Brief Summary: Cobra reads Duke's mind! Leaving 29 minutes to kill...

Summary: Duke welcomes attendees to the World Wide Anti-Terrorism Center, then heads home. While he’s on his way home, the guys of Sky Patrol ask him if he’d like an escort home. He declines, which causes Static-Line to start fretting about what could go wrong while Duke’s flying back.

In the next couple minutes we get capsule personalities for the various members of Sky Patrol: Static-Line is a worrier, Drop Zone is a macho ass, Altitude is an artist.

Sure enough, Duke comes under attack! He’s shot down by Cobra while Sky Patrol scrambles to go save him. Drop Zone and one other member are left behind in reserve.

Duke finds himself brought to the Fortress of Truth where the Mind Mangler and Gnawgahyde are waiting for him. The Mind Mangler is some weird looking robotic dude with funky eyes and Gnawgahyde is the Dreadnok poacher. Why the Dreadnoks need a poacher escapes me, but here he is. Big as life and twice as ugly.

Duke has been strapped into a DiC version of the comics’ Brainwave Scanner (also known as Snake-eyes’s Comfy Chair). Mind Manger wants all the secrets of the Joes’ base. Meanwhile, in the background we get a glimpse of a young red-haired girl.

Outside, Sky Patrol is looking for Duke in the air. They realize that Duke must have been shot down, since they can’t see his plane so Sky-Dive turns over control of his plane to Altitude. He and Sky Dive discuss the relative abilities of their toys…err…vehicles.

Drop Zone shows up and blows the whole thing. The Cobra forces in the area spot him and scramble to prepare for the incoming Joes. All three Joes end up having to ditch and parachute to the ground.

Inside, Gnawgahyde tells the Mangler that the Joes are there and is told to take care of them while the Mangler tries to break Duke’s brain. He’s got Duke Close to breaking.

The Joes outside know that Duke is caught but they’re pinned down by Cobra. Luckily for them, Drop Zone parachutes in, shooting at the Cobras on the ground on his way down. This is, according to my friend Anna, a violation of the Geneva Convention. Why, I’m not sure, since it’s not a violation to shoot at the guy parachuting down. If anyone can corroborate this, let me know at kepulver@yahoo.com .

Inside, Duke thinks about Scarlett to keep from revealing any secrets. In a just world, we’d hear Scarlett saying “Duke, I think we should just be friends” but then, this isn’t a just world.

Instead, Duke passes out and the Mangler leaves. The cute redheaded girl we saw earlier sneaks in. AS it turns out, she’s the Mangler’s daughter (??). She gives Duke water and begs him to take her away from here. Apparently the Mangler has used the mind scanner device on her as well, so she gives Duke some advice of what to do to beat him: give him only the images you want to give! With that, she scarpers out before the Mangler comes back.

Sky Patrol moves in to try and rescue Duke.

Duke thinks of various Cobra defeats, which makes the Mangler mad. Gnawgahyde, on the other hand, laughs at the images of Cobra Commander getting spanked (er..figuratively, that is). AT least until Duke remembers a time he sent Gnawgy packing and showing off his skull and crossbones boxers.

Outside, the Joes spot video monitors and come up with a plan to freak out the Cobras. Apparently, Altitude used to work in the animation business and just happens to have one of his disks with him. Frogman vs. the Ant Men! HE patches this animation into the video monitors, showing the Cobras footage of a giant frog monster destroying some nameless city. Since the Cobras are also animated they freak out and start running. ‘Course, ti probably helps that Gnawgahyde’s in charge and well, he’s not the fizziest grape soda in the six pack.

Megan manages to free Duke just as the Mind Mangler shows up. She sneaks him out a back door, saying that she knows a secret way out. Oddly enough, the Mind Mangler seems to see them leave but does nothing to stop them.

The Cobras are all gone from the base. Duke is still woozy from the mind probe and tells Megan to run ahead, leave him behind. But, it turns out to be the Joes, not the Cobras.

