User Reviews

From camp, Hogan and men spot a new fuel depot being built a bit outside the stalag. Then we switch to a scene with Klink, a German general marvelously played by Theodore Marcuse, and his girlfriend, Marya (played again by Nita Talbot). She is the Russian who almost fouled up operations one time when the Heroes went to Paris. She hangs around with Germans all the time, yet insists to Hogan that she is on their side. LeBeau acts like she is his fiancée, insisting he trusts her in everything she says, even though he has never done more than have short conversations with her.

Before Hogan and men can set up any sort of sabotage, they learn that it is a trap the general is setting up, because he has noticed how much sabotage goes on all around Stalag 13. Hogan suspects the Russian is selling them out, but goes ahead with a sabotage plan where they dig a tunnel all the way to underneath the new fuel depot and plant a large bomb set to destroy it at 8 p.m. the next night.

When Hogan tries to confront Marya, she insists he trust her and he even lets her know what they have going. The general and Marya come back to camp a bit later and the general informs Klink that Marya has indicated Hogan has connections with the Underground and will attempt to sabotage the new depot. So Hogan will be taken to the depot and stay there, with Schultz as his guard, to make sure there is no attack or bomb on the site.

Hogan has set it up so the men cannot disarm the bomb. He winds up telling the general an attack will happen by 8 p.m. that night. The general lets Marya talk him into letting Hogan and Schultz go back to the stalag so they can mine him for other information later. The general will stay to let the defense from the promised attack. Of course, the bomb going off kills him and destroys the depot.

The plot was, even for Hogan's Heroes, ridiculously convoluted, but it was interesting to see where they would take us. At one point the general leads a bunch of soldiers into Hogan's barracks. They begin cutting up mattresses and other things as he tells Hogan that they are experts in finding tunnels and radios and such. But without them really beginning to search, he instead decides to take Hogan to the fuel depot to hold him as a hostage. For reasons unstated, he calls of the search for tunnels. Since they have tunnels all over the place, the jig could have been up had the Krauts only persisted.

Letting Hogan go back to camp made no sense from the general's perspective. If Hogan is really some sort of espionage leader, once they have the goods on him, he is most unlikely to talk about his contacts. And of course, it seems odd that the general would really believe whatever Hogan told him was the truth.

Frankly, if he truly suspected Hogan was leading some saboteurs, I would think the fuel depot would be a fake-why risk setting up the Allies with a place they could destroy? Oh wait, that idea was tried in another episode some time ago.

What really seemed dumb to me was the general telling Hogan so much about his suspicions and how he'd be on guard against anything happening to the depot. He basically told Hogan about the trap he was setting, as if to bait him. Letting Hogan think the fuel depot just happened to be set up in that area and NOT alerting him would seem the wiser course.

Once again Marya annoys the heck out of me. She seems to always be trying to inform her latest German boyfriend that this is a man operating against the Third Reich while a POW, and then she comes up with the most cockamamie plan for how to eventually help Hogan in a way that had little chance of working. I also can't stand LeBeau fawning over her when all she's ever done for him is promise to spend some time later-but later never comes. If her German friends ever reacted in a logical way, Hogan would have been shot as a suspected spy, because of what she said, on any of the occasions where Marya is involved.

For an involved serious plot, and the performance of Theodore Marcuse, I give this a 6.