Rendezvous in the City of the Dead

After a recap of Cobra's Pyramid of Darkness plan, Shipwreck and Snake Eyes get past a voice-print robot guard by chanting the Cobra oath and pass as factory workers, claiming the parrot and the wolf are Destro's pets. They take the laser disc that programs the control cube assembly line and flee through the mines by hand car. On Admiral Ledger's carrier, the Joes track Destro's course to the Devil's Playground, where Cobra is planting its first cube. On Space Station Delta, Dusty and Mutt work as slaves under Zartan and the Dreadnoks until Dusty uses the gravity lever as a ruse to reach the control room and, later, a sparking cable as a diversion while he splices a cable, so that what Zartan hears is broadcast on Joe frequency. The Joes learn where the cubes are going and send teams after them. The episode ends with Lady Jaye calling for help as Destro closes in.

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

"Since when are birds and dogs part of Cobra regulations?" -- A Cobra factory worker

"Well, Hitler had a canary. Attila the Hun liked goldfish. What can I tell ya? You want Destro's zoo, buddy, you got it." -- Shipwreck

"I've been at sea so long, whales ask me for directions." -- Admiral Ledger

"She's not just a lady, Admiral Ledger. She's my teammate." -- Flint

"When you slave for a Cobra, sure is neat to do your work to a boogie-woogie beat."

"If we don't start retaliation, we're sunk, and that's no bunk!" -- Roadblock

"Like, makes no never mind to me, Airtight. I'll just mellow out until we hit the City of the Dead." -- Footloose

"We just went from the sewer up to the toilet." -- Shipwreck

"I've been underground so long I feel like a toadstool." -- Shipwreck

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 Control Cube factory runs on slogans. The robot guard wants a voice print, and nothing short of the full chant will do: a first attempt at "Cobra Commander, the Great Snake, rules forever" gets a flat "Wrong," and the version with "Hail Cobra Commander" in front of it gets an order to get to work and a cheery "Have a nice day." [1] A loudspeaker congratulates the workers on finishing a cube, the workers answer with a chorus of "Cobra!", and the foremen shout "Work!" at anyone standing still. Cobra has made obedience its security system, and the Joes spend the episode showing how little that protects.

In this chapter of the Pyramid of Darkness the Joes get further with talk than with guns. Shipwreck and Snake Eyes get through by reciting and then by bluffing. Dusty and Mutt, slaving on Delta, use the gravity lever as a ruse, then draw the guards off with a sparking cable and splice a cable so that whatever Zartan picks up on his monitor goes out on Joe frequency. The Joes learn that the Mountain of Glass and the City of the Dead are targets because Cobra briefed itself aloud, and Airtight, on the carrier, only has to listen. [2]

The best bluff belongs to Shipwreck. Challenged on when birds and dogs became part of Cobra regulations, he offers the parrot and the wolf for target practice and adds, "Just don't tell Destro who told you to take 'em." The worker's attitude changes at once. "Well, Hitler had a canary," Shipwreck says. "Attila the Hun liked goldfish. What can I tell ya? You want Destro's zoo, buddy, you got it." By the end the man is sending them back to work on condition that they look after the pets and tell him if anyone is unkind to them. It works because he fears Destro more than he fears an irregularity.

The carrier scenes make the one argument in the hour. Admiral Ledger runs a tight ship with little room for visitors, "but especially when they're female," and Lady Jaye answers that women aren't bad luck at sea. "Old Navy is just what I am, ma'am," he replies. "I've been at sea so long, whales ask me for directions." Ledger is played as a gruff old salt, and the script gives Flint the line that matters: "She's not just a lady, Admiral Ledger. She's my teammate." Nothing shows Ledger changing his mind, but by the Devil's Playground she is there regardless.

On Delta the comedy is zero-gravity labour. Prisoners drift through the station while shaggy beasts, the Scuzzy Fuzzies in a prisoner's phrase, and a pair of Dreadnoks keep them moving. One prisoner answers an order to stop talking with a song about how neat it is to work to a boogie-woogie beat. We love the gravity trick: Dusty runs for the control room shouting that he needs gravity, Ripper and company chase the madman, and the lever does the rest. Duke is already in the control room when Dusty gets there. [3]

The weakness is the Devil's Playground, the one straight firefight. Flint and Lady Jaye arrive under laser fire, a cube hangs from a helicopter, and one of them says out loud that they do not know what the cube does but want it taken apart before it does it. The line is honest, and it leaves the sequence with nothing to be about. Then Lady Jaye, whom Flint defended as a teammate, spends the last seconds of the episode shouting "Flint, help!", which undercuts the point, though a cliffhanger will do that.

