HUMANOID DEFENDER (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                        This flop pilot for a TV show may be better known by the title JOE AND THE COLONEL, but I've chosen the VHS title of HUMANOID DEFENDER. The well-trained clone soldier Joe (played by Gary Kasper, and whose technical name is J.O.E., though I forget the acronym's meaning) is definitely the star of the show. But the support-character of "The Colonel," played by William Lucking, definitely does not deserve co-billing.                                      

I concur with this review that the TV-movie feels as if writer Nicholas Corea-- who worked exclusively on TV shows and TV movies-- tossed almost every idea he had for an ongoing series into the mix for this hour-and-a-half pilot. This does give DEFENDER a minor distinction for sheer incoherence, though there's nothing especially amusing about the chaos. First, we see the full-grown clone being trained in a government facility by his "three parents," whom I *think* may also have contributed genetic material to his creation-- which if true would make him more like a DNA version of Frankenstein than a clone. Then the "mother" of the trio, Lena (Gail Edwards) is said to have died suddenly. The military's liaison, The Colonel, blows it off, but the third "parent," Doctor Rourke (Terence Knox) thinks Kai's death is part of a conspiracy to shut down the JOE project. There's also been an incident in which Joe, despite being massively trained as a super-soldier, refuses to kill an animal when ordered to do so. So Rourke spirits Joe away.                           

 So far, so average for a derivative spy-story. But DEFENDER goes completely off the rails because Corea sought to set up a rationale for Joe as an action-hero. Joe and Rourke hide themselves in some suburban dwelling, where one assumes they're going to keep their heads down and live a mundane life. But no, somehow Rourke works things out so that Joe can still take on missions to help people, like liberating a kidnap victim from terrorists. Not a word is said about how such activities could call the military's attention to their existence and location. Then there's a plot about an unthinking Joe-clone that gets loose and creates very minor chaos before Joe takes the creature out with very minor action. Then, surprise, Lena is alive again. And then Rourke's out of the picture and the Colonel's a good guy after all, since he becomes Joe's new handler for whatever adventures are down the road. None of the actors, good or bad, can do anything with this sloppy tripe. I think Gary Kaspar tried hard to make his sketchy character charming, but I have a theory that even if had DEFENDER become a regular show, it would probably have flopped, and thus Kaspar probably would not have had any more lasting success as an actor than he did in real-time.