Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis (Part VII)

Episode 8 – What Dreams May Come

In Queens, a fifty-foot, six-limbed, godawfully ugly thing interrupts an obnoxiously “Nu Yawk” couple’s spat over the electric bill, reducing their five-story walk-up to scrap. Morning finds H.E.A.T. there (minus team-spy Monique), as they seem to be the only municipal agency at work in New York. Seriously, where is the Fire Department? Isn’t this a city in recovery from perpetual Godzilla attacks? Why does anyone still chose to live in this New York? But then again, why does anyone chose to live in Metropolis? Or Marvel Comic’s version of the City That Never Sleeps?

In any case, the team finds plenty of residual ionization, but actual, physical evidence eludes them…until a frantic phone call from Monique interrupts Our Heroe's search. The as-yet-unnamed creature is making its presence known down by the MTA bus depot. Team lead Nick and Mendel Craven (the Designated Cowardly Lion) leave Randy and Elsie to pick among the ruins, and on each other. Their constant sniping will be this week’s B-story, as each attempts to rest control of the teams Executive Officer position from the other.

Meanwhile, Nick and Craven join Monique at the MTA. Again they seem to be the only public servants in sight, rescuing civilians from the depot’s garage even as the still-nameless monster tears the place apart. Our (human) Heroes’ imminent demise once again appears at hand…until Godzilla, the real hero of the piece, stomps his way out of the ocean and into an inconclusive fray. The misshapen mutation appears to feed on electromagnetic energy, and reacts to Godzilla’s blasts of radioactive breath the same way mosquitoes react to type O-pos. Things look bad for Nick and his half of the team (who’re once again caught between the battle, and once again, survive uninjured, despite the flying buses and falling lizards all around) until Godzilla head-butts the creature into a cloud of debris…where it vanishes without a trace.

Stymied, H.E.A.T. reconvenes at their “high tech” condemned building of a headquarters. Elsie and Randy, for all their interpersonal sniping, managed to uncover something back in Queens: the one apartment in the whole building untouched by the destruction. That’d be the apartment of a Mr. Sydney Walker, an employee at the…MTA bus depot…who hasn’t been seen (at home or work) for weeks.

For all my disdain for Randy (I have a mild hatred for all characters who presume to speak for the audience) we occasionally think alike. “I see where you’re going with this,” Randy says. “Walker hates his job and everyone around him. So when he accidentally mutates into a giant bug zapper, he decides to get his revenge!” (Pause.) “What?”

"That Crackler thing can’t be a human mutation,” Mendel counters. “It’s not even alive.” Rather it appears to be a walking electromagnetic field—a walking, stalking, size-changing hologram, ripped out of its holodeck and set loose upon the world.“‘Crackler?’” Randy asks.

"Well, what would you call it?”

Indeed. Typically, the first scientist to discover a new organism gets the honor of christening it. Nick, never one to be a jealous fuck (except when his girlfriend’s involved), allows Craven’s name to stand as he doles out assignments. Elsie and Randy will proceed to Manhattan Neural Research Center, the last place anyone saw Sydney Walker alive (in human form, at least). Craven and Monique will join Nick for a little pleasure drive around the city. “Let’s go Crackler hunting,” Nick says. Do I detect a hint of relish in his voice? Methinks yes.

On their own again, Randy and Elsie gain access to the Center, despite Center personnel’s apparent obsession with security. “Looks like Walker isn’t here,” Randy says. “And he isn’t in room 213.” “Well,” Elsie counters, “let’s not pay him a visit.” Upstairs, they find two anonymous scientists and one sleeping man with more EEGs strapped to his head than a grand maul seizure patient.

Seems Mr. Sydney Walker checked himself in complaining of insomnia. “To put him under,” the male scientist explains, “we enhanced his Theta brain waves. That was…a week ago. We haven’t been able to wake him since.” Each attempt’s only achieved a slight increase in brain waves activity—accompanied by a massive electromagnetic discharge. “We assumed that dissipated into the atmosphere,” because that’s just what you’d assume…until the Humanitarian Environmental Analysis Team comes knocking. In the usual, haphazard way common to scientists in American media, our team hammers out a hypothesis through phone conferencing.

