Filmation unites The Little Mermaid and The Flying Dutchman in this cautionary tale of what happens when a cargo of Sagar Tree Trail Mix goes astray.
Somebody needs to tell Tom Ruegger (also responsible for the snoozefests "Search for the Starsword" and "Lightning City of the Clouds") to stop writing episodes already. And somebody also needs to muzzle that annoying baby Mermanite, or better yet, inflict him on the Overlord. For some odd reason, Filmation children are almost always annoying, and this time is no exception. Poulo's the only one who can stand the little bastard, and only because he wears a set of earplugs; it's the best darn moment of the episode, so don't miss it.
Not that anyone can understand half of what the Mermanites say. One of the ongoing problems with the series is the dialogue; if you own any of the tapes, you'll probably find yourself rewinding just to catch what some of the characters say, and the names of guest characters often get garbled. That's true here with the baby Mermanite, whose name we never did quite catch; we needed the storyboard to tell us his name is actually Puffin.
Brindelle really needs to ditch that Snow White voice.
When our queen with the fishtail welcomes our heroes to her empty kingdom, you'll do a double take, since Typhot captured eight Mermanites at most. And what a villain Typhot is, too! An ancestor of the Overlord and a phantom who can turn into a flying manta ray when defeated is a-okay with us--family reunions must be a real hoot--but for all of this, you'd think Tom Ruegger could find a better use for this guy. What a waste of a good villain! The stock footage of the Mermanites capsizing Typhot's ship in the flashback and in real-time is really awful., and that's just another quibble in an episode that could have been a heck of a lot better, so we're only giving it **
Case in point: when Blackstar, Warlock and Klone are caged and sent to the bottom of the sea, why isn't there at least the threat of their drowning? Okay, Klone can always turn himself into an eel and slip through the bars, and maybe Warlock can hold his breath a really long time, but Blackstar doesn't exactly have gills; some desperate air bubbles from him would have provided some much-needed dramatic tension.
And how is it that Brindelle is able to manuever around on dry land given that she only has a fishtail? At least She-Ra's Mermista could morph a pair of legs, but Brindelle looks really ridiculous "standing" on the deck of the Golden Galleon.
And here we also have another glowing example of the Idiot Plot Syndrome in that the action would have been over in two minutes if Blackstar were simply smart enough to toss down a handful of Power Fruits and take out the bad guys. What's the matter, the guy doesn't like trail mix?
As always, Ruegger is woefully lacking in the episode title department. The episode takes place in the Sea of Tranquility, but the episode title refers to the "Serpent Sea." Why, you ask? It's a mystery, don't bother trying to figure it out. But in the Sea of Tranquility, we're still waiting for that "The Eagle has landed" joke from our dim-witted astronaut hero. Hmmm, makes you think somebody wasn't getting enough of those Knowledge Nuts.