Month: November 2011

Before we get started, those of you who are into that whole Facebook thing (It’s a fad. It will pass) and have found this at all interesting, you should, I think the term the kids use these days is “stalk”, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future on Facebook. If you are into “The Twitter”, you should, I think the term is “twat” @Capt_Power_2011. I honestly can’t tell if these are the official feeds of the group responsible for the upcoming DVD release, but if they’re not, no one is. They’ve got some neat stuff there, including an interview with Gary Goddard and Tim Dunigan, who have both aged rather gracefully, about the never-before-seen behind-the-scenes documentary footage that will be on the upcoming DVD.

Also, buy the damned DVD. It’s available for pre-order at Walmart, Amazon, and many other fine retailers. It’s already on my wishlist, though it remains to be seen if I’ll preorder and thus ensure that it arrives on my doorstep the day it’s released, or if my wife will make me wait until Christmas, because it’s kind of a dick move to buy yourself a present at the beginning of December. (Seriously though, I’m getting one before New Year’s. My son is not going to grow up watching off-air VHS copies of this show which are a quarter-century older than he is).

And now, on with the show…

Power on

It has come to my attention, through a careful survey of the facts, that your previous presentation may have been, shall we say, misplaced.

Ah. Yes. That.

You claimed that “Wardogs” was the second episode of the series. However, my research clearly shows that it first aired on the Twenty-Second of November, some two months after “Shattered”.

Right. As I mentioned before, these episodes, particularly in the first half of the season, were only very loosely ordered. I mentioned that “Shattered” doesn’t really feel like a solid choice for a first episode. In fact, the pilot for the series was “Pariah”, which is still two episodes off. “Wardogs” was indeed aired tenth, but we do have a clue to the fact that this was not its original intended position, which you no doubt have already observed.

Of course.

The opening line of “Wardogs” is “Database Journal 47-5 mark 13.” Now, we don’t have any kind of confirmation for how or even if these numbers directly map to dates, but I’m inclined to guess that “47-5 mark 13” is future-speak for “May 13, 2147”. In aired order, episode 3, “Final Stand”, is dated 47-7 mark 1 — July 1, 2147. That would place “Wardogs” two months before “Final Stand”. The episode I’ll be reviewing this week, “The Abyss”, has only one date mentioned, and it’s “99-7 mark 3” So… This one is set fifty years after the rest of the season? Either Cap is using a different dating system for his personal journal, or he misspoke. In either case, best guess, this episode takes place on July 3.

Because I couldn’t find dates in most of the episodes, I’ll defer to captainpower.com to provide the dates which appear in this table:

Episode	Stardate	Aired Order	Stardate Order	My Order
Shattered	47-2.10	1	1	1
Wardogs	47-5.13	10	5	2
The Abyss	99-7.3	2	10	3
Final Stand	47-7.1	3	9	4
Pariah	47-3.7	4	2	5
Fire in the Dark	47-4.17	5	4	6
The Mirror In Darkness	47-7.12	6	11	7
The Ferryman	47-4.12	7	3	8
And Study War No More	47-9.14	8	16	9
The Intruder	47-5.20	9	6	10
Flame Street	47-8.4	11	12	11
Gemini and Counting	47-8.10	12	13	12
And Madness Shall Reign	47-8.16	13	14	13
Judgment	47-11.3	14	18	14
A Summoning of Thunder, Part 1	47-6.14	15	7	15
A Summoning of Thunder, Part 2	47-6.14	16	8	16
The Eden Road	47-10.15	17	17	17
Freedom One	47-8.30	18	15	18
New Order: The Sky Shall Swallow Them	47-11.26	19	19	19
New Order: The Land Shall Burn	47-11.26	20	20	20
Retribution, Part 1	47-12.15	21	21	21
Retribution, Part 2	47-12.15	22	22	22

My ordering is basically the same as the aired ordering, except that I’ve moved “Wardogs” up to episode 2, because Wardogs is the episode most blatantly aired outside of its intended position. This is also basically what Wikipedia does, except that they reverse “The Abyss” and “Wardogs”. I make no attempt to defend this beyond “That’s what order my ancient copies are in.”

So, with that settled, this week we have “The Abyss”. Stardate 99-7.3. Let’s check the capsule summary from TheTVDB.com…

A brief transmission reveals the location of secret military base, still manned and functioning. But when Power and Hawk go to investigate, they’re attacked and captured, ending up scheduled to be executed as spies and traitors as Dread’s forces close in on the location…

So… Cap and Hawk meet up with a surviving regiment from the pre-apocalypse armed forces, and are mistaken for enemies, and– Really? Really?

It would seem so.

Okay, seriously? I have distinct memories of this show being clever and mature and having a rich storyline. And they pull this? It’s the same damned setup as last time!

You did just explain that these three episodes would not have originally aired in this order.

So that makes it better? We’re up to three episodes and one and a half plots! Okay. Fine. Let’s get on with the slow desecration of my childhood memories that is…

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Episode 3 (or 2. Or 10. Whatever): The Abyss
By J. Michael Straczynski

The first thing you’ll notice about this episode is that it is the only episode of the series whose title card is not enclosed by unwarranted scare quotes. Or more likely not, since most people don’t notice that sort of thing. But I noticed. Oh how I noticed.

