Jake is off to high-flying melodrama and adventure in this week’s installment of Tales of the Gold Monkey! The first episode originally aired 24 November 1982 and was written by Danny Lee Cole, Jeff Ray, William Driskill and George Geiger.

It starts back in 1937, with Jake (Stephen Collins) still serving in the Flying Tigers, and is caught up in a dogfight with a couple of Japanese Zeroes. On arriving back at base, there’s a moment of celebration with William Lucking’s Gandy making a reappearance.

Then we jump back to 1938, and we’re flying into Bora Gora. On arrival, it seems there is a German Naval crew taking some leisure time in the Monkey bar, and one of them has Jack’s eye! Fisticuffs ensue, despite Jake offering to buy the eye back, and Jack, himself, recovers his eye.

While all this is going on, Corky (Jeff MacKay) finds himself mistakenly wed to one of the local girls, and is eager to be shot of her. So Jake and Corky prepare to head to the girl’s island, and drop her off with family. It also seems though that there may be a Japanese bomber base in the area, and Sarah (Caitlin O’Heaney) is ordered by her agency to investigate it.

Soon, familiar faces show up, in the person of  Soon-Tek Oh plays Kenji Miura who is seeking to avenge the death of his brother, one of the pilots of the Zeroes that Jake shot down. He’s working from the hidden bomber base, and challenges Jake to a final duel to the death for honor and vengeance

Jake chooses an aerial duel, and though succesful, he’s forced to bail out, and land in the drink, where close to drowning, it takes Jack giving up his recently recovered eye as payment for the locals to go rescue the pilot.

Everything turns out for the best at the end, as everyone sits back in the Monkey Bar, except for poor Jack, eye-patch back in place… and we all know he can hold a grudge.

The Lady and The Tiger, which aired 8 December 1982, and was written by Bellisario, sees Jake forced to crash-land when the Goose’s engines fail. The island is inside the Japanese Mandate, but he is rescued by Martha (Anne Lockhart) and her son, an Amish family, who agree to keep him safe until help can arrive. Actually, this sounds a lot like a rehash of Bellisario’s Galactica episode, The Lost Warrior, which saw Apollo (Richard Hatch) in a similar situation – right down to the young boy facing off against a dangerous animal… in this case a tiger. And instead of a cylon named Red-Eye, we have a Japanese soldier dressed as a cowboy who calls himself Buck Jones (Richard Narita).

There’s a funny gag, when Jack barks at a Japanese soldier (during Jake’s attempt to call for rescue), and as we know, two barks means yes, but there’s a Japanese translation under it this time around.

Princess Koji (Marta DuBois) and Todo (John Fujioka) show up at the Monkey bar, to negotiate with Louie (Roddy McDowall) about access to the Japanese island for Corky and the equipment Jake needs.

In the end, as in The Lost Warrior, Jake confronts Buck, the boy confronts the tiger, and Jake’s friends arrive to rescue him. Sadly as a rehash of a Galactica episode, this makes this episode of the series the worst to date.

Oh well. They can’t all be winners.