I’ve decided that we all need a little more fun at the
moment, so instead of looking at Rod Serling’s Patterns like I was going to, I am instead recapping an episode of Super Friends where they fight the
Titanic.
Yes. The actual Titanic.
Saturday Morning Cartoons went extinct a couple of years ago.
With streaming services allowing parents to curate their kids’ viewing, and
24hr cartoon channels available, the once noble establishment that brought
forth everything from The Jetsons to
the North American Pokémon craze died
a peaceful, largely unnoticed death.
But, for fifty years of broadcast television, it was a
coveted block of time carved out for the wild imaginations of kids, and the
advertisers trying to target them. A devil’s pact of calculated branding and
genuine fun.
The history of Super
Friends, in particular, is a mess
full of title changes, network changes, syndication deals falling through, and
so much behind-the-scenes drama it’d make a hilarious HBO drama set at Hanna-Barbera
in the 70’s. You’d never guess how much backstabbing went into producing each
seven minute episode about a super hero friendship team.
This second retooling brought about Challenge of the Super Friends, which was then morphed into The World’s Greatest Super Friends,
becoming a more reasonable half hour in length. Throughout all of its
incarnations, it was made up of various short segments.
By 1983, it was just called Super Friends again, and it was also cancelled. Again. But a
syndication package had been worked out, so Hanna-Barbera produced 27 extra
episodes that wound up only being broadcast in Australia. They’re known as The
Lost Episodes of Super Friends.
This is one of them.
We start with an ocean recovery ship sending two divers into
the icy depths of the Atlantic. Despite the fact that the Titanic was sunk by
an iceberg, in iceberg waters off the coast of Newfoundland, the divers are
wearing short sleeves. This is a cartoon, so there’s literally no reason that
has to be the case.
They’re called Pete and Rene. It works well because Pete is
super bland and Rene is incredibly French.
Pete thinks that tonight is the night they find the wreck of
the Titanic, or at least he hopes so. This is the last dive they’ll be able to
get in before the winter storms hit the region. So they really shouldn’t be going with short sleeves.
“Three years we search for the sunken ship!” Rene grumbles,
“We should have given up years ago!”
(This episode has a ton of French characters. For most of
the 20th century, thanks to the pioneering efforts of Jacques
Cousteau, the French were considered the uncontested masters of the deep.)
While Rene is griping that they’ll never find the Titanic,
something in the distance catches his eye.
It’s the Titanic!
Just sitting there, totally visible, in all its ruined
grandeur. It gives this salvage team all the credibility of somebody looking
for a pair of glasses that are on top of their head.
“She’s been down here since she sank in 1912!” Rene lets Pete
know, in case he forgot the most famous details of the wreck they’ve been
hunting for the last three years.
Pete radios up to Jacques, an assistant aboard their own
ship, to let him know to send down the pump hoses so they can raise the
wreckage. I’ve never raised a sunken ocean liner, so I’m going to go ahead and
accept all of this as proper procedure.
The Titanic sits on the ocean floor, her once elegant façade
now caked with blood red rust. The tear in her hull is jagged and menacing,
looking distinctly like a maw of sharpened teeth.
Pete and Rene decide to swim inside and have a look around.
These guys are nuts.
As they pass through the opening, the lower section trembles
behind them – like a jaw about to snap shut.
“There’s something weird about this place,” says Rene as
they swim through the long-abandoned hallways with their seaweed strewn
chandeliers. “It gives me the creeps.”
Aw, who could possibly be scared in an underwater death trap
haunted by hundreds of steerage passengers and also probably Leonardo DiCaprio?
You’re going to be fine, Rene.
They come to the door to the engine room, which Pete is
determined to open for some reason, like he thinks if they can get the engines
working again the ship will float or something. The door is jammed, but he
refuses to give up. He gives it a yank with all of his might, and it blasts the
two divers back with a sudden wave and something that might have been a steam
cloud, if that’s at all possible?
An inhuman hiss echoes through… the water, and we learn that
the engine room has been home to a monster this whole time!
And not just any monster, one that kind of looks like what
would happen if an octopus was made of hatred and refried beans.
“What is it?!” Rene shouts.