We open on a soldier emerging from under a giant metal waffle. He narrowly avoids a leftover Blake’s 7 Prop and is just able to switch on a transmitter before he’s caught by a gang of soldiers led by General Briggs, played by Michael J Reynolds, a man who has made his career playing… Pretty much different variations on the Briggs character, with the occasional foray into “Stuff we wanted Ray Walston for but couldn’t get him.” He summarily decides that the soldier, Price, has turned traitor and He points a gun at him in a “I’m going to shoot you now” sort of way, and then we cut away.implied-shoots him.

Back at the Power Base, Cap and Hawk sit around the TARDIS console, monitoring radio frequencies, when they suddenly pick up morse code from “Nope. No idea how geography works in the futureSector 42“. When the signal cuts off suddenly, Cap decides that there’s no time to alert the others, as surely this is a distress call from a surviving military unit who are in trouble. He and Hawk rush over to the Power Booth and, three episodes in, for the first time in the series, we get to see the full proper transformation sequence. Which seems to involve holding hands.

As Cap and Hawk hop on their hoverbikes to greenscreen their way to Sector 42, we cut to Lord Dread in Volcania. Dread is doing his daily reading from the Book of Computers, This is not me being flippant. He actually prefaces it with a cite.Chapter 4, verse 1:

And the Machine was given unto man. The Machine was perfect of mind and elegant of form. And the Machine said, “This is my gift to my people, that they may throw off the bonds of flesh.”

Good to know that Dread’s obsession with perfect, logical machine perfection, taken to its logical end, results in him writing quasi-religious scripture aping a stilted, archaic form of English specifically to sound like a five-hundred-year-old translation of a two-thousand-year compilation of a collection of four-thousand-year-old documentation of the cultural and superstitious practices of a nomadic bronze-age civilization.

Man, this machine logic is weird.

Overmind interrupts Dread because it’s picked up the transmission as well, from sector 14. So Dread uses a different map system than Power. Great. I am never going to sort these out. Anyway, just like in the other two episodes, it appears that Lord Dread receives a personal notification of every single thing that happens anywhere on Earth, and Dread is basically doing nothing of any pressing importance at the time. And, just like before, Dread’s immediate reaction is to order Soaron to go take care of it, and Soaron is just sort of flying around and having a good time when the call comes in.

Actually, I’m not clear what Dread orders Soaron to do. When Dread tells him to go “neutralize” the “disturbance” in sector 14, Soaron asks, “Shall I terminate current operation?” and Dread answers “No, my sentry: finish the task at hand, and then await further orders.” So… Dread orders Soaron to go to sector 14 and neutralize the disturbance, but not to stop what he’s already doing, and to finish what he’s already doing, and then stop and wait for more orders. So.. Did he order Soaron not to go to sector 14? Or to go to sector 14, but finish what he was already doing first? Or… Look, for all that “The Machine was perfect of mind and elegant of form,” jazz, Dread’s management skills leave a lot to be desired.

And by the way… First it’s night, then it’s day (Cap had given the time as 0300 hours), then it’s night, then dawn. Given that we know the Power Base is in Colorado and Volcania is in Detroit, this would seem to imply that Sector 42 is on the east coast, though dialogue later will suggest otherwise. Also, possibly that the earth rotates the wrong way.

Once we eliminate as impossible any scenario where the rotation of the earth has been reversed, we are left with the possibility that latitude is the key discriminator among these locations; during certain parts of the year, a location a few degrees closer or further from the equator could have a significant impact on the time of sunrise and sunset. Furthermore, it is inherently likely that Captain Power, being a military man is giving times in the Greenwich time zone. And indeed, we can not be certain of the location of the strange metal bird-man at all.

Ah, but in that case, the time would be closer to ten at night eastern time, and, if I’m remembering rightly, seven in Colorado. Which would account for the daylight the first time we see the hoverbikes, but it would hardly explain how eight to ten hours would have passed on the east coast.

In that case, I submit that you must consider one additional possibility.

What’s that then?

The director just didn’t care.

Touche. Shortly after Cap and Hawk land, General Briggs’s soldiers descend upon them and in a few minutes, a band of infantrymen who haven’t seen action in years are able to disarm and incapacitate the Future’s Last Hope For Survival. Because the damned Power Suits run on three triple-A batteries.

Cap wakes up strapped to a chair in the General’s underground lair. As a shortcut to let us know that General Briggs has come unglued, he does the cliche Crazy Military Guy act, where he takes everything Cap says as evidence against him: “We came here because we received a distress signal,” Cap says. Briggs responds “Aha! So you admit you were exchanging unauthorized signals with a known traitor!” Briggs also asserts that he has a duty to protect his men and keep them safe until he receives orders from the president. Cap proves that he hates America by revealing that there isn’t any US government any more, and Briggs takes this as further evidence of Cap’s traitorous intent, especially as “You should be using your training, manpower and supplies to help people instead of hiding in this hole in the ground,” is exactly the same sort of commie-socialist-nazi-kenyan propaganda the treasonous soldier had been spouting before the general offed him.

The general storms off, leaving behind a soldier whose name I do not recall, but who I will call “Colonel Will-Eventually-Order-The-Men-To-Safety-While-The-General-Has-A-Breakdown”, or “Col. Weotmtswtghab”. Cap points out that the General is plainly insane, sowing a seed in Col. Weotmtswtghab’s brain.

In the next room, the soldiers are showing their resolve, even under these conditions, to still stand by traditional US military regulations and procedures, and are therefore torturing Hawk with an electric torture machine. Hawk, not being one to take crap from anyone, tells his interrogators to get stuffed. The general enters with a copy of Hawk’s permanent record, and, finding that he’s the sole survivor of his original unit, accuses him of, what else, treason. He further asserts that the fact that Hawk knew Dread before his transformation proves that he’s actually a Dread spy.

