There's No Place Like Springfield, Part 1

In a jungle at night, Shipwreck and Lady Jaye find Professor Mulaney, a scientist forced by Cobra to build a formula that makes water explosive. He locks its missing ingredient into Shipwreck's mind with a neural link and a whispered code word, and Cobra snatches him away in smoke. The pair flee in a Sharc with Firebats on their tail and reach the Flagg, but Shipwreck's craft sinks with him in it.

He wakes in Springfield Medical Center, told he is Hector Delgado, husband of Mara and father of Althea, and that the Flagg sank six years ago, Cobra was defeated and the Joes disbanded. At home, nightmares have Cobra demanding what Mulaney told him, while Torpedo, Flint and Scarlett behave as if the war were long over. A car wash he recognises from a nightmare opens a run of dreamlike scenes that end in a stone cell, with Scarlett aiming a crossbow at 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

"Hit the beach! Hit the beach!" -- Polly

"It's locked in your subconscious, where Cobra cannot force it from you." -- Mulaney

"Come on, you hunk of substandard plastic! Open up!" -- Shipwreck

"Your satellite dish fell off the roof, and you took a nasty spill off that ladder." -- A hospital staff member

"I-I ain't nobody's daddy." -- Shipwreck

"I-I never figured myself for the two-car suburban-daddy type, but maybe this is what I always wanted." -- Shipwreck

"That's...how it feels, Mara." -- Shipwreck

"I hope that fall knocked some business sense into your head, Brainwreck." -- Torpedo

"The doll, Shipwreck, is my fiance." -- Flint

"Or we'll destroy... your happy home." -- Cobra Commander

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.

The cruellest thing the script can do to Shipwreck is give him a nice life. Everything else he can fight: Cobra, the sea, a Sharc that will not open. A house at 6 Village Drive is a different kind of opponent: a wife who comforts him through nightmares, a daughter who blesses the President in her prayers and two cars in the garage. Steve Gerber knows the way to hurt such a man is to make the offer sincere.

The opening is a rescue that goes wrong. Shipwreck and Lady Jaye find Professor Mulaney, a kidnapped scientist whose formula could turn an ocean into a bomb. He hides its missing ingredient inside Shipwreck's head by means of a neural link and a code word whispered out of the viewer's hearing [1]. Shipwreck asks why, if the formula is in his noodle, he cannot remember it. Gerber lets the man who must carry the absurd plot be the one to say so. Then the professor vanishes in smoke, and a Sharc flight ends with Shipwreck in a sinking cockpit, telling the canopy what it is made of.

Then the cut that matters. He wakes at Springfield Medical Center [2], asks who won, and is told he lost, because his satellite dish fell off the roof and he took a nasty spill off a ladder. It is the best joke in the script and a sign of how the episode will work. Shipwreck is Hector Delgado, with a wife called Mara and a daughter who calls him Daddy. He is given the history of the war in a single sitting: the Flagg sank six years ago. He rafted to Pearl Harbor, took a medal, fought alone into Cobra Commander's throne room and took him captive. Cobra was smashed forever and the Joe team disbanded [3]. It is a flattering account, and his reply, asking whether he was the big hero, is the moment he sounds like a man handed something he did not earn.

The trap is comfortable. The house is furnished out of Shipwreck's old life, with a ship's wheel and a USS Flagg life ring over the fireplace and flintlock pistols on the wall. Scarlett keeps her crossbow in the car, which she says was Shipwreck's idea. The parrot, as he remarks with some relief, is the one thing that has not changed. Asked why he looks ready to cry, he says he never figured himself for the two-car suburban-daddy type, but maybe this is what he always wanted, and that it feels as though someone is about to steal it. The line is sincere, and it also shows how the trap might work: the thing he is afraid of losing is the thing the nightmares threaten. Part 1 never says who built Springfield; the nearest it comes is Cobra Commander, in a nightmare, threatening to destroy "your happy home" unless Shipwreck talks.

Torpedo and Flint fill in the cast, Torpedo with a dig at "Brainwreck" and Flint with a fiance, and Lady Jaye, Shipwreck is told, was killed on the Flagg. Polly, who has squawked nautical slogans since the jungle, starts demanding that he talk.

The nightmare carries the unease, and it wears thin. Shipwreck is interrogated in a dream, wakes, is comforted by Mara; he is interrogated in another, wakes, is comforted by Mara; the second makes the same demand again. By the time the car wash from his dream turns up in the street, we have stopped trusting the cut between dream and day.

The last stretch gives up separating them anyway. Shipwreck shouts for Roadblock, someone is melting, three men drag him away, and then he is in a stone cell with Scarlett's crossbow aimed at him and his friends dropping away one by one. It ends on an empty cell with piles of pale slime in the corners, which Part 1 leaves unexplained, and so does this guide. As a first half it is properly unsettling, and we want to see what Part 2 does with it!

1 ^ The subtitle track gives the code word only as [ WHISPERING ].

2 ^ The title card reads There's No Place Like Spring Field, with the town split into two words, though the dialogue and the subtitle track write Springfield.

3 ^ Nobody on screen has visibly aged in the six years the recital claims, and the town has an answer ready for most of what Shipwreck asks, from the car (Scarlett says it was bought three years ago) to the business (he is told Torpedo and Deep Six are his partners).

1. Shipwreck's address in Springfield is "Number 6, Village Drive," which fans read as a nod to The Prisoner, whose hero was Number Six and was held in a place called the Village. Two fan sources note it, and the Joe wiki adds that the setup follows the same pattern: a man with a valuable secret is kept in a pretty town designed to break him.
2. The Joe wiki says the title is a nod to The Wizard of Oz. Shipwreck echoes the dream angle when he is left alone in the house: "Maybe when I wake up it'll all turn out to be a dream."
3. Mara's appearance is a callback to [Memories of Mara](/cartoons/1985/episodes/memories-of-mara/), where she is the blue-skinned woman who cannot survive long out of water. Shipwreck's aside, "The last time I saw you, you couldn't even breathe out of water," refers to that episode, which aired about four weeks earlier.
4. In Springfield he is called Hector Delgado. His real name, Hector X. Delgado, appears on a computer file in [Captives of Cobra, Part I](/cartoons/1985/episodes/captives-of-cobra-part-i/).
5. Polly squawks "Miles to go before we sleep" as Shipwreck drags the professor toward the beach, which fans read as a play on the closing line of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." The same fan guide hears an echo of Othello in the parrot's "Lights out."
6. The idea of Cobra running a perfectly ordinary town called Springfield is older than the cartoon: a fan guide notes that issue #10 of the Marvel G.I. Joe comic, from April 1983, also has a Cobra base disguised as a normal town of that name.
7. A fan guide says the old USA Network print dropped a scene where Shipwreck's daughter Althea says her prayers and blesses "the President and Stupid," her toy kitty.
8. Dialogue insists the Flagg sank six years ago and that Duke and Scarlett bought their car three years ago, yet no one on screen looks any older.
9. The Joe wiki spells the professor's name "Mullaney" and notes he returns in "Joe's Night Out."