RoboCop: Alpha Commando (1998-1999)

Starring: David Sobolov, Akiko Morison, Dean Haglund, Blu Mankuma, and Campbell Lane
Grade: B

In yet another attempt to revive RoboCop for television after the ill-fated live-action series from 1994, the franchise goes back into the animated realm at what seemed like the perfect time. With science fiction and more mature action-adventure cartoons being all the rage with the young teenage demographic at the time, greenlighting RoboCop: Alpha Commando made sense for a lot of reasons. Just like the idea behind the animated RoboCop program from 1988 attempting to live in the world of action figure friendly shows like G.I. Joe and He-Man, RoboCop: Alpha Commando is very much a product of the time period it came out in. To give you an idea, it’s a show that you would find in that “Fox Kids” era of television that consisted of cartoons possessing a solid balance of crime fighting, action violence, and humor, with writing that didn’t dumb down but invited you to engage with its world. It’s similar to the style and tone of shows like the Extreme Ghostbusters, Men in Black: The Series, X-Men, and Batman: The Animated Series, but it contains a lot of light-hearted humor to make it fun for the whole family while keeping the attention span of a younger kid. At the same time, it doesn’t insult the intelligence of teens or adults. Instead, you will find yourself swept up in the adventure more often than not.

Surpassing the 1988 cartoon in just the three-part pilot episode, RoboCop/Alex Murphy (Sobolov) has been cryogenically frozen and brought back to life in the year 2020 A.D. to help Agent Nancy Miner (Morison), a spy for the heroic Alpha Division organization. For the record, this is the first time in the franchise where they tell the viewer what year it is. After the pilot episode however, we see why they never did that because they inexplicably change it to 2030, as if it matters at that point. Regardless, we don’t know why RoboCop has been offline for so long, but he’s reactivated because Deputy Mayor Goodrich is known to have a lot of law enforcement officials in his back pocket. With this in mind, Alpha Prime (Lane) reactivates RoboCop to assist Miner in her mission to stop a potential assassination attempt. Naturally, she hates robots and doesn’t like the idea once she meets her temporary partner, but as Murphy reiterates throughout the series as sort of an angry catchphrase, “I am not a robot”. You don’t have to tell RoboCop fans that. Anyway, RoboCop wins over Miner not long after by kicking major ass left and right and saving Miner’s life after jumping onto a bomb that was right in front of her (Justice Reborn: Part 1). To be fair, he could’ve punted the thing into the next century to avoid this action entirely, but we’re not going to nitpick too hard. From this point on, they become close friends and partners, and Miner returns the favor by saving Murphy in a warehouse in Canada he’s taken to by recurring Russian villain Marta Kludge (Justice Reborn: Part 2). Now, along with Kludge, many of the villains of RoboCop: Alpha Commando are members of terrorist organization DARC (Directorate for Anarchy, Revenge, and Chaos). It’s a retread of SPECTRE, KAOS or even HYDRA, but this is just one of the few unoriginal ideas of the show and they should not be faulted for it. If anything, it just gives them a good basis to build off of and go back to anytime they need a big episode to liven things up. They do it in spades too, as Alpha Commando is everything the previous two attempts at a series weren’t.

