Destro returns with the meteorite, tells Cobra Commander that the failed strike on New York has handed the Joes time and hope, and takes command of Cobra himself. He threatens to execute the world's captive leaders one at a time, beginning with General Flagg. Held in the Cobra Temple, Scarlett finds Selina and the two of them organise the slaves for a rising. At Joe headquarters, Breaker puts Duke in a sensory deprivation tank to recover the memory Cobra erased, and what surfaces is the ring Duke gave Selina, whose microchip components give the Joes a homing fix on the Cobra hideout. The Joes mass in, the slaves rise, Cobra Commander is taken and Destro escapes. Dr. Vandermeer then returns the Eiffel Tower to London.
"And knowing is half the battle." Every Sunbow episode closed on a public-service spot delivered to camera by a Joe, addressing children on a real-world hazard. The ethic underneath the writing, across the whole run, is that Cobra acts out of fear and the Joes act out of responsibility.
Voice talents, as credited on this episode's closing titles. The Sunbow credit crawl lists the company of voice actors for the miniseries and does not assign roles, so no role attributions are given here.
Liz Aubrey Jackson Beck Michael Bell Arthur Burghardt Peter Cullen Pat Fraley Marla Frumkin Scott Buster Jones Christopher Latta Morgan Lofting Rob Paulsen John Stephenson B.J. Ward Frank Welker Michael Yama
"Your stupid, bungled attempt to disintegrate New York has given our enemies the two commodities they must not be allowed. Time and hope. Nothing undermines our cause more greatly than failure to execute our threats." -- Destro, to Cobra Commander
"The ring. Duke's ring. Six foot two, eyes of blue." -- Scarlett, to Selina
"Look, I'll tell you straight off. Duke wouldn't want us to sit this one out. Understand?" -- Scarlett
"I shall execute your leaders one at a time, every half hour on the hour, starting with General Flagg." -- Destro
"I think there's just enough juice to send the Eiffel Tower back where it belongs. Here goes." -- Dr. Vandermeer
"London? You put the Eiffel Tower back in London?" -- A Joe, on the result
"I guess I goofed, but there's nothing I can do. All the elements are used up." -- Dr. Vandermeer
"Well, nobody's perfect." / "No, but we do okay." -- The last two lines of the miniseries
Dialogue transcribed for gijoe.army from the episode audio, 2026-09-14. The Sunbow prints carry no subtitle track, so every line here was transcribed and then cross-checked against a second pass; where a speaker could not be established beyond doubt, the line is left unattributed. Corrections are welcome on the forum.
Duke gave Selina a ring in part two. He had nothing else on him, he was climbing onto a stolen glider at the time, and the line he gives her is the smallest thing anyone says in five episodes: something to remember me by.
That ring is how the war ends.
The finale is built around a piece of plotting that should not be as satisfying as it is. Cobra's fortress has never been found, Duke's memory of it has been wiped, and the Joes have a working M.A.S.S. Device with nowhere to send it. So the Joes put Duke in a sensory deprivation tank and walk him backwards through his own life until the fortress surfaces. What the team spots in the recovered memory is not the mountain or the gate; it is the ring on the hand of the woman who freed him, still carrying the electronic signature of the microchip components inside it. She is the homing fix. The weapon that has held the planet hostage for four afternoons is beaten by an object handed over as a keepsake, by a man who expected nothing back, to a woman who had already refused to say why she helped him.
Everything else in the episode returns to that idea. Scarlett, taken prisoner at the end of part four and fitted with a control band of her own, finds Selina in the cells and barely has to explain herself. "The ring. Duke's ring. Six foot two, eyes of blue." They organise the slaves between them. [1] By the time the Joes mass in through the rock the revolt is already under way, so the rescue arrives to find the prisoners have started without it.
Cobra's half of the episode is the reverse case. Destro arrives with the meteorite and finds that Cobra Commander has spent the interval firing an empty threat at New York, and his verdict is the sharpest strategic thinking anyone does in the miniseries: the failure has handed the enemy two commodities they must never be allowed, time and hope. He then takes command himself, and promptly makes the very mistake he has just diagnosed, announcing that leaders will be executed one at a time, every half hour on the hour, beginning with Flagg. Given the chance to behave better than the man he deposed, he behaves worse, and faster. [2]
The assault itself is the weakest passage. It is competently animated and entirely conventional, jets and gliders and troopers on ledges, but it also has the standard problem of a five-part climax: the plot is already decided, and the action is the tidying up. Cobra Commander and his officers are rounded up in a single line of dialogue, and Destro slips away swearing to return, in the other standard line.
The coda is the part we all remember. Vandermeer, given the last of the elements and a chance to put the Eiffel Tower back where it belongs, puts it in London. There is no fuel left to try again. A serial that has spent two hours on teleported armies, radioactive mines and giant worms ends with a group of soldiers agreeing to tow a French landmark home by sea, and with the last two lines of the whole thing: "Well, nobody's perfect." "No, but we do okay." The M.A.S.S. Device was the most frightening object on American television that week, and its last act is a filing error!
The stakes were always the people. Cobra never worked that out, and it lost to a ring.
1 ^ The revolt is Selina's operation and Scarlett joins it rather than starting it. Selina has the men already waiting on a signal, and the scene in the cells is the two of them settling whether the men can be counted on and when to move.
2 ^ Note who is watching the world refuse him. Not one nation surrenders, and the Baroness has to tell him so: one wants to take a vote, another wants to take it under consideration, and none of them is frightened. It is the same joke as the requisition form in part one, told from the other side of the war.
- M.A.S.S. Device five-part miniseries, September 1983. Marvel Productions, Sunbow Productions and Toei Doga, distributed by Claster TV Productions, a division of Hasbro Industries. Copyright 1983 Sunbow Productions, Inc.
- Written by: Ron Friedman
- Produced by: Don Jurwich
- Executive Producers: Joe Bacal, David H. DePatie, Tom Griffin
- Executive in Charge of Production: Lee Gunther
- Supervising Director: Dan Thompson
- Sequence Directors: Gerry Chiniquy, Nelson Shin, John Gibbs, Art Vitello, Sid Marcus, Sam Weiss, Tom Ray, Arnie Wong
- Storyboard Directors: Rick Hoberg, Sherman Labby, Larry Houston, Lonnie Lloyd, Bob Kline, Don Shepard, Hank Tucker
- Model Design: Russ Heath
- Voice Directors: Don Jurwich, Wally Burr
- Supervising Editor: Robert T. Gillis
- Music Editor: Joe Siracusa
- Sound Effects Editors: Richard Gannon, Jim Blodgett
- Production Manager: Kathy Conte
- Checking Supervisor: Barbara Donatelli
- Creative Consultant: Jay Bacal
- Title Song by: Spencer Michlin and Ford Kinder
- Music by: Johnny Douglas
- Production code: 4009
- Originally aired: September 16, 1983 in afternoon syndication.
★ DISCUSSION
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