DVD, Smallville S2 (Visitor) (2)
Traditional 'Smallville' on the face of it, at least at first, and I had the impression this was going to be a weaker episode of the season. But that was probably the result of not really liking the story in the past, and perhaps that lessened my expectations, because this time I found it to be quite a lovely instalment that threw up various ideas, was beautifully shot, well acted, and kept me guessing all the way through whether Cyrus was an alien or not. It starts with a spot of bullying in class, that's the main reason it seems classic 'Smallville,' but instead of Cyrus turning out to be a vengeful psychopath with murderous tendencies, and whom Clark has to deal with, it's quickly apparent that he's not on the list of meteor freaks that have required intervention. In fact it soon becomes apparent that Cyrus could actually be a fellow Kryptonian. Now I didn't think that was likely, but I did wonder if he might be from another planet - hey, if Clark can drop on Earth and grow up a farm boy, why couldn't a similar thing have happened to Cyrus? Obviously Clark finds it hard to believe, but you soon realise he wants to, he wants a connection to the newly discovered world he was from, which Dr. Swann (who gets a mention), had informed him about in only the previous episode. I like that he has various people to talk to him about the situation from various degrees of understanding: his parents are one angle, Pete is another - he knows the secret, too, and he's someone Clark can discuss things with who isn't in authority over him and can talk man to man.
If only there had been more scenes for Pete like the one he gets in this one. It's not that it's anything special, but it does illustrate the point of having him be there as a confidant. Chloe is next in line, she's part of the gang, but not on the inside, so doesn't know Clark's point of view, and then there's Lana and perhaps Lex, who are on the periphery and have the good or the bad side when it comes to Clark. The good, in that Lana was slyly hoping Clark would offer to stable her horse at the Kent Farm, the bad, in Lex showing girlfriend Dr. Bryce his secret room that contains the car that smashed into Clark and various pieces of evidence about him and his family. That's another fascinating situation being developed: Helen clearly seems to want to be around Lex, unlike a lot of people, but at the same time she's garnered Martha's trust for not giving her boy away after the strange blood sample he'd given. Jonathan doesn't trust her, yet Martha, whether through the difficulties and changes in herself from pregnancy, goes against his wishes and confides in Helen, and it's putting the doctor in a very delicate position: two opposites both trusting her and being willing to invest that trust. I have the feeling she turns out to be a spy for Lionel (who doesn't appear again this time), so it may not be genuine affection for Lex, but even if she were working for the other Luthor, she's still at a kind of opposite ends of the spectrum at the same time.
It was these little character developments that were popping up in the episode that enamoured me with the episode, but it was also the story of Cyrus, this outsider who believes he is from another planet where his real parents are waiting for him, the traditional wish of the orphan, and just the idea that he and Clark could in some way be connected is a huge thing at this point in the series when it was so much more realistic and you didn't have all kinds of Kryptonians popping up, which got ridiculous. It was a small, personal story, and yes, there is another of those weird non-meteor rock powers, like Ryan had: Cyrus can heal, but it's not, seemingly from the meteor rocks, unless he was outside when they fell, which is how Clark explains him being able to draw the ship that brought him. It doesn't really need explanation I suppose, it's more important that he uses the healing and is put in a position where he could have refused to save the nasty bully that had caused so much grief. He chooses to set aside his own compelling desire to be at the top of his tower where he believes he will have that one chance to rejoin his kind, in order to sacrifice it all to save the life of someone that doesn't deserve it. It's an inspiring moment, worthy of the kind of quality inspiration that 'Star Trek' used to do so well before it became mere shoot-'em-up fantasy in recent years, and I respected it and enjoyed the episode so much more because it was able to successfully conclude the episode.
I even loved the moment Clark pulls the tower back upright and the vehicle trying to topple it is pulled along, too. It was a simple, but great use of his powers. When the lads surrounded him and Cyrus at school you really want him to go all 'Karate Kid' and beat up the four or five of them, however many were there, but you also know that's not the right thing to do, not because violence breeds violence, or that he couldn't explain his being able to do that, but because Clark is a man of peace and it wouldn't fit with his character - even in the hallway when the bully jibes at him or mocks Cyrus, the ordinary reaction, especially if you were big and tough as we know he is, would be to give the bully a piece of his mind, a tongue-lashing, if not an actual physical assault to make him think twice, and I feel like if the series had been made today that's what the audience would demand, but that's not the right course and I really admired his restraint in all things. I feel like TV and film has turned a corner in the years since (maybe even during), the series, with anti-heroes more and more popular, and evil getting an upper hand over other evil more desired than true heroism: not being baited, not giving in to revenge, doing good even to those that do evil to you, it's practically Biblical in its message here.
For all those reasons I really took to this episode, it seemed especially well presented, I don't know whether it was the direction or just that sense of beauty in so many shots, gorgeous lighting and an impression of goodness even in the landscape. I noticed that whenever Cyrus was there and things seemed so uncertain, the camera would be a lot more jittery, bobbing around to emphasise the mood in stark opposition to other serene images in the episode. And the way Lex just turns up at places and has that slightly sarcastic smile or tone, it really went back to Season 1 in him seeming like an unknown quantity: is he after the Kents, is he a good guy, is he serious in what he says to Helen…? It could be that with lowered expectations it stood out more, or that I hadn't watched something as uplifting for a few weeks, but whatever the reason it did work for me this time and I was completely wrong to dismiss it before. Sometimes you need a gentle, positive story, and this had no violent death or major issues, it was about identity and the give and take of secrets and trust. Even though it almost ends with Helen put in that difficult position, having said there should be no locked doors between her and Lex, at the same time she's keeping deep, dark secrets from him, it still took the time to end more positively with Lana and Clark in the barn looking at the stars. It may still be uncertain, since she confesses if Cyrus had really been an alien she'd have been unsettled, but it's not an all-out horror at the concept, so maybe Clark should have opened up at that point, the perfect opportunity?
***
Tuesday, 14 December 2021
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Wii, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007) game
'More of the same' isn't a bad deal when it comes to high quality titles like the 'Metroid Prime' series on GameCube, but at the same time this third and final instalment in the trilogy was on a new console so you can't help but feel it should have tried to break a little new ground, create greater immersion or do something that would surprise. In reality, while it does try to inject some unique gameplay elements in the control scheme, it boils down to gimmickry and was a game I'd much rather have been able to play through with a 'Cube controller rather than the awkward Wiimote and Nunchuk. I don't know whether it was the fact I was using a third party control handset and sensor bar, or whether this was the experience for other players at the time, but I had the same issues I experienced with other games on the Wii, most relevantly 'Red Steel.' It seems the setup simply wasn't suited to first person shooters, but then it also didn't seem suitable for 3D platformers as I found with 'Mario Galaxy' - perhaps the Wii wasn't suited to traditional gaming styles in general? Not that the controls take too much away from the experience, it's still got the typical lonely, empty, and creepy settings, the progression with areas and abilities slowly being shared out in the usual dungeoneering that shares more with the 'Zelda' series than FPS'.
At the same time there is no doubt that the occasionally imprecise control method and strain placed on wrists in long play is a detriment to an otherwise enjoyable game to the extent that I almost took off a star in the rating for it. The immersion of interacting with the environment was there, but it was also few and far between, almost an afterthought to justify it being on this particular console. There were times it could be a real pain, too. Again, I may put it down to third party accessories, I've not used an official control setup on the console, so I can't say, but there was one moment in particular that I needed to do several physical actions in tandem with an ally to be able to activate something: pull this out, twist it, push it back in. But I found that while the Wii would recognise the turning motion to great effect, pushing in and out of the screen was hit or miss, often miss, so that was incredibly frustrating, though I eventually muddled through. You're also given your ship in a much more hands-on way, where you use it to solve puzzles, sit in it to travel to destinations and generally have the feeling it is your ship. It would have been nice to be able to actually fly it to various planets, perform some space combat and use the various controls that seem to have no practical use. Maybe it would have taken too much away from the exploring desolate environments so I can see why it wasn't implemented, but it's the kind of greater immersion a new game on a new console could have done with.
The game is very much like a stripped down 'Zelda,' as with the previous 'Prime' games before it: there aren't any side quests, other than the collecting of the power cells (though it turns out this is essential to final progression), there are few characters to talk to, it's mostly you going about your business of shooting, scanning and puzzling: a dungeon here, then onto the next one, no over-worlds, no shops, just pure exploration. I must say it took me a while to get into, mainly for the controls, which are fiddly with the placement of buttons (you have to keep flipping between normal view and your other visors, mainly the scan visor, by pressing '1,' which is slightly awkward). But there's a good sense of story being told in log entries you find along the way, the impression of doom and desolation is strong, and like most games of this ilk, it's the moments when you've unlocked maps and locations, backtracking to use a new ability to get to collectables such as missile expansions, life extending energy tanks, or power cells, that enhance the experience.
Once you've been to the Chozo Observatory and been given the locations of all pickups on the maps it does take away something from the challenge in the sense that it's very easy to see where to go, and this is certainly the easiest game in the series - I never even got stuck once! It's good that you have reminders of what you need to do and where to go to do it whenever you fire up the game, or if you've been wandering around for a while, and the ability to mark rooms on the map for future reference was helpful, but it does all make everything so much easier. At the same time it was wise to remove the frustration of wandering around hoping to find something you're not even sure is there, to the extent that when you don't have that option in the last proper level, the Pirate Homeworld, it is disconcerting to have no guide, forced to rely entirely on your eyes. And even with the mapped collectables you still have to solve the puzzles in each area to get at the pickups, going there is only part of the work.
I stupidly failed to scan the first power suit upgrade I came across, walking into it and picking up before I realised, which meant I could never get 100%. I could have simply restarted as I was only a little way in, but I foolishly kept going, even though from then on I scanned at every opportunity, despite knowing I couldn't get full marks. In the end, however, the game didn't appear to acknowledge the scanning - it didn't grade me on how much I'd scanned. Because I knew I'd missed at least one thing it can't be included in the percentage of the game as a whole or I wouldn't have been awarded the 100% completion I achieved, so does that mean it didn't have any bearing? The scanning is a very big part of the series and shows that there's an element of skill in how you keep track of what may need scanning - going back to previous areas, always keeping the scan visor up if you can (I made it a habit to have it on before stepping through a door so as not to be caught out by anything fast moving - similarly, you have to take risks by scanning enemies and bosses at different stages of their defeat so as not to miss scans), showing that despite the relative ease of the game, if you miss something it's gone for good, as once you've operated on things they change and need to be scanned again in their new state. The downside is that you don't always get the full sense of the visual wonder they were trying to achieve because the scan visor dims your display to show up scannable items more clearly.
Otherwise, while not any jump up from the 'Cube's visuals, it's still good looking. The music is a touch generic, the puzzles aren't exactly taxing, and the enemies aren't too tough either, apart from some of the big bosses which can take time to deal with, though it can also be partly down to the controls making things harder than they need to be at times. The variable speeds of doors opening can be a source of frustration, but I think that's another oddity carried over from the previous games. I'm not quite sure why they do that, whether it's to inject a greater sense of unease when you need to exit a room quickly to escape something, or anticipation when you're about to enter a new location, I don't know. To me it can get annoying and I wasn't sure if it was affected by where you hit the door in accuracy or distance or if you had no effect on it either way and it was completely random. Other annoyances were I never won any of the green tokens you need to unlock certain parts of the bonus content of storyboards and the like, so how are you supposed to get those? (I subsequently learned they only come from Friend Codes online!). And also, it offered me the chance not to save after the final battle, which I did, meaning my file is now inaccessible and has to be overwritten! The option to go back into a file should always be there without sacrificing the 'complete' finality of completion - I would have backed up the save file on SD card if I'd thought about it...
I would say this is a game well worth playing, whether you'd completed the first two, as I had, or not, it stands alone, especially as it is a continuation in style. The highest tribute I can give it is to say it made me want to play the original 'Metroid Prime' again just to see how it all began, and enjoy more precise control, which is always a compliment to a new game in a series. I don't know if further games have continued Samus Aran's story on subsequent consoles (the story ends with a shot of Samus flying off into space, then a mysterious 'X'-shaped craft powers up stealthily to follow…), not having kept up with the Nintendo production line, but I would love to play a version on the Switch with the latest graphics, sound and immersion in the environment to see what they could achieve now. Saying that, it's really not the visuals that are the best thing about the games, it's the involvement of the player and sense of progression and achievement that stand out. On a negative note I do find the 'sci-fi' trappings occasionally irritating as it's very magical and 'videogamey' in the manner in which things don't really make physical or technological sense (and follows the typical gaming pattern of the final level being a weird alien land that's more difficult, linear, and ends with a big boss fight that goes on for a while), I'd prefer to see a much more 'realistic' approach as sometimes shown in the great puzzles of gears and mechanics rather than a magical fantasy style, but perhaps that would make it less accessible. As it is, this was a rewarding experience that I could imagine playing through again in future (a higher difficulty mode was unlocked on completion), and is one of the better games I've experienced on the Wii. I was thinking for much of the time it doesn't quite show the system could cope with all genres as well as its predecessors, but it won me over before the end when I realised I kept wanting to get back to it!
****
'More of the same' isn't a bad deal when it comes to high quality titles like the 'Metroid Prime' series on GameCube, but at the same time this third and final instalment in the trilogy was on a new console so you can't help but feel it should have tried to break a little new ground, create greater immersion or do something that would surprise. In reality, while it does try to inject some unique gameplay elements in the control scheme, it boils down to gimmickry and was a game I'd much rather have been able to play through with a 'Cube controller rather than the awkward Wiimote and Nunchuk. I don't know whether it was the fact I was using a third party control handset and sensor bar, or whether this was the experience for other players at the time, but I had the same issues I experienced with other games on the Wii, most relevantly 'Red Steel.' It seems the setup simply wasn't suited to first person shooters, but then it also didn't seem suitable for 3D platformers as I found with 'Mario Galaxy' - perhaps the Wii wasn't suited to traditional gaming styles in general? Not that the controls take too much away from the experience, it's still got the typical lonely, empty, and creepy settings, the progression with areas and abilities slowly being shared out in the usual dungeoneering that shares more with the 'Zelda' series than FPS'.
At the same time there is no doubt that the occasionally imprecise control method and strain placed on wrists in long play is a detriment to an otherwise enjoyable game to the extent that I almost took off a star in the rating for it. The immersion of interacting with the environment was there, but it was also few and far between, almost an afterthought to justify it being on this particular console. There were times it could be a real pain, too. Again, I may put it down to third party accessories, I've not used an official control setup on the console, so I can't say, but there was one moment in particular that I needed to do several physical actions in tandem with an ally to be able to activate something: pull this out, twist it, push it back in. But I found that while the Wii would recognise the turning motion to great effect, pushing in and out of the screen was hit or miss, often miss, so that was incredibly frustrating, though I eventually muddled through. You're also given your ship in a much more hands-on way, where you use it to solve puzzles, sit in it to travel to destinations and generally have the feeling it is your ship. It would have been nice to be able to actually fly it to various planets, perform some space combat and use the various controls that seem to have no practical use. Maybe it would have taken too much away from the exploring desolate environments so I can see why it wasn't implemented, but it's the kind of greater immersion a new game on a new console could have done with.
The game is very much like a stripped down 'Zelda,' as with the previous 'Prime' games before it: there aren't any side quests, other than the collecting of the power cells (though it turns out this is essential to final progression), there are few characters to talk to, it's mostly you going about your business of shooting, scanning and puzzling: a dungeon here, then onto the next one, no over-worlds, no shops, just pure exploration. I must say it took me a while to get into, mainly for the controls, which are fiddly with the placement of buttons (you have to keep flipping between normal view and your other visors, mainly the scan visor, by pressing '1,' which is slightly awkward). But there's a good sense of story being told in log entries you find along the way, the impression of doom and desolation is strong, and like most games of this ilk, it's the moments when you've unlocked maps and locations, backtracking to use a new ability to get to collectables such as missile expansions, life extending energy tanks, or power cells, that enhance the experience.
Once you've been to the Chozo Observatory and been given the locations of all pickups on the maps it does take away something from the challenge in the sense that it's very easy to see where to go, and this is certainly the easiest game in the series - I never even got stuck once! It's good that you have reminders of what you need to do and where to go to do it whenever you fire up the game, or if you've been wandering around for a while, and the ability to mark rooms on the map for future reference was helpful, but it does all make everything so much easier. At the same time it was wise to remove the frustration of wandering around hoping to find something you're not even sure is there, to the extent that when you don't have that option in the last proper level, the Pirate Homeworld, it is disconcerting to have no guide, forced to rely entirely on your eyes. And even with the mapped collectables you still have to solve the puzzles in each area to get at the pickups, going there is only part of the work.