There is a certain flaw in the General’s reasoning

Yeah. It rhymes with “He’s sad as a catter.”

To show how evil he is, every time Hawk tries to answer, the torturer zaps him instead, proving that the torture isn’t actually about getting information, but is 100% about the torturer getting his rocks off by making Hawk suffer. Which, for the record, is always what torture is about.

The general decides that he’s satisfied himself that Hawk and Cap are “obviously” spies, and orders them executed. Hawk expresses his displeasure as only he can.

After a commercial break, we return to Briggs’s office. Col. Weotmtswtghab comes in, hoping to dissuade the general from offing Cap and Hawk, but the general launches into rambly story about how the reason we lost both Vietnam and the fictional 2127 South American Vietnam Analogy War was because the anti-war movement had better songs than the pro-war movement, and if only it weren’t for guys like Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan, we’d have totally won the Vietnam Analogy. When Col. Weotmtswtghab finally gets a word in, he protests the general’s decision, which prompts a little outbursts of mental instability where the general gets all shouty and threateny about the idea of someone daring to question his orders. The General reiterates that he wants the prisoners executed by 1800. So this is 15 hours after the first scene now.

We cut back to Soaron, who is standing on a pile of debris, apparently having finished whatever he was doing that morning. Dread orders him to proceed to the transmission source and rendezvous with a unit of troopers. So… I guess Dread really did mean “Finish what you were doing, then call me back, and then I will order you to do the thing I just told you I was going to order you to do.”

Hawk is tossed in a cell with Cap, and Hawk makes some threats he can’t back up about what he’ll do if Cap has been hurt. Because, y’know. I seriously don’t want to ship these two, but they just make it so darned easy. Corporal Exposition rattles off “He’s strong never met anyone like him he’ll survive not that it’ll make much difference.” And if you think there should have been punctuation in that sentence, you and I feel differently from the director.

Once alone, Hawk and Cap discuss their chances for survival, and Cap hits on the crazy idea of trying to plug his discharged suit directly into the high-voltage cable running up the wall. There is some awkward technobabble while Cap speculates that the Power Suit’s “modulation system” might “kick in with the charge” and protect him from otherwise certain electrocution. I remembered this scene even decades later, and it’s got a nice MacGyver feel to it. As Soaron and the Bio-Mechs approach, alarms go off in the base and the soldiers are forced into combat. These soldiers who were able to effortlessly disable two members of the Future Force are easily p0wned by Soaron and the Imperial Storm Troopers.

Realizing the imminence of their danger, Cap succeeds in pulling down the power cable, He’s wearing his TRON-suit underneath, so no, fangirls, no exciting shirtless Tim Dunigan for youtakes off his top, peels off the collectable Captain Power Decal from his chest, and plunges the sparking cable into his breastplate, throwing him across the room and leaving him in a crumpled heap on the floor. We cut away as Hawk futilely tries to awaken his friend. Oh no! Captain Power has killed himself! There’s no chance now!

Quite impossible, given the length of episode remaining

Well yeah. Like I said before. In the next scene, Cap just gets up and is perfectly fine. No injuries from the electrocution, nor anything from having been hurled across the room into a cinderblock wall. But before that, we show the general in his office. The realization that all is lost is too much for the old man, and he just sort of frets around shouting that it’s not his fault and that he doesn’t know what to do. Fortunately, Col. Weotmtswtghab picks up a microphone and Orders The Men To Safety While The General Has A Breakdown.

Fully restored, Cap powers on, and then casually offers the electric cable to Hawk. I really regret that we cut to Cap blowing up bio-mechs, because I think Hawk would have had some fantastic facial expressions for being electrocuted and thrown across a room. Instead, we get to watch Cap, who earlier was easily dispatched by the infantry, clean the floor with the bio-mechs. So, infantry beats Captain Power, Mechs beat infantry. Power beats mechs. It’s post-apocalyptic roshambo!

Inside, Col Weotmtswtghab announces that he’s gotten most of the men to the escape tunnels, and begs the general to escape with them. The general has regained enough composure to go down with the ship, formally turning his command over to Col. Weotmtswtghab and making his last order to get the men to safety, then he sits in the corner and sings “It’s a long way to Tipperary” until Soaron walks in, calls him a pathetic fool, and digitizes him.

I guess Soaron decides it’s not worth pursuing the other soldiers, as we cut to a dogfight in the sky between him and Hawk, which goes the way it always does: one shoots, then the other, back and forth until Hawk catches Soaron in the chest with his nerf missile, causing the Bio-Dread to go spinning off.

On the ground, Cap gets himself surrounded with his power running low. Again. The sultry computer voice in the suit informs him that there’s no escape. Cap is showered with weaponsfire, and channels Dirty Harry for a second, rasping out “You want to party? Let’s party,” before revealing a previously unmentioned jetpack, which he uses to jump over the Bio-Mechs, so he can shoot them while they sort of look around, confused. Another tense moment diffused by “Cap suddenly remembering that he knows how to shoot things.”

He calls Hawk in to give him a lift to safety, which he does, by swooping in, grabbing Cap around the waist, and flying away. Our episode ends on the two of them fleeing to safety.

So what becomes of the surviving soldiers? Do they join up with Captain Power and his men?

Nope. Never seen nor heard from again. I like to imagine that due to improper ventilation, they all die in the escape tunnel from radon poisoning.

And General Briggs?

Gone. They never pull him out of storage or anything.

