And yet, when I think of all the ones I wish I could get on DVD to just watch at my leisure, the one I always think back to is Mighty Max, the show based on a toy which was a boy's version of Polly Pocket.
However, Polly Pocket never had a skull mountain or dragon island play set, so points for Max.
...I wonder how much those go for on eBay.
While I look that up, let's dig into the second episode of the amazingly brutal show, The Brain Suckers Cometh.
I'll apologize now if the images aren't that great, it's the curse of a series never being sent to DVD.
The episode opens with a spaceship moving past a planet in space (as opposed to in the subway, naturally), and I have to confess I love this spaceship. It's shaped like a head complete with two diabolical glowing red eyes on top of it. Unless it's in the path of the sun, it's completely black except for those two blinking red eyes. It's actually pretty intimidating.
The ship blows up a random passing satellite, and we jump over to Max's school where he manages to blow up one of the computer lab's computers. We're also introduced to Ernie, who is such a big nerd that he makes me look like a walking Mountain Dew commercial. He even has a pet name for Max, which I can't tell if it's "Maxie-Maxie" or "Maxie-Waxie." I also can't tell which would be worse.
We're also introduced to ... um, well, they never say her name, but apparently she's friends with Max and is even enough "in the know" that when he gets a message from Virgil to meet the other heroes somewhere, she doesn't even bat an eye when he says he has to leave. Not really much of a secret identity there, Max.
Max takes the nearest portal (through a locker in the school gym's locker room, which of course is next to the computer lab) to Kansas. There, Virgil tells Max that aliens are "coming past mars" and will be there in "three hours."
That's...pretty darn fast. See, the New Horizons craft left Earth on January 19th, 2006 travelling at 36,373 miles per hour. It didn't get to Mars until April 7th.
Max is, of course, the world's only hope, and Virgil states that the alien ships not only can't be detected, but the military would be useless in battle against them. Obviously this calls for a child with a hat!
They head out through another portal in a corn field, and appear on board the alien spacecraft and wait one minute. If the ship is travelling that fast and the portals are fixed places in space, the odds of hitting the second the ship happens to be there (not to mention accounting for acceleration) are astronomical to the point of being impossible. However, we see the portal be open for a couple of seconds, so I guess maybe they happened to peg the exact moment the ship traveled through that spot in space and once the portal opened it got yanked along?
There's so much wrong with the physics here that my brain isn't even willing to think about it any further and it just wants to see aliens.
The team manages to evade a flying sentry robot, but wind up stuck on a conveyor belt loaded with brains (hence the title) and sent down a tube into a giant tank filled with a gooey pink liquid and floating brains. I don't know if brains actually float, but it's a pretty creepy image.
One note, I love how, when the team is falling onto the conveyor belt, Max asks Virgil why he can't fly, and the response is "I learned to read instead."
After the team sneaks into the control room, they spot the one thing they need to steal to completely foil the alien's plans to invade Earth: a floppy disk.
It's oh-so-90s.
Max claims the disk after Norman takes out the alien pilot with a single punch, but they're immediately discovered and the alarms go off. Another portal won't be arriving for twenty-two minutes (?) so Max has the idea to steal one of the fighter jets instead.
Virgil and Norman get separated from Max (Norman's awesome line: "Fifty to two. Hardly seems fair. I'll fight with my eyes closed."), but the fate of mankind is more important than two lives, so Max is sent back to Earth before the aliens can reclaim the disk. So, who can Max get to help with decoding a disk and altering the alien's plans for total domination of the planet? I mean, who would you go to?
a) "I don't care if he's busy, tell Bill Gates that he has to see what's on this disk!"
b) "Steve Jobs? Hi, we haven't met before, but I have something you absolutely need to see."
c) "What do you mean you don't know how to use computers? C'mon, Matthew Broderick, you were so great in Wargames!"
Or yeah, we can go back to Ernie, that works, too.
