Mind Menace

Airborne and Flash chase a Cobra helicopter carrying a kidnapped woman, while Duke and Lady Jaye watch Airborne's kid brother Tommy fail a card test and turn out to be a telekinetic. Cobra agents grab Tommy, and Airborne and Flash are shot down and caged at a Cobra psionic training camp on Easter Island, where the Moai come to life and the base is set to explode.

Duke, Lady Jaye, Snow Job and Blowtorch follow a boast to a Cobra fortress in the Himalayas, where they free the hostage and find Tommy on a throne wired into the fortress's traps. Airborne reminds him of the model planes he built and the toy helicopter he made, Tommy breaks free of the neural disrupter, and Cobra Commander and Destro flee in their flight pods.

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

"I guess I blew it, huh?" -- Tommy

"Look at the way you spread these cards around the room!" -- A scientist

"I still don't like the idea of recruiting civilians." -- Lady Jaye

"You'd deny a dying man his last request?" -- Airborne

"When these psionics have been taught total mastery of their powers, Cobra will control an arsenal of living weapons deadlier than anything the world has ever known."

"I don't want to hurt anybody, especially not my own brother." -- Tommy

"Please don't make me hurt my brother." -- Tommy

"Tommy, you made this! For me, remember?" -- Airborne

"I would concede your failure, you arrogant fool!"

"Saints preserve us!" -- Blowtorch

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.

The easiest way to beat a brainwashing machine is to smash it, and Mind Menace spends its climax declining to do that. Cobra has a device that makes psionic kidnap victims obedient, a kid on a throne wired to its amplifier, and a fortress full of traps that answer to his mind. What defeats all of it is a man holding up a toy helicopter and begging the boy to remember him.

Martin Pasko starts small. Tommy Talltree, Airborne's kid brother, sits in a laboratory with six cards face down while a scientist explains that this is psionic, not psychic. He cannot match a single card, apologises ("I guess I blew it, huh?"), and the scientist points at the cards he has scattered around the room. The test he failed was the wrong test; the one he passed was telekinesis. It is a gentle, funny scene, and it sets the terms for the hour: Tommy believes he has let people down, and the hour is spent showing him otherwise. Lady Jaye, watching from the console, says she does not like recruiting civilians, and the story gives her a short, ugly vindication when Cobra agents turn up for the last name on their list.

Cobra's side has the better talk. Airborne and Flash are caught, and Airborne, with the air of a man playing for time, asks whether they would deny a dying man his last request. A voice answers that this is a point well taken, and lays out the plan: training camps for psionically gifted people, a neural disrupter that guarantees cooperation, an arsenal of living weapons. Villains explaining themselves to doomed heroes is an old habit, but here the hero asked for it, and the script gets the plan across by having someone ask a question.

Easter Island, where the camp stands, is written off quickly. The time locks will open in forty-five seconds, the Moai come to life, and Airborne and Flash spend the island's last minutes dodging stone fists and trading gallows jokes about wills and tap dances. It is a fun sequence, and we are glad it does not stop to explain itself: a stone statue that swings a fist is a monster anyone can draw!

The back half moves to a fortress in the Himalayas, where Snow Job, Blowtorch and Lady Jaye take on a rescue. Here the writing leans on gadgets, but there are small pleasures. The out-of-body traveller has to be coaxed back into her body by pretending to touch her, since moving her might stop her ever finding the way back [1]. And Blowtorch, hearing a voice calling for help, tells it to keep making noise because he is after freeing it, not frying it.

Then the climax, which is the reason to watch. Tommy sits on a cobra throne with a gem on his chest and the fortress's traps answering to his thoughts. Airborne says he is his brother Franklin, that Tommy gave him the name when he made airman, that Tommy used to play with model planes and said he wanted to serve his country and make him proud [2]. Tommy's eyes glow, the glass between them holds, and Airborne holds out the helicopter Tommy made him. The scene is about being known, and the disrupter has no answer to it.

The weakness is how little the script says about what the disrupter is. Cobra tells us it works on all the others, and we are shown the red gem on Tommy's chest, but not what it takes from him or why one memory should outweigh it. The solution is emotional rather than logical; the only setup it gets is a Joe announcing that he needs to stop off at headquarters to pick something up.

As a first-season entry it is warm and tidy, and nothing in it is wasted. Tommy is told he has a gift, but it takes his brother to tell him who he is.

1 ^ The out-of-body traveller is seen through binoculars, sitting cross-legged in a doorway, at 15:53; Flash identifies her as the girl kidnapped in Hawaii.

2 ^ Tommy cries "Frank" at 4:33 when Airborne's helicopter is hit, and Airborne says the name Franklin at 19:24. The subtitle track labels Snow Job as the speaker at 15:41, but the Joe on screen in a green beret and tan parka at 16:39 does not match his look.

1. This is where we learn Airborne's first name. Trying to reach his brainwashed brother, he calls out, "It's your brother, Franklin!" and then reminds Tommy, "You gave me that name, when I was made airman." Real names come up in other episodes too: the file screen in [Captives of Cobra, Part II](/cartoons/1985/episodes/captives-of-cobra-part-ii/) gives Gung-Ho's as Etienne R. LaFitte, and Alison Hart-Burnett is named as a real name in [Skeletons in the Closet](/cartoons/1985/episodes/skeletons-in-the-closet/).
2. Tommy fails the ESP card test, yet the scientists are pleased when he scatters the cards around the room. "Not psychic, psionic," one of them corrects him, and the diagnosis is telekinesis. The episode closes with a gag on the same test. A Joe tells Tommy that next time someone asks him to join an ESP experiment, Tommy offers, "Um, turn them down?" and gets, "You know something, kid? You read my mind."
3. Storm Shadow makes a brief cameo, dropping from the ceiling on a rope, sword raised, during the lab raid, and is gone before the plot moves to Easter Island. The Joe Guide site notes that his jump reuses a sound effect from the training droid on the Millennium Falcon, and that R2-D2's chirps and whistles play when the island's defenses swing around to fire at the Joes.
4. Episode lists and fan sites call this one "Operation: Mind Menace." Its production code is 600-09, against 600-23 for [The Funhouse](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-funhouse/), which aired two weeks earlier on October 1, 1985.
5. Cobra Commander's headgear changes from episode to episode. In [The Funhouse](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-funhouse/), two weeks earlier, he wears the hood. Here he is in the gleaming battle helmet, as he is again in [Flint's Vacation](/cartoons/1985/episodes/flints-vacation/). Nobody in the story explains the switch.
6. Cobra's neural disrupter is not the first gadget Cobra has used to bend Joe minds. In [The Vines of Evil](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-vines-of-evil/), Cobra Commander says, "I've programmed my neural controllers to force you to fight to the finish," and Duke tells Snake Eyes, "If we concentrate, we can resist the controllers." This time the cure is family, not concentration: Tommy comes back when Airborne holds up a toy helicopter Tommy made for him and begs him to remember.
7. The Joe Guide site collects the nitpicks. The cells of Duke and Airborne are reused during their dash to save Tommy, and a small jump shows up as Airborne runs. Lady Jaye's gloves come and go between shots, and a Cobra symbol on an officer's shirt changes from silver to red.
8. Cobra's psionic recruits Carmandy (fire), Tommy (telekinesis) and the Hawaiian out-of-body traveler appear in no other episode of the season, and neither does the plan for an "arsenal of living weapons." The Joe Guide site adds that USA Network cut Airborne's plea to Tommy, about eight seconds, from its showings.