“It looks like a huge cargo plane,” says Ryu, but Jun notes that no one has reported any missing transport planes in this region.

Joe wonders if it’s a Galactor plane, and Ken confirms his hunch by noticing a red Galactor symbol on part of the wrecked plane.





Ken quickly contacts Dr. Nambu to tell him what they’ve found.

“Good –I want you to search it thoroughly,” replies Dr. Nambu’s voice from Ken’s bracelet.

But somewhere else, an underwater vessel is moving through water.

“Meanwhile,” says the narrator, “Galactor is also searching for the missing transport plane.”

And, boy, are they searching in the wrong place!

And, we get our first look at the Captain of the Week for this underwater Galactor mecha, and he is sight! It’s been a while, I think, since we had one this silly.

Behold Captain Tiger Shark:





Now, back at Yellow Mountain, some lights on a console suddenly activate inside the wreckage of the transport plane but the Ninjas are too far away to notice.





“When the plane’s transmitter is reactivated,” the narrator tells us, the crew of Captain Tiger Shark’s mecha pick up the signal.

A goon informs the Captain of the newly-found signal and he demands the coordinates. Receiving them from the goon, he activates a map and, looking at it, says “As I suspected…”

We don’t get to hear what he suspected.

We do get an on-screen Berg Katse though.





Katse’s been informed that the transport plane is on Big Yellow Mountain, but he’s wondering why it suddenly started transmitting a signal now. Captain Tiger Shark speculates some kind of shock reactivated the transmitter. Katse, lip curled in a sneer, retorts that he’s figured out that something’s reactivated it –he’s concerned that the “something” is other, non-Galactor people.

“It’s a high mountain,” muses the Captain, “There shouldn’t be anything up there except animals and birds-”

“Did you say ‘birds’?” demands Katse, “That’s it. It’s the Science Ninja Team.” He’s not pleased with this thought.

“How would they know to look up there?” queries the Captain, only to be told “They have their ways,” by a grim Katse.

Katse tells him to use caution investigating, and the Captain bows as Katse cuts out.

Next, we see some debris from the wrecked transport plane, on a table.





“Before he could do that,” explains the narrator, “Gatchaman and the others took all the plane parts that might be clues, and brought them to Dr. Nambu at the Crescent Base where they were being thoroughly analyzed.”

And Dr. Nambu is also speaking on a cordless telephone.

“Then, by asking the head of the intelligence department,” continues the narrator, “to run an ID check on the name of the person who shipped the sugare, he discovered that the one who had bought up all the artificial sweetener was the international dealer in death, Martin Gillman.”

We get an image of Gillman.





‘Then, by looking at the fuel gauge and the flight recorder in the transport plane that had crashed, Dr. Nambu deduced [by taking rulers to a map while the Ninjas watch] four possible points of departure.”

So now Ken’s G1 jet is speeding off across a sea, Joe’s G2 car is zooming along a road, and Jun on her bike is skimming fast across the surface of some body of water as the narrator explains that the Team has split up to search all four locations simultaneously.

Dr. Nambu studies a map. I guess that Big Yellow Mountain isn’t in India after all –unless Australia has somehow moved all the way across the Indian Ocean –Darwin, meet Mumbai.





Ken, we are informed, is investigating “Location A.” This entails looking sexy on a beach –whoo hoo!





But he “turns up nothing unusual.”

Joe checks out “Location B,” and unfortunately he keeps all his clothes on while doing this. Location B “is also a wash.”





And Jun, in location C, also finds no clues.





“Only D remains,” says a discouraged looking Dr. Nambu, putting a red marker on that location on his map.





And now we see Location D, where seagulls fly in circles near the waterfront and our favourite comic relief duo are pulling up in front of a fancy hotel in a limo.

A valet opens the limo’s door and out steps a pompous looking Jinpei, carrying a butterfly net, wearing glasses and garbed in traditional safari attire, pith helmet and all. He is followed by Ryu, wearing a fez and a suit (and carrying all the luggage).

Inside, they’ve been shown to their spacious room. “How do you like it, my fine Sirs?” asks a man who is perhaps the hotel’s manager.





