Friday, August 09, 2024

Wonder Woman - Episodes 18-21 Reviews

In this batch of episodes, Steve Trevor gets kidnapped, a singer corrupts his fans, a queen bonds with a thief and a fake marriage solves a crime.

Episode 18: Knockout 


Ah, Steve Trevor Jr. He's just like his dad. Looks like him, acts like him and has a tendency to be captured like him too. For the majority of the episode Steve's a prisoner of Carolyn Hamilton (Jayne Kennedy), a former colleague of his. Carolyn's joined a radical group and genuinely believes that's she's going to help do something good, in spite of said group's failed attempts to also capture Diana and Joe. In the Wonder Woman '77 comics, the character of Carolyn would eventually become Nubia and here, it's Diana that managed to get through to her in order to turn on her radical group. There's also a nice subplot where Diana befriended a cab driver and his son. 7/10

Episode 19: The Pied Piper


In DC Comics, there's a villain/antihero character called The Pied Piper but usually they're an enemy of The Flash. Here, the character's a disillusioned singer named Hamlin Rule (Martin Mull) who decided to use hypnosis to get his groupies to rob banks. This episode not only gave Joe Atkinson more to do but it also introduced his daughter, Elena (Eve Plumb), who was under Hamlin's spell until Wonder Woman managed to get through to her. More interestingly was the fact that in spite of his actions, the episode did attempt to redeem Hamlin, who wanted to atone for his actions while also having his creative juices resurged as well. 7/10

Episode 20: The Queen And The Thief 


Time for a really fun undercover episode and this one delivered for me.  You've got both Diana and Steve undercover at the Malakan Embassy, trying to stop international jewel thief Evan Robley (David Hedison) from stealing the crown jewels of Queen Kathryn. Diana's the maid and Steve's locked away for a good portion of the episode. Then there's the fact that the thief isn't actually the baddie in question but someone more trustworthy who was determined to have the Queen deposed. There was nice bonding moments between the Queen and Wonder Woman and there's an amusement end scene where the title really lived up to it's promise. A very entertaining episode. 8/10

Episode 21: I Do, I Do


If you wanted an episode where Diana was paired with a new undercover partner, well, didn't this one deliver or what? Steve largely sat this one out in favour of Agent Christian Harrison (John Getz), who opened the episode by marrying Diana. It's established quick enough that the pair were posing as a married couple in order to go to a spa resort. The objective there was to catch a shifty masseur David Allen/Walter Lampkin (Henry Darrow), who was extracting information from government wives. One of those wives managed to outsmart him and almost got killed by a horse named Satan. A noteworthy element of the episode was Diana not wearing glasses in her civilian identity while Christian was also smitten with Wonder Woman. He was an okay guest character with decent chemistry with Diana. 7/10

Next blog I'll tackle the episodes The Man Who Made Volcanoes, Mind Stealers From Outer Space: Parts 1 and 2 and The Deadly Toys.

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