This episode from season 3 of "Wonder Woman" first aired on Sep. 29, 1978 called "Hot Wheels" was one that was entertaining and exciting, yet it had a twist to the plot. It involves Diana Prince and her gov. Counterparts looking for an old classic Rolls Royce car and it has a little hidden item that being an important microchip like device located in the car's hood. Things twist and turn in the episode as bad guys obtain the car and it's becomes a find and seek and hunt mission for "Wonder Woman"! Also Diana(Lynda Carter) has a damsel in distress scene as she's tied up in the backseat of a car and has a black gag placed in her mouth! "Hot Wheels" is without a doubt one of the better episodes of the final season.
4 Reviews
Missing Cast
fhsmct10 April 2022
Pretty darn terrible
Joxerlives6 February 2012
Warning: Spoilers
A very very slight tale but good to see that even the new, serious, season has Diana still being tied up. Lance LeGAULT is one of those faces you see everywhere in the late 70s and early 80s especially in Magnum, Airwolf, TJ Hooker but above all he's Military Police Colonel Decker who pursues the A-team over the course of 2 seasons (and Elvis' body double in his movies!) Steve still has a role to play but now he seems to be largely restricted to the office. Do love the car though, very evocative of the 1970s like mainstream porn and films with wicker furniture (and indeed mainstream porn films with wicker furniture which Lynda could easily have ended up doing) 3/10 little enough to recommend it
Wonder Woman Wallops a Car Theft Ring
hypestyle10 April 2022
Warning: Spoilers
"Hot Wheels" is an episode of the third and final season of the Wonder Woman television series. The basics of the plot involves IADC agent Diana Prince supervising the delivery of a Rolls Royce automobile at a Los Angeles-area shipping port. The IADC isn't in the business of reselling luxury cars, however. Inside the hood ornament is a microfilm that contains plans for a missile system for a foreign power (Soviet Union? China? It's never specified). When the appropriately large-sized shipping crate is opened, however, a miniature, motorized replica is revealed. Somehow, the Rolls Royce has been stolen.
The microfilm was sent by the IADC's foreign bureau, but somehow information on the Rolls was intercepted by a criminal who runs a black market car sales ring, with a car wash as its front. Wonder Woman's initial trailing of the Rolls is interrupted by a Los Angeles police officer, Inspector Bolt (Peter Brown). Introduced as being nominally sexist (referring to Wonder Woman and Diana as the "two females" who ruined his bust), he is forced by Steve Trevor to partner with Diana on solving the twin cases: that of the missing Rolls Royce and the microfilm hidden inside the ornament.
Eventually, some spy work reveals that the crime boss behind the heist is Otis Fiskle. He's played by Lance LeGault, who had a journeyman's career in supporting roles in B-movies before becoming a veteran day-player in episodic dramatic television of the 1970s and 80s (Magnum P. I., Rockford Files, Airwolf); he's arguably best known as Colonel Decker in "The A-Team".
Fiskle's team is largely bungling, thus making them more susceptible to an undercover guise for Bolt and Diana as would-be buyers of off-market luxury cars. The undercover play has random hits and misses, leading at one point to a rooftop tumble for Diana's alpha-male foil Inspector Bolt and a curious damsel-in-distress moment for herself, bound and gagged in the back of a getaway vehicle. (Scholars of the Wonder Woman comics will note that being tied up/shackled by a man was a special weakness of the heroine; it's unclear if the script writers were trying to be mindful of canon or if they simply felt it was a quicker way to move the plot along. We can sidestep the psychological explorations of bondage/S&M scenarios in vintage Wonder Woman comics for another day.)
Another sidebar that bears mentioning: one of Fiskle's henchmen is a Black car-wash employee. He's tasked with following Bolt when Fiskle gets suspicious of him. Bolt makes a passing remark to Diana about "a shadow" following him when he meets Diana for a debriefing. "Shadow" becomes Bolt's nickname for the man for the rest of the episode. Indeed, when one looks at the IMDB page, it's also the character's name, oddly enough. For some viewers, the double-entendre is obvious. For the uninitiated "shadow" was one of many belittling slurs toward African-Americans for decades. Given that this was produced in 1978, non-PC sensibilities of the era notwithstanding, it's more than a little cringe-inducing, in retrospect. That said, there is also a Black dentist in the story (unethical, turns out), but he is at least spared such coded references. He was played by Don Mitchell, a veteran of episodic television best known for his role as a cop in the "Ironside" series.
The climax is at an abandoned camping shack near a lake on a lonely country road.
Overall, this episode is fairly okay. Nothing really stands out about it. There's not much violence, and neither Diana nor Wonder Woman find themselves in any "sexy" situations. The tension between Bolt and Diana is supposed to drive the narrative but the actor playing him is a little flat sometimes. LeGault as Fiskle is a joy to watch chew scenery. Not among the top 10 episodes of the series.
The microfilm was sent by the IADC's foreign bureau, but somehow information on the Rolls was intercepted by a criminal who runs a black market car sales ring, with a car wash as its front. Wonder Woman's initial trailing of the Rolls is interrupted by a Los Angeles police officer, Inspector Bolt (Peter Brown). Introduced as being nominally sexist (referring to Wonder Woman and Diana as the "two females" who ruined his bust), he is forced by Steve Trevor to partner with Diana on solving the twin cases: that of the missing Rolls Royce and the microfilm hidden inside the ornament.
Eventually, some spy work reveals that the crime boss behind the heist is Otis Fiskle. He's played by Lance LeGault, who had a journeyman's career in supporting roles in B-movies before becoming a veteran day-player in episodic dramatic television of the 1970s and 80s (Magnum P. I., Rockford Files, Airwolf); he's arguably best known as Colonel Decker in "The A-Team".
Fiskle's team is largely bungling, thus making them more susceptible to an undercover guise for Bolt and Diana as would-be buyers of off-market luxury cars. The undercover play has random hits and misses, leading at one point to a rooftop tumble for Diana's alpha-male foil Inspector Bolt and a curious damsel-in-distress moment for herself, bound and gagged in the back of a getaway vehicle. (Scholars of the Wonder Woman comics will note that being tied up/shackled by a man was a special weakness of the heroine; it's unclear if the script writers were trying to be mindful of canon or if they simply felt it was a quicker way to move the plot along. We can sidestep the psychological explorations of bondage/S&M scenarios in vintage Wonder Woman comics for another day.)
Another sidebar that bears mentioning: one of Fiskle's henchmen is a Black car-wash employee. He's tasked with following Bolt when Fiskle gets suspicious of him. Bolt makes a passing remark to Diana about "a shadow" following him when he meets Diana for a debriefing. "Shadow" becomes Bolt's nickname for the man for the rest of the episode. Indeed, when one looks at the IMDB page, it's also the character's name, oddly enough. For some viewers, the double-entendre is obvious. For the uninitiated "shadow" was one of many belittling slurs toward African-Americans for decades. Given that this was produced in 1978, non-PC sensibilities of the era notwithstanding, it's more than a little cringe-inducing, in retrospect. That said, there is also a Black dentist in the story (unethical, turns out), but he is at least spared such coded references. He was played by Don Mitchell, a veteran of episodic television best known for his role as a cop in the "Ironside" series.
The climax is at an abandoned camping shack near a lake on a lonely country road.
Overall, this episode is fairly okay. Nothing really stands out about it. There's not much violence, and neither Diana nor Wonder Woman find themselves in any "sexy" situations. The tension between Bolt and Diana is supposed to drive the narrative but the actor playing him is a little flat sometimes. LeGault as Fiskle is a joy to watch chew scenery. Not among the top 10 episodes of the series.
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