And what of the remaining members of the team?

They were off in “Sector 7” doing a recon mission. Not mentioned again in this episode.

I see. It is tempting to draw certain conclusions from the ending of this story.

Why should we draw conclusions? The writers didn’t.

Ah, I think you see what I am alluding to. From the evidence here, I am inclined to conclude that the writers just didn’t care.

On the face of it, yes. But don’t forget: this episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski, a writer whose qualifications shouldn’t be in any doubt.

Even a fastidious writer might find himself operating at times with less than full enthusiasm. For example, at the moment I personally care so little for the consequences of this analysis that I have been forced to consume quite a considerable amount of cocaine merely to remain awake.

Fair point, but I think that while it might seem that the writers didn’t care, this episode in fact shows clear signs of executive meddling. Consider: this episode is significantly more action-oriented than the others we’ve seen. There are two major set-piece battles which take up more than a third of the episode’s entire run-time. We have a scene early on with Soaron which does nothing to advance the plot, and is essentially reiterated in full later. No, I think that the logical conclusion here is that word came down from on high to increase the amount of action in this story, and that expansion crushes out a lot of the finer details. The episode ends in what’s essentially the middle of a scene, and the most logical reason I can think of for that is that any attempt to tie up the plot neatly at the end was cut to add a few extra seconds to the fight scenes.

There is a certain lack of cohesion between the action sequences and the narrative segment of the story.

Right. This episode feels very much like it’s meant to be a character study of General Briggs, demonstrating how the pressure of his position has made him paranoid and dangerous. But it’s hamstrung by the short running time. We never really get a sense of the forces that have come to bear on the general, so he comes off as just being an obstinate asshole. When Captain Power accuses him of cowardice, we’re supposed to understand that the general isn’t really a coward, but a brave man overwhelmed by his situation — but without seeing more of the general in action, there’s nothing to take us there.

As in “Wardogs”, one of the major flaws of this episode is the near complete failure of the scenes we actually get to see to instill any sort of emotion in the audience with regards to the guest characters. I have by now started to build an investment in Cap and Hawk — more Hawk than Cap, really — but this story wants us to care about the soldiers, and I just don’t. Out of the entire unit, the only two whose names I can even remember are Briggs and Price — and Price is the guy who dies in the first scene. The only other character who makes any impression at all is “Guy who tortures Hawk”. And let’s face it, if you want me sympathizing with someone, you probably shouldn’t show them committing torture. This could have been fixed if they’d depicted the soldiers as reluctant to zap Hawk, only doing it under direct prompting from the general. That would also have served as a good way to show how desperate and unstable the general was. But, just like in “Wardogs”, all of that is cut short in favor of more action sequences.

The action looks great. It’s fun and paced well, though, as always, it feels perfunctory. We do the “Cap seems to be hurt but isn’t” thing again. Hawk and Soaron have a dogfight again. “Cap is cornered by mechs, but escapes by the simple expedient of shooting at them” again. These feel very much like mandates handed down from the studio execs.

If this show were remade today as an adult drama, all these problems could be fixed and the elaborate stories they set up could be brought to fruition. Heck, as an hour-long show, you could tell these stories well, and still have time for fifteen minutes of action scenes.

And this would make a brilliant story in that format. Unlike our last two outings, the plot doesn’t hinge on something chock full of troubling implications — we do have the General’s rant about Vietnam, but that really serves less as a political statement than as a statement about the general’s state of mind.

I’d be remiss, of course, if I didn’t point out the other big glaring issue in this one: Three of our five regular cast members aren’t here at all. Now, in a half-hour show with a moderate-sized ensemble, you have to expect that not everyone will play a significant role in every story, but so far, we’ve had one episode that was a character-focus episode for John, one that was a character focus episode for Hawk, and one that’s a Bromance episode for the two of them. Scout, Tank and Pilot have had at most a half-dozen lines each so far in the entire series. I guess if you want your unfortunate implications, there they are: three episodes about the white North American men, with hardly anything from the woman, the African-American, or the European.

It does get better, though. Next week is a Tank-focused episode, and after that… Well, actually, after that it’s another Hawk episode. I kinda get the impression that at some point during development, the writers decided that Hawk was a more interesting character than Cap, and decided they’d make the show be about him instead, even if Captain Power had to retain top billing for legal reasons.

Indubitably.

Hi everyone, and welcome back to–

I say!

What?

Sir, I realize these are progressive times, but you appear to be naked.

Huh? Oh. Right. Sorry. Here. Power on!

And welcome back to A Mind Occasionally Voyaging as we dive once again into the post-apocalyptic world of…

Now, I’m not saying that I am tapped into the pulse of Hollywood, but on October 19, I posted my review of episode one of Captain Power, and on October 20, CNN Entertainment did a feature on it. Which can only mean one thing.

That the pending DVD release has sparked up public interest, including both the CNN article and your own review?

Um, no. Clearly, it means that the writers at CNN Entertainment have spies in my basement, watching me blog.

Of course.

One thing I learned from the article is that Tim Dunigan, who, as I mentioned last time, is now a mortgage broker, still has the Captain Power suit, and sometimes wears it to work to impress clients.

• A Mortgage broker shows up to closing dressed as Captain Power
• B “I have five piercings. Guess where they are.”
• C 3 AM Text Messages from Ex-Girlfriend You Haven’t Spoken To In Five Years Demanding Personal Details About Your Wife
• D Bumping into Shari Lewis at the Holocaust Museum

I can’t quite imagine how this could have a positive effect on a normal client, but of course had he been my mortgage broker, I think I would have immediately caved on that extra half a point I wanted them to take off. To better explain, please see the chart to the right to explain exactly where this idea falls on the scale of awesome to creepy.