Seems like Walker (who’s psyche test “suggested intense repressed rage,” according to one of the Neural Research Center’s whitecoats—and you still went through with treatment? You bastards practically asked for a giant monster to hatch out of that man’s head), comatose state notwithstanding, controls the Crackler unconsciously, dreaming it into being and dreaming himself into the driver’s seat. Another Theta spike appears right on cue, setting up our final fight scene…and the predictable resolution.

Weird though this episode may be, it carries all the hallmarks of an American comic book icon. Yes, that’s Len Wein, co-creator of Swamp Thing, still slinging words from the trenches of American children’s television. (Show’s what happens to those unfortunate comic book creators who never secured the rights to their characters—hold them dear to your heart, boys and girls. Corporate American would like nothing more than to mine them for all eternity while paying you a pittance.) Being the case, you’ll find quite a few tropes from 70s-era comics scattered throughout the episode.

It begins in media res, with exposition (especially scientific exposition) delivered in clumsy blocks of dialogue, often in the middle of a fight scene. In the tradition of 70s-era team books, H.E.A.T. voluntarily splits itself up into more easily-managed micro-teams. This allows Nick, Monique and Craven to remain busy while Wein focuses our attention on the main characters: Elsie and Randy. Their separate and disparate skill sets do end up solving the case, despite the obligatory friction. Obligatory because, without it, how could you bring these character’s through a dramatic arch in twenty-two minutes or less? Bully to Wein, then, for not shoving that resolution in our face. It comes in a quiet moment during the final fight scene, as Godzilla’s battle with the Crackler tears apart Shea Stadium, not in a South Parkian, “I’ve-learned-something-today” moment…but with the simplest of gestures: an offered hand, by Elsie to Randy…who’s just been knocked across the room by an electric shock. You can see Randy’s entire character summed up in that rash but well-meant attempt to unplug Walker and shut the Crackler down. Of course his ad hoc, ask-questions-later tactics are going to run afoul of Dr. Elsie Chapman, team paleontologist. My only complaint is, since this is a kid’s show, its sympathies obviously tilt toward Randy; in the end, he’s always right. Even his “I see where you’re going with this” comment is more on-target than anything H.E.A.T.’s three scientists come up with—and that’s a bad sign all around. Do you want the punk kid to be the smartest one in a room full of “professional” monster hunters? I think not.

Standard monster movie tropes are bent over backward to provide a human interest story, parallel to and grounded by the big-ticket mayhem. Our monster turns out to be little more than a man with a lightning rod strapped to his head—a tiny, repressed, pathetic little man, who frees himself from his internal monster with a little help from Randy and some spontaneous, Primal Scream therapy (continued shades of the 1970s). Having confronted his trauma, Walker sinks into a crying jig as Randy consoles him with quite words: “No problem, dude. It’s over.” And just when I start to wonder about wishful thinking, Elsie steps in to give us an aside: “Except for the years of intensive therapy.” Amen, sister.

By provoking Walker into a shouting match, Randy (somehow) destroys the Crackler’s supply of emotional fuel. Godzilla, having battled the Crackler across Flushing Meadows (bye, bye, Unisphere), dissolves it with a well-timed fireball—miraculous, considering all previous attempts to nuke the Crackler only made it stronger.

In the end we have here a good stand-alone episode…that could’ve used a second draft and a little more thought put into its wacky excuse for physics. A little more money might’ve helped out as well, populating the otherwise-deserted monster scenes with fleeing civilians and/or useless human authority figures. By now I’ve probably worn your ears off with my complaining about Godzilla’s ancillary role in his own show, so there’s little need to reheat that hash here…except that Sydney Walker’s story, with its shades of Bruce Banner (the greatest giant monster in comics) has put me in that frame of mind. I liken Godzilla to Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk—a destructive force that shows up, no more than twice an episode, to solve things with a maximum amount of collateral damage. Is this the best role a giant monster can expect? Can we do nothing more without swinging wide into King Kong territory? And exactly what’s to become of that little Theta wave-amplifying, monster-creating, dream machine? No self-respecting “number one monster hunting team” in the world would just leave the damn thing sitting around the Manhattan Neural Research Institute.

Would they? Really?