Review for Blue Thunder: The Complete Series

Introduction

My nostalgia buttons got pushed again when Mediumrare announced the release of Blue Thunder on DVD. That's the TV series that I adored as a kid, spun off the Roy Scheider movie. Once again I found that my golden memories of the show were warped. I was sure that I had seen tons of Blue Thunder when it was on the BBC, and it was a strong rival in my affections to Airwolf. It turns out that Blue Thunder's run came to an end after a mere 11 episodes. It certainly doesn't sound like the epoch defining television that I recall. But then again, I remember one rainy games lesson at school, the PE teachers rented out Blue Thunder on VHS for us to watch, not an Airwolf movie. Of course they, and we were expecting Blue Thunder as in the TV series. When it came to a room full of 12-year-old boys and the wonders of naked yoga, a riot almost broke out. But that was the movie, and this is the TV series, and the only thing it has in common is the helicopter, while the characters are all different.  Frank Murphy becomes Frank Chaney, Jack Braddock becomes Ed Braddock, and Richard Lymangood becomes Clifton Wonderlove. But that helicopter is so much cooler than Airwolf. ITV's long running top pre-teen draw was a glorified Sikorsky, painted black, and given some ridiculous abilities. Blue Thunder, based on Aerospatiale Gazelle actually looked the part, an airborne tank of a helicopter. Its capabilities seemed realistic (except for Hollywood's usual outlandish understanding of computers), and when compared to military helicopters like the Cobra, and especially the Apache, it could almost be a documentary. I even thought the Blue Thunder theme music was better.


Once again I lament that my favourite television series always come to a premature end. Earlier this year, it was Street Hawk that finally came to DVD, and I felt a little justified in holding a torch for those super-powered motorbike antics, which came to an end after barely 13 episodes. Maybe Blue Thunder will justify my faith in it too. The Astro Division of the LAPD are the policemen of the sky, but even their choppers aren't always up to the task. But an operation in conjunction with the Federal Government aims to rectify that. Blue Thunder is a revolutionary chopper, an urban gunship with armour plating, and a cannon that does more than just pacify. But it is its capability as a surveillance platform that is truly astounding. Infrared, sound detection, whisper mode silent flying, and a sophisticated computer system make it more a tool for detective work than urban warfare. Its crew consist of maverick pilot Frank Chaney, and flight engineer and tech whiz kid Clifton 'JAFO' Wonderlove. Ground support comes from Rolling Thunder, with former NFL giants turned cops and engineers Richard 'Ski' Butowski and Lyman 'Bubba' Kelsey, while Captain Ed Braddock runs the operation. These missions are far from conventional police work. All 11 episodes of Blue Thunder are presented across three discs.


1. Second Thunder
There's a rogue pilot out there, taking pot shots at police helicopters. It gets even more serious when a helicopter is shot down, claiming the lives of its crew. Frank Chaney is itching to face down the criminal in Blue Thunder, but his maverick nature doesn't score any points with Captain Braddock. Yet when it is revealed that the rogue pilot is a drug runner named PVC, it becomes personal. PVC was a police informant, Frank's informant, who still brought drugs in under their noses, and murdered Frank's partner. This is Frank's chance to even the score.

2. A Clear and Present Danger
An armed raid on a bank, supported from the air by a WWII fighter plane is bad enough, but when the raid is carried out by a military supremacist group, intent on overthrowing the Federal Government and declaring independence, that becomes a top priority for Blue Thunder. The trouble is that the government have also sent a bureaucrat along to see that the mission is accomplished by the book. On the bright side, the bureaucrat is a leggy blonde.


3. Arms Race
Gunrunners are getting cocky when they feel that they can blow random planes out of the sky with impunity. The sticking point is trying to find a way into the group, which is tightly knit and wary of strangers. When customs agents arrest Frank Chaney's ex-girlfriend from his Vietnam days, smuggling cash for the group, it looks like they have their way in. But not everything is as it seems

4. Revenge in the Sky
An F86 Sabre has been stolen, a Korean War veteran fighter jet that was being lovingly restored. It would take just a few parts to turn it from a cherished antique to a working weapon, and it isn't long before reports come in of aerial attacks. It would certainly get the government concerned, but the Federal agents who arrive to liase with Blue Thunder are surprisingly tight-lipped and reticent, telling them only enough to aid their search and destroy mission. But then, someone tries to kill Frank Chaney, twice. Then someone he's close to is murdered; their dying words, 'KGB'.


5. Trojan Horse
Rescuing a kidnap victim so that she can testify against a white-collar criminal is just the start of Blue Thunder's involvement with Richard Lassiter. He may have been sentenced to 25 years behind bars, but it's in a medium security prison. If that isn't enough, he aims to escape long before he even gets there. Frank's stubborn belief in his hunch is enough to put paid to that scheme, but once inside, rumours of a breakout plan begin to surface. Someone will have to go in undercover as a prisoner.