I stupidly failed to scan the first power suit upgrade I came across, walking into it and picking up before I realised, which meant I could never get 100%. I could have simply restarted as I was only a little way in, but I foolishly kept going, even though from then on I scanned at every opportunity, despite knowing I couldn't get full marks. In the end, however, the game didn't appear to acknowledge the scanning - it didn't grade me on how much I'd scanned. Because I knew I'd missed at least one thing it can't be included in the percentage of the game as a whole or I wouldn't have been awarded the 100% completion I achieved, so does that mean it didn't have any bearing? The scanning is a very big part of the series and shows that there's an element of skill in how you keep track of what may need scanning - going back to previous areas, always keeping the scan visor up if you can (I made it a habit to have it on before stepping through a door so as not to be caught out by anything fast moving - similarly, you have to take risks by scanning enemies and bosses at different stages of their defeat so as not to miss scans), showing that despite the relative ease of the game, if you miss something it's gone for good, as once you've operated on things they change and need to be scanned again in their new state. The downside is that you don't always get the full sense of the visual wonder they were trying to achieve because the scan visor dims your display to show up scannable items more clearly.
Otherwise, while not any jump up from the 'Cube's visuals, it's still good looking. The music is a touch generic, the puzzles aren't exactly taxing, and the enemies aren't too tough either, apart from some of the big bosses which can take time to deal with, though it can also be partly down to the controls making things harder than they need to be at times. The variable speeds of doors opening can be a source of frustration, but I think that's another oddity carried over from the previous games. I'm not quite sure why they do that, whether it's to inject a greater sense of unease when you need to exit a room quickly to escape something, or anticipation when you're about to enter a new location, I don't know. To me it can get annoying and I wasn't sure if it was affected by where you hit the door in accuracy or distance or if you had no effect on it either way and it was completely random. Other annoyances were I never won any of the green tokens you need to unlock certain parts of the bonus content of storyboards and the like, so how are you supposed to get those? (I subsequently learned they only come from Friend Codes online!). And also, it offered me the chance not to save after the final battle, which I did, meaning my file is now inaccessible and has to be overwritten! The option to go back into a file should always be there without sacrificing the 'complete' finality of completion - I would have backed up the save file on SD card if I'd thought about it...
I would say this is a game well worth playing, whether you'd completed the first two, as I had, or not, it stands alone, especially as it is a continuation in style. The highest tribute I can give it is to say it made me want to play the original 'Metroid Prime' again just to see how it all began, and enjoy more precise control, which is always a compliment to a new game in a series. I don't know if further games have continued Samus Aran's story on subsequent consoles (the story ends with a shot of Samus flying off into space, then a mysterious 'X'-shaped craft powers up stealthily to follow…), not having kept up with the Nintendo production line, but I would love to play a version on the Switch with the latest graphics, sound and immersion in the environment to see what they could achieve now. Saying that, it's really not the visuals that are the best thing about the games, it's the involvement of the player and sense of progression and achievement that stand out. On a negative note I do find the 'sci-fi' trappings occasionally irritating as it's very magical and 'videogamey' in the manner in which things don't really make physical or technological sense (and follows the typical gaming pattern of the final level being a weird alien land that's more difficult, linear, and ends with a big boss fight that goes on for a while), I'd prefer to see a much more 'realistic' approach as sometimes shown in the great puzzles of gears and mechanics rather than a magical fantasy style, but perhaps that would make it less accessible. As it is, this was a rewarding experience that I could imagine playing through again in future (a higher difficulty mode was unlocked on completion), and is one of the better games I've experienced on the Wii. I was thinking for much of the time it doesn't quite show the system could cope with all genres as well as its predecessors, but it won me over before the end when I realised I kept wanting to get back to it!
****
Tuesday, 30 November 2021
The Pirates of Orion
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Pirates of Orion)
A packed episode in terms of characters and voices, and though one with various visual and audio gaffes, one of the stories that had the closest feeling to the series it was based on: Dr. McCoy is especially prevalent for a change as he has a most important patient, his own First Officer, Spock, who has contracted a deadly virus that will finish him off unless they can get a specific drug. But the nearest supply is just out of range for the time the Vulcan has left! It's a good scenario, written by Howard Weinstein who was very young at the time and whose success at selling the script led him to write Trek novels, including one of the earliest in the Pocket Books range from 1981! You can see how much of a fan he was by how close the characters and situations are to 'TOS,' while also seeking to expand upon existing lore and weave in connections with what had come before. We see a whole different kind of Starfleet ship, as well as a fearsome alien vessel, Kirk gets to be the hero, but at the same time everyone else is involved, even Nurse Chapel, and the dialogue between Spock and McCoy, their eternal friendly feud coming naturally from the story, making it quite enjoyable.
Perhaps the only flaw with the story is the way the Orions look, nothing like the glimpses we saw of them in 'The Cage' and 'Whom Gods Destroy,' though they certainly behave in nefarious fashion as demonstrated by the example from 'Journey To Babel,' who committed suicide when his plot to destabilise relations failed. That episode is clearly a touchstone for this story as Kirk refers back to it directly (and pleasingly), saying that Orion neutrality has been in question ever since that affair - updating the status of races and their politics is one of those aspects regular viewers love about Trek, solidifying this world we visit, and revisit, proving that even when we're not seeing the individual pieces in every episode or story the wheels keep turning and the galaxy isn't standing still. Hence we have Orions showing up as pirates. They're about as pale green as you can get, almost turquoise or very light blue, so perhaps this is where 'DSC' got its inspiration from when they included them in Season 1. Thankfully the modern era eventually changed them to be much darker green, as it was almost like they were ashamed how green they used to be, so at least they saw sense in that regard (even if they don't like giving us the kind of details we see in this episode). It's actually their uniforms that are really green, which only makes their skin seem paler. Perhaps this is a particular branch of the race who make up for their pale skin by wearing the brightest green possible?
Their name was one of the gaffes of the episode as both Lieutenant Arex and Captain Kirk pronounce is as 'Orry-on' rather than the usual 'Ory-on,' which is a little disconcerting, but I suppose comes from them being audio lines recorded with no expert on hand to explain proper pronunciation. It's not like they were a commonly used race on 'TOS' anyway, so Doohan and Shatner wouldn't have remembered the right way to say it. I must say I was impressed with Doohan's versatility as while he was recognisable to varying degrees in most of the guest voices he did, even though he does have a good variety (Arex sounding completely different from Scotty, for example - just watched an episode of 'Taxi' where Andy Kaufman switches between Latka as himself and then an American version, which was somewhat similar!), for some time I wasn't sure it was him as the Orion Captain, though in the end I settled on it being him. But there were at least a couple of other guest voices who weren't part of the regular cast, Captain O'Shea of the SS Huron (or is it?), and the other Orion crew-members, I think. Majel Barrett gets to portray the good old Enterprise computer again, but also what appears to be the Helmswoman for the Huron, and Nurse Chapel herself. And even George Takei plays another crewman on the Huron as well as Sulu. Only Nichelle Nichols sticks purely to Uhura.
Another way you can tell this is written by a fan is that we have a different set of characters who beam over to the Huron - when do we ever see Kirk accompanied by Scotty, Uhura and Chapel on a Landing Party? It was fascinating to see another starship, both its external, which had more of the look of a converted cargo vessel than a Federation starship, and its Bridge. In fact we get to see three different Bridges and as many different View-screens, all unique: the Huron's has the usual horizontal lights flashing along, but vertically in this case, and the screen's a square shape, while the layout of the Bridge is quite different, smaller and simpler. I can't say it was an attractive design, but at least we got to see a proper starship. The questions is, is it the SS Huron, as spoken in dialogue by Kirk and its own Captain O'Shea (complete with a rare beard), or the 'USS' Huron, as depicted on screen? A case of the animators not paying attention to the script, or the voice artists not realising it was written wrong, who knows? It would depend on whether the audio was recorded first and then animated, or the reverse, but even so you'd think it would be defined in the script! At least they got the idea right of each starship having its own unique insignia badge: rather than the arrowhead chevron we know from the Enterprise, the Huron crew have a pointed star that looks almost like the later combadges we'd see from 'TNG' and beyond.
One thing I noticed about the animation was they did seem to be playing for time by hanging on establishing shots of ships for longer than usual - it's rich of me to point that out when I'm always chiding modern Trek for not caring enough to have decent external views of ships and preferring everything to be seen through the ridiculously giant windows that came from the Kelvin Timeline and thus have no place in the Prime, and I didn't mind it, but it was noticeable as if they were saving a few precious seconds of expensive time. The reuse of footage, something I'd always had the impression of from my previous viewings as a child, but which on this run through I hadn't found as common or obvious, was clearly evident, especially in the shots after Spock's collapse as we see a phantom McCoy in both instances when he's supposed to be in Sickbay! The first time you see him next to Kirk's chair, then Kirk calls down to Sickbay for a medical alert and McCoy isn't to be seen in any other shot of that scene. Then exactly the same mistake happens again later on, only this time it's even more glaring as McCoy is contacting the Bridge from Sickbay to tell them to send Spock for his next shot, and then he collapses and phantom McCoy is hovering by Kirk's chair again! It's so brief you'd easily miss it if you weren't paying attention, but it still looks pretty lazy! If they were going to reuse it they could at least have coloured McCoy's shirt as another division so it wasn't as obvious!
What isn't lazy is the story's attention to detail, such as reiterating that Spock has copper-based blood as opposed to humans' iron-based. I was really hoping the Orions were going to be revealed to have copper blood too, maybe they'd have to give Spock a transfusion and that might help to explain their green colouring, but that never came up, sadly. I did wonder if they meant pneumonia is no longer a dangerous illness in this time as Kirk said something about the virus outbreak coming under control and now being not even as dangerous as pneumonia, which would suggest it's easily cured. And it was good to see McCoy practically pulling rank on Spock about halving his duty shifts - I always like it when we get to see a Doctor overrule command personnel on medical grounds as it adds a whole other level to the hierarchy of a functioning starship. And Spock behaves as Spock-like as ever, knowing he's dying, but preferring to carry on with his duties, as stoic and dependable as ever. Even the ending is fun with McCoy adamant Spock has to cave in and admit his physiology would have been better if it were human, which of course he doesn't, so it's very much in the 'TOS' vein.
We even get scenes in the Briefing Room with its Tri-screen, and when Kirk beams down to the asteroid to meet with the treacherous Orion Captain, and Spock is incapacitated, Scotty gets to have command again, sitting in the Captain's Chair as we've seen a number of times. The Orions see the only way to protect their perceived neutrality is to blow themselves up in this explosive asteroid field, taking the Enterprise with them, but this goes a little far for the sake of protecting their piracy! It's like the Ferengi giving up a valuable hoard so no one will ever know they were greedy! But it does fit with the Orion spy from 'Journey To Babel,' and gave the race a hard edge (all unsuccessful Orion missions end in suicide!), especially for a Saturday morning cartoon, though Kirk makes it clear he's not going to allow it, the Captain will stand trial for his actions. I'm not sure there was a strong enough message at the heart of the tale to make it one of the best of 'TAS,' but it's certainly one of the better stories by virtue of using the whole cast rather than just Kirk and Spock. We even learn (if this were canon), that McCoy has been a doctor for twenty-five years, in a moment that was closest to exploring an idea: he expresses disgust with his profession that with all they know he still can't save Spock's life and it's all no use, then Kirk says he wouldn't have been a doctor so long if he truly believed that. Finally, it would have been nice to see the USS Potemkin which is the starship which delivers the drug to the SS Huron, but there were probably enough starships for one short episode (and the Orions' looked a bit Vulcan, as in the T'Plana-Hath, the ship that made first contact with Earth - maybe they took their inspiration from that?).
**
A packed episode in terms of characters and voices, and though one with various visual and audio gaffes, one of the stories that had the closest feeling to the series it was based on: Dr. McCoy is especially prevalent for a change as he has a most important patient, his own First Officer, Spock, who has contracted a deadly virus that will finish him off unless they can get a specific drug. But the nearest supply is just out of range for the time the Vulcan has left! It's a good scenario, written by Howard Weinstein who was very young at the time and whose success at selling the script led him to write Trek novels, including one of the earliest in the Pocket Books range from 1981! You can see how much of a fan he was by how close the characters and situations are to 'TOS,' while also seeking to expand upon existing lore and weave in connections with what had come before. We see a whole different kind of Starfleet ship, as well as a fearsome alien vessel, Kirk gets to be the hero, but at the same time everyone else is involved, even Nurse Chapel, and the dialogue between Spock and McCoy, their eternal friendly feud coming naturally from the story, making it quite enjoyable.
Perhaps the only flaw with the story is the way the Orions look, nothing like the glimpses we saw of them in 'The Cage' and 'Whom Gods Destroy,' though they certainly behave in nefarious fashion as demonstrated by the example from 'Journey To Babel,' who committed suicide when his plot to destabilise relations failed. That episode is clearly a touchstone for this story as Kirk refers back to it directly (and pleasingly), saying that Orion neutrality has been in question ever since that affair - updating the status of races and their politics is one of those aspects regular viewers love about Trek, solidifying this world we visit, and revisit, proving that even when we're not seeing the individual pieces in every episode or story the wheels keep turning and the galaxy isn't standing still. Hence we have Orions showing up as pirates. They're about as pale green as you can get, almost turquoise or very light blue, so perhaps this is where 'DSC' got its inspiration from when they included them in Season 1. Thankfully the modern era eventually changed them to be much darker green, as it was almost like they were ashamed how green they used to be, so at least they saw sense in that regard (even if they don't like giving us the kind of details we see in this episode). It's actually their uniforms that are really green, which only makes their skin seem paler. Perhaps this is a particular branch of the race who make up for their pale skin by wearing the brightest green possible?
Their name was one of the gaffes of the episode as both Lieutenant Arex and Captain Kirk pronounce is as 'Orry-on' rather than the usual 'Ory-on,' which is a little disconcerting, but I suppose comes from them being audio lines recorded with no expert on hand to explain proper pronunciation. It's not like they were a commonly used race on 'TOS' anyway, so Doohan and Shatner wouldn't have remembered the right way to say it. I must say I was impressed with Doohan's versatility as while he was recognisable to varying degrees in most of the guest voices he did, even though he does have a good variety (Arex sounding completely different from Scotty, for example - just watched an episode of 'Taxi' where Andy Kaufman switches between Latka as himself and then an American version, which was somewhat similar!), for some time I wasn't sure it was him as the Orion Captain, though in the end I settled on it being him. But there were at least a couple of other guest voices who weren't part of the regular cast, Captain O'Shea of the SS Huron (or is it?), and the other Orion crew-members, I think. Majel Barrett gets to portray the good old Enterprise computer again, but also what appears to be the Helmswoman for the Huron, and Nurse Chapel herself. And even George Takei plays another crewman on the Huron as well as Sulu. Only Nichelle Nichols sticks purely to Uhura.
Another way you can tell this is written by a fan is that we have a different set of characters who beam over to the Huron - when do we ever see Kirk accompanied by Scotty, Uhura and Chapel on a Landing Party? It was fascinating to see another starship, both its external, which had more of the look of a converted cargo vessel than a Federation starship, and its Bridge. In fact we get to see three different Bridges and as many different View-screens, all unique: the Huron's has the usual horizontal lights flashing along, but vertically in this case, and the screen's a square shape, while the layout of the Bridge is quite different, smaller and simpler. I can't say it was an attractive design, but at least we got to see a proper starship. The questions is, is it the SS Huron, as spoken in dialogue by Kirk and its own Captain O'Shea (complete with a rare beard), or the 'USS' Huron, as depicted on screen? A case of the animators not paying attention to the script, or the voice artists not realising it was written wrong, who knows? It would depend on whether the audio was recorded first and then animated, or the reverse, but even so you'd think it would be defined in the script! At least they got the idea right of each starship having its own unique insignia badge: rather than the arrowhead chevron we know from the Enterprise, the Huron crew have a pointed star that looks almost like the later combadges we'd see from 'TNG' and beyond.
One thing I noticed about the animation was they did seem to be playing for time by hanging on establishing shots of ships for longer than usual - it's rich of me to point that out when I'm always chiding modern Trek for not caring enough to have decent external views of ships and preferring everything to be seen through the ridiculously giant windows that came from the Kelvin Timeline and thus have no place in the Prime, and I didn't mind it, but it was noticeable as if they were saving a few precious seconds of expensive time. The reuse of footage, something I'd always had the impression of from my previous viewings as a child, but which on this run through I hadn't found as common or obvious, was clearly evident, especially in the shots after Spock's collapse as we see a phantom McCoy in both instances when he's supposed to be in Sickbay! The first time you see him next to Kirk's chair, then Kirk calls down to Sickbay for a medical alert and McCoy isn't to be seen in any other shot of that scene. Then exactly the same mistake happens again later on, only this time it's even more glaring as McCoy is contacting the Bridge from Sickbay to tell them to send Spock for his next shot, and then he collapses and phantom McCoy is hovering by Kirk's chair again! It's so brief you'd easily miss it if you weren't paying attention, but it still looks pretty lazy! If they were going to reuse it they could at least have coloured McCoy's shirt as another division so it wasn't as obvious!