First of all, the action is exciting, suspenseful, and innovative, as the writers have given RoboCop a whole new crop of gadgets and weapons to use to keep the viewer guessing like a heat gun, a glue gun, a grappling hook, missile launches, calf thrusters, a fire extinguisher, chainsaws, and so much more depending on the situation. Plus, he has an awesome, futuristic motorcycle he rides from to time that makes you wonder why they didn’t think of it in any previous RoboCop production prior, especially after that great motorcycle chase in RoboCop 2. The creativity doesn’t stop there either. Here, even when they are watching TV, RoboCop uses the inside of his chest to heat up some popcorn (Best Friends). Of course, this is the second biggest improvement: the humor. In the midst of all the action violence, Murphy will have moments where he teases crossing the line like cutting open Elsa’s parachute but then catching her just before she hits the ground before adding, “Just kidding” (We’ll Always Have Paris). This is the most personality RoboCop has shown before or since, and it’s a welcomed change of pace. He still has the robotic voice and deals with flashbacks of his family and misses them dearly, as that heartfelt “Goodbye” he says to them once they escape through the vent, after saving them from Brink in the two-part “Family Reunion” arc, speaks volumes. Nevertheless, they add wrinkles of humor and other emotions to his character that make the energy of this program higher than it’s ever been in the franchise. Even now, I can’t help but laugh at the end of “Maxop 4” when the criminal that RoboCop befriended starts messing with Miner and he responds, “Stop G-man. She knows karate” or commenting “I hope he is not our evening’s entertainment” when Jack Queso makes a poor joke at the beginning of “Cop Games“. Then, there’s the bonus final message of “Inside Out” where Alpha Prime reveals the real reason as to why the events of the episode happened, and Murphy chalks it up as, “Never underestimate the destructive power of pettiness”. As funny as it sounds, that’s life advice. The 1994 live-action show played with some dry humor coming from Murphy, but this Murphy is much more fun. He’s not some goofball that detracts too far from the heart of the character either.

In fact, in “Plague on Ice“, the crux of the episode is Anais Gaia releasing the Fear Virus that preys on everyone’s fears. To overcome this, Murphy has to embrace his robotic side for a change to see through the illusions, and it’s fantastic. Still, why this take on Alex Murphy succeeds is because he’s less rigid than ever before. He has a tendency to comment funny puns after taking down a villain in the vein of James Bond or Austin Powers, and he’ll even throw out some chuckle-worthy trash talk like when he’s facing Rexor (Robopop). There’s this dramatic face to face they have in the heat of battle, and he comments “I wish I couldn’t see you”, prompting a perplexed Rexor to ask why. An aggressive but comical Murphy responds, “Because you’re really ugly!”, and it works, just because of well the build up to it is. It’s like RoboCop knows he has been given this new lease on life and wants to try and change with the times in an effort to get cooler, modernize, and bond with his co-workers. At one point, he even writes up a parking ticket on Miner as a joke (The Hermanator). Again, the humor is done in such a likeable way, fans of the franchise may actually appreciate the change. It’s harmless fun and an improvement. Plus, the comedic timing of Murphy is underrated, and it aligns with the basis of the narrative. He’s five years removed from his previous adventures, he’s introduced to a whole new Detroit that is even further into the future, and he’s very used to his life as RoboCop now. To be fair, he doesn’t forget it entirely. It’s always going to bother him, which is why he’s so easily convinced by Anais Gaia to transport himself into a human body via a DNA replicator in “Doppelganger” because he gets a chance to be a fully realized human being again. It’s the lone time we get to see Alex Murphy as himself, and you can see how elated he is for this small amount of time. Naturally, there’s a caveat that makes him age rapidly and they have to merge him back with the body of RoboCop before he dies at the end of the episode, but it’s just enough to show that the heart of the character will always be there for fans, even if it looks like he’s far past it on the surface.

