Captives of Cobra, Part I

A secret Cobra facility in the United States explodes and leaves behind a field of growing, high-explosive crystals that G.I. Joe cannot attack or move without risk. Duke's team guards the crystals while the Baroness, unable to shoot at them, has the Joes' family files copied from the Pentagon and sends the Crimson Guard, Xamot and Tomax to seize relatives of the Joes who are home on leave.

Mac Ito's family in Los Angeles, the O'Haras in Atlanta, Shipwreck's nephew in San Diego, Spirit's relatives in Taos and Barbecue's family in Boston are all taken, and the Baroness has a scientist brainwash the captives with augmentors that make them obey her signals. After Duke's team runs a test detonation, the recalled Joes drive into a canyon, meet a Cobra unit, and recognise their own families under the helmets.

Voice talents, as credited on this episode's closing titles. The Sunbow credit crawl lists the company of voice actors and does not assign roles, so no role attributions are given here.

Liz Aubrey Jackson Beck Michael Bell Gregg Berger Arthur Burghardt Corey Burton Darlene Carr Francois Chau Peter Cullen Christian Czingland Pat Fraley Barbara Goodson Dave Hall Johnny Haymer Zack Hoffman Kene Holliday Michael Horton John Hostetter Buster Jones Stan Jones Jimmy Keegan Christopher Latta Hap Lawrence Pat Lentz Loren Lester Ketty Lester Mary McDonald Lewis Morgan Lofting Mona Marshall Bill Morey Rob Paulsen Bill Ratner Hal Rayle Neil Ross Dan Roth Will Ryan Marilyn Schreffler John Stephenson B.J. Ward Lee Weaver Frank Welker Michael Yama Keone Young

"Ohh! But my mama's making gumbo!" -- Gung-Ho

"Right here in the U.S. of A." -- Gung-Ho

"Tell me, Commander, who in all the world would you never let come to harm?" -- Baroness

"Me!" -- Cobra Commander

"I know you from the way you stand, Brian." -- Scarlett

"Well, you may not believe this, but I was adopted, too." -- Shipwreck

"But the important thing is that they do love you and take care of you. That's what really counts." -- Shipwreck

"Is this the best Cobra can do, terrifying innocent children?!" -- Patrick O'Hara

"Only on Cobra soldiers, whose wills are not strong." -- A Cobra scientist

"As long as they wear these, they'll obey any orders." -- A Cobra scientist

Transcribed from the episode's closed-caption subtitle track and converted from capitals to sentence case. Speakers are named only where the track or the picture makes them clear.

A soldier on leave is a soldier whose beeper is about to go off, and the best thing "Captives of Cobra, Part I" does is let us watch it happen in a store, a gym, a backyard, on a pier and in a village square. Mac Ito is hauling boxes through the family shop in the Watts district of Los Angeles when the device on his belt starts chirping, and he blames his agent and some emergency stunt work. Spirit is called away from his cousin's coming-of-age ceremony in Taos while her grandfather asks whether he would dishonour it because the white men call. [1] The structure is a travelogue with a hostage crisis folded inside it, and it works because every household is different and each Joe lies to it in a different way.

Cobra has found the one place the Joes cannot be armoured, their families, and the script spends its first half making sure we meet those families before they are taken. The Baroness's pitch is the hinge. The crystals are too volatile to shoot at, so she asks the Commander who in all the world he would never let come to harm, and he answers "Me!" It is the funniest line in the half hour, and it settles who is running the operation: he then places his Crimson Guard at her service.

The scene that earns the episode its keep is the quiet one on the San Diego pier. Shipwreck's nephew Jesse has just been told by his parents that he was adopted, and Hector, as the family calls him, sits him down with a fishing rod and says that he was adopted too. Whether that is true of him the script gives us nothing to check, so the line has to work as comfort alone, and it does. Then the beeper goes and a bite tugs the boy's line, and the cut away from the pier is abrupt on purpose.

