GI Joe, A Real American Hero S1E1-5: "The Pyramid of Darkness"

This review was comissioned by @krinsbez.


A few years after the Marvel Comics run that I looked at a while ago started coming out, GI Joe got an animated series as well. Not surprising; the comics sold very well, and it was the mid 1980's, so making a cartoon of everything and selling toys of everything was the name of the game.

I believe that this 1983 series is also the origin of the oh-so-exploitable "Knowing is half the battle!" public service skits that GI Joe is all but synonymous with nowadays.

The first five episodes of this series make up a single multi-part introductory story, informally known as the "Mass Device" arc. This five-part pilot is is what I was supposed to be looking at today, but I had a mixup. See, after the five-episode miniseries that kicked off the animated series, the first five proper, non-miniseries episodes of the show were a five part story called "The Pyramid of Darkness." One with almost the exact same plot as "The Mass Device," apparently. I didn't realize until I was halfway through.

It was an easy mistake to make. Fortunately, @krinsbez said that he's fine with me reviewing either of the two 1983 five-part animated GI Joe pilots about Cobra stealing a spacecraft to use as a component in a world domination plot. So, thank you to the commissioner for rolling with it!

Anyway.

The comics that this series followed from were pretty variable in quality from issue to issue, so I don't have any expectations of the cartoon series for better or for worse. This could be better than most SatAm shows, worse than most SatAm shows, or just the average lazy paste. Well, let's check it out.


Episode one, "The Continuing Adventure of GI Joe," starts with the Joes launching a space shuttle out of their secret underground base, with a launch bay that reveals itself by sliding a literal mountain out of place across the ground. The launch is declared WOC ("WithOut Cobra") at first - apparently an actual designation for events that Cobra doesn't attack - until suddenly Cobra attacks! Their force is led by a pair of psychically linked twin brothers called the Twin Crimson, an ace fighter pilot with metal skin named Destro, and Cobra Commander himself commanding a squadron of laser-tanks in broad daylight on American soil. They grab the space shuttle in a giant net and start trying to physically steal it out of the air.

I just summarized the first three minutes of the first episode. And let me tell you, it never stops for even a second for the entire rest of the five-part pilot.

It's absolutely glorious.

The funny thing about this series is that if you changed the name and character designs, it would have absolutely nothing to do with the version of GI Joe from the comics that precipitated it. And, honestly? I think that that's to the animated series' benefit. From the intro sequence (which features the Joes fighting a giant cobra-shaped spaceship in a Star Wars-esque air battle) onward, it's made clear that this version has nothing to do with America, the military, foreign policy, any of it. It's just a fantasy world that pays a very occasional word of lip service to the American military.

In this world, GI Joe is essentially the entire military. Cobra, meanwhile, is described as a terror group, but portrayed as a hostile foreign power with equal resources, manpower, and technology. It's basically a war between two nation states, only instead of full-sized militaries they each have a lineup of superheroes and ridiculous gadgets, plus the odd crowd of nameless mooks who mostly stay in the background. There's no questionable politics here, because there are no politics at all. It's set in a total fantasy world, and it consists almost entirely of action scenes, to the point where I could almost call the entire episode until it's final five minutes or so one long fight sequence.

And you can bet that the bombastic drums and trumpets never stop playing at any point in the runtime. It's almost more like a really weird music video than anything else.

The characters we focus on include some familiar faces from the comic issue I reviewed, and some new ones. All with their personalities softened and rough edges sanded down to mere gruffness at worst. Stalker is here, and still probably the most violent Joe, but it's the silly action-quippy kind of violent now. Snake Eyes is still his silent, lethal self, but now he brings a cute pet wolf with him wherever he goes that totally undercuts the menace of his comic self. Scarlet's most distinguishing trait, aside from the martial arts skill, is her love of cute fluffy things. Hawk is the least changed, still being the straight-laced leader guy.

And oh man, for new faces, just check out this absolute king:

This is Shipwreck. He talks like a pirate, and so does the (seemingly human-level intelligent) parrot he's got on his shoulder. He, Snake-Eyes, and their animal companions carry an entire subplot by themselves with just Shipwreck and his parrot talking and Snake-Eyes and his wolf reacting in body language alone.

On the bad guy side of things, I was initially disappointed. No Baroness, who I remember mostly fondly from the comic. Cobra Commander is given this shrill, high-pitched generic supervillain voice that just doesn't fit him, and in his initial appearance he seems to be the usual incompetent paper tiger of a SatAm villain who gets humilitated in every engagement. But then, at around the halfway point, this all gets turned around. Much like his comic book version, this Cobra Commander specializes in diversions and psyops, only in this version he's much better at it. It turns out that his bumbling performance in the space shuttle attack was literally just an act for the GI Joes' benefit.

In fact, the entire rest of the episode consists of Cobra winning, with Cobra Commander's own plans being shown to run circles around the Joes at nearly every turn. To the point where I'm more frustrated with their own showing than I am with the opposition's.

