Having witnessed the murder of his girlfriend Mira, Rian tries to make his fellow Gelflings believe him. He successfully transfers his dreams and memories to his best friend Gurjin, but before he can convince everyone else, skekSil, who fails in trying to steal Mira's essence for himself, spins the story and convinces the Gelflings that Rian's mind is sick and that he was the one who killed Mira, even though Rian has no logical reason to.
Meanwhile, Aughra finally awakens from her thousand year journey among the stars as Thra calls her back. Donna Kimball voices Aughra, and she is a perfect successor to Billie Whitelaw. She's also puppeteered by Kevin Clash, and this is not the first time Clash has replaced Frank Oz; he also animated Oz's characters in 'Muppet Treasure Island', while Oz was busy directing. Without Kimball's voiceover, Clash's voice for Aughra is less of a "feminine Yoda" voice than Oz's. Still, he performs her very nicely.
In the forest, Grottan Gelfling Deet (short for Deethra), sent from her home in the caves to save Thra, meets an excitable Podling named Hup who wants to become a Paladin. Hup seems a bit infantile but he gets way more interesting as the series goes on.
The pacing is a bit slow and it lacks focus, so it's worth a rewatch. There is development to characters we just met, and fleshing out of characters we already know. The best developed new character is Princess Brea, who is a spirited but intelligent young woman trying to figure out the meaning of a mysterious symbol.
One of the villains shows a surprising sympathetic side: skekTek. Sympathising with a dastardly villain is an uncomfortable yet interesting experience. The Scientist abuses animals for his experiments (except for, as we find out, the small green bird-like creature he has caged somewhere between his desk and the fiery shaft over which the Crystal is suspended), and of course is a nasty creature who shamelessly drained the essence of one of his own palace guards and was involved in covering it up, but he's treated like trash by the others; The Emperor bosses him around, the more conventionally "manly" Skeksis like skekVar insult him to his face, and skekSil throws him under the bus, and when he has his eye gouged out by a peeper beetle, you can't help but feel sorry for him (I'm guessing his urRu counterpart, urTih, has a glass eye). The circumstances surrounding poor skekTek's hardship brings this Nietzsche quote to mind: "He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat." Anyway, another good episode in a great series.
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