Chaos in the Sea of Lost Souls

The recap leaves Alpine and Bazooka on an ice floe among leopard seals. Quick Kick, a stuntman filming a candy-bar commercial, lassoes them clear, and the three hitch a ride with Cobra after Major Bludd activates the third control cube. Xamot, who can feel his brother's whereabouts, places Tomax aboard a Joe ship in the Sea of Lost Souls, and Cobra Commander lets him go while telling Destro and the Baroness to set off the fourth cube before the Twins are clear.

Satin's van gets past a Cobra gate, and Shipwreck and the others knock out the guards with a dance number. Lady Jaye dives after Destro's cube and meets his Robotopus. The Twins are freed, the cube is set and the Pyramid of Darkness is complete, and the Dreadnoks they have hired take Space Station Delta from Zartan, leaving the Commander at their mercy. Quick Kick's group ends pinned in a cockpit.

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

"May I remind you... Extensive Enterprise has financed this operation 100%." -- Xamot

"Our leader has no heart."

"I wonder if I should begin with my back to the camera and then turn suddenly... or will a simple close-up be more dramatic?" -- Cobra Commander

"Neither, Cobra Commander!" -- Tomax

"The whole enchilada." -- Tomax and Xamot

"Sorry, your Supreme Snakeship, but the twins have it right, and you have it wrong." -- Zartan

"Polly wants bulletproof feathers!" -- Polly

"It was more monkeys than a barrel of laughs, or something." -- Satin

"Your new initials are M.U.D. And if you can't spell, that means mud!" -- A Cobra trooper

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.

Nobody in Cobra's inner circle is hiding anything this time, which is the joke. The betrayals in this episode are announced in advance, in the room, to everyone but the people being betrayed, who guess anyway, and everyone carries on regardless.

Xamot wants to rescue his brother Tomax, whom he can feel somewhere in the Sea of Lost Souls [1], and Cobra Commander says it is out of the question; Xamot reminds him that Extensive Enterprise has financed the operation, and the Commander changes his mind within a line. Somebody in the room remarks on the change of heart, and the answer is that the leader has no heart. The moment the doors close he is telling Destro and the Baroness to set off the fourth cube the instant it is positioned, dooming the Twins to the same fate as G.I. Joe, and Destro is delighted to find that this leaves two fewer partners with whom to share the Earth. The Twins have reached the same opinion of the Commander's pledge, and when one asks the other whether he believes it the answer is a cheerful no.

So the episode is about a contract, and what makes it fun is who has read the small print. Money wins. The Twins are the only party with a payroll, and it covers more of Cobra than anyone has noticed: when Zartan, hearing that his Dreadnoks are taking Space Station Delta, calls them mercenary traitors, they agree with the description and explain that their real employers are Tomax and Xamot. Zartan, who holds the station for the Commander, loses it to a better offer.

The Commander's collapse is the best scene in the hour. He is alone at his console, wondering aloud whether to begin with his back to the camera and then turn suddenly or whether a simple close-up would be more dramatic, when the Twins announce that they now control the station and the Pyramid of Darkness, "the whole enchilada", they add together. He calls in Zartan to put them straight, and Zartan says, with some apology, that the Twins have it right and he has it wrong. The Commander, after a burst of shouting about skullduggery, pledges his absolute loyalty, to which the answers are how comforting and how dependable. It is cowardice written as high farce, and well earned.

The Joe side is the comic one. Satin's van, painted with her own poster, talks its way past a Cobra gate on the strength of an engagement to entertain Destro and the Commander, and when the troopers demand a performance they get a saxophone solo from a Shipwreck in a lime wig and green plaid jacket, a parrot in sunglasses, and a song whose last line promises that when we finish, you get slugged. The troopers are on the ground by the end of the chorus. It is gloriously silly, and it works as a counterweight: the only people who keep faith with one another are the ones dressed as a band, and Satin, who has her own song to sing and a father Cobra framed, is allowed to go her own way. Flint's remark that men sailed the seas before electricity gives us the hour's prettiest image, a sailing ship gliding through a field of wrecks!

The weak spot is Quick Kick. The stuntman arrives by lasso on an ice floe [2], delivers a Frozen Fudgie jingle and a run of film references, and spends the hour as a passenger in Alpine and Bazooka's story rather than a participant in it. In this part the plot has not yet found a use for him, and his cliffhanger, three Joes pinned by G-forces while a Cobra voice renames him M.U.D., is the least interesting thing in the episode.

Placed in the run, this is the hinge: the Pyramid is completed, the power goes out, and the villains' alliance goes out with it. Ron Friedman writes a Cobra in which every plan is sound and every partner is the flaw, and the Joes only have to be nearby when it gives way.

1 ^ The Twins' shared sensation is a throwaway gag in "The Further Adventures of G.I. Joe"; here it becomes the tracking device (6:49 to 7:02), and Cobra Commander treats it as sentiment rather than intelligence.

2 ^ The recap leaves Alpine and Bazooka about to be devoured by leopard seals; the threat is gone by the time the lasso lands, in under two minutes (1:29 to 3:07).

1. Quick Kick makes his first appearance of the season here: a movie stuntman shooting a Frozen Fudgie bar commercial whose director "took off with the equipment and my money." Fans point out that his figure belongs to the 1985 toy wave, so this miniseries doubles as his introduction before he turns up again in [Excalibur](/cartoons/1985/episodes/excalibur/).
2. The twins' psychic bond drives the plot. Xamot yells "I'm falling!" while standing on solid ground, Cobra's own side spells out that there is "a psychic bond between them," and the rough treatment Tomax took after his capture in [Three Cubes to Darkness](/cartoons/1985/episodes/three-cubes-to-darkness/) tells Xamot his brother is somewhere in the Sea of Lost Souls.
3. Cobra Commander is a frustrated director. Just before he announces his world-conquering ultimatum he wonders whether to begin "with my back to the camera and then turn suddenly" or go for a simple close-up. Tomax and Xamot walk in and ruin the shot.
4. Quick Kick talks like a man who has seen too many of his own movies. He explains the ice-floe rescue by saying it was in a Robert Redford picture, and later pitches a getaway like the one in his martial-arts flick "Last Jet to Killer Karate College." The Joe fan wiki lists the Redford crack among the episode's real-world references.
5. Satin tells Shipwreck she has her own song to sing because Cobra framed her father, and as she leaves the phrase "The Cobra Who Got Away" is heard. Fans on the Joe wiki say that is the title of her song, which comes back in "Joe's Night Out"; they also note she is blonde in this miniseries but orange-haired in "Glamour Girls." She gets her payback on Cobra Commander in [Knotting Cobra's Coils](/cartoons/1985/episodes/knotting-cobras-coils/).
6. Look closely at the title card and you will see it spells the name "Choas in the Sea of Lost Souls." The typo made it onto the broadcast.
7. Fans comparing broadcast versions note that USA Network reruns dropped Quick Kick's candy-bar jingle ("they'll melt in your mouth and turn to lead in your guts") and Polly's "bulletproof feathers" quip. Both are intact in the cut we watched.
8. The black Cobra tanks crawling across the snow have twin gun barrels. The Joe fan wiki says it is the same extended tank model, with a second turret, first seen in the opening chapter of the Pyramid of Darkness.
9. This is chapter four of five. The whole Pyramid of Darkness aired in one week, September 16 to 20, 1985, as production numbers 600-37 through 600-41, and the regular run started the following Monday with "Countdown for Zartan," production number 600-02.