Battle of the Planets, Episode Thirty-Four
Gatchaman Episode #42, The Great Breakout Trick Operation
DVD and Veoh episode #35
Review/Summary: Center Neptune establishing shot, and Zark (as always). “Center Neptune is located deep beneath the sea, but its eye is constantly scanning the universe for signs of invaders or any alien intruders from outer space.” [As opposed to invaders and alien intruders from other countries on Earth, Zark? Ah, well, the target audience would have been thinking of extraterrestrials when they heard the word ‘alien’. You get a pass on that.]
And now Zark, wearing his sweater, on his slab recliner. He stabs a button on the console beside him and a book slides down the tube to the table on his other side while he’s talking. “But, when everything is quiet, I get a second now and then to sit back and relax.” Picks up book, opens it, puts it down. “That was a marvelous book. I didn’t have to look up a single word.” [Not saying it.] “That’s what takes the time, you know. The men from the Department of Ultra-Cybernetic Engineering programmed me to read a book in two seconds.” [Nowadays, he’d just download the information in a nanosecond or less. Science marches on.] “But if I don’t know a word, I have to look it up, and that can often take 15 minutes.” [Way to inspire the kids to read, Zark. You’ve just implied that it takes so long to find the definition of a word that it isn’t worth the effort. After all, if it takes you fifteen minutes, it should take a mere human even longer.]
Zark is in his tube, heading down to Nerve Center. “I think they forgot to program me for a tie-line to the dictionary.” [Here’s a suggestion, Zark: read the dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary, to start, then every dictionary for every language you can find. You’ll never have to look up a word again, unless it’s from a language so obscure it hasn’t been recorded in any form.]
That over, we have the Nerve Center, and Zark in his Zarkstyle. “Reading is a great way to relax.” [Yeah, after driving off the kids with telling them how hard it is to look up words. Way to ruin the message.] He flies over to his favorite console. Then we get a full-face closeup: “Which reminds me: I hope Tiny’s relaxing on his furlough. Imagine: two weeks doing nothing. I’d rust clean away.”
Everybody got that? Tiny’s on vacation. Something Is About To Happen. [A common staple of fiction. After all, an uneventful vacation isn’t very interesting to read about.]
Zark bets Tiny’s having a great time. “I wonder if I can get him on monitor.” [Ah, yes, that whole ‘constant surveillance’ thing mentioned in the first episode. The robot obviously lives vicariously through G-Force.]
Gatchaman animation. Close-up of a pair hands, handcuffed. Then a shot of hard-looking men, all wearing grey outfits, seated, facing two sitting guards. This is definitely not a tour bus.
It isn’t. Nor does it have official markings of any sort on the outside. Not even Engrish.
Then we see Tiny, arms out, flagging it down. The driver stops for him. He goes to the passenger window and explains that his van broke down and he’s been walking for three hours. They’re the first people he’s seen, which he thinks is a bit odd. This close to the beach, there should be surfers. [Because, for the purposes of this episode, there are no warning signs or other markers that there’s a prison in the area. Hell, there aren’t even any convenience stores, and there are usually those near any government facility.]
The guard in the passenger seat eyes the back of the prison wagon, and tells Tiny there’s room in the rear. He tells Tiny to move it when the big guy keeps on thanking him. [I don’t think prisoner transports are allowed to pick up passengers, for obvious reasons. Government drivers cannot, while operating a government vehicle, pick up civilian passengers.]
Tiny goes to the back, opens the door, and one of the guards in back yanks him inside.
As the van drives along a causeway flanked by ocean, the driver checks his watch. They’ll just beat the high tide.
They drive into – a prison.
Zark yelps how terrible this is. Tiny’s been thrown in prison. [Uh, it takes more than that to land in prison, Zark old pal old buddy. There’s the whole arrest, trial, and conviction process to go through first. Unless you live in a police state where people are ‘disappeared’ regularly.] And since Tiny was on furlough, he doesn’t have his communicator so that he can contact G-Force or Zark. [So, Zark, try calling the prison yourself. Or alerting Chief Anderson so that he can call and get Tiny out. You know, common-sense stuff like that.]
According to Zark, Barracuda Island is a maximum-security prison. Not only is it completely surrounded by water, its walls can’t be scaled without a lot of equipment. [How about an aerial approach, hm?] Maybe Tiny can convince them he’s not a criminal. [Should be easy enough: he’s not on the list of prisoners, he’s wearing civvies, and the van personnel know they picked him up on the road. Honestly, the scriptwriters could have done better. How about Zark suspecting that something is wrong because they stopped to pick up a passenger?]
