Recap / SWAT Kats S1E3: "The Wrath of Dark Kat"

"Now, where was I? Oh, yes! Doomsday!"

Act I

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The SWAT Kats' arch-enemy Dark Kat (Brock Peters) lands outside of the Megakat Nuclear Plant in his massive aircraft, the Fear Ship. Using a holographic projection of himself, he warns the guards not to interfere, using the Fear Ship's heat beam to destroy their Jeeps when they refuse to listen. His minions, pink, gargoyle-like creatures called Creeplings (Charlie Adler), break into the power plant and breach the reactor despite the radiation-suited technicians' attempt to stop them and begin collecting the nuclear fuel rods inside. The Enforcers soon arrive on the scene, along with Callie Briggs. Covering the story from the air are reporter Ann Gora and her cameraman Jonny K., in the news chopper flown by Al (Frank Welker).

Callie argues with Commander Feral over the best course to proceed, with Feral opting for a direct assault against the Fear Ship using Enforcer Peacekeeper tanks. However, the ship is surrounded by a forcefield which repels the tank fire. Dark Kat destroys the tanks in retaliation, their crews barely bailing out in time. Feral counters with a squadron of jets, but Dark Kat shoots those down as well, although their pilots manage to eject. Callie contacts the SWAT Kats, who (in their civilian identities of Chance and Jake) are having a pepper-eating contest. Jake cheats, pretending to eat the biggest pepper but actually hiding it down his pants. After he and Chance suit up as the SWAT Kats, T-Bone expresses doubt that Razor ate the pepper, which he still has hidden down his trousers.

Arriving at the Nuclear Plant, they attack the Fear Ship with Baby Boomer missiles, but these have no effect. Realizing the ship is protected by a forcefield, Razor prepares to short it out using his new Scrambler Missiles, but tragedy strikes when Ann Gora goads a reluctant Al into flying closer to the Fear Ship for a better look. The heat beam hits the chopper, causing it to fall towards Callie, Feral and a crowd of innocent bystanders.

Act II

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Using a Spider Missile, Razor grabs the falling news chopper out of the air, preventing it from landing on Callie, Feral and the others. Dark Kat takes advantage of their vulnerability to shoot the Turbokat, damaging it, preventing Razor from firing the Scrambler Missiles. Setting the news chopper down, they escape before Dark Kat can finish them off.

Commander Feral's ambitious second-in-command Lieutenant Commander Steel (Hal Rayle) makes fun of them, and is told by Feral that he plans to sneak aboard Dark Kat's airship with a signal device so that the Enforcers can follow him to Dark Kat's currently unknown secret base. Feral manages to get aboard after the Creeplings finish gathering the nuclear fuel rods and bring them aboard the vessel in a carrying case.

Dark Kat leaves, and Steel informs an astonished Callie and Ann of the Commander's desperate plan. Little does Feral suspect that Steel is planning to betray him and let him get killed so that he can be the new commander. When Feral sneaks into the cockpit of the Fear Ship, Dark Kat is waiting for him and he is quickly overpowered and taken prisoner.

Meanwhile, the SWAT Kats are repairing the Turbokat, and think back to their last encounter with Dark Kat. When the two were still pilots in the Enforcers, they tried to stop Dark Kat from destroying Enforcer Headquarters. But an overeager Commander Feral, flying up behind their jet, demanded they back off and leave Dark Kat to him. When Chance refused because they had a missile lock, Feral angrily passed them, his wing clipping theirs, sending their jet flying out of control. They ejected safely, but their jet hit Enforcer Headquarters, blowing up most of the upper floors. Blaming them for the destruction, Feral terminated them and sent them to work in the Megakat City Salvage Yard under the supervision of Burke and Murray. It was after this that they got the inspiration to build the Turbokat from discarded Enforcer vehicle parts, and become the SWAT Kats, allowing them to take on criminals their way without Feral breathing down their necks.

Dark Kat takes Feral to his volcano base and ties him up, revealing he is using the stolen nuclear fuel rods in a bomb he calls the Doomsday Device. He plans to use it to destroy Megakat City. Feral struggles against his bonds. Outside, the SWAT Kats arrive and gain entry into the volcano using a Mole Missile, then ride in on the Cyclotron. Noticing them on a security camera, Dark Kat pulls a lever, causing the tunnel they're in to fill with lava, forcing them to turn around and flee, eventually coming to a dead end cliff jutting over a river of molten lava.