When it seems like Cobra Commander and his minions have made an undignified retreat underwater after failing to grab the space shuttle, it turns out he was just leading the pursuing Joes in their amphibious fighter-submarine-planes into a trap. He has these huge underwater robots waiting for them that are specifically designed to suck submarine-planes into their mouths and spit them out again with sufficient force to break them open, and they do just that. Meanwhile, his own air-combat specialist Destro leads the Joes' own air units in a long, fruitless chase before suddenly flying between two skyscrapers out of their sight and doing this:

The GI Joes had no idea about Cobra's secret 30th floor financial district airbase before he does this, and they still have no idea about it afterward. Gone without a trace.

Cobra managed to trick the GI Joes into thinking they were trying to steal the space shuttle, when in reality they were just surreptitiously planting a package aboard it before being "forced" to retreat without the prize. What's in the package they planted? Well, when the shuttle gets up to the GI Joe space station (yes, GI Joe has a space station), it turns out to be full of these:

Which then, when a secret Cobra agent who'd already been insinuated into the space station's crew blows a literal dog whistle, transform into these:

Yes, the transformation includes them suddenly having laser guns in their hands now. No, fuck you, we're never explaining or even acknowledging this.

They arrived with a handwritten note, too. They're called "fatal fluffies," and Cobra Commander wishes the Joes good luck with them in his signed gift card.

I am in heaven right now.

The fluffies, along with a few Cobra commandoes who were smuggled in along with them, take over the space station and capture all the Joes aboard. They then send a communique to the GI Joes' main surface base. When said surface base replies, Cobra is able to triangulate its previously unknown location, and also to bomb that location from orbit with the captured space station's weaponry.

The first episode of the five-part pilot ends with GI Joe's higher-ups having to flee the burning ruins of their headquarters, Snake-Eyes and Shipwreck alone having gotten passed the ship-eating sea robots using a clever trick of their own and found their way into one of Cobra's bases by tracking the fleeing Commander, and the Commander himself gloating to his lieutenants about his real plan. Using the captured space station, he's going to set up a global network of supertech devices to form the "pyramid of darkness." Basically, this will let him shut down all electronics anywhere or everywhere in the world. When threatened with the sudden end of high-tech civilization, Cobra Commander expects the world government(s) to surrender to him in short order.

Actually, the final final scene of the episode has Snake-Eyes and Shipwreck disguised as Cobra soldiers trying to get passed a security robot. And not realizing that the "password" they thought they were copying was actually just a test phrase for the robot to apply its voice recognition to. The final shot has them and their pets fleeing the suddenly aggressive robot while it screams "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" in a hilariously bad American-voice-actor-trying-to-do-a-dalek-impression voice.

No really, it's literally that.

The next episode, "Rendezvous In the City of the Dead," follows three subplots. Snake-Eyes, Shipwreck, and their pets infiltrate the underwater Cobra base. Hawk and most of the Joes evacuate the ruined HQ and prepare to strike back. And, aboard the space station, Breaker, Scarlet, and some others struggle to liberate the facility from Cobra control. The pacing suffers a little from how it's broken up, and sometimes one of the subplots starts getting slow and padded in order to not get ahead of the other two, but the story still keeps up at least most of the insane momentum from the previous episode. And even when it's being slow and padded, it makes sure to never, ever, even for a single moment, stop being every bit as what the fuck.

The fatal fluffies can talk apparently. And are smart enough to act as literal whip-wielding taskmasters for the Cobra troops on the station to put to work enslaving the GI Joe crew on their own space station.

To the story's credit, the batshit predicaments it left some of the Joes to cliffhang from at the end of the previous episode don't get resolved by deus ex machina like I was expecting. Or, well, it's not any more arbitrary or incomprehensible than the events that got them into those situations, at least. Snake-Eyes and Shipwreck get saved by Shipwreck's parrot doing a perfect immitation of a Cobra soldier's voice, which is apparently enough to make the dalek-wannabe forget all about killing them and deactivate the death trap it had just been herding them into. The space station crew, meanwhile, do something actually clever by using their superior knowledge of the station against the occupiers; they successfully gamble on Cobra not knowing about the artificial gravity device they were experimenting with aboard the station, and suddenly turning it on and throwing the station from 0G to 1G of gravity gives them exactly the shake-up they need to start fighting back again and temporarily retake control and get some important comms out before Cobra and their fluffies recover.

The next complication the infiltrator duo faces, by the way? After joining the assembly line to put the finishing touches on the Pyramid of Darkness components before deployment, they get called aside by a Cobra lieutenant who scolds them about violating their base's policy on pets. Somehow, it took that long for anybody to notice.

What the subversive actions in the Cobra base and aboard the space station amount to, in the end, is a tracking chip being placed on one of the cubelike Pyramid of Darkness components, and the probable locations of the others' deployment being beamed down from the space station to where Hawk and the others can pick it up. For their own part, Hawk and Co are having to make do with using a navy aircraft carrier as their new temporary HQ. And apparently GI Joe isn't the entire military after all (could have fooled me up until now), because there's some interagency friction with the admiral aboard the carrier.