Next scene is Tiny being manhandled by the prison’s guards. He throws them off, and more come running.
While that’s happening, the fellow who’d ridden shotgun in the prison van tells his cronies to take over. With that, the ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ run off to do just that.
Prison break!
The guards muscling Tiny are rudely interrupted by the news that Spectra has taken over the prison. Now the fake guard has a revolver drawn. Quite a nice shot of the business end in the foreground, as the Spectra agent comes into focus.
That’s impossible, the real guards protest. They have 300 guards, and will fight to the last man.
“Yes indeed, and we should be getting to him in about 15 minutes.” [Nice line.]
Tiny wonders what Spectra has in mind.
Now an edited montage of the Spectra-engineered prison-break. We see men with guns, but no shooting. Lots of running about, as prisoners are released from their cells. The cons actually obey when told to gather in the prison yard (but then, where else can they go?).
Cut to Mark, who's reading, his bracelet on a table. The ‘badge’ on the bracelet lights up, and Anderson’s voice comes through: “Security, calling G-Force.”
Mark picks it up, says, “Ears on, Chief.”
Then, for some reason, a monitor on the wall activates, showing Chief Anderson. The boss tells him that Spectra has just broken into Barracuda Penitentiary, and probably intends to move the entire population to another planet.
Mark asks the logical question: Why would Spectra want hardened criminals? [This is actually a good question. There’s a reason prison is a second home to a lot of people. Criminals tend not to do well in military or similar organizations. They don’t like obeying other people’s orders.]
Anderson reminds him that most of the prison population is from Spectra. G-Force put most of them there. [So now the viewers know what happened to the goons that G-Force caught in various episodes.
[Which means that yeah, there’s a problem. The Spectrans are used to following orders, and they have discipline.
[Why wouldn’t Mark know where the Federation puts captured Spectran soldiers?]
And in case anyone’s forgotten: Zark has apparently not told Anderson about Tiny being in the prison, however accidentally.
G-Force is to get to the prison and keep that move from happening. [Because in the BotP universe, there’s no one else to take care of that sort of thing. Even though Spectrans had to sneak into the prison, and are currently waiting for their ride, which means conventional military forces could take control of the place.]
Now it makes sense that they picked Tiny up. They couldn’t risk him telling anyone he’d seen them.
Back on Barracuda Island (or in Barracuda Penitentiary):
[It’s a pretty good bet the escapees have found the last of the guards, and he’s now fish food.]
The Spectra agent running the prison break tells the cons that it will be a homecoming for most of them. He offers to the others the chance at new lives on another world, and the chance to strike back at the people who imprisoned them. [Rescuing captured soldiers is a much better motivation for the infiltration than in the Gatchaman original. The clunker is that POWs are not kept in regular prisons, but in special, separate facilities.]
The Terran convicts are rightly suspicious. Nobody keeps promises to convicts. [I’m not sure how true this is. It’s difficult to keep order in prisons in the first place. Breaking promises left and right is a sure way to guarantee restive, troublesome inmates.]
Spectra, the agent explains, has need of their talents, and they will be well paid. [There’s a reason these guys are in prison. They’re probably not the best people to hire.]
Tiny realizes he can’t escape now. He’ll play along and make a break for it later. [Because, in the BotP universe, there’s no way to prove you aren’t a convict if you arrived in the back of the prison wagon. And the decision makes no sense in-universe, also: the scriptwriters could have shown him deciding to do his job as a member of G-Force, and infiltrate this escape.]
The de facto leader of the Terran cons (a bald badass) decides they’ll join with Spectra, because it has to be better than prison. But don’t try anything, or else.
Be at the east wall in 30 minutes. They’ll receive new uniforms.
Most of the cons are thrilled. The badass is near the wall, fists up. One smell of a double-cross, and – he punches the stone wall hard enough to leave a dent.
An admiring con says if they’d known he was that strong, they could have busted out without Spectra. He doesn’t look like the sharpest blade in the knife drawer, though.
The agent liked what he saw of Tiny, and offers him a spot. Keeping up the deception, Tiny says he’s got nothing better to do (at least for a week or two), so why not? [Under the circumstances, this line is serious understatement.]
Back to Our Heroes. Anderson tells Mark that Zark has learned that Tiny is in the prison. [Zark knew from the beginning.] So not only must they stop the prisoners leaving, they must get Tiny out. [As if the viewers couldn’t figure that out for themselves.]
“In other words,” Mark says, “a routine assignment.”
