The Phantom Brigade

Cobra Firebats raid a Soviet munitions factory, and the Joes arrive to defend it. Meanwhile Cobra troopers seize a Gypsy, whom the Baroness brings to Cobra Commander, who orders her to summon three restless spirits, a Roman centurion, a Mongolian warrior woman and an American pilot from the First World War, each tied to a keepsake the Commander holds. The ghosts, whom Joe weapons pass through, attack the airfield and the factory until the Baroness, worried that the Commander may soon have no use for her, tells the Joes the secret: bury the coin, the ring and the locket and the ghosts will go. Duke leads a parachute and hovercraft assault on Cobra's castle. The Joes talk the pilot and the archer round, and the ghosts themselves corner the Commander, who hands the objects over.

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

"Those who die by accident or by treachery do not cross peacefully into the spirit realm." -- The Gypsy

"Yes, soldiers who do not fear death because they are already dead." -- The Gypsy

"Say, isn't that my locket?" -- The ghost pilot

"Call it job security. If the ghosts defeat you, Cobra Commander may no longer need my services." -- The Baroness

"I like to use my head before I use my guns." -- Wild Bill

"My C.O.'s keeping the locket she gave me until I get back to base." -- The ghost pilot

"Yeah. And he hisses a lot." -- The ghost pilot

"We are no man's slaves. We are bound to this world by those objects... not by your will." -- The Roman warrior

"Holy boiled mackerel." -- Duke

"My dear husband, we shall be together at last." -- The Mongolian warrior

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.

Soldiers who do not fear death because they are already dead: it is a good pitch, and it comes together around the Gypsy's candle and crystal ball. [1] Sharman Di Vono's script makes the keepsakes matter. The ghosts are not summoned by incantation alone but by the objects that were dear to them in life, an ancient coin, a wedding ring and a locket, and they stay in the world only while those objects stay in Cobra's hands.

Cobra rules the dead the way it rules the living, by holding on to something they love, and the Joes win by giving it back. The pilot says it before anyone else does. "Say, isn't that my locket?" he asks on arriving, and the Commander tells him he can have it back if he does what his new commanding officer says. Later, just after protesting that he cannot be dead, he explains to the Joes that his C.O. is keeping the locket his girl gave him until he gets back to base. Asked whether this C.O. wears a mask, he says, "Yeah. And he hisses a lot." The joke is the gentlest in the episode, and it describes Cobra's management style better than any of the Commander's speeches.

The first half belongs to the Joes' habit of reaching for hardware. A plane that their lasers pass straight through is a stealth device, an archer who ices the airfield over might be a hologram, the Centurion's blade is an antigravity weapon, and "What kind of weapon haven't they got?" one of them asks. [2] It is what a team that spends its life fighting Cobra's inventions would say, and it takes the Baroness to supply the answer.

She is the one Cobra figure who sees it coming. She watched the summoning from behind the Gypsy's table. Later, arriving on the rooftop beside the burning factory with a raised glove and the words "I come in peace," she tells the Joes the secret of the Phantom Brigade and gives her motive with no pretence at nobility: "Call it job security." The line is worth the price of the episode, because the Commander has already mused that he may have no need of living agents at all, "not even you, Baroness."

The scene that works hardest is in the helicopter. Wild Bill, Cover Girl beside him, takes fire from the biplane and declines to shoot back until he knows who he is shooting at. He keeps a small American flag in the cockpit, has it held against the canopy, and the ghost pilot stops firing at once: "Oh, my gosh, they're American." "I like to use my head before I use my guns," Wild Bill says, and the Joes are better for it.

What follows is the heart of it: a Joe's quip that he is looking through the pilot turns into a young man's panic, "I can't be d-dead!" When the Joes plead with the ghosts, "Don't you remember what it felt like to hurt, or to love?", the Mongolian warrior answers with an account of a husband who died soon after they were married. Nobody fires a shot in that exchange. They talk until the ghosts remember who they were.

The weakness is the assault that follows. Duke tells Airborne and Rip Cord to hold the courtyard, takes Gung-Ho snake hunting, and Major Bludd ends up in the sea, but the argument has already been won. The storming of the castle is a lot of ordnance for an ending the ghosts reach on their own. They find the Commander behind a stone pillar, and the Roman tells him, "We are no man's slaves." He gives the objects up, and a skeletal hand lands on his shoulder.

The final speeches belong to the dead: the pilot, who admits he lost the locket gambling, and the archer's "My dear husband, we shall be together at last." Episode twenty-eight of the 1985 run wins by returning what was taken, and we are happy to see it go that way!

1 ^ The Gypsy's threat that the hands of anyone who touches a Gypsy queen without permission will shrivel and fall off (4:34) is never paid off, and she is not seen again after 7:06.

2 ^ The closed captions give the biplane's type as "Spat" (8:16); its wing carries a roundel and a number one (13:59).

1. The Baroness warns the Joes about the ghosts herself, explaining that they are bound to the world by a locket, a wedding ring and an ancient coin. A Joe works out the fix, getting those objects and giving them a proper burial. Her reason for helping? "Call it job security."
2. The Firebats are named correctly at the start ("Firebat One"), but later in the episode they are "Stingers", both in Wild Bill's quip about biplanes and in Major Bludd's call to "Stinger Squadron". The Joe wiki lists the slip as a glitch, and "Stinger Battalion" turns up again in [Hearts and Cannons](/cartoons/1985/episodes/hearts-and-cannons/).
3. The Joes fight alongside Soviet troops here, with Ivan and Tolbukin defending a munitions factory in the Carpathian Mountains. It is a long way from the standoff in [The Invaders](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-invaders/), where the Oktober Guard, the Soviet counterpart to the Joes, join the shooting.
4. When the Roman centurion shows up, a Joe guesses "Great Caesar's ghost" and gets the reply "No, merely a Centurion." Fans point out that the catchphrase comes from the editor character on the Adventures of Superman series.
5. A Joe tells a Soviet officer he sounds "just like Count Dracula", and the officer promptly says the gypsies call the Carpathians haunted with ghosts and vampires. The Joe wiki also notes that the signs at the base are printed in English, which it suggests might be because of NATO use.
6. Supernatural stories crop up repeatedly in the late 1985 episodes, with the Lady of the Lake in [Excalibur](/cartoons/1985/episodes/excalibur/) and a curse on the treasure of Osiris in [The Gods Below](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-gods-below/) coming within weeks of this October 9 broadcast.
7. The ghosts never really answer to Cobra Commander. They tell him they are "no man's slaves" and bound to the world by the objects, not by his will, and a voice then warns him to return what does not belong to him, which he does.
8. Fans who tracked the USA Network reruns report that a 30-second stretch with the Gypsy's threat to the Cobra troops, along with the reactions that follow and a Baroness line, was cut from that version.