After a first season on ABC, it was time for the show to make several changes as it entered it's second season, including a move to CBS. Let's dive in, shall we?
Episode 14: The Return Of Wonder Woman
It wasn't just a change of networks that befell this series. Nope, we had a name change to The New Adventures Of Wonder Woman and gone was the 1942 setting in favour of a 1977 one instead. Still though Lynda Carter remained as Wonder Woman while Lyle Waggoner was now playing Steve Trevor Jr, the son of the Steve Trevor from the first season. Waggoner does nothing to differentiate between father and son, even though the son was revealed to be a government agent at the IADC (Inter-Agency Defence Command) with Joe Atkinson (Norman Burton) serving as a head figure of sorts. Diana's meeting of Steve Jr played out exactly like her meeting with his father with The Queen (Beatrice Straight) being resigned to her oldest daughter heading back to Man's World yet again. The terrorists of the week wanted to destabilise Latin America and Steve Jr ended up being kidnapped and cloned before being rescued by Wonder Woman. It's a near redux of the opening pilot/TV movie with a few little differences. Not bad overall though. 7/10
Episode 15: Anschluss '77
Yeah, this series might have transported itself to 1977 but it really cannot leave World War II behind and this episode alone was all about another group of baddies wanting to go back to that era. Taking place in San Rafael, Cordova, you had Fritz Gerlich (Mel Ferrer) wanting to establish a Fourth Reich, complete with a clone of Adolf Hitler (Barry Dennen) at the ready for this scheme. There's a minor subplot with Diana being in danger in the caves that ended up exploding with Steve Jr also not clocking the coincidences of Diana and Wonder Woman not being in the same room. It's an okay episode but I was hoping a new time period would move the show away from Nazi schemes. I guess not. 6/10
Episode 16: The Man Who Could Move The World
I have to admit that while I do wish the show would move past World War II, this episode actually did something less clichéd and much more needed. It actually dared to examine the trauma that war had on a person with one of the few sympathetic antagonists the show introduced. The antagonist being Ishido (Yuki Shimoda), who believed that Wonder Woman's presence in his childhood during the war led to his older brother's death. This led to him gaining telekinetic power via a machine that he used to kidnap Steve Trevor (and the doctor helping him) in order to try and get revenge on Wonder Woman. While it was obvious that Diana wasn't responsible for Ishido's brother dying (mainly because the brother turned out to be alive), I did like that there was an attempt to make Ishido into a more rounded character. He even managed to get a redemption story and a reunion with his brother. Oh and I'm loving the snarky computer at the IADC as well. 8/10
Episode 17: The Bermuda Triangle Crisis
This was an episode where got a case of last time and first time. With the former, this would be the last time in which we would see The Queen Hippolyta on the show but the first time that Wonder Woman would use her tiara as a communication device and show off the blue body suit costume. The main crisis of the episode revolved around Diana's worries of the IADC setting up a base camp near the Bermuda Triangle and nearer to Paradise Island. Yes, there was some bad guys in the mix with Steve Jr's and Diana rescuing a captive soldier and the latter pretending to reveal secrets in order to facilitate an escape. Steve Jr's admiration of Wonder Woman has become so overt that even Joe Atkinson has noticed it. 7/10
Next blog I'll tackle the episodes Knockout, The Pied Piper, The Queen And The Thief and I Do, I Do.
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