Duke needs medical attention and Megan needs to be evacced since she’s a civilian. Static-Line worries about bringing her back to HQ with them, while Drop Zone figures this is the perfect time to start hitting on her. God, this guy makes Clutch look subtle. And desirable. For reasons that’ll become clear shortly, Megan is charmed by Drop Zone (and word to the wise, this is the ONLY reason any sane woman would fall for this kind of macho BS).

Duke, Megan, Drop-Zone and the others leave to go back to base. Sky-Dive and Altitude stay behind to investigate the now-empty Cobra base.

Back at the Joe base, we learn that Duke’s gonna be okay! He suffered some stress to his nervous system but he’ll be fine with some rest. Drop Zone, having offered to give Megan a tour once he got done checking on Duke with the others, goes out to look for her. But she’s not where they left her! Uhm!!! Static Line says that he knew there was something fishy about her!

Sure enough, Megan’s in the control room running a program called ‘sneak peek’ in the Joe computer.

Back at the Cobra base, the others have discovered that the place is deserted. Something doesn’t seem quite right about it. They find the Mind Mangler and discover that he really is just a robot…so someone else would have to have been running the show. Gnagahyde is quickly ruled out for obvious reasons which leaves only Megan as a possiblitiy (since she’s the only other person with a name).

Back at the Joe base we find out that Megan is ZARANA! What a surprise!

“You may be a girl, but you’re also a no good lousy snake!” says Drop Zone, realizing that his chances of getting laid by Megan are now nil.

Here’s the really clever bit of the episode: apparently, the Mind Mangler was a failed experiment by Cobra, but it worked well enough that Zarana used it to base the whole scheme around. Capture Duke, pretend to help him escape the evil Mind Mangler, get brought back to the Joe base, steal the information the Mangler was looking for, make it back to Cobra in time to be the only one to actually do something that worked in the entire run of Cobra in the cartoons.

Her exposition done, Zarana detonates the Dome while Sky Dive and Altitude are still inside. When she’s made aware of the fact that she might have killed two Joes, Zarana’s reaction is: “It’s not my fault! I didn’t mean to!” Which makes no goddamn sense!

Zarana escapes with the information stolen from the Joes’ databanks in a bag (well the disks are in the bag). She’s also managed to disable the Joes’ auto defenses.

Sky Dive and Altitude show up, being very much not dead and Sky Dive jumps onto Zarana’s plane and yanks the bag away from her. He falls off only to be saved from certain splatty death by Duke who grabs him with a pair of pinchers. When asked why he isn’t resting, Duke says “Who could sleep with all this racket?” ha-ha…

Altitude gives Duke the Mangler as a gift, having reworked him to now polish Joe vehicles.

Commentary: Zarana’s plan is the best part about this episode which is surprisingly strong for DiC. Propadeutic at the Complete Guide to GI Joe site mentions this episode in his summary of the 1990 cartoon series, saying that it’s a good introduction of Sky Patrol and is probably the best episode of the first season. It’s not my favorite of the second season, but it is a good one and easily one of the better DiC episodes overall.

About the worst I can say is that Drop Zone gets on my nerves. I realize that the character is a bad-ass, I’ve read his file card, but cripes how this macho posturing idiot got to be a Joe is beyond me.

It’s worth noting here, since this is where I’m thinking of it, that the original DiC characters tend to fare about the best of those shown in the DiC episodes. Characters like Duke, Hawk, CC, Destro, etc. have the baggage of their Sunbow characterization to get over. And even though the two series are not connected, it’s hard to get over the fact that apparently most of the characters we met in the Sunbow episodes had full frontal lobotomies in the early 90s. Why else would they act this doofy?

File Card Fun-Fact: According to his file card, Altitude used to work in animation until his budding career was "shortened by the collapse of syndicated cartoon programming."