Now for photos of the prison dropping onto a table, as Jason speaks. Whoever designed the prison wasn’t encouraging the drop-in trade. It’s only accessible by the causeway, and then only during low tide. Twice a day.
Princess comments, “You’re saying, we use the main road, be daring, and pray a lot.” That’s our Swan!
Mark agrees, but says there’s a way to get close. He sets down another photo, showing a small island reached by a squiggly causeway. That’s the original prison site. It was torn apart in a killer hurricane several years ago. Maybe they can use it. [We’ve just located a maximum security prison for interstellar prisoners somewhere in the much-travelled Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico area. Or off the East Coast of the United States. Head, meet wall. Wall, meet head.]
A Spectra sub is coming for the prisoners at six. [How do they know that?] They have to get there first, and hope the tide stays out long enough to load the cons. They should pretend to be from Spectra – then he sags and says there’s no time to prepare.
Princess holds up a machine. She says she’s been recording various Spectrans. She has an hour of Zoltar.
Mark is inspired.
Next scene is the team in a hangar as the disguised Phoenix rises from underground. For some reason, the dialogue implies that the disguise hasn’t happened yet, as Jason worries about it staying in place. When Princess asks why, he explains that they’re covering all the lifting surfaces, which will make the ship difficult to fly, even for an experienced pilot.
From behind, they hear Zoltar: “Which Mark is not.”
They turn, shocked.
Sigh. We’re supposed to believe this is Mark disguised as Zoltar. The costume doesn’t even come close to being Zoltar. It’s mostly reddish-brown (or whatever that color is supposed to be), with a blue-green design on the chest, a purplish cape, and some sort of stupid flower-collar, and a mask whose sole resemblance to Zoltar’s is that it has some purple on it. Not to mention that Mark has a completely different build from Zoltar.
Keyop comments, “Ugly Zoltar.”
Princess thinks he looks cute. [Muscular guy in a tight-fitting one-piece outfit? You have to ask?]
Mark just hopes he can fool the Spectrans. Princess is willing to bet none of them ever saw Zoltar. [So, Spectra doesn’t have the equivalent of television or movies? Or are images of Zoltar forbidden? No: he’s shown himself on monitors to the troops.]
Now to a shot of – seagulls.
Over the prison. Tiny and a prisoner with serious 5 o’clock shadow stand by the wall. Two seagulls are sitting on the con’s shoulders. He tells Tiny that all you have to do is be gentle: they know the good guys. As the birds fly off, Tiny comments that they’re almost pets. The con says they’re better than pets: you never have to take them out for a walk.
Tiny’s impressed that this guy remains cheerful, even in prison.
Now to some place flat and isolated-looking, with G-Force. Mark, standing at the boarding ramp for the disguised Phoenix, says he’s really put in a crash course on Zoltar’s voice. Switching to it, he says he hopes he passes as he enters the command ship. [The ‘tone’ of the dub changes here. I can’t describe it any other way. It just doesn’t sound like a natural transition. Yes, I know it’s two different people speaking the lines, but you know what I mean.]
As Jason said, they had to cover the lifting surfaces. Keeping the Phoenix trim is a problem for Mark.
And back to the prison, where Tiny’s having trouble fitting into his new clothes. The mask won’t stay in place, and when he lifts his arms, the seams rip.
The lead agent looks at his watch. It’s almost time for their pick-up. One minute. He orders them to follow him.
And it’s not immediately obvious where they’re going, except that it looks like many are running out one small gate while the others use ropes to descend the outer walls of the prison.
Meanwhile, G-Force prepare their trick on the other island: a set of Spectra.
Oh, okay, the cons are boarding the disguised Phoenix, as Zark so helpfully tells us. It’s all going ‘exactly as we planned.’ [I don’t remember Zark participating in any plans.]
Mark, using Zoltar’s voice, is urging his passengers aboard.
As an odd-looking Spectra vehicle approaches under water. It doesn’t look like a submarine. Rather, it looks like a rejected design for the Apollo lunar lander (or a lame, low-budget-movie lunar lander).
At the Phoenix, the Spectra agent shows a few brains: he says they were expecting a submarine. Mark-Zoltar explains that they discarded that after looking at the problems. [Which were?] Board the plane and go straight to Spectra.
So, why weren’t the Spectra agents informed? This guy could be trouble.
Mark-Zoltar keeps bluffing: What does he mean, ‘not informed’? He personally wrote the astro-gram.
Now we see that everyone’s been boarding using an old-fashioned boarding stair. If I’m judging the scale correctly, that makes the Phoenix the size of a passenger jet.