What isn't lazy is the story's attention to detail, such as reiterating that Spock has copper-based blood as opposed to humans' iron-based. I was really hoping the Orions were going to be revealed to have copper blood too, maybe they'd have to give Spock a transfusion and that might help to explain their green colouring, but that never came up, sadly. I did wonder if they meant pneumonia is no longer a dangerous illness in this time as Kirk said something about the virus outbreak coming under control and now being not even as dangerous as pneumonia, which would suggest it's easily cured. And it was good to see McCoy practically pulling rank on Spock about halving his duty shifts - I always like it when we get to see a Doctor overrule command personnel on medical grounds as it adds a whole other level to the hierarchy of a functioning starship. And Spock behaves as Spock-like as ever, knowing he's dying, but preferring to carry on with his duties, as stoic and dependable as ever. Even the ending is fun with McCoy adamant Spock has to cave in and admit his physiology would have been better if it were human, which of course he doesn't, so it's very much in the 'TOS' vein.
We even get scenes in the Briefing Room with its Tri-screen, and when Kirk beams down to the asteroid to meet with the treacherous Orion Captain, and Spock is incapacitated, Scotty gets to have command again, sitting in the Captain's Chair as we've seen a number of times. The Orions see the only way to protect their perceived neutrality is to blow themselves up in this explosive asteroid field, taking the Enterprise with them, but this goes a little far for the sake of protecting their piracy! It's like the Ferengi giving up a valuable hoard so no one will ever know they were greedy! But it does fit with the Orion spy from 'Journey To Babel,' and gave the race a hard edge (all unsuccessful Orion missions end in suicide!), especially for a Saturday morning cartoon, though Kirk makes it clear he's not going to allow it, the Captain will stand trial for his actions. I'm not sure there was a strong enough message at the heart of the tale to make it one of the best of 'TAS,' but it's certainly one of the better stories by virtue of using the whole cast rather than just Kirk and Spock. We even learn (if this were canon), that McCoy has been a doctor for twenty-five years, in a moment that was closest to exploring an idea: he expresses disgust with his profession that with all they know he still can't save Spock's life and it's all no use, then Kirk says he wouldn't have been a doctor so long if he truly believed that. Finally, it would have been nice to see the USS Potemkin which is the starship which delivers the drug to the SS Huron, but there were probably enough starships for one short episode (and the Orions' looked a bit Vulcan, as in the T'Plana-Hath, the ship that made first contact with Earth - maybe they took their inspiration from that?).
**
Schrodinger's Bomb
DVD, BUGS S2 (Schrodinger's Bomb)
'Neville Schrodinger's Cat' doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the title they actually chose, but it does link back to the first time we saw Jean-Daniel, pushing around Mr. Neville at the beginning of 'Pulse,' so I wonder if this innocent little joke on Ed's part was given to him as an inside joke by writer Stephen Gallagher, the man who gave us JD in the first place and now writes his emancipation? Gallagher's fingerprints are all over this, the best episode since 'Out of The Hive,' a culmination of the arc this season and a gelling of philosophy, action and character, not to mention some serious series continuity. While we finish out the arc of the Prison Governor (finally named as Governor Holstock), the Prison Guard (never given a name), and JD's incarceration, we also bring back Roland Blatty and his Bureau of Weapons Technology, both of which Gallagher created for the second episode of the series, 'Assassins Inc,' so it's easy to see why he's so associated with the series despite not being the show-runner - he probably contributed the most and the best ideas, and he wasn't done yet, one reason why his absence hurt Season 4 so much.
We're thrown off-balance right from the first scene with what I presume is stock footage of a vehicle travelling in a desert land, then we're inside what we learn is the lost tomb of King Katran and I'm getting visions as diverse as 'Uncle Jack & Cleopatra's Mummy' and 'Stargate SG-1,' both made within a few years of this episode, before and after, for its fascinating desert tomb decor and style. The unknown players form an alliance (why did General Maliq have to shoot off his super-duper better-than-a-rifle gun at the seal, I'm sure it would have been worth something!), the Neumann's, Father and daughter, with this foreign warlord (of the 'Kingdom of Oroman' according to his bio seen later on a computer screen), who speaks with an impeccable English accent (I assumed he was educated in England). But post-credits we plunge right in with Ros undercover as 'Princess Rosalia,' working with the Bureau to uncover the Neumanns as weapons dealers, when things go wrong, Bureau agents have to be sent in and Dr. Neumann is able to secure the vital evidence in his vault which will explode unless they exit the building. Hence the philosophical quandary of Schrodinger's cat: either the evidence isn't in there, in which case they have nothing on Neumann, or it is, but it'll explode meaning they'll have nothing on Neumann, the old cat in the box trick of a cat with a vial of poison having the probability of 50/50 whether it's alive or dead in a sealed box.
Confused? I thought it was very well presented and much more intelligent than the average Saturday night entertainment, I like that they were able to introduce interesting concepts such as this, not just run around and blow things up. Which they did admirably as well! It really opened the series up to have our team working with the authorities, and it was quite different to the Bureau's first appearance when they were merely dealing with intellectual property rights, albeit for deadly weapons and devices. Here it's guns drawn at dawn, the agents storm this fantastically ornate building (was the huge fan something they recreated for the internal set, or did they film inside the building we saw?), that looks rather out of place in a series usually so dedicated to the ultra-modern steel and glass constructions that marked it out as futuristic. I don't know whether it was just designed to be a contrast and continue the middle eastern or African desert theme, or whether the script changed and they decided to move the Neumann's museum, or whatever it was, to our own country. It wouldn't have been an issue if it was only the building itself, but then the Bureau show up driving these really old cars that wouldn't look out of place on the streets of Egypt or some other developing nation, and yet here we are in the middle of what we assume is London (they even reuse various locations already seen in other episodes, such as the stretch of road where Ros and Roland tail Maliq, the top of the car park where they trace Cassandra's car, and the large arena, all of which would be reused again), on a series usually intent on cutting edge tech, and the Bureau are running these outdated cars?
That's why I thought it could possibly have been originally planned as an overseas operation, not that that would make a lot of sense since the Bureau's authority is implied to be in the UK, but it was perplexing. It is very exciting to see our team working with this big organisation that had previously been established, not that I understood all that at the time. As I probably mentioned in my 'Assassins Inc' review, back when I first watched it I had the impression Season 1 was all about the team working with Blatty as if he was their boss, since I hadn't seen it and came in on episode three of Season 2. The way Roland just shows up here and knows them and they know him, and the strict and authoritative tone he takes with them suggested it, even though he is made to look a little pompous to the point of overconfidence in his authority, such as when Beckett has to push him down to stop him being shot when they're surrounding the ship at the end. Blatty is a good man, he's all about the law and stopping dangerous criminals, but he's there to show the advantages our team have of working outside of the rigid structure of a government organisation. As Blatty says, these 'consultants' have the tendency of taking over operations, and we'd see in Season 3 what a blending of being part of an organisation, yet also having a great deal of autonomy and a more fluid way of working, would look like.
I'd love to know how much of the season was plotted out, whether they knew Jean-Daniel was going to buy his way out of prison by making it an acquisition in a hostile takeover, or not. They must have known that was the trick as he'd been making money from the first time he appeared and it was such a clever idea to use the Gizmos team as the tool to leverage all this cash flow and investment, typical of such a devious mind. But had they worked out how the season was going to end up, had they decided on artificial intelligence, or was that something they came up with as the Big Plan of JD, knowing he'd have some kind of world-dominating evil to carry out? Similarly, did Gallagher plan to bring back Roland and his Bureau or was it just a neat slotting together of the pieces, because there didn't have to be connection to past stories, it's just that this makes it so much more satisfying if you're someone who's paid attention? Equally, if you didn't know all that backstory you enjoyed it for being thrilling adventure (never before has a man shaving his head been so full of tension!), constant twists and double-backs, it's absolutely full of a bright, rich, yet dangerous series of situations. I noticed especially that Ros seemed back to her best - I've mentioned in some reviews that Jaye Griffiths sometimes came across as a little removed compared to Season 1, whereas here she has all the verve of old.
Perhaps it was meeting JD again after all this time, and one moment that really stood out for me was when they do first lay eyes on each other when she's in the back of the van and JD is in control. There was something that linked to the final ever scene of the series, the very end of 'The Enemy Within' where Ros and Beckett are kidnapped and meet someone they apparently know. I think it was the scene in this episode that makes it seem more plausible that it could be JD there as it's the way he greets Ros here. There's no surprise between them, though Ros is shocked. We also get the best episode for JD so far. Granted, he'd been locked up in a prison cell for all but one of his previous appearances, and in 'Pulse' it took a while for us to realise that he was actually the brains behind the operation, not the brawn we took him for. But here he's the wolf uncaged - lean, hungry and ready for his plans to come to fruition after long planning and waiting, and he is an extremely dangerous man. His presence makes certain scenes even more tense, since he's always so icy cool and calm that when he starts to look and sound slightly worried as batty old Dr. Neumann shaves his head to reveal the key code tattooed on top of his head, they're right down to the last second before the whole place is going to go up in their faces and you can see in JD's highly expressive eyes that it's crossing his mind that his whole plan, his whole life, could be scuppered by the bumbling of his associate.
Could it be this incident that gives him reason to shoot Neumann in cold blood (mind you, everything he does seems to be done in cold blood - he'd have made an excellent Cardassian!), or at least a toll against the man? JD is a complex villain. He's unquestionably evil, but then he saves the life of Cassandra when her Father is going to shoot her, presumably for being a liability after her blinding by Beckett. His rationale is that, "Only rats and insects eat their young," which, coupled with the fact he worked with his own brother in 'Pulse' and seemed to be motivated by revenge against the team that 'killed' him and put JD away, suggests family ties are important to him. But then he claims there's no percentage in revenge when speaking to Ros. And it's not like he looks after Cassandra, he just leaves her in the middle of the road, half-blind, with the corpse of her dead Father sprawled in front of her. Was that a kind of test? How does she deal with being put in such an untenable situation? My theory is that JD was brought up in a strict crime family, where honour among the family was of the highest importance. But he also has a malevolent enjoyment of playing with power that makes him a fascinating adversary, not just in terms of opposition to our team, but as a compelling character on his own. It's simply fascinating to wonder about his motivations, his past, and what drives him.
It's telling that I haven't talked much about our heroes yet, because the shadow of JD dominates the episode. When he's not there you're wondering what he's doing and when he is, he tends to draw you in, even though he's with other villains. Maliq, too, has a strong personality, but not the deviousness of JD, as when he fails to carry out his ally's strict agreement on the First Century Bactrian gold artefacts from the tomb, another moment when JD's cool demeanour is rattled - he wanted the ugly grey stuff as it contained this special Niobium 5 which is a low temperature superconductor, for what purpose we can only speculate on at this stage, but that would become fully apparent in subsequent episodes. Again, I love that we don't know what JD's future plans are, his goal here is just to get out of prison. But he does seem to have lost some of his bite when he's in the surroundings of Maliq and his men, because how can anyone stand up to a small army? But Maliq underestimates him, has no understanding of the kind of mind he has, sending one puny soldier to take out the great JD? Ludicrous! And of course he never learns his lesson as there seem to be no second chances in JD's world: you either contribute what was agreed, or you're fired. That's fired upon, the roar of the gunfire echoing through the ship's hold as he takes down Maliq.
I do wonder how he was able to get his hands on a 'ton' of this mythical Red Mercury (which sounds a bit like the unexplained McGuffin in 'Star Trek XI': Red Matter, except that in Trek you expect higher standards of scientific plausibility, or at least you used to…), which is what he and the Neumanns barter for the Bactrian artefacts, but we have to assume JD has all kinds of criminal connections. He also has previously unseen skills - I'm not talking about the electronics or the manufacturing capability, but his untold ability to somehow get behind the rather gullible Prison Guard when she's lured into his cell by the TV screens. It's really hard to see how that worked, but I imagined he'd actually filmed the sequence earlier and was then enacting it as if he was doing it right there, which would explain how he could sneak round behind her, except for the fact that the screens were right next to the wall and so he couldn't get round that way… So either he scuttled across the ceiling or he walked round the other side while she was mesmerised up close to the screen… I don't know, it never looked quite right and how would he know when it was okay to move, how could he get past her peripheral vision? I know it's supposed to be a fun, entertaining moment and not to be thought about, but it was entirely unnecessary. Okay, not entirely, the guard needed to be taken care of as while they could cordon off a corridor to get JD, Neumann and Cassandra out of the prison, she'd have been in the way, but that was the only slightly flimsy moment.
The Governor's misplaced trust is shown to be a great weakness as he's got to the stage where he's actually confiding in his prisoner, telling him about the takeover and how his job may be on the line. I feel they should have done a little more with both Governor and Guard so that we actually cared what happened to them. As it is, they both look somewhat foolish, even after the Guard expressed suspicions against JD in a previous episode, she's lured in by his trick and ends up getting carried like a sack of potatoes into the Governor's office. We never know what happened to the pair, I expect they were just left there as the villains made their escape, their lives intact, but their careers over. While all this is going on our team are kept busy running around, jury-rigging doors, dodging explosions and just generally having a good time since the pressure's off as Roland's the boss and they don't have any reverence for him. At the same time their lives are still put in danger on a regular basis, whether it be from Cassandra's high-tech gun with its laser sight, 'computer micro-targeting' (whatever that means), and 'in-flight error correction' (those bullets must cost a fortune!), or various explosives. But it was a great weapon Cassandra had, and what really gets the Bureau of Weapons Technology on board for the mission.
It's important to note that despite this being the culmination, or at least a stage towards it, in the villain's plans, it's still a lighthearted story where there are plenty of moments of levity, either intended (Beckett and Ed chuckling over Ros' cover alias), or not (Ed getting really worked up about Cassandra's exploding shells as Beckett tells him to draw her attention!). There's all the usual action, Ed gets to ride in a helicopter again, though this time he's not the pilot as he has to abseil onto the ship's deck where Ros is being held hostage. The best moment may be at the Neumann's building where JD has left Blatty taped to a bomb, while he holds a grenade to Ros' head, then Ed and Beckett charge down there only to realise it's actually a bomb within a bomb, or a diversionary bomb attached to Roland to distract them from the room full of explosives that are about to go off, forcing them to bundle the Bureau Chief out as the place explodes, and only then defuse the one stuck to him at the last moment. It's great stuff and you really feel the force of the blasts as you see the actors running from the flames, especially the shot of the van erupting behind Ed, Ros and Beckett, which looks so close to them! That whole moment was terrific as Ros is chained to the steering wheel, Ed can't reach the grenade and Beckett comes running in wielding a huge angle grinder! It's over the top, but in the way the series did best.
They even have one of the best jokey final scenes, which for once isn't cheesy or silly and demonstrates the strong friendship between the trio as they quiz Beckett on 'Einstein's dog,' a scenario he made up so he didn't look so ignorant after Ed had dropped in the Schrodinger's cat analogy earlier. It's lovely to see them all laughing and happy especially as we then cut to a final final scene, a simple set of images of the desert, the tomb, and finally, JD with his hands on the material he needs for whatever nefarious plot he'd planned. And he really is such a great character, the way he nonchalantly palms the grenade in his pocket when Ros is captive, taking the clothes of the soldier sent to kill him (that's an action figure variant if ever I saw one!), but it's also a sense of superiority to his enemies, either moral or not. For instance, he does diminish a little on the ship, off-balance by his meticulous planning being affected by Maliq's failure to comply with instructions, but regains his stature by showing he was a soldier, too (don't forget he left the Foreign Legion saying it was too easy). He makes the point that so few of those the Gizmos team cross ever survive, which I feel is Gallagher calling attention to a trope of the series, perhaps poking fun a little, but also using it as a stick to beat our heroes with, because it is true. His attempt to finish each of them off is like a piece of artistry, sending Ed and Beckett to help Roland, but he also has more than one reason for doing so much of what he does - in that instance covering his escape, but he also has a further hold over Ros, that her friends are dead and she helped, perhaps a direct attack for her part in Patrick's death.
I haven't even made reference to what the team were wearing (yellow jacket for Ros, purple shirt for Beckett and Ed's now standard blue jumper), because this is such an atypical episode - for one thing it takes place mainly in daylight, but also we don't see so much of the technological side of the series in terms of the settings, buildings and gadgetry, there simply isn't time as we fly from one part of the story to the next, all the compressed energy and buildup of the season being released in dramatic style. And yet it's not over… There's that sense of coming danger, that this was merely the taster, and that's exciting, too. I went in not really wanting to watch the episode, not because I didn't think it would hold up, but I just wanted to relax and not have to think about anything or write a review, but the mark of a truly great episode is that it doesn't matter how you feel going in, it will win you over, energise you and change your mood entirely, which is exactly what happened and has enthused me to write so much. There wasn't even that much to nitpick: I wished when Ros commented on the brevity of Maliq's lecture that she'd said in 'our day' instead of 'my day,' since she was talking to Roland and they'd been at university together. And Maliq commenting on their 'textbook pursuit,' how his driver was completely unaware of them, suggested to me he should get a new driver: a yellow car on an empty road, and he didn't notice? Maybe he was so used to the backup car dealing with tails he'd become blase about it all? And a barcode on the bonce? Inventive, but not very practical - I assume the actor was wearing a wig, but if so it looked very real!
