Man-At-Arms

In Filmation's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Man-At-Arms is the palace weapons master and its resident inventor, a mustached engineer in helmet and armor who is as likely to be found in his workshop as on a battlefield. He is in the very first episode, "Diamond Ray of Disappearance," shown on September 5, 1983, where Skeletor's new diamond banishes him along with King Randor and Queen Marlena, and he is one of the handful of people who know that Prince Adam is He-Man.

The next day's episode, Paul Dini's "Teela's Quest," gives him a past. The Oracle of the Crystal Sea tells Teela that the Sorceress of Grayskull is her mother and that Man-At-Arms adopted her as an infant, and the Sorceress wipes the memory once the danger is over. From then on he carries two secrets, Teela's and Adam's, and the series never asks him to account for either.

Filmation was slow with his personal name. Duncan is spoken on screen in "The Problem With Power," first shown on November 9, 1984, early in the second season.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Island of Fear (), 4:23 to 6:21, 1 minute 58 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

David Wise's "Day of the Machines," first shown on September 19, 1984, is the episode most interested in the man behind the gadgets. A remote-control rocket from one of his experiments slips its leash, crashes into a royal chamber and nearly kills the King and Queen, and almost at once Man-At-Arms has decided that the only honorable thing to do is resign. Nobody else in the room agrees with him, and the script is careful to make the accident nobody's fault.

Skeletor does not cause the crash; he only notices it, and slips an energy bug called Byte into the royal computers while a good engineer is busy doubting himself. Once Byte is loose the palace machines turn on everyone, Man-At-Arms included, and a man who has just tried to give up his job has to keep doing it. Teela's closing moral tells viewers to own a mistake and not shift the blame onto others.

Alan Oppenheimer voiced Man-At-Arms in the Filmation series. He also voiced Skeletor. Both characters are in most episodes, so the hero's mentor and the villain trying to kill him are the same performer arguing with himself.

Mattel's Masters of the Universe Classics cardback opens with a sentence most retellings skip: "REAL NAME: Duncan. For two centuries, the Eternian weapons master and combat instructor to the royal family has been called the 'Man-At-Arms.'" Man-At-Arms is an office. Duncan holds it. Others held it before him and, as it turns out, someone holds it after him.

The rest of the card sets out his career. Duncan was trained by the renowned tactician Dekker and came through the Great Unrest as a veteran of it. King Randor then asked him to take the post and to fortify the royal guard with an elite strike force, which Duncan named the Masters of the Universe, so the team's name is his coinage. The card also makes him a great inventor, crediting him with an electronic version of the Sword of Power for Adam to use until Adam could unite both halves of King Grayskull's sword, and it closes on Duncan and his adopted daughter Teela scouting the borders of Eternia for signs of lurking evil.

Mattel's Dekker card tells the succession slightly differently. Dekker was a mercenary from the Dunes of Doom who switched sides during the Great Unrest, became King Miro's Man-At-Arms, took "a young prodigy named Duncan under his wing," and then retired to Orkas Island "passing his title and duties to his former apprentice and sidekick." So Dekker's card says Dekker handed the post on, and Duncan's card says Randor asked him to take it. Both are official, and they are not quite the same event.

The Classics line released a Snake Man-At-Arms figure, and its bio is the grimmest thing in the whole cardback set: "REAL NAME: Duncan of the Viper Clan. Exposed to the Serpent's Ring, Duncan was magically transformed by King Hsss into a Snake Man permanently."

The rest of the card follows that through to the end. Under the spell he uses his genius to build great and horrific machines of war for the Snake Men. He is replaced as Royal Man-At-Arms by Clamp Champ, is forced to fight him, and is mortally wounded in their final duel at the Second Ultimate Battleground, recovering his own humanity for a moment beforehand thanks to a spell cast by his daughter Teela, by then the new Sorceress of Grayskull. Nothing about it is a curse waiting to be broken in the third act, and the inventiveness that made him useful to the heroes ends up arming their enemies.

Clamp Champ's card confirms the succession from the other end. Raenius, formerly King Randor's bodyguard, stepped in as the new royal Man-At-Arms after Duncan was captured and turned. The card is candid that Raenius is not the equal of the man he replaced: he lacks Duncan's skills as an inventor, and proves himself instead through hand-to-hand combat and weapons knowledge, particularly the techno clamp that gave him his nickname. He leads the Masters of the Universe all the way to the Second Ultimate Battleground.