Max shows up at Ernie's house (begging how he managed to land a spaceship), and tries to convince him that the world is in danger, just to get sound scientific reasoning as to why there's no chance aliens could be invading. Max finally gets him to look at the disk (because of course it fits into a 90s PC which doesn't even seem able to run Windows 3.1 yet), and they look at the alien's detailed invasion plans. They're so caught up they don't even realize one of the aliens stowed away and sneaked in behind Max until it winds up drooling on Ernie.
"This is one of those real aliens, isn't it?"
"No, it's my Grandma. RUN."
I think one thing I loved about this was the fact that I was never really a sarcastic kid, but a lot of the humor I loved came from people who replied to things like that. Groucho Marx, the Stooges, Bugs Bunny, they were all wise guys who always managed to slip in a bit of sly humor to any situation.
The boys run away (leaving the disk) and the alien chases them (leaving the disk), but an unfortunate encounter with a speeding semi saves the boys from having their brains harvested.
Ernie still seems reluctant to help Max save the actual entire planet because "Max was mean to him earlier" (priorities, man, priorities), but Max talks him into it. Ernie agrees to do it, on the basis that Max actually takes Ernie into space with him. Max doesn't want to, but a) he owes Ernie, I guess, and b) Max needs him to install altered software on the disk to save the planet.
They take the spaceship back aboard to find nobody waiting for them in the hangar (plot hole?) and nobody in the control room (I guess they're having one of those "all staff" meetings, probably to celebrate Bernice's birthday or something), allowing them to upload the new software.
The two boys are pretty much caught immediately afterward, though, and soon rejoin Virgil and Norman to be strapped to a conveyor belt (how many of these does the ship have?) to have their brains scooped out. Everything looks dire, there's no possible way to overpower their bindings, what could POSSIBLY SAVE THE DAY?
Uh, yeah. Ernie just sort-of unplugs the entire system as they go past it. These are the stupidest aliens who ever existed.
The heroes rush to where the next portal is supposed to show up at, just to realize that the ship is slightly off course due to the new software. Max starts to try to pilot the entire ship over to where the portal will appear, while the aliens launch some fighters to try to blow up their own ship. I don't understand these aliens at all. Is this a "if we're going, we're taking you with us" attack?
Since space travel is obviously just like video games (which will become relevant the next time someone blames video games for how space terrorists got away with something), Max and Ernie are able to shoot the fighter craft and pilot the ship to where the portal appears. The ship explodes and (somehow) the heroes emerge from the other end of the portal in the jungle. Max and Ernie make up, and Ernie runs off to tell people how he just saved the world, just to get captured by cannibals.
Because of course.
Max, Norman, and Virgil head off to save Ernie, and the camera fades to black.
Let's find out what the lesson for the episode is:
"I bet you didn't know that space-time is actually curved, and scientists are moving towards a theory that unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity in a quantum theory of gravitation!"
.... you know, for kids!
The Good:
I, um, yeah, this episode was kinda all over the place. We didn't get Tim Curry's voice, and while the aliens were clearly designed based off of Alien, we didn't really get any of the same suspense. The aliens just kinda ran around with their claws raised like they were trying to go "booga booga booga" and forgot the words.
It does have some of the classic science fiction tropes, and the fact that all computers are universal might be why I wasn't as initially bothered by the resolution to Independence Day. I mean, sure, it bothers me now, but not at the time it didn't.
The dialogue is witty, the banter and arguing between Max and Ernie was believable, and the design of the ship was pretty cool, but...
The Bad:
For an advanced alien attack force against whom our military would be pointless in combat against, they were sure stupid. Electrical outlets right next to conveyor belts that prisoners are strapped to? Leaving rooms abandoned? Not capturing Max when he was alone on the fighter? I'm really disappointed in this species. I think, fortunately, that this was the only time these guys appeared, because I'm really hoping for a better villain next time.
So yeah, tune in next time when we get a really awesome villain.
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