*****
'Neville Schrodinger's Cat' doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the title they actually chose, but it does link back to the first time we saw Jean-Daniel, pushing around Mr. Neville at the beginning of 'Pulse,' so I wonder if this innocent little joke on Ed's part was given to him as an inside joke by writer Stephen Gallagher, the man who gave us JD in the first place and now writes his emancipation? Gallagher's fingerprints are all over this, the best episode since 'Out of The Hive,' a culmination of the arc this season and a gelling of philosophy, action and character, not to mention some serious series continuity. While we finish out the arc of the Prison Governor (finally named as Governor Holstock), the Prison Guard (never given a name), and JD's incarceration, we also bring back Roland Blatty and his Bureau of Weapons Technology, both of which Gallagher created for the second episode of the series, 'Assassins Inc,' so it's easy to see why he's so associated with the series despite not being the show-runner - he probably contributed the most and the best ideas, and he wasn't done yet, one reason why his absence hurt Season 4 so much.
We're thrown off-balance right from the first scene with what I presume is stock footage of a vehicle travelling in a desert land, then we're inside what we learn is the lost tomb of King Katran and I'm getting visions as diverse as 'Uncle Jack & Cleopatra's Mummy' and 'Stargate SG-1,' both made within a few years of this episode, before and after, for its fascinating desert tomb decor and style. The unknown players form an alliance (why did General Maliq have to shoot off his super-duper better-than-a-rifle gun at the seal, I'm sure it would have been worth something!), the Neumann's, Father and daughter, with this foreign warlord (of the 'Kingdom of Oroman' according to his bio seen later on a computer screen), who speaks with an impeccable English accent (I assumed he was educated in England). But post-credits we plunge right in with Ros undercover as 'Princess Rosalia,' working with the Bureau to uncover the Neumanns as weapons dealers, when things go wrong, Bureau agents have to be sent in and Dr. Neumann is able to secure the vital evidence in his vault which will explode unless they exit the building. Hence the philosophical quandary of Schrodinger's cat: either the evidence isn't in there, in which case they have nothing on Neumann, or it is, but it'll explode meaning they'll have nothing on Neumann, the old cat in the box trick of a cat with a vial of poison having the probability of 50/50 whether it's alive or dead in a sealed box.
Confused? I thought it was very well presented and much more intelligent than the average Saturday night entertainment, I like that they were able to introduce interesting concepts such as this, not just run around and blow things up. Which they did admirably as well! It really opened the series up to have our team working with the authorities, and it was quite different to the Bureau's first appearance when they were merely dealing with intellectual property rights, albeit for deadly weapons and devices. Here it's guns drawn at dawn, the agents storm this fantastically ornate building (was the huge fan something they recreated for the internal set, or did they film inside the building we saw?), that looks rather out of place in a series usually so dedicated to the ultra-modern steel and glass constructions that marked it out as futuristic. I don't know whether it was just designed to be a contrast and continue the middle eastern or African desert theme, or whether the script changed and they decided to move the Neumann's museum, or whatever it was, to our own country. It wouldn't have been an issue if it was only the building itself, but then the Bureau show up driving these really old cars that wouldn't look out of place on the streets of Egypt or some other developing nation, and yet here we are in the middle of what we assume is London (they even reuse various locations already seen in other episodes, such as the stretch of road where Ros and Roland tail Maliq, the top of the car park where they trace Cassandra's car, and the large arena, all of which would be reused again), on a series usually intent on cutting edge tech, and the Bureau are running these outdated cars?
That's why I thought it could possibly have been originally planned as an overseas operation, not that that would make a lot of sense since the Bureau's authority is implied to be in the UK, but it was perplexing. It is very exciting to see our team working with this big organisation that had previously been established, not that I understood all that at the time. As I probably mentioned in my 'Assassins Inc' review, back when I first watched it I had the impression Season 1 was all about the team working with Blatty as if he was their boss, since I hadn't seen it and came in on episode three of Season 2. The way Roland just shows up here and knows them and they know him, and the strict and authoritative tone he takes with them suggested it, even though he is made to look a little pompous to the point of overconfidence in his authority, such as when Beckett has to push him down to stop him being shot when they're surrounding the ship at the end. Blatty is a good man, he's all about the law and stopping dangerous criminals, but he's there to show the advantages our team have of working outside of the rigid structure of a government organisation. As Blatty says, these 'consultants' have the tendency of taking over operations, and we'd see in Season 3 what a blending of being part of an organisation, yet also having a great deal of autonomy and a more fluid way of working, would look like.
I'd love to know how much of the season was plotted out, whether they knew Jean-Daniel was going to buy his way out of prison by making it an acquisition in a hostile takeover, or not. They must have known that was the trick as he'd been making money from the first time he appeared and it was such a clever idea to use the Gizmos team as the tool to leverage all this cash flow and investment, typical of such a devious mind. But had they worked out how the season was going to end up, had they decided on artificial intelligence, or was that something they came up with as the Big Plan of JD, knowing he'd have some kind of world-dominating evil to carry out? Similarly, did Gallagher plan to bring back Roland and his Bureau or was it just a neat slotting together of the pieces, because there didn't have to be connection to past stories, it's just that this makes it so much more satisfying if you're someone who's paid attention? Equally, if you didn't know all that backstory you enjoyed it for being thrilling adventure (never before has a man shaving his head been so full of tension!), constant twists and double-backs, it's absolutely full of a bright, rich, yet dangerous series of situations. I noticed especially that Ros seemed back to her best - I've mentioned in some reviews that Jaye Griffiths sometimes came across as a little removed compared to Season 1, whereas here she has all the verve of old.
Perhaps it was meeting JD again after all this time, and one moment that really stood out for me was when they do first lay eyes on each other when she's in the back of the van and JD is in control. There was something that linked to the final ever scene of the series, the very end of 'The Enemy Within' where Ros and Beckett are kidnapped and meet someone they apparently know. I think it was the scene in this episode that makes it seem more plausible that it could be JD there as it's the way he greets Ros here. There's no surprise between them, though Ros is shocked. We also get the best episode for JD so far. Granted, he'd been locked up in a prison cell for all but one of his previous appearances, and in 'Pulse' it took a while for us to realise that he was actually the brains behind the operation, not the brawn we took him for. But here he's the wolf uncaged - lean, hungry and ready for his plans to come to fruition after long planning and waiting, and he is an extremely dangerous man. His presence makes certain scenes even more tense, since he's always so icy cool and calm that when he starts to look and sound slightly worried as batty old Dr. Neumann shaves his head to reveal the key code tattooed on top of his head, they're right down to the last second before the whole place is going to go up in their faces and you can see in JD's highly expressive eyes that it's crossing his mind that his whole plan, his whole life, could be scuppered by the bumbling of his associate.
Could it be this incident that gives him reason to shoot Neumann in cold blood (mind you, everything he does seems to be done in cold blood - he'd have made an excellent Cardassian!), or at least a toll against the man? JD is a complex villain. He's unquestionably evil, but then he saves the life of Cassandra when her Father is going to shoot her, presumably for being a liability after her blinding by Beckett. His rationale is that, "Only rats and insects eat their young," which, coupled with the fact he worked with his own brother in 'Pulse' and seemed to be motivated by revenge against the team that 'killed' him and put JD away, suggests family ties are important to him. But then he claims there's no percentage in revenge when speaking to Ros. And it's not like he looks after Cassandra, he just leaves her in the middle of the road, half-blind, with the corpse of her dead Father sprawled in front of her. Was that a kind of test? How does she deal with being put in such an untenable situation? My theory is that JD was brought up in a strict crime family, where honour among the family was of the highest importance. But he also has a malevolent enjoyment of playing with power that makes him a fascinating adversary, not just in terms of opposition to our team, but as a compelling character on his own. It's simply fascinating to wonder about his motivations, his past, and what drives him.
It's telling that I haven't talked much about our heroes yet, because the shadow of JD dominates the episode. When he's not there you're wondering what he's doing and when he is, he tends to draw you in, even though he's with other villains. Maliq, too, has a strong personality, but not the deviousness of JD, as when he fails to carry out his ally's strict agreement on the First Century Bactrian gold artefacts from the tomb, another moment when JD's cool demeanour is rattled - he wanted the ugly grey stuff as it contained this special Niobium 5 which is a low temperature superconductor, for what purpose we can only speculate on at this stage, but that would become fully apparent in subsequent episodes. Again, I love that we don't know what JD's future plans are, his goal here is just to get out of prison. But he does seem to have lost some of his bite when he's in the surroundings of Maliq and his men, because how can anyone stand up to a small army? But Maliq underestimates him, has no understanding of the kind of mind he has, sending one puny soldier to take out the great JD? Ludicrous! And of course he never learns his lesson as there seem to be no second chances in JD's world: you either contribute what was agreed, or you're fired. That's fired upon, the roar of the gunfire echoing through the ship's hold as he takes down Maliq.
I do wonder how he was able to get his hands on a 'ton' of this mythical Red Mercury (which sounds a bit like the unexplained McGuffin in 'Star Trek XI': Red Matter, except that in Trek you expect higher standards of scientific plausibility, or at least you used to…), which is what he and the Neumanns barter for the Bactrian artefacts, but we have to assume JD has all kinds of criminal connections. He also has previously unseen skills - I'm not talking about the electronics or the manufacturing capability, but his untold ability to somehow get behind the rather gullible Prison Guard when she's lured into his cell by the TV screens. It's really hard to see how that worked, but I imagined he'd actually filmed the sequence earlier and was then enacting it as if he was doing it right there, which would explain how he could sneak round behind her, except for the fact that the screens were right next to the wall and so he couldn't get round that way… So either he scuttled across the ceiling or he walked round the other side while she was mesmerised up close to the screen… I don't know, it never looked quite right and how would he know when it was okay to move, how could he get past her peripheral vision? I know it's supposed to be a fun, entertaining moment and not to be thought about, but it was entirely unnecessary. Okay, not entirely, the guard needed to be taken care of as while they could cordon off a corridor to get JD, Neumann and Cassandra out of the prison, she'd have been in the way, but that was the only slightly flimsy moment.
The Governor's misplaced trust is shown to be a great weakness as he's got to the stage where he's actually confiding in his prisoner, telling him about the takeover and how his job may be on the line. I feel they should have done a little more with both Governor and Guard so that we actually cared what happened to them. As it is, they both look somewhat foolish, even after the Guard expressed suspicions against JD in a previous episode, she's lured in by his trick and ends up getting carried like a sack of potatoes into the Governor's office. We never know what happened to the pair, I expect they were just left there as the villains made their escape, their lives intact, but their careers over. While all this is going on our team are kept busy running around, jury-rigging doors, dodging explosions and just generally having a good time since the pressure's off as Roland's the boss and they don't have any reverence for him. At the same time their lives are still put in danger on a regular basis, whether it be from Cassandra's high-tech gun with its laser sight, 'computer micro-targeting' (whatever that means), and 'in-flight error correction' (those bullets must cost a fortune!), or various explosives. But it was a great weapon Cassandra had, and what really gets the Bureau of Weapons Technology on board for the mission.
It's important to note that despite this being the culmination, or at least a stage towards it, in the villain's plans, it's still a lighthearted story where there are plenty of moments of levity, either intended (Beckett and Ed chuckling over Ros' cover alias), or not (Ed getting really worked up about Cassandra's exploding shells as Beckett tells him to draw her attention!). There's all the usual action, Ed gets to ride in a helicopter again, though this time he's not the pilot as he has to abseil onto the ship's deck where Ros is being held hostage. The best moment may be at the Neumann's building where JD has left Blatty taped to a bomb, while he holds a grenade to Ros' head, then Ed and Beckett charge down there only to realise it's actually a bomb within a bomb, or a diversionary bomb attached to Roland to distract them from the room full of explosives that are about to go off, forcing them to bundle the Bureau Chief out as the place explodes, and only then defuse the one stuck to him at the last moment. It's great stuff and you really feel the force of the blasts as you see the actors running from the flames, especially the shot of the van erupting behind Ed, Ros and Beckett, which looks so close to them! That whole moment was terrific as Ros is chained to the steering wheel, Ed can't reach the grenade and Beckett comes running in wielding a huge angle grinder! It's over the top, but in the way the series did best.
They even have one of the best jokey final scenes, which for once isn't cheesy or silly and demonstrates the strong friendship between the trio as they quiz Beckett on 'Einstein's dog,' a scenario he made up so he didn't look so ignorant after Ed had dropped in the Schrodinger's cat analogy earlier. It's lovely to see them all laughing and happy especially as we then cut to a final final scene, a simple set of images of the desert, the tomb, and finally, JD with his hands on the material he needs for whatever nefarious plot he'd planned. And he really is such a great character, the way he nonchalantly palms the grenade in his pocket when Ros is captive, taking the clothes of the soldier sent to kill him (that's an action figure variant if ever I saw one!), but it's also a sense of superiority to his enemies, either moral or not. For instance, he does diminish a little on the ship, off-balance by his meticulous planning being affected by Maliq's failure to comply with instructions, but regains his stature by showing he was a soldier, too (don't forget he left the Foreign Legion saying it was too easy). He makes the point that so few of those the Gizmos team cross ever survive, which I feel is Gallagher calling attention to a trope of the series, perhaps poking fun a little, but also using it as a stick to beat our heroes with, because it is true. His attempt to finish each of them off is like a piece of artistry, sending Ed and Beckett to help Roland, but he also has more than one reason for doing so much of what he does - in that instance covering his escape, but he also has a further hold over Ros, that her friends are dead and she helped, perhaps a direct attack for her part in Patrick's death.
I haven't even made reference to what the team were wearing (yellow jacket for Ros, purple shirt for Beckett and Ed's now standard blue jumper), because this is such an atypical episode - for one thing it takes place mainly in daylight, but also we don't see so much of the technological side of the series in terms of the settings, buildings and gadgetry, there simply isn't time as we fly from one part of the story to the next, all the compressed energy and buildup of the season being released in dramatic style. And yet it's not over… There's that sense of coming danger, that this was merely the taster, and that's exciting, too. I went in not really wanting to watch the episode, not because I didn't think it would hold up, but I just wanted to relax and not have to think about anything or write a review, but the mark of a truly great episode is that it doesn't matter how you feel going in, it will win you over, energise you and change your mood entirely, which is exactly what happened and has enthused me to write so much. There wasn't even that much to nitpick: I wished when Ros commented on the brevity of Maliq's lecture that she'd said in 'our day' instead of 'my day,' since she was talking to Roland and they'd been at university together. And Maliq commenting on their 'textbook pursuit,' how his driver was completely unaware of them, suggested to me he should get a new driver: a yellow car on an empty road, and he didn't notice? Maybe he was so used to the backup car dealing with tails he'd become blase about it all? And a barcode on the bonce? Inventive, but not very practical - I assume the actor was wearing a wig, but if so it looked very real!
*****
Rosetta (2)
DVD, Smallville S2 (Rosetta) (2)
It's becoming popular to bring back old actors to play their characters of the past in film and TV of the present - we're getting old Batmen and probably old Spider-Men, not to mention Trek actors returning for more, after decades away, but 'Smallville' did arguably the best recall of something in its family tree of any superhero production long before it was a trend. It doesn't get more prestigious than bringing back arguably the man who started the superhero wave, right at the genesis of the blockbuster era: Christopher Reeve in 'Superman: The Movie' from 1978! Sure, there had been a TV Superman before that, and of course Batman and Robin, but in the late 70s, 'Superman' was the genesis of all the comic book films to the present. We've seen other films come along that reinvented the genre or solidified it as a going concern ('Batman' in 1989, 'X-Men' in 2000, 'Spider-Man' in 2002, 'Batman Begins' in 2005, to name a few key examples), but never had a comic book hero been treated seriously, in full colour on the big screen, and Reeve's legacy is vast. The film series itself may have petered out with the ill-advised 'Superman IV: The Quest For Peace,' but Reeve would always be remembered as the man who had started it all, and for many, myself included, he'll never be replaced as the definitive Superman.
