Zero The Memory Thief

A storm grounds the Mirage, and the Steel twins decide to wait it out. At Hawk Haven, Commander Stargazer has been monitoring Mon*Star's communicator frequency and learns that the Mob has a Mega-Missile targeted to blow up Earth in less than thirty minutes. Mon*Star, calling himself the planet master, watches the countdown begin. Before Stargazer can raise the SilverHawks, Zero the Memory Thief gets to him, wipes out everything he knows about the Mega-Missile and takes his memories of all the criminals in the universe as well.

Quicksilver finds the Commander unable to recognise him. The security scanners show Seymour's cab leaving Hawk Haven, and Zero reports his success to Mon*Star before leaving to make a few limbo bucks on the planet Fence. Quicksilver confronts Seymour, who says he only dropped Zero off because Zero claimed to have information for the Commander, and then took him on to the Sini*Star Diner on Fence. Quicksilver lets the cab driver go and sets off for Fence with Tally-Hawk.

On Fence, Zero offers a disk holding everything Stargazer knows for two grand, and his buyer turns him down. Quicksilver catches up with him, stops him leaving and makes him feed the Commander's memory back. Stargazer comes to and sends Quicksilver to Brim*Star to stop Mon*Star. Mon*Star sees Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk on radar, orders Windhammer to hold them and readies his transformation.

Quicksilver knocks down Windhammer, and Stargazer sends the Mirage on to Brim*Star as the countdown reaches its last minutes. Mon*Star gets hold of Quicksilver, and Quicksilver calls on the Steel twins to stop the missile. With seconds left, the SilverHawks reach the launch, and blast off is off. Flying home, the team agree that Hawk Haven's security needs beefing up so that no more unwanted guests like Zero get in.

The Silverhawks race to prevent the Mob from launching a Mega-Missile aimed at Earth.

Zero the Memory Thief: "I did it! I wiped Stargazer's memory clean as slate!"

Seymour: "I'm just the cab driver around here. You know what I mean."

"I say two grand isn't too much to pay for it."

Zero the Memory Thief does not want Commander Stargazer dead, and he has no interest in the Mega-Missile either. He wants what is inside the old man's head, and once he has it on a disk he means to sell it. Jeri Craden's villain is a fence, and he takes his goods to the planet Fence. His first move is to take everything Stargazer knows about the missile. His second goes further: he promises to take "every thought you ever had".

The theft is drawn as a glowing red waveform running out of Stargazer's head and into Zero's machine. It is the best image in the episode, because it turns an idea into an object that can be carried off. Commander Stargazer's memory is the thing the team cannot work without, and the episode treats it as stolen goods that have to be tracked down and taken back like any other loot. When Quicksilver finds the Commander at his console, the old man does not recognise him! It falls to Quicksilver to go through the security scanners, which show Seymour's cab leaving Hawk Haven.

The middle of the episode is a detective story on a small scale, and the best part of it. Seymour is the first lead, and the script is fair to him: he dropped Zero off because Zero said he had information for the Commander, and "I'm just the cab driver around here. You know what I mean." Quicksilver lets him go with a kind word, since he was only doing his job, and follows the trail to the Sini*Star Diner. There the disk is already on offer, "I say two grand isn't too much to pay for it", and the buyer answers "And I say it is." It is a good joke: the only buyer Zero finds for Stargazer's memory will not pay his price.

Mon*Star's scenes are louder and less interesting. He calls himself the planet master, bursts through a globe of the Earth to announce that he will destroy it, and cackles through the countdown with Yes-Man agreeing to every word.[1] Windhammer is sent to hold off Quicksilver and knocked down before he has done much holding.

The weakness is that the team spends most of the episode waiting. A storm grounds the Mirage at the start and the twins decide to wait it out. Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk then carry the story alone until the last few minutes, when the rest of the SilverHawks arrive at Brim*Star in time for a countdown that the episode has to hurry.[2] The Steel twins, grounded in the first scene, are barely heard from again until Quicksilver calls on them to stop the missile. It is a sensible way to fit a mystery into a short slot, since a detective story only needs a detective, but it leaves the climax thin, and Zero, the most interesting new character in some time, is gone before it starts.[3]

The last word goes to security. Flying home, the team agree that Hawk Haven needs beefing up so there are no more unwanted guests, "Like Zero, the memory thief". Zero the Memory Thief is a caper with a thin ending, but we would watch it again for the waveform alone!

1 ^ The missile is called at T minus 29 minutes at 3:58, at eighteen minutes at 7:17 and at five minutes at 16:06, so the Mob's clock runs a little faster than the viewer's.

2 ^ The Mirage's orders come from Stargazer once his memory is back: "Proceed to Brim*Star immediately."

3 ^ Zero's fate is never shown. The last we see of him is Tally-Hawk perched on his head while Quicksilver tells him to feed back the Commander's memory, "And no funny business."

1. First appearance of Zero the Memory Thief, who says he will take Stargazer's knowledge of the Mega-Missile, his memories of all the criminals in the universe and every thought he ever had.
2. Zero's theft is drawn as a red waveform running from Stargazer's head into a machine, and what he takes ends up on a disk that he offers for sale on Fence for two grand.
3. Seymour carried Zero to Hawk Haven because Zero said he had information for the Commander, then dropped him at the Sini*Star Diner on Fence, first seen in Stop Timestopper; Seymour addresses Quicksilver as Lieutenant.
4. A storm grounds the Mirage at the start and the twins wait it out, as Windhammer's space blizzard held back the Mirage in Sky-Shadow.
5. Mon*Star calls himself the planet master, and he has the transformation chamber prepared once Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk show up on his radar.
6. The team close by agreeing to beef up security at Hawk Haven, which the scanner record shows Zero reached in Seymour's cab.
7. The closing quiz is about the distance from Earth to the Sun and how long the Sun's heat and light take to reach us, and the Copper Kidd finishes on fifteen points for the day.

One name enters the series in this episode.

• Zero the Memory Thief

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.