“Just splendid!” says Jinpei (affecting, in the dub, an English accent).

Ryu, taking on the role of manservant to Jinpei, informs the hotel manager that Jinpei is “the Prince of Tuba,” adding “he’s very fond of insects and wishes to gather specimens for his collection.”

“Oh, so you’re the Prince of that country that’s famous for its sugare?” remarks the manager, “This is quite an honor.”

Ryu, flourishing grandly with his arms, now informs the manager that “he’ll spare no expense to obtain the right specimens for his royal collection –right, Prince Jinpei?”

Jinpei startles at Ryu’s use of his real name and makes a shushing gesture. Ryu, a bit nervous now, clasps his hands together and quickly adds that the Prince is looking for ants, and will pay “100 million” to anyone who can inform him where he can find ants.

The manager is impressed by the sound of this offer, though he briefly refers to Jinpei as “a kid” before correcting himself to “Prince” and he goes running from the room eagerly.

Wearily, Ryu closes the door behind him, leaning against it and then sinking down to sit on the floor. “I’m wiped,” he says.

Jinpei, likewise yawns and announces he’s beat. Recalling episode 50, where they had to suffer a hotel with fleas and lizards, I’m wondering if Ryu and Jinpei were determined, this time around, to get better digs.

But clearly word has spread of their extremely generous cash-for-ants offer, and a long line up has formed outside the hotel.





From the vantage of their high balcony, Jinpei and Ryu are staring in dismay, asking the manager if all the people lined up are there for them. The manager happily confirms this, as Jinpei and Ryu exchange glum looks.

“I saw them everywhere,” a man is telling a valet (who’s hastily taking notes), “There were ants in the place I keep my sugare.” Others are waiting close behind him for their chances to be heard.





Upstairs, Ryu comes into the room, where Jinpei is stretched out, relaxing, on the massive bed. He wants to know if Ryu got any leads downstairs.

Ryu complains that it’s pretty much all “bad information,” and wonders if their Location D is a dud.

“It’s not working, huh?” says Jinpei sadly, “Ants always gather around sweet things, so I though it would.”

Actually that sounds like a pretty good plan –or more than what Ken, Joe or Jun seemed to have, anyway.

“I guess I’ll get in the bath,” says Jinpei, disappearing into the bathroom. Just then, the manager (not bothering to knock or anything) barges into the room crying “We found someone! Someone who knows where there’re lots of ants!”

Ryu suspects another scam –someone making stuff up to get money- but Jinpei emerges from the bathroom, bath preparations interrupted, to hear the manager insist that this new informant is the real thing.





And then he beckons and this finder-of-ants comes into the room.





Smitten with her appearance, Jinpei is suddenly embarrassed to be seen wearing a towel and Ryu gasps.

“Nice to meet you, I’m May,” she tells Ryu. He blushes and manages to stutter out his name. Her eye glints briefly (the mark of evil!) and she asks if they’re ready to be shown the ants’ location.

Still blushing and smiling, Ryu says they are.





However, Jinpei is less easily taken in and is now regarding her skeptically (perhaps he noticed that glint) from the ajar door of the bathroom.

“Something about her smells fishy,” he thinks to himself, holding his chin.

Next, we see Ryu trailing admiringly behind May as she leads him along the waterfront and finally to a warehouse. Sure enough, Ryu pulls out a magnifying glass and stoops to study the trail of little ants that are crawling across the ground and entering the warehouse through a small chink in its wall.

Jun is still sobbing as Ken adds, “We won’t get a chance like this again,” but then she gets a grip and seems to resign herself to Ken’s decision.





And now the narrator informs us that Ken, Joe and Jun have detected the submarine with their radar and have “followed it secretly so as not to be discovered.”





Captain Tiger Shark is looking through his periscope again. Underwater, a large door opens and the submarine sails inside… something –a base or a larger ship- and the door closes behind it.

When they surface, it does look like they’re inside a large base of some kind.





The God Phoenix is underwater now too, and speeding in the direction the sub went.

