Synthoid Conspiracy, Part I

During war games for Pentagon officers aboard a command ship, Cobra Commander and Zartan, with an uninvited Destro in tow, ambush the Joes with Cobra Morays and Fang copters. Zartan gasses the bridge, and synthoid duplicates, artificial humans made from chemicals Destro supplied, take the place of the officers. Cobra Commander then reveals a synthoid of Destro himself, and warns that even he can be replaced.

The copies cut the Joes' funding, and a Cobra raid wrecks their starved base. The synthoid General Franks orders the Joes disbanded, while Zartan captures the real Duke and a synthoid takes his place. When Junkyard goes for the General, who orders the dog destroyed, Mutt strikes an officer and the General has Mutt branded a deserter and sets his men to capture him.

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

"Incredible explosions, but they missed the ships entirely!"

"Time for a nap, gentlemen." -- Zartan

"Kneel, slave."

"Remember, Destro, even you can be replaced."

"You were expecting maybe Spider-Man?" -- Zartan

"Mutt? Who you calling "Mutt"? I'm Mutt!" -- Mutt

"Your very existence is a threat to our national security!" -- The general

"Keep your hands off my dog!" -- Mutt

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.

Christy Marx's way of ending G.I. Joe in this first half is not a bigger weapon but a better forgery. Cobra attacks twice, misses every ship it fires at the first time, and wins anyway, because the damage is done by people who look like the Joes' own chain of command.

The opening is a trap dressed as a parade. The Pentagon's budget committee is aboard a command ship to watch war games, General Howe is introduced as its head, and Duke tells his people that the top brass are watching and they should show them what G.I. Joe can do. The Joes answer with a chorus of "Yo, Joe" and a scramble of SkyStrikers. Then Cobra's missiles go off in spectacular fashion and "miss the ships entirely," Duke is shot out of the sky, and Zartan, in an army officer's uniform, tells the bridge it is time for a nap and gasses the room. The Joes spend the battle fighting an enemy that never intended to win it [1].

What Cobra actually wants is clearest in the lab, and the lab is the best scene. The Commander has Destro in tow from the start, uninvited and complaining about shoddy workmanship ("if you'd bought it from me"), and the synthoids, it turns out, are made from genetic engineering chemicals Destro himself sold. Then Destro is shown a synthoid of himself. "Kneel, slave," the Commander tells the copy, and, to the original, "At least it obeys orders." A demonstration of the neutralizer goes wrong, the wrong setting leaves a puddle on the floor and someone has to be warned off destroying every synthoid at once. "Remember, Destro, even you can be replaced." It is a villains' scene about job security, and it gives Destro a rare moment of fear.

The same worry runs through the plot. Cobra's synthoids "follow orders without question," and the plan works because the Joes' real chain of command is built to follow orders too. The officers who come back from the command ship are wrong in every way that matters. They blame a sergeant for a disaster they were gassed in, and then the committee smoothly recommends cutting the Joes' funding in half and, on the next breath, doing away with them completely. By the second half the base has no fuel, no ammunition and no parts for its tanks, and a general is using the words "national security" to disband a unit that has just been attacked [2].

The second attack is where the fakery starts to show. Cobra bombers strike the base, Dreadnoks turn up on the ground, and Zartan appears in person ("You were expecting maybe Spider-Man?"). Duke is taken. After Duke is pulled aboard, someone calls Scarlett "Cover Girl" and is corrected with "The name is Scarlett!"; Duke recoils from Junkyard and snaps at someone to get "that mutt" away from him, which draws "Mutt? Who you calling "Mutt"? I'm Mutt!" The scene is funny and slightly cruel, and when the real Duke, held by Cobra, sees the copy and says "That's me!", the viewer has already watched the fake be wrong about plenty.

The weakness is that the script wants the Joes fooled and wants us to see the fakery coming, and settles the contradiction by making the Joes oblivious. Scarlett corrects one wrong name and the matter ends there. Junkyard, who greets Duke boisterously earlier on, growls at him later, and nobody connects the two. Even the General's orders to destroy the dog, shoot an unarmed man and arrest a soldier for "gross insubordination" meet protests but no suspicion.

Still, it is a sharp opening to a two-parter. The closing minutes are a cliffhanger in the grand tradition: the General has branded Mutt a deserter, someone cries that the world has gone crazy, and the false Duke volunteers to "get him for you, General." We cannot wait for Part II!

1 ^ Both the command ship (1:46) and Duke (3:07) fix the start for "exactly 10:00 hours". Erickson, the officer who is "quiet today" at 2:33, is never named again in this half.

2 ^ The orders come in a scene of officials at 12:44 where General Howe, whose title (head of the Pentagon budget committee) was given at 2:14, makes the recommendation and General Franks, asked because he has "always supported G.I. Joe," goes further.

1. Zartan's "You were expecting maybe Spider-Man?" is a rare brush with the outside world. Shipwreck adds his own pop-culture moment when asked to sink a Cobra Moray: "Does Popeye like spinach?"
2. The fake Duke is easy to spot if you know the Joes. He calls Scarlett "Cover Girl" and gets corrected ("The name is Scarlett!"), then demands that someone get "that mutt" away from him when Junkyard growls, which draws a "Who you calling Mutt? I'm Mutt!"
3. The synthoids are sold as perfect copies, and Cobra uses them to replace Pentagon brass. The lab scene also shows a second Destro, and Zartan's neutralizer demonstration nearly goes wrong when he is told "No, not that setting!" The story continues the next day in [Synthoid Conspiracy, Part II](/cartoons/1985/episodes/synthoid-conspiracy-part-ii/), where the neutralizer pays off.
4. The origin of synthoids is stated twice with different chemistry. Here they are made from "genetic engineering chemicals" bought from Destro. By [There's No Place Like Springfield, Part 2](/cartoons/1985/episodes/theres-no-place-like-springfield-part-2/) the material is called pseudoplasm, and fans on the wiki note that synthoid impostors come back to haunt the Joes there.
5. The real enemy of the first act is the budget, not the missiles. Colonel Sharp introduces General Howe as the head of the Pentagon budget committee, and by the next scene Howe is proposing to halve the Joes' funding while Franks wants them done away with completely. The Joes then spend a scene listing the fuel, ammo and parts they no longer have.
6. General Franks calls Duke "Sergeant" in this episode, and the Joe wiki notes that as field commander Duke outranks plenty of higher-ranking people on the team.
7. In the opening scene Destro complains about "shoddy workmanship" and adds "if you'd bought it from me." It fits an arms dealer who is a supplier first and a villain second.
8. Fan guides catalog the animation slips: when Scarlett asks Rock 'n Roll to move closer to the Fang copter, the scrolling Joe base backdrop repeats and visibly jumps, and Zartan's arms are inked far darker than usual.