Despite this, Alex Murphy has reached acceptance this time around, and that’s totally fine. This is where the series finds the voice of this version of Murphy. This Murphy doesn’t have to dwell in figuring out his own mythos in such dark and dramatic ways that previous movies or shows have done. We begin Alpha Commando where he’s well past that, knows who he is, and what his job is moving forward. It’s refreshing. Really, the entire show is refreshing and injects life into the dying property after an up and down decade for the titular protagonist. Making Alex Murphy this new and improved version of himself with a load of other gadgets, a more athletic body than ever before and might only be rivaled by the 2014 remake, and giving him a likeable, fun, loyal, and upbeat attitude and personality, allows him to win over the viewer rather quickly. His loyalty to his new friends in the show is also a major attribute of this Murphy. In a character-defining moment at the end of “While You Were Sleeping“, he defeats Elsa and has her handcuffed to wait for Brink. She pleads with RoboCop, saying how he doesn’t know what Brink will do to her, and Murphy straight-up tells her “…And I don’t care!”. Whether it was a tactic for her to reveal the locations of everyone doesn’t matter, this was an example of Murphy saying damn the prime directives. His friends mean too much to him that it overrides everything else. This is why his partnership with Agent Nancy Miner is as good as it is. With a solid voice acting performance from Akiko Morison, a great character design, and more personality and backstory than Anne Lewis ever showed in three movies and a cartoon, Miner is the second-best partner in the history of the franchise as a whole. As stated in the review of the live-action 1994 show, Yvette Nipar as Det. Madigan is still the overall best without question. Even so, Miner is an excellent addition and co-star to Alpha Commando. Her importance to the Alpha Division is introduced from the very beginning, but she’s not a character written with an unlikable ego that has trouble with RoboCop taking the spotlight or anything. It’s more about her hatred towards robots. Besides this, she’s just as dedicated to law enforcement as he is, and they work as a lovable team once he proves himself.

After the initial uneasiness, all is cool between the two, and the viewer never gets the sense of an agenda-pushing character that is used to upstage RoboCop to put Miner on a pedestal. It’s not controversial to say this either. Many animated programs are guilty of this to force the viewer into liking a new character regardless of gender, and it’s a tired, groan-inducing trope. If they do it right, the characters will lead by example and win the audience over through their actions. The writers shouldn’t need to make others look bad to achieve that. Yes, this is a dig at the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy and Lightyear. Thankfully, Alpha Commando doesn’t go down this lazy path with Agent Miner. The writers only give Miner reasonable, untrustworthy feelings about working with a robot. Once they partner up and show each other through their interactions and their passion for taking out evil, they become inseparable. By the end of the three-episode pilot, Miner solidifies herself as an early favorite. At the same time, they make her a role model without forcing the issue. Despite being this badass, action heroine in her own right that risks her life every day, she’s also a single mom. Her son is Matt, and the episodes involving Matt are never boring, as they only level-up Miner in the heat of battle (Cyber-Fagin, Power Play). It works within the series because it’s something Alex Murphy can relate to. Obviously, we know he’s a family man but can’t go back to his family because of how difficult it would be on them, so him hanging around Miner and her son from time to time is sweet because their interactions help Murphy connect with his human side. Later in the series in the episode “Father’s Day“, we also finally get to learn about Miner’s ex-husband. He’s known as a boring staples salesman to Matt and even Miner herself, but it turns out he’s a masked, whip-cracking secret agent for the Department of Weapons and has a deeper voice than the one he puts on for his former family. It’s a really cool twist and not only further develops people like Miner while inserting another entertaining character to the world of the show, that would have surely been a recurring character in future seasons had the show lasted, but it further showcases how much the writing has improved for this series compared to previous failures in the franchise.

All of the principal characters and a lot of the rogues’ gallery of villains and supporting characters that drop in and out of the show are well-defined, have colorful and detailed character designs, and really make their marks in the episodes they are given. Some are a little too fantastical to fit the show at first like The ERG being this inexplicable wire-monster with cool sunglasses (Robo Racer, The ERG and I), pirate Captain Jolly Roger Jones (Deep Trouble), and the human plant monster Dr. Mulch (Garden of Evil), but the writers do a good enough job within its 22 minutes to explain how they came to be, their motivations, and why the location they’re in and their backstory has led to this point, that all questions surrounding them are answered by the end of it. Though it teases becoming too much, it never crosses the line into outrageous, which is something the 1994 never figured out. With Alpha Commando, they find a way to justify everything. In fact, they do such a great job at world-building that when evil geneticist Anais Gaia creates a mutant monster Biomax (Survival of the Fittest), you’re fully on board to watch RoboCop fight this thing. When Dr. Mulch suffers was one of the most horrific demises since Emil in the first RoboCop film as he’s turned into a fucking tree, it actually makes sense as to how they get there by the end of the episode. That’s a testament to good writing. Surprisingly, the only thing that was questionable in terms of realism within the context of this world was Mulch’s former assistant from Louisiana in Katzu Bodine. At the end of “Garden of Evil“, she was inspired by Miner and RoboCop to go back to school. Upon her return in “Thank You Very Mulch“, she somehow has a PhD in plant physiology. There’s no time jump either. The timeline of the show is that of a daily thing. Are we just supposed to buy that this southern belle pulled off a doctorate between episodes 21 and 36 after starting from scratch? That’s more unbelievable than the group of evil clowns giving a virus to the city through the creation of Grin Cola (A Pretty Girl Is Like a Malady)! Besides this, the lone exception of depth out of the principal cast is Sgt. Reed, who doesn’t change all that much in the show, though he’s helpful and is a good filler character. He contains elements of Sgt. Reed from the movies and Sgt. Parks from the 1994 show.