I haven’t mentioned Gary Goddard before. His entertainment company has been responsible for a lot of things, mostly designing theme park entertainment like the Star Trek Experience and Jurassic Park: The Ride. But he also has done work on the stage, in Specifically, Masters of the Universe, but I can’t imagine that’s the thing he wants to be remembered for.film, and television. And the reason I bring him up is that he created Captain Power, and in the CNN article, he mentions wanting to revive Power as a modern not-for-kids Sci-Fi Drama, a la the (now old) new Battlestar Galactica. Which would kind of blow my mind — in much the same way that the new Galactica did — though I’m having a hard time imagining an adult audience taking a title like Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future seriously. Still, fingers crossed.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For a revival to get greenlit, people need to buy the DVDs, and for people to buy the DVDs, you need to read my reviews, see the wonder and majesty that is Captain Power, and mutter to yourself “Oh man, I have to buy this and tell all my friends to do the same!” In this episode of A Mind Occasionally Voyaging, we’re retreating back to the magical land of the eighties to take a look at episode 2 of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
Episode 2: Wardogs
By Larry DiTillio

And here I have some eratta from last time. I previously credited the writer of Episode 1 as “Larry Oitillio”. That’s because they insisted on doing all the intertitles for this show in the OCR Font designed to convey “It’s the FUTURE!” to the audience by showing them 1960s banking technology. Google assures me that Larry DiTillio is a fairly famous writer, whose credits include He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Babylon 5. So I should not at all be surprised to see his name attached to this show.

We open on Cap’s Log, explaining that they’ve received word of several well-orchestrated raids against Dread in “It’s the future, so regions don’t have names, but numbers.Sector Seven“, and that he’s sent Hawk out to do a greenscreen “field correspondent” piece for The Daily Show aerial reconnaissance.

A Dread convoy is doing its darnedest to look inconspicuous against the gray and colorless backdrop. Aside from the bright red strobing target lights on the front. We cut to this episode’s guest talent, hiding behind a rock. The man observes the Dread troop movements and reports back to an unseen female voice, name-dropping something called “Eden 2”, which is their ultimate goal, and — hey, where do I know that voice from?

Anyway, the guy with the binoculars orders his gang, who he refers to as “War Doggies”, to attack. I’ll take a moment now to point out, outside of the regular cast, the only characters we saw in episode 1 were the bio-mechs, the sontaran, and Athena, who is fairly well groomed, having just been restored from tape backup. So this is really the first time we see Non-Future-Force-People-of-the-Future living the post-apocalyptic lifestyle. They look pretty much like you’d expect: like extras from a Mad Max film. Long hair, sleeveless shirts, more exposed chest hair than I am really comfortable with, Rambo-style headbands, shoulder pads that would make Rob Liefeld cream himself, and — oh holy crap. The guy calling the shots in the raid is notable First Nations actor and guy-often-confused-with-the-English-author Graham Greene. You may remember him from… Pretty much everything in the last 20 years that called for a Native American of a Certain Age. His big break in the US market was Dances With Wolves, but he also held such widely respected roles as the Alaskan dad in Roget Ebert’s least favorite movie ever, North, as well as episodes of A great show which I really miss now that it’s gone, in spite of doing something silly with their title such that I am forced to refer to the show as “Numb-three-ers”.Numb3rs (as a Native American chief), The Red Green Show (as a nearly deaf and possibly deranged explosive expert), the second Twilight movie (as Charlie’s token Native American-slash-Werewolf friend), and Canadian time-travel-domestic-drama Being Erica (as probably the most senior of the time-traveling therapists. Seriously, if you’re not watching Being Erica, you should be. It also has a former Power Ranger in it), and numerous other things I haven’t watched and therefore will not mention.

He will be playing the role of “Cherokee” this week, a name which reflects all the care and subtlety that goes into choosing a name that reflects and is respectful to the character’s heritage without straying into harmful stereotypes or cliche oversimplifications. Well, that or they just threw a dart at a board with popular Native American-Sounding names on it and it landed just shy of Tecumseh. But what can you expect from a culture where most people still use the term “Indian” for a people who we’ve known for over 600 years are from the opposite side of the planet from India.

The doggies make short work of the Bio-Mechs, by which I mean there’s an overly long fight scene to show off the strobe effects in order to give the kids their money’s worth this episode. Eighties River Tam jumps atop a tank and tosses a grenade inside, in order to establish her as a reckless risk-taker, a trait which will at no point be relevant. We cut back to Hawk, who reports in that he hasn’t seen anything, such as a pitched firefight with a large Dread convoy, and that someone is “playing a game of hide and seek”. On the ground, a mech with a giant truck-mounted canon decides that it would be a good time to reveal his presence and starts shooting. That finally gets Hawk’s attention, unlike the previous firefight, and he dispatches the mech with a single shot from his wrist mounted nerf rocket. Unfortunately, none of the wardogs see him do this, because a few seconds later, they look up, and Eighties River Ram identifies him as a Graham Greene repeats it back to her as “Clicker”, so I assume it’s Futuristic Slang for “robot” and they’ve mistaken him for a mech. But she quite distinctly pronounces it “Quaker”.Quaker, and because they apparently hate the society of Friends, Graham Greene shoots Hawk with his big gun, disabling him in a single hit.

