Satellite Down

Breaker finishes diagnostics on the Joe spy satellite just as Cobra's ray takes control of it. Unable to hold it, Flint orders it brought down, and it crashes in an unexplored region of Africa. Spirit and Dusty land near the site, run into Storm Shadow and meet a white-bearded man called Macintosh who is said to live there like a hermit; Spirit, Lady Jaye and Macintosh end up on foot in the jungle while Flint and Dusty bring vehicles overland and try to find a way across a canyon.

The Primords, ape-like people who worship the satellite as a god, capture Lady Jaye, Macintosh and Storm Shadow. Spirit and the others escape with Storm Shadow as a temporary ally, but the alliance collapses when he attacks Primord children. The Joes save the children, win the chief's friendship, and defeat Cobra when it springs a trap; the Joes leave a television set in place of the satellite.

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'd finish you, Joe, but that would deprive me of the opportunity to humiliate you again someday." -- Storm Shadow

"Okay, Stormie. Let's see your kung-fool!" -- Dusty

"I'm Macintosh, aye, but I'm no hermit. I just live in an out-of-the-way neighborhood." -- Macintosh

"I hate high places! I hate bein' a duck in a shootin' gallery! And I hate falling!" -- Lady Jaye

"They may be primitives, but they make a good grade of rope."

"If you've got anything against human sacrifice, this would be a good time to leave."

"Then it should suit you perfectly." -- Lady Jaye

"Then, one day I alone may defeat you." -- Storm Shadow

"Such ridiculous compassion for your foes is the Joe team's fatal weakness!" -- Storm Shadow

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.

What do you owe the man who keeps trying to kill you? Ted Pedersen's answer, delivered in an African jungle, is a truce for as long as the crisis lasts, and the script spends its running time finding out where that truce runs out.

The setup is a spy satellite that Cobra drags out of orbit with a red ray and that Flint orders brought down rather than lose, so that it lands in an unexplored region of Africa and sends a mixed party on foot into the jungle: Spirit and his eagle, Lady Jaye, a white-bearded man named Macintosh whom the Joes know as the hermit and who insists he is nothing of the kind, and, a step ahead with a dagger, Storm Shadow. The Primords are the surprise. Macintosh's expedition was wiped out by what he is told, with some condescension, are mythical creatures more ape than man, and the script gets good use from the word, which the Joes repeat as the creatures show up. [1]

The best idea in it is what the Primords have done with the wreckage. They have painted the satellite and set it in a cave under hanging stone slabs, and the party is told what its lights mean: the fools think it is a god, the blinking lights are its eyes, flashing with anger, and if anyone has anything against human sacrifice this would be a good time to leave. It is a good joke with a threat inside it, since Lady Jaye is already bound with the others and will shortly be laid across an altar. Storm Shadow, tied up beside her, complains that this is no honourable way for a warrior to meet his end, and is told that it should suit him perfectly.

The alliance that follows is where the episode finds what it is about, which is that Joe honour and Cobra honour look the same for an afternoon and are not the same thing. Someone on the Joe side proposes that they work together or die with their differences unresolved; Storm Shadow agrees, on the understanding that one day he alone may defeat the person he is working with, and for a while the party fights side by side with the formality of duellists. It ends when Storm Shadow goes after a group of Primord children, and the Joes cannot forgive it. Told that they are just children, he answers that they are enemies, and that such ridiculous compassion for foes is the Joe team's fatal weakness. The episode's reply is everything after: Spirit, Macintosh and Lady Jaye shelter children in a cave and carry them up a rock face, the chief's son turns out to be one of them, the word orto turns out to mean thank you (a lovely touch!), and when Cobra springs its trap the Primords are on the Joe side of it. The compassion that was supposed to be fatal is the only reason anyone gets out of there.

The back half cannot match that. Once the alliance is over the episode falls back on a chase: F.A.N.G. helicopters, red-suited troopers, Storm Shadow riding a skid, a satellite swung on a rope. It is all competently staged and has little left to say. Flint and Dusty, who spend the middle of the episode trying to get a bridge across a canyon, are mostly there to worry about Lady Jaye, which they do at length.

Storm Shadow is the kind of villain who is easy to write as a menace, and Pedersen writes him as wrong instead, which is harder and gives the episode its one real argument. The last gag, a television set left behind as a replacement for the satellite while a toothpaste jingle plays, is the right size of silly. [2] The Primords are creatures of nature, someone says, and will know what to do with it; the last shots are Primords crowding round the set with the chief crouched beside it.

1 ^ The word is used at 4:49, when the Primords are first described as mythical protohuman creatures more ape than man, and again at 8:11 as the party walks into them. The second time is the better line.

2 ^ The television is on screen from 21:03, with a jingle for "Happy Fresh" toothpaste on the soundtrack, and the Primord chief is seen crouching beside it at 21:17.

1. The Primords and the hermit Macintosh appear only in this episode. Despite the similar name, [Primordial Plot](/cartoons/1985/episodes/primordial-plot/) is a dinosaur-cloning story with no connection to these ape-like people.
2. The Joe wiki calls this the first time Flint and Lady Jaye openly embrace. When she turns up alive, he stumbles through "I was worried about you," and she answers, "That doesn't exactly make me unhappy, you know." Earlier Flint had said he would like to see her "stick around a while longer."
3. Spirit and Storm Shadow agree to unite against the Primords and settle their differences another day. The truce falls apart when Storm Shadow turns on the Primord children, and their duel ends with his centuries-old sword broken.
4. A Cobra scene has Storm Shadow credited with "extraordinary intuition" while he reports sensing a "disturbing presence" in the jungle. The Joe wiki ties this to the sixth sense Snake Eyes is known for.
5. The Primords mistake the downed satellite for a god, and Flint leaves them a television set in its place. The tribe is last seen chanting "Yo, Joe" around it while a toothpaste jingle plays. One fan guide wonders if the tribe's word "Orto" (it means "thank you") is a wink at orthodontists.
6. Spirit's eagle Freedom is named here and was already seen with Spirit in [The Palace of Doom](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-palace-of-doom/). In this episode the bird helps move the plot along by finding Flint and Dusty and leading them to Spirit's party.
7. The satellite survives a fall from orbit but gets wrecked by a shorter drop, a point the Joe wiki finds hard to swallow. Flint waves off Lady Jaye's worry about headquarters: the data is safe inside the computer chips.
8. Vehicle names turn up in dialogue gags, such as Spirit's "Cobra trubble bubbles" and "And claws!" and the line "This F.A.N.G.'s not big enough for the both of us!" A fan gear list shows the Trubble Bubble, Claw and F.A.N.G. all in play, and the episode came out as volume 4 in the home-video tape series.