It was incredible that they managed to find Tom Welling for 'Smallville,' someone that looked so much like Reeve and had much of the same style to him, minus the bumbling Clark Kent side. He wasn't the confident, sure Superman, either, but someone you could easily see becoming Reeve's character (as opposed to Brandon Routh or Henry Cavill, the latter especially doesn't ring true to that original clean-cut image). So to bring Reeve in as a guest star was a major coup and this is one of the landmark episodes of the entire series. It's a job to know whether a single episode could hold up under such a mountain of expectations and I was half expecting this to fail to live up to my memories of it being one of the best. It didn't help that some of the effects didn't look so good, specifically Clark flying in his dream (I think the first time he'd flown since the dream he had in the pilot, or was it the second episode?), and we just merge from a beautiful point of view in the air to a gloomy image of the cave, then we're inside the internal set. Then Welling is dangling from wires, looking like he's dangling rather than flying - I know it's on a TV time and money budget, but it wasn't quite right, he needed to be stock still, no movement. And then we have teen soap territory with Lana and Chloe falling out over Clark's preference for the former and the scenes with the Kents early on had nothing spectacular about them, and then Clark defies his Father's explicit command not to put the octagonal key in the cave wall, and…
I needn't have worried. Long before we get to the legendary scene of two Supermen meeting (neither actually Superman, of course), the young and the old actor, only a year or two before his death as the paralysis finally took him, which was as momentous and enthralling as ever, the episode's theme is wonderfully explored through the simple idea of a school project: the family tree. It was ironic Chloe was moaning about it being such an old-fashioned thing to do considering how prevalent and popular such fascination with our personal pasts has become in the years since then, but the flaw for most of the characters was perfectly evoked when Pete is the only one to be from a normal family - Chloe was abandoned by her Mother, Lana's an orphan and Clark's adopted, all three of them have a difficult time with the concept of lineage. It was so well done, too, they just throw it in casually, but the real meat is that none of them really feel a complete part of a true family. The row between Chloe and Lana has the latter coming to the conclusion that she can't pretend to be part of a family she's not part of, while Chloe eventually makes her see that they are as close as sisters. And Clark has his mind on Martha's new baby (he needn't have worried), and that his parents will have a 'real' child instead of merely an adopted one.
It's a powerful exploration of inclusion and identity, wrapped up in the typical teen worries, only Clark's are a lot bigger. For the first time he finds out his true name, Kal-El, and the name of his home planet, Krypton. But while it's joyous to have the answers about his past that he's been craving, it's not all for the good. His planet is gone and his biological Father has apparently sent his son to Earth for the purposes of ruling them like a god, a shocking revelation for a simple farm boy. But it all comes down to whether genetics are the stronger, or how he was raised, his human Father strongly advocating his famous attitude towards choice. I don't think he actually said the catchphrase ("We always have a choice, son!"), but that was the message he was sending. Was there some doubt or concern in his eyes at the end when he was hugging Clark? It seemed to be the directorial intent since they allowed the time to have the camera swing round to Jonathan's face as he embraced his son, and it did seem to me to be a hint of concern over whether it could be that Clark isn't strong enough to prevent the despotic 'destiny' he's been sent into.
The important part of the story, though, was the sense of Clark becoming his own man. Yes, he was wrong to go against his parents' wishes and do something dangerous, and because of him Dr. Walden is put into a catatonic state, but it was also a turning point in his life. While Walden's removal may be beneficial in the short term as it means he's not going to be unravelling any more clues about Clark and his people, and Lex' plans are curtailed for the moment, at the same time it would come back to bite him at the end of the season. But there were so many things to like about the story and how it was handled - I loved how the key itself was calling to Clark, not like the One Ring in 'The Lord of The Rings,' a malevolent attempt to ultimately get itself back to the one who imbued it with power, but an insistent instinct to learn what he needs to progress in his life, plugging into the cave wall and taking that knowledge of Kryptonian language. I also loved how Dr. Virgil Swann, Reeve's character, has that same insistence that now is the time, now or never, he needs to make a decision. I'm not sure he had to go alone, but at the same time that was like another instinct: that it was time to grow up and stop relying on his parents for everything, to take his birthright, in a way.
Was that email account a joint one for everyone at the Torch, because it seemed to be Chloe's, yet Swann has sent all these messages for Clark! It's a wonder she didn't go through and open them all. I suppose it would have been the same symbol of hope in each one so it wouldn't have done her any good, and it seemed Clark wasn't replying to Swann from within that account, which was why he could do it with Pete hooked up to the internet in his barn. But these things need explanation! There was a sub-theme about personal space and privacy going on, ironically from Chloe - Lana looks at her pictures, which was bad of her, you don't start snooping about on someone's computer if they let you borrow it, it's an unwritten rule that doesn't need to be said, but who snoops on the snooper? Lana snooping on Chloe, Chloe then snooping on Lana (did she deliberately come back in to see if her friend had been tempted or did she forget something she needed?). Then later in the episode she's back to her full journalistic integrity, not keeping the Kents' barn fire a secret, despite them being friends, after Clark's seared symbols on there with his heat vision. It's like she can separate her nosy-Parker stuff as being right, but Lana looking at stuff is wrong. I suppose she does have a case, but as Clark says, it certainly was unhelpful for their family with all the UFO enthusiasts showing up.
I liked what was going on there, and it was mirrored in Lex, who similarly is feeling out of the loop with Clark because he very likely knows things about the cave paintings he's not telling and refuses to be honest. True, Lex has done his fair share of that, especially in Season 1 with the obsession over the accident Clark saved him from, but although he skirts close to accusing Clark of lying or hiding things, he never comes right out and says it, when he probably has the justification since Clark is pretty poor at coming up with evasions or excuses. I liked the idea of Dr. Walden having to work with him, but I don't know if Clark would have ever agreed to it, though it was a moot point by the end of the episode anyway, as Walden is out of the picture. It takes a long time to eventually get to Christopher Reeve, and it is sad that he'd only return once after this, I believe, he was the sort of character who could easily have been worked in as a recurring ally for Clark, someone to help him reach his next stage in life that his parents can't do, but of course they couldn't go down that route, partly I imagine Reeve wouldn't have been able to do a lot of episodes, and partly it would be necessary to use the character sparingly because it's a special moment for the meeting of two heavyweight figures in the Superman mythos coming together.
Clark wears more red and blue than ever, we hear those magical strains of John Williams' iconic Superman theme, and the series just felt closer to the mythology we knew than ever before. Sadly, apart from occasional, intermittent moments, or later in the series when it's him and Lois working for the Daily Planet in Metropolis, the series chose to travel an entirely different path that was far more outrageous and wacky so that there was no way it could fit into the Reeve films as a prequel, even if it was meant to (which it wasn't - always very clear of exact dates when the series was set), but until things went completely out of control it still felt like a relatively grounded, realistic portrayal that could connect to the past thematically, but became so far out and teen soapy, etc, that it's a real shame what became of it. That doesn't take away from the potential that was shown here, from the music and Reeve, to the opening of the spaceship with the little grooves where baby Kal-El had been plumped, and Jonathan having some strong Father-son moments of faith in himself for the way he and Martha had brought Clark up, and in Clark who'd shown himself to be the kind of person they'd intended him to be. In the end this wasn't really a cliffhanger jumping off point into something great, but the episode can't be judged for that and is unquestionably one of the most powerful of the series, heartfelt, genuine and presenting hope, while tinging it with the reality of effort to do good being required and chosen. And I also didn't realise that last week's episode marked the point I began reviewing the series, twelve years and more ago, so I've now done reviews for every episode at least once and completed my own 'destiny'!
****
It's becoming popular to bring back old actors to play their characters of the past in film and TV of the present - we're getting old Batmen and probably old Spider-Men, not to mention Trek actors returning for more, after decades away, but 'Smallville' did arguably the best recall of something in its family tree of any superhero production long before it was a trend. It doesn't get more prestigious than bringing back arguably the man who started the superhero wave, right at the genesis of the blockbuster era: Christopher Reeve in 'Superman: The Movie' from 1978! Sure, there had been a TV Superman before that, and of course Batman and Robin, but in the late 70s, 'Superman' was the genesis of all the comic book films to the present. We've seen other films come along that reinvented the genre or solidified it as a going concern ('Batman' in 1989, 'X-Men' in 2000, 'Spider-Man' in 2002, 'Batman Begins' in 2005, to name a few key examples), but never had a comic book hero been treated seriously, in full colour on the big screen, and Reeve's legacy is vast. The film series itself may have petered out with the ill-advised 'Superman IV: The Quest For Peace,' but Reeve would always be remembered as the man who had started it all, and for many, myself included, he'll never be replaced as the definitive Superman.
It was incredible that they managed to find Tom Welling for 'Smallville,' someone that looked so much like Reeve and had much of the same style to him, minus the bumbling Clark Kent side. He wasn't the confident, sure Superman, either, but someone you could easily see becoming Reeve's character (as opposed to Brandon Routh or Henry Cavill, the latter especially doesn't ring true to that original clean-cut image). So to bring Reeve in as a guest star was a major coup and this is one of the landmark episodes of the entire series. It's a job to know whether a single episode could hold up under such a mountain of expectations and I was half expecting this to fail to live up to my memories of it being one of the best. It didn't help that some of the effects didn't look so good, specifically Clark flying in his dream (I think the first time he'd flown since the dream he had in the pilot, or was it the second episode?), and we just merge from a beautiful point of view in the air to a gloomy image of the cave, then we're inside the internal set. Then Welling is dangling from wires, looking like he's dangling rather than flying - I know it's on a TV time and money budget, but it wasn't quite right, he needed to be stock still, no movement. And then we have teen soap territory with Lana and Chloe falling out over Clark's preference for the former and the scenes with the Kents early on had nothing spectacular about them, and then Clark defies his Father's explicit command not to put the octagonal key in the cave wall, and…
I needn't have worried. Long before we get to the legendary scene of two Supermen meeting (neither actually Superman, of course), the young and the old actor, only a year or two before his death as the paralysis finally took him, which was as momentous and enthralling as ever, the episode's theme is wonderfully explored through the simple idea of a school project: the family tree. It was ironic Chloe was moaning about it being such an old-fashioned thing to do considering how prevalent and popular such fascination with our personal pasts has become in the years since then, but the flaw for most of the characters was perfectly evoked when Pete is the only one to be from a normal family - Chloe was abandoned by her Mother, Lana's an orphan and Clark's adopted, all three of them have a difficult time with the concept of lineage. It was so well done, too, they just throw it in casually, but the real meat is that none of them really feel a complete part of a true family. The row between Chloe and Lana has the latter coming to the conclusion that she can't pretend to be part of a family she's not part of, while Chloe eventually makes her see that they are as close as sisters. And Clark has his mind on Martha's new baby (he needn't have worried), and that his parents will have a 'real' child instead of merely an adopted one.
It's a powerful exploration of inclusion and identity, wrapped up in the typical teen worries, only Clark's are a lot bigger. For the first time he finds out his true name, Kal-El, and the name of his home planet, Krypton. But while it's joyous to have the answers about his past that he's been craving, it's not all for the good. His planet is gone and his biological Father has apparently sent his son to Earth for the purposes of ruling them like a god, a shocking revelation for a simple farm boy. But it all comes down to whether genetics are the stronger, or how he was raised, his human Father strongly advocating his famous attitude towards choice. I don't think he actually said the catchphrase ("We always have a choice, son!"), but that was the message he was sending. Was there some doubt or concern in his eyes at the end when he was hugging Clark? It seemed to be the directorial intent since they allowed the time to have the camera swing round to Jonathan's face as he embraced his son, and it did seem to me to be a hint of concern over whether it could be that Clark isn't strong enough to prevent the despotic 'destiny' he's been sent into.
The important part of the story, though, was the sense of Clark becoming his own man. Yes, he was wrong to go against his parents' wishes and do something dangerous, and because of him Dr. Walden is put into a catatonic state, but it was also a turning point in his life. While Walden's removal may be beneficial in the short term as it means he's not going to be unravelling any more clues about Clark and his people, and Lex' plans are curtailed for the moment, at the same time it would come back to bite him at the end of the season. But there were so many things to like about the story and how it was handled - I loved how the key itself was calling to Clark, not like the One Ring in 'The Lord of The Rings,' a malevolent attempt to ultimately get itself back to the one who imbued it with power, but an insistent instinct to learn what he needs to progress in his life, plugging into the cave wall and taking that knowledge of Kryptonian language. I also loved how Dr. Virgil Swann, Reeve's character, has that same insistence that now is the time, now or never, he needs to make a decision. I'm not sure he had to go alone, but at the same time that was like another instinct: that it was time to grow up and stop relying on his parents for everything, to take his birthright, in a way.
Was that email account a joint one for everyone at the Torch, because it seemed to be Chloe's, yet Swann has sent all these messages for Clark! It's a wonder she didn't go through and open them all. I suppose it would have been the same symbol of hope in each one so it wouldn't have done her any good, and it seemed Clark wasn't replying to Swann from within that account, which was why he could do it with Pete hooked up to the internet in his barn. But these things need explanation! There was a sub-theme about personal space and privacy going on, ironically from Chloe - Lana looks at her pictures, which was bad of her, you don't start snooping about on someone's computer if they let you borrow it, it's an unwritten rule that doesn't need to be said, but who snoops on the snooper? Lana snooping on Chloe, Chloe then snooping on Lana (did she deliberately come back in to see if her friend had been tempted or did she forget something she needed?). Then later in the episode she's back to her full journalistic integrity, not keeping the Kents' barn fire a secret, despite them being friends, after Clark's seared symbols on there with his heat vision. It's like she can separate her nosy-Parker stuff as being right, but Lana looking at stuff is wrong. I suppose she does have a case, but as Clark says, it certainly was unhelpful for their family with all the UFO enthusiasts showing up.
I liked what was going on there, and it was mirrored in Lex, who similarly is feeling out of the loop with Clark because he very likely knows things about the cave paintings he's not telling and refuses to be honest. True, Lex has done his fair share of that, especially in Season 1 with the obsession over the accident Clark saved him from, but although he skirts close to accusing Clark of lying or hiding things, he never comes right out and says it, when he probably has the justification since Clark is pretty poor at coming up with evasions or excuses. I liked the idea of Dr. Walden having to work with him, but I don't know if Clark would have ever agreed to it, though it was a moot point by the end of the episode anyway, as Walden is out of the picture. It takes a long time to eventually get to Christopher Reeve, and it is sad that he'd only return once after this, I believe, he was the sort of character who could easily have been worked in as a recurring ally for Clark, someone to help him reach his next stage in life that his parents can't do, but of course they couldn't go down that route, partly I imagine Reeve wouldn't have been able to do a lot of episodes, and partly it would be necessary to use the character sparingly because it's a special moment for the meeting of two heavyweight figures in the Superman mythos coming together.
Clark wears more red and blue than ever, we hear those magical strains of John Williams' iconic Superman theme, and the series just felt closer to the mythology we knew than ever before. Sadly, apart from occasional, intermittent moments, or later in the series when it's him and Lois working for the Daily Planet in Metropolis, the series chose to travel an entirely different path that was far more outrageous and wacky so that there was no way it could fit into the Reeve films as a prequel, even if it was meant to (which it wasn't - always very clear of exact dates when the series was set), but until things went completely out of control it still felt like a relatively grounded, realistic portrayal that could connect to the past thematically, but became so far out and teen soapy, etc, that it's a real shame what became of it. That doesn't take away from the potential that was shown here, from the music and Reeve, to the opening of the spaceship with the little grooves where baby Kal-El had been plumped, and Jonathan having some strong Father-son moments of faith in himself for the way he and Martha had brought Clark up, and in Clark who'd shown himself to be the kind of person they'd intended him to be. In the end this wasn't really a cliffhanger jumping off point into something great, but the episode can't be judged for that and is unquestionably one of the most powerful of the series, heartfelt, genuine and presenting hope, while tinging it with the reality of effort to do good being required and chosen. And I also didn't realise that last week's episode marked the point I began reviewing the series, twelve years and more ago, so I've now done reviews for every episode at least once and completed my own 'destiny'!
****
Tuesday, 16 November 2021
The Jihad
DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Jihad)
This is one of the least Trekky stories of the series so far, in fact I'd go so far as to say if JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and their ilk had chosen an episode upon which to base the modern generation of films and TV shows, this could have been the one they picked! We're far from the rigours of Starfleet protocol, off on an alien planet, we have two handpicked characters, Kirk and Spock, selected to go on a mythical quest with a gang of bizarre aliens, they experience all kinds of physical adventure and there's even a twist: one of their number is intent on sabotaging the mission! It couldn't be much closer to 'DSC' or the Kelvin Timeline films, except that this is a geologically unstable planet upon which they make their quest, complete with volcanoes and lava floes (see 'Into Darkness'), even ending with a fight in zero gravity (see 'Beyond'). There doesn't seem to be much connection to Trek, other than one of the group, Sord, potentially being a Gorn, but you notice they introduce each of the members of this expedition and give some information on them, but when they get to Sord another character interrupts so we never get to hear anything about him! It's fun to think he is a Gorn, but a shame we couldn't have had some private ribbing between this lizard-like alien and our Captain Kirk, about the time he faced a Captain of that race.
It's not like they don't have characters interacting, Lara, this 'hunter' with special tracking senses, gets quite a few scenes with Kirk - she's this Calamity Jane-type tough woman who always says what's on her mind and gets quite suggestive with the Captain. Apparently she's also human but from another planet, but again, we don't go deeply into each of these new characters or races. Still, it is somewhat entertaining in a typical Saturday morning adventure cartoon style, in the sense that it's a lot of weird and wonderful people and action, though there isn't a lot else. We have this birdlike prince, Char of the Skor, whose race is threatening a holy war against the known galaxy (I suppose they're letting the unknown parts off this time!), unless they can retrieve the mystical item that is at the heart of the mission: the 'soul' of Aylar, a religious leader who set the warrior race on the right track and civilised them, and they in turn immortalised him by recording his brain patterns before his death and embedding it in a sculpture, which has been stolen. Not sure what the point of recording his brain was, unless it's like one of those computers that the Enterprise regularly encountered on 'TOS' and which was some kind of oracle that led the people (and which Kirk often came in and destroyed to free the people!). We're not privy to any information about this artefact, it's purely plot motivation.
