Synthoid Conspiracy, Part II

Cobra's synthoid duplicates have taken the place of the Joes' generals and of Duke, and the army has declared G.I. Joe disbanded. Scarlett, forced to fetch coffee for the false General Franks, radios the false Duke to assemble the team at midnight in an old bunker, and Franks passes the plan to Cobra Commander.

Destro, angry that Zartan made a synthoid copy of him, offers the Joes the truth, but they refuse until the army under the false General Franks surrounds them. They steal their planes, accept Destro's force field and refuelling, and fly toward Cobra's island base. The real Duke, chained in a swamp, is found by Mutt and Junkyard. At the base the Joes free the real officers, Scarlett and Duke expose the false Duke, and the Commander turns the neutralizer on a claimed synthoid; Zartan shouts that it is set at maximum, and every synthoid collapses. General Franks restores the team.

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

"How badly do you want the answer, Joe? Enough to trust me?" -- Destro

"Uh, put it this way, Destro, I'd likelier trust a rabid weasel!"

"Scarlett, type those papers up immediately, and bring me some more coffee!" -- General Franks

"Looks like Destro dumped us right in a nest of vipers."

"Because Zartan dared to make a synthoid replica of me." -- Destro

"Such presumption cannot go unpunished." -- Destro

"Hold it, boys. If either of you makes a move before we figure out who's who, you're both dog meat." -- Mutt

"You are to blame for this, Zartan! Why do I ever listen to you?" -- Cobra Commander

"Looks like those gators are gonna get a nice, hearty supper."

"For your loyalty in the face of adversity, for your courage against overwhelming odds, I hereby restore G.I. Joe Special Missions Force to full operating status with highest military honors." -- General Franks

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.

Nobody in "Synthoid Conspiracy, Part II" can tell who deserves to be believed, and the joke at the centre of it is that the plainest truth teller on offer is the villain the Joes least want to hear from. Destro offers them the answer the moment they ask the question, and the half hour spends much of its energy on their refusing him.

Trust, and how easy it is to withhold from the person who is right, drives the rest. "How badly do you want the answer, Joe? Enough to trust me?" Destro asks, and the reply, that a rabid weasel would be likelier, is the correct one for a Joe to give and an expensive one. His stated motive is that Zartan dared to make a synthoid replica of him, which he had destroyed with a device called the neutralizer, and such presumption cannot go unpunished. It is a petty, believable reason, and the script backs it with deeds: his drones refuel the Joes' planes, he throws up a force field to buy them time, and he gives them the coordinates of his ship, the Valkyrie. What he says about the synthoids is true. He is still the last person the Joes want to listen to. [1]

The false Duke, meanwhile, is the man everyone trusts, and the writing lets us hear why he should not be. Whatever he says is agreement with a hesitation in front of it: "Uh, right," "Look, I'm with you all the way, guys!", "Yeah! Uh, well, uh, okay!" It is a modest piece of characterisation, a leader reduced to a nodding man, and it sets up his exposure. The recap helps for the same reason, since it reminds us that Mutt's dog sensed the false general and was ordered destroyed, and the climax hands Junkyard the job of telling the two Dukes apart.

The standout is the smallest scene. Scarlett is made to type papers and fetch coffee for a General Franks who has disbanded her team, mutters "Reports. Coffee. Ugh." under her breath, and then picks up a handheld radio to tell Duke to reassemble the team at midnight in the old bunker. The Duke she is calling is standing in Franks's office. His answer is a fumbled "Uh, right," and the next thing we hear is Franks being told that the meeting is tonight and that the impostor is invited. She is doing the right thing with the information she has, and the audience, who knows better, watches the trap close.

Elsewhere the writing is looser but cheerful. The Joes' theft of their own planes is a caper, with Cover Girl playing a damsel to distract an MP, Wild Bill springing a surprise on the armoury guards and Clutch hotwiring a tanker. The weakness is the ending, where the synthoids are undone not by the Joes but by the villains' own device. The Commander uses the neutralizer on a man claiming to be the synthoid, Zartan shouts that it is set at maximum, and every duplicate in the story is sent to its doom. An officer falters through an announcement that Cobra must be recognized as friends, a word at a time. An admiral touches his cheek in front of rows of sailors, and the false Duke's face drips and peels as he looks at his hands. It is a good visual, but it is the villains' doing, and the Joes' own contribution is a call to stop the cannons at a switchboard. [2]

As the second half of a two-parter, the episode pays off its recap: a team disbanded by an impostor is restored in one speech from Franks, who is himself again. What lingers is the unglamorous part, a team that spends most of the half hour wrong about its only ally, and a dog that was never fooled!

1 ^ The title card does not appear until about 3:12, over a jungle scene after the recap and a short scene with Destro and Mutt; the recap itself runs to about 2:30, so the episode holds its title back for a good while.

2 ^ The subtitle track labels "Duke" on the line "Cobra Commander," and the following lines have the Commander greeting him and Duke claiming to be the synthoid. From the picture alone, the Duke on screen could be the real Duke or the synthoid, so this review reads that exchange as the real Duke bluffing his way into the control room; the dialogue does not settle it.

1. Destro switches sides out of spite. He tells the Joes he is helping because "Zartan dared to make a synthoid replica of me," and the wiki notes that Cobra Commander and Zartan used that copy to humiliate him. One Joe says he would sooner trust "a rabid weasel," but the wiki points out that the switch fits Destro's filecard: he is happy to work against Cobra when his honor or his business is at stake.
2. The opening recap is stitched from [Part I](/cartoons/1985/episodes/synthoid-conspiracy-part-i/) and reuses lines such as "Time for a nap, gentlemen" and "Take that dog and have it destroyed!" Franks's declaration that "there is no more G.I. Joe" is replayed from the same episode.
3. The Cobra base the Joes attack is called the "Cobra launch base" in the dialogue, and JoeGuide notes how closely it resembles the Terrordrome playset that came out the next year. It adds that an early commercial for the comic issue #54 also called the toy the Cobra Launch Base before the name changed.
4. JoeGuide traces Destro's ship, the Valkyrie, to Norse mythology, the maidens who choose the slain, and notes that the same word was used for the planes in the Japanese series Macross, which American viewers know as Robotech. It also reports that the humming forcefield sound is the one used for phaser fire in the original Star Trek, and the clashing lasers at Cobra's base sound like Star Wars lightsabers.
5. JoeGuide spots a Batman Beyond episode, "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot," that uses the word "synthoid" and ends on the line "antique doll collection," which the guide reads as a nod to the original twelve-inch G.I. Joe. The story is by Paul Dini, who wrote [Jungle Trap](/cartoons/1985/episodes/jungle-trap/) for this series.
6. Fans on the wiki point out some paint trouble: Cover Girl's trenchcoat vanishes for one shot while she helps Recondo and Stalker, Barbecue's suit is miscolored in the group shot at the end, and Airborne switches from a sky-blue flight suit to the tan, blue and brown version of his toy between two shots at the Skystrikers.
7. Scarlett plays the obedient secretary for Franks, answering "Yes, General Franks!" and muttering "Coffee. Ugh." That cover lets her radio the false Duke from his office, and Cobra Commander's order to "learn their plans" is how Cobra hears about the midnight meeting in the old bunker.
8. JoeGuide logs four trims made for the later USA Network reruns, including 18 seconds that held a crack about the Joes: "Looks like Destro dumped us right in a nest of vipers."