Defying Orders

Master Roshi arrives at Wukong Hospital with devastating news from Bulma: Vegeta is fully healed and on Namek, their ship is destroyed, and a being far stronger than Vegeta commands an army already collecting Dragon Balls. Goku is stunned that anyone could be more powerful than the Saiyan prince who nearly killed them all.

Yajirobe bursts in with a lifeline: Korin's newest crop of Senzu Beans has finally matured. Despite the doctor's protests, Goku catches a tossed bean and eats it. The healing is instantaneous. He leaps from bed, shatters his casts by flexing, and throws his hospital gown aside to don his martial arts uniform. Taking the remaining six Senzu Beans, Goku jumps out the window onto the Flying Nimbus and rockets toward Capsule Corporation.

Dr. Brief unveils a custom spaceship built from the pod Goku arrived on Earth in as a baby, complete with an artificial gravity machine capable of generating up to 100 times normal gravity. The doctor warns Goku to increase the setting gradually to avoid being crushed. Goku launches immediately, dismissing Dr. Brief's concern about the unfinished stereo system. Within moments, the ship is hurtling through space on a six-day course for Namek. Goku begins training at 20 times gravity and is instantly flattened, realizing he should have started at 11.

On Namek, Krillin and Gohan suppress their power and follow Frieza's forces to a Namekian settlement. What they find is chilling. Frieza sits in his hover-pod at the center of the village, flanked by Zarbon and Dodoria, with soldiers herding Namekian villagers out of their homes at gunpoint. Among the captives are the elder Moori and two children, Dende and Cargo.

Krillin and Gohan observe from behind a ridge, terrified but unable to look away. Dodoria's scouter briefly detects their suppressed power before Krillin pulls them further into hiding. The episode ends with Frieza smirking as he prepares to interrogate the Namekians, his soldiers already holding four of the seven Dragon Balls.

Goku's departure from the hospital is one of Dragon Ball Z's most iconic comedic sequences. The sight of a fully healed Goku bursting free of his casts, tossing his gown onto the baffled doctor's head, and leaping out a window leaves the entire ward in shock. Chi-Chi's parting shout about clean underwear is the perfect punctuation to the absurdity.

This marks the last time Goku rides the Flying Nimbus in Dragon Ball Z, closing the chapter on an iconic element from the original series as the story enters its most expansive arc.