As a chapter in a serial about moving cubes around, it has more charm than the task usually earns. We would take Dusty's gravity trick and Shipwreck's zoo over the cube any day, and the slogans over both!

1 ^ The robot's routine runs from "Intruders must be exterminated" at 1:32 to 2:03, with Polly's squawked "Hail, Cobra Commander" at 1:54.

2 ^ The public address system announces control cube one complete at 2:24; Zartan is told at 8:41 that two more parties have left with cubes, and the Commander demands the fourth and final cube at 11:19.

3 ^ Duke is in the Delta control room from 8:38, and at 9:17 someone asks "Duke, are you okay?", but nothing in the episode says how he came to be there.

1. Despite the title, nobody reaches the City of the Dead in this chapter. Footloose says, "I'll just mellow out until we hit the City of the Dead," and a Cobra voice says the Crimson Twins "will soon reach the City of the Dead without interference from G.I. Joe." The "giant clay warriors" the closing preview teases belong to [Three Cubes to Darkness](/cartoons/1985/episodes/three-cubes-to-darkness/), whose frames show Roadblock, Airtight and Footloose fighting stone guardians there.
2. This is the second of five parts. The recap and the closing preview both name the whole run "G.I. Joe: The Pyramid of Darkness," and it played one chapter per weekday, September 16 to 20, 1985, from [The Further Adventures of G.I. Joe](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-further-adventures-of-g-i-joe/) to [Knotting Cobra's Coils](/cartoons/1985/episodes/knotting-cobras-coils/). The Joe Guide fan site adds that an early Sunbow synopsis called the weapon the Cone of Power before it became the Pyramid of Darkness.
3. Admiral Ledger makes his first appearance of the season here, and he is not thrilled to host the Joes. He tells Flint that "temporary" is the word to remember, then adds that visitors are a problem, "but especially when they're female." Lady Jaye calls bad luck at sea an old Navy superstition, Ledger answers, "I've been at sea so long, whales ask me for directions," and a Joe stands up for her: "She's not just a lady, Admiral Ledger. She's my teammate." Ledger turns up again in [Chaos in the Sea of Lost Souls](/cartoons/1985/episodes/chaos-in-the-sea-of-lost-souls/) and [The Pit of Vipers](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-pit-of-vipers/).
4. To get a parrot and a wolf past Cobra's factory floor, Shipwreck insists they are Destro's pets and, when the foreman balks, offers the historical precedent: "Hitler had a canary. Attila the Hun liked goldfish." The Joe fan wiki's footnote on that is simply that he is making it up.
5. The closing preview promises that "Alpine shatters the Mountain of Glass by yodeling," and it is not a joke. In [Three Cubes to Darkness](/cartoons/1985/episodes/three-cubes-to-darkness/) the move is called "the good old Alpine yodel," and by [Knotting Cobra's Coils](/cartoons/1985/episodes/knotting-cobras-coils/) the whole yodeling team is a weapon.
6. The creatures guarding the prisoners on Space Station Delta get their nickname from a Joe who says they first have to get past "those Scuzzy Fuzzies" and then the Dreadnoks. Three episodes later, in [Knotting Cobra's Coils](/cartoons/1985/episodes/knotting-cobras-coils/), a pair of Dreadnoks explaining themselves to Zartan blame "those scuzzy wuzzies."
7. The bounty on Shipwreck and Snake Eyes is "10,000 Gold Fang shillings" for the trooper who brings them in. No other episode of the season mentions that currency, and the Joe fan wiki reads it as the reward, and possibly the regular pay, of a Cobra trooper.
8. Fans have been frame-counting this one. The Joe fan wiki says Snake Eyes's visor goes solid black in several shots of the rail cart chase, and that ten crew members on the carrier vanish for about twelve frames. The Joe Guide site adds that Satin's gray stockings were left uncolored in one shot.
9. The Joe Guide site says that when the series was rerun on USA Network, Sgt. Slaughter narrated the recaps and the next-episode preview was built from different clips. By its description the original shows Satin on stage and clay statues, while the rerun version shows the Joes backstage and shooting skeletons in the City of the Dead.