The Invaders

Duke, Dusty, Barbecue and Gung-Ho chase Tomax and Xamot across a desert until the Oktober Guard, the Soviet counterpart to the Joes, join the shooting. A purple alien in a flying saucer snatches the twins and warns Earth of its fate. Washington and Moscow blame each other for a string of attacks, and the United Nations shouts itself hoarse.

Duke takes a squad by submarine to the Oktober Guard's Siberian base, is captured, and persuades Colonel Brekhov to cooperate. When the alien threatens San Francisco and Vladivostok, both sides mass their forces, and a cowboy-hatted Joe and Snake Eyes take to hang gliders and are captured. The saucers are Cobra airships and the alien is Zartan, and Cobra means to seize Washington and Moscow while both are undefended. Snake Eyes has spotted a milk carton beside the alien on the broadcast, the prisoners get a warning out, and the Joes and the Oktober Guard beat the attackers back.

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

"Duke, can I interest you in some ocean-front land in Missouri?" -- Gung-Ho

"Imagine taking Xamot and Tomax as examples of humanity." -- Duke

"Moderation, gentlemen. We mustn't kill them... all." -- Tomax and Xamot

"Whoever they are, I hope they're on our side."

"They sound like Gung-Ho and that guy Horrorshow."

"Colonel, I believe this is yours."

"A milk carton and a human hand, two things you don't find many of on the moon, huh?"

"I may not occupy the White House, but I can still destroy it!"

"Hey, Gung-Ho, how come Snake Eyes getting all the brains and you getting all the ugly?"

"Hear me well, men of Earth. I shall speak but once." -- The 'alien'

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.

Two sides can be told the same lie and believe it for opposite reasons, and "The Invaders" is built on that. Underneath the flying saucers it is a cartoon about two groups of professional soldiers who each assume the other is behind the trouble, and the saucers are only the reason they share a stretch of desert. The Joes are chasing Tomax and Xamot across the dunes on Turbo cycles when an olive jeep of Oktober Guard soldiers opens fire from a mesa, and for a moment nobody can tell who the shooting is aimed at. Dusty notices that it is aimed at Cobra, and Duke explains why: they are not helping us, they are helping themselves.

Then the saucer lands, a purple alien in a magenta tunic announces from its doorway that two specimens have been taken for examination, and the episode starts spending its real material. Colonel Sharp lists the damage: a Russian oil refinery, an American airfield, a tanker, a Russian observatory and a stretch of the Alaska pipeline. The next scene cuts to the United Nations, where a Soviet delegate and an American delegate accuse each other of being behind all of it. Somebody on the Joe side listens and says they sound like Gung-Ho and that guy Horrorshow. The invasion works because each side is ready to hear that the other did it, and the two squads have the same quarrel at the size of a foxhole.

Gung-Ho and Sergeant Horrorshow are the best thing in it. Neither can be left alone with the other without a fist coming up. The stockade scene starts with Gung-Ho wishing Horrorshow did not have a gun and ends with Horrorshow asking whether he needs one; it is two men escalating on purpose. Duke's answer when the teams agree to cooperate is a joke in sergeant's logic: he will not let either of them out of his sight, so they are both on his squad, and that is final. The officers are the sensible ones; Duke and Colonel Brekhov, meeting on the dunes, agree to walk away and pretend it never happened, and it is the sergeants who will not let it go.

The clue is what lifts it above a squabble. When the alien appears on a monitor to threaten San Francisco and Vladivostok, a carton of milk sits next to him. The script waits until the last scene to have Gung-Ho ask how Snake Eyes ever got wise to Cobra's scheme. The broadcast plays again, the milk carton and the human hand are pointed out, and the answer is that these are two things you do not find many of on the moon. It is a fair-play clue, in plain sight, and it makes Snake Eyes the detective of the story.

Cobra's plan is a decent feint. It frightens both nations into massing their forces at the wrong cities, so that the White House and the Kremlin stand unguarded while Cobra troops in tourist clothes and ordinary cars close in. [1] Zartan, unmasked at about 15:00 as the alien, is gleeful and a little too talkative, which brings us to the weakness. The Commander discusses the schedule over a radio link while the captives lie on the tables, Zartan tells them they must perish, and the episode cuts away from the execution altogether. How the prisoners get off the tables and into a flyable saucer is never shown. The next we see, one of them is on television warning two governments. [2] A twenty-two minute slot needs that cut, but it is still the least satisfying hinge in the script.

The last act splits across two capitals, the Joes defending Washington while Brekhov's men drive the snakes from their motherland, and the SkyStrikers arrive in time. Gung-Ho and Horrorshow then spend the final scene insulting each other again, laughing as they do. The alliance stopped the invasion and left the quarrel where it was, and we would not have it any other way!

1 ^ The countdown clock on the Cobra screen reads 17:59:57 at 17:48, moments before the order "1800 hours." at 17:50 and "Attack!" at 17:53, so the timing of the feint is stated twice in quick succession.

2 ^ At 17:14 Horrorshow announces "a message from Comrade Wong" and the Joe on screen is the cowboy-hatted Wild Bill, and the same name turns up at 10:37 when he introduces himself to Snake Eyes; Wong is named nowhere else in the episode, so the name is left as the subtitle track gives it.

1. The running gag is Gung-Ho and Sergeant Horrorshow insulting each other: "dumb Russian bear" from one side, "ugly" from the other. It is still going in the last scene, which ends on a shout of "Ugly!" and laughter.
2. The Joes meet the Oktober Guard here, and the episode uses that name. When [The Great Alaskan Land Rush](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-great-alaskan-land-rush/) aired four days later, the same Soviet team, with Colonel Brekhov back in charge, went by "Red Oktober". The fan wiki points out that the later name is the odd one out.
3. How did Snake Eyes spot the fake? The alien's broadcast "from the Moon" shows a milk carton and a human hand, "two things you don't find many of on the Moon". Fan guides agree on the carton; the wiki says the hand never actually appears.
4. Fans think the plot was inspired by the 1983 NBC miniseries V. The alien warns that his world circles the star Sirius, which fans say is where V's Visitors come from, and they compare the saucer's arrival in the middle of a battle to V's opening.
5. The Oktober Guard's war cry "Nu, pogodi!" is also the title and catchphrase of a long-running Soviet cartoon, usually translated "Well, just you wait!"
6. The "alien" in the saucer is Zartan, and the others are startled to learn that. The recap in [The Vines of Evil](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-vines-of-evil/) calls Zartan "the evil master of disguise", and here he gets to prove it.
7. Horrorshow announces a "message from Comrade Wong", the cowboy-hatted Joe, and it arrives in pure Western slang: "Cobra fakeroo!" and "Hightail it for Washington, D.C., and Moscow, pronto!" JoeGuide notes that fans read Wong as a nod to Larry Hama, who wrote Snake Eyes in the Marvel comic.
8. Tomax and Xamot finish each other's lines the whole way through ("A close... encounter. Painfully close."), and the Joes open the chase with a "Hot pursuit" pun. The fan wiki catches that the shot of the twins turning to fire from their Ferrets is used twice in the desert.
9. Small slips the fan guides list: Horrorshow's mustache vanishes in one shot, and the sign on the Extensive Enterprises building has a backwards N.