SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 18: WONDERLAND
ICONIC SCENE: Weird trees…
BROADCAST DATE: August 26, 1984
1. Jeanne stands in front of the red Bioroid, saying, “Seifriet, it’s me, Jeanne!” and remarkably, it actually seems to have some effect, as Seifriet tries to fight the mind control. Finally the Zor cause him to retreat, and Jeanne and Andrzej meet up with the only survivors of the infiltration mission, who just happen to be Bowie, Charles, and Louis.
2. Andrzej says that there will be “zorozoro” Zor soldiers (in the subs as “Zillions of Zor”). That is, the place will be swarming with them. And Jeanne chastises him for making such a stupid pun.
Anyway, they decide to leave the Spartases behind and go on foot to try to find the command center.
3. And, unlike the previous infiltration, which was straight out of a horror movie, it’s clear that this one’s going to have a lot more humor in it. In order to try to blend in, Charles makes a pass at a trio of Zor girls. They think something’s wrong with him, and try to strip him and give him a massage as a stopgap before taking him to the medical center.
Jeanne tries to rescue him, but they’re quickly found out, and go on the run from the Zor soldiers, splitting up as they do so.
4. Charles and Andrzej hide, and then ambush the soldiers chasing them. It’s a strange scene. Charles and Andrzej are drawn quite comically, but when they shoot the soldiers, it’s brief but surprisingly brutal.
5. Jeanne goes ahead of Louis and Bowie, and walks into a pink room with three beds. Completely nonsensically, she decides it’s time for a nap. Upon lying down, sensors beep, and she gets surrounded by some kind of energy field. Bowie turns it off quickly enough, but even for Jeanne, this is really irresponsible.
They have to hide while some Zor women come in, and take off all their clothes in order to go “get sterilized,” which I have to assume is like the Zor version of a shower. So when they leave, Jeanne, Bowie, and Louis take their clothes and run.
6. In trying to escape some guards, they end up in what looks like a restaurant, but turns out to be a “stabilization center.” They have to drink some mysterious liquid, then get put in one sealed container and scanned, and then have to drink another mysterious liquid and then put in another sealed container. The three of them are worried, but go along with it.
In other words, they seem to be putting themselves into a lot of situations where they could get trapped extremely easily, without a shred of plausibility.
7. Still, the manage to get away, and Jeanne ends up going on a fun-house ride on first a floating automated car, and then on a conveniently-placed slide, and crashes into a room where she meets a handsome and kind Zor dude, named Ratel.
He’s in the area where they keep the people who’ve lost one of their trio, with the implication that they’re kind of a drag on society.
8. This part’s important: she gets really angry that the Zor here have basically given up, and starts yelling at them, which draws the attention of the guards. Ratel tells her to run, and she does… but she grabs him as well.
9. Bowie gets reunited with Musica, and then everything kinda happens at once. First Bowie gets captured. The Louis finds a central computer and plans to destroy it, be it attacks him and he gets captured. Charles and Andrzej find the command center, but they get pinned down and captured. And Jeanne and Ratel find some rather dismal parts of the mothership (where those that show too much emotion are kept to have their organs harvested) and then Ratel distracts the guards so that Jeanne can get away. He’s killed, and she’s captured anyway. So he died for nothing, and it’s Jeanne’s fault for taking him with her.
(Oh, and the guards almost kill a baby, and don’t seem to care.)
10. So yes, everyone’s captured in a cell together. TO BE CONTINUED…Regardless how much I complain about Jeanne’s stupid decisions (whether or not they get people killed), this is still one of the best episodes of the series. It’s set entirely within the Zor mothership, and I find the designs for the Zor architecture and technology to be fascinating, and there’s always cool and creepy backgrounds to look at. I said before that one of the problems with the show is that the Glorie landscape is pretty bland and uninteresting, but this makes up for it by being really interesting to watch, start to finish.
NUMBER OF SHOWER SCENES IN THE SHOW SO FAR: Well, the three Zor girls in the first half are, as I said, probably going to take a shower of some kind, but we don’t actually see it, so I guess still 5.
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