Blackstar
and Warlock come to the aid of a damsel in distress: the beautiful Princess
Talena. A monstrous man Thorg attacks
her relentlessly.
Thorg is driven off,
and Talena promises to become an ally to the rebellion if Blackstar delivers
her safely home to her kingdom in the west.
Blackstar happily agrees.
Unfortunately,
Blackstar has been bamboozled. Talena is an evil witch, and controls the
all-powerful crown of Karn. Thorg’s
people have been enslaved by it, and now she wishes to enslave Blackstar as
well.
Mara,
the Trobbits and Thorg join up to save Blackstar, but he becomes brainwashed by
Talena, and she summons “demon fire” to stop her foes…
“The
Crown of the Sorceress” is another good episode of Filmation’s Blackstar
(1981), in part because it reveals that our hero isn’t exactly infallible.
He
interferes in the affairs of Thorg and Talena, and makes an assumption about
who is good, and who is evil. The
beautiful Talena, he assumes, is good, because she is under attack and
attractive.
The rock-man, Thorg, by
contrast, seems aggressive and “ugly” by conventional standards of beauty.
This
lesson is not relentlessly hammered home (as it might be on a series like Secrets of Isis,
for example…) but it is still there for children to recognize. Blackstar acts
without having all the facts, responding to superficial physical traits.
Fortunately,
Mara comes to the rescue and returns Blackstar to his heroic self, and the
climax of the episode is pretty strong because it sees Talena summoning all
kinds of monsters to stop the heroes, including giant, purple, horned ape
creatures, and the aforementioned demon wind.
Next
week, the final episode of Blackstar: “The Zombie Master”
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