Strangely enough, Reed in Alpha Commando is played by Blu Mankuma, who played Parks in the live-action show. It’s weird sometimes how all of this connects. Furthermore, it needs to be said how there are still inconsistences involving canon, with the most glaring problem being that the names of Murphy’s family are changed again. Here, his wife Ellen and son Jimmy are renamed “Susan” and “Rich”. Nevertheless, they are also under federal protection, so when they introduce themselves to Murphy in the “Family Reunion” arc, who’s obviously acting like he’s not Alex Murphy, they go by “Claire” and “Jack”. You have to shake your head at how confusing this detail is.

With your mind in a tailspin, it makes you echo the cries of the Harmony Bots: “Without order, society ceases”.

Rounding out the main cast is Dr. Cornelius Neumeier (Haglund), a clumsy, awkward, and extremely intelligent on-staff scientist who aids in fixing RoboCop, creating all the gadgetry on the show, and aiding in missions from time-to-time. We’ve seen this type of character before too, and he looks like Milo from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Even so, he’s a light-hearted supporting star that is a harmless guy to play off of. With Neumeier being a prime example of this, even the most basic characters are still written well enough that the episodes featuring them in bigger ways don’t take away from star at all. If anything, it enhances the show and keeps the viewer guessing. One of the better episodes has Neumeier having to save the day after being turned into a liquid because of a toxic chemical falling onto him (H-2-Uh-Oh). As crazy as the episode becomes, it’s done very well, and you never groan and think, “Okay, can we go back to RoboCop shooting people?”. It’s actually a nice change of pace and helps in making Neumeier more than the nerdy comic sidekick, which we can all appreciate for show-quality purposes. The ending to that particular episode was also one of the best, as Elsa Lustig shoots the glass window, so Neumeier evaporates out of it. However, RoboCop uses his freeze gun and turns Neumeier into falling snow to save him, giving him time to turn back into his normal human state. How they wrap up some of the action on these episodes are pure genius. It’s the proverbial tying of the bow on the present, as evidenced by “Plague on Ice“. RoboCop is shot down in the snow, and Neumeier is wrapped in a net and about to be dragged into the icy waters of the arctic, with Anais Gaia escaping into a submarine with the special rocks she needs. Just before she closes the door on the submarine however, RoboCop recovers, saves Neumeier from hitting the water, and shoots the box containing the rocks right out of her hands. Since the submarine is about to submerge in the water as it happens, it literally leaves Gaia with no choice but to let it go because otherwise she would have no escape. RoboCop just smirks at her, and it’s perfect.

There are so many examples of these fantastic finales for episodes that there’s too many to count (Return of the Hermanator, Out of the Dark, Robopop).

