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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spells &amp; Karma" data-source="post: 64108" data-attributes="member: 23">HOT WHEELS / THE DEADLY STING / THE FINE ART OF CRIME / DISCO DEVIL / FORMICIDA / TIME BOMBIt's quite a few years since I last watched this show, but the overall feeling I gained from the last time round was that the series declined into juvenile pap during the third season.Fortunately, that hasn't been the case this time. Not entirely anyway. Each episode has its share of saccharine - mostly courtesy of IRAC and Rover. But it hasn't ruined my viewing this season. Indeed, Season Three so far has been more consistently enjoyable to watch than most of Season Two.The half dozen episodes listed above can generally be grouped into consecutive pairs. The first two were very surprising in feeling quite sophisticated in their plotting and (for the most part) execution. Ok - they're slightly generic late-Seventies episodic crime-fighting fare, but none the worse for it. Thing took a dip with the middle two episodes. Fine Art had Roddy MacDowall back as a different character from that in his Volcanoes episode, but one that's at least as OTT. The story and some of the setups felt like they were straight out of Sixties Batman. I wouldn't be in a hurry to watch it again, but it had its moments. Disco Devil too, was a bit naff, but had some memorable moments. The scene where Diana uses her bracelet to cut the glass mirror and escape is etched into my memory banks from watching it as a five or six year old, so it certainly made an impression on me back then.[MEDIA=youtube]ETWT8lfMby8[/MEDIA]Formicida and Time Bomb are two favourites. Certainly the best two of the season so far and two of the better episodes of the entire run. Formicida isn't exactly a challenging or complex story, but the biggest draw is finally seeing Wonder Woman come up against a genuine super villain which has rarely happened in this show.Wonder Woman needs some female arch villains. Certainly early on in the series it was established that Amazonian philosophy considers women to be superior to men. On that basis, what could be a bigger challenge to Diana than tackling another super powered woman. Apart from Season One's Fausta Grables, this is about the only time that happened. This is quite reminiscent of some of those Season One episodes in that Wonder Woman ends up bonding with the misunderstood woman and convincing her to go straight. It all fits in perfectly with the tone of early WW comics and the sense that Diana would want to save a fallen woman... because she's worth it. The fight with Stella Stevens in the Pilot has spoilt me, because compared with that scene the battles with Formicida are quite tame. There's no knockout punch or pushing each other through glass doors and over tables. With the stricter censorship around violence, there isn't really any punching or even slapping here. Instead, there's the now standard WW fight etiquette of throwing the opponent round - usually into some empty cardboard boxes. But by Season Three standards it's as good as it gets.It occurred to me while watching this time round that Formicida's raison d'être as an ecological terrorist using force to get polluters of the planet to do the right thing foreshadows that of the second Cheetah who would appear in the comics a couple of years after this and become Wonder Woman's primary antagonist for half a dozen years until the Crisis hit DC. I can't help wondering if Debbi Domaine's origin was partly inspired by Formicida's.Time Bomb is perhaps of most interest to many as the infamous Joan Van Ark/Ted Shackelford episode. It's easy to see why they would be paired again come Knots Landing. The chemistry is really good here and both have great screen presence. I can never watch without thinking of Joan falling about laughing and saying that Ted looked like a big silver condom. And he kind of does. But he also does a pretty incredible thing in managing to work the skintight silver for all he's worth. I love how serious he is in his scenes, and one can easily imagine that there was a whole lot of howling laughter between takes. Ted is making a return visit here. Warner like to recycle their actors in different roles, it seems. Here he's Adam - a new ally of Diana's from the future. And he falls for her. Even after he returns to the future, there's a hint that he and WW will have much to talk about in the year 2155.Joan is Adam's colleague Cassandra who wants to return to the late twentieth century motivated by greed. She's aware that the era to which she's escaping is one that offers the opportunity to become rich to those who fight for it. And she's done her homework. With her eyes on the target, she'll charm anyone and use any knowledge she can find to make lots of money. And part of the offensive involves using Shackelford, tapping into what he has to offer and then moving on. Basically, this is Joan Van Ark playing Abby Ewing.Also of note to Knots fans: while Joan and Ted have the entire cold opening together and a few scenes early and late in the episode, most of Joan's scenes in the middle part of the episode are shared with Allan Miller: Knots Landing's Scooter Warren. Somewhere out there, a young Laura Avery is rolling her eyes.This episode would have been filmed in late '78, and if memory serves the Pilot for Knots was shot in spring of '79. It's probably a safe bet to assume the onscreen chemistry between Van Ark and Shackelford in Time Bomb helped convince the powers that be when it came to recasting Gary for the new series.The characters being from the future brings a sense of fun, and watching it some decades later adds layers to that. Adam scoffs at IRAC being a quaint antique, just as a viewer in 2017 would. He also casually mentions the nuclear holocaust which happened in 2007 to a horrified Diana.I don't know if the Knots angle is what makes this so enjoyable of if it's enjoyable simply because it has great actors doing good things with what is at times some pretty poor material. Not being one to look gift horses in the mouth, I'm simply going to go on enjoying it.</blockquote>

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