Knocked out of the sky, Hawk falls powerless, perhaps thousands of feet, to land on the sun-baked desert landscape below, and is severely injured. He’ll spend the rest of the episode slowly dying of his massive internal injuries. Naw, I’m just kidding. Hawk isn’t hurt at all, just playing possum. Cap psychically deduces something has happened, and tries in vain to reach Hawk on the radio, but he’s called away by Tank and Scout, who’ve discovered a secret gigantic Dread-made technodrome in the middle of nowhere which they think for no clear reason must be related to Project New Order, so they’d better look into it, what with everyone having read the back of the box, and knowing that Project New Order will be a recurring plot element over the course of the series.

Graham Greene and Eighties River Tam are still bound and determined to mistake Hawk for a Bio-Dread, and make plans to cut his head off to access his delicious bubble memory and nougat center. Hawk overpowers Eighties River Tam, springs to his feet, and, having his would-be decapitators at gunpoint, and defended from their counterfire by his armor suit… Powers his suit down so everyone can see his Spooky Face while he tells them, “Sorry, but I’ve gotten used to this head!” Bless his heart. He’s really trying to toss off a cool one-liner, and it just isn’t working out for him. He proceeds to go through a lengthy series of really creepy facial expressions that I think are aiming for “Dirty Harry”, but come off as “Creepy Stalker” as he explains that his butt hurts and he is not happy about having been shot at. Larry DiTillio is still convinced he can keep up this farce about the Wardogs thinking Hawk is working for Dread, so they just sneer at him while someone offscreen presses a gun to Hawk’s neck. Graham Greene calls him a “Dread Head”, but Hawk can’t even get out his angry retort as he turns around to see this newest attacker, then squeals like a little girl when he sees that it’s his old friend-with-benefits Vi. They go in for a quick cuddle while Graham Greene and Eighties River Tam look on in befuddlement, before a hard cut to the inside of… Somewhere. I mean, I assume it’s a cave or something, but this really just drives home for me how completely ungrounded this episode is, geographically. The Wardoggies had assumed that the convoy they raided was headed for Dread’s base. Did they mean Volcania? Volcania is supposed to be in Detroit, and is post apocalyptic urban sprawl as far as the eye can see. This is… A quarry. Possibly the same quarry as the last episode. Now, admittedly, we never went as far north as Michigan on that road trip I took out to the midwest ten years ago, but I’m like 50% sure that Detroit is not normally surrounded by a desert wasteland riddled with cliffs and caves and desert. Given that Hawk is ostensibly Canadian and Vi served with him in the Metal Wars, and Graham Greene is Canadian, so I might guess that this episode is set in Canada. Sure. Why not. According to myth, had a second season been produced, the Power Base would have relocated to Canada. Now, my Canadian geography is not great, so for all I know, there are huge swaths of Canada which look like generic post-apocalyptic deserts (cliff-bearing type), but I am unconvinced that there exists a place in Canada where one would get “much needed supplies” in convoy-quantities such that the shortest path from there to Detroit takes you though such a landscape.

Logic suggests that such a convoy could only originate in Ottowa, Toronto, or Montreal.

It is fascinating how much I fail to care. Vi introduces Hawk to the Wardoggies. Well, she introduces him to them. There’s no scene where they cut to each of them in turn giving us a name and a personality trait so that we care if they die later. Instead, Vi takes Hawk back to her room to… Apparently talk abut Hawk’s dead wife. I assume she’s dead. And his wife. We really just get “What about Joanna? Is she–” and a sad head-shake from Hawk. She also asks after “Mitch and Katie”, who were “In Dalworth when Dread hit it.” Again, nothing to connect these to, but, um. Did they just tell us that Hawk’s children are dead? Or digitized, a fate which the last episode dedicated itself to explaining was worse. Hawk tries to get Vi and the Wardoggies to join La Resistance, but she’s tired of all this fighting, thinks the war is unwinnable, and is “If this is indeed Canada, “north” seems like an unlikely place to put your mythical promised land heading north” to a place called EarthPrelapsarian BoogalooEden 2, which they’ve got a hot tip about, though Hawk doesn’t believe in it.

While they’re each trying to convince the other to run off with them, Graham Greene rushes in to alert them to a ship on their radar. Hawk identifies it as Cap’s shuttle, and runs outside to call him. And because Hawk apparently does not carry a radio separate from his easily-disabled and power-limited Power Suit, this requires Powering On.

He calls home and, typical man, invites Cap over to Vi’s place and totally expects her to do all the cooking when he didn’t even ask her ahead of time. Cap totally ditches Tank and Scout, revealing which teammates really matter to him. Tank and Scout tempt fate by saying that everything is totes cool and Dread’s forces have no idea whatever that they’re nearby. A little flying nothing-in-particular-shaped thing scans them with its Dalek Vision, and instantly, Dread is personally alerted in Volcania. Dread does not understand the concept of matrixed management models. He So… What exactly is Dread doing before he turns around to face the screen. Does he just sit there in his throne all day looking dour at the empty space in front of him?turns toward the video screens, the only adornment in his lair. He immediately places his base on high alert, and calls Soaron. Man took over the entire world and has reduced 98% of the human race to convenient 3.5″ floppy disc, but he seems to have exactly one guy he can go to when he needs something done.

