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The Best Episodes of Blue Thunder Season 1

Every episode of Blue Thunder Season 1 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Blue Thunder Season 1!

Binge this in 8h 59m•Peaking at 6.6/10

Blue Thunder is a 1984 ABC television series based on the movie of the same title featuring the Blue Thunder helicopter. The series uses the converted Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter and large portions of stock footage from

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Fan Favorite
    Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 1 - Second Thunder
    6.4/10(60 votes)

    #1 - Second Thunder

    S1:E1

    In this ""Pilot"" episode of the ABC half season spin-off of the original 1983 blockbuster smash hit under the same name starring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates and Malcolm McDowell, The Blue Thunder Unit take on a ruthless pilot who has been recently aerially assassinating police helicopter units over Los Angeles. In an attempt to settle an old long-lasting score with Frank Chaney, the pilot and leader of The Blue Thunder Unit, the crazed comedian who calls himself ""P.V.C."" contacts Chaney, Braddock and the rest of the team and warns Chaney personally that he is going to blow him out of the sky for what he did a year ago when he destroyed his aircraft with a 12-gauge shotgun during an unsuccessful drug bust while he was a police officer, plus to make sure that he succeeds in transporting a scheduled shipment of drugs over the Mexican border. Still continuing to wipe out airborne police units when very cannily evacuating the entire Astro-Division Building, and with the acknowledge of how the

    Director:Gilbert M. Shilton
    Writers:David Moessinger, Jeri Taylor

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  2. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 2 - A Clear and Present Danger
    6.2/10(47 votes)

    #2 - A Clear and Present Danger

    S1:E2

    A paramilitary group who call themselves the ""Posse Magistratus"", have been the prime suspects for a series of bank robberies, and one particulary involving a heavily-modified World War II fighter plane. In order to track down this plane and stop the whole game, Chaney and Wonderlove attempt to track it down, based on various aerial police sightings. When accomplishing this, Chaney spots gun mounts on a plane that they performed an unauthorised thermograph upon, and results in not in the state of valid evidence to charge the Sheriff who owns it for the state-threatening operations. However that same day, the same World War II figher plane attacks them, and ends up being shot down by Chaney in Blue Thunder. To posess reliable and sufficent evidence to charge the ''Posse Magistrates'' of the crimes they have took out, Ski goes undercover as a mechanic, but it isn't long until Chaney and Wonderlove discover that the group plan to kill one of the cities' main councilmen at the Queen Mary s

    Director:Charlie Picerni
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 3 - Arms Race
    6.3/10(48 votes)

    #3 - Arms Race

    S1:E3

    Aggie Mills, an former flame of Chaney's who he knew back in the Vietnam War, comes for help via the FBI to distort a much-growing drugs & gun smuggling ring, extending to more places than just Los Angeles. When the first operation is not a success, and turns out to be a smokescreen, Bubba and Ski are assigned to go undercover as truck mechanics, but they also accidentally discover that Aggie Mills is not all what she says she is, and happens to be associating with the man in-charge of the whole operation, Harold Longstreet. When Bubba and Ski are caught red-handed while placing a radar receiver on one of the trucks, in order for Chaney and Braddock to know where the drugs and the weapons are being ferried from, its a race against time for Chaney and Wonderlove to save their two crew members, and prevent Longstreet and Mills from getting away, unconvicted.

    Director:Gilbert M. Shilton
    Writers:Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby

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  4. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 4 - Revenge in the Sky
    6.3/10(46 votes)

    #4 - Revenge in the Sky

    S1:E4

    An F-86 Sabre jet is stolen from an airfield by a group of KGB mercenaries, followed by an intense but unsuccessful chase by security personnel. The subsequent day, FBI agent Bruce Walsh informs Captain Braddock, Chaney and the Blue Thunder crew to participate immmediately in an in-depth search for the lost jet fighter, which with the proper treatment could be converted into a lethal weapon which could not be recovered by the government. Chaney is dis-satisifed with Walsh not providing substantial information regarding the hi-jack but Walsh covers his own with the excuse of Apex having their full acceptance with the FBI on this case. Throughtout the assignment, Chaney soon starts to develop a very romantic and cosy relationship with Walsh's assistant, Kate Cunningham, who unforuntely later on is killed just before she arrives at Chaney's house and mumbles the words ""K.G.B."". The search turns into an evenmore vengeful one, but when revealing the location of the Sabre jet, Blue Thunder i

    Director:Bernard McEveety
    Writer:Kenneth Peters

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  5. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 5 - Trojan Horse
    6.1/10(43 votes)