The Atlanta scene is the neatest. Scarlett walks into a gym where her father and brothers spar in masks so that nobody can tell who is who, and she picks Brian out by the way he stands. Moments later the room is full of Crimson Guards and a white-clad ninja, and Patrick O'Hara is told to surrender because Cobra already has his sons. [2] The family fights back first, which gives his later outburst at the Baroness, about terrifying innocent children, the weight of a man who has already been in the scrap.

The machinery is introduced with a politeness that makes it worse. The scientist running the brainwashing chair admits it has been tried only on Cobra soldiers, whose wills are not strong, and the Baroness answers by starting with the smallest hostage, a girl in a bikini taken from a lounge chair in a Louisville backyard. [3] "Who do you serve, little one?" "I serve Cobra." There is no quip to cushion it, and the lounge chair we saw earlier is what makes it land.

The Joes' half is the weaker one. Duke, Gung-Ho and Tollbooth spend a long stretch with the crystals, which chime and grow while a loose boulder rolls off a cliff, and which the team works out are new piezoelectric crystals. The test detonation is a tidy piece of information, but it is delivered at a walking pace while the families are being loaded into vans. Duke's reminders that the slightest vibration could set them off are the sort of line a script writes to keep a MacGuffin in view.

The cliffhanger is the right one. The Joes ride out to meet a Cobra unit their scouts say is small enough to handle, and then the faces come into view: Shipwreck cries out for Jesse, Scarlett says "Shawn. No." and Spirit says "Grandfather." No explosion this time, only a roll call of people we have met! Cobra's first move against the Joes as people rather than soldiers is only frightening if we have first seen them as sons and nephews, and this half takes the trouble.

1 ^ Each home is introduced by an on-screen location label: Watts District, Los Angeles; Atlanta, Georgia; Louisville, Kentucky; San Diego, California; Taos, New Mexico; Boston, Massachusetts. The on-screen computer records that give Quick Kick's and Shipwreck's real names (Macarthur S. Ito and Hector X. Delgado) belong to the same Pentagon family data the Baroness's intruder copies before the failsafe shuts the computer down.

2 ^ The dialogue never names the white-clad intruder at the Pentagon or the one in the gym; going by his look, both appear to be Storm Shadow, though nobody says so and the review does not name him.

3 ^ The Louisville household is the one the dialogue never labels. Lady Jaye's roll call of Joes on leave names Scarlett, Barbecue, Quick Kick, Shipwreck, Thunder and Spirit, which accounts for every family in the episode except this one, so Thunder is the likely candidate, but nobody on screen says so.

1. The plot hangs on the Joes' real identities. The Baroness points out, "But the true identities of the Joes are top secret," and Cobra answers by tapping into Pentagon computers. A fan guide also notes that one version of Sunbow's synopsis for this two-parter explains why the Joes use code names.
2. Almost every Joe is pulled away from a family visit by a beeper, and the episode repeats the beat several times. Fans on the Joe guide site have also catalogued the households, including the O'Haras in Atlanta (Scarlett's family), the Ito family store in Watts for Quick Kick, Thunder's Louisville home, and Spirit's grandfather in Taos.
3. The Baroness persuades Cobra Commander that taking hostages is the only safe plan with a single question: "Tell me, Commander, who in all the world would you never let come to harm?" His one-word reply, "Me!", is followed by her "Fool."
4. Shipwreck's nephew Jesse has just been told he was adopted, and Shipwreck's reply is that he was adopted too: "We're lucky to have people who love us as much as our real parents might have, maybe even more." It is a quiet moment for the series' resident clown.
5. Scarlett's father and brothers greet her wearing masks so she cannot tell who is who, and she picks out Brian "from the way you stand."
6. Fan guides list several visual slips. Scarlett's name is misspelled on a Cobra monitor, the Cobra Ferrets that attack Spirit's family are green instead of blue, and in one shot Quick Kick appears to be wearing Shipwreck's shirt.
7. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, "To be continued on tomorrow's G.I. Joe", and the sequel [Captives of Cobra, Part II](/cartoons/1985/episodes/captives-of-cobra-part-ii/) aired the next day. The crystals the Joes guard in the opening also drive the plot of that sequel.
8. The kidnappers' van carries the license plate 888, and a Joe fan guide wonders whether that is Cobra's lucky number.