Tiny’s the last one on board. He looks at Mark, but doesn’t seem to recognize him. Keeping to his disguise, Zoltar says that if he lost some weight, he’d be on time. Give him lean men.
Commercial break.
And Zark’s quad of monitors. Because all commercial breaks end with Zark.
What a time for his master telecom contact to the Phoenix to go bad. He will have to check his auxiliary monitor.
Which basically is Zark wiping that upper right hand screen. He’s never been able to get it completely clean since the previous Halloween, when a couple of young robots sneaked in and waxed it. [Mighty big hole in your security, Zark.]
He has to get in touch with Mark. So far, G1 is doing a great job pretending to be Zoltar, but can he fool everyone?
Yeah, we know where it’s going, even without the trailer before this episode. [Hell, every TV show where the hero disguises himself as a bad guy has this happen.]
Looks like Zark is getting through.
Which means we no longer have to look at crappy Zark animation.
But we still have to hear Zark. They’re continuing with the plan. Which Zark informs us he had considerable input in planning. [Yeah, it’s all about you, Zark.]
Right now, we see the disguised Phoenix take off and dive under water. By the look of things, they even disguised the entire control room. Wow.
Tiny comments on the bad piloting, and wishes he was up front. [Hey, people can hear you.]
And now we see a streamlined vehicle underwater. Not the Phoenix. Not the Spectra vehicle from earlier.
But it’s the lunar lander reject that flies out of the water.
The Spectran leader sees the track the Phoenix made when it took off, and realizes that someone beat them to wherever they are in relation to the prison. They take off again.
Meanwhile, the Phoenix lands on the set that G-Force constructed. Since, as Zark reminds us, the windows are covered, nobody knows they’re back at their starting point.
Zark spells it out for us, as projection screens are deployed to either side of the ship and Princess starts a film running. Now, here the scriptwriters screwed up: the footage is clearly of underwater scenes, but Zark is talking about the illusion of flying.
Mark, using Zoltar’s voice, gets on the intercom and tells everyone that it’s five hours to their first interplanetary stop for refueling. Sit back and enjoy the ride. [They have time-warp technology that allows travel between Earth and Spectra in a single day, but it still takes five hours to reach their first rest stop? Well, that’s a bit more realistic than expected.]
Weird lines from a goon in the real Spectra transport: they’re approaching the Spectra underwater complex. His superior says they can’t do that in a plane.
And now a shot of gas streaming from vents, putting the convicts to sleep. Tiny, who knows darn well that’s not Zoltar in charge, manages to avoid being knocked out.
Mark comes out, and resets the watches of the few who have them. Tiny realizes he’s not Spectra, but doesn’t make the logical connection that it might be Mark (or any other member of G-Force) in disguise.
The ‘submarine’ commander is looking at viewscreens showing an unfamiliar skyline. He’s never seen those buildings before. They weren’t there this morning. Organize a landing party and get over there. [Where is ‘there’? Where are they supposed to be right now?]
Aboard the Phoenix, it’s time for everyone to wake up. One goon looks at his watch and says his nap felt more like five minutes than five hours. [How does he know? I’ve often been surprised to find that I’ve slept several hours, when it felt like minutes, or that I’ve slept for less than an hour, yet it felt longer.]
Anyway, they look out the windows, see the set, and conclude that they’re on another planet. Yes, they’re free.
Tiny knows that Spectra wouldn’t land in the middle of an alien city. Maybe he stumbled into something. [So Spectrans wouldn’t be smart enough to conceal their identities, or to set up their own refueling depots? Really, Tiny?] And he still doesn’t conclude that G-Force might be behind this.
Mark comes out and tells Tiny and the intelligent goon, using his own voice, that they’ve had to land on an alien planet. [The scriptwriters could have had him say they’re at the refueling depot.]
Outside, goons are rushing up on the set G-Force built.
And Mark is digging himself in deeper as he talks of repairs and staying overnight, still using his own voice. The agent with a brain now knows something’s up, and asks what Mark just said. G1 replies. Tiny has disappeared from the scene. [Editing.]
Jason and the team have been watching via CCTV. To make sure viewers get it, Jason says, “Mark’s forgotten. He’s using his own voice.”
Without giving any sign that he suspects, the head goon keeps talking as he draws his pistol and uses it to knock Mark out. We only know that because Jason helpfully tells us.
Standing over unconscious Mark, the goon asks why they always underestimate Spectra people. “When you’re bent on deception, you mustn’t let your mind wander.” He pulls off Mark’s mask. “You’ve gotta be born mean to be Zoltar.”
G-Force’s reaction? Princess says, “Poor Mark.”