    #5 - Trojan Horse

    S1:E5

    The witness, also his confidental secretary, who could put her employer, corrupted financier Richard J. Lassiter behind solid steel bars is rescued by the Blue Thunder unit from an estate where her kidnappers were previously holding her hostage, until Lassiter's court-trial was finished. He has been sentenced for 25 years for fraud, extortion and imtimidation, and is scheduled to be transferred to Greenlake Penitentiary, a medium-security facility, located in the Central part of the state. Complaining of a gut instinct that Lassister will have his associates prepared to rescue him from lifetime imprisonment while being transferred in a police motorcade, Braddock warns Chaney not to go anyway near the transportation, however he does so. If he hadn't, then Lassiter would have got away scot free, thanks to a truck parked in the middle of the routed road with heavy automatic weapons, which is blown away by Blue Thunder's 20mm 6-barrel Vulcan electric cannon. Now in prison, Lassiter already

    Director:Guy Magar
    Writer:Brian Alan Lane

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  6. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 6 - Skydiver
    6.6/10(44 votes)

    #6 - Skydiver

    S1:E6

    Madame Eva Parada, the president of Sumora, is inviting major U.S. business corporations to set-up branchs in her country, by signing lease agreements, however a small rebel group, who call themselves ""The Revolutionary Forces of Sumora"", are not tolerating this happening. When providing ground and aerial security at the Sumoran Embassy, where a guest reception is underway, Blue Thunder is decoyed by an supposedly out-of-control civilian plane, while Bubba and Ski do not notice the ""gorgeous"" woman who offered them sky-diving lessons at an airshow, Gretchen Terrell, sky-diving herself discretely onto the Embassy premises and planting explosives around the perimeter. These do cause heavy damage, but do not scare away the major corporations and Madame Eva Parada from continuing their negotiations, even though The Revolutionary Forces gave them a highly threatening warning. Although Captain Braddock is completely annoyed at how the ""most sophisticated surveillance unit in the world"" manag

    Director:Guy Magar
    Writer:Rick Kelbaugh

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    The 20 BEST Episodes of Blue Thunder

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  7. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 7 - Clipped Wings
    6.2/10(39 votes)

    #7 - Clipped Wings

    S1:E7

    Chaney's arch rival is given control of Blue Thunder after Chaney is reassigned for breaking off a drug stake out in order to pursue kidnappers

    Director:Bernard McEveety
    Writer:Allison Hock

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  8. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 8 - Payload
    6.2/10(37 votes)

    #8 - Payload

    S1:E8

    The Space Shuttle Argo, privately funded and arranged without any governmental interference, becomes under threat by a group of weapon dealers who don't want their sales of bacterial weapons falling down heavily because of this. This is because, the shuttle has successfully performed an gene-splicing experiment in outer space, relieving the American Space Industry after it is set for the shuttle to re-enter orbit, but there is one slight problem. The experimental canister has to be transported from the moment the shuttle touches down, to an unknown designated laboratory, where it will be configured and analysed to affect the usage of bacterial weaponry, in 20 minutes. Only Blue Thunder has the speed capabilities to achieve this, and so Apex lends the unit to them. After a accident involving the helicopter's entire electronics being short-circuited by power lines at a nearby power plant where the team managed to apprehend two men linked to the trading of German Warfare products, Profess

    Director:Bernard L. Kowalski
    Writer:Daniel Freudenberger

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  9. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 9 - The Long Flight
    6.5/10(45 votes)

    #9 - The Long Flight

    S1:E9

    Chaney must convince the granddaughter of a dead mobster to turn her grandfather's business documents over to the FBI before his old business associates kill her to get them

    Director:Phil Bondelli
    Writer:Fred McKnight

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  10. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 10 - Godchild
    6.6/10(39 votes)

    #10 - Godchild

    S1:E10

    A pair of professional killers, disguised as highway patrol officers, and organised crime connected, perform an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Lisa Ritchie at an exclusive restaurant, located near Farrow Beach of the Pacific Coast Highway. When tailing a man who could be linked to the shooting, Chaney and Wonderlove uncover a conspiracy between two members of the International Carrier's Union; Carl Suhonen, a suspected organised crime hitman, and the Union's President, Jake Cusak. What they want, lies in the secret being conceived by their target, Lisa Ritchie, granddaughter of the late organised crime's top man, Joseph Ritchie. Before he died, he told her where the records of all his organised crime dealings, happenings and secrets are, and until the men who are after her back off, she is being protected at her grandfather's exceedingly expensive hillside mansion, where numerous Federal Agents are body guarding her, whom have requested to assign the Blue Thunder Unit to them for

    Director:Guy Magar
    Writers:Peter Collins, Richard Danus

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  11. Blue Thunder Season 1 Episode 11 - The Island
    6.2/10(41 votes)

    #11 - The Island

    S1:E11

    The Blue Thunder team journeys to a small Caribbean island to prevent American mercenaries, who have been hired by the KGB, from killing the Prime Minister

    Director:Earl Bellamy
    Writer:Unknown

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Season 1 Ratings Summary

"Second Thunder" is the best rated episode of "Blue Thunder" season 1. It scored 6.4/10 based on 60 votes. Directed by Gilbert M. Shilton and written by David Moessinger, Jeri Taylor, it aired on 1/6/1984. This episode is rated 0.2 points higher than the second-best, "A Clear and Present Danger".