Another major positive coming out of Alpha Commando is how it maximizes the potential of RoboCop. They only tease this in the 1994 show when RoboCop is offered a role as a secret service agent in the episode “Public Enemies“, but he turns them down. It really gets you thinking of all the cool stuff they can do with the character and all the locations the cyborg can go if he’s not entirely confined to Detroit, Michigan. RoboCop enthusiasts should not be worried though. His home base is still with Detroit, and he loves his day-to-day work with them. However, RoboCop along with Miner have a unique deal where their ultimate boss is Alpha Prime and the Alpha Division, but if they aren’t needed for something big, they still work for the police department under the leadership of Sgt. Reed. This way, the show can expand its storytelling options without losing the core of the franchise’s story. It’s a genius decision that allows them to put RoboCop in any situation, and it’s magnificently done. It does beg the question why Alpha Prime tells Miner they have no jurisdiction in Canada in “Justice Reborn: Part 2” since they’re doing jobs in the Arctic a few episodes later but whatever. Maybe they were still figuring things out in the pilot, as that would explain the difference of the year the show takes place in moving forward. Anyway, because of how each episode is never predictable in where the mission will be, you have to think certain premises may have been pitched in the writers room by asking questions like how RoboCop would fare in space (Power Play), an underwater sea colony (Deep Trouble), Texas (Maxop 4), Paris (We’ll Always Have Paris), Alaska (Francesca’s Quest), Louisiana (Garden of Evil), Las Vegas (Cop Games), Florida (Inside Out), a volcanic island in the Caribbean (Survival of the Fittest), whatever the “Northern Territories” entail where the DARC headquarters are at (Head Games), or even the polar opposites of Antarctica (Plague on Ice) and the Sahara Desert (Robo Racer), which were back-to-back episodes funny enough. They even come into contact with an underground community of upgraded Neanderthals and deal with a power struggle between the leaders at one point (Out of the Dark).

Not every episode is an absolute banger, but it’s never boring and that’s a fact. At the same time, some episodes could have easily been stretched into a TV movie or a longer arc of more than one episode like the aforementioned “Power Play” and excellent episodes like “Inside Out” and “Head Games“. Now, “DARC Secrets” was arguably the weakest episode of the bunch because RoboCop is damaged and incapacitated, and they use this as a way for all the characters including Murphy himself to think of flashbacks to the times they’ve spent together. Considering this is only one, 40-episode season, it’s way too early to have a flashback episode. That’s something you do when you have a lot of content, and the audience has to be reminded of the past because there’s so much. However, Alpha Commando only had so many episodes to begin with, which is why this came off as filler, as the flashbacks chosen were overly long sequences of previous episodes covered in full. What’s impressive is that they still make up for it in the third act of the episode as they come under fire from DARC and RoboCop has to use literally every weapon in his arsenal while they are cornered because they are that close to dying, leading to the Alpha Division fending of the DARC agents after seeing Murphy’s flares. So, even at its worst, they did a good enough job at selling the suspense of the episode and it felt like a huge deal by the end of it.

Alpha Prime is a major figure in the show, but there are some hiccups here. It makes sense why he would try to maintain anonymity, but the way they do it is murky. They make his face look like static and his voice modulator masking how he sounds results in him being hard to understand regarding certain details he rattles off. He also reminds us of Cobra Commander so much, you become genuinely surprised he doesn’t turn into a villain. Thankfully, they finally reveal what he looks like in “Inside Out” when RoboCop and Miner are accused of treason, and his character design is quite cool, complete with him being in a Professor Charles Xavier-like mechanical wheelchair that RoboCop appreciates. What doesn’t make sense moving forward is that though we know what Alpha Prime looks like after that episode, they go back to doing the static-look of the character with the weird voice. Why do this if the audience and the main characters know what he looks like at this point? On the other side of things, I loved the reveal of DARC’s leader in Mr. Brink. He’s the most G.I. Joe-like character out of Alpha Commando, and I don’t mean that disparagingly. I adored the design of the character, his hulking presence, and the toy marketability of him. They only scratched the surface of this antagonist. Had this series have lasted, he may have had a Skeletor-like legacy, as a definitive, climactic showdown between Brink and RoboCop in a series finale or a massive episode would have been awesome to watch unfold. He does do some dastardly things like kidnapping Murphy’s former family after he has his team track them down since they are under federal protection (Family Reunion: Part 1 and 2), but they were building to something even greater. As soon they start revealing how major villains like Kludge and Elsa all work under Brink’s massive DARC empire, you can tell it was going to lead into something enormous in future potential seasons.