“I don’t know!” Pete replies helpfully.
Super useful dialogue guys. Good work.
Now terrified, Pete and Rene try to flee to safety, but every
exit is blocked by the same kind of refried beans that comprise the monster.
Up on the salvage vessel, Jacques watches in horror through
a TV screen that was hooked up to a camera somewhere on Pete. (Fine. Whatever.
I’m not an underwater video engineer, they can have mini cameras all over them
if they want.)
Jacques and a guy in headphones see the Octopus of Beans,
moving closer and closer to the camera, its yellow eyes glowing with sinister
intentions, and then the picture cuts out.
“Quick!” Jacques orders, “Contact the Super Friends!”
Moments later, at the Hall of Justice…
Aquaman and Black Vulcan are the only superheroes available to
take the call. Aquaman is actually a good fit, for once in his life, but Black Vulcan
might not be so helpful. Also, put on some pants, man.
Jacques explains on the call screen that they need to save
his divers before their air runs out. He neglects to mention the hideous
monster trapping them inside the Titanic.
Might want to throw that in, just in case they need special
equipment or something.
Aquaman promises they’ll be there as soon as they can.
“The next bolt of lightning you see will be… Black Vulcan!”
Black Vulcan shouts dramatically, putting a magic fishbowl over his head and
turning his legs to lightning.
Look, I’m not his doctor, I don’t know how it works.
While he’s doing that, Aquaman is rushing down to the
basement boat launch thing and jumping onto a giant seahorse to ride like an
oceanic desperado.
They both arrive at the location of the Titanic, as quickly
as electricity and a seahorse can carry a man, but unbeknownst to them, trouble
is brewing below the waves.
The pump hose is caught in those tooth-like jags, and inside
the ship, Pete and Rene are being manhandled by the unsettling tentacle arms of
the monster.
A-ha! It was growling, and the closed captions just read:
“Algae Monster growls.” It’s made of algae! It doesn’t look a damn thing like
any kind of algae I’ve ever seen, but that’s what it is.
Black Vulcan and Aquaman hurry through the water to where
the pump hose is struggling to free itself from between the demon teeth of the
sunken ship. Suddenly, Aquaman hears a
strange, high-pitched ringing noise, and holds his ears in agony.
“My aquatic telepathy is picking up something incredibly
dangerous!” He gasps.
Probably the algae
monster.
Our two heroes nevertheless speed into the metallic mouth
without hesitation. And as they do, we see that an eye is opening on the side
of the ship. Like in The Hobbit when
Smaug opens his eye to reveal he’s buried in the treasure, but also like total
nonsense because this isn’t a dragon, it’s
the Titanic.
Black Vulcan notices that the two divers they’re trying to
save aren’t anywhere to be found. That’s quitter talk, Black Vulcan, you guys
have looked through exactly one hallway of a massive floating luxury hotel.
On cue, he and Aquaman are then attacked by what used to be Pete
and Rene. They’ve been overtaken by whatever malevolence possesses the algae
monster, and it’s coated them in the goopy brown substance that it uses for
everything. They look like evil koalas. Made of refried beans.
One of them jumps on Black Vulcan’s back, and the other
gives Aquaman a hug. But I think it’s supposed to be a violent hug of attack.
Either way, he’s not respecting Aquaman’s personal boundaries.
Aquaman surmises that some kind of chemical reaction in the
cargo hold created the algae monsters; an idea he’s basing on absolutely nothing. First of all, the
Titanic wasn’t carrying weird chemicals, she was carrying people. Second of
all, Aquaman hasn’t seen the Grand High Algae Monster yet. All he knows is that
some bean koalas don’t like them very much.
Black Vulcan does what anyone would do in this situation, and
tears off the face of his attacking seaweed monster. But a second face is
revealed beneath – that of Rene! It’s a surprise to Black Vulcan, but not to
us.
“Great lightning! It’s the divers!” Black Vulcan gasps.
“They must have been taken over by some mutated form of
thinking algae!”
Aquaman, quit guessing. Just deal with the situation at hand
and figure it all out later. Just because you’re in the ocean doesn’t mean you
have to be the expert.
