I mean, I think the Country Bears cartoon show only lasted one episode, at least that's how I remember it, anyway.
One that constantly falls under the radar of people looking back nostalgically is Mighty Max, a show that has so far managed to pay an homage to the Aliens franchise, Norse mythology, and now John Carpenter's The Thing.
You know, for kids!
The episode begins at an American station in the Arctic, where four men in what are either casual military dress or the worst research clothes of all time are monitoring several computer systems. Their time spent watching dials move back and forth and listening to what sounds like a modem chirping are interrupted by a crash and a scream from somewhere in the facility. One of these guys is extremely practical based on his reaction, and would probably be me if I joined the military:
Overweight Guy With Mustache: "What was that?"
Guy With Glasses: "I don't know, but I don't think I want to be here to find out."
The window into their room suddenly shatters, and I think it's clear that it must be a research base due to the fact that the overweight guy's immediate reaction is to pull out a semiautomatic rifle and start shooting at whatever's attacking them.
I'm pretty sure the military has rules about keeping guns like that just lying around.
The guy with the gun gets zapped by some kind of energy, and despite the best efforts of the three remaining guys to escape, the monster is able to smash its weigh through two steel doors and chase them down hallways, with only one man able to escape out a window.
I'm not calling casualties yet, that could just be a stun weapon.
Back at Max's totally 90s room (I wish my name was Max so I could spray paint "MAXIMIZE" across my wall back then), Max leaps out of bed to enjoy the first day of summer vacation, just to find that the outside world is covered in snow. Our hero, aware that strange things happen all the time, responds by simply changing clothes and going sledding like this happens all the time.
He's not very proactive, our hero.
Now, I've bought a lot of Virgil's means of contacting Max, and some have been pretty far fetched. However, listen to this method:
1) Max sleds across the ground and plows into a snowman stopping him in his tracks.
2) Scribbled in the snow are instructions telling Max to look to his right for directions to a portal.
3) Lying beside the remains of the snowman is a map.
This show would not work today, because you'd just have Virgil calling Max on his cell phone or notifying him via Twitter that it's time to save the world.
@NotAChicken: "Mighty one, we need your help, take the portal at the Minimart behind the taco display."
@MAXIMIZE: "Aw, man!"
Where was I? Oh, right. Virgil needs Max to do something about the weather, because according to him, "the Earth has been sent outside its orbit." ...well, we're all dead.
Norman kicks down the door to the weather monitoring station (someone let me know if the military runs those or not, if they do, someone's going to get in trouble regarding that gun), and they find...all three guys presumed dead from before just sitting around doing nothing. They don't even blink an eye at the fact a kid, a guy able to kick down their door, and a chicken just barged in, they simply greet them and ask how they can help.
Obviously, this crew is all from Minnesota.
Max attempts to shake hands with one of the men, but the guy's hands are cold as ice, and he flinches back when Max tries to give him a hand warmer. Besides that, everything else seems completely ordinary, which starts to really bother Virgil since if nothing's wrong, he wasted a ludicrous way to contact Max for nothing.
Virgil gets a brief reprise from being proven wrong for once in his life when the men suddenly start shooting at a fourth figure outside, claiming that, yeah, he's one of theirs, but he's gone crazy and needs to be stopped. Max and Norman charge out with the guys, and Virgil manages to land face-first in the snow and goes down waist-deep.
Norman and Max encounter the "crazy guy" who accuses them of being aliens, and Virgil manages to find the rest of the crew who just grin at him with creepy expressions.
Crazy McGoNuts, after somehow tying up both Max and Norman (in an igloo, no less), accuses the two of being "ice aliens assuming human form." Max, forgetting that he's already fought aliens before, seems convinced the guy really is crazy, but McGoNuts manages to find out the truth about the good guys before showing them his proof that everybody else is an ice alien. Apparently it's the aliens moving the planet out of its orbit so they can create a permanent ice age and take over, being "unable to withstand even the smallest amount of heat."
Max, Norman, and McGoNuts (I don't think we ever get his name) head back into the base to see if they can locate Virgil, and they do find him...in a way. Apparently he's been "body snatched" (hey, there's an idea for a movie) as well, and picks up Max and throws him against a wall before Norman breaks a box over him. Norman and McGoNuts are shot by the same energy beams (which I guess proves they're stun, since they aren't going to kill Norman right now) and Max barely gets away before being able to double back and find the alien spacecraft.
It's not really as epic as the last spaceship he was on, but it'll do for our purposes.
So, let's get a look at our shape-shifting aliens, shall we?
Okay, not as ugly as "The Thing" but it's still a pretty cool looking monster. Especially with a whole ship of them.
