
4. The launch from Earth carries a countdown, a trajectory call of ZKKB and a booster jettison; Bluegrass's amplifier and his guitar, Hot Licks, go aboard with him.
5. The arrival at Hawk Haven repeats "home for the next few centuries" and the north wall from Journey to Limbo.
6. Steelwill wears a red-and-white football jersey in the Hawk Haven lab, the same kit he wears in Junkyard Dog.
7. Flashback closes the episode by dealing with the time window so that he is the only time traveller left in Limbo; Stargazer tells him he will get another shot at Hardware.
8. The closing quiz is about meteoroids, meteors and shooting stars, and the Copper Kidd finishes on ten points for the day.

One name enters the series in this episode.

• Booster Rockets

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.