Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, The Master teams up with an old enemy.

Episode 1.4 “Hostages”

(Dir by Ray Austin, originally aired on February 10th, 1984)

“Hi, I’m Max Keller….”

This episode of The Master opens with Max (Timothy Van Patten) flying high above California in a motorized hang glider.  Apparently, this is the latest part of Max’s ninja training, though I have to wonder where the hang glider came from and whether or not being able to use a hang glider is a specific ninja skill.  The more I think about it, the more it seems that McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) is just leading Max on for his own amusement.

Max spots a woman (Jennifer Runyon, who later took over the role of Marcia Brady in A Very Brady Christmas) who is sitting behind the wheel of an out-of-control car.  Apparently, the brakes have failed and the car will soon careen over the side of a cliff!  Max swoops down and rescues the woman, minute before her car crashes and explodes.

The woman is Alice Clayton, the extremely talkative daughter of U.S. Senator Sam Clayton (Robert Dowdell).  Don’t worry, no one was trying to kill her.  The brakes just failed on their own.  A grateful Alice invites Max and McAllister to come to a party that the senator is throwing at his hillside mansion.

Soon, Max and McAllister are wearing tuxedos and hanging out at the party.  A CIA agent named Malory (one-time Bond star, George Lazenby) recognizes McAllister and accuses him of running a “subversive ninja school.”  Meanwhile, by an amazing coincidence, Okasa (Sho Kosugi) — McAllister’s former student who has taken a vow to kill him — also happens to be at the party.  He even takes the time to throw a ninja star at McAllister.

But that’s not all!  The party is also crashed by a group of terrorists, lead by Serena (Randi Brooks) and Castile (David McCallum).  The terrorists kidnaps Alice, her father, and the wives of several European diplomats.  The head of the CIA (Monte Markham) orders McAllister and Malory to set aside their differences and to rescue the hostages.  Max also decides to help which means that the hang glider makes another appearance as Max soars above the terrorist compound.

Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double gets quite a workout in this episode of The Master.  Not only do Okasa and McAllister have a brief fight but McAllister also gets to take on an entire compound full of terrorists.  Of course, McAllister wears his full of ninja uniform while doing all of this, all the better to hopefully keep us from noticing that Lee Van Cleef isn’t the one doing all of the kicking and hitting.  And I will say that, in this episode, the fights were fairly well-done.  The plot was predictable but the fights were probably about as exciting as you could hope from a network television show that aired in the 80s.

Other than the fights, the best thing about this episode was the chance to see George Lazenby playing a character who was Bond in everything but the name.  Lazenby himself has said that one of the reasons he struggled with the role of James Bond was because he was too young when he starred in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  In this episode of The Master, Lazenby is older and a bit more weathered and he’s totally believable as a spy who is tough but who still enjoys the better things in life.  As well, David McCallum does a good job as the cynical terrorist, though his character isn’t really given much to do.

I actually kind of enjoyed this episode of The Master.  As opposed to the previous three episodes, it focused on the action and it didn’t really have any slow spots.  It was a fun episode.