On they go, each having been chosen for their specific skills (for example, the green insect creature calling itself 'M3 Green,' a bit of a cowardy-custard, is there in the event they need to pick a lock…), and also so that when they realise one of them must be a quisling and a traitor, we can wonder about all of them. Because Kirk and Spock are almost the only regular characters in the episode - Scotty's there to beam them down in the Transporter Room at the beginning, and Sulu's there in the same place to greet them when they return, 'two minutes later' (some time shenanigans that were never explained!), but there's no sign of McCoy or Uhura at all, and Scotty and Sulu get about one or two lines each. I don't think we even saw the Bridge! Of course James Doohan gets plenty to do anyway as he does guest voices, this time Char, and possibly Sord, though I wasn't a hundred percent certain on that one. The leader of the mission, the white tiger woman (garishly suited up in pink!), who set them off on their journey (I didn't catch a name), may have been voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but I wasn't sure about that, and M3 and Lara both were guest voices, which is surprising as you'd expect Majel Barrett and Doohan to have been used there.
I don't know why this powerful race, the Vedalla, the oldest spacefaring race Kirk knows of, don't carry out the mission themselves since they set it up - tiger lady just gives them the information and charges them to sort it out! It's fun to see such wacky and wild alien designs, but it's another aspect of the story that makes it feel a lot less Trekky than usual. Plus we get yet another land based vehicle, although this time the open-topped tank car isn't Starfleet in origin. Is it from the Vedalla? The colours and brightness of it all, and charging around on a so-called 'mad' planet (complete with those purple flying dragons again, which must be at least the third time they've been used!), makes for entertainment, as does Kirk and Spock wrestling with the double-crossing Char at the end in zero-g (Kirk asks when Spock last did null gravity training, to which his First Officer responds, 'last week, with you,' as if he's forgotten!). But there really isn't much to take away from the episode, other than Lara's indecent suggestion they make some 'green memories' in case they're about to die on that planet. I suppose there are some parallels with other Trek races in that some of the Skor were fed up with the peaceful direction their race had gone and wanted to get back to warrior ways - we've seen the Klingons go wild on 'DS9' after a long peace with their old enemies, the Federation, and of course there's the split of the Vulcans, a faction leaving the planet in disgust at the ways of Surak to become Romulans, so even in this episode it's possible to find Trek precedent.
It's just that colourful characters in both visual senses and personality aren't enough to carry an episode on their own, and concentrating on simple adventure as an end in itself is fine for other cartoon series, but from Trek I expect more than that. It makes me wonder if the new series, 'Star Trek: Prodigy' will be like this with its wacky alien characters and childish target audience, just another outpouring of Trek content for the sake of it, and a further diluting of the brand. Saying that, the amount of Trek out there now has already diluted it to a great extent, but then 'DSC' did that for itself when it staked out its territory as a Trek that is going to ignore or redefine the parameters of what makes Trek, Trek. For all the flaws in 'TAS' it still feels like genuine Trek, based on the same principles and world that was built in 'TOS' and further expanded in the following spinoffs, so as much as I can easily criticise it, it's generally a more satisfying experience than any of the new stuff being pumped out a dime a dozen by CBS.
**
This is one of the least Trekky stories of the series so far, in fact I'd go so far as to say if JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and their ilk had chosen an episode upon which to base the modern generation of films and TV shows, this could have been the one they picked! We're far from the rigours of Starfleet protocol, off on an alien planet, we have two handpicked characters, Kirk and Spock, selected to go on a mythical quest with a gang of bizarre aliens, they experience all kinds of physical adventure and there's even a twist: one of their number is intent on sabotaging the mission! It couldn't be much closer to 'DSC' or the Kelvin Timeline films, except that this is a geologically unstable planet upon which they make their quest, complete with volcanoes and lava floes (see 'Into Darkness'), even ending with a fight in zero gravity (see 'Beyond'). There doesn't seem to be much connection to Trek, other than one of the group, Sord, potentially being a Gorn, but you notice they introduce each of the members of this expedition and give some information on them, but when they get to Sord another character interrupts so we never get to hear anything about him! It's fun to think he is a Gorn, but a shame we couldn't have had some private ribbing between this lizard-like alien and our Captain Kirk, about the time he faced a Captain of that race.
It's not like they don't have characters interacting, Lara, this 'hunter' with special tracking senses, gets quite a few scenes with Kirk - she's this Calamity Jane-type tough woman who always says what's on her mind and gets quite suggestive with the Captain. Apparently she's also human but from another planet, but again, we don't go deeply into each of these new characters or races. Still, it is somewhat entertaining in a typical Saturday morning adventure cartoon style, in the sense that it's a lot of weird and wonderful people and action, though there isn't a lot else. We have this birdlike prince, Char of the Skor, whose race is threatening a holy war against the known galaxy (I suppose they're letting the unknown parts off this time!), unless they can retrieve the mystical item that is at the heart of the mission: the 'soul' of Aylar, a religious leader who set the warrior race on the right track and civilised them, and they in turn immortalised him by recording his brain patterns before his death and embedding it in a sculpture, which has been stolen. Not sure what the point of recording his brain was, unless it's like one of those computers that the Enterprise regularly encountered on 'TOS' and which was some kind of oracle that led the people (and which Kirk often came in and destroyed to free the people!). We're not privy to any information about this artefact, it's purely plot motivation.
On they go, each having been chosen for their specific skills (for example, the green insect creature calling itself 'M3 Green,' a bit of a cowardy-custard, is there in the event they need to pick a lock…), and also so that when they realise one of them must be a quisling and a traitor, we can wonder about all of them. Because Kirk and Spock are almost the only regular characters in the episode - Scotty's there to beam them down in the Transporter Room at the beginning, and Sulu's there in the same place to greet them when they return, 'two minutes later' (some time shenanigans that were never explained!), but there's no sign of McCoy or Uhura at all, and Scotty and Sulu get about one or two lines each. I don't think we even saw the Bridge! Of course James Doohan gets plenty to do anyway as he does guest voices, this time Char, and possibly Sord, though I wasn't a hundred percent certain on that one. The leader of the mission, the white tiger woman (garishly suited up in pink!), who set them off on their journey (I didn't catch a name), may have been voiced by Nichelle Nichols, but I wasn't sure about that, and M3 and Lara both were guest voices, which is surprising as you'd expect Majel Barrett and Doohan to have been used there.
I don't know why this powerful race, the Vedalla, the oldest spacefaring race Kirk knows of, don't carry out the mission themselves since they set it up - tiger lady just gives them the information and charges them to sort it out! It's fun to see such wacky and wild alien designs, but it's another aspect of the story that makes it feel a lot less Trekky than usual. Plus we get yet another land based vehicle, although this time the open-topped tank car isn't Starfleet in origin. Is it from the Vedalla? The colours and brightness of it all, and charging around on a so-called 'mad' planet (complete with those purple flying dragons again, which must be at least the third time they've been used!), makes for entertainment, as does Kirk and Spock wrestling with the double-crossing Char at the end in zero-g (Kirk asks when Spock last did null gravity training, to which his First Officer responds, 'last week, with you,' as if he's forgotten!). But there really isn't much to take away from the episode, other than Lara's indecent suggestion they make some 'green memories' in case they're about to die on that planet. I suppose there are some parallels with other Trek races in that some of the Skor were fed up with the peaceful direction their race had gone and wanted to get back to warrior ways - we've seen the Klingons go wild on 'DS9' after a long peace with their old enemies, the Federation, and of course there's the split of the Vulcans, a faction leaving the planet in disgust at the ways of Surak to become Romulans, so even in this episode it's possible to find Trek precedent.
It's just that colourful characters in both visual senses and personality aren't enough to carry an episode on their own, and concentrating on simple adventure as an end in itself is fine for other cartoon series, but from Trek I expect more than that. It makes me wonder if the new series, 'Star Trek: Prodigy' will be like this with its wacky alien characters and childish target audience, just another outpouring of Trek content for the sake of it, and a further diluting of the brand. Saying that, the amount of Trek out there now has already diluted it to a great extent, but then 'DSC' did that for itself when it staked out its territory as a Trek that is going to ignore or redefine the parameters of what makes Trek, Trek. For all the flaws in 'TAS' it still feels like genuine Trek, based on the same principles and world that was built in 'TOS' and further expanded in the following spinoffs, so as much as I can easily criticise it, it's generally a more satisfying experience than any of the new stuff being pumped out a dime a dozen by CBS.
**
Gold Rush
DVD, BUGS S2 (Gold Rush)
'Serious science' is a phrase used by Beckett at one stage in this one, and that sums up the episode quite neatly. 'Cool bananas' is a phrase used by Ros at one stage, too, but that doesn't sum up the episode, it's just a fun line that she'd either said before, or would say again. It didn't quite become a catchphrase, but it's just the sort of thing you'd expect to come from her mouth. Beckett's wording is the appropriate one as this is heavy on the sci in sci-fi and I was impressed at how much detail they were able to get across to the audience, complex descriptions and concepts bandied about between the action that I'm pretty sure you would not see in Saturday evening entertainment now. And probably not then either - it's not like 'BUGS' was the vanguard (hee, hee), for scientific discussion. But in this case the writers really put the effort in to make things sound right, much in the same way Trek always used to. Technobabble is the word and the series often included it, just perhaps not quite as much as this episode boasts. There's also what I took to be some unintentional foreshadowing, setting up a concept vaguely close to what would be the big ending of the season when they talk about this computer virus has jumped the digital moat Ros has erected around the defenceless data of their client - it sounded very much like Cyberax jumping the species barrier, as we'd find out in a few episodes, and the idea of an airborne computer virus was genius and also heralds a further link between the physical, organic world our team operate in, with the shadowy digital one of computers.
That wouldn't have been their intention, Cyberax may not even have been invented yet (I'd love to know if it was part of the season's plan from the start, but we'll never know), and if it had been meant as a primer to prepare us for that idea it would have been a lot more obvious. Just like the way the subtlety is lost in the Jean-Daniel scene with the Prison Governor as they sit in his office and share cake: the Governor actually says outright that JD is an inspiration for his forgiveness of 'those three' who put him there and that he bet on their success, which is what he's been doing the whole time. I suppose with hindsight I've watched the episodes so many times that I know what's going on and there was no need in the early episodes to explain it like that, but in retrospect it may have been needed, may have been too subtle for viewers, especially if they missed an episode here or there so I can understand why they'd make it clear. I just loved the fact that before it was so nuanced and about interpretation. In any case they add some new mystery into the mix with JD's thermometer of doom portending big things will happen when his investments reach the top goal and the final shot of the episode is exactly that happening. It makes you really want to find out what's going to happen next (one of my favourites), when the prison scenes had been such a slow burn, although this was only the fourth episode to actually feature this serialised part of the story.
As we'd seen before, the team carry on unaware that their moves are actually earning their nemesis a means to power (despite the bonkers way the end result would be achieved!), it's only the audience who are given the extra layer of intrigue on top of everything else. We're thrown right into the story once again after the opening credits with the team striding into the Eastern European Monetary Commission, an outfit headed by the straight talking Vanguard in her striking red suit and blonde hair, a woman who has a lot of responsibility on her hands with the economies of several countries, but isn't very practical when it comes to computers and technical things, which is realistic - you'd expect her to delegate realms outside her expertise to experts. One question is why she didn't call in the security consultants who are tied to the EEMC and who keep a key to the vault off-site. How did she know to call in Gizmos (as they never call themselves), this is an instance where there's no friend in the company whom Ros or Beckett know (Ed almost never seems to have any friends!), so they must advertise well? Direct mailings? Email? Cold calling? We don't need to worry how the business works, the important thing is that the team are all present and correct, ready to power up their skills in the service of good, and they do start by impressing their client, getting through the voiceprint authorisation with no hassle at all, though it's a different story when Ros fails to stop the progress of the virus.
Did Pyke and Kristo, this week's money mad villains (they should have teamed up with Pascal and Lacombe from 'Blackout'!), buy their virus carrier from Cyberscope? It certainly looks like the little metal mouse bombs that could climb up the inside of walls and were activated by a target's voice to explode. This one is a tasteful shade of green, unleashing its payload of gold-eating gas by wickedly spreading its little wings. It could have been a Cyberscope design (and in real terms was likely a repurposed prop from 'Assassins Inc' as we'd seen them reuse several gadgets so far), but we don't need everything to connect to something we'd already seen as things can become ridiculous. Still, I wouldn't have minded someone wondering if the tech had been modelled on one of those designs, a little throwaway suggestion, perhaps. Another little throwaway that probably was entirely unintentional was that the colours on the Network Status screen that represented stages of the EEMC's data security corresponded with the team's main clothing colours! I only noticed this because I'm paying so much attention to what they wear each episode (Ros had some more interesting earrings), but Beckett had a green shirt and on the screen that stood for 'operational,' Ed wore his usual blue jumper and blue meant 'de-coupled,' while irony of ironies considering her heroic roles, Ros wore a red dress and on the screen red meant 'failure'! So I don't think we can read too much into that, it must have been mere coincidence, though Ros' antigen is also red… but it didn't fail.
It's fun to look out for odd little details like these or spot reflections of other episodes: Pyke, the blue suit-wearing villainess, partner of Maximillian Kristo, uses a brooch or lapel pin as a clever disguise for a communications device, just as our team would sometimes use. Then there's the switch-around of Beckett's driving being joked about at his expense by Ros for a change (he asks if she wants to drive and she says she would, but he needs the practice!). And don't forget, while they didn't reference Cyberscope, they certainly did bring back one previously used company from Season 1: JBS Security. This was the company Ed and Beckett used as cover so they could get into Hennessy Brock's building in 'Manna From Heaven,' only this time it's inverted, the villain using it as cover to get into the EEMC (which when I first saw it I thought looked like the Bureau building from Season 3), and surprise Ros and Vanguard, so that was a fun little connection. This time Ros ends up as the one at the switchboard of doom, Ed's trapped in the vault and Beckett is the one being the action man as he has to get down a tunnel full of noxious gases - now all three of them have crawled through air ducting in at least one episode! Last time it was Ed at the control station while Ros had the action down a tunnel, so I like how they switch things around from episode to episode, no one having a set responsibility that they always have to maintain as their role.
Another inversion is in the trope of the bad guy being caught as part of his plan. It wasn't a trope then, as far as I'm aware, but in the last decade or so it's become tiresomely familiar (the Joker in 'The Dark Knight,' Silva in 'Skyfall' and Loki in 'Avengers Assemble' to name a few high profile examples), but here, instead of the villains allowing themselves to be caught, they booby-trap Ed's recorder from when he infiltrates their Bio Gro facility as 'Dr. Russell' from the Biohazard Safety Council, and allow him to escape from the back of their van so when he enters the gold vault they can unleash the gas and infect the reserves. A clever plan, and one in which you see the cold, clever mind of Kristo at work. Pyke isn't quite as intelligent as him, there are a couple of times when she's about to do something and he stops her. For example she's not sure if 'Dr. Russell' is genuine so Kristo tells her to test him, then when they catch Ed out and decide to kill him because he knows too much she's all ready to pull the trigger until Kristo says not to do it there. This could have all been part of the ruse to convince Ed he was being carted off to a secure location to be killed, but it could just as easily have been all planned in Kristo's mind and he didn't reveal what they were actually going to do until they were on the road. He may be the sensible one, but he also demonstrates a fearsome streak of violence, as when he roars at Pyke's death (I think we can assume she hadn't survived the explosion from the giant pressure cooker), and pushes up the security shield over the door with brute strength.
There's also the confrontation with Ros and Vanguard in the EEMC security control room. He's clearly angry, Ros has already bested him once, escaping with her antigen. He's not thinking straight because you'd expect him to be a better shot than what he manages, firing wildly round the room, missing both Ros and Vanguard. I didn't quite see how the thing with the gas cylinder came to be: we see Vanguard uncouple it to use as a weapon, but instead of attacking Kristo, she shouts to Ros, who I thought had been the other side of the room, but who has somehow made it to Vanguard's side where she can grab the cylinder and use it as a weapon to batter Kristo with! She accidentally knocks him onto the fizzing electrics he'd previously shot up, electrocuting him (much like Hex in 'A Sporting Chance'). So Ros killed both villains singlehandedly this time, she's getting a bit of a record in that regard - I wonder if she marks them off as notches on the edge of her computer monitor? Ros still doesn't seem quite as relaxed and herself as she did in Season 1 and I wondered if maybe it was the clothing they made Jaye wear? Maybe she didn't feel it fitted with the character as much, who knows, but sometimes she's seemed more Ros-like than at others. I don't know, it's difficult to describe, but she has generally seemed more remote than before while the two guys have been exactly the same.
