"Wonder Woman" might have moved into the 1970s, but our titular heroine still can't escape her World War Two past as "The Man Who Could Move the World" targets her in a revenge plot that scrambles thoughtful elements and curious juxtapositions. Writer Judy Burns's context involves the American government's internment of Japanese-Americans following Pearl Harbor, for its time a controversial topic hardly broached in popular culture, while Lynda Carter spends much of this typically uneven episode in her Wonder Woman costume, a nod to the T&A emphasis of many 1970s television programs.
Scientist Kenneth Wilson (Lew Ayres) has developed a machine that enhances telekinetic powers, which his test subject Takeo Ishida (Yuki Shimoda) intends to abscond with to use in his elaborate plan to confront Wonder Woman. Turns out that during his internment as a boy, he and his older brother Masaaki tried to escape their camp near Los Alamos, New Mexico, when they strayed into a live-fire artillery exercise that badly wounded Masaaki. Wonder Woman tried to rescue the boys, but young Takeo became convinced that she was responsible for what he thought was his brother's death. This becomes his obsession, as Wonder Woman discovers in the adult Takeo's home with its macabre shrine to her that plays to the stalked-woman trope.
Lured to the abandoned camp, Steve Trevor becomes the bait to compel Wonder Woman into a confrontation with Takeo that descends into a caricature of imagined Asian fanaticism--Shimoda is even decked out in samurai garb that would do Toshiro Mifune proud--that spurred the internment of Japanese-Americans in the first place. Meanwhile, to placate Takeo, Wonder Woman removes her bracelets and girdle containing her superpowers, an act of psycho-sexual submission inherent in William Marston's very creation of the character, enabling him to force her to walk through a minefield, with director Bob Kelljan's repeated closeups of Carter's feet sure to delight boot fetishists.
It's too easy to pick apart older movies and TV shows for not conforming to current standards. Instead, contemporary viewers (and reviewers) should watch them for insights into the assumptions and attitudes of their time. With its admittedly incongruous blending of muted social comment--no coincidence that Los Alamos was where the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were developed and tested--and crowd-pleasing titillation, "The Man Who Could Move the World" offers a fascinating glimpse into the creative and commercial subtexts driving "Wonder Woman."
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