Act III

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Dark Kat sees the Cyclotron fall into the lava and assumes the SWAT Kats are dead, but in reality they leaped off mid-fall, using grappling lines fired from their wrist-mounted Glovatrix weapons to swing to safety. Dark Kat resumes work on the Doomsday Device as Feral unties himself and attempts to hit him a rock, but Dark Kat smacks him aside, knocking him unconscious. The SWAT Kats run in and attack. Working quickly, Dark Kat finishes arming the weapon, and then fights with T-Bone, throwing him down into a pit with spikes at the bottom. Razor fires a net over Dark Kat, trapping him temporarily, then rushes to the pit, where he is relieved to discover that his friend survived by grabbing onto the sides. While he is helping T-Bone, the Creeplings free Dark Kat, and they load the Doomsday Device onto the Fear Ship and fly out of the base.

The SWAT Kats and Commander Feral go outside as three Enforcer jets arrive. Steel, flying the lead jet, is surprised to find Feral still alive. Feral intimates that he thinks Steel doublecrossed him, and punishes his treacherous second-in-command by forcing him to serve as his weapons officer as they fly off after Dark Kat. Steel, a coward, is terrified.

As Dark Kat flies over Megakat City and prepares to drop the Doomsday Device, the Turbokat flies underneath the Fear Ship and Razor gains entry through the aircraft's open bomb bay doors using his Glovatrix's grappling hook. He ties the bomb in place, so that when Dark Kat tries to drop it, it won't release. Creeplings enter the bomb bay and fight Razor, and he uses the pepper he had stuffed down his pants to squirt juices in one's eyes, blinding it, but another unties the bomb, dropping it, with Razor clinging to it, from several thousand feet up.

Despite the fact Dark Kat made all the wiring inside the bomb the same color (red), Razor manages to figure out which wire to cut to disarm the weapon, and it lands harmlessly on the runway of Enforcer Headquarters. Meanwhile, T-Bone pursues Dark Kat who is attempting to escape. He uses Scrambler Missiles to short out the forcefield, leaving the villain vulnerable. Feral and Steel catch up. When Dark Kat shoots at them, Feral orders Steel to return fire, but the cowardly Lieutenant Commander becomes too afraid and hides down in his seat, almost throwing up, disgusting Feral and allowing T-Bone to finally get the finishing blow against his and Razor's old foe. The Fear Ship explodes and crashes.

T-Bone initially fears Razor dead, but his friend soon contacts him over the radio to assure him that he disarmed the Doomsday Device, saving the city, as a joyous T-Bone heads to Enforcer Headquarters to pick him up.

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Tropes featured in this episode include:

• All There in the Script: Although Dark Kat calls his ship "The Doomsday Express", its actual name is the Fear Ship.
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: The Creeplings breach the reactor without any adverse effects to themselves or anyone else, and even handle the glowing nuclear fuel rods with their bare hands.
• Big Damn Heroes: The SWAT Kats swooping in and grabbing the falling news chopper before it can land on Callie and Feral.
• Bomb Disposal: Razor has to try to disarm the Doomsday Device in freefall.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Averted Trope. Not only is Razor not punished for cheating in the eating contest, but having stuffed the pepper down his pants saves his life later when he's able to pull it out and squirt its spicy juices into a Creepling's eyes.
• Chekhov's Gun: The pepper Jake put down his pants. It saves him later on when he uses it to squirt pepper juice into a Creepling's eyes.
• Convection Shmonvection: All the lava flowing through Dark Kat's Volcano Lair doesn't seem to adversely affect him or the Creeplings.
• Crazy-Prepared: Dark Kat to the point where he knew someone would try and disarm his weapon, so he made all the wires inside the Doomsday Device the same color.
  Razor: Ugh! Dark Kat, you miserable psycho!
• Danger Deadpan: Whilst dangling over the spike pit, T-Bone is pretty chill, even telling a very worried Razor, who has come to rescue him, "What took you so long?"
• Déjà Vu: Razor discusses this with T-Bone. They clashed with Dark Kat in the past, when they were Enforcers, and Feral was also involved. Now all three parties are drawn together again.
  • When Chance/T-Bone faces Dark Kat by himself, Feral intervenes like last time, but he's prepared to outmaneuver Feral and take down Dark Kat, all while lampshading this trope.
    T-Bone: Deja Vu City! But he's not crowdin' me out this time!
• Dirty Coward: Steel. Despite wanting to be commander of the Enforcers, when he finally has a chance to see some action, he freezes up and doesn't even fight back.
  Feral: And you wanted my job?
• A Day in the Limelight: Feral has a more actively heroic role in this episode than previously, even if his plan doesn't work.
• Distressed Dude: Commander Feral spends most of the episode taken prisoner.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: (Hopefully) completely unintentional. In the scene where it's revealed Razor still has the pepper he put down his pants when he cheated in the contest, T-Bone, congratulating him, calls him "one macho kat." We then see a close up of the pepper making a huge bulge down the leg of Razor's fight suit, as he gives it a loving pat and says "Ain't it the truth?"
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Dark Kat nicknames the Fear Ship the Doomsday Express, calls his atomic bomb the Doomsday Device, and won't shut up about "Doomsday."
  Dark Kat: And now it's Doomsday time!
• Eating Contest: When contacted by Callie, Chance and Jake are in the midst of seeing who eat the most extra-spicy mongo peppers.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Dark Kat's first act is to cut a bridge in half, apparently For the Evulz. When he actually appears, he threatens to make all of Megakat City suffer for the actions of the guards who refuse to bow down to him (and intends to do that whether they do or don't).
  • Although she appeared in "The Giant Bacteria", this episode is the first time reporter Ann Gora actually exhibits a personality. Her attempt to make Al fly closer to Dark Kat's ship despite the danger shows that she is eager for a story to the point of needless recklessness.
  • Al himself quickly establishes that he is cautious when he refuses to obey her.
  • Steel is introduced yelling at bystanders through a megaphone and trying to prevent Deputy Mayor Briggs from entering the scene. This cements him as an arrogant blowhard who likes lording his perceived superiority over others.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dark Kat is quite polite to his captive while discussing how he plans to wipe a city full of thousands, maybe even millions of people off the face of the Earth.
  Dark Kat: So much for the SWAT Kats. Now, where was I? Oh yes! Doomsday!
• Flashback: An extended one halfway through the second act which reveals how Chance and Jake first encountered Dark Kat, got unjustly kicked out of the Enforcers and became the SWAT Kats.
• For the Evulz: At the beginning of the episode Dark Kat uses his ship's laser to slice a bridge in half. He doesn't get anything out of it, besides establishing that wasn't a nice ominous shadow flying past.
• Glory Hound: Feral is portrayed this way in the flashback. He's so intent on being the one to take down Dark Kat that he rams Chance and Jake's jet out of the way.
• Go Through Me: The lead technician in the nuclear power plant tries this. The Creeplings just pick him up and throw him aside like nothing.
• Heroism Motive Speech: Jake gives one during the Flashback. It's an epiphany that leads him and Chance to become the SWAT Kats.
  Jake: Hey, y'know Chance, there's enough military salvage here to build our own jet.
  Chance: And do what?
  Jake: Get back in the air and get back at Dark Kat! And all the other criminal scum who rear their ugly heads in Megakat City. Only this time, we do it our way!
  Chance: Well, what are we waitin’ for, buddy?
• Hope Spot: Feral manages to get himself untied and grabs a rock, sneaking up on Dark Kat and intending to clobber him with it, but Big Purple knocks him aside before he can strike.
• Huge Holographic Head: Dark Kat addresses the guards at the nuclear power plant this way.
• James Bondage: Feral being Bound and Gagged in the Volcano Lair.
• Jerkass Has a Point: As is usual for Commander Feral.
• Just Plane Wrong: When Dark Kat shoots down the news chopper, Al says "We've lost our main rotor!" Except it lacks a tail rotor (like every helicopter in SWAT Kats), so what it lost was its only rotor.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Steel. The most that happens to him despite betraying Feral and trying to get him killed is that Feral takes him for a scary ride in the jet.
  • Jake. He's never punished for cheating in the eating contest.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The SWAT Kats beat a hasty retreat back to the hangar after the Fear Ship's head beam damages Razor's targeting computer. The alternative was remaining and letting a second hit and blowing up. Steel mocks them for what he sees as their cowardice, but Feral tells him to shut up.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the previous episode, "The Wrath of Dark Kat" contains no deaths except Creeplings. Even Dark Kat, though he seems to die crashing in his ship at the end, is eventually revealed to have survived. Dark Kat targets the guard shack at the beginning rather than the guards themselves, and even when he targets vehicles, such as the guards' Jeeps and the Enforcers' tanks and jets, their occupants always manage to leap free before their vehicles blow up. It's possible this was a direct result of complaints about the previous episode's more gruesome elements.
