Present Perfect vs. The Return of Tambelon · 7:15pm Jun 10th, 2014
At this point in the show, I think it behooves all MLP:FiM fans to have at least passing familiarity with the constructs of G1: pony races, possibly characters, creatures, and most importantly, the villains. We've already gotten Tirek; it's only a matter of time before something else shows up. I guess I didn't review Escape from Midnight Castle when I watched it. Suffice to say, it's fast-paced, makes little sense, contains bizarre song queues (including the classic "Call Upon the Sea Ponies") and poor animation, but it did introduce Tirek, who's a pretty intimidating villain of the sort only 80's children's shows could have concocted, as well as Scorpan, who has a surprising character arc (as opposed to none in the current day). I also discovered that that episode is not the G1 pilot, like I thought it was, which makes so much more sense now.
Anyway, because I was recently reading Discorderly Conduct, I decided it would be a good idea to go find out what the hell Grogar was all about.
This feller.
You can watch the full four-part episode yourself here, but unless you have a high appreciation for bad old cartoons (G1 MLP was about as bad as GI Joe, only without the laser fights), I don't recommend it. So take this journal as a "Present watched it so you don't have to", if only because reviewing the episode would leave me with "fast-paced, bad animation, makes no sense, kinda dumb" and that's just the sin of its creation. Let's begin.
"The Return of Tambelon" starts with the ponies and whiny children playing hide and seek, as these things tend to. G1 unicorns, it should be noted, can "wink out" (i.e., teleport), but this is of course against the rules of the game. One of the younger ones sucks balls at hide and seek, so she winks out a couple of times before not coming back (she also sucks at winking out). Then her hot mom goes looking for her and also doesn't come back. (Apparently winking out dilates time as well as space, since the other ponies worry that she doesn't immediately show up again.) Pretty soon, it's apparent that all the unicorns are being directed elsewhere than their intended destination when winking out, and searches happen.
Oh yeah, and there's a terrible song in there, too.
I'll be honest, I kind of blanked out most of the "what's going on" part, but the low down is 500 years ago (epic time segments were slightly less epic in G1), a place called Tambelon existed in the Realm of Darkness or from the Realm of Darkness or something, ruled over by an evil magical goat named Grogar. He was defeated or something and vowed to come back 500 years later, that is, today. Somehow, he's trapping the unicorns. The pony who's recounting all this conveniently forgets everything else.
Anyway, Tambelon shows up pretty much right on top of them, and Grogar sets his underlings -- the Troggles, basically your average Henson monster rendered in bad cartoon style -- to capturing all the ponies, Bushwoolies, Grundles, etc. that they can. His plan is to gather up all the creatures not under his control, banish them to the Realm of Darkness, and rule Ponyland and all the pink plastic playsets therein. Oh, and he's got a donkey sidekick named Bray, who dresses in a jester's outfit and sounds like Jar-Jar Binks without all the "meesa". On that note, Grogar is, unless I miss my guess, voiced by 80's supervoice Frank Welker, and sounds exactly like one of the Transformers he voiced, but I can't remember who.
Anyway, the remaining ponies, humans, Grundwoolies, etc., try to come up with a plan to save their friends. Their first mistake is in forgetting that they suck at everything. Eventually, they use the amazing 80's technology of a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder to record Bray yelling at some Troggles, and with that and a... okay, the disguise is actually pretty decent, they lure Grogar out of the walls and surround him. Unfortunately, they missed the part where he shoots magic lightning out of his horns; luckily for them, he did too, and starts trying to head-butt them all into oblivion. Cue Grogar getting stuck in a tree.
See, somewhere along the line, magical forgetting pony figured out that the bell he wears around his neck grants him his magical power (there's another, larger one somewhere in Tambelon whose purpose beyond a plot device I totally missed), and so the idea is to get it away from him and then they can win all the things forever. Unfortunately, Spike goes in for the grab and proves that, like Loverboy, he has always sucked. (I hope someone gets that reference.) He gets his ass handed to him, and Grogar captures the fuck out of them some more and heads back to his fortress.
Here I would like to stop for a second and point out two things I did like. Actual characters, even! Heart Throb has something of modern day Rarity's personality, only much more adventurous. There's also a Flutterpony whose name I missed (she's sometimes kind of green) that speaks using really big words, which is a thing that happened in old cartoons but which I nevertheless found amusing. Though I liked her less once a second pony showed up doing the same thing.
