Subscribe!Vytor: The Starfire Champion (1989)
Originally posted on 18 April 2026First episode title: The Starfire Legacy
How familiar with the show am I?: I'd never heard of it before.
In this fantasy sci-fi hybrid series, in a galaxy far away, a primitive from the land joins forces with someone from the more advanced world of the sky to fight the forces of evil.
As the episode starts, our main players are:
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Vytor, a man from the "savage" tribe of Terrons that live down on the surface of the world, who wears a large ring on the front of his clothing
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Skyla, a woman from the sky civilisation, who wears multi-purpose technological devices on her wrists, and who is the daughter of her people's ruler, King Altair
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Windchaser, a Cloud Cruiser, the seemingly sentient flying vehicle that Skyla rides
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Myzor, an exiled ruler who wants to take back control of this world
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Dreadlock, Myzor's chief minion
In a dark lair inside a mountain, Myzor executes a robot who has failed to find the Starfire Ring he has been looking for for the last seventeen years, and orders Dreadlock to continue searching. Meanwhile in the sky, Skyla is steering Windchaser towards the planet's surface, which the vehicle advises against. Then, on the island she is heading in the direction of, Vytor participates in a race against another man, Targil, to determine the new champion of their village, the one responsible for protecting it. Their race across the jungle is interrupted when a fleet of fighters piloted by Myzor's robots shoot down Windchaser, who crash-lands on the island. There is barely time for Skyla to learn who Vytor and Targil are before a robot also lands and attacks - the Terrons try to fight it off but are unsuccessful, with Targil getting shot, and Vytor and Skyla end up having to jump off a cliff towards a river to escape it.
They land in the water and find themselves in front of an old artificial cave with symbols carved around it. As they enter, some kind of demonic creature menaces them, but Vytor's ring glows and the creature vanishes, replaced by a projection of a woman. She says that she is Lyria, Guardian of the Chamber of Knowledge. She explains that the world used to be ruled by three kings - Altair, Myzor, and Trion - and she reveals to Vytor that Trion was his father. She explains through a mystic vision that Myzor wanted to conquer the world but Trion stole the Starfire Ring and hid it with his infant son before Myzor trapped him in the Shadow Realm. In order to help Vytor fight Myzor, Lyria grants him his father's Starfire Shield, powered by the ring, and a "Trimerang", a three-bladed throwing weapon stored in the shield. But Myzor has been watching this meeting using his magic orb and sends Dreadlock out to find Vytor.
Vytor and Skyla head out of the cavern but are attacked by a large tentacled creature called a "Creeper", and Vytor quickly has to accustom himself to his new weaponry in order to save Skyla from it. When they get out, Skyla tends to the damaged Windchaser, and Vytor heads to his village only to find that Dreadlock and the robots have captured his people. Vytor throws his Trimerang only for the robots to use a small boy as a human shield - Vytor's cry of "NO!" reveals to him that his weapon obeys his voice, and it stops in its tracks before the boy can come to any harm. Two of the robots capture Vytor but Skyla arrives, using a taser-like function of her wrist devices to paralyse the robots. Then Windchaser swoops in and frees the villagers, who get onto some winged boats they call gliders. From above, they are able to attack the robots by throwing things, and Vytor also attacks them, but they just rebuild themselves whenever they are destroyed, and Dreadlock is attacking Vytor too with a kind of whip. Vytor manages to slice the whip with the Trimerang, and Skyla finds a way to use her devices to mess with the robots' programming - they then rebuild themselves all wrong, putting legs in place of heads and so on.
Dreadlock begins to flee across a bridge and Vytor follows, so Dreadlock slices through the bridge to cause Vytor to fall - however, the shield works as a kind of glider and saves him. He flies back up and kicks Dreadlock down off the edge, but then takes pity on him and helps him back up. Dreadlock therefore gets away, and Myzor, who has been watching all of this, declares that he will defeat Vytor next time.
Myzor's attitude of being ungrateful to his own minions is pretty typical cartoon villain stuff, although it is implied the robots can just be easily rebuilt when he decides to destroy one on a whim. Outside of this opening scene, it's only Dreadlock who commands the robots directly, so it seems like they are chiefly his concern.
Skyla's first scene has a lot of "As You Know" type bits between her and Windchaser, as if they're each worried the other might have temporarily forgotten that he is her vehicle and that she is the daughter of the king, who might not be happy that she's taking a trip down to the surface. Yes, it's probably necessary as the episode has a lot to get through, so I wouldn't mark it down too much for that.
The race between Vytor and Targil seems to be the culmination of a larger competition - perhaps each round eliminated some contenders until they were the only two remaining. The two of them seem to be friendly with each other despite being each other's main rival for what sounds like a very important role. The race is presided over by the elderly village chief, Eldor - gee, I wonder how they came up with that name - who subjects Vytor to some withering sarcasm when he is late to the race.
Vytor: I was just warming up for the competition!
Eldor: Then you should be as warm as a summer's day by now.
The first meeting between the Terrons and Skyla makes it clear they already know her people exist, so this isn't like learning about angels or anything - Targil says that she must be one of the "cloud people". In contrast, Skyla doesn't know anything about Terrons until Windchaser explains the situation to her. He uses the term "savage", which she picks up from him and continues to use in reference to Vytor for the whole episode!
Before Vytor and Skyla jump down into the river, there's a humorous bit where Skyla insists on trying to calculate the ideal trajectory of the jump using her device even while the robot is advancing on them, until Vytor just grabs her and makes the decision for her!
When Lyria tells Vytor about his father, it's not clear what he did or didn't already know about his parents. Was he found by the Terrons and taken in as if he was an orphan? He believes himself to be a Terron, so it's possible he was told someone else was his father, but the episode doesn't go into this. It's also strange that his father owned a shield and weapon that are powered by the ring, when the flashback gives the impression that Trion obtaining the ring was followed almost immediately by him hiding it with his son.
The danger to the small boy's life felt unnervingly real when the Trimerang was headed right for him. Logically I knew a cartoon like this wouldn't show any spilled blood on-screen, but they still could have cut away and made it clear he had been killed. It would even have been an interesting addition to the hero's backstory to have him accidentally kill an innocent early in his quest, to highlight the importance of learning how to use his weapons. Still, this was an effective way of illustrating this ability of his weapon as a result.
Well, this was interesting. Only four episodes were made of this show, so I've basically just watched the first twenty minutes of a movie. As such, I do like what I've seen, but I would need to see more.
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