What kind of interagency friction? Well, the admiral thinks it's bad luck to have women aboard a ship. This gives the show an opportunity to teach us a very important lesson about sexism. And also gives the admiral to respond to the accusation of "that's just an old sailor superstition" with a gloriously over-the-top exclamation of "I AM A SUPERSTICIOUS OLD SAILOR! I'VE BEEN AT SEA SO LONG THE WHALES ASK ME FOR DIRECTIONS!"

The hero we need and deserve, ladies and gentlemen. Too bad about the sexism, but we do both need and deserve this man.

Speaking of heroes, one of the GI Joe team leaders sent to lead an assault on one of the leaked cube locations is a guy who goes by Roadblock. For some reason, he's three times the size of a normal person. Also, he only speaks in rhyme.

Now, this might seem a little uncomfortable, having one of the only black characters be kinda sorta a compulsive rapper. And, it is, I won't pretend otherwise. However, there are two saving graces to this.

1. Roadblock is actually good at this. Not always, but almost always. His wordplay is usually top notch.

2. The other black GI Joe, Stalker, meanwhile breaks ethnic typecasting wide open when he gets deployed to an arctic cube site and brings down the iceberg that Cobra is setting up their device on by yodelling at it.

This episode doesn't actually culminate in the City of the Dead, as it turns out. Also, I'm not sure why that location got episode naming rights, because it's only one of several locations (all famous landmarks, naturally) that GI Joe squadrons are sent to intercept Cobra cube-placing teams at. But anyway, the City of the Dead clash - along with several other battles - actually takes place in the next episode, "Three Cubes to Darkness."

And oh my god, I do not even know how to articulate the centerpiece for this one holy shit.

So, Snake-Eyes, Shipwreck, and the pets? They've managed to plant the tracking chips and steal some vital data before escaping the Cobra base and reaching the surface again. Only, this puts them in a city. A Cobra city. Or...actually, I'm pretty sure it's the same city that the Joes were defending back in the first episode, but like. A Cobra neighbourhood. Maybe it's like East and West Berlin or something, but there are Cobra propaganda posters up all over the place, and Cobra military police patrolling the streets that the Joes need to avoid. They end up running into a diner/nightclub to hide for a bit and get some food, and then suddenly this is a world war 2 movie about a pair of American agents trying to lay low in Vicchy France.

Like, it turns out the club they're in is literally a 1930's cabaret. Complete with a femme fatale blues singer who feigns loyalty to the occupying force while covertly helping the good guys hide from the Cobra agents (in her own words, she "has a soft spot for weirdoes." This is the entirety of her given motivation). Cobra agents who are wearing 1930's style trenchcoats.

This sequence culminates in the singer lady taking Shipwreck, Snake-Eyes, and their pets up onto the stage as impromptu backup dancers for her act.

And, for some reason that is clearly paining him immensely, the Cobra SS officer leading the hunt for them decides that he cannot interrupt this performance even to apprehend enemy agents. He needs to slowly, with his teeth barred, maneuver his men to surround the stage and cover all the exits so that they can move as soon as the song is over. Not one second before it ends, though. That will apparently destabilize the regime or something.

...

Never before in my life have I so badly regretted my body's marijuana intolerance.

This has to be the best show ever made for watching high. It just has to be.

...

Meanwhile, the belated confrontation in the City of the Dead turns out to be...in a different City of the Dead than the IRL famous one. We're in China rather than Egypt. Cobra plants a cube inside of this ancient mausoleum and trust the ancient defences to take care of Roadblock's pursuing Joe team. You see, the Cobra officers know that if you step on the wrong floor tile in the mausoleum's entrance hall, it will activate a pressure plate. And if that pressure plate gets pushed, hundreds of terra cotta warriors will suddenly come to life and kill any intruders in the entry hall. The GI Joes did not know about this historical curiousity, and end up suffering for it.

The joke's on the Cobra guys in the end, though. It turns out there's another hidden trap deeper inside that they didn't know about either. This one doesn't bring terra cotta statues to life though, oh no. This one animates an army of the actual ancient dead. And, unlike the mere archaic swords and polearms wielded by the clay warriors, these undead guardians wield lightsabres in their skeletal hands.

Elsewhere in the world, a pair of Joes named Lady Jay (the one who the admiral was being charmingly sexist to an episode ago) and Clay have a romantic moment while buried in a pit of hot mud that Cobra knocked them into at a Devil's Playground cube site. And, at the opposite end of the temperature scale, Stalker's yodelling attack ends up being foiled by the arctic cobra group's last-minute samurai reinforcements. Stalker and his second in command end up getting chased onto a floating iceberg, where they are menaced by a pack of vicious, man-eating leopard seals.

All around the world, Cobra teams seem to be getting the better of the GI Joe interception groups sent after them. The space station is back under Cobra control, despite the trick with the gravity having broken it for a short time. Unless Snake-Eyes and Shipwreck can get the technical data they stole back to Hawk and use it to find some other way of disrupting the Pyramid of Darkness, it seems that Cobra Commander has won.


That's three out of five episodes of the multi-part pilot. My head is spinning and my body is made of light. I can taste the drumbeats and I feel the images lick and nibble my skin. Splitting it here.