I'm a Gerry & Sylvia Anderson fan, dating back to THUNDERBIRDS, and I was surprised at how clumsily structured this pilot episode to their later series JOE 90 was -having finally caught it on the A&E boxed set of DVDs.
Pilot introduces the main characters, title Joe, a nine-year-old dubbed most special agent to work for World Intelligence Network on spy missions; his dad, Prof. McClaine; the boss in charge of operations Shane Weston; and the inevitable American component, cutely named Uncle Sam = Sam Loover.
Show's gimmick is colorfully introed: BIG RAT - computer that is used to transfer tapes of people's brain waves to little Joe, permitting the kid to use the stored intelligence and experiences of adults on his missions. The electrodes needed to keep the info in his brain are included in a set of eyeglasses Joe must wear.
-SPOILERS AHEAD-
That's about it but this pilot presents lots of problems to involving a potential viewer. I don't believe the series sold or aired in the U. S., so my take on it is all these decades later. But I do know that the pilot turning out to be all a fake fantasy is as unsatisfying as those crummy movies where the hero or heroine wakes up in the final reel: "it was all a dream".
Joe is sent on a secret mission to Russia to steal their new MIG 242 jet and all goes without a hitch in entertaining fashion. I knew something was odd when the Russian commandant is sitting in his office with a big portrait of Stalin (!) behind him, in a show that is set in the "near future" after 1968, not back in the Stalin era.
It turns out, as explained at the end by Shane Weston, that the mission we've watched never happened, it just might have been Joe's inaugural escapade, and after all "there is no conflict between the USSR and England". Yeah, right. Why would one want to invest one's viewing time in such a shaggy dog show? After all, even LOST and FLASHFORWARD waited till the end of their respective series to turn off the viewers, rather than lousing things up in the pilot.
Making matters worse, at the end of the pilot, suddenly the live action ends, and we get a montage of still shots of the cast and sets, while a heavy, evidently hastily added voice-over fills in all sorts of back-story and other material, some of it true spoilers in the real definition of the word, for example the declaration by Prof. McClaine: "Joe is not my real son!". I was particularly annoyed by the final wrap making Joe a secret agent after the Prof's objections, with the Prof signing off by saying to him "Don't come crying to me if you get hurt". He might not be his real dad, but that is a cavalier attitude beyond the pale.
As expected for an Anderson production the tech credits are fine, with those beloved explosions and miniatures fans of the Supermarionation art form know and love.
Pilot introduces the main characters, title Joe, a nine-year-old dubbed most special agent to work for World Intelligence Network on spy missions; his dad, Prof. McClaine; the boss in charge of operations Shane Weston; and the inevitable American component, cutely named Uncle Sam = Sam Loover.
Show's gimmick is colorfully introed: BIG RAT - computer that is used to transfer tapes of people's brain waves to little Joe, permitting the kid to use the stored intelligence and experiences of adults on his missions. The electrodes needed to keep the info in his brain are included in a set of eyeglasses Joe must wear.
-SPOILERS AHEAD-
That's about it but this pilot presents lots of problems to involving a potential viewer. I don't believe the series sold or aired in the U. S., so my take on it is all these decades later. But I do know that the pilot turning out to be all a fake fantasy is as unsatisfying as those crummy movies where the hero or heroine wakes up in the final reel: "it was all a dream".
Joe is sent on a secret mission to Russia to steal their new MIG 242 jet and all goes without a hitch in entertaining fashion. I knew something was odd when the Russian commandant is sitting in his office with a big portrait of Stalin (!) behind him, in a show that is set in the "near future" after 1968, not back in the Stalin era.
It turns out, as explained at the end by Shane Weston, that the mission we've watched never happened, it just might have been Joe's inaugural escapade, and after all "there is no conflict between the USSR and England". Yeah, right. Why would one want to invest one's viewing time in such a shaggy dog show? After all, even LOST and FLASHFORWARD waited till the end of their respective series to turn off the viewers, rather than lousing things up in the pilot.
Making matters worse, at the end of the pilot, suddenly the live action ends, and we get a montage of still shots of the cast and sets, while a heavy, evidently hastily added voice-over fills in all sorts of back-story and other material, some of it true spoilers in the real definition of the word, for example the declaration by Prof. McClaine: "Joe is not my real son!". I was particularly annoyed by the final wrap making Joe a secret agent after the Prof's objections, with the Prof signing off by saying to him "Don't come crying to me if you get hurt". He might not be his real dad, but that is a cavalier attitude beyond the pale.
As expected for an Anderson production the tech credits are fine, with those beloved explosions and miniatures fans of the Supermarionation art form know and love.