“It looks like we made it here unnoticed, huh?” remarks Jun to Joe, as they see the underwater door the sub went through earlier looming ahead.

“Where exactly is ‘here,’ though?” replies Joe.

“It’s most likely a stopping point on their sugare transport route,” concludes Ken, perhaps thinking this place isn’t big enough to be the vast operation with hundreds of thousands of workers that Dr. Nambu envisaged.

But now the sugare is being unloaded from the sub –all in cute little bags that feature the Galactor logo. Who did all the bagging? Is there a captive engineer-staffed bagging conveyor belt somewhere inside that sub?





The bags are all going into a transport plane –probably very much like the one that crashed on Big Yellow Mountain. Yes, it seems Ken is right about this being a stopping point –especially as there’s no way that a submarine can go all the way to Karakoram…

Captain Tiger Shark is impatient for the whole transfer business to be done, but an alarm starts sounding and a goon in an upper level surveillance rooms barks that the underwater radar has detected the God Phoenix.

May looks very interested in this bit of news, demanding “What’s that?!” “What the hell?” demands Gillman likewise, spitting out his cigar.

“If the Science Ninja Team finds us,” says May, “Then the plan I’ve been working on using Gillman as a front will become completely meaningless.”

“Huh?” says Gillman, clearly perturbed to learn his secretary is using him as a front for her own schemes.





“Tiger Shark,” May instructs, taking charge of the situation, “Go put our prisoners to sleep immediately and take them in to Leader X right away."

Captain Tiger Shark salutes to her and departs, and now May turns and looks at the quite confused Gillman.

“You’re not May!” he yells, pointing an accusing finger as she begins to laugh at him, “You’re an imposter!”

“I’ve been fooling you all along!” declares Katse’s voice, “But I don’t need to anymore!”





And the green clothes are whipped off to reveal Berg Katse.





“Who the hell are you?” gasps Gillman.

Katse introduces himself.

“You’ve been playing me all along, haven’t you, you bastard?” says Gillman.

“Yeah, but I don’t need you anymore, so I’ll just be punching your ticket.”

Katse then elucidates this metaphor by pulling out a handgun and pointing it at Gillman.

Gillman starts pleading, offering to give Katse “sugare, missiles –anything!” but Katse shoots him anyway and he falls backwards over a railing.

Meanwhile, Captain Tiger Shark is entering a cell, where the air is cloudy with sleeping gas, but he’s wearing a gas mask.





He reaches for what looks like Jinpei sleeping on his stomach in his safari jacket and pith helmet, but upon grasping the clothes, he discovers to his alarm that the Science Ninja Team’s Swallow is concealed beneath them.

Jinpei (who must have been using breathing techniques to resist the sleeping gas) leaps up and sends his bolas flying around the Captain’s neck, and knocking his mask away from his face.





Jinpei runs from the cell.

Inside the sugare tank where Ryu was trapped, two goons, in gas masks and carrying guns, are looking for him. Suddenly, the Owl’s arm emerges from the sugare and grasps one goon’s leg, pulling him down. A leg emerges from the sugare next, kicking the other goon in the crotch.







Ouch!





Ryu now comes all the way out of the sugare and puts the goon out of his misery by clobbering him, and then he punches the other goon in the head to make sure he stays down too.

Ryu leaves through the ceiling hatch. In the corridor above, goons rush at him but he grabs them one by one and tosses them and then bashes two other goons' heads together before charging at a bunch of other goons and smashing them together.

He charges down the corridor now, head down, punching every goon he encounters.

Elsewhere, Jinpei is leaping and flipping off walls and pipes in a manner far more agile than Ryu and just as effective, as he takes down goons with sharp kicks.

However, they’re both startled when they back into each other and initially make to fight.







Of course, as soon as they recognize each other, they happily hug each other.

Meanwhile, Katse is standing on a little balcony atop the sub, snapping “Hurry up and finish transporting the cargo! The God Phoenix is coming!”

And just then it makes a grand (and destructive) entrance –I imagine Joe at least enjoyed the opportunity to bash it through the wall of a Galactor base!





The balcony on which Katse was standing breaks apart from the impact and he falls to the floor below.