6. Skydiver
An air show is the perfect place to show off the latest aerial crime-fighting hardware to an awestruck public, but Blue Thunder winds up being upstaged by an unscheduled daredevil skydiver. Gretchen Terrell turns out to be pretty cute under the parachute silk, so it's easy to forgive her stunts, and even easier to give her a ride in Blue Thunder in exchange for some skydiving lessons. But this is the worst time for the Blue Thunder team to be lax in their security. They are supposed to be protecting the ambassador of a small, strife-torn country, just as it's about to make a statement on the world stage.


7. Clipped Wings
Frank Chaney's maverick nature finally catches up to him, when during a drug stakeout; he breaks his mission to deal with a kidnapping report. He's found culpable when another police helicopter gets caught in Blue Thunder's downdraft and is forced down, letting the kidnappers escape. That chopper's pilot, Peter Anson, was originally the second choice for the Blue Thunder program, and now that Chaney's been busted down to a beat cop, the anal retentive Anson is left leading the Blue Thunder team, much to the annoyance of the other members. Meanwhile, the kidnappers are still out there, still kidnapping public figures, and still demanding a huge ransom. The only way for Chaney to get back where he belongs is to bust the kidnappers himself.

8. Payload
The world's first private space shuttle, the Argo is in orbit carrying out a ground breaking gene-splicing experiment. But what the general public doesn't know is that the genes being spliced will result in an antidote to most of the world's bioweapons. The major arms dealers don't want that, which is why Blue Thunder has been placed in charge of security. It's the worst possible time, as a vulnerability in Blue Thunder's systems has been uncovered. It can be solved with an ECM unit, for which they'll need Blue Thunder's original creator. The trouble is that someone else has got to the professor first.


9. The Long Flight
Captain Braddock's daughter comes home from college just long enough to be kidnapped. When you're a police captain leading a task force against organised crime, it tends to make loved ones a target, and now Amy Braddock is a pawn in a murderous drug dealer's game with the LAPD. Cobra doesn't just want Blue Thunder off his back, he wants the helicopter itself. What better to transport drugs back and forth across the Mexican border with? As Captain Braddock tries to do the right thing, Blue Thunder will have to fracture a few international laws to get the captain's daughter back.

10. Godchild
Of all the things a girl could inherit from her grandfather, the last thing anyone would want would be a heap of mob records. Now Lisa Ritchie is the target of all manner of hoodlums, aiming to get their hands on those records, or aiming to silence her before she could pass them on to anyone else. Frank has a hard time convincing her to accept Blue Thunder's protection, especially as Lisa is a Family girl through and through.


11. The Island
Blue Thunder has a new, overseas mission, and this time JAFO isn't invited. The reason is that Blue Thunder has a new co-pilot, a girl named Terry who is familiar with the Caribbean Island of Malaga. It's a little despotic bit of paradise, whose Prime Minister rules with an iron thumb, crushing all opposition like a bug. You'd think no one in their right mind would be too bothered by an assassination. But it's the KGB bank-rolling this assassination, and they've hired US mercenaries to do it, just to blame the US when Malaga becomes communist.

The Discs

The 4:3 transfer is pretty good, especially considering that Blue Thunder was one of those eighties action serials that was shot on film, and what we get here are native PAL transfers. It's all clear, sharp, and colourful, with not much in the way of digital artefacts, print damage or signs of age, except for the fashions. I guess Blue Thunder hasn't seen a lot of wear and tear over the years from repeats. The only real annoyance is the prevalence of stock footage, not only from the feature film, but also from earlier in the series as well. It gets tiresome by the third episode. Audio comes in DD 2.0 English, and is clear enough. There aren't any subtitles though.

All three discs get animated menus, but the only extra features of note are the episode synopses that you can read when you select an episode individually. If you tire of pressing buttons, there is a play all option.

Conclusion

Ham and cheese! Blue Thunder is piloted by ham and cheese. James Farentino slices the ham, while Dana Carvey cuts the cheese. I wish I had a time machine so that I could go back to my eleven-year-old self and give me a slap. Blue Thunder is bad. It's excruciatingly bad. It's awful, it's painful, and I can't believe that I had such rose-tinted memories of it. I can't believe that I let those rose-tinted memories be shattered by doing something dumb, like actually watching the show again. Fortunately for my more world-weary, experienced, and cynical self, Blue Thunder is definitely in the so bad that it's good category. There came a point where all of James Farentino's over the top extemporising (seriously, Shatner would cringe), and all of Dana Carvey's single note impersonations (he is the original Alistair McGowan), all just clicked into a fugue of daftness, and I could enjoy the show with the same sort of sneering appreciation I have for other such 'classics' like T.J. Hooker and Knight Rider. This is a show that excels at sucking, a show that drinking games are created around.


