JOE 90

Joe 90 is an agent of W.I.N.

That acronym stands for the World Intelligence Network, a multinational organization tasked with intelligence gathering and conducting field operations as might be required to help maintain the precarious balance between the Western Block, which runs the W.I.N., and the Eastern Block, which while not specifically identified is definitely the 'other' side. The head of the London office of the agency, titled the Supreme Commander, is Shane Weston, a man who was a field agent himself for 20 years so knows what it means to put his life on the line over and over. His deputy is Sam Loover and this former operative is more often seen still in the field when he is not handling liaison duties between W.I.N. and Joe 90

Joe 90 is the codename used to denote Joe McClaine, a diminutive nine-year-old British schoolboy. This spectacled lad is the adopted son of Professor Ian 'Mac' McClaine, who took him in as a much younger tyke on the deaths of the boy's parents. In that codename, the 'Joe' of course comes from the boy's real name. The meaning of the '90', though, is not so certain. At one point it is said that there he was the 90th person to become a field agent out of the London office. Later it is said that it comes from the fact that the program he is involved in for W.I.N. is known as Project 90.

The McClaine's live in an Elizabethan-style cottage on the Dorset coast. While the building looks completely normal, albeit a tad on the large size for just the two of them, it houses an amazing basement. In the subterranean construct is Professor McClaine's laboratory, including the invention of Professor McClaine known as BIG RAT.

The Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record and Transfer system, aka BIG RAT, consists of a fantastic computer system which has the ability to record a person's knowledge, experience, and skillsets, storing it in its extensive memory banks, and then passing it to another person via a special pair of glasses which hold the brain patterns and make them available to the wearer via a set of electrodes on the frame.

Joe 90 was picked as the person most commonly called upon to make use of these brain patterns. This came about because Loover had seen in Joe McClaine enormouse potential for making excellent use of these patterns as well as being largely ignored by adults since he was just a young boy. For his part, Joe 90 was excited to be called for duty and never squawks in the least no matter how dangerous the mission.

With this pair of glasses and the brain patterns it may be holding (apparently one set at a time), Joe 90 can, depending on whose patterns are uploaded, fly a plane, scuba dive with ease, speak different languages perfectly, drive high-speed racecars, understand complex mathematical equations, operate like a surgeon, climb perilous mountains, and so on.

No wonder Joe 90 is routinely referred to as W.I.N.'s "Most Special Agent".

I was never a fan of the puppetry called Supermarionation. Technologically it is impressive, I will grant, but the same thing that creeped me the heck out with movies like Chucky really kept me from being able to enjoy these series.

That and the idea that several grown men thought hooking up a 9-year old boy to electrodes, zapping into his brain incredible amounts of data from brain patterns of other people, and then sending him into harm's way to climb mountains, infiltrate top security facilities, drive race cars at 100 kmh, and so on, seemed like a good idea. And one of those fellows was the boy's adopted father!

Nope, not for me!