Attack of the Slitha Monsters #4

Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three.

And here we have the final section of this post series, with the exciting (by which I mean "frustrating") conclusion.

When last we saw Skysurfer One and Cybron's daughter Serena, they were trapped in a huge pit with a giant, totally crazy looking worm monster that apparently will eat humans.

As the monster threatens Serena, who after that fall she took into the pit should by all rights be the worm pit equivalent of street pizza (she bounced top-first off of the big metal pillar that was being used to lower in victims), Skysurfer One gets in its way and uses his fire sword to get its attention, shooting off flames and shouting "You like your meals hot and spicy, do you? TRY THIS!" or something to that general effect...

...and it sounds for all the world to me like he's indirectly hitting on Serena, because the emphasis was on him drawing attention away with his fire sword.

The worm spits fire/acid/something at him with little effect, and then wounds him with its tail and makes him drop his sword, but after Serena tosses his weapon back to him, he causes a cave-in that apparently kills the beast.

However, he's bleeding from the battle (which was actually quite a bit more common in cartoons of the era than before or since), and Serena decides to bandage his wound.

With a piece of her diaphanous dress.

Meanwhile, Cybron's bioborg Chronozone/Chronozoid (I think it's been rendered both ways) goes and wakes Cybron up, amusingly by pushing a button on his face.

He's pleased to hear that Skysurfer One is apparently dead, but very peeved to hear that Serena apparently suffered the same fate. He orders the immediate launch of the bioborg worm fleet.

And so it happens.

The Skysurfers and Netheron rebels plan to immediately launch a vengeance strike/counterattack.

Meanwhile, Skysurfer One and Serena have broken out of the pit. This is notable, if for no other reason than this face.

Meanwhile, the bioborg worms are devastating Los Angeles.

They seem to have a bit more firepower in the form of similar lasers to the normal ones, plus the ability to rapid-fire spit fireballs.

The army responds with a pair of civilian-model helicopters.

Let that sink in. The army responds with exactly two unarmed, unarmored helicopters.

One of them disappears off camera, and the other opens its side to reveal... three soldiers carrying assault rifles, who fire on one of the worms.

It doesn't go well, and soon they're firing on the worm from a rooftop. (The pilot apparently died.)

Dargon and his posse are pleased with the performance of the new worms, and from the comfort of their presumably climate-controlled cockpit are pleased to take on the challenge of the rebels' robot worm.

Meanwhile, there's all sorts of rather random and kinda dumb fighting.

At one point, Sliced Ice falls off her board and hangs from a building whilst being menaced. (Although don't get the impression this happens to her more often than anybody else-out of all of them, Air Enforcer falls off his board randomly more than any of the other characters combined just in these two episodes.)

Crazy Stunts lassos one.

Ultimately, though, it seems that these bioborg worms have the same weakness as their predecessors-their cockpit canopies are easily shattered-and no particular advantages beyond a slight increase in firepower. If they'd been given some of the same crazy abilities as human bioborgs, they might have been pretty dangerous, but overall, they're actually statistically less impressive than their predecessors, with one exception (which I'll touch upon when I get to it).

Replicon and the other bioborgs are watching the fight from an assault helicopter nearby, and Replicon gets bored and impatient and decides to attack, despite orders from Cybron to only observe.

This helicopter's quasi-military design makes the earlier weirdness with the army's choppers all the more baffling, especially when Replicon uses it to take down Air Enforcer and Sliced Ice in short order.

Unfortunately for them, Soar Loser gets an idea.

The view inside the bioborg worm's cockpit is pretty interesting, by which I mean, it's silly and amusing. Check out this control.

Specially made for dyslexics, apparently. Soar Loser also has the amusing line "Looks like Cybron must've hot-wired their nervous systems!"

Anyway, it's pretty predictable what happens to the bioborgs in the helicopter at this point.

Here's where the bioborg worms show their chops-fighting enemies similar to... themselves.

The rebels' robot worm doesn't endure being shot by seemingly identical lasers to the ones that didn't harm it before too well, and, well, it seems to burn out.

Then the Skysurfers, whom Skysurfer One has rejoined by this point (oops, skipped that bit in the screenshots), fly up and blast the cockpit right off of the bioborg worm.

Into a hole.

Apparently to the center of the Earth.

Whoever else is in charge of stuff calls a general retreat, and the bioborg worms flee down the same hole.

Darkstorm's rebels and the Skysurfers have a brief parting of the ways, and that's that-we never hear from any of the Netheron character set ever again.

What happened to all the bioborg worms, who would need regular maintenance from Cybron just to survive? (Which is one of the major reasons why his bioborgs never seem to have any intention of rebelling against him.)

For that matter, if Cybron can turn any living thing into a bioborg, why hasn't he experimented with things like dogs, or horses, or even elephants or whales? (No cats though, because as much as I love cats, that'd be asking for trouble.)

And does Cybron ever find out that his daughter and his worst enemy probably did something in a cave?

Dunno. Why? Because this series was more episodic than the original He-Man cartoon.

I probably ought to do up some profiles for the series regulars; if I do, I'll link to them from these posts. It'd probably make bits of these less confusing for those who never encountered the series.

-Signing off.