On a side note, it’s hilarious that Kludge is forever in the doghouse at DARC just because of the failure to assassinate the Premiere of Naugmenastan in the fucking pilot. What did that guy do for DARC to want him to die that badly? I get their whole thing is “chaos for profit”, but can’t this be accomplished in other ways? Give Kludge a break. In addition, the gag of Miner getting her car destroyed in more than one episode was quite funny, as was Neumeier pointing out how immature Charlotte Tenenbaum is for working for terrorists to spite him.

*Did anyone think that DARC dentist Dr. Rotar from “Small Packages” had traces of Dr. McNamara from the 1988 cartoon in his design? Apparently, Alpha Commando shared many of the same writers, so this may have been a subtle callback.*

After RoboCop: Alpha Commando weeds through its growing pains in its slow start to the season, it finds a great groove down the line and never dulls. Without making this section too big, the best episodes are RoboCop getting to be a fully realized Alex Murphy one more time (Doppelganger), the first return of Anais Gaia in Antarctica (Plague on Ice), some kid named Brandon setting off a chain of events by lying and saying RoboCop is his dad (Robopop), RoboCop being the star of the Real Cops reality show (Really, Really Big Shoo), Neumeier getting to save the day (H-2-Uh-Oh), RoboCop in the Sahara and the beginning of The ERG (Robo Racer), RoboCop in space, which arguably should be a live-action movie (Power Play), RoboCop and Miner being accused of treason and the first reveal of Alpha Prime (Inside Out), RoboCop not being able to trust anyone (While You Were Sleeping), RoboCop stealing a severed, animate robot head containing files of DARC agents but the head is a massive shit-talker (Head Games), RoboCop at arguably his most heroic (Survival of the Fittest), Miner’s ex-husband also being a spy on the good side and teaming with RoboCop (Father’s Day), and the warring caveman tribe that RoboCop and the crew find themselves in the middle of (Out of the Dark). Also, a special shoutout goes to “Francesca’s Quest“. It unofficially serves as a test to see how RoboCop would fare on his own without the use of Miner, Neumeier, and Reed, and he passes it with flying colors. Truth be told, the series may have been better had RoboCop solo-ed it. Even so, the introduction of the Francesca character, how RoboCop was able to turn her back to the good side, and how they teased a bit of romance/friendship between the two cyborgs in this episode and “Das Re-Boot” was an intriguing development of the show. That was a storyline we were eager to delve deeper into had there been more to it like they were alluding.

It’s a wild show. In one episode, lawn equipment can come alive. In others, the cold open has a terrorist steal three nukes, state he will use one on Paris to show he means business, and he demands $10 billion to not go through with it. This is what you’re getting with RoboCop: Alpha Commando. Between the three attempts at making RoboCop a staple of television, this is the best one by far. It does something refreshing with the concept while staying true to the heart of its character, it maximizes the potential of the cyborg and what he can accomplish like never before, there is a sense of freedom that no other RoboCop production has, and there’s still a lot of great science fiction action and humor to maintain a fun energy throughout its one season. Admittedly, it never achieves a status of being untouchable or anything, but there is a good chance this may have been smoothed out had it been given years to grow in subsequent seasons. Regardless, the entertainment value of any random individual episode never goes under a “C” grade, it always keeps the viewer’s attention, the action is awesome, and there’s spurts of brilliant writing riddled all over the place, endearing us to the new direction of this show and its characters. It’s a great foundational season that may have become something special had it been given more time. Sadly, it’s yet another animated program that may have gotten the axe too soon.