Black Vulcan decides that the best thing to do is put the
divers out of commission until they can find some way to help them, so he
shoots a bolt of lightning towards Pete. Pete dodges, and the blast of electricity
hits one of the interior walls.
It was supposed to be set on stun or whatever, but it’s
enough of a jolt to…
AWAKEN THE TITANIC!
The ship snarls, her wild purple eyes crazed with hunger, her
jaws finally snapping shut on the pump hose.
Inside, the walls of the hallways heave and pulse like
lungs, as the blast of air from the pump hose begins to push the water out.
“Aquaman! This ship is alive!” Black Vulcan cries, still
struggling in combat with Rene.
“Something’s forcing the water out,” Aquaman replies, held
in a full nelson by what was once Pete. “It must be trying to raise itself!”
Who are you, the Titanic’s psychologist? Stop guessing about everything, Aquaman.
The vortex created by the pump hose traps all four guys in a
crazy whirlwind that somehow shoots them out of the dilapidated smoke stacks
and back into the open ocean.
The Titanic roars like Godzilla, and slowly begins to float
to the surface.
Onboard the salvage ship, Jacques frantically tries to radio
Black Vulcan, to no avail. He looks out the porthole beside him, and sees the
roiling bubbles that herald the surfacing of the now-possessed ocean liner.
“No! It can’t be!” He shouts, just before actually seeing
what’s going on.
And then, the Titanic is once again afloat somehow. Alien
magic or a chemical reaction or something. It doesn’t matter. Aquaman probably
has a guess or two, though.
At least four times as large as the salvage vessel, and
attached to her by the pump hose, the Titanic stares down her prey with crazed
hunger. She glides along the top of the water, straight for Jacques and his
ship, and snap! She bites!
That’s right. The Titanic is a cannibal monster ship, and
only the Super Friends can stop it.
“The Titanic!” Jacques cries, as the Titanic takes dainty
nibbles out of his vessel, “It’s devouring my ship!” (All boats are girls,
Jacques, you should know that, you’re French.)
Once she’s finished the appetizer, the Titanic heads off to
see what else she can find to snack on.
Watching from below the water, Aquaman and Black Vulcan are
shocked to see her shadow passing overhead.
“How can it be leaving under its own power?” Aquaman wonders, like the fact that she’s a ship with teeth and she’s eating other
ships is totally normal, but running without engines? Whaaaat?!
Black Vulcan reminds him that they’ve got more pressing things to
deal with, namely Pete and Renee being covered in the peanut butter of the sea
and trying to kill them. But it’s cool, because he has a plan.
And that plan is handcuffs made of kelp.
With Pete and Rene caught by the easiest thing to break out
of ever, Aquaman and Black Vulcan make to return them to their ship – only to
find that the salvage vessel is sinking!
That’s not much of a problem, because Black Vulcan uses his
lightning power to weld the hull back together and the ship stays afloat. It’s
about as plausible as anything else that’s happening.
Once everyone is safely onboard, the algae is removed from
Pete and Rene, and they go back to their old selves. Completely unaware of what
they had done while possessed.
Black Vulcan tells them he’ll get the coast guard or
somebody to come pick them up.
“But first, we’ve got to find the Titanic,” Aquaman says
dramatically, looking into the distance like a man with a vendetta. “Before it finds anyone else!”
Later, off the coast of Cape Race in Newfoundland…
An old fisherman is sat at the end of the dock, casting his
line from a lawn chair and whittling a stick while he waits for a bite. It’s
the middle of the night, which is actually a great time to go fishing.
He hears a strange growling noise coming from the open
water.
“Ahoy! Who’s out there?” He calls.
Chances are good he wasn’t expecting a possessed version of
the Titanic with a mouth and eyes to spring up from the water and roar at him,
but that’s what he gets for calling out to the terrors of the deep.
He instantly recognizes what he’s looking at, which is kind
of impressive, and starts shouting for everyone to get off the docks.
There’s only one other guy, a young sailor who probably
hangs around just to make sure the old man doesn’t fall in the water or
something, but the two of them run like crazy. The Titanic bites through the
deck, just behind them, taking out the chair and the fishing pole. They barely
make it to dry land.
