In which the futility of watching BraveStarr strikes me heavily.
It’s been a while since Fuzz has taken the limelight, and consequently I had been beginning to forget quite how teeth-grindingly annoying he is. This is brought back into sharp focus at the start of this week’s magnum opus, which begins with Fuzz making some horrible squelchy snoring noises, after which he wakes up and starts gibbering. I don’t know what he says because he’s operating on a frequency way higher than anything I can understand, but I did eventually deduce he was asking Doc Clayton to teach him about astronomy. He does this by asking the doctor to help him see stars, which if I were Doc Clayton, I’d take as an open invitation to wallop him.
All this is, of course, leading to the episode’s calling card – the runaway planet. Doc Clayton notices a planet that shouldn’t be in the New Texas solar system, and very soon the gravitational pull of this planet starts causing problems. The first sign of trouble comes when a space cruiser crash lands on New Texas, leaving the space cruiser’s captain – a guy called Retro West – with a sprained arm.
BraveStarr brings Retro to Doc Clayton, where Retro proves himself to be impatient, rude, and demanding. He justifies his behaviour by claiming he doesn’t need friends, so I think we can all see where this is going moral-wise. Luckily, there’s no time right now to dwell on the friendship issue, since Doc Clayton learns that the runaway planet is on a collision course with New Texas, prompting BraveStarr to suggest blowing the planet up with a powerful explosive called magnumite.
Everyone agrees this is a great idea, but in order to reach the planet in time, it is necessary to use Retro West’s spaceship. Retro isn’t a fan of this idea, but BraveStarr pushes the issue, and Retro agrees – probably because he’s had word of how dementedly violent BraveStarr’s mate Thirty/Thirty is. However, Retro’s sprained arm means he can’t pilot the ship, so BraveStarr drafts in Doc Clayton and Molly, the mail wagon driver, to do it instead.
This unusual team successfully manages to plant the magnumite on the planet, but on their way back to New Texas they realise there are life signs on the planet, so they are obliged to turn round and investigate. There’s then a load of tedious mucking about with a pair of stupid aliens, which eventually blithers to a conclusion when our heroes remove the aliens just in time for the runaway planet to blow up.
In today’s episode…
Okay, so I was wrong about the friendship moral. Instead, we get a crazy little scene in which Doc Clayton presents BraveStarr and Thirty/Thirty with a biology textbook, and they all have a discussion about the preciousness of all types of life. Got to admit, I didn’t see that coming, but that doesn’t mean it’s any good.
Character checklist
Today’s episode features BraveStarr, Thirty/Thirty, Fuzz, McBride, Molly, Doc Clayton, Retro West, and the two stupid aliens, who incidentally are small and pink with permanently stoned expressions.
Insults
Retro calls Molly a “stupid toad” and addresses the stupid aliens as “creeps”. Molly reserves “varmints” for the stupid aliens, and implies that Retro is a “grouch”. Sorry for wasting your time with this entirely useless information.
Strength of the Bear
BraveStarr can barely wait to get going with his bear strength today, indulging in its use only about 30 seconds after he first appears on screen. To be fair, it is needed to prevent the crashed space cruiser from toppling into a ravine, so I suppose we’ll let him off.
Starr Rating
Sometimes my wife comes home from work and says something like, “I listened to Radio 4 on the way back today. It was a really interesting discussion about whether we need our politicians to be hypocrites. Can they actually do their job if they tell the truth all the time?” She’s obviously hoping for a sensible debate from me, but unfortunately I can never answer because my only reply is, “Well, I watched BraveStarr on my way home.” Sometimes, I don’t mind this conversational imbalance, because watching cartoons is such fun, but at other times, it can be a bit demoralising.
Today was one of the other times, primarily because this episode struck me, especially in its second half, as being among the most pointless things I’ve ever watched. It somehow seemed to have no purpose whatsoever, and just meandered through a series of events that technically does count as a story but is utterly unfulfilling for some reason that I can’t quite lay my finger on. It can’t really be described as a bad episode, because there’s nothing really wrong with it as such – but on the other hand, I think I might have to say it’s my least favourite so far, because it feels so oddly hollow. It’s a very strange episode indeed.
BraveStarr Episode Review Site 