Treasure of the Nazca Plain

Scott films a sunset while Matt Trakker and Alex Sector visit the Nazca Plain, until a strange yellow rain falls and T-Bob's eyes start to glow. Analysis shows the rain is a brew of lemon juice, sea salt, corn beer and cherimoya, and Alex traces the only local aerial-spraying firm to V.E.N.O.M. Professor Carruthers tells of a legend of treasure hidden in the Cave of Winters. V.E.N.O.M. has sprayed the ground figures so they glow and point toward the cave, and M.A.S.K. uses infrared and the glowing eyes to follow. In the cave, the treasure turns out to be warmth: a hot, steamy refuge that would have sheltered people in the Ice Age.

It would appear that the treasure is in the eye of the beholder.

What is the most valuable thing you can find in a cave in the high desert? Treasure of the Nazca Plain answers that it is warmth, and the answer is better than it first sounds.

Everyone in the episode is reading the same ground. A film crew of one, Scott, sees a sunset and a location for his next picture. A professor sees an old ceremony and a legend about a Cave of Winters. V.E.N.O.M. sees a set of enormous figures that, once sprayed with the right brew, will glow and point the way to a prize, and M.A.S.K. sees a chemical analysis, an infrared reading, and the only local company with aerial spraying equipment. The episode is about reading, and about who finds meaning in the same landscape, and it makes that point most neatly through T-Bob, whose eyes light up after the yellow rain falls and whose glowing eyes turn out to matter once the team works out what the spray does.

This is the best use of the premise, since it turns a line about treasure being in the eye of the beholder into a visual pun as well as a thesis. M.A.S.K. explains the glow as a reaction between the spray and phosphorus in T-Bob's eyes, and the same spray lights the figures on the plain, which is why an infrared view can show them and why a direction can be taken from their pattern. The writing here is tidy: the chemistry, the legend and the sign on the ground are each given a line, and each line is used again later.

The ordinary parts of the investigation are pleasantly handled too. The lab breakdown of the rain is a list of lemon juice, sea salt, a Peruvian beer and a fruit, which the professor later matches to a ceremony said to be far older than the Nazca themselves, and the search for companies that rent spraying planes lands on a name that gets repeated back in garbled form, a gag the episode is happy to spend a moment on. The visual design is bold where it needs to be: the target of concentric circles with a cable running down its centre hole, a cave full of lilac growths, a sunset sky behind T-Bob with his arms raised, and a red car with its gull-wing doors open, flying through the air.

The standout scene is the cave itself. V.E.N.O.M. arrives expecting gold, and the cave is sweltering and steamy, which leads one villain to complain that all that work has produced a hole in the ground. The M.A.S.K. side supplies the point: during the Ice Age, a place of steam and heat in the middle of the cold would have been the ultimate treasure. It is a modest twist, but a coherent one, and it gives the villains a defeat that is a matter of values and not only of tactics.

The weakness is how the episode arranges its information. Matt cannot be raised on the radio for most of a day, which keeps Scott's report about T-Bob's eyes from reaching anyone until the moment it matters, and the film-shoot thread that puts Scott in the right place is lighter than the rest of the plot. The professor's legend is also delivered largely in one conversation, so by the time the cave appears the viewer has had little time to want what is inside it. A little more build toward the treasure, and a little less reliance on a radio that works only when the story needs it, would have given the payoff more to land on.

As a verdict, this is one of the smarter V.E.N.O.M. schemes in the first season, a plan that works only if the heroes read the ground for them; it is a little rushed, but the ending is among the more thoughtful in the show.

1. The M.A.S.K. wiki lists the line about the treasure being in the eye of the beholder in its Satoisms section, without naming a speaker.
2. The M.A.S.K. wiki lists an error in which Alex Sector is in the driver's seat of Rhino's all-terrain vehicle when Bruce Sato is first seen driving it.
3. The M.A.S.K. wiki lists an error in which Miles Mayhem says "Viper, on" while wearing his Python mask.
4. The M.A.S.K. wiki records this episode's safety tip as Scott, planning his next picture, warning T-Bob that hot grease on cold water can splatter and hurt him.