Ed gets to almost be James Bond, although he doesn't have the ruthless streak that MI6 operative has, he isn't into killing people (not like Ros is, apparently!). But superficially at least - he wears the tuxedo in his role as Dr. Russell, effecting a more upper class accent, but it's on the top of the van and climbing down the ladder on its rear that it's most striking. Whenever I see a van with a ladder on the back it always makes me think of 'BUGS' for this exact scene! I wondered if the guy, Dench, who shows Pyke round at the EEMC at the start as if she's come for a job, was a tribute to Judi Dench who had made her mark as 'M' in 'Goldeneye' the previous year and would return the following year for 'Tomorrow Never Dies'? They certainly had the gadgetry of the Bond films of the past - although there are no tasers this time, Pyke prefers nonlethal darts, and I thought, at least she'd done that instead of killing Dench, unlike Pascal in the previous episode who just killed the guide right away. But then she rolled an explosive at him which blew him to shreds (like JD using his bazooka on the guy in 'Pulse'), so she wasn't so ethical after all! Kristo prefers a handgun. Ros' goggles were the standout piece of tech this time - they seemed to have dual functionality, if that's possible, since they were clearly night vision for use in low light, yet she could also see an infrared beam which she has to step over. And she actually has an argument with one door-opening gadget that refuses to play ball!
The real gadgetry hardware is in the vault, as Ed finds to his detriment. I don't know if it was intentional, but we see a bright white room for the Bio Gro lab, with such strong contrast you can't see the walls at all, which lights everyone in it as if they're out in the snow, then we have the exact opposite with a completely black room for the vault, though it's a shiny, reflective blackness. It's here that Ed encounters a live action computer game that has a licence to kill: him. The threat detectors, Motion Detection and Disabling Units, or MDDUs, to add another acronym (MDDU, EEMC, they weren't shying away from being technical and these names only added to the sense of complication!), were Ed's worst nightmare since they mean he has to move around at a snail's pace, not something he'd ordinarily be good at. Each time he outfoxed one of them it was like the 'game' went to the next level: escape out of the view of one of these guns (probably a high-powered taser as it fired an energy beam from its nozzle), and another one comes down from the other side of the ceiling, level two. Use one of the guns to blast the other and you think you're safe and another gun comes down, level three… I thought he was going to get the guns to detect each other's motion and destroy themselves, but it would make more sense that their location and movement would be part of their programming so they couldn't damage each other, and Ed grabs one to blast the other instead. They certainly were given character with the nozzle part like a face, and this growling noise being emitted, unless that was Ed's stomach rumbling!
Ed wasn't given much help by his colleagues in the episode, it must be said - he gets stuck in the vault while Beckett and Vanguard dash for the exit, and earlier, when Ros said she'd cover for him when Pyke comes to test him, she lets him act as if the nonsense Pyke was spouting was something he knew about so it's too late to pretend he is an expert! Thanks, guys… In the important ways, however, they once again show great faith and trust in each other: Ros has a terrible decision to make, letting rip with the antigen in the vault to save the gold of all these nations, while risking Ed's death, she says to herself, 'don't let me down, Beckett,' then has to do what must be done. And he didn't let his friends down, they save Ed, save the gold and even get Vanguard to replace the gold ring Ros lost to the virus earlier. About that ring: where did it come from, who gave it to her? I don't think she'd ever worn it before, so was this a gift from Alex, the guy in 'Blackout' who she was special friends with? I have other questions, too: where did the oxygen and mask come from that Beckett dons to crawl through the toxic gas pipe? Vanguard just strides in lugging all this diving equipment as if they keep it in a locker just in case and it did make me laugh from the matter of fact way she carried it in. And JD's sentence is supposedly one hundred and forty years! That seems a little harsh, and can a Governor really petition it to be cut in half? There was even a rare production flaw as you just see the boom mic drop into shot when they enter the vault for the first time. Whoops!
***
'Serious science' is a phrase used by Beckett at one stage in this one, and that sums up the episode quite neatly. 'Cool bananas' is a phrase used by Ros at one stage, too, but that doesn't sum up the episode, it's just a fun line that she'd either said before, or would say again. It didn't quite become a catchphrase, but it's just the sort of thing you'd expect to come from her mouth. Beckett's wording is the appropriate one as this is heavy on the sci in sci-fi and I was impressed at how much detail they were able to get across to the audience, complex descriptions and concepts bandied about between the action that I'm pretty sure you would not see in Saturday evening entertainment now. And probably not then either - it's not like 'BUGS' was the vanguard (hee, hee), for scientific discussion. But in this case the writers really put the effort in to make things sound right, much in the same way Trek always used to. Technobabble is the word and the series often included it, just perhaps not quite as much as this episode boasts. There's also what I took to be some unintentional foreshadowing, setting up a concept vaguely close to what would be the big ending of the season when they talk about this computer virus has jumped the digital moat Ros has erected around the defenceless data of their client - it sounded very much like Cyberax jumping the species barrier, as we'd find out in a few episodes, and the idea of an airborne computer virus was genius and also heralds a further link between the physical, organic world our team operate in, with the shadowy digital one of computers.
That wouldn't have been their intention, Cyberax may not even have been invented yet (I'd love to know if it was part of the season's plan from the start, but we'll never know), and if it had been meant as a primer to prepare us for that idea it would have been a lot more obvious. Just like the way the subtlety is lost in the Jean-Daniel scene with the Prison Governor as they sit in his office and share cake: the Governor actually says outright that JD is an inspiration for his forgiveness of 'those three' who put him there and that he bet on their success, which is what he's been doing the whole time. I suppose with hindsight I've watched the episodes so many times that I know what's going on and there was no need in the early episodes to explain it like that, but in retrospect it may have been needed, may have been too subtle for viewers, especially if they missed an episode here or there so I can understand why they'd make it clear. I just loved the fact that before it was so nuanced and about interpretation. In any case they add some new mystery into the mix with JD's thermometer of doom portending big things will happen when his investments reach the top goal and the final shot of the episode is exactly that happening. It makes you really want to find out what's going to happen next (one of my favourites), when the prison scenes had been such a slow burn, although this was only the fourth episode to actually feature this serialised part of the story.
As we'd seen before, the team carry on unaware that their moves are actually earning their nemesis a means to power (despite the bonkers way the end result would be achieved!), it's only the audience who are given the extra layer of intrigue on top of everything else. We're thrown right into the story once again after the opening credits with the team striding into the Eastern European Monetary Commission, an outfit headed by the straight talking Vanguard in her striking red suit and blonde hair, a woman who has a lot of responsibility on her hands with the economies of several countries, but isn't very practical when it comes to computers and technical things, which is realistic - you'd expect her to delegate realms outside her expertise to experts. One question is why she didn't call in the security consultants who are tied to the EEMC and who keep a key to the vault off-site. How did she know to call in Gizmos (as they never call themselves), this is an instance where there's no friend in the company whom Ros or Beckett know (Ed almost never seems to have any friends!), so they must advertise well? Direct mailings? Email? Cold calling? We don't need to worry how the business works, the important thing is that the team are all present and correct, ready to power up their skills in the service of good, and they do start by impressing their client, getting through the voiceprint authorisation with no hassle at all, though it's a different story when Ros fails to stop the progress of the virus.
Did Pyke and Kristo, this week's money mad villains (they should have teamed up with Pascal and Lacombe from 'Blackout'!), buy their virus carrier from Cyberscope? It certainly looks like the little metal mouse bombs that could climb up the inside of walls and were activated by a target's voice to explode. This one is a tasteful shade of green, unleashing its payload of gold-eating gas by wickedly spreading its little wings. It could have been a Cyberscope design (and in real terms was likely a repurposed prop from 'Assassins Inc' as we'd seen them reuse several gadgets so far), but we don't need everything to connect to something we'd already seen as things can become ridiculous. Still, I wouldn't have minded someone wondering if the tech had been modelled on one of those designs, a little throwaway suggestion, perhaps. Another little throwaway that probably was entirely unintentional was that the colours on the Network Status screen that represented stages of the EEMC's data security corresponded with the team's main clothing colours! I only noticed this because I'm paying so much attention to what they wear each episode (Ros had some more interesting earrings), but Beckett had a green shirt and on the screen that stood for 'operational,' Ed wore his usual blue jumper and blue meant 'de-coupled,' while irony of ironies considering her heroic roles, Ros wore a red dress and on the screen red meant 'failure'! So I don't think we can read too much into that, it must have been mere coincidence, though Ros' antigen is also red… but it didn't fail.
It's fun to look out for odd little details like these or spot reflections of other episodes: Pyke, the blue suit-wearing villainess, partner of Maximillian Kristo, uses a brooch or lapel pin as a clever disguise for a communications device, just as our team would sometimes use. Then there's the switch-around of Beckett's driving being joked about at his expense by Ros for a change (he asks if she wants to drive and she says she would, but he needs the practice!). And don't forget, while they didn't reference Cyberscope, they certainly did bring back one previously used company from Season 1: JBS Security. This was the company Ed and Beckett used as cover so they could get into Hennessy Brock's building in 'Manna From Heaven,' only this time it's inverted, the villain using it as cover to get into the EEMC (which when I first saw it I thought looked like the Bureau building from Season 3), and surprise Ros and Vanguard, so that was a fun little connection. This time Ros ends up as the one at the switchboard of doom, Ed's trapped in the vault and Beckett is the one being the action man as he has to get down a tunnel full of noxious gases - now all three of them have crawled through air ducting in at least one episode! Last time it was Ed at the control station while Ros had the action down a tunnel, so I like how they switch things around from episode to episode, no one having a set responsibility that they always have to maintain as their role.
Another inversion is in the trope of the bad guy being caught as part of his plan. It wasn't a trope then, as far as I'm aware, but in the last decade or so it's become tiresomely familiar (the Joker in 'The Dark Knight,' Silva in 'Skyfall' and Loki in 'Avengers Assemble' to name a few high profile examples), but here, instead of the villains allowing themselves to be caught, they booby-trap Ed's recorder from when he infiltrates their Bio Gro facility as 'Dr. Russell' from the Biohazard Safety Council, and allow him to escape from the back of their van so when he enters the gold vault they can unleash the gas and infect the reserves. A clever plan, and one in which you see the cold, clever mind of Kristo at work. Pyke isn't quite as intelligent as him, there are a couple of times when she's about to do something and he stops her. For example she's not sure if 'Dr. Russell' is genuine so Kristo tells her to test him, then when they catch Ed out and decide to kill him because he knows too much she's all ready to pull the trigger until Kristo says not to do it there. This could have all been part of the ruse to convince Ed he was being carted off to a secure location to be killed, but it could just as easily have been all planned in Kristo's mind and he didn't reveal what they were actually going to do until they were on the road. He may be the sensible one, but he also demonstrates a fearsome streak of violence, as when he roars at Pyke's death (I think we can assume she hadn't survived the explosion from the giant pressure cooker), and pushes up the security shield over the door with brute strength.
There's also the confrontation with Ros and Vanguard in the EEMC security control room. He's clearly angry, Ros has already bested him once, escaping with her antigen. He's not thinking straight because you'd expect him to be a better shot than what he manages, firing wildly round the room, missing both Ros and Vanguard. I didn't quite see how the thing with the gas cylinder came to be: we see Vanguard uncouple it to use as a weapon, but instead of attacking Kristo, she shouts to Ros, who I thought had been the other side of the room, but who has somehow made it to Vanguard's side where she can grab the cylinder and use it as a weapon to batter Kristo with! She accidentally knocks him onto the fizzing electrics he'd previously shot up, electrocuting him (much like Hex in 'A Sporting Chance'). So Ros killed both villains singlehandedly this time, she's getting a bit of a record in that regard - I wonder if she marks them off as notches on the edge of her computer monitor? Ros still doesn't seem quite as relaxed and herself as she did in Season 1 and I wondered if maybe it was the clothing they made Jaye wear? Maybe she didn't feel it fitted with the character as much, who knows, but sometimes she's seemed more Ros-like than at others. I don't know, it's difficult to describe, but she has generally seemed more remote than before while the two guys have been exactly the same.
Ed gets to almost be James Bond, although he doesn't have the ruthless streak that MI6 operative has, he isn't into killing people (not like Ros is, apparently!). But superficially at least - he wears the tuxedo in his role as Dr. Russell, effecting a more upper class accent, but it's on the top of the van and climbing down the ladder on its rear that it's most striking. Whenever I see a van with a ladder on the back it always makes me think of 'BUGS' for this exact scene! I wondered if the guy, Dench, who shows Pyke round at the EEMC at the start as if she's come for a job, was a tribute to Judi Dench who had made her mark as 'M' in 'Goldeneye' the previous year and would return the following year for 'Tomorrow Never Dies'? They certainly had the gadgetry of the Bond films of the past - although there are no tasers this time, Pyke prefers nonlethal darts, and I thought, at least she'd done that instead of killing Dench, unlike Pascal in the previous episode who just killed the guide right away. But then she rolled an explosive at him which blew him to shreds (like JD using his bazooka on the guy in 'Pulse'), so she wasn't so ethical after all! Kristo prefers a handgun. Ros' goggles were the standout piece of tech this time - they seemed to have dual functionality, if that's possible, since they were clearly night vision for use in low light, yet she could also see an infrared beam which she has to step over. And she actually has an argument with one door-opening gadget that refuses to play ball!
The real gadgetry hardware is in the vault, as Ed finds to his detriment. I don't know if it was intentional, but we see a bright white room for the Bio Gro lab, with such strong contrast you can't see the walls at all, which lights everyone in it as if they're out in the snow, then we have the exact opposite with a completely black room for the vault, though it's a shiny, reflective blackness. It's here that Ed encounters a live action computer game that has a licence to kill: him. The threat detectors, Motion Detection and Disabling Units, or MDDUs, to add another acronym (MDDU, EEMC, they weren't shying away from being technical and these names only added to the sense of complication!), were Ed's worst nightmare since they mean he has to move around at a snail's pace, not something he'd ordinarily be good at. Each time he outfoxed one of them it was like the 'game' went to the next level: escape out of the view of one of these guns (probably a high-powered taser as it fired an energy beam from its nozzle), and another one comes down from the other side of the ceiling, level two. Use one of the guns to blast the other and you think you're safe and another gun comes down, level three… I thought he was going to get the guns to detect each other's motion and destroy themselves, but it would make more sense that their location and movement would be part of their programming so they couldn't damage each other, and Ed grabs one to blast the other instead. They certainly were given character with the nozzle part like a face, and this growling noise being emitted, unless that was Ed's stomach rumbling!
Ed wasn't given much help by his colleagues in the episode, it must be said - he gets stuck in the vault while Beckett and Vanguard dash for the exit, and earlier, when Ros said she'd cover for him when Pyke comes to test him, she lets him act as if the nonsense Pyke was spouting was something he knew about so it's too late to pretend he is an expert! Thanks, guys… In the important ways, however, they once again show great faith and trust in each other: Ros has a terrible decision to make, letting rip with the antigen in the vault to save the gold of all these nations, while risking Ed's death, she says to herself, 'don't let me down, Beckett,' then has to do what must be done. And he didn't let his friends down, they save Ed, save the gold and even get Vanguard to replace the gold ring Ros lost to the virus earlier. About that ring: where did it come from, who gave it to her? I don't think she'd ever worn it before, so was this a gift from Alex, the guy in 'Blackout' who she was special friends with? I have other questions, too: where did the oxygen and mask come from that Beckett dons to crawl through the toxic gas pipe? Vanguard just strides in lugging all this diving equipment as if they keep it in a locker just in case and it did make me laugh from the matter of fact way she carried it in. And JD's sentence is supposedly one hundred and forty years! That seems a little harsh, and can a Governor really petition it to be cut in half? There was even a rare production flaw as you just see the boom mic drop into shot when they enter the vault for the first time. Whoops!
***
Tuesday, 9 November 2021
Fever (2)
DVD, Smallville S2 (Fever)
'Fever'? More like 'Fever Dream'! This was one that I had no recollection of from the title and even when the episode had gone some way in I didn't remember what it was about or what happened, and I think I know why: it was quite uneven, some momentous things happen, but at the same time they don't really turn into much and there's a strong side order of teen soapiness that jars a little bit. I mean, one moment you've got Jonathan Kent breaking into the Disease Control Authority, full of soldiers clumping around with drawn weapons, and the next you have Chloe spilling her teenage girl's guts all over an unconscious Clark, only for him to utter the one word in response: "Lana?" Right from the start I'm questioning characters. For instance, Martha opens the episode sneaking down to the storm cellar to bury the tin of flour that was carrying the Kryptonite key that was hidden under the sink (keeping up?), since Jonathan's fixing the tap. Why didn't she tell her husband and son about it? Similarly, I'd forgotten she was supposed to be pregnant (did we know that, I can't remember?), so why didn't she tell her husband and son about it? At least, and this is a big point in the episode's favour, they didn't drag it out over multiple episodes as a modern series would probably do, we have the questions raised and within a few minutes Jonathan's at her side as she wakes up in the Smallville Medical Centre, and what does he do right away? Asks her about these very two questions.