Oh yeah, there's another song about now. It's sung by the Bushwoolies and Grundles. It's awful.
So they try again. Whiny child #1 somehow manages to capture a Troggle (named Trog, of course) who says he's defecting from Tambelon because Grogar captured his people and they don't enjoy serving him. He leads them into a secret passage and... double crosses them! No one saw that coming! Now everyone in Happy Valley or whatever the fuck it's called is in Grogar's clutches and will be sent to the Realm of Darkness (which I have to assume is not a nice place) at the stroke of midnight, just as soon as he gets his ass in gear and casts the spell. Oh, but actually it's a triple cross and Trog still wants to help them, but the Troggles are too busy celebrating Grogar's victory under duress.
There's a really stupid plan involving gruel shoved into a crack in the ceiling that lets enough of them escape to grab Bray's keys, which they use to free the rest of the ponies, et. al., and then everyone makes a break for it. They shout to the Troggles for help, promising them freedom, and then Grogar shows up and starts blasting everything with lightning. In true 80's cartoon style, he misses every time, but it's enough to keep them all at bay. Meanwhile, forgetting pony figures out that ringing the giant bell will remove Grogar's power (and here's where paying attention earlier might have helped; as far as I can tell, Grogar made the damn thing to bring Tambelon back, but it also controls his own magic? That seems like a bad idea, just sayin'), so...
You guessed it! Another fucking song!
Megan (aka non-whiny child) and British pony go flying off to ring the bell, a Flutterpony tricks Grogar into blasting his own gate open (it unfolds like a lawn chair; the animation budget was obviously running on fumes by this point), the big bell rings, Grogar's bell disintigrates into black ash and he gets very sad. Then the magic happens in his cauldron or whatever and Tambelon vanishes, Megan and her limey wing slave escaping just in time to avoid being sucked into the Shadow Realm or whatever. After some bizarre head-squishing antics from Spike (seriously, the animation on portions of this show is just jaw-droppingly horrendous), we have a happy ending.
Was it good? Fuck no. Grogar is a far less intimidating, and overall interesting, villain than Tirek. He's not really even as memorable as the Smooze, just sort of your average conquering magical warlord. But the moment Grogar revealed that he wanted the humans, and had originally captured the Troggles, because they have hands, and hands are useful for slaves to have when you yourself do not have them, my mind kicked into overdrive with a G4 Tambelon/Grogar-based story starring Lyra, because that's how I roll. Chances of it actually being written are slim, but you never know. So it was at least worth knowing about. And now you do, too, without all the ocular trauma. Thanks for reading. Pray for me as I consider watching all of G1 someday.
I remember watching The Return of Tambelon not too long ago myself; I was looking to become familiar with G1 so I could try to incorporate it into some stories. It's pretty cliche and terrible like you said, but I still found Grogar oddly compelling. I think that, with some polishing, he could be as neat a villain as Tirek.
As a side note, go watch the episode called Baby It's Cold Outside. It features one of my (unjustifiably) favourite villains, King Charlatan, a penguin dude who accidentally freezes his own son solid and then tries to justify it.
It's ridiculous, but there is a surprisingly decent song in there.
Yeah, the Grogar/Lyra/hand connection has been made in the past, but I've never seen anything come of it. Yet.
Also, "limey wing slave" may be the best thing I've read all day.
50% less epic!
Do they really call it "winking" in the episode? If so that probably explains why you occasionally see Twilight's teleportation described that way in G4 fanfiction.
2196119
This.
2196119
I keep reading it as "limey wang slave" now. D: You've ruined me!
2196182
Yeah, it's "winking out". As far as I can tell, from having seen a grand total of two G1 episodes, that's all unicorns can really do, but I guess some of them can do other stuff? Like Fizzy makes bubbles. I dunno.
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Hey, all I did was quote you. Any perceived wang slavery is entirely the fault of your subconscious.
Wow. Yeah, just from reading this I can tell the Lunaverse did it better. It also included genocide, spiritually wrecking Tirek, and a super-lich, but they're used well.
Lunaverse version had no 'limey wing slaves' in it, however.
2202324
Obviously, they're doing it wrong. :V
I need to write clop about G4 North Star now, don't I? :|
2202326
We would never admit to forcing you to do such a thing.
Actually Grogar is voiced by Michael Bell.