It's probably a little unfair to compare it to the Blue Thunder movie; after all they were aimed at completely different audiences. But Blue Thunder the movie was a taut, engaging tech-thriller with a sharp story and engaging performances, with a class cast. All that Blue Thunder the series inherits is some stock footage and the helicopter. It has all the smarts, the edginess and the wit taken out of it, and the result is aimed at the juvenile age bracket, precisely the bracket that I was in when I first saw it. And unlike its contemporaries on TV, it didn't try to appeal to broader audiences by throwing in a little depth. The stories and the writing are purely kids' stuff, making little sense beyond good guys and bad guys dynamics, and the necessity of blowing something up at least once an episode. To be fair to the actors, it's hard to bring dimension to single-note characters that have little more to them than just the labels, maverick pilot, goofball flight engineer, and shouty captain.


One problem is that Blue Thunder doesn't make a very interesting hero vehicle. It may be realistic as a helicopter, filled with all manner of fancy avionics and tooled up with a Vulcan cannon, able to loop-the-loop, but it doesn't do anything too fantastic like breaking the speed of sound, or holding a conversation with the pilot. What made it fascinating in the movie was that it was as much hero vehicle as villain, and that its surveillance capabilities made it a Big Brother tool of the state, something that means that the movie still hasn't dated. That ambiguity can't carry through to a kid's TV action show, so any questions as to the rights and wrongs of a helicopter gunship applied to police work are quickly brushed under the carpet in favour of that good guys versus bad guys simplicity.


It's a pretty simple set up though, with bad guys committing crimes somewhere in the city, Blue Thunder investigating, bad guys invariably pulling a surplus WWII fighter plane out of their arsenal, dogfight over the city, good guys win, run end credits. There are a couple of variations, with the KGB getting in on the act reminding us that there is a Cold War on, Chaney being reassigned to ground duty, the Captain's daughter kidnapped, and invariably one of the team will have to go in undercover at some point. But it really is a case of rinse and repeat from episode to episode, with a comfortable familiarity quickly establishing itself. There is a whole lot of stock footage too, not only from the movie, but also from earlier episodes. Regardless of where the story is taking place, the city, the suburbs or the country, the terrain always looks like the same sparsely vegetated brush-land. But some of the aerial photography and stunt flying indicates a whole lot of time and money spent on the project, and it's a shame that the show didn't live up to the stunts.


The saving grace of Blue Thunder, especially in the earlier episodes is the comic relief. Rolling Thunder, the ground support team comprises a couple of former NFL players turned cops, Bubba and Ski. In a coincidence, both actors were NFL players before treading the boards. I guess to make things easier for them, the characters and actors shared similar names, Bubba Smith became Bubba Kelsey, while Dick Butkus became Richard Butowski. The irony is that of the cast, they deliver the more natural performances. They also have the most to do as characters, they are the most likely to have to go in undercover, and they also have a second string to their bow, as they are always ribbing each other about their NFL careers, and always playing some sort of prank on each other. Ski is a slob who drives fast, while Bubba is more meticulous, and doesn't like fast driving. It's an odd couple byplay that makes the ground crew's screen time more valuable than that of the stars.


Every new show has its teething troubles, and Blue Thunder's lasted most of the way through the series. It's around episode 10 that the show finally finds a groove. Farentino and Carvey dial their performances back, and the writers start aiming their scripts at an audience aged in the double figures, although the childish aspects of the show don't vanish completely. The final episode even diverges from the aerial police work, with Blue Thunder assigned to a federal mission to protect the Prime Minister of an island from assassins, a banana republic that is the football being kicked around between the Russians and the US. This is probably the smartest and most interesting of the episodes here, but the clandestine cold war mission treads firmly on Airwolf's bailiwick. I'm no longer surprised or aggrieved that Blue Thunder was cancelled. But I still think that in terms of aesthetics, the Blue Thunder helicopter has it hands down over Airwolf. I do accept that the theme tune is awful though.


Blue Thunder is fun for nostalgic value, as long as your nostalgia for this show isn't centred on the misapprehension that it was any good. It's the epitome of silly eighties action television, and as long as you can get behind just how dumb this show actually is, you'll enjoy it a whole lot more than if you were to take it at all seriously. I wonder which eighties show will get the back catalogue treatment next. I hope it's Manimal. Then I can rub my hands with glee while hitting my head against the desk in exasperation, all at the same time.