Excalibur

A Joe carrier arrives off the English coast to install a new anti-Cobra radar, fights off a Cobra air attack, and sends the radar ashore by hovercraft in a worsening storm. Storm Shadow has taken the sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake and uses it to cut through the Joes' defences. A villager named Beemish tells Duke the legend: if the sword is taken, the Lady will drown the British Isles.

Footloose is captured, and Quick Kick and Spirit slip into the Cobra-held castle to find him. Meanwhile Destro goes after the sword himself, Cobra attacks the village, Wild Bill's helicopters arrive, and a dam gives way, flooding the town and wrecking the radar. In the end the Joes are credited with clearing the castle and returning Excalibur, and Mutt and Junkyard find the villagers' cat, Queen Anne.

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

"Scoff while you may, but legend says that if Excalibur is taken from the Lady, she will raise up her hand and drown the British Isles." -- Beemish

"You ever thought of going into the fortune-cookie business?"

"I think I feel a fish swimming around in my shoe."

"Curse this blasted English weather." -- Destro

"It's gonna take a sign from above to get us out of these moors alive."

"Ask, and ye shall receive."

"Excalibur was almost mine!" -- Destro

"Well, this has been quite a week. We not only lost the radar system, but we're responsible for wrecking this whole town." -- Duke

"But remember, you can get another radar system, and the town can be rebuilt." -- Beemish

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 radar system is a poor thing to bring to a village that has a legend, and the Joes learn it the hard way, by being competent at the wrong problem. Dan Di Stefano sends the team ashore on the English coast with an anti-Cobra radar, a hovercraft, a thunderstorm and an ambush. They get the equipment ashore, they make a stand by the lake, and they bring Wild Bill's helicopters in when the line starts to give. They lose anyway, because the thing that matters is a sword at the bottom of a lake, and the man who knew about it is a villager in a tartan cap.

Much of the half hour is about being told the truth by someone you have no reason to believe. Beemish walks into the barn, gives his name, backs Spirit's claim that the storm is not natural, and explains who keeps Excalibur and what happens if she loses it. Duke has a missing man to find, so he says he appreciates the folklore and sends the two he calls muttonheads back out into the rain. The legend says the radar the Joes came to protect is beside the point, and the script lets both readings stand for a long while. The dam gives way, which is a thing dams do, and the legend had promised a flood. By the time somebody on the Joe side admits to beginning to believe it, the dam is already going.

The best sequence is the least useful one. Quick Kick falls off a castle wall and breaks his leg. He wonders aloud what the Duke would do in a situation like this, and answers himself in a John Wayne voice. [1] Spirit sets the leg with what he calls ancient Indian medicine and Quick Kick calls a miracle. The pair go on into the castle, where Footloose is found in a cell and the way out is lost. Someone says it will take a sign from above to get them out of the moors alive, and someone answers ask, and ye shall receive. Then gold letters spelling YO JOE appear, glowing in the storm clouds! [2] The cartoon knows how silly that is, and the lines that follow, where the group starts wishing for a lowered drawbridge and a bulletproof hide, are the cartoon laughing at its own wish-fulfilment. It rhymes neatly with the legend: in this stretch of Britain, asking for help gets an answer, and nobody is sure from whom.

Destro is the other pleasure. He sneezes his way across the English weather after the sword, and we could watch him do it all day. We see him with a scope over one eye, then Storm Shadow, sword on his back, framed in a rifle sight. A voice says it is sorry, my friend, but it must have Excalibur no matter what the cost. [3] Cobra Commander, meanwhile, gets a battle he cannot finish and, near the end, the pleasure of telling Destro it is all his fault.

The weak spot is the payoff. Lady Jaye reports that the dam is going, Beemish says only returning Excalibur can save them, and the flood arrives and takes the radar with it. Then the closing dialogue credits the Joes with having returned the sword to the Lady of the Lake, without anything in the dialogue showing how. A story that opens on a legend owes it one proper scene, and this one does not pay.

It ends with the team owning up to the damage and a villager comforting Duke. Mr. Beemish tells him a radar system can be bought again and a town rebuilt, and as the one person in the half hour who had the picture from the start, he is entitled to the last word. The Joes lose the radar and find Queen Anne the cat, and the episode is right about which of those the village was worried about.

1 ^ The pun is on John Wayne's nickname and runs against the team's own Duke, who is nowhere near the scene; the caption track directs "Imitating John Wayne" at 16:03 and "Normal voice" at 16:10.

2 ^ The letters are on screen at 18:14, in the middle of the exchange; the caption track gives no sound for them, so whether the characters see them is left open.

3 ^ The caption track logs a sneeze at 11:51, 11:56, 12:17 and 20:53, none with a speaker label, so the sneezer is inferred from Destro being on screen at 12:09 and 12:13.

1. Right after someone sighs that it will take "a sign from above" to get the Joes out of the moors alive, gold YO JOE letters light up the storm clouds. The Joe fan wiki says the floodlight trick is borrowed from the Bat-Signal.
2. Quick Kick, introduced in [Chaos in the Sea of Lost Souls](/cartoons/1985/episodes/chaos-in-the-sea-of-lost-souls/), breaks his leg and asks what "the Duke" would do in this situation, then answers in a John Wayne voice: "Call the nearest Indian, pilgrim." Duke is the Joe field leader and also John Wayne's nickname, so the gag works two ways. Spirit then sets the leg, it heals on the spot with "ancient Indian medicine," and the fan wiki points out that Spirit's file card lists him as a shaman.
3. Once the sign from above pays off, the Joes start treating wishes like room service. A Joe wishes the drawbridge would lower, it does, and someone crows "we're on a roll" and asks what else they should ask for. JoeGuide calls it Flint's three wishes and complains that USA Network reruns cut part of the sequence.
4. Polly's "Squashed by a squash!" gag from [The Greenhouse Effect](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-greenhouse-effect/) gets recycled when she squawks it on the carrier bridge. JoeGuide says that is where the line was first heard.
5. Destro sees at once what Excalibur can do and says he has to get it before Cobra Commander realizes its power. The Joe wiki calls this rare insight for the cartoon, and Destro even says "I'm sorry, my friend" before going after the sword.
6. Destro sneezes his way through the English storm, with bracketed sneezes at least four times in the dialogue, and grumbles "Curse this blasted English weather" while hunting for the sword.
7. Beemish appears and vanishes at just the right moments to nudge the Joes along, and he is also the one who tells the legend that the Lady of the Lake will drown the British Isles if Excalibur is taken. Fans on the Joe wiki and JoeGuide wonder whether he is meant to be a Knight of the Round Table or Arthur himself.
8. The Joe wiki doubts that the admiral on the carrier is Admiral Ledger from the Pyramid of Darkness run, since this one has only a moustache, and the dialogue never gives him a name beyond "Admiral."