| Have Mask, Will Travel | |
|---|---|
| Season 3, Episode 10 | |
| |
| Air date | 7. February, 1997 |
| Written by | Duane Capizzi |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous The Aceman Cometh |
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Have Mask, Will Travel is the fifty-fifth episode and series finale of The Mask: The Animated Series. It also functions as the second part of a crossover with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
Summary[]
In the second half of The Mask and Ace Ventura crossover, Ace is called upon by NASA to travel to a space station where a hamster—one that knows the entire Elvis Presley catalogue—is missing. When Stanley Ipkiss arrives to retrieve his mask (taken by Spike in the previous episode), he becomes the Mask and joins Ace on his mission.
Plot[]
Ace arrives to his apartment, ready to enjoy a day of fun with his pet animals, until Stanley knocks on his door and asks for his Mask back after Spike stole. Ace, who does know that Spike stole the Mask, feigns ignorance until two government agents ask for Ace's assistance on an important mission and Stanley, being a civillian, is forced to stay behind, until he discovers Spike using his Mask as a plate. As Stanley chases after Spike, Ace is taken to NASA headquarters and informed about his mission: a guinea pig named Gordon, trained by NASA to sign the entire Elvis Presley catalogue backwards, has gone missing in deep space.
Ace is told he will have to board a spaceship for his mission, while Stanley, having followed Spike all the way to NASA, finally succeeds in putting on the Mask. Excited about space travel, the Mask decides to come along and boards the spaceship, alongside Ace and Spike. Suddenly, the ship crashes into a meteor and the heroes are left stranded. As the heroes explore the meteor, Ace feels the need to go to the bathroom and attempts to use a small crater as an improvised toilet. Suddenly, an alien creature grabs Ace's behind, just when the heroes' ship receives a transmission from a woman called Dr. Spacelove, who offers to teleport them to her space station, Deep Space 4.
As the heroes are teleported to Deep Space 4, Spacelove informs them about Gordon. After getting the alien creature detached from his behind, Ace starts searching the station for clues and interrogating possible suspects, such as a domestic robot tasked with taking care of Gordon. The robot believes Spike to be a hostile life form and starts chasing him all over Spacelove's laboratory, accidentally releasing the alien creature, who has become an adult, from its container.
During the investigation, the Mask accidentally throws Ace into a cloning machine and the clone is devoured by the alien, who starts attacking the humans. While Ace discovers that the domestic robot was suffering from a malfunction and accidentally threw Gordon into outer space in a garbage container, having confused him for garbage, the Mask accidentally teleports the hostile alien to Earth, where he attacks the workers at NASA.
Ace believes Gordon's capsule was consumed by a black hole and thrown into an unexplored region of space, so he reluctantly asks for the Mask's help in rescuing him. Ace pilots a ship into an unknown planet, which is revealed to be the homeworld of the alien that had attacked Ace earlier. Ace, Spike and the Mask come across a cave full of alien eggs and discover Gordon's capsule. As they attempt to retrieve it, they are attacked by the brood's mother and her newborn children. The mother forcibly removes the Mask's from Stanley's face, but Ace's behind gets bonded it to it and, for a few seconds, keeps the aliens distracted by putting them in diapers and giving them wedgies.
Stanley separates Ace's behind from the Mask and puts it on yet again to defeat the aliens and return Gordon to Deep Space 4. Although the mission is now complete, Ace and the Mask decide not to return to Earth and instead agree to stay on Deep Space 4 for a little while, if only to enjoy Spacelove's company.
Characters[]
Notes[]
Continuity notes[]
- This episode marks the second time the Mask travels to outer space and fights aliens. The first time was "For All Mask-Kind".
References to other works of fiction[]
- Once again, the Mask shapes his head to look like the Wolf from Red Hot Riding Hood.
- This episode contains a few references to the Alien franchise:
- The antagonists are obvious parodies of the Xenomorphs.
- When fighting the alien at Deep Space 4, the Mask uses a robot similar in appearance to the Power Loader.
- The Mask describes the infant alien that had attached itself to Ace's behind as a "Butthugger", an obvious reference to the Facehugger.
- The Mask makes a reference to Superman by describing him as "an old friend from planet Krypton".
- When the Mask introduces himself to the aliens' mother, he takes the form of "Poseidon, king of planet Neptune", a reference to both the planet and the Roman god.
- Ace sarcastically refers to the Mask as Dr. Smith, a character from the television series Lost in Space.