“Wow, this is convenient!” says Jinpei as he and Ryu now emerge from a hatch in the sub to see the God Phoenix in front of them. They quickly leap to its dome and get inside. I guess the God Phoenix is now sort of sitting on top of the sub and the transport plane, inside the base’s docking bay.





“Forget about the sugare! Just take us up!” yells Katse, and the transport plane fires up its engines and starts moving, dislodging the God Phoenix from its position atop it. Inside the God Phoenix’s bridge, Joe gasps and grabs the controls for balance while Ken falls back in his seat.

However, no sooner are Ryu and Jinpei on the bridge, Joe immediately vacates the pilot’s seat for Ryu and the God Phoenix now follows the transport plane.





They exit what looks like a small, rocky island through an opening in a cliff overlooking the sea, in pursuit of the plane.

But now the Ninjas are all staring in alarm at the view screen, as it appears that the transport plane is about to fire on them.

“Away with the missiles,” says Katse, on the plane’s bridge. Two missiles are fired at the God Phoenix, but fortunately Ryu is able to evade them and the missiles instead strike the opening in the island through which the God Phoenix and the plane had just departed.

Battle of the Planets Episode: “Super Space Spies”

Okay, the first thing that strikes me about this episode is that it doesn’t open with a scene of Center Neptune and the fish, followed immediately by Zark explaining his eternal vigilance and concern for the well-being of the universe. Instead it opens with a view of snowy mountains.

Two mountain climbers are here, but one of them loses his footing and begins to slide down a steep slope. The other climber grabs hold of his falling companion’s rope but it breaks. But the falling guy slows his descent some with his pick axe and lands at the bottom of the slope, relatively okay. He calls up to his friend “I’m all right!” before heading to a nearby stream to splash some water on his face.

But he pauses, surprised, as he tastes some of the water that’s on his hands.

“Salt water? That’s impossible!” he declares.

And we cut to… no, it’s not Zark, it’s Zoltar. I much prefer Zoltar.

He’s on a screen, telling a tiger shark-like fellow that “Those two men mean trouble.”

“They’re just a couple of scientists from G-Force,” replies Tiger Shark, a tad dismissively, “On a routine check.”

“I want no one checking that area –especially G-Force,” insists Zoltar to this oddly-attired subordinate.

“I skillfully planted a pollutant in the snow,” replies Tiger Shark, “It defies detection.”

Uh, if your “pollutant” is salt, don’t be so sure of that!

“Nothing must go wrong with our newest plan for conquering Earth,” says Zoltar, lip curling slightly, “You should have kept those men away!”

Tiger Shark thinks that they’re having a hard enough time just climbing, and won’t learn anything. Zoltar points out that the success of this venture depends on Tiger Shark himself, who is fine with that, as long as he gets a “percentage.”

“All you’re asking for is trouble, unless you follow my orders implicitly, Captain!” replies Zoltar. Okay, he’s a Captain.

He bows now and says “My loyalties are only to you.”

And now we get the underwater shot of Center Neptune and the fish.

Zark cuts right to the chase as he descends in his little elevator tube.

“Two of our scientists have discovered a critical environmental problem,” says Zark, “I’ll have to run a multiversal computer analysis on the condition of Mount Camilla’s snowpack.”

This is critical, Zark explains, because if the snowpack is contaminated, then a main source of water will be “unfit for human consumption.”

At the bottom of the tube now, Zark exits and flaps his cape to fly over to his monitors.

He continues to explain that the snow that accumulates in the mountains in the winter, melts in the spring and summer and flows down to fill resevoirs. Concluding that “it looks bad,” Zark contacts Chief Anderson.

His worst fears have been confirmed he states –the snow pack on Mount Camilla is contaminated. “Alert G-Force at once,” instructs Zark.

So now we see Chief Anderson, who is telling G-Force that Zark has confirmed that Mount Camilla “has been covered in salt crystals.” Naturally, he thinks Spectra is behind this. Princess wonders why they’d salt a mountain, and Tiny thinks it “Sounds like a waste of time.”

