Slave of the Cobra Master

With Cobra holding the world to ransom, Dr. Vandermeer tells the Joes that the only answer to the M.A.S.S. Device is another M.A.S.S. Device, and that it will need three rare catalytic elements. The first is a radioactive crystal buried near the Arctic Circle. Scarlett takes a team north and finds Cobra's mining robots already at work, and when the mine's fail-safe charge floods the workings with radiation Snake Eyes goes in and brings the shield down from the inside so the others can get out. In the Cobra Temple, a prisoner named Selina slips Duke a strip of metal that will break the mind-control band, and sends him to the great cobra's mouth and a stolen glider. He leaves her a ring. Cobra vanishes the world's assembled leaders from Tanu Island, and Duke wakes in a Joe infirmary with no memory of where he has been.

"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

"Slip this between your headband and your forehead, and you will be able to interrupt the control waves. It will cause you agonizing pain, but you will be free to run." -- Selina

"Why... Why are you doing this?" -- Duke

"The M.A.S.S. Device is not a toy for your amusement. These repeated demonstrations of its power have almost exhausted our supply of catalytic elements." -- Destro

"It was I who developed the M.A.S.S. Device. I, who made you aware of its potential." -- Destro

"You! Without my money and organization, you'd be out in the rain watching your face rust." -- Cobra Commander

"Something to remember me by. Until I come back to free you and your people." -- Duke, leaving Selina his ring

"We can stay here and learn to glow in the dark. Or we can go out there and maybe get cut to pieces." -- A Joe pinned in the crystal mine

"There was no time for him to get out. He knew that when he brought it down to save us." -- Scarlett, on Snake Eyes

"We'll never forget you. What you've done, Snake Eyes. We owe you our lives." -- The team, leaving the mine

"Nothing except... except a face. A beautiful face." -- Duke, remembering nothing else

Transcribed from the episode's English subtitle track. Character names follow Joepedia, which spells the prisoner Selina where the subtitle file spells her Selena.

A title tells you who to watch. This one points at Duke, and for the first few minutes that is where the camera obediently goes: a control band on his forehead, a stadium of Cobra banners, and a champion being brought in to pulverise him for the Commander's amusement.

The person who actually moves the plot is standing behind him with a cup of water.

Selina barely appears, yet every consequence in the back half of the miniseries runs through her. She slides a gold strip under Duke's headband, tells him plainly that it will cause him agonising pain and that he will be free to run, and gives him a rendezvous at the Great Cobra's mouth. When he asks her why she is doing it, she does not answer; she tells him the guards are coming. A trooper sees the handoff and demands to know what she passed him. She says nothing, and stands there while Duke bluffs. She is risking a great deal more than he is, but the episode never makes a speech about it.

Then, on the other side of the world, "Slave of the Cobra Master" does the same thing again with a different character. Trapped in the crystal mine behind a radiation shield, with Cobra's repair droids coming through the rock, Snake Eyes goes in and brings the shield down from the inside. Scarlett's line afterwards is the flattest, best-written thing in the episode: "There was no time for him to get out. He knew that when he brought it down to save us."

This is what the episode is about. Duke walks out of the Cobra Temple because somebody else took a risk for him, and Scarlett, Snow Job and Tripwire walk out of the mine because somebody else stayed in it. Neither of those people was asked. The title says slave and it means Duke, but the two characters behaving like free people here are a prisoner nobody in the temple thinks worth watching and a man who cannot speak.

Friedman then lands the cruellest possible ending on it. Duke surfaces in the infirmary with Stalker and Cover Girl over him, asking where Cobra's headquarters is, and he has nothing. The memory has been wiped clean, and all he can retrieve is a face. He cannot even name the person he owes it to. [1]

The Cobra material is having a very good day as well. Destro and Cobra Commander spend the episode circling one question neither will say out loud. Whose organisation is this? It comes out in the strategy meeting. Destro developed the device and made the Commander aware of what it could do; but it is the Commander who observes that without his money and his organisation, Destro would be out in the rain watching his face rust. [2] A children's cartoon about a terrorist army had the nerve to make its two villains a financier and an engineer who despise each other, and to let them argue about credit rather than about evil!

Elsewhere the episode is thinner. The Arctic sequence looks handsome, all pale blue snowfield and long shadows, but the mine robots are an ordinary obstacle and the fight against them runs a beat or two past its idea. The Tanu Island broadcast, where Flagg tells the assembled leaders that his country will never surrender and is then vanished mid-sentence along with everyone else present, is the sharper beat and is over in seconds.

Duke keeps nothing from the Cobra Temple except a ring he gave away.

1 ^ The ring he leaves with Selina, a keepsake and nothing more as far as either of them knows, turns out in part five to be the only usable fix on Cobra's headquarters. Keep an eye on it.

2 ^ The quarrel is also the first crack in a partnership that the finale splits wide open, when Destro takes command outright and Cobra Commander is reduced to watching him do it.

Written by the gijoe.army desk

1. 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.
2. Written by: Ron Friedman
3. Produced by: Don Jurwich
4. Executive Producers: Joe Bacal, David H. DePatie, Tom Griffin
5. Executive in Charge of Production: Lee Gunther
6. Supervising Director: Dan Thompson
7. Sequence Directors: Gerry Chiniquy, Nelson Shin, John Gibbs, Art Vitello, Sid Marcus, Sam Weiss, Tom Ray, Arnie Wong
8. Storyboard Directors: Rick Hoberg, Sherman Labby, Larry Houston, Lonnie Lloyd, Bob Kline, Don Shepard, Hank Tucker
9. Model Design: Russ Heath
10. Voice Directors: Don Jurwich, Wally Burr
11. Supervising Editor: Robert T. Gillis
12. Music Editor: Joe Siracusa
13. Sound Effects Editors: Richard Gannon, Jim Blodgett
14. Production Manager: Kathy Conte
15. Checking Supervisor: Barbara Donatelli
16. Creative Consultant: Jay Bacal
17. Title Song by: Spencer Michlin and Ford Kinder
18. Music by: Johnny Douglas
19. Production code: 4006
20. Originally aired: September 13, 1983 in afternoon syndication.