Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!

Mekaneck

Real Name: Orius

Injured in the Battle of the Avion during the Great Unrest, Orius was brought by Duncan to Castle Grayskull where he was healed by the Sorceress. The magic spell replaced his neck with an ever-expanding mechanical construction made of microscopic nanites. By increasing or decreasing the number of nanites in his body, Orius gained the ability to grow his neck to almost unlimited length. Taking the code name Mekaneck, he served the royal household as a loyal member of the Masters of the Universe, using his amazing periscope neck to spy on the evil enemy.

I lost track of the numbering on these bio discussions. I’m trying to do right by you all and re-educate myself on the MOTUC story, but it’s pretty complicated by this point, and some of the later bios seem to contradict stuff from earlier ones. Anyway, let’s get to it!

First off is his real name, Orius. I didn’t do a lot of research on it, but this seems to be its first appearance. The character’s name in the series bible wasn’t even Mekaneck, it was “Spy Man.”* A more fitting name might have been “Oculus,” the Latin word for eyes, but that was taken. As for “Orius,” that’s just a Latin suffix for “having to do with.” So barring any new information, I guess it’s just a random name? Which is totally fine with me – I’ll take “Orius” over half of these names any day of the week.

This new origin for Mekaneck’s powers confuse me a little. It’s not as humorously opaque as his Millennium origin (from a n0w-lost bio on the Cartoon Network website), but it’s still weird. Once again we get a “magic” spell that somehow involves technology. I would assume this is somehow related to Cable’s He-Ro’s techno-organic virus, and this seems like a good place to pick up that thread, but it’s glossed over in favor of a handwaving nanorobots-related explanation of his neck’s powers, which seems kind of redundant when you’re already talking about a magic spell.

Other tidbits are that we learn Mekaneck was present at the Battle of Avion, where he presumably fought for the Eternians. Evidently this is the first we’ve heard of this battle, one of several during Keldor’s rebellious years before his face got burned off.

*Which, apropos of nothing, reminds me of the pseudonym I used prior to Poe Ghostal, “Spy Dude” – itself a nickname I made up for the main character in the old PC game Midnight Rescue!