Midway through its second season, "Wonder Woman" got a makeover including a cold open, upgraded opening credits and theme music, a promotion for Steve Trevor as Joe Atkinson gets kicked upstairs, and Bruce Lansbury ("Mission: Impossible") stepping in as supervising producer for the rest of the series' run.
Coinciding with Lansbury's arrival, "The Man Who Made Volcanoes," scripted by Brian McKay and Dan Ullman from a story by Wilton Denmark, dives into the Cold War as Steve dispatches Inter-Agency Defense Command agent Diana Prince into Baja California to find an IADC agent gone missing following the eruption of a mysterious new volcano in Communist China, with the Chinese suspecting the Americans of somehow being responsible.
Indeed, inscrutable Chinese intelligence chief Colonel Minh (James Ahn), based in Los Angeles's Chinatown, dispatches two of his operatives, American-based Lin Wan (Richard Narita) and, fresh from the homeland, gung-ho Mei Ling (Irene Tsu), to tail Diana, with the pair sniping at each other in rom-com fashion. And when another volcano blossoms in the Soviet Union, it too accuses the US of causing the trouble and sends a pair of stereotypical agents into Mexico's frontier in a superpower convergence that could escalate into a global disaster.
However, the one causing all the grief is brilliant American scientist Arthur Chapman (Roddy McDowell)--he even has the nerdy Coke-bottle-bottom glasses to prove it--but although he toiled for years for the US, he holds a Krakatoa-sized grudge against the military-industrial complex and is willing to destroy the world with his terrifying laser weapon all in the name of . . . Peace. That is, unless Wonder Woman can stop him.
Although his Chapman seems less the James Bond villain and more like Herbert Lom from "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976), which must have informed Denmark's story, McDowell is a reliable and convincing enough actor to carry the conceit forward. Responding to him in her Wonder Woman guise, and perhaps emboldened by being thrust into the solo spotlight as Lyle Waggoner recedes further into the background, Lynda Carter commands attention throughout the episode with confidence and conviction, even if she does get into a catfight with Tsu.
"The Man Who Made Volcanoes" does lean on Asian stereotype a little too heavily, particularly during the denouement when the rom-com element gets unsurprisingly resolved, although at one point Artie Kane's incidental music swipes slyly from Jerry Goldsmith's score for "Chinatown" (1974) as this midseason makeover erupts with renewed energy.