Max manages to free Virgil while taking out the fake one, and let's be honest, the fake one probably threw the fight because he didn't want to be stuck as a tiny chicken creature instead of a regular-sized human like his friends.
Max and Virgil manage to free Norman by pressing Max's hand warmer against the newly minted "fake" Norman, but this has the unintended effect of the creature melting and then bursting into flames.
They meet up with McGoNuts in a hallway, and we actually get a pretty good moment where McGoNuts accuses the three of being ice aliens, and the three accuse him right back of the same. The logic that goes back and forth between why the other side must be fake is actually pretty good, and does a decent job playing up a paranoia angle that leaves the characters not sure who is who they claim to be anymore (and, as Norman says, "I'm not even sure I'm who I claim to be!")
There's also a cute scene where Max tries to have everybody test themselves on his hand warmer, just to have Virgil flinch and be tackled by Norman before Max realizes he turned it up too high and it actually is really hot.
Max and Norman head to find the other soldiers, sending McGoNuts and Virgil to figure out how to put the planet back in its orbit. As I'm sure you have already guessed, they do find the other three soldiers, as well as McGoNuts all frozen in their own little stasis tubes, meaning Virgil, once again, is left alone with a horrible space monster.
Virgil manages to set the planet back in orbit using a computer operated by crystals- ...really? Crystals?
Who uses crystals to run a computer?
Oh, right. My bad.
Virgil manages to avoid becoming blasted for a short time, but Max and the rest are chased by the ice aliens into a chamber that they barely manage to lock behind them (read: Norman shoves an I-beam into the door to wedge it shut).
After poking around for a moment, Max concludes that they're in the controls to regulate the temperature of the ship, and despite everybody's protesting that they don't have time to figure out the controls, Max comes up with a way to solve the problem quickly.
He smashes the controls with a chair. The Mighty One, ladies and gentlemen!
Without the systems keeping everything at sub-zero temperatures, the aliens all burst into flames, the ship starts to come apart (because I guess when you're crafted to operate that cold, it's easy for everything to overheat), and everybody manages to get out alive at the last second.
And thus ended the first wave threat of the ice aliens, but just remember that this was only a single ship, who knows how many are still out there and will show up la-
What's that? They don't show up again?
Oh. Well, then.
Max gives us a history about the purchase of Alaska and how ridiculous the NBA salary cap is. Seriously.
The Good:
A show was willing to do a shameless homage/rip-off of John Carpenter's The Thing without completely screwing it up. They did a bit of paranoia, a bit of horror, and a lot of science fiction that blended together really well. Granted, it would've been great if Crazy McGoNuts looked a bit more like Kurt Russel, but way to go having a guy who looked like Wilford Brimley.
The backgrounds and setting design were all also done really well, from the bare-bones government office feeling of the weather station to the exotic nature of the spaceship (even though I'm left wondering why they left chairs lying around when they leave as soon as they get legs that they could use them with), and even the barren icy wasteland of the arctic was presented well.
Okay, it's all set dressing, but I noticed it and thought it was neat.
Some of the dialogue is also extremely well written, and I found myself smiling quite a bit at the clever lines the writers came up with.
The aliens are also designed extremely well, since they tried to give some of the "blobish" nature of the Thing in their slug-like shapes, but left enough spiky bits and claw features (as well as energy blasts from their hands) to make them intimidating.
The Bad:
I get you wanted a serious threat, but "aliens pushing the planet out of orbit" is a bit out there, even for a show that has dragons, giant spiders, and lava monsters. There'd still be SOME aftereffects from such a sudden lurch through space, and whether it's crops dying off, flooding after the snow melts, or simply storms brewing from sudden air pressure shifts, you can't just leave it at "okay, everything's better now."
The show still has a small problem with breaking the fourth wall now and again, usually when Max jokes while he's alone (and just happens to be glancing at the "camera" as he does so). It's rather jarring when I'm trying to actually get into the story and suddenly have a character seem to turn and make a joke for my benefit when it doesn't happen regularly.
Overall:
A very solid episode, and one that I suspect the writers knew that they'd have people watching carefully based on how important The Thing was to horror and science fiction culture, even at that time. They couldn't just copy the same story (you probably can't do a tentacle dog in a cartoon like this in those days), but they had to stay true enough to the source material to not make it look like they were just stealing instead of honoring it.
Of the episodes seen so far, this is definitely in my top five up to this point.
So, next one might be the last Mighty Max for a while, but it's a pretty major one in terms of plot as we get an actual bona-fide assault on Skull Mountain and Max and Skullmaster finally face each other!
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