We cut back to inside the Wardoggies’ cave, where Hawk has, of course, immediately de-morphed. Cap is here now, and Vi is explaining their plan to rendezvous with a contact who is going to get them to Eden 2. Cap explains that the entire “It’s the future. There are sectors now.sector” is closed off, and offers to take them to “The Passages”, but they’re determined. And if Eden 2 turns out to be a myth, they’ll… Find something else. We have yet to hear anything about these Passages other than “they’re a place where Cap takes people he saves, where they are safe,” and we have yet to hear anything about Eden 2 other than “It’s a place where you can go and be safe,” so any real sense of why they’d be so determined to choose the one over the other was certainly not clear to audiences during the original airing, or, for that matter, to internet critics a quarter century later.

Vi indicates that she will not be swayed, so, in spite of Hawk’s protests that Cap somehow magically convince her otherwise, Cap and Pilot decide to just bugger off to see what Tank and Scout have found, leaving Hawk to… Um, do whatever I guess.

Soaron flies around, basically just to show off the state-of-the-art 1980s CGI for a good 30 seconds before landing in front of — hey, isn’t that exactly the same Egyptian Catacomb entryway from last week? Anyway, he orders the biomechs to withdraw and announces VERY LOUDLY that they’re going to abandon this top secret and highly valuable base. Scout calls Cap and asks if they should go in. Cap tells them to hang back, so they can all march blindly into the trap together. We cut back to Scout and Tank, and it sounds for all the world like the boom mike catches one of them farting.

Back in the caves, Hawk is still grousing about Vi’s unwillingness to give up her dream of leaving the horrors of war behind to hide out in a secret underground refuge in favor of leaving the horrors of war behind to hid out in his secret underground refuge. Vi decides to win the argument by seducing Hawk, by stepping out from behind a curtain dressed like Donna Reed. She’s all dolled up for some romance, but for some reason, they decided that, with Hawk and Vi both being Soldiers of a Certain Age, their notion of dressed-for-seduction is straight out of the 1950s. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the writer momentarily forgot that this is the future, and that the, say, thirty years earlier when Hawk was in his prime is still a hundred and thirty years in the future.

Or maybe he did, which is why Hawk’s reaction to this clumsy act of seduction is a look of confused horror. This reaction, and I realize that you will all be shocked to learn this, is not what Vi was expecting, and she starts to cry and self-deprecate over her foolishness. But it turns out that the sight of a woman crying is exactly what it takes to get Hawk’s motor running, and he rushes over, takes hold of her and announces, “Which he means as a compliment, but it seems to edge kinda close to “Given that my choices are heavily restricted due to the apocalypse, I guess you’ll do.”You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in a long time,” and then they make out.

The show suddenly remembers that this is a kid’s action adventure, and we cut back to Captain Power and company before we get to see Hawk pull out his little war doggie. They gun down the few remaining guards at the Technodrome, and Pilot unlocks the front door using an industrial vibrator a sonic screwdriver. Inside, Scout finds computer files about the mysterious “Project New Order”, which he tries to decrypt, while the others plant a time bomb, and have just found a pile of Ominously Foreshadowy Barrels when they are caught by a band of mechs led by Dread’s chief Nazi, “Overunit Weber”.

Overunit Weber is a sort of over-the-top “pretty-boy” fascist type, in a a uniform listed straight from the SS, with jodhpurs and an abundance of braid and decoration, and a tall hat, and, for reasons best known to himself, enormous Mr. T-style bling. He gloats over how Power is now his prisoner, and prepares to dispatch the remaining Rangers of the Future, unaware that Scout is still in the next room. Scout morphs his suit into the likeness of Lord Dread and walks in on them just as Overunit Weber calls the real Dread to report his victory. Scout makes no attempt at subterfuge: he just walks in, stands there for a second, and Overunit Weber is surprised enough by this that Cap can give the order for the others to start shooting. Which means that there’s absolutely no reason Scout had to turn into the likeness of Dread. Which has me thinking…

Cap and company brutally slaughter all the mechs, allowing Overunit Weber to run away like a small child. They give chase, but like all secret Dread facilities, there’s a “Lock the heroes in a small trap-lined hallway” button, locking our heroes in a narrow room with bunch of giant novelty phalluses hanging from the ceiling.

Knowing that the visual style of this series was heavily influenced by Japanese media, the Future Force fears that this show is about to take a tragically Hentai turn, and Tank creates an exit for them the way only he can.

Back in the caves, Vi is back in her uniform with an easygoing, postcoital manner as she tries to persuade Hawk to come away with her to Eden (yeah, brother) 2, as “We’ve done our share of the fighting. Let’s spend whatever time we have left loving.” As she considers helping herself to another heaping helping of Hawk, Graham Greene busts in and announces that Dread’s pulled all his forces east, giving them an opening to slip off to meet their contact. Hawk, though, knows that “east” is the general direction where the rest of his team has gone. After a few seconds of hesitation, Graham Green sheepishly reveals that Cap and the others are trapped. Way to bury the Yes, that’s how it’s spelled. It’s newspaper jargon.lede there, Cherokee.

Hawk asks Vi for help, and she holds fast that, if it were just her, she’d do it, but she’s unwilling to risk her men. Hawk goes hardcore Bros Before Hos with her and says, “Yeah. I feel the same way about the Captain,” which you can read as extremely homoerotic if you want, but I choose not to ship Hawk and Cap because the age difference makes it kind of creepy for me. He storms off, telling the rest of the Wardoggies, “I hope you find your paradise,” in a tone that very clearly indicates that by “I hope you find your paradise,” he means “Go fuck yourselves.” Yeah. How dare they not want to give up their only chance at survival and a peaceful escape from decades of horrific war and the constant threat of a fate worse than death to go on a probably suicidal mission to save a group of five strangers who are much better equipped than they are and wouldn’t even need saving if they hadn’t waltzed into possibly the most obvious trap to ever be shown in a television series before the premiere of Stargate SG-1? Anyway, Hawk powers up again and salutes Vi, which I’m going to take as one last parting jab, since he’s making a point to make his final goodbye to her as a soldier rather than as a lover.