Outside the set, the other Spectrans prepare to invade the control room. When they burst in, they find an empty room.
Not empty. G-Force is there, and there is an edited fight. [It’s really obvious because the Gatch theme is playing, and it’s all hacked up.] Jason gets hold of one of them, and orders him to tell his leader it’s okay to enter the base.
[What base? This is the set that G-Force set up.]
The goon obediently sends the message. His leader is seated with arms and legs crossed, as if he’s angry about something.
At the Phoenix, the intelligent goon directs the men debarking into the fake city. [Not much choice in the matter? Did he think he couldn’t take the Phoenix anywhere?]
Tiny and the grizzled fellow head away from the main crowd. They emerge from the set and see some unconscious goons on the ground, then G-Force.
Jason, thinking he sees Spectra agents, knocks Tiny out with his cable-gun before the big guy can get in a word. Only after the mask falls off does Jason recognize his friend. The convict runs back into the main set.
As Jason apologizes, Princess calls them to the control room. Looks like the head goon left fused dynamite by Mark’s head.
Goon with a brain starts noticing that his surroundings are vaguely familiar. He hears a rhythmic beeping, and runs after the convicts, calling out that this may be a trap.
Oh, and Jason’s cable-gun saves Mark’s life.
The submarine crew enters the prison yard. Spotlights pin them, and a gate crashes down behind them. The leader demands to know who gave him the ‘all clear.’
Then the convicts rush into the yard, cheering, thinking they’re free.
The intelligent goon approaches the submarine commander, and says that he suspects a trap. Before he can continue, the real Zoltar insults them over the prison intercom system, calling them idiots and spelling out how they were tricked. [How did Zoltar find out?]
Dismayed prisoners now take a good look around. They start realizing they didn’t go anywhere.
The badass sees the dent he made in the wall. When the prison idiot says he could swear he saw a hole just like that, baldy yells that they were double-crossed. He made that hole. Ah, well, they’re no worse off than they were. [Yeah, you just shot your chance at parole, have probably gotten at least another decade added to your sentence: no biggy.]
Our gull-loving con is back with his feathered friends. Proper guards, accompanied by Chief Anderson, shout at him to get away from the walls.
Well, it’s time to end the episode, which means we get Zark voice-over. He explains that Tiny feels bad for his friend (and so does he). As the Phoenix sheds its disguise, he has to tell the audience [because children are too stupid to figure things like that out for themselves].
Oh, sheesh, we have Zark stuck in his tube, going up and down to silly sound-effects. Then he heads up to his ready room. He doesn’t know about us, but when he goes through something like the great deception, he gets very nervous, and he has to get away for a few seconds. The best thing he’s found is to take a ride up and down. Very relaxing.
He arrives in his ready room, talking about being ready for his 10-second oil break. Another defeat for Spectra. But they’ll be back.
[Where’s Rover? The metal pup has been conspicuously absent the last several episodes.]
Fic alert: Why would Spectrans not know what Zoltar looks like?
Bizarreness Alert:: We’re expected to believe the goons don’t know how Zoltar dresses? Or his general appearance?
The voice imitation gimmick just doesn’t work very well. Casey Kasem and Keye Luke are not even the same vocal range in terms of frequency, pitch and timbre.
Gatchaman Plot:: Jinjin Prison holds the worst of the worst, inmates on death row. (In a later episode, the death penalty has been abolished, so these guys aren’t ever getting out.) Galactor infiltrates, intending to break out new recruits.
The plot of the BotP episode mostly follows the Gatch episode. Except for editing out the more violent bits.
The SNT uses a piece of ground on the prison island itself to establish their ‘set’. The small island was where Galactor was to pick up the prisoners, but Ken and the GodPhoenix were there first.
However, Ken merely pretends to be a Galactor commander, not the Purple Doberman on Speed. What Jun holds up is a faked recording of Berg Katse that they plan to use.
What trips up Ken are a number of little mistakes that make ‘Blackie’ (the intelligent goon in the BotP ep) suspicious. Finally, Blackie figures out that he’s being tricked and knocks Ken out.
The convict with the seagulls, Jim, is actually a sad and sympathetic figure. He regrets his crimes and plans to escape to return to his wife and daughter. At the end, he’s back in prison, welcomed back by his gulls.
Ryu, expert pilot that he is, knows that he’s not on any functioning air- or water-craft. Although he also doesn’t twig to possible SNT involvement.
The Galactor commander who was to pick up the convicts went to the prison island to investigate what happened. And got caught with the rest when the trap was sprung on them.