Episode 17 – The Wrong Hands

In which Fuzz introduces us to his appalling cousin.

This episode begins unpromisingly with Fuzz blundering up to BraveStarr and Thirty/Thirty and introducing them to his cousin. I couldn’t tell for sure what Fuzz’s cousin is called, but it sounds very much like “Twit”, and since he’s wearing a flowerpot on his head, that seems appropriate, so Twit it is. The aptness of his name is borne out when, seconds later, a ship arrives belonging to the slave-driving Kreng (last seen in Memories), and Twit ambles up to them to make friends.

Fuzz: “Christ, Twit, even I think you’re tedious. Just look at my exhausted face.”

With stunning predictability, the Kreng don’t want to be Twit’s friend. This is understandable. I don’t want to be Twit’s friend either, and I’m one of the good guys. Well, relatively good. Anyway, a Kreng soldier tries to murder Twit (again, understandable), but BraveStarr and his posse intervene, leading to a not particularly exciting fight, which only ends when the Kreng commander gets in touch with BraveStarr to inform him that this is a misunderstanding and that the Kreng have come to New Texas to buy kerium, not start trouble.

BraveStarr takes him at his word, and the Kreng take their ship out of town and land it in the desert, near a feature called Twisted Mountain. On BraveStarr’s instruction, an individual introduced as Doc Clayton begins spying on the Kreng to find out if they’re up to something. Naturally, it turns out that the Kreng are up to something: they have built an enormous cannon of great power, and concocted an ill-conceived plan to conquer the entire galaxy. Using the one cannon. Listen guys, it may be a really powerful cannon, but it still can’t be in more than one place at a time, so using just this to conquer the galaxy is going to be a lengthy process at best.

Doc Clayton: “Check out my wheels! Figuratively speaking. It doesn’t really have wheels, obv.”

Doc Clayton immediately informs BraveStarr, who decides that now is an appropriate moment to have a barely relevant flashback to his childhood. This is particularly surprising, since I thought we established recently that BraveStarr doesn’t remember his past. Either way, thanks to him wasting time in this manner, a Kreng patrol finds them and takes them captive, and they’re only saved because Fuzz and Twit drive up and cause a distraction.

After strength of the bearing his way through the battle, BraveStarr decides to take one of the Kreng captive and chooses Zing, the Kreng doctor. Doc Clayton tries to strike up a rapport with Zing, questioning how a doctor – sworn to protect life – could be spending his time working with a cannon that could hurt so many people.

While Zing considers this, our heroes nick a Kreng vehicle and drive up to the cannon in an attempt to destroy it. Eventually, Zing undergoes his inevitable change of heart and gives BraveStarr the information he needs to blow up the cannon, and after that’s achieved, two ships from the Galactic Federation show up to arrest the Kreng. Zing, of course, escapes arrest, and is welcomed as a new doctor for “some of the outlying settlements”, which I think is shorthand for “you’ll never see him again”.

Zing: “Yes, yes, I’ll go to the outlying settlements. Just don’t let that maniac Thirty/Thirty anywhere near me.”

In today’s adventure…

BraveStarr, giving all the indication of having been nipping at the absinthe recently, indulges in a rambling monologue about the nature of power. He suggests that we should use power for the good of everyone, which is all very well, but I can’t see a practical application for the intended viewers of this cartoon.

Character checklist

This episode has a tighter cast than usual, limiting itself to BraveStarr, Thirty/Thirty, Fuzz, Twit, Handlebar, the Shaman, Doc Clayton, Doc Clayton’s friend, a lizard-man called Diamondback, the Kreng commander, Doctor Zing, and some Kreng soldiers.

Diamondback: “I’m sure there’s a decent reason I’m dressed a bit like a pirate.”

Unnecessarily Violent Horse

When BraveStarr and Fuzz take on the Kreng, they do it by essentially non-violent methods. When Thirty/Thirty takes on the Kreng, he shoots his massively overpowered gun directly into his victim’s chest. I’ve said it before: Thirty/Thirty does not have a temperament suitable for law enforcement.

Insults

A Kreng soldier doesn’t know what to make of Twit, eventually dismissing him as a “little vermin thing”, which is just about right. The Kreng commander, however, has the perfect measure of BraveStarr, addressing him as a “meddling marshal”. Finally, BraveStarr considers the Kreng soldiers to be “hotheads”, while Thirty/Thirty rather strangely refers to them as “jaspers”. This is not an expression I’ve ever heard before.

Thirty/Thirty: “I don’t care if jaspers is a proper word or not! Just let me kill them!”

Strength of the Bear

Well, it takes its time to show up this week, but the bloody bear strength is still in evidence. This time, BraveStarr uses it to pick up and throw a rock on which some Kreng are standing. It’s also used at the very end of the episode to destroy the cannon.

Starr Rating

Perhaps because my expectations were set despairingly low with the appearance of Twit at the beginning, I found this episode far more entertaining than I thought it would be. Twit’s introduction is little more than a red herring, since he barely features, and after his admittedly excruciating first scene, he isn’t particularly annoying. The plot itself isn’t hugely original, but it is very watchable and provides both a decent sense of peril and some nice character development for Doctor Zing. It probably isn’t anyone’s favourite, but it doesn’t go too far wrong either.