Wonder Woman - The Feminum Mystique

The TV Tomb of Mystery is an ongoing attempt to stave off acquisition of any more impulse-buy DVDs by taking better inventory of the ones already in hand. 

Today's excursion:

(1976)

Season 1, Episodes 4 and 5.

While the title invokes Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, nothing else in this story does. "Feminum" is a precious metal found only in one place in the world:

It's called Amazonium in the old comics - no idea if it's still around in the New 52. Prolonged exposure to it is the source of the Amazonians' enhanced speed, strength, and agility. It's also the material with which they make their bullet-deflecting bracelets.

See?

Wonder Woman aired from 1975 to 1979, first on ABC and later on CBS. Sooner or later, CBS ends up with everything. It starred - like you need me to tell you any of this - Lynda Carter as Diana Prince.

Personally, I feel the most interesting portrayal of Wonder Woman was in the 2009 animated film where she was voiced by Keri Russell. I never would have credited Keri Russell with the range she's shown since her Felicity days, but she's done some great work in recent years. And she's great as Wonder Woman. Everyone's great in that movie, actually.

Nice review here, and I nicked this pic from there, as well.

Anyway, none of this is to say Lynda Carter's stronger association with the character is undeserved. She is the reigning Wonder Woman champ and likely will be for some time, given Hollywood's inability to get a movie or TV show together for the character. Sooner or later, inevitably, the right reboot will connect with the right audience. But until then:

"The Feminum Mystique" is campy fun. It suffers from the same things most episodes of the series suffer from, namely, a poor script and generic visual design. The first point is unremarkable for its era; that's just the way 70s (and a lot of subsequent) TV went. The second is less excusable, as the concept itself - a statuesque demigoddess from an invisible island of statuesque demigoddeses descends upon WW2 America to wage her own war against the Nazi war machine and make her way in the world -  demands a certain amount of style that never quite gels. Too many props and costumes from other shows, too many 70s haircuts for stories set in the 40s. The show is somewhat tone deaf to its own possibilities.

Attempts at meta were almost always accidental. (From "Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua," s1e6.)

Another underutilized aspect of the show was Wonder Woman's relationships male characters. If this was all done with a bit more panache, it'd be hilarious fun - even better than Buffy, potentially. Instead, we get better than Charlie's Angels.

The other lead of the show is Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor, who constantly needs rescuing by Wonder Woman.

She flirts with him/ holds a torch for him - naturally! - but this shot pretty much sums up who needs whom in their relationship.

This should have been exploited a bit more cheekily. The only men Wonder Woman meets (in season one, anyway) are benevolent himbos, Nazi bastards, and wannabe-Nazi-bastards done in by their arrogant short-sightedness. But all she does is leap over them and deflect their bullets with her wristbands, then don her glasses and tie up her hair and make googly eyes at Steve.

The original comics are better-known these days for the pro-bondage stance of their creator, William Moulton Marston, than their WW2 themes.

This is well-mapped terrain, so I won't dwell on it.

The TV show went for a best of both worlds approach. (From "Fausta, the Nazi Wonder Woman," s1e2.)

"The Feminum Mystique" introduces that heroine-to-cosplayers-everywhere, Wonder Girl:

Played somewhat improbably in retrospect by Debra Winger.

In the comics, Wonder Girl is (or was - it changes often) Donna Troy, her kid sister. Here she is still her kid sister but is renamed Drusilla, for some reason.

Drusilla thinks back to seeing her sister change into Wonder Woman once.

So she tries it.

And voila:

Instant costume, replete with Feminum bracelets.

Even for its era, this displays a rather dogged disregard for viewers' intelligence.

She travels from Paradise Island on the advice of Mama Wonder Woman aka Queen Hippolyta.

Played by Carolyn Adams (aka Morticia Addams)

Once in America, her sister takes her under her wing and shows her around the office. (Naturally. Diana only works at the State Department during World War 2 - I'm sure kid sisters from out of town with no identification were welcome at the office.) She plays the fish out of water, fascinated by ice cream and the curious idea that her sister works for a man in the outside world. Then, of course, she's captured in the same manner Wonder Woman's always captured - knocked out by chloroform.

This was over-used an awful lot.

 

Drusilla reveals the existence of Paradise Island, whose paramount rule, reiterated by her mother in this very episode, is You must never reveal our existence to the outside world. She's meant to come across as the country mouse, I get that, and the guy sent in to her cell to get this info uses subterfuge, sure. But come on. The script even has her lament her lapse in security/ duty - directly before giving the exact coordinates of the island to the Nazi spy. Phwew.

Winger returns for another go-round as Wonder Girl in another episode, but - according to her, anyway - she feuded too much with Lynda Carter and was never asked to return.

When asked on Larry King about the feud, Lynda Carter seemed surprised to hear it and denied any alleged bad behavior on her part. She seemed pretty sympathetic, so I'm Team Lynda on this one, if we're breaking into teams.

To the episode itself.

Diana is on hand when the Nazis try and steal the XPJ-1, an experimental jet fighter. Said Nazis basically just drive up on a jeep. Sure, they had men on the inside, but seriously? On an air base? During wartime? And during a top secret test flight? There's, like, four dudes here for security.

Never mind that the Nazis were well ahead of the Allies when it came to jet fighters, nor that the chief engineer of the project (in this episode) is a Nazi himself, i.e. he probably could have just built one for them.

The Nazis are more interested in these indestructible bracelets they saw on Wonder Woman.

Oh yeah - John Saxon is one of the Nazis.

Although he's identified as an officer, he doesn't have a Luger. Deduct appropriate points.

This leads to their eventually kidnapping Drusilla, as mentioned above.

Just two Nazi dudes trying to figure out this Feminum business.

Achtung!

The symbolic awesomeness of Nazis trying to determine the chemical formula for Feminum for their own twisted purposes through a cheap, phallic microscope prop is probably unintentional, but I'm happy it's there.

The Allies intercept transmission of the captured coordinates of:

Off she goes.

She attempts to rouse the fighting spirit of her fellow Amazonians, but somehow the non-super-powered Nazis (all twelve of them) manage to subdue the island with their cunning use of gas grenades.

The problem might be the "crack team" Wonder Woman assembles to guard the island.

The blonde girl in that picture above is Pamela Shoop, aka the horny nurse with the hornier boyfriend who both die in the hot tub in the original Halloween 2. Before she or any of the other Amazonians know it, the Nazis have them mining the Feminum.

"When zey are done," says Nazi John Saxon -

"ship zem all to Berlin. For study... and possible breeding." Nazis, amirite?

Thankfully, Wonder Girl returns, and with her help, the Nazis are defeated and their memories erased.

I didn't bother screencapping it, but this reversal of fortune for the Nazis happens when John Saxon dares refer to Queen Hippolyta as "old." Earlier, he taunted her with news of capturing and torturing Drusilla, her youngest daughter, and she shrugged it off. But call her an old woman? Now it's time for action.

Oh yeah, the experimental jet. They go back and save it and capture the last baddie.

Wonder Woman and General Blankenship watch Steve Trevor walk away.

And that's a wrap on that. Here are some screencaps I had leftover, since what this post needs is obviously more screencaps:

The Wonder Sisters!

William Marston once said that Wonder Woman was psychological propaganda for "the new type of woman who should run the world." If he had been alive to see this, I wonder what he'd have thought?

"The Feminum Mystique" aired on November 6th and 8th, 1976 and was

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