“Make ocean out of mountain,” stutters Keyop, and Jason shoves Keyop’s head down, declaring “They couldn’t do that.”

“Maybe,” insists Keyop.

But Chief Anderson thinks Keyop is on to something –that Spectra might have used salt from the ocean to pollute the mountain.

Now Princess realizes that this whole scheme of Spectra’s will ruin drinking water, and Chief Anderson adds that it could ruin farm land as well.

“With no food or water, Earth would be forced to surrender,” says Mark.

“No way are we going to sit back and let that happen to us!” declares Jason, punching one hand with his fist.

So, the decision is made that they will go and investigate the area around Mount Camilla.

"It’s up to G-Force to stop the pollution of our planet’s water,” voiced-overs Zark as the Phoenix flies through the snowy mountains, “Life on Earth would be impossible without fresh water.”

Once they’ve landed and exited the Phoenix, Keyop makes himself a snowcone. However, when he licks it, he sadly says “Salt.”

Now, unless it’s extremely cold where they are, wouldn’t the salt be melting the snow? Maybe it’s not in a high enough concentration to do that.

Tiny, pointing, thinks the salt came from the mountain but Mark is wondering how the salt got to the mountain in the first place. Princess thinks Spectra could have dropped it there from a spaceship of some kind.

“Right, Princess,” says Mark, and I’m not entirely sure if he’s being sarcastic.

“Any idea what we’re looking for?” asks Jason pointedly.

“No,” says Mark, not reacting to Jason’s apparent implication that they’re wasting their time, “Just look around.”

But just then, Mark notices something, like a shard of metal, stuck in the snow some distance away and decides they should go check it out.

Once there, Tiny is unable to pull it out of the snow (and loses his grip and ends up falling backwards and crashing into Keyop, encasing them both in snow).

For some reason, Keyop does not decide to try to pull it out with his buggy by tying a rope to it (not that it would have worked, heh.)

Mark, however, fires up the engines of his jet and blasts it with their heat, melting all the snow away from the metal shard, revealing that the shard is actually part of a massive piece of wreckage.

“It looks like the hull of a wrecked ship,” says Tiny, eyes wide.

“But how could a boat end up on top of a high mountain like this?” asks Princess

“Easy,” says Jason, “Noah’s ark did it.” Um, Jason, according to the Old Testament that required a 40-day flood that covered the Earth –not exactly “easy.”

“Spectra,” declares Mark, solving the puzzle by drawing everyone’s attention to a Spectran symbol on a piece of the wreckage.

“I think we’ve discovered the wreckage of a Spectra airship on the mountainside,” announces Mark, having contacted “Center Neptune” on his wrist communicator.

“Center Neptune” means Zark –it’s his voice we hear now saying “Gather samples, and return.”

But somewhere else, a sub resembling a tiger shark is cruising along underwater, with Captain Tiger Shark on board, looking through a periscope.

Back at the site of the wreckage in the mountains, lights begin to blink on the console of the wrecked airship, though no one in G-Force is near enough to notice.

But on board the Tiger Shark sub, they’re picking up a signal now. At the Captain’s instructions, a Spectran soldier homes in on it and informs him that “the wreck on Mount Camilla has been uncovered.”

“G-Force,” growls the Captain, now consulting a map, “They’ve found the wreckage!”

But now we go to Center Neptune, and we see the samples of the wreckage that G-Force gathered lying on a table.

Zark is telling Chief Anderson, who’s listening on a phone, that his analysis of the samples has determined “that Zoltar is not working alone in this operation.”

He continues, “Spectra has a tightly knit espionage network that is salting the water reserves of the entire galaxy. The head agent is known as Barzok.”

We see that Chief Anderson has a photograph of the Barzok –a somewhat sinister looking man, with a cigar in his mouth.

“This man is a very dangerous character,” adds Zark, “Who is the mastermind of Spectra’s inter-galactic slave system.”

Now we see that Chief Anderson is busy plotting vectors on a map as G-Force watches.

“We also know of Spectra activity on Paradise Island asteroid. G-Force must locate the Spectra spy network.” It’s not clear how this relates to the mapwork Anderson appears to be doing.

