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DVD: Joe 90 - The Complete Series
A&E Home Video
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
We Statesiders who were lucky enough to grow up watching Thunderbirds may not know, technically, what "Supermarionation" means, but we're certain it's a grand thing. Gerry Anderson's "puppet shows," as the uninitiated would naively call them, were riveting when we were kids, and they're extremely entertaining to adults who "get it," as well. I specified Statesiders because we only knew a fraction of the story. On the other side of the pond, in Anderson's jolly ol' England, there were many different TV series' from his production company featuring those wonderful actors with strings attached. Now that A&E Home Video is putting out box sets of all of them, collectors are blissed out. We'll be taking a look at each of these sets, though not in chronological order; we've already covered Thunderbirds (1965) and Captain Scarlet (1967) but haven't covered Supercar (1961) or Stingray (1964) yet, so that train has already sailed. No worries, they're self-contained. No cross-over. I've yet to see Captain Scarlet piloting the Supercar or Brains stepping off the Thunderbirds set to help Joe 90 with a mission.
So you're probably wondering what Joe 90's all about. The show, made in 1968, was set in a time very near our own (I'm thinking 2015 or so), and as is almost always the case in futuristic shows, the advances of science have been overstated a bit. That's okay, we're already watching marionettes performing a spy drama, so we've got to be willing to suspend a lot of disbelief. With that out of the way, it's safe to tell you about the amazing invention of Professor Ian "Mac" McClaine. It's called the BIG RAT, which stands for Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record And Transfer. He can record the brain waves of one person and place them in the brain of another, who then knows what the first person knows. (Sounds a little big-brotherish, doesn't it?) Quite an invention.
Let me stop for one moment to assure you that, yes, this process is Andersonized. Bigtime. Anyone who has seen a documentary or two on the man knows that he was never one to let a puppet make a phone call when, instead, he could have it push a button that pulls back a carpet that reveals a trap door that inverts a pool table that has a videophone screen on the other side. Yes, you can rest assured, the process of getting one person's thoughts into another person's brain is more fun than watching dominoes collapse, incite and disrupt in choreographed glee. What's a little strange is that the Professor is using his 9 year old adopted son, Joe, as a guinea pig. This doesn't seem to bother him, but when their American friend, Sam Loover (who Joe calls Uncle Sam, isn't that cute?) approaches the Prof with a wacky, nutty plan to use Joe as a spy, armed with brainloads of information from more recognizable spies or unwilling enemy agents, well... that's where Professor McClaine draws the line, sort of. More or less. Okay, he doesn't. Joe becomes the youngest agent in business, smart as the person his brain is overflowing with as long as he wears the special eye glasses with the electrodes built in.
Hey! You're hemming and hawing! I told you to suspend that disbelief and have fun. This is a show designed for children, after all, but like almost all Anderson productions, adults love it, too. There's adventure, suspense, drama, very, very mild comedy, all kinds of cool gadgets and, unlike in previous Anderson shows, marionettes with features modeled to look human and not puppet-like. There's also a loveable character named Joe, a kid when he is a kid, suddenly very sophisticated and self-assured when he's a super-spy or a fighter pilot, then right back to someone who'd just like to have a story read to him before bed. Clever idea, as long as you don't get too real about the ramifications of putting a child in fighter jets or among dangerous killers.
The entire 30 episode run of 25 minute shows is here in this 4-DVD box set, along with a few extras like still photos and commentary on two episodes. The character bio section is a bit disturbing, actually. Let's just say that in Anderson's world, at least at that time, women (wives, mothers, whoever) had a bad habit of dying in car wrecks, leaving the boys to do the show without them. (Were puppet breasts expensive in 1968?) Forget the extras. It's about the show, and this was an entertaining and offbeat little show, not in the same league as Thunderbirds, perhaps, but fun stuff that's easy to get into. Why they called it Joe 90, I'm not sure. The kid was 9. He wasn't born in '90. Anyone have Gerry Anderson's e-mail address?
© 2004 - DJ Johnson