The Phoenix arrives. Jason comments that they arrived too late to do any good, but reaches for his favorite button anyway. Then suddenly, Tiny is asking where the mastodon came from. Jason slams his fists on the console and says it came from Spectra. [More bad editing.]

Smoke pouring from its ruined ear, the mecha submerges.

Mark calls the others and says he’s heading back to Center Neptune.

And –

We’re at Center Neptune. Where the Fish Parade is in full swing.

Anderson is reassuring viewers that everyone at the Earth Resources Center and Joyland Park escaped safely. According to Zark. [Because, you know, none of the target audience watched Japanese and American giant-monster movies or the old Universal or Hammer movies. So they don’t know about fictional death and would be horribly traumatized at the deaths of unnamed cartoon people.]

Zoltar was responsible for the attack, and he is determined to harass them until Earth gives him what he wants. Which will be never.

Princess has some bad news. She doesn’t know how to tell him, but she lost her shoe. [At the time, it sounded so damned silly. Maybe it’s just that there’s no way to make ‘I lost my shoe’ sound like a catastrophe.]

And everyone freaks.

Anderson is blunt: Without the complete uniform, she cannot transmute. She’s useless to G-Force. Go find that shoe. If anything, he sounds like he’s scolding her. Give her a break: she was trying to rescue people [even if some nitwit edited all of that out].

I’m guessing nobody thought to make extra shoes.

Meanwhile, the mastodon is being repaired. Zoltar is pitching a fit and falling in it, demanding that repairs be completed AT ONCE. [They really didn’t need that, since it’s all voice-over. His Purpleness now sounds like a brat.]

Little montage of the repair crew at work. One goon finds Princess’s shoe and tosses it into the incinerator. Where, despite intense heat, nothing happens to it.

Back at Center Neptune, Anderson has another worry: if that shoe is subjected to atomic radiation, it would produce a copy of the wearer. [Yeah, that’s bad. Something that couldn’t be corrected, huh? But why would they bathe it in radiation?] If her shoe is in the wrong hands, her cover could be blown. [On the way to it. They’d still have to find a name to go with the face and body.]

Cut to a peeved Zoltar: “Why do you bother me with such trivial things?” Do they expect him to believe claims of an indestructible shoe?

The goon on the monitor tells him to see for himself. Zoltar says that if it’s true, it’s made of an element of which he knows nothing. [Scriptwriters failed science class again. They could have written ‘material’ or ‘substance’, but chose ‘element.’]

At the goon’s renewed invitation, Zoltar says he’ll come to the lab. Prepare to test the shoe for its resistance to all destructive forces. [Well, since the Gatch original did the same thing, we can’t fault these folks. But you don’t test a one-of-a-kind object in a potentially destructive manner, no matter how tough it is.]

Cut to the shoe, securely fastened in place, apparently so that they can be certain it’s actually resisting damage, and not merely thrown clear.
The first test is a drill. For some reason, Zoltar thinks it’s damaging the shoe, snarks about the waste of his time, and turns away. The goon at the controls calls him back.

Next test is subfreezing cold and a device that hammers the shoe. The hammer breaks. [It would take considerable cold to make anything brittle enough to break. And what sort of lab is this that has a testing chamber like that?]

Next, some type of laser beam. For some reason, the machine explodes.

Now we get to the radiation. Which is generated with a very nasty high-frequency sound that makes my ears hurt. They crank it up to eleven –

And get the image of Princess in her Birdstyle.

Cut to a rainy night outside Jill’s. Princess opens the door and looks out, thinking. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s useless to G-Force. Maybe she should resign.

As she steps out, we see her feet, and the brown shoes she’s wearing. Yep, the geniuses of Galaxy Security did not think to make spare shoes for G-Force.

Now the Luminous One, stating the obvious: they can reconstruct G3’s civilian appearance from her image, trap her, and bring her to Spectra. It wants ‘that pretty thorn in our side removed.’ The Almighty Butane has taste.

It warns Zoltar that it will not tolerate another failure.
Montage of scientists at work. And Zark telling us that Spectran scientists are working night and day to produce another mannequin of Princess. [How does Zark know?] This will allow Zoltar to identify a member of the G-Force team, and by association, the others. [In 'Race Against Disaster', they seemed to know Jason.]

Now to an old-fashioned slide projector. Okay, not slides. It is projecting a lighted outline of a woman. And Zark is still talking: Zoltar’s men, slaves to his will, must achieve success – or else. [Or else what? Get sent to bed without supper? This show barely admits people die.]

The result is a blank-faced mannequin. Which is dressed very much like Princess in civilian clothes. Zoltar is pleased. And he has an idea.

We all know what happens when Zoltar has an idea. As Jeff Goldblum said in the sequel to Jurassic Park: ‘There’s running, and screaming.’ And not necessarily by Zoltar.

And now a blimp with a very colorful covering. Way cooler than the Goodyear blimp. Just hope that’s not a weapon underneath it.

