Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.42: Mass Transit Trouble

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.42: Mass Transit Trouble

Original Air Date: November 8th, 1993

The nineties were a decade that had plenty of real problems but that didn't stop bored housewives and obnoxious moral guardians from getting mad about unimportant shit. Lots of kids media was controversial at the time. Is "Ren and Stimpy" too gross? Is "Power Rangers" too violent? Is "Harry Potter" turning our children into Satanists? These are all real, dumb questions people asked. "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" largely avoided that level of controversy, on account of it being about goofy cartoon animals and being too cheap and unambitious for anyone to care. However, one episode did manage to get removed from rotation twice. "Mass Transit Trouble" has Robotnik threatening to blow up several landmarks, including an airport. This would get the episode pulled after the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. Who would've thought that this, the most ridiculous of cartoons, would be uncomfortably close to real life tragedies twice?

Robotnik returns once again to terrorize the transportation industry in "Mass Transit Trouble." Sonic and Tails race to stop a freight ship from crashing into an iceberg, because Coconuts has taken the local lighthouse keeper hostage. This is just the first of a triple assault across the Mobian globe. Sonic has to run around the planet to a crisis Scratch has caused at an airport before going around the world again to stop a train crash engineered by Grounder. Already exhausted, Robotnik then reveals his real plan via a world-threatening message: Powerful bombs have been planted in each of the previous locations, each designed to go off at the same time. Sonic can't be in all three places at once, after all. The worn-down hedgehog hero must run off again to try and save the day. 

Most of Robotnik's villainous plots in "AoStH" are pretty hairbrained yet "Mass Transit Trouble" features him in an unusually clever mode. Sonic may casually violate the laws of physics all the time but he can't be in multiple places at the same time. Robotnik and his bots can't outrun the hedgehog but perhaps they can overwhelm him. Even super-fast video game mascots have their limits. Tiring a hero out with simultaneous, far spread-out threats to public safety is pretty clever. It's the kind of shit Lex Luther tries all the time but I'm surprised goofy ol' Robotnik went there.

It's a set-up rift with suspense and, surprisingly, "AoStH" tries to take advantage of that. Even by the time he gets to the train station, where he has to redirect four trains set on a collision course with each other, Sonic is already exhausted. The presence of multiple bombs forces him to out-think his opponent, doing crazy shit like heating his shoes up to red hot temperature or just sawing through the fucking earth. Yet, even then, there's always a time limit. Sonic is always racing against the clock, a good way to increase dramatic tension. Even at the end, after he successfully grabs all the bombs, he still has to detonate them in a safe place without getting himself exploded. Up until the very end, our hedgehog hero is almost out of time. 

Yet "AoStH" is always a goofy kids show, so it can never let the situation get too serious. The episode is packed full of random, dumbass gags. Like the lighthouse keeper being a stereotypical Scotsman. (He also, despite being a seagull, has a mouth full of disturbingly human-like teeth.) Or the train conductor being a slow-poke turtle. The most surreal of these jokes has a bomb detector acting like an overeager hound dog, leading Sonic to a "bomb" movie and letting him float through the air at one point. The most underachieving joke has Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts attempting to blow up Sonic on their own. This, predictably, goes wrong for them. The show is so concerned with undermining its own tension, that quick and random sight gags are included as Sonic is running from place-to-place. This is an example of the show having a solid premise and even potentially a good script but being unable to commit to it, due to the childish limits of the series' tone.

Once again, Robotnik proves to be the most interesting character in this show, even if he's largely off-screen in this episode. In "Mass Transit Trouble," Robotnik graduates from wannabe tyrant and cartoon supervillain to full-blown terrorist. He's always wanted to make Mobius bow to him but he resorts to threatening untold innocents with death and violence here. Perhaps it's just because this episode got pulled due to two real life terrorist attacks that made me feel this way but it feels like a surprisingly severe action by the villain. In order to beat-down Sonic, he really is willing to kill a bunch of regular people. He never even asks for a ransom or anything. Robotnik is just straight-up out to terrorize people in this one. It's unexpected, to say the least. (Despite his unambiguously evil actions here, there's still a sight gag involving an advertisement for Robotnik brands. Suggesting he's still trying to operate as a businessman, even while functioning as a public terrorist. Truly, this show takes place in a capitalistic dystopia.)

If the comics or "SatAM" had tackled a plot line like this, it probably would've made for a damn fine issue or episode. In the hands of the goofiest "Sonic" cartoon, it can only reach the level of an okay episode. It's hard to get too invested in a serious situation, when goofy jokes have to be inserted at every opportunity. Still, I have to give the writers some points for thinking up a good premise for an episode, even if the execution could've been a little better. [6/10]