Chapter VII
First print date: June 11 1977
Prog appearance: 16
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Ron Turner
With the very Hall of Justice itself under threat from Call-Me-Kenneth and his Heavy Metal Kids, Dredd makes a desperate dash to the orbiting weather station that controls all of Mega-City One's climate. With Walter and the three original robots who helped him take the base, he breaks in and takes control of the station. His plan is to programme a huge electronic storm that will wipe out all the robots, or at least scramble their circuits sufficiently to disable them. However, there is a failsafe built into the computer: since 2012, no weather pattern may be programmed that could conceivably cause harm to humans, and Dredd has to think again. Channelling the computer's power through Walter's own circuits he is able to bypass the safety protocols and have the computer programme up the storm he wants.
Below, in the Hall of Justice, the Judges are losing the fight as the sky begins to darken. Call-Me-Kenneth has the Chief Judge in his robotic claw, ready to deliver the killing blow with his drill when suddenly lighting arcs down from the sky. Nobody in Mega-City One has seen lightning before, and they wonder what it is, as it seeks out the metal in the area, scrambling the circuits of the Heavy Metal Kids, who begin to turn on one another, the humans forgotten. Call-Me-Kenneth is struck by an out-of-control Heavy Metal Kid and falls.
By the time Dredd returns to the Hall of Justice the battle is over, and the robots all lie at his feet like scrap metal. All but one. There is no sign of the body of the leader of the robot rebellion, and if Call-Me-Kenneth has survived, then the war is not yet over...
QUOTES
Walter: “Wobot twying to destwoy the control room. Destroy it, master!”
Dredd: “Robot destroyed, and I don't need advice from an overgrown vending machine like you, Walter!”
Dredd: “Atmospheric Control creates all the weather for the city, Walter. I'm programming the computer for an electric storm of seven million megavolts!”
Heavy Metal Kids: “Knock down those walls! Squash a judge! Turn him into human sludge!”
Judge: “Look! Look how the very sky grows black! It is an omen --- we are finished!”
Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Where you'll never get bad weather, as climate is completely and automatically controlled by a computer which regulates temperature, rainfall, and all the other things that go to make up weather. Cyclones? Typhoons? Tsunamis? All things of the past: man now has total control of his environment, and never again will he be subject to the vagaries of nature.
The Dichotomy of Dredd
Here I'll be looking at the times when Dredd sacrifices something for the law, those moments when he has to choose between two evils, and chooses the lesser, and the occasions where, in order to fulfil his duty and uphold the law, he will sometimes make a choice we might not have expected him to.
When he programmes up the electrical storm, Dredd does not seem to consider the safety of the loyal robots who have been built at the factory, and who have fought alongside him to secure Call-Me-Kenneth's base. Of course, it is possible that the lightning will only hit those robots who are outside, and none of the loyal ones are. But what of the quartet that came with him to the weather station? Again, they're secure inside the station, but it's unclear as to when Dredd leaves the orbiting platform to return to the ground, though I guess it would be unlikely he would do this during the storm.
Also, he has no problem whatever in risking the life of Walter, his most loyal servant at this point, by running the weather station computer through him, which almost fries the vending robot's circuits. In truth, were Walter to “die”, Dredd would probably consider it a good bargain for the lives of all those in the Hall of Justice. If indeed he gave it any thought at all.
Houston, we have a problem!
What's with the archaic speech when the storm hits? “The very sky turns dark”? “It is an omen!”? The Judges have all been speaking in modern parlance up to now. Why does this one think he's in some sort of Greek tragedy? Weird. And Wagner's such a good writer, it's an odd slip. To be honest, it's more like something I'd expect from yer man who wrote the “Antique car heist” episode.
I'll ask the questions, creep!
What is it about 2012 that created a failsafe in the weather control computer that does not allow it to accept any programme for weather that would harm humans? Was there some big catastrophe in that year? And is it coincidental that this was the Mayan thing, which would have been generally not public knowledge back in the seventies? Did Wagner read up on those prophecies and decide to use them? I know they were used in
The X-Files during the last episode, but even then, that was twenty years later. Or was it just a random date he picked?
Famous firsts
When Dredd sees the problem programming the weather control station computer is going to cause him, he snarls “Drokk it!” This is, I believe, the first usage of a term which will become one of the most used in Dredd's universe, leading to phrases such as “What the Drokk?” “Drokk this!” and “Drokkin' thing!” It's an exclamation of anger, and its closest translation would be something like “damn it” or “f
uck it”! I don't know its origin, if it has one, but it helps to begin make up the language which will become exclusive to this strip.
Laughing in the face of death
Again we have the Heavy Metal Kids with their hilarious songs.
Return of the nitpicker!
Yes, it's Walter's speech again that has me rolling my eyes. As they enter the control room, Walter says to Judge Dredd, “Wobot twying to close the control room. Destroy it, master!” Here we have no less than three instances of where Walter uses an “r” when he shouldn't be able to. He should be saying “contwol”, “woom” and “destwoy”. While I hate and loathe Walter's lisp --- as well as everything else about him --- if you're going to write that in you need to be consistent, and it's hard to see how Wagner could have missed out three such obvious instances of where the robot fails in his lisp.
