Charles Cioffi would have made a fine James Bond villain, as much for his quietly creepy presence in movies such as "Klute" (1971) and "Missing" (1982) as for the fact that the Bond franchise featured a number of lackluster, ineffectual villain performances even by fine actors (hello, Michael Lonsdale as Drax in 1979's "Moonraker"). Instead, Cioffi had to settle for being Ray Manta, the baddie arms dealer who heads the International Confederation of the Power Elite (ICOPE; cute, eh?) in "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis" whose presence in said spooky spot endangers both the world in general and Paradise Island, home to the Amazons who include Wonder Woman herself, in particular.
Moreover, Paradise Island faces peril even from the United States, which wants to build a nuclear breeder reactor on a nearby island. When an American Air Force pilot (Larry Golden) goes missing in the Triangle, Diana Prince and Steve Trevor are dispatched to investigate, but their plane is brought down by Manta's sound-wave weapon (a "Manta ray"?), stranding them on Manta's island teeming with his military contingent. Spotting the downed pilot, they try to rescue him but are captured, leading to Cioffi regaling them in his Bargain-Basement Bond Villain Complex with his (ahem) "SPECTRE" of World Domination.
Writer Calvin Clements, Jr., sprinkles then-current political and cultural references and themes into his Bond-lite script including nuclear destruction, American prisoners of war in Vietnam (the emaciated pilot), and fascination with the paranormal (the Bermuda Triangle, popularized by Charles Berlitz's 1974 book), while Clements borrows the term "power elite" from sociologist C. Wright Mills's own influential critique.
In addition to her glorious Wonder Woman costume, Lynda Carter debuts her form-hugging wetsuit to stimulate the T&A factor during the, er, climactic Bondian Big Bang. Freshly-minted Oscar winner Beatrice Straight (for 1976's "Network") joins fellow Oscar winner Cloris Leachman as the latest distinguished actress to play Diana's mother Queen Hippolyta (with Carolyn Jones an Oscar nominee), but the spotlight belongs on Cioffi, a voluble villain by turns grandiose, sardonic, and churlish as "The Bermuda Triangle Crisis" delivers James Bond on the cheap.