Outside the Technodrome, Soaron is… Just sort of hanging around. Dread calls him and alerts him to Hawk’s approach. And we get another exciting air battle, where we intercut back and forth between a badly CSO’d Hawk and a badly CGI’d Soaron trading shots at each other, most of their laser blasts exploding harmlessly in the empty air behind or off to the side of their targets.

The fight goes on for, well, too long really, then Hawk seems to just kind of get distracted and plays with his glove for a while, giving Soaron the opportunity to get in a good shot which knocks Hawk out of the air and unmorphs him. Soaron declares “Victory is mine!” So naturally, God smites him for his pride by having the Wardoggies show up and in about three shots from the ground, dispatch Soaron, who could hold his own against Hawk, who was flying. Vi helps Hawk up and announces that she’d decided to “Give Dread something to remember us by,” which prompts a warm expression from the previously kind of dickish Hawk. Fickle!

The exposition fairy inspires Tank to remind Cap that there’s a bomb about to explode on the computer in the next room, and that their power suits are almost drained, because these things get slightly worse gas mileage than ’57 Chevy with six passengers and a trunk full of gold bullion. For his trouble, he takes one to the chest in the next volley of gunfire and powers down. A cutaway to the bomb shows 87 seconds left on the clock. Overunit Weber orders Power to surrender, but Cap responds by telling Weber to “This show is really terrible about pithy one-liners. That bit from Hawk about his ass being sore is pretty much the best we’re going to get.Come try it.” But just as Overunit Weber orders their destruction, the Wardoggies blast their way in through the wall. They don’t actually do anything; the distraction just gives Cap an opening to gun down all the Bio-Mechs while Overunit Weber curls up in the fetal position. Can’t have our heroes killing a human. Hawk offers them a lift, and the rest of the team races back to the curiously doorway-shaped hole. Tank looks back to tell the empty room “Less get out! Zeese plays gonna blow!” For emphasis, we cut back to the bomb timer, which now shows 15 seconds, even though it’s only been 30 seconds since the last time we saw it. Exactly twenty seconds later, just as the Future Force and Wardoggies are driving away in their little tiny tank-jeep-of-the-future thing, the bomb explodes. Or maybe not. Something explodes, but it’s clearly an entirely different design of building than the technodrome we’ve seen in every other exterior shot. And a good thing too, because Overunit Weber who they’d gone out of their way not to kill was still inside the technodrome.

With only a few seconds left in the episode, Vi and Hawk say their goodbyes and exchange a last kiss as the rest of the cast sort of stands around awkwardly, trying to figure out why the director didn’t tell them all to wander out of frame for this bit so that it didn’t look like everyone else had huddled around to watch Hawk make out. As the Wardogs drive away, Vi and Hawk exchange a last salute to each other, but since Hawk isn’t being a passive-aggressive dick at the moment, it’s a very relaxed and casual salute. In fact, Vi looks more like she’s just waving at him, and Hawk looks more like he’s tipping an invisible top hat at her.

And that, friends, is episode 2 of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. I think it’s a pretty solid one — it’s a character-focus episode for Hawk, which is a little weird this early on, but as I said before, I get the distinct impression that the aired ordering of these episodes didn’t have a lot of thought put into it. The big thing you’ll probably notice is that the plot of this story, at its most basic, is “One of our heroes meets up with an old love interest, gets shot at, then smooches. They raid a Dread base and blow it up after hearing a cryptic clue about ‘Project New Order’. Dread sets up an obvious trap and the heroes fall for it.” So on that level, it’s basically the same story as last week. But this one lacks all the heaviness that comes from making a protracted rape metaphor. Further, by separating the episode out into the A-plot with Hawk and the B-plot with the others, this episode is a lot more balanced, giving everyone something to do, even if Pilot is limited to unlocking doors with sex toys. This episode has a lot more action, and just a lot more general-stuff-going-on, and it doesn’t stray too far into dangerous territory by getting hung up on a protracted metaphor.

Which isn’t to say that this episode is shallow: the whole thing with the Wardogs in general and Vi in particular is a prevailing sense of how just plain exhausting war is. We have all the proof we need that Vi and the Wardogs aren’t cowards, and they aren’t weak, but they’ve been fighting for years, and they’re just plain tired of it. And the way Hawk and Vi act toward each other feels pretty natural — I give Hawk grief for being a dick to Vi, but it’s a very natural sort of dickishness: his friends are in danger so he lashes out — and they’re both quick to forgive when the crisis passes. I don’t especially like Hawk in those scenes, but I can understand where he’s coming from.

Now, this series is really a showcase for why “Half-Hour Drama” is not a common modern TV format. I really would have liked to have some insight into the Wardogs themselves. After their first scene, their screen presence basically shrinks down to “Graham Greene walks into the scene, delivers a message, then leaves.” There just isn’t time to develop more that the one of them — we don’t even learn most of their names.

Warning: the next paragraphs contain a discussion of gender essentialism and the portrayal of women in the media. If you’re not cool with that, skip ahead to the paragraph accompanied by a Mad Libs cover.

Continue reading Yippie-ti-yi-yo, Get Along War Doggies (Captain Power, Episode 2)