Now we hear Zark saying “You’re cleared for launching, Team,” as we see the Phoenix taking off from Center Neptune.

“That was a beautiful lift off,” blathers Zark, as we get a view of the planet Saturn, “and G-Force is now well on its way through our solar system, heading past Saturn and out of our galaxy, the Milky Way.” Wow –they must sure be moving damned fast!

So, Zark informs them he’s transmitting them to time warp, and we get some odd footage of a sort of spiral of white smoke in space, followed quickly by the Phoenix approaching a heavily meteor-pocked and barren-looking planet/moon/asteroid…

The Captain is impatient for the job to go faster, but an alarm sounds and a Spectran soldier calls out that an unidentified ship is approaching.

“It’s the Phoenix!” says the blond tourist guide to Barzok, and next thing he knows, she’s telling him “You’ve outlived your usefulness –I’ll be giving the orders around here from now on.”

“Bring me the puny spy I caught snooping,” she tells Captain Tiger Shark, “We’ll use him to bait the rest of G-Force.”

“Who do you think you are?” demands Barzok angrily, pointing a finger at the blond tourist guide as she begins to laugh Zoltar’s laugh. Barzok is horrified to see, as she sheds her disguise now, that she really is Zoltar.

“So, you aimed to replace me as ruler of Spectra?” he asks Barzok angrily. Barzok, looking terrified, insists that Zoltar is the ruler of Spectra. Zoltar retorts that he’s correct and that now Barzok is “nothing.”

But, he doesn’t shoot Barzok or anything nasty like that.

We cut to Keyop’s cell, where he appears to be sleeping on the floor in his safari clothes. But when the Captain comes in, wearing a gas mask, he leaps out from beneath the clothes, having transmuted, and he takes down the Captain with his bolas before running from the cell.

In the salt tank, two Spectran soldiers come looking for Tiny, but he’s hidden himself beneath the salt and is able to reach up and pull one soldier off his feet. Somehow, both soldiers are down though (and surely Tiny didn’t kick anyone in the crotch or punch them in the head) and Tiny escapes through the now-open hatch in the ceiling, shutting it behind him. Now he’s rushed by a whole bunch of Spectran soldiers in a corridor, but he throws some of them aside, bangs some others’ heads together and shoves some together hard so that they all fall down. Then he runs down the corridor, punching and flipping more of them as he goes. Elsewhere in a corridor, Keyop is also taking down a couple of soldiers, and then as he backs up, he bumps into Tiny who is backing up from the opposite direction. They’re very happy to see that they’re each okay, hugging each other.

Meanwhile Zoltar is giving orders for his ship to depart the base, but just then, the Phoenix comes bashing through the door that the sub had entered through. This causes Zoltar to fall down from the little balcony on the sub where he’d been standing. Coming up from a hatch in the sub now, Keyop and Tiny see the Phoenix right in front of them and quickly leap up to its dome.

“Forget about them –blast off!” orders Zoltar and he and his ship rise into the air and fly towards another exit out of the base. The Phoenix gets jostled, but Tiny is at the helm again and the Phoenix lifts off in pursuit of the Spectran ship. They all look alarmed when they see that the ship is about to fire rockets at them, but when this happens, Tiny is able to evade them and they instead strike the base that they had just departed from, destroying it.

“So much for their secret base,” says Tiny.

“We’re gaining on them. They must be overloaded,” says Mark, looking ahead at the ship Zoltar is on, which is wobbling unstably in the air.

“We’re carrying too much salt! What’s the gravimeter reading?” demands Zoltar.

But the soldier studying it sees a wildly fluctuating needle and has to tell Zoltar he can’t get an accurate reading –“the needle has completely flipped.”

Zoltar, sweating, orders him to take evasive action and to jettison the salt. “Head for the escape hatches!” he adds, showing touching concern for the survival of his crew.

On the Phoenix, they all see that the ship is dumping its salt. “Are we pulling within range?” Jason asks Tiny. Tiny is smugly rubbing his nose, and he notes they’re picking up speed now that they’re lighter so “It’s now or never.”