I feel like this sequence needs fog, just to kind of hide
how stupid the Titanic looks. Then it would be more effective.
Meanwhile, over by the lighthouse, some guy who looks like
Ray Dorset from Mungo Jerry has been enjoying the totally advisable and safe
pleasures of cruising around on a speedboat alone at night. The only trouble is,
the speedboat’s engine is having problems and won’t start.
And now the Titanic is going to eat him.
He looks over his shoulder in terror as the Titanic edges
closer and closer, with her teeth open and ready. He frantically turns the key
to no avail, but just as the monster ship chomps, the speedboat starts! Phew!
Enraged, the Titanic goes for the next nearest target: the
Cape Race lighthouse.
She takes a chunk out of the side nearest to the water, and
the whole structure shakes like mad. Inside, the lighthouse keeper struggles to
keep his balance as the building tilts to one side. I don’t know how lightning
or being able to talk to fish is going to help here, but let’s find out.
“Oh no! The Titanic’s destroying that seaport town!” Back
Vulcan shouts, landing on a nearby outcropping of rock.
Learn the names of Canadian towns, Black Vulcan. Seriously.
He radios Aquaman on a walkie-talkie neither of them had
before… I don’t want to know where they’ve been keeping those. They don’t
exactly have utility belts. Or pockets.
Atop his pink
seahorse, chilling in an underwater cavern full of beautiful glacial ice, Aquaman
responds with the good news that he has a plan to stop the Titanic from eating
anymore boats or towns or lighthouses or whatever.
I kind of thought that the reason the Titanic was trying to
eat ships was because she wanted to sink them and tear up their hulls as
vengeance for what happened to her in 1912. But now she’s trying to eat a town,
and I realize that it was wrong to try and attribute any sort of motivation to
her.
“Lead it 45 degrees northeast!” Aquaman tells Black Vulcan
over the radio.
(Am I the only person who knows ships are girls?)
Black Vulcan zooms over to the side of the lighthouse and
hits it with lightning, which apparently does something to stabilize it? I
guess he welded some rebars or… charged up the girders? It still looks really,
really unsafe.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?!” Black Vulcan
taunts the Titanic, bafflingly. That lighthouse was way closer to being the same size as the ship. Black Vulcan is, you
know, dude-sized.
Regardless, he manages to lure the Titanic away from the
town.
The old lighthouse keeper goes onto the balcony to
celebrate. It does not seem like a good idea.
“The Super Friends have saved Cape Race!” He calls out.
The Super Friends didn’t do anything, old man. This is 100%
Black Vulcan. Don’t go putting this one on Superman’s résumé, he’s not even here.
The whole town cheers, throwing their bucket hats and
captain caps into the air in celebration.
(“Thanks, Superman! Hooray for Superman! We’ll never forget
the day Superman saved us! Let’s build him a statue!”)
Black Vulcan, barely ahead of the Titanic’s terrifying
mouth, leads her towards an iceberg where Aquaman waits nervously.
“I hope this works!” He mumbles to himself, before diving
back into the water.
Wait… no… that’s not seriously your plan, Aquaman?
Good god.
Well, as we all know, icebergs are the Titanic’s natural
enemy. Like snakes and frogs. They want nothing more than to destroy her, and
she’s powerless to stop them.
Black Vulcan easily goads her into ramming herself right
into the waiting ice blades jutting forth from the iceberg. The hull beneath
the original breach is torn open, the ship makes a farting noise like a
deflating balloon and sinks. A classy end to a classy lady.
Over on a neighbouring iceberg, Aquaman and Black Vulcan
watch as she goes under.
“Isn’t it strange,” Black Vulcan says, with unexpected
poignancy, “to think the Titanic was sunk on this same spot 70 years ago? And by
an iceberg, too!”
Pretty sure that’s how Aquaman came up with his plan. He was
just thinking: “How did they stop it the first time?”
“Who says lightning never strikes twice in the same spot?”
Aquaman muses, looking over the now calm waters.
And that’s the end. There’s no resolution to the algae
monster, there’s nothing to prevent the Titanic from biding her time and trying
to eat Cape Race again one day.
Just another Band-Aid solution from THE SUPER FRIENDS!
Bonus Images:
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