The Ultimate Weapon

V.E.N.O.M. wrecks a movie premiere for no obvious reason, and M.A.S.K. is left to work out why. Their next target is an observatory, where a new device of Miles Mayhem's, the Cyclonic Disruptor, jams the controls and weapons of every M.A.S.K. vehicle, leaves Gloria critically hurt in the pile-up, and scrambles T-Bob, who is visiting with Scott. Alex Sector builds neutralizers and turns T-Bob into an early warning system. The computer predicts a strike on the Phelps reactor, which has just taken delivery of plutonium. Mayhem counters the neutralizers, the team abandons its vehicles and fights on foot, and a time bomb is carried away from the reactor.

Very unsporting of him, I must say.

Why would anyone raid a movie premiere in order to rob a nuclear reactor? Buddie asks nearly that question in the first few minutes, and the computer's answer, "insufficient data," gets the first real laugh of the episode. The reply comes later and it is a good one: the movie theater and the Mackenzie Observatory both have funny-looking domes, and the attacks on them were a dress rehearsal for the Phelps reactor. A villain who tests his new toy on buildings that look like the real target is a villain with a plan, and V.E.N.O.M. does not always get credit for plans.

The toy in question is the Cyclonic Disruptor, and it brings us to what the episode is actually about: what is left of M.A.S.K. when the vehicles stop working. For a show built around transforming trucks, that is a bold subject. At the observatory the Rhino battering ram stalls, the belly cannons will not fire, the hypno headlights fizzle, and the flying vehicles cannot be steered. Gloria is the one who pays for it. Everything after that point asks the same thing from a different angle, namely what the team has when the machines are taken away, and the answer is masks, nerve and a robot wired up to feel the disruptor first.

The writing handles that question in a tidy two-part shape. Alex builds neutralizers and has them installed overnight, and the plan is to make V.E.N.O.M. think the vehicles are still out of control. Scott gets his role too, riding in Rhino with T-Bob wired up as an early warning system, though the setup is a little cruel: Scott and T-Bob are sent to the observatory to keep them out of the way, and the observatory is where V.E.N.O.M. strikes next. Nobody at Boulder Hill seems to notice the joke.

The voices lean into the comedy. Alex's complaint that Mayhem has beaten his neutralizers by turning up the power, and that this was very unsporting, is the best piece of acting in the episode because it is delivered with total sincerity.

The standout scene is the bluff at the reactor. The team activates the neutralizers, then pretends to be out of control, working slowly toward the plant, so V.E.N.O.M. will walk into the trap. Mayhem sees through it, raises the power, and the plan fails in an entirely fair way. The heroes lose here because the villain was cleverer, and that makes the next sequence, with everyone leaving their vehicles and going in on foot, feel like an escalation instead of a rescue. Brad's holographic images help keep the villains busy, and a time bomb set for thirty seconds gets attached to a rocket pack.

The weakness is Gloria. She is unconscious all night, the doctor calls her condition critical, and Brad blames himself and asks to stay at the hospital. At the end she tells T-Bob she feels fine, and jokes that she had no choice but to get well fast because the team was having all that fun. A recovery that quick makes the earlier grief into a gag, and Brad's guilt has nowhere to go. A single scene of her in a hospital bed would have been enough weight; the episode gives it a night and then forgets about it.

Among the first batch of episodes this is one of the stronger ones. It is the episode that most clearly argues the masks matter more than the machines, and it manages that without abandoning the machines, which is a neat trick for a show that exists to sell them! The hitchhiking safety tip at the end does its job and stays out of the way.

1. The M.A.S.K. wiki lists the movie that V.E.N.O.M. attacks in the opening as a space film titled 2020, and the billboard for it is visible in the published frames.
2. According to the M.A.S.K. wiki, the footage of Gloria Baker breaking stones with kung fu in the agent call-up sequence is reused in the later episode Bad Vibrations, with different sound effects.
3. The M.A.S.K. wiki records a continuity error: Buddie Hawks is in the room when Matt suggests that Scott and T-Bob visit the observatory, yet he waits to be asked before mentioning that his underworld contact named the observatory as V.E.N.O.M.'s next target.
4. The M.A.S.K. wiki notes that T-Bob rides on Scott's lap in the car on the way to Boulder Hill, which sits oddly with a robot who can transform into a motor scooter.
5. The M.A.S.K. wiki lists the closing safety tip as a warning against hitchhiking: Scott invites his friend Jeff to walk to the soccer game with the Trakkers rather than accept a ride from a stranger.
6. The M.A.S.K. wiki credits Sharon Noble with the voice of both Gloria Baker and the M.A.S.K. Computer, and lists a recording date of September 24, 1985 for this episode.
7. The M.A.S.K. wiki describes the Cyclonic Disruptor as roughly the size of a typewriter and installed in Switchblade's cockpit, and says V.E.N.O.M. never uses it again after this episode.
8. The M.A.S.K. wiki places this episode at seventh of 65 in the season, between Dinosaur Boy and The Roteks.