• Literal Cliffhanger: T-Bone clinging to the wall of the spike pit.
• A Molten Date with Death: Dark Kat tries to kill the SWAT Kats this way. They narrow escape.
• Mighty Glacier: Dark Kat is slow in a fight, but he's huge.
• Never My Fault: Neither Feral nor Chance accepts blame for the destruction of Enforcer Headquarters and letting Dark Kat escape. Although Feral did ram Chance and Jake's jet out of the way, Chance did disobey a direct order from his superior. Nor did he help his and Jake's case by choosing to argue about it with Feral right afterward.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Jake cheats in the pepper-eating contest by stuffing the pepper into his pants and making a chomping noise when Chance isn't looking. He receives no comeuppance for this.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The episode ends this way with T-Bone flying off to pick up Razor.
• Offhand Backhand: Done to Feral by Dark Kat when he tries to hit him with a rock.
• Only I Can Kill Him: Comes up twice. The argument over who gets to shoot down Dark Kat's crippled fighter jet in the flashback is what starts everything; Feral demands that Chance and Jake back off and let him shoot Dark Kat, but Chance refuses on the grounds that they have a lock already. This comes up again at the end when Feral demands that T-Bone let him have the kill after T-Bone has disabled the Fear Ship's shields, but not only doesn't Feral get a shot off because Steel freezes up in back, but T-Bone ends the issue by blinding Feral with a smokescreen before shooting down the Fear Ship himself.
• Origins Episode: The flashback reveals how Jake and Chance decided to become the SWAT Kats.
• Out of Focus: Callie vanishes from the episode about halfway through the second act and is never seen again.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Despite their tiny size, the Creeplings are capable of lifting and throwing a full-grown kat in a heavy lead-lined radiation suit.
• Pit Trap: Dark Kat throws T-Bone into one of these, which is lined at the bottom with the obligatory Spikes of Doom.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Prior to betraying Feral, Steel does nothing but suck up to him and do things he thinks will endear himself to his commanding officer, such as trying to prevent Callie from crossing the barricade.
• Properly Paranoid: Al the pilot refuses to fly the news chopper closer to the Fear Ship because "It's too dangerous." Not even one minute later, he's proven right when it shoots off the chopper's rotor blades.
• Reused Character Design: Except for the two guys at the front gate, all the nuclear power plant guards are the same character model recycled about twenty times.
• Riding the Bomb: Razor, very much against his will, when a Creepling drops the Doomsday Device with him still clinging to it.
• Roar Before Beating: Dark Kat during his fight with T-Bone.
• Scare 'Em Straight: This appears to be Feral's motivation for making Steel his gunner in the final battle, despite him being next to useless and having no combat experience.
  Feral: You want my job, green horn? This is how you learn it.
• Some Kind of Force Field: The Fear Ship is protected by one of these. Razor even uses the trope name, word for word, to describe it.
• Stab the Salad: When we first see Chance and Jake, there's a very dramatic montage of them tying on Rambo style headbands and pulling on gloves, looking as though they're about to fight... but then they put bibs on and it's revealed they're just really, really intensely preparing for an Eating Contest.
• Stress Vomit: It's heavily implied Steel pukes in the backseat of the jet.
• Take My Hand!: Razor when helping T-Bone out of the spike pit.
• Tank Goodness: This episode introduces the Peacekeeper, the Enforcers' main battle tank.
  • Tanks, but No Tanks: Unfortunately, they're rather poorly designed. In particular, their main guns only seem capable of pivoting up and down, but not moving side to side.
  • Tanks for Nothing: In addition, the energy blasts they fire don't penetrate the Fear Ship's forcefield. Dark Kat destroys them pretty easily.
• Too Dumb to Live: The two guards at the nuclear power plant's main gate are either this or just suicidally overconfident. Their response to the sight of the Fear Ship? Pull their sidearms (standard-issue laser pistols) and demand Dark Kat's immediate surrender. They're just lucky that he shoots their guard shack and not them (see Lighter and Softer).
• Turn in Your Badge: Feral fires Chance and Jake from the Enforcers in the flashback, and they toss their helmets away.
• Unishment: Downplayed. Feral decided to stick Jake and Chance in a salvage yard to pay off the damages to Enforcer HQ. It's cruel to pay debt from a menial job, which is likely to take forever to do. Even more so with two workers they can't stand. However, when they find working machine and vehicle parts from the military to eventually build what would be their Cool Plane (The Turbo Kat), the future SWAT Kats treat their punishment as this. They have a Home Base to build and maintain their gear, they can protect the city without Enforcer authority, and Feral doesn't bother to check on them.
• Visionary Villain: His Bomb Throwing Anarchist tendencies aside, Dark Kat avoids the common problem of And Then What? by having a definite plan for after he blows Megakat City into nuclear litter: he wants to rebuild it into "Dark Kat City", a post-apocalyptic hellscape "where lawlessness is the law of the land."
• Volcano Lair: Dark Kat's Supervillain Lair is a big hollowed out volcano a la You Only Live Twice with lots of skulls, spike pits and evil-looking machinery and lava flowing everywhere.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: When Steel gets sick in Feral's jet.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Doomsday Device, an atomic bomb covered in Spikes of Villainy.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Steel arrives in a jet at Dark Kat's lair with two other jets. They disappear after this scene and do not accompany him and Feral to pursue Dark Kat.
• Wire Dilemma: Parodied. When attempting to disarm the Doomsday Device, Razor reminds himself, "Always cut the red wire!" only to then pry off the side panel and discover all the wires are red!
  Razor: Dark Kat, you miserable psycho!
• The Worf Effect: The first three jets Feral sends against Dark Kat are played up as being flown by his finest pilots. Dark Kat shoots all three down (at the same time!) to show how dangerous he is.

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