In a sprawling urban city, a talented hacker tries to steal from a MegaCorp, but gets caught. The company owner sways the hacker to his side with promises of wealth. Together they hijack and weaponize a satellite and, with the hacker posing as a member of the military-industrial complex, they even try to use a narcotic-based poison to bring down a crusading hero who stands in their way. During their plan to build a giant supercomputer, one of the corpos is turned into a killer cyborg. The hacker ends up leaving the MegaCorp and helping the hero.

Okay, Superman III isn’t actually cyberpunk enough to be called cyberpunk, really. But I’ve amused myself by referring to it as such before and I’ll probably do it again.

What I will say is that the hacker character in the movie, Gus Gorman, should come back. I say we keep him as close as possible to the character as seen in the movie. He’s talented with computers but has trouble making his way in a corporate world, so he does thing underhanded now and then. He probably came afoul of Superman at some point, but Superman can tell that prison isn’t a solution, so he and Gus become allies. Sometimes Gus’ll get in over his head and maybe some criminal types will want to harm Gus, so Superman can save the day. There are definitely times when Superman (or Lois or Jimmy or anyone) might need the aid of a hacker, so he can be brought in for that stuff. I’d be wary of making him a clean-cut good guy, but in a world where Superman is a champion of the oppressed, Gus would be on that list.

As the title may suggest, this one is about the Wild Cards taking some downtime. They are stressed and exhausted from constant war, so they are given 48 hours on the spaceship caled the Bacchus, which is basically a mobile pleasure city. This episode has Coolio in it. This episode has David Duchovny in it. Those are some impressive gets.

And, as is the purpose of an episode like this, we get to see how all the cast relax. Vansen plays pool. McQueen watches old movies. Damphousse and Wang almost hook up with each other. West just kinda wanders around. Hawkes’s goal is the loss of his virginity, which is complicated by Hawkes having been given some medicine by a neglectful medic, one which In-Vitros are not supposed to get, and has now developed an addiction to that drug. Then the episode rushes to a fit in a battle where the team have to realize that they have to get back out of relaxation mode, I guess. It’s all kind of a mess.

I like that Duchovny’s guy is a Silicate who works on the Bacchus. It is more interesting to me if that whole species of AIs isn’t pirates, but there are some who can live and work among humans. It’s also worth noting that when Coolio’s guy welcomes the crew to the Bacchus, he says that the ship has real stuff, not “holodecks”, using that specific term from Star Trek. It’s fair enough, Star Trek probably exists as a show in that world’s history, so the term would exist there. It’s just not something I expected.

In this one, they’ve got a tank.

The Wild Cards are engaged in fighting on some planet and they come across an eccentric guy in a tank named Pearly. That is, like an actual military tank vehicle, not like the derogatory term for In-Vitros. The eccentric tank guy gets killed off early enough, so they can focus on a different eccentric guy they meet. This guy is a Major who has been stranded on the planet alone for months and has even learned some of the Chig language. The Wild Cards try to rescue this guy, but when the power cells for Pearly go missing, obviously the mysterious new guy who speaks the enemy language is the prime suspect.

But actually, the cells were stolen by Wang. He ran into some silicates and they are using the war crime confession he made under torture as a means of blackmailing him. He feels like he has to go along with them, until he fights back against them. He feels bad about it, though, and he is able to redeem himself by doing some fighting. In the end, it’s all good for Wang.

And instead of leaving, the eccentric Major stays on the planet with Pearly. No matter what, it was cool that they had a tank in this one.