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"Power Play"
Written by Len Janson and Chuck Menville
Directed by Anthony Bona
Original airdate:
December 7, 1991 |
Tom goes in search of power
crystals to replace the equipment’s failing batteries.
Didja Notice?
At 0:24 in the episode, Kevin comments that he's so hungry he
could eat a T-rex burger. Possibly this is intended as an
in-joke variation on the
Flintstones brontoburgers.
As Tom and Kevin make their way home in the night from a
scouting expedition of the Land, their flashlights are getting
dimmer and dimmer due to low batteries. Tom comments they used
up the last pack of batteries. As I've said before, why did Tom
allow the family to waste precious battery life on
non-essentials like their boom box? The only no-prize explanation
I can come up with is that the flashlights were the only
"essential" electronic items in their equipment and they may use
a different size battery than the non-essential ones. In other
words, the flashlights may use D-size batteries and the other
items all use C-size or smaller, so there's no reason not to use
up the C-size.
Perhaps because this was the final episode of the season, the
writers include a string of dialog that is similar to some
spoken in the premiere episode "Tasha". In
"Tasha", Tom gets
chased by Scarface and in this one he is chased by Spike the
stegosaur. Listen to these two strings of dialog from the
episodes:
dialog from "Tasha"
and
dialog from "Power Play". Of course Kevin's comment about
Spike having Tom for dinner doesn't make a lot of sense
considering stegosaurs are herbivores! Still, the Stegosaurus
could have killed him by trampling or smacking him with his
spiked tail while protecting his territory.
In this episode we see that Annie keeps a diary. In it, she
writes that Kevin was counting on his videos of the family's
time in this world to make him a big Hollywood producer when he
gets back to Earth.
At 3:43 in the episode, Tom is mixing and matching all of their
"dead" batteries to find two with enough juice left to power one
flashlight for a while. The batteries he has all appear to be
disguised Duracells; the producers have used some silvery
material to partially or fully wrap each battery to cover up the
logos. The distinctive "copper top" of Duracell batteries are
visible on a couple of them.
At 5:01 in the episode, when he gets the idea to possibly use
power crystals to power their devices, Tom flicks on his one
working flashlight so that it's shining in his face; the
equivalent of a light bulb appearing over a character's head in
a cartoon when they have an idea!
Apparently, Sleestak, like
Star Trek's Vulcans, have
green blood!
After narrowly escaping Scarface, the injured Shung stumbles
into the cave in which Tom is hiding and he appears to have
green blood oozing from a cut on his head. Does this mean their
blood is copper-based like the Vulcans rather than the iron-base
of red blood?
While Kevin, Annie and Stink try to entertain themselves, Kevin
dares Stink to "make me laugh". Stink immediately dresses in
drag and even behaves in an exaggerated female flirting behavior
with Kevin! How does Stink know anything about how human females
on Earth would dress and behave? His only exposure to human
females is Christa (who doesn't remember Earth or its customs)
and Annie (who hasn't had an opportunity to flirt with
boys...unless she was attempting to woo Balen off camera in
"Day
for Knight"!).
At 12:31 in the episode, the anthropomorphism of Tasha continues
as we see that even she finds Stink's drag costume hilarious.
Oddly enough, both LOTL90 and LOTL70 have episodes featuring a
Paku in a dress; Stink here (although he is actually just
wearing a beach towel wrapped around himself) and Cha-ka in
"Baby-Sitter", in which he is modeling Holly's homemade dress for
her while she hems it.
At 21:16 in the episode, we see Tom place a crystal in one of
the flashlights. As he screws the cap back on he holds it down
below the table top...so the viewing audience can't see the
stagehand exchange it for an identical one with batteries so
Timothy Bottoms can turn it on and show that the crystals work
in place of batteries!
After Tom turns on the flashlight and is thrilled at the
resulting beam, he then immediately turns on the boom box and
portable television. Apparently he placed crystals in all the
devices before he powered on the flashlight to see if his idea even
works!
Pakuni translations |
Time in
episode |
Pakuni |
English |
9:15 |
Stink says, "Acuba
ne, Porters." |
"Greetings, Porters." |
12:37 |
Stink says, "Acuba
ne, Kevin Porter." |
"Greetings,
Kevin Porter." |
15:46 |
Stink says, "Ayu.
Ayu." |
"Yes. Yes." |
19:44 |
Stink says, "Shung! Shung malu!" |
"Shung! Shung evil!" |
Unanswered Questions
How are the crystals able to power the Porters'
electronic devices? Even if the crystals do contain power, it
seems unlikely that just tossing a loose one inside an
electrical device would power it. There's a reason there are
metal contact points in electrical devices that the batteries
must be in contact with to work. It would have made at least
slightly more sense for the Porters to find that they could
re-charge their old batteries with the crystals instead.
Memorable Dialog
T-rex burger.wav
might find a way home.wav
the old flashlight trick.wav
kiss civilization goodbye.wav
wherever Shung found his crystal.wav
good riddance.wav
gross me out.wav
this just isn't your day.wav
Stink, you have a spider on your dress.wav
a million bananas.wav
plenty of room in this land.wav
seal him up.wav
wimping out.wav
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