Chapter Two – "The Undersea City"

A handy slide show recap reminds us that Unga Kahn is mad, a tyrant and wants to conquer the upper world. Sharad is apparently the man from episode one who was wearing the puffy hat. He is forever striving to protect his people from Unga Kahn. Diana is a "go-getting newspaper girl" who got mixed up in the affair because she’s a go-getting newspaper girl. Billy Norton is the small boy. It says he stowed aboard the submarine "through his love of adventure and admiration for Crash Corrigan" but it looked far more like an admiration for adventure and love for Crash Corrigan.

And we’re right back in the action. The Volkites are shooting sideways at our heros and Crash Corrigan clambers up a mountain to his certain death. The lackey with the high tech corset activates all his toys and the mountain collapses. Absolutely no chance Crash will survive. None what so ever. Bombs, ray guns, Volkites – he’s toast.

Oh wait, he jumped down a few feet, landed on some sand and was able to run away. Hurray.

"At least those mechanical men can’t follow us through the flames" says Crash. Metal being so flammable and all that.

Diana actually refers to herself as "girl reporter".

Two men on horseback spot Crash and co. They are wearing white hats so must be goodies. They think Crash and his posse must be in league with Unga Kahn. Oh the misunderstanding. Several hundred of them ride over to apprehend them.

"We are returning with strange prisoners" claims the leader of the hundreds of white hated men. He sends a minion in to see the puffy hat guy and he almost kills two peasants by opening a door in their face.

Unga Kahn discovers that the white hats have taken Crash prisoner so sends several hundred of his own black hats to capture them. Swords are drawn and black fights white like a chess match that has got horribly out of hand.

Meanwhile, Crash is taken back to the Sacred City by a man whose helmet makes him look like the unfortunate result of a late night encounter between a pale woman and a cheap vibrator.

Luckily, the white hats are crap at tying knots and Crash is free almost immediately. He hasn’t noticed the colour of his captor’s hat so assumes he should escape. Which is fair enough as they didn't notice that Crash was wearing a white hat. Oh the lack of communication. The Juggernaut is sent out and the white hats run away in fear. The Volkites manage capture the girl reporter and the professor using mostly footage lifted from the previous episode. Crash bravely hides behind a rock while this is happening. He then abandons the small boy and decides to run after the Juggernaut.

Cue comedy – a Volkite finds the two comedy characters asleep by the lake. He takes them both prisoner but kindly lets them take their parrot with them. Comedy character number one plays the mouth organ but even that can’t save them.

Crash has managed to keep pace with the high speed battle talk and watches it go into the mountain. From the next shot it appears the Volkites did a very nice job of reverse parking.

The plucky girl reporter and the professor are taken to meet Unga Kahn. He welcomes them with one of his trademark scowls.

Kahn explains that the goodies are baddies, the baddies are goodies – quite literally black is white and white is black.

Crash spies an insanely difficult way to break into the tower. It is more or less how Pertwee and Sarah Jane got into the Dark Tower in the Five Doctors.

Professor Norton explains about rocket power. Unga Kahn asks if the professor could build rockets big enough to lift his tower up to the surface. Norton says he can. Unga Kahn is so happy that he gives them another of his trademark scowls.

Having brilliantly convinced them that he’s a nice guy and having won their confidence enough that the professor is willing to share his knowledge for the betterment of humanity, Kahn decides to add, in passing, that he has harnessed the power of the atom and that his intentions are as follows.

"I’ll either become the supreme ruler of the upper world… or destroy it!"

He underlines the seriousness of his ambition with, yes – you’ve guessed it, another trademark scowl. Warmth, happiness, anger – is their nothing he can’t display in a scowl?

The plucky female reporter tells Kahn that the professor would never help with such a fiendish plan. He backs her up by saying that he will, indeed, never help with such a fiendish plan. Kahn scowls.

Meanwhile, Crash has gone one better than Pertwee. Instead of merely sliding across and convenient cable between mountain and tower, he decides to use it as a tightrope and walk right across. It was a tense fifteen seconds and no mistake.

He climbs in through a window, creeps up on a couple of guards and has an impromptu manly grapple. He manages to choke them both out and steal their clothes.

The professor is put into a cubicle to "persuade" him to build Unga Kahn’s rockets for him. The room fills with smoke and "the transformer" begins its fiendish work.

Crash, now dressed as a baddy, shoots the corset from Unga Kahn’s lackey and releases the professor. I have to ask why he bothered to dress up as a guard if the first thing he was going to do was draw so much attention to himself. Maybe he just liked the idea of wearing a miniskirt.

He grapples with a few more men, including the rarely seen aeroplane spin, before a Volkite lumbers in and blows his way through the door. Crash tries shooting it but for once he’s met an alien menace that is immune to bullets. Fear not – he chucks a chair at it and it falls over.

The lackey sneaks over and picks up the fallen Volkite’s ray gun. He shoots Crash and he falls down a long lift shaft to his certain death. He got lucky once but this time there is no way he could’ve possibly survived.