Wonder Woman (1975) episode 3 allows for a couple of comparisons to Indiana Jones, and sees Steve Trevor try to save the day for once.
“On Paradise Island there are only women. Because of this pure environment, we are able to develop our minds and our physical skills, unhampered by masculine destructiveness.” – Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman episode 3 (“Fausta: The Nazi Wonder Woman”) opens with the reveal that a certain Adolf Hitler has got his hands on some film of Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) in action, and, furthermore, he’s watched six hours of it! That’s more than I’ve seen of this telly show! I’ve been watching Wonder Woman in action and thinking: “hey, this is fun”, but apparently Adolf has reached the altogether-different conclusion: “hey, Wonder Woman would make a great addition to my war effort”.
Seemingly having enough self-awareness to know Wonder Woman isn’t likely to accept such a proposition, but not enough self-awareness to know that messing with an Amazonian princess is a bad idea, Hitler sends out his best underling to kidnap her. Because, you know, there’s nothing like a bit of kidnapping to convince your friendly neighbourhood goddess to sign on with the Axis.
But, here’s the twist: said Nazi underling – Fausta Grables (Lynda Day George) – is a woman! Gosh, you wouldn’t have been expecting that back in the ‘70s. For, obviously (to be read sarcastically), nobody knew women were capable of being Nazis, and vice versa, until 1989 – when The Last Crusade came out. Also, while I’m mentioning the Indy franchise, there’s a curiously familiar transitionary sequence in episode 3 of Wonder Woman that features a map of the world and a flying aeroplane… did Wonder Woman contribute to the Indiana Jones blueprint? Who’s to say? Certainly not me – that’s not a nest of snakes I want to poke.
So, Fausta Grables’ first step in enacting her boss’ big plan is to lure Wonder Woman into a fistfight, and observe her powers in a closer situ. To do this, Grables nicks Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner) and ties him up as bait, which, as you can imagine, is a cakewalk. Much like one of those long talkie bits in Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One (2023): Fausta dons a disguise, makes sure she has a gas mask to hand, then walks into Major Trevor’s office, and hits him with a cloud of the sleepy stuff.
After Fraulein Grables has made some notes on Wonder Woman’s powers then, and taken a fancy to that golden lasso of hers, she sets up an oddly elaborate and startlingly efficient public-event-cum-competition-of-strength as a ruse for luring out Wonder Woman once more. Wonder Woman inexplicably falls for this second piece of bait too, and whilst competing in said competition, a false-floored stage sees her whisked away from showing the American public her biceps, and into the chloroform-wielding hands of some Nazi bloke. Having captured Wonder Woman, the Germans take her home with ‘em.
With Wonder Woman now out of the picture, it’s down to Steve Trevor to save the day, and what a lousy job he does of it. The heavy-footed moron gets himself captured, and almost-killed twice, before being generously saved by those who would go out of their way to keep a fool from his grave.
On Wonder Woman episode 3 as a whole, however, seeing Nazi offices again (like in the first episode), and having Steve and Wonder Woman head over to Germany themselves, puts Wonder Woman episode 3 a step above the previous for me. Widening the scope to feature the enemy’s home territory this early in the series has me hoping that things continue to grow and multiply in this fashion. The more Wonder Woman tries to pass off the same ‘70s backlots and Californian landscapes as different islands and locations, the higher my star rating is likely to get. Also, if the number of Americans-pretending-to-be-German continues to rise at this rate, the resulting accents will maintain the comedy quite sufficiently, thank you very much.
Now, to conclude, I would just like to ask: I’ve only noticed this episode how Wonder Woman checks her headband after spinning into costume – has she always done that? I wonder why she would, I mean, it’s not magic like her belt is, is it? Perhaps there was one time, which we didn’t see, where she forgot to put on the headband after spinning out of her secretary uniform, and then had to fight off the bad guys with hair in her eyes. I’m sure that would be a mistake to only make once.
Episode 3 of Wonder Woman (1975) is now available to watch on digital and on demand.