This was a relief. I'm not saying Martha's answers were particularly compelling or full of the kind of homespun good sense you'd expect from a farmer's wife like her, but it chimed with her character to some degree, even if usually she doesn't keep things from her family and was being a bit silly. But we can forgive her for some feminine eccentricities and it all comes right in the end so no real harm done. But there could have been. There could have been great harm done! How many moments in this episode is Clark and his secret put at severe risk by his parents? Obviously the farm being searched by the DCA in their hazmat suits was the first big threat, but fortunately Pete was able to pull through and help his friend by stashing the Kryptonian ship at his place and proving what a good friend he is. But then Clark is also affected and Dr. Bryce pays a home visit to see to him while Jonathan starts babbling about how Clark is special and she can never tell anyone about him and she can't take a blood sample… Oh! She did. Well, she can't send it off anywhere and she can't tell anyone… Why trust her? I suppose there was no way to prevent it, but it's very awkward since she's Lex Luthor's girlfriend. But at least she's very strict on doctor-patient confidentiality - did Mr. Kent know she would be, or, as he says about something else later in the episode, is he just grasping at straws?
I thought maybe the blood would show up as normal since Clark was under the influence of the meteor spores (which never gets fully explained - how did it get underground, isn't the storm cellar older than the time of the meteor shower?), the doc did manage to spike him with a needle and draw the sample, which ordinarily wouldn't be possible and was what I was expecting to happen which would prompt Jonathan to be forced to tell Helen all about Clark and his abilities. Instead she's just flabbergasted by what she sees in his blood (we're not privy to that), but at the end is happy to wave it all away as a miracle that Martha recovered and Clark's blood is weird in some way we're not told. Or was she just fobbing them off in order to have time to think about what she's going to do next? The next time Clark was put at risk was when his Father tries to break into this DCA facility to get the ship's key - would it really be that highly guarded or do they share it with a military base of operations for the local area (the car chase doesn't seem to go on very long!), because that was the most unbelievable moment in the whole thing! Mr. Kent doesn't have a military background, I'm pretty sure, he's a farmer, and yet he's confident in his ability to break into this top security compound, cutting through wire, sneaking around like a spy (should have blacked his face up), rolling under doors and then ransacking the correct storage room - how would you even track down stuff in a place like that in the dark!
If it wasn't for Clark showing up against orders, he'd have been caught, and this and the moment Pete is similarly caught on the road a bit later were the most cartoonish parts of the episode: you're pushed to the limit, you think it has to be the end of the line, how are they ever going to get out of this one…? And then Clark knocks out the guard who's interrupted Jonathan, and it turns out Pete is driving the Kent pickup. But how suspicious was the whole thing, I was really expecting the head of the DCA investigation to show up and act like he thought Mr. Kent was to blame: the soldiers who saw him had given some kind of description because Pete doesn't match it, one guard, the guy who got clunked on the head was quite close, and Mr. Kent's stuff is the bit that's rifled through… His pickup is the one that's seen leaving, or so they think, and why is this kid driving it out here at this time of night. It was a whole shady, crazy thing, culminating in everything's gone back to normal so the DCA aren't going to come back and establish what really happened there? Utterly ridiculous! I know, I know, this is a comic book series, but it's a tribute to the actors and the writing of the first couple of seasons that for the most part it came across quite realistically and wasn't played up melodramatically.
If we want melodrama then we have to wait for Chloe's emotional outlet as she apparently comes to sit with Clark for a bit. Not very long, as it turns out! I couldn't help feeling when I saw her pink page (so we know it's not just any printout as Lana has to find it later), had been typed on a word processor! Somehow this seems like the kind of thing that should be written out lovingly by hand, not the cold, detached form of the printed page. It is quite touching, but it's also a little sickly and you just wish they'd stop with all this love triangle nonsense and get back to the characters just being good friends and dealing with mysteries. Another strikingly unromantic moment comes much later, near the end of the episode, when Lex leaves a little present on Helen's desk (why does he keep showing up at her work, is that the only time she has available to see him - it's a bit weird), she fails to notice it and so he has to hand it to her and you think it's going to be an engagement ring. Let's not forget he'd already been married and had an annulment once this season (albeit meteor rock power induced, or was it just the woman's own weird freak power, I don't recall), so why not get married again? But no, instead it's a door key to the Luthor Mansion (I'm still not sure, is this Lex' place again or does it belong to his Father?), a far cry from a ring and a sign of the kind of morality of the times…
To cap it all off we have some odd cross promotion with a band called 'Steadman' playing at the Talon with Pete acting as DJ. The scene was clearly designed to feature this band (whom I've never heard of, not being a music type), but it lands rather discordantly when thrown in at the end of the episode and doesn't entirely work. Then there appears to be product placement when Pete hands Clark a CD of the Talon Mix, or whatever he called it, which smacks very much of merchandise for the series - I wouldn't be surprised. After an episode of bizarre moments, moments that could have thrown Clark's secret out to the world, we get an advert for some pop music? I didn't even mention Jonathan and Clark taking the ship on the back of another pickup right outside the hospital before popping the octagonal key in, causing it to hover above the vehicle, glowing white and sending a wave of light rushing through the hospital. I know it's supposed to be the middle of the night, but a hospital is one place where there are always people coming and going: staff ending or starting shifts, having breaks, patients being brought in! Anyone at all could have witnessed this amazing event and then the Kents would have had serious questions to answer. We never even heard whether the ship healed every single person in the hospital with its ray, or if it was only Clark and Martha since it has the power to neutralise Kryptonite as we'd seen before with the red variety. They could have said how miraculous it was every patient was healed that night, which would have been really cool and now the place is empty of the sick, but they didn't.
In the end I didn't quite know how to take the episode and it's no surprise that it didn't stick in my mind as the majority have from this season: because while the things that happen are huge (key meets ship! Helen knows Clark isn't normal! Martha's having a baby!), they're presented in quite a laid back way as if it's not that big a deal. So you're left in some ways disappointed that things didn't add up to more, and yet at the same time it's an episode that isn't hiding things from the audience and expecting us to wait on tenterhooks to see when things will be resolved. Apart from Helen being a grey area for the Kents everything is fine by the end, except for the silly girly stuff of fighting over Clark (ooh, it was so unsettling to see you ill because you're never ill). I respect Jonathan taking on any risk in order to have even the slightest thread of a chance of saving his family, even if it was bizarre and the lack of consequences at the end were even more farfetched. Hence why I think of it as this very uneven story. But the balance is the thing, and in that scale, good just about wins out over wackadoodle, there aren't the misery moments or depressing stuff that has been occasionally creeping in this season, so it's not bad overall. There was a very good moment of truth in the episode, right at the beginning when Jonathan says that for all Clark's abilities they're no substitute for a tap washer, a small thing that has one purpose and does its one job perfectly. I wish that had been a theme that had been developed throughout instead of being a throwaway line, but that's 'Smallville'!
***
'Fever'? More like 'Fever Dream'! This was one that I had no recollection of from the title and even when the episode had gone some way in I didn't remember what it was about or what happened, and I think I know why: it was quite uneven, some momentous things happen, but at the same time they don't really turn into much and there's a strong side order of teen soapiness that jars a little bit. I mean, one moment you've got Jonathan Kent breaking into the Disease Control Authority, full of soldiers clumping around with drawn weapons, and the next you have Chloe spilling her teenage girl's guts all over an unconscious Clark, only for him to utter the one word in response: "Lana?" Right from the start I'm questioning characters. For instance, Martha opens the episode sneaking down to the storm cellar to bury the tin of flour that was carrying the Kryptonite key that was hidden under the sink (keeping up?), since Jonathan's fixing the tap. Why didn't she tell her husband and son about it? Similarly, I'd forgotten she was supposed to be pregnant (did we know that, I can't remember?), so why didn't she tell her husband and son about it? At least, and this is a big point in the episode's favour, they didn't drag it out over multiple episodes as a modern series would probably do, we have the questions raised and within a few minutes Jonathan's at her side as she wakes up in the Smallville Medical Centre, and what does he do right away? Asks her about these very two questions.
This was a relief. I'm not saying Martha's answers were particularly compelling or full of the kind of homespun good sense you'd expect from a farmer's wife like her, but it chimed with her character to some degree, even if usually she doesn't keep things from her family and was being a bit silly. But we can forgive her for some feminine eccentricities and it all comes right in the end so no real harm done. But there could have been. There could have been great harm done! How many moments in this episode is Clark and his secret put at severe risk by his parents? Obviously the farm being searched by the DCA in their hazmat suits was the first big threat, but fortunately Pete was able to pull through and help his friend by stashing the Kryptonian ship at his place and proving what a good friend he is. But then Clark is also affected and Dr. Bryce pays a home visit to see to him while Jonathan starts babbling about how Clark is special and she can never tell anyone about him and she can't take a blood sample… Oh! She did. Well, she can't send it off anywhere and she can't tell anyone… Why trust her? I suppose there was no way to prevent it, but it's very awkward since she's Lex Luthor's girlfriend. But at least she's very strict on doctor-patient confidentiality - did Mr. Kent know she would be, or, as he says about something else later in the episode, is he just grasping at straws?
I thought maybe the blood would show up as normal since Clark was under the influence of the meteor spores (which never gets fully explained - how did it get underground, isn't the storm cellar older than the time of the meteor shower?), the doc did manage to spike him with a needle and draw the sample, which ordinarily wouldn't be possible and was what I was expecting to happen which would prompt Jonathan to be forced to tell Helen all about Clark and his abilities. Instead she's just flabbergasted by what she sees in his blood (we're not privy to that), but at the end is happy to wave it all away as a miracle that Martha recovered and Clark's blood is weird in some way we're not told. Or was she just fobbing them off in order to have time to think about what she's going to do next? The next time Clark was put at risk was when his Father tries to break into this DCA facility to get the ship's key - would it really be that highly guarded or do they share it with a military base of operations for the local area (the car chase doesn't seem to go on very long!), because that was the most unbelievable moment in the whole thing! Mr. Kent doesn't have a military background, I'm pretty sure, he's a farmer, and yet he's confident in his ability to break into this top security compound, cutting through wire, sneaking around like a spy (should have blacked his face up), rolling under doors and then ransacking the correct storage room - how would you even track down stuff in a place like that in the dark!
If it wasn't for Clark showing up against orders, he'd have been caught, and this and the moment Pete is similarly caught on the road a bit later were the most cartoonish parts of the episode: you're pushed to the limit, you think it has to be the end of the line, how are they ever going to get out of this one…? And then Clark knocks out the guard who's interrupted Jonathan, and it turns out Pete is driving the Kent pickup. But how suspicious was the whole thing, I was really expecting the head of the DCA investigation to show up and act like he thought Mr. Kent was to blame: the soldiers who saw him had given some kind of description because Pete doesn't match it, one guard, the guy who got clunked on the head was quite close, and Mr. Kent's stuff is the bit that's rifled through… His pickup is the one that's seen leaving, or so they think, and why is this kid driving it out here at this time of night. It was a whole shady, crazy thing, culminating in everything's gone back to normal so the DCA aren't going to come back and establish what really happened there? Utterly ridiculous! I know, I know, this is a comic book series, but it's a tribute to the actors and the writing of the first couple of seasons that for the most part it came across quite realistically and wasn't played up melodramatically.
If we want melodrama then we have to wait for Chloe's emotional outlet as she apparently comes to sit with Clark for a bit. Not very long, as it turns out! I couldn't help feeling when I saw her pink page (so we know it's not just any printout as Lana has to find it later), had been typed on a word processor! Somehow this seems like the kind of thing that should be written out lovingly by hand, not the cold, detached form of the printed page. It is quite touching, but it's also a little sickly and you just wish they'd stop with all this love triangle nonsense and get back to the characters just being good friends and dealing with mysteries. Another strikingly unromantic moment comes much later, near the end of the episode, when Lex leaves a little present on Helen's desk (why does he keep showing up at her work, is that the only time she has available to see him - it's a bit weird), she fails to notice it and so he has to hand it to her and you think it's going to be an engagement ring. Let's not forget he'd already been married and had an annulment once this season (albeit meteor rock power induced, or was it just the woman's own weird freak power, I don't recall), so why not get married again? But no, instead it's a door key to the Luthor Mansion (I'm still not sure, is this Lex' place again or does it belong to his Father?), a far cry from a ring and a sign of the kind of morality of the times…
To cap it all off we have some odd cross promotion with a band called 'Steadman' playing at the Talon with Pete acting as DJ. The scene was clearly designed to feature this band (whom I've never heard of, not being a music type), but it lands rather discordantly when thrown in at the end of the episode and doesn't entirely work. Then there appears to be product placement when Pete hands Clark a CD of the Talon Mix, or whatever he called it, which smacks very much of merchandise for the series - I wouldn't be surprised. After an episode of bizarre moments, moments that could have thrown Clark's secret out to the world, we get an advert for some pop music? I didn't even mention Jonathan and Clark taking the ship on the back of another pickup right outside the hospital before popping the octagonal key in, causing it to hover above the vehicle, glowing white and sending a wave of light rushing through the hospital. I know it's supposed to be the middle of the night, but a hospital is one place where there are always people coming and going: staff ending or starting shifts, having breaks, patients being brought in! Anyone at all could have witnessed this amazing event and then the Kents would have had serious questions to answer. We never even heard whether the ship healed every single person in the hospital with its ray, or if it was only Clark and Martha since it has the power to neutralise Kryptonite as we'd seen before with the red variety. They could have said how miraculous it was every patient was healed that night, which would have been really cool and now the place is empty of the sick, but they didn't.
In the end I didn't quite know how to take the episode and it's no surprise that it didn't stick in my mind as the majority have from this season: because while the things that happen are huge (key meets ship! Helen knows Clark isn't normal! Martha's having a baby!), they're presented in quite a laid back way as if it's not that big a deal. So you're left in some ways disappointed that things didn't add up to more, and yet at the same time it's an episode that isn't hiding things from the audience and expecting us to wait on tenterhooks to see when things will be resolved. Apart from Helen being a grey area for the Kents everything is fine by the end, except for the silly girly stuff of fighting over Clark (ooh, it was so unsettling to see you ill because you're never ill). I respect Jonathan taking on any risk in order to have even the slightest thread of a chance of saving his family, even if it was bizarre and the lack of consequences at the end were even more farfetched. Hence why I think of it as this very uneven story. But the balance is the thing, and in that scale, good just about wins out over wackadoodle, there aren't the misery moments or depressing stuff that has been occasionally creeping in this season, so it's not bad overall. There was a very good moment of truth in the episode, right at the beginning when Jonathan says that for all Clark's abilities they're no substitute for a tap washer, a small thing that has one purpose and does its one job perfectly. I wish that had been a theme that had been developed throughout instead of being a throwaway line, but that's 'Smallville'!
***
Blackout
DVD, BUGS S2 (Blackout)
Was this the series' answer to 'Die Hard' and all those subsequent spinoffs and copycats? It's probably the closest thing, and when you think that film was only a few years before this, it seems likely it was some kind of influence. The difference being that I actually like this and it doesn't rely on lots of swearing and violence to make an exciting story, something that was always a strong point about the series. Saying that, it is a little bit bloody: we linger unnecessarily long on the post-smash bodies of terrorist Pascal (played by Samantha Beckinsale, who I think is the sister of Kate), and the mystery man Martin Kolveck, not to mention that the poor tour guide showing the group round NRGen is shot by Pascal for no reason other than she seems to dislike fat men! Add to that a high number of deaths on screen (Lacombe, her partner at the Currency Exchange House in the Financial District, murders three security guards in cold blood!), and the fact that Ros was directly responsible for three of them and the body count is pretty high! Perhaps this reflected the stakes in this takeover of the split isotope fusion reactor plant, that its destruction would result in a five mile-wide crater, causing the deaths of who knows how many people, so our team didn't have time for finesse when dealing with such people. And what people they were, these terrorists purporting to be from the Pro Earth People's Front, though in reality the Front part was an actual front for criminal activity: no less than clearing out the vaults at the Currency Exchange.
It seemed like a lot of work to go to for a van load of notes, but I suppose, like Alec Guinness' character in 'The Lavender Hill Mob' Lacombe was on the inside and saw how it could be done (though he wasn't coming up for retirement so decided to make his own). It was certainly audacious to create such a massive diversion by taking over a power plant in the name of nature and provided us with a sizeable sense of scale in what was being attempted, and in reflection, what our team were trying to prevent. It was so big that it's one of those cases when you wonder why Kanin, the representative of NRGen (how did he know about the Gizmos team, was a mate of Alex?), didn't have a direct line to the army or government forces - say, armed police, anti-terrorist organisations who train for such eventualities. But then this was in the years before planes were flown into the Trade Centre in New York, and while there