A Kind of Princess is the second episode of the first season of Superboy from 1988 featuring John Haymes Newton as Clark Kent / Superboy, Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, and Jim Calvert as T.J.White.  Guest-starring Julie McCullough as Sara Danner, the “princess” of the title caught up in a struggle between two mob bosses.

Clark Kent is hearing about his girlfriend’s upcoming 18th birthday party.  Sara Danner’s father is coming to town especially.  Meanwhile, Lana feels pangs of jealousy.

Clark does the gentlemanly thing and gets the bill … and then proceeds to get T.J. to pay it.

Clark sees something odd going on near a parked car and he uses his X-Ray vision to spot – a remote controlled bomb! Set to explode when another car passes it!

Quickly, Superboy intercepts the car and pushes it out of the blast zone..!

Clark discovers that Sara’s father was in the car and that he, Matt Danner, is the head of an organised crime syndicate. Lana asks if this changes his view of Sara and Clark says that he’ll reserve judgement until he knows whether she heads any crime syndicates.

Danner gives his daughter her birthday present while telling her that he can’t attend her party. Assassination attempts ruin his schedule. Meanwhile, Danner’s rival – Casey – isn’t pleased that Danner is still alive.

Sara’s birthday party is in full swing, but Clark needs to leave early. There’s only one birthday present she wants from him, but he beats a chivalrous retreat. Sara can’t believe that such things happen in the 20th Century.

When Clark leaves, Sara’s bodyguard is overpowered and she’s kidnapped. Clark doesn’t think the bodyguard is innocent, and his X-Ray vision proves that he didn’t get wounded in the attack.

Superboy zeroes in on the bodyguard when he does a runner…

In the sky, Superboy proves his point in his own unique way. With the bandage off, the bodyguard’s guilt is revealed. Superboy insists that he tells him where Casey is keeping Sara.

On a boat in the marina, Casey has Sara boobytrapped with explosives.  He calls Danner to ransom his daughter for all of his syndicate activity.  He refuses, and Sara overhears the refusal.

Superboy arrives on the boat, but Casey is ready to explode the girl if Superboy doesn’t freeze…

Taking his cue from Casey, Superboy lets loose with his freezing super-breath!

Unable to press the button, Casey is apprehended by the police.

Superboy saves the girl, but the death threat has made her want to leave town and get away from her father. She says farewell to Clark.

Danner tries to repair the damage between him and his daughter but it’s too late. Sara waves a last farewell to Clark.

Clark and the others watch her leave, and then Lana asks Clark a very personal question…

Sara Danner is played by Julie McCullough, a name (and face) familiar to many who grew up in the 80s.  Seeing her acting is probably the freshest thing in this episode given that the actual plot is a direct steal from just about every other 80s action/adventure show of a few years earlier.  (I recently watched an episode of Dempsey & Makepeace that used the same “kidnap the child to ransom the syndicate” plot.)

Lana and T.J. get to do very little in this episode, although there is a very subtle sub-story for T.J.  At the site of the first explosion, his camera eyes up a very attractive young lady – and we see them both together at Sara’s birthday party (she’s also present at the end shot).  At the party, Lana has her own boyfriend who seems quite unable to keep up with Lana’s active dancing (makes you wonder why she’s jealous that Clark has someone else).

Over the years, I’ve seen this episode twice on TV and once on DVD.  When the episode was shown on ITV, they cut out all the scenes of Sarah Danner with the explosive strapped around her, which made it very difficult to understand what the threat was.  Apparently it was deemed too sensitive or something.  When the episode was shown on Sky (Sky2 I think it was at the time), they left in all the scenes with the bombs around the girl but cut the episode short to avoid the conversation between Lana and Clark with Lana asking the personal question about whether Clark and Sara shared anything more than a passionate kiss.

It’s curious to compare the censorship and to ponder the reasons behind them.  ITV must have though that the audience was adult enough to know what teenagers do behind closed doors but not adult enough to cope with bombs attached to a pretty girl.  A few years later, Sky apparently believed that we’re all okay with strapping bombs to precocious little girls but that we can’t handle the idea that there’s anything beyond kissing.

It’s almost comical.  Fortunately for us, the DVD episode is uncut.

In summary, this episode epitomises the “80s” feel of the first part of Superboy‘s first season.   As I understand it, this was intended – in order to keep everything simple while they got a handle on the Superboy FX and they kept the budget tight.   Once the series proved popular enough, they changed the storylines away from this 80s “rut” and would later include scifi, fantasy, magic, and all manner of other genres.