Action Man helps teach Jacques some martial art moves, but Jacques is soon captured by Doctor X, who tries to force him into revealing the location of Action Force Headquarters. Jacques, defiant, says nothing, but in an attempt to send an SOS to Action Man, he inadvertently leads him into a trap!
Summary
The adventure begins at an air force base in southern California, where two men guarding a jet plane are snatched offscreen and replaced with Skullmen. Dr. X boards onto the plane where its pilots are tied and gagged. One of the Skullmen is seen at the thingypit. Dr. X takes off, only to discover that the fuel tank appears to be low on fuel, and screams in frustration.
At Action Force Headquarters, Norris alerts the team of the theft. He mentions that the jet is fully computerized, and is loaded with missiles and smart bombs. With this, he could start a war, but he’s low on fuel. He demands a fuel tanker, or he’ll blow up half of Hollywood.
Once taking off in the Action Force Jet, Action Man puts on magnetic gloves and climbs down onto the stolen jet by climbing down the tube that refills the jet. Once it’s refueled, Action Man blows a hole in the jet and climbs in. But Dr. X finds out and Action Man is greeted with Skullmen. Action Man decides to leap out and open his parachute. Dr. X makes the assumption that if “Action Man is here, so is Action Force.” So he fires a missle at Action Man and the team tries to help. The missile barely misses him, but singes his parachute and he responds to it by just saying “Guys, I have a problem.”
The Missile heads towards Hollywood and even makes a shot right through the “O” in the Hollywood sign. Jacques locks in on the missile’s command channel and contacts Dr. X, and teases him saying “This is your captain speaking and kiss your missile goodbye. It’s mine now.” Jacques attempts the same “O” move X made but it doesn’t go as well and knocks the O over. Action Man reminds them that he is falling from the sky. Natalie seems unaware that his parachute was on fire, because she wonders why he doesn’t use it. They fly underneath him, and Action Man is caught by Knuck, and the missile plunges harmlessly into the water.
Back at Action Force Headquarters, Jacques seems depressed. It seems he’s sick of being stuck in a wheelchair, and wishes he could take care of himself. Action Man gets the idea of putting him in a zero-g room, so he wouldn’t need his chair for a little bit. Jacques wants to learn how to defend himself, and Action Man tells him “To move like the master, you must think like the master.” Which triggers a memory flashback of an old temple and a man in a robe scolding him. He wonders where he could have learnt this.
As they train, Jacques actually manages to flip Action Man over. Their training session is interrupted, though, when Natalie tells them they’re wanted at the COM link. Norris informs them that the plane was stripped of its weapons around the edge of South America.
Naturally, Action Force has to get those weapons from Dr. X. Once they take off, they arrive at the European Space Agency, where Action Man finds lots of Skullmen. They need a way to get in without alerting them, and Natalie conveniently looked at the center’s blueprints before they came down, so she knows all the access tunnels and hatches. So through there, it appears Jacques has hacked into the system and learns that Dr. X is going to launch 2 rockets. He can stop them, but it will take time with the amounts of security encryptions in the system. As he does this, Action Man orders the others to find another way to stop the rockets. Preferably a faster one.
Meanwhile, Dr. X monologues about how soon they will be in space and Action Force will be indisposed. Professor Gangrene, however, whines about how he doesn’t want to go into space because it’s “Cold and airless.” Dr. X then makes a crack about how space is a vacuum, like his head. There’s a bleep on his screen and he sends some Skullmen to the area Action Man is.
Back to the good guys, Jacques manages to hack in, but Skullmen attack just as he does. Action Man manages to fight some of them off, but once he does, he discovers that Jacques has vanished from his chair. Action Man gives a red alert and tells them to take out his supply rocket as he goes after them. Elsewhere, there’s a flood of water that prevents the supply rocket from launching. As Dr. X watches, he runs to the elevator to the next rocket with Gangrene, and boards the other rocket. As the elevator ascends, Action Man grapples himself onto the bottom of it and follows. He calls the others, telling them to return to Jet Extreme and return for pick up. He then ambushes Dr. X, who yells him “You may have stopped my supply rocket, but that’s all you will do unless you want something bad to happen to the boy.” He then points to Jacques, who is being held by a skullman and Gangrene. They then go in the rocket and it takes off. Action Man then manages to escape on Action Force's helicopter.
The rocket enters space and does its usual detachments as it flies towards the Russian space station. Dr. X begins saying that once Station Extreme reaches “Perigee”, which is the lowest point of orbit, he will lauch his smart bombs at it, and blow it to bits. Jacques tells him that he doesn’t know the coordinates, but Dr. X reminds him that HE knows. Despite Professor Gangrene’s offer to use some truth serum on him, Dr. X says he has something just as good and more unpleasant in mind. He then has him thrown into some locked room where Jacques finds a radio spectrometer and begins to take it apart. Back on Station Extreme, Knuck makes a comment hat if Jacques were here, he’d be able to find himself real fast. Just then, they pick up a signal from the Russian space station. Afterwards, on the station, Jacques hears Dr. X and Professor Gangrene coming, and quickly puts the radio back as it was. Gangrene pleads with him to let him use some hypnosis techniques he knows, but Dr. X refuses. Dr. X tells him that Jacques has already helped them.
He purposely put Jacques in that room, so he’d use the radio to bring the team there, kill them there, and take over Station Extreme. Action Man launches a shuttle from Jet Extreme and heads towards the station. Dr. X sees his shuttle coming and fires a couple of missiles at him. Jacques then flips over the skullmen holding him captive into the screen Dr. X was using, smashing it, but the missiles continue to follow Jet Extreme’s warm engines anyway. Then, one of the missiles chases after Action Man’s shuttle, as the other one continues after the jet, but they dodge in time and smash the missiles into each other. Dr. X, though, thinks the missiles have done their jobs. As Dr. X remains beside himself, Action Man sneaks onto the station, blows some skullmen away, and drives Dr. X crazy when he realizes he’s on board. Dr. X orders Gangrene to have the emergency reentry vehicle ready and grabs Jacques. Once Action Man appears, Dr. X threatens to hurt Jacques, but the two wink at each other and Jacques flips over Dr. X, sending him into the reentry vehicle.
Afterwards, back at Action Force Headquarters, the whole team stands in the zero-g room in ninja clothes. Action Man says that, even though Dr. X got away, he learned never to mess with anyone on his team. Knuck says he wishes he could’ve seen Dr. X’s face when Jacques flipped him. Jacques takes hold of Knuck, says “Want a mirror?” and flips him over just the same way and tells him “That’s the look.”
Notes
- Flashback: Action Man remembers a temple and that he had some sort of Tibetan monk teacher. According to the series bible, the monk was part of a cult called the Akesh Maharishis, who lived in an remote ashram in the Himalayas. By excelling in their intensive regimen of physical conditioning, wilderness survival, mountain climbing, martial arts and ninja-like skills, yoga and meditation, Action Man earned the coveted "A.M." tattoo of the cult.
- This episode is centered on the character of Jacques.
- Action Man tells Action Force to return to Jet Extreme and return for pick up. Later, Action Man is picked up by Action Force's helicopter, NOT Jet Extreme.
- If Dr. X wasn’t going to let Professor Gangrene DO anything, why’d he bring him along?
External links
http://www.bloodforthebaron.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=1854