Writer Stephen Perry arrives at ThunderCats like a playwright who has wandered into a toy shop and decided that the monsters deserve Shakespearean ambitions. The Doomgaze is his first contribution to the series, and it immediately reveals a writer far more interested in shadows than sunshine. The result is an episode that remembers Mumm-Ra was conceived as an ancient horror long before merchandising softened his edges into those of a Saturday morning pantomime villain.
In this episode, Mumm-Ra is allowed to breathe the stale air of his own mythology. His incantations carry genuine weight to them, his threats carry cadence of forgotten curses, and his determination to purge Third Earth of the ThunderCats finally feels worthy of a creature who has supposedly survived the collapse of civilisations. It's remarkable how much menace can be restored simply by giving the villain the dialogue that sounds as though he believes every syllable himself.
The story's great tease is Ta-She, introduced here with all the ceremony of someone destined to become a recurring nightmare. Should she be successful, of course. Emerging from the Timewarp Prison, she possesses the sort of hypnotic allure that fairy tales have long warned impressionable princes about. Unfortunately, ThunderCats episodes run with the urgency of a commuter catching the last train home. Before Ta-She has properly stretched her dramatic legs, she is unceremoniously packed back into magical custody. The Doomgaze is the first Thundercats tale that really should have been a 2-parter. Its worth noting that Perry would go on to write the season’s only 2-parter in “Feliner”. It’s a pity, because Ta-She’s abilities are deliciously unsettling. The notion that she bends minds through irresistible beauty is exactly the sort of gothic flourish that suits Mumm-Ra's supernatural corner of the series. Better still, it allows Cheetara one of her finest moments.
Faced with Ta-She's seductive powers, she dismisses them with magnificent confidence: "You may mesmerise the men with your evil beauty... but I am a woman. You hold no mystery to me." Meow. It's the sort of line that lands with surprising force, not because it waves a flag for empowerment, but because it feels entirely natural to the character delivering it. Lynne Lypton really enjoyed delivering this one. Long before anyone was assembling marketing campaigns around "strong female characters", ThunderCats occasionally remembered that strength simply meant refusing to be intimidated.
The episode also quietly expands the mythology. Having lurked ominously above Mumm-Ra's sarcophagus since the series began, the Ancient Spirits of Evil finally make themselves heard. Unfortunately, they sound alarmingly like Panthro after swallowing an echo chamber. Once you've noticed it, the illusion is rather like spotting the stagehand holding up the ghost. Visually, however, The Doomgaze frequently borders on magnificent. Ta-She's spectral ship drifting through storm clouds is a miniature work of art, and the facial features throughout echo the dinstinct details shown in episode 2 “The Unholy Alliance”. Likewise, Mumm-Ra's famous transformation sequence receives newly painted surroundings, a neat reminder that the animators often found inventive ways of making familiar cels feel newly cinematic without drawing everything from scratch.
Like many of the series' strongest instalments, The Doomgaze leaves you wishing it had at least another ten minutes in which to explore its own ideas. It hints at richer mythology than its running time can comfortably accommodate, introduces a villain who deserves an encore, yet never recieves one, and briefly allows horror to eclipse heroics. If its celebration of female resilience feels unexpectedly modern, that is almost certainly accidental. But children's television has always had a habit of stumbling into truths adults later congratulate themselves for discovering. The Doomgaze remains an atmospheric reminder that beneath ThunderCats' colourful exterior lurked a series occasionally willing to peer into the darkness—and find something looking back.
Next time: “Lord of the Snows”