On the ground, an announcer (Alan Dinehart having some fun, I think) shills ‘Tomorrow’s Woman’ cosmetics, announcing the opportunity for every woman passing by to become the next model. This causes a considerable stampede. Hey, it was the 1970s. [So, either people really will crowd around for a product that doesn’t exist, or Spectra has a controlling interest in a cosmetics company? If so, do they know that Zoltar is using their lip gloss?]

As women line up, we’re shown a cut-out that even has the same hair silhouette as Princess.

A definitely overweight woman tries to squeeze through, then a thin one. All are watched through a window by a very evil-looking woman.

I do believe it’s time for a commercial.

Now for Zark in his tube. Things are quiet right now. He can take time out to relax and recalibrate his strobitron resonators against his strobometric potentiometer. [Oh, dear: I can’t think of anything suitable. I mean, it doesn’t sound quite kinky enough.] In other words, he’s going to take a 10-second oil break. [Where’s my tool-box? I have tools. I’ll recalibrate him gladly.]

And he barely lies down when Susan calls, giving him an antenna erection. She has an urgent problem. Could she help him find a girl?

Oh, I will spare you the verbal fumbling on Zark’s part. He doesn’t want to find any other girl.

Susan corrects him: Princess is missing. G-Force hasn’t seen her all day. [So, the scriptwriters could not have had her just say that? They had to go for the innuendo, first? Damn, but Sandy Frank’s secretary must have been HAWT if they couldn’t give Susan even one line that didn’t sound like a 1-900 phone-sex script.]

More Zark floundering, then he says he’ll get on it right away.

And now, for some reason, Chief Anderson is reading the paper. [They have newspaper delivery at Center Neptune?] He lowers it, and asks G-Force if they’ve seen it. He does not look pleased. Princess has entered the contest. (And she would be specifically mentioned because -- ?)

Keyop chirps that she’s in the finals.

Anderson wants to know what’s got into her. He’s so annoyed that his eyes are now very dark grey, instead of the brown of other episodes.

Mark says, “You were rather hard on her.” And Keyop says she was depressed.

Anderson says there’s something wrong with this contest. He checked into the company, and the woman who runs it, a Madame Dumaine (sp?) has shady connections. [Yep, she’s Zoltar’s lip gloss source.] She’s rumored to be a Spectra agent. Princess has gotten herself into big trouble, and G-Force must help her out of it.

Now to the evil-looking lady Madame Dumaine, who’s reporting to Zoltar. They have all the women who fit the cut-out. It won’t take long to bring them to him.

She goes to another room, and tells the young women that they’ll go upstairs for the final judging. Princess does not look thrilled to be there. Could she suspect that something’s wrong with this contest?

In the elevator, and purple vapor spews through a vent. Next thing, we see the elevator doors open and Madame Dumaine wearing a gas mask. The camera pans down to unconscious victims.

Wait: Princess has her hand over her mouth and nose, and she’s conscious.

Now, somehow, the elevator car becomes a transparent module that is raised into the bottom of – something – overhead. Our cosmetics queen steps out and tells the goons at the controls that they can leave, now.

Ah: they’re in the blimp. Or, rather, in that orangey thing suspended below it. The jets fire up, and it starts moving.

Aboard the Phoenix, Tiny comments that Princess could be a million miles away by now. Mark tries to reach her again.

His bracelet is silent, then lights up with the G-Force symbol.
Back to Princess, who’s tapping her bracelet against the bars of the elevator-turned-cell.

In the control room, Dumaine tells the goons there’s nothing to worry about. Even though they can see the Phoenix.

And the Spectra blimp and the Phoenix pass right by each other.

Jason asks what happened to the signal from Princess. Mark says it faded, and wonders why she answered in code instead of voice. [Come on, Mr. Perfect, take a guess that she’s been captured.]

Keyop brips that she might be a prisoner, and Jason agrees. They have to find her, fast.

Mark orders Tiny to return to the area where the signal came through, and try again. Because the plot demanded that he not think of this when he first lost it.

They turn, and Mark tells Keyop to put his ‘Cosmic Communicator’ on the detector panel. (Which we saw in 'Decoys of Doom.') Keyop obeys.

Cut to a large, museum-like building with dinosaur skeletons outside. [Since no museum will have actual skeletons on display outdoors, these must be copies.]

Inside, we see the blimp, on the floor beside the mastodon mecha (which now looks like an ordinary mastodon – if mastodons were ever larger than blimps).

Inside the mecha, all the women are in a cage. Madame Dumaine, holding a whip, stands outside with Zoltar. [No, no, I won’t say anything. Not a thing. At all.]

Zoltar wants to see if one of these ‘pretty creatures’ looks familiar, now that he can identify his ‘lovely adversary.’ [Right about now, if I were Princess, I’d be hoping like hell that my teammates were just outside the door. And if I were one of the women, I’d be hoping that Zoltar wasn’t the type to take out his frustrations on others – and that I did not look anything like the aforementioned ‘lovely adversary.’ Oh, and that he was not into using whips.]