Chapter VIII
First print date: June 18 1977
Prog appearance: 17
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Ian Gibson
As we head into the final episode of the first Dredd epic, the robot war is over, the robots have been defeated but their leader is still on the loose. Unwilling to submit to the Judges and his human masters, it would seem Call-Me-Kenneth was only wounded in the fight with the Heavy Metal Kids on the steps of the Hall of Justice. Desperate for oil to enable him to carry on his killing spree, blind to the fact that his robot army lies in ruins, or reprogrammed to serve the very “fleshy ones” he hates so much and whose treatment led to his rebelling, the carpenter robot heads for the Mega-City One oil depot. Although he has him in his sights, Dredd cannot fire at the robot for fear of taking the depot, and half of the city, with him.
As the oil tanker he seizes at the depot lifts off, Dredd jumps aboard, watching in horror as the crew are dumped over the side. He attacks Call-Me-Kenneth, but his bullets just bounce off the robot's hard shell. Then he concentrates his fire on the “open wounds”, the areas of Call-Me-Kenneth's plasti-skin which have been damaged and where the circuits are exposed. This hurts and enrages the robot, and he slashes at Dredd, knocking him overboard. As he falls though, Dredd fires back up at the robot, igniting the oil on the tanker. Call-Me-Kenneth begins to burn. A moment later the tanker explodes, taking the rebel robot leader to his electronic grave. Dredd, falling through the air, is saved by a hover patrol.
Later, as the now-loyal robots are put to work rebuilding the shattered city, the three robots who helped Dredd are awarded a special honour: pleasure circuits, while Walter is made the very first ever free robot. True to form though, he would rather serve Judge Dredd, and to the Judge's chagrin, he ends up in his apartment, where Maria is about as pleased to see the robot as is Dredd himself!
QUOTES
Newscaster: “Greetings, law and order fans! You're tuned to another edition of
Crime Time. The war with the robots is over, but robot leader Call-Me-Kenneth is still at large!”
Dredd: “I dare not fire. There's enough fuel in that depot to destroy half of Mega-City!”
Grand Judge: “Robots! Those of you with masters to go to --- go there! Those of you whose masters were killed, go to the robo-pound and wait to be claimed. There is much work to do. We have a city to rebuild.”
Grand Judge: “Robot Walter, for services above and beyond the call of duty, I award you your freedom!”
Walter: “Oh Judge Dwedd. Walter is so grwateful he could leak oil. How can Walter ever wepay you, dear master?”
Dredd: “You can start by getting off your knees. You're a free robot now: the first ever.”
Walter: “Walter is tired of fweedom, master. Walter look after you now ---”
Maria: “I want-a him out, Judge!”
Dredd: “And the citizens think we Judges have it easy! I think I'd rather fight another robot war!”
Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Kind of depressing to see that, a hundred years into the future, man is still looking to oil as his fuel of choice. Is it only for the robots? That oil depot is huge, and you would have to think that the vehicles in Mega-City One also utilise it. Surely by now everyone would be zipping along on hydrogen-powered scooters or something? Mind you, this was written in the 1970s..
I AM THE LAW!
It sickens Dredd to see innocents fall to their deaths as Call-Me-Kenneth pilots the oil barge up into the sky, but he is determined their deaths will be avenged. Besides, if the mad robot gets away with such a supply of oil, who knows what carnage he could wreak? Dredd will however not risk the safety of citizens by firing on the robot when he is within the confines of the depot, for fear of igniting the dump's massive stock of the flammable liquid.
Laughing in the face of death
The end scene is both touching and funny, as Dredd, having essentially saved his city, is faced with a domestic set-to between his maid and the robot who now wishes to be his servant, even though it has been granted its freedom.
Those clever little touches
As the oil tanker rises up into the sky, we see it is operated by Texas City Oil. This is the first, but not the last, we will hear of Texas City, otherwise known as Mega-City Three, and it's both appropriate and hilarious that Gibson has depicted the company by using stereotypes associated with the red state: a Dallas Cowboys-style cheerleader wearing a stetson and holding a semi-automatic machine gun!
Fall of a tyrant
Like many dictators whose empire has collapsed, Call-Me-Kenneth, once the most powerful and feared robot in Mega-City One, finds himself hunted, on the run as he tries to secure a supply of oil that will allow him to remain one step ahead of the Judges and continue his reign of terror. With it would seem no logic circuits left, the mad robot cannot see that the end is nigh: his army, his slaves have abandoned him, and he is Public Enemy Number One. It's doubtful though that Mega-City One has made provisions at this point for the incarceration of robots, and anyway, he's a multiple murderer so he can expect nothing but death at the hands of the Judges. Perhaps his logic circuits are firing fine after all, and he realises he has no choice left but to go out in a blaze of glory, hoping his name will be remembered. The only trouble with that is that all the robots who followed him are either scrap metal or reprogrammed, and if anyone remembers him it will be the humans, who will recall when they came close to extinction, and take steps to ensure there is never another Call-Me-Kenneth.
PCRs
As Call-Me-Kenneth dies in the explosion when the tanker goes up, he roars “Top of the world!”
The iconic line uttered by Cagney at the end of the classic gangster movie, “White heat”.
It's also hardly coincidental that the award ceremony at the end, when Stewart, Howard and J70Stroke12 are given pleasure circuits, and Walter his freedom, is very reminiscent of the classic “Star Wars” closing scene, the movie having been released only a month before...
Ch-ch-ch-changes
They're at it again! Now it's Grand Judge. Chief Judge, Grand Judge! Pick one! They do eventually...
Return of the nitpicker!
What's this? Last episode it was J70Stroke12, now one of the three heroic robots that helped Dredd in his fight has become J70Stroke13! Has he been upgraded? And this mistake is made twice, in adjoining panels...