“All right!” says Jason happily.

“They’re pulling away!” says Mark, frowning, “Release the cybernetic rockets!”

Jason, adding “Out of sight!” pushes the red button and two “cybernetic rockets” shoot towards the Spectran ship. The ship blows up completely when they hit it, but no doubt all the crew were able to evacuate via the escape hatches.

We see debris from the destroyed ship falling into the sea below –and there also is a red escape vessel. On board it, Zoltar is kneeling in despair at a console, saying “If I hadn’t brought aboard our secret escape rocket, we could never make it back to Spectra.”

He said “we,” so the rest of the crew must be there with him, even if we don’t currently see them.

“What will the Great Spirit say?” wails Zoltar now, clutching his head.

On the Phoenix, Tiny thumps his hands on the console, saying “I’m a dumb spy –that blond really turned me on and all the time it was just Zoltar in disguise!”

Yes, that could be valid grounds for being upset! How did he know she was Zoltar, though? He wasn’t there when “she” pulled off her disguise.

“Those outer space romances never last,” says Mark, looking sympathetic. Princess is gazing happily at Keyop. Jason is sitting with his arms crossed and eyes closed –brooding, perhaps, on an outer space romance that didn’t last?

Zark voice-overs that Tiny shouldn’t feel bad for being tricked by Zoltar. “After all, he’s the wiliest villain in the universe. Tiny really played a major role in breaking up Spectra’s secret spy network. Earth is safe once more.”

As he’s saying all this, the Phoenix is flying off into a pretty sky over a blue sea.

But then we have to cut to Zark.

He’s telling us that G-Force is probably half way home, and that he has time for a 10 second oil break. He heads for his reclining chair, and of course, this is when Susan calls.

Zark wastes time blathering on about who could be calling, and how, of course, whoever it is, they’re calling for Zark himself –they couldn’t possibly be calling for 1-Rover-1 (I don’t know, I think I might prefer to talk to the dog) so it must be for him.

But when he finally does answer the incoming call –it’s not Susan! No, it's another robot dog, yapping.

“It’s for you,” Zark has to admit, now explaining to us that 1-Rover-1 does have some friends in outer space -on Sirius, the dog star.

Groan.

The End.

It's not just salting Earth's waters that'd be dangerous -salt buildup in soil destroys its fertility.

Frankly, to me the Gatch episode seems to be very much a retred of the original Sugar Beetle ep. I wonder if that's why they skipped this for Guardians of Space.

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Candi

Hollywood is a land of money and cowardice.

-Henry A. Lee, Cracked.com columnist

I have nothing intelligent to add but as a Gatchaman newbie... I finally get to see Ken without his top on and he is wearing stripy budgie smugglers... lol.

Thanks for another great recap and screencaps, LB and Saturn!

I too think that the BOTP plot, using salt instead of sugar, makes more sense! I wonder if, in Gatchaman, they emphasised on sugar because the show was targeted towards a young audience! But, then, it wasn't such a healthy publicity, either!

I've been chuckling at all your comments, LB, but the word that made me laugh most was the country called "Tuba"! In my language, "tuba", apart from the musical instrument, is an offensive term to call someone "really ignorant", like when tapping on one's head in order to show that his/her mind is hollow! Poor Jinpei ... he wasn't that much of a prince of such ignorance, though! Apart from all the comic relief, he has also shown that he knows how to work his brains when he wants in this episode!

I also have found the Owl's apology for ruining the plan to locate Galactor's secret headquarters by his quick escape so thoughtful of him and so demonstrative of his kind character! I agree that he wasn't at all to blame, and that anyone in his situation would have done likewise!

A shirtless Ken, in his outdated swimwear, was surely another bonus! Join the club, PalyNerd! ... even though I sincerely don't know what he might have achieved by sitting shirtless and trying to seem relaxing on a beach as related to the mission assigned! Perhaps he was just having a well-deserved break after having completed his job, which, at the end, turned out futile! A good way of working undercover for us, though ... and, the dark sunglasses always do the trick!

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To be or not to be a gatchamaniac - that's the dilemma!

Hi all!