Madame Dumaine uses her whip to lift the head of one girl, then grabs another by the hair. No dice. Zoltar gets grouchy.

“If the girl is here, we’ll find her,” she of the whip assures him.

Princess slips her bracelet into her pocket.

Aboard the Phoenix, Keyop says they have a blip. I think. Hard to tell, but he detected something.

Right. Time to go down and investigate. Keep the Phoenix circling. Jason, Mark, and Keyop fly down to investigate a possible Spectra base.

Just as it’s Princess’s turn to show her face. She resists as much as she can without blowing her cover. Zoltar wants a good look at her.

And someone calls for him. Intruders.

Zoltar figures it’s G-Force, and rushes out. In the mecha’s control room, he orders the anti-aircraft missiles deployed.

Yep, the ‘museum’ is a Spectra front. The weapons are hidden in the skeletons. Tiny dodges the missiles.
Inside, Mark, Jason and Keyop break through the skylight.

In the mecha, Princess leads the other women out of their cell. Someone edited the escape to make Spectrans look too stupid to lock a door.

They rush down a corridor to a room where a shoe is displayed under a dome. The dome obligingly opens, and Princess picks up the shoe.

Removing the shoe sets off an alarm. Zoltar heads back to his prisoners.

He meets them with guards. Going somewhere?

Suddenly, there are Mark, Jason, and Keyop above them, looking down through what looks like a hole blown in the intervening floor. Which means more editing to satisfy the moral guardians. We get the usual heroic dialogue, and Zoltar snarling about G-Force.

Princess, in full Birdstyle, joins Mark. [She was carrying around its mate all this time? And none of the bad guys noticed?] The team rescue the girls, and a suddenly-alone Zoltar flees.

Mark chases him, throws his sonic boomerang. Zoltar ducks through a closing door, leaving only a corner of his cape to be caught. Mark shouts at him to keep running and never come back.

Tiny calls: he’s coming in to pick up Mark.

Mark leaves one last little present: the same type of little homing beacon he used in Attack of the Alien Wasp to attract the Spectran missiles. [This is a nifty thing about the show: some of these gadgets appear more than once.] But just in case viewers missed that episode, Mark has some helpful thoughts about the device’s purpose.

Now we have the Phoenix racing along on its wheels towards the museum, where it rams through the wall and stops at the base of the mecha. Given that it’s propelled by jets, the ship either has really good braking thrusters, or some other braking system. The rest of G-Force, and the former captives, slide down the head and trunk to the ship.

In the mecha control room, Zoltar orders preparations for an all-out attack.

As per the standard operating procedure for Spectra mecha monsters, the ‘mastodon’ reveals its true nature by shedding all its hair.

Tiny launches the Phoenix just in time. The ‘mastodon’ is ready to fight.

Zoltar orders an attack.

The mecha fires its missiles, which seem to head right for the Phoenix.

Zoltar gets to gloat for about two seconds before a goon reports the missiles are coming back. Then it’s everybody to the escape ship.

Another Spectra base destroyed. You can bet there isn’t an insurance company anywhere that will insure anything from Spectra.

Some congratulatory dialogue about the rescue. Keyop tells Princess to stick to G-Force, ‘Tomorrow’s Woman.’ She grabs him and tells him to stop needling her, or he’ll be ‘yesterday’s Keyop.’

And – yes, boys and girls, we have Zark in voice-over again. Because episodes can never end with the original Gatchaman animation. As the Phoenix returns home to Center Neptune, carrying the young women, preparations are underway to welcome Princess home. [The young women don’t need to go to Center Neptune for debriefing. That can happen at any Galaxy Security facility.]

__________________
Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

Ah, but there are also BOTP episodes where the Team is clearly concerned with hiding their civilian identities. I think it was more of a concern 'as the episode demanded' in that series.

__________________

__________________
Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

In Cupid Does it to Keyop, Spectra seems to take it for granted that they know who Keyop is. even in civilian clothes, but then later they change their minds when Mark uses the false dummy to impersonate him.

__________________

In BOTP, there is no reason that Spectra would have known where to send the note, unless you buy that they knew who Keyop was, and knew that they could reach him at Jill's. That's pretty damning.

In Gatchaman, Galactor knows where to deliver the note, because they're having Jinpei followed, knowing that Jinpei (not G-4, the Swallow) is the boy who rescued Maria. They suspect him of being G-4, but don't know for certain.

__________________

More fun from the necessities of animation. That longer scene could have been chilling and suspenseful. Will the team arrive in time, or will we see a Jun vs Katse smackdown?

__________________
Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

Maybe he has a fetish?

(Oooh, somebody with a truly warped mind should run with that.)

__________________
Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

There are other warped people who can handle that.

__________________
Benefits, not features; benefits, not features

And where do we newbies find Bird Scramble?

Really, you should write a book. Or something.

__________________
Benefits, not features; benefits, not features