The
bad-tempered animated comedy leaps into orbit when a young Ethiopian boy
finds a starship and embarks on a quest to lead his famine-plagued people
to a land of plenty.
(originally aired November
17. Repeat showings scheduled November 20 and November 21)
What happened
Every journey begins with
a single step....
Screaming in from a hypervelocity
jaunt through space, a three-fingered elderly-looking alien comes to Earth
and lands in a desolate draught-stricken wasteland. Emerging from the winged
craft, the large-brained alien hails three Earthlings with the salutation,
"Greetings Marklars, I am Marklar."
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He is promptly devoured by
the three ferocious lions, who leave nothing but thick puddle of blood
soaking into the thirsty desert hardpan. And, of course, the spaceship....
(more extensive spoilers)
The adventure begins....
Quotable moments
Pat Robertson: Here
at the 600 Club we need your money to spread the word of Jesus and build
more advanced deflector shields for our galactic cruiser. Sally Struthers
has a Tydirium Junker, which is the favorite ship of the Hutts, and she
has trapped our new CBC ship in a positronic tractor beam. So we're gonna
need an ionic tractor disrupter. Now, not a regular ionic tractor disrupter,
but a negative tractor disrupter to spread the word of Jesus.
Stan [explaining
the missionaries to the Marklar leader]: They use Marklar to try and force
Marklar to believe their Marklar. If you let them stay here they will build
Marklars and Marklars. They will make all your Marklars believe in Marklar.
Marklar Leader: Young
Marklar, your Marklars are very wise.
The Marklars
[beckoning to the Ethiopians]: Can stay.
Ethiopians: Whoooo.
Marklar Leader [to
Sister Hollis and the missionaries]: You Marklars must leave.
Sister Hollis: But
you will all burn forever in eternal hellfire.
Marklar Leader: Yes,
that's nice, thank you for stopping by.
Analysis
While not destined to become
one of the classics of South Park, "Starvin' Marvin in Space" is an entertaining
swoop through what the space outside south Park's world must look like.
The episode was short on
the foul-mouthed bickering that is often the funniest dialogue of the show,
but Pat Robertson's emotional appeals for advanced weaponry for his space
crusaders almost made up for it.
While a fun ride, though,
the episode was low in the preposterousness that made the series an underground
phenomenon. Absent were the wild plot twists -- like the blow to the head
that made Cartman think he was a Vietnamese prostitute -- that yielded
such unforgettable situations in previous episodes.
Animators working on the
Sally Struthers-Jaba the Hutt amalgam put in a stellar performance in creating
a sickening fright of a creature who drooled gobs of blue goo. The show
also rolled out some advanced "special effects" during the passage through
the wormhole, during which space-time did in fact warp in the precise manner
predicted by Einstein.
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