Zeek's Power

Hotwing's magical power is running low. He tells Stargazer that every fourteen years he is recharged by the Magical Orb, which powers itself up from Earth and should have arrived days ago; without it he will grow weaker and weaker. Stargazer gives it twenty more limbo minutes before he sends out a search.

Out in Seymour's cab, Zeek promises that today will be their lucky day, and the Orb turns up asking for Hotwing. Zeek tells it he is Hotwing, in a wonderful disguise, and the Orb, deciding that you have to take chances in life, hands over the power, with a warning that it will return if he is not the real Hotwing. Seymour wants to tell the SilverHawks. Zeek silences him with a spell and heads for the Starship Casino.

Stargazer sends the SilverHawks to search the Alpha and Delta sectors, with the Mirage out and the Kidd taking Mayday. At the casino every machine pays out for Zeek, until Poker-Face demands the money and ends up on the wrong end of Zeek's magic. Poker-Face calls Mon*Star, who laughs until he hears that it is his own money, then orders his transformation. Seymour, voiceless, reaches Stargazer, who works out that Zeek has taken the Orb's power. The Mirage is too far away, so he sends Condor and Moon Stryker to grab Zeek, while Hotwing hangs on.

Mon*Star reaches the casino and traps Zeek in his Light-Star, and the SilverHawks arrive. Flashback gets Zeek out, and Zeek gives Hotwing his power back, a complete recharge. Stargazer could send Zeek to the penal planet for impersonating a SilverHawk; instead he puts him on probation, with daily reports, community service, no trips out of Limbo, and confinement to Seymour's cab. Hotwing gives Seymour his voice back.

Zeek talks the Orb into giving him the magical powers intended for a weakening Hotwing and heads to the casino.

Zeek the Beak: "Only Hotwing could come up with such a wonderful disguise!"

"You gotta take chances in life!"

Commander Stargazer: "And finally, you are confined to Seymour's cab"

Anyone can say they are Hotwing. Matthew Malach's script builds its comedy on how little it takes, because the Magical Orb, sent up from Earth to recharge a fading SilverHawk, can be talked into handing over Hotwing's power by Zeek. He tells it that he is Hotwing in a disguise so good that only Hotwing could have thought of it, and the Orb, after conceding "You do have a point!", decides that you have to take chances in life. It is the funniest exchange in the episode.

The joke sharpens once the power changes hands. Zeek now has the magic of a SilverHawk he once guided into Brim*Star for a fee,[1] and he spends it on a jackpot at the Starship Casino and on shutting up his partner. Having Hotwing's magic does not make Zeek a hero, because every spell he casts uses power that Hotwing needs to stay on his feet. The script keeps cutting away from Zeek's winning streak to check on Hotwing, and when Zeek tells Poker-Face "I'm just trying to make an honest buck." we have just watched Hotwing growing weaker in Stargazer's office.

Seymour is the one who wants to go to the SilverHawks, and the script takes his voice away. His last words as the spell takes hold are "I'm gonna tell the SilverHawks.", and he does, without making a sound. The standout scene is his arrival at Hawk Haven, played entirely through Stargazer's side of the conversation: he asks Seymour whether he has lost his voice, then what Zeek did, then where Zeek is now, and works out the business with the Orb from the answers he cannot hear. It is good writing for a voice actor with nobody to play against, and it gets the plot moving faster than the search in the Alpha and Delta sectors ever does.

That search is the weakness. Stargazer sends the Mirage, Flashback and the Kidd out across "a pretty fair-sized piece of space", and when the answer turns up it is Seymour, at Hawk Haven, with the Mirage too far away to help. The Orb promised to come back and punish an impostor, but it never does.[2] Mon*Star's arrival brings the transformation and the Light-Star, but the fight at the casino is over quickly. A comedy built around Zeek also has to fit in the SilverHawks' search and Mon*Star and Poker-Face at the casino, and the SilverHawks' own part is what gets thinned out.

Stargazer tells Zeek he could be shipped off to the penal planet for impersonating a SilverHawk, then hands down probation instead: daily reports, community service, no trips out of Limbo, and "And finally, you are confined to Seymour's cab", which Zeek takes harder than the penal planet! Hotwing gets his power back, and Seymour gets his voice back.[3] Zeek promised Seymour a lucky day, and he ends it stuck in that cab until further notice.

1 ^ That was in Hotwing Hits Limbo, where Zeek opened his price for showing Hotwing the way in at half a million limbo bucks and settled for a dollar fifty.

2 ^ Its parting warning is that if Zeek is not the real Hotwing it will return and destroy him; he hands the power back before the question comes up.

3 ^ Seymour's voice is nearly forgotten: Stargazer only remembers it at the end, with "Oh, I almost forgot." before asking Hotwing to fix it.

1. Hotwing's magic is recharged by the Magical Orb, which powers itself up from Earth, and without it he says he will grow weaker and weaker.
2. The Orb is persuaded on the strength of a disguise: Zeek argues that only Hotwing could have come up with such a wonderful one.
3. Zeek's spells shut Seymour up, send giant coins flying at Poker-Face and leave Poker-Face begging to be let down.
4. Mon*Star laughs at Poker-Face's trouble until he hears that the money Zeek is taking is his own, and then he orders his transformation.
5. Condor calls Stargazer 'Gaze' when he answers the summons to Stargazer's office, which has a dartboard and a horned trophy on the wall (16:00).
6. Mon*Star traps Zeek in the Light-Star, and the SilverHawks have to get him out of it before he can give the power back.
7. The narrated preview reuses the casino jackpot shot from the middle of the episode, with Zeek buried in coins beside a many-armed gambler.
8. The closing quiz is on Titan, the only satellite in the solar system with an atmosphere; the Kidd picks it and Saturn from multiple choice and finishes on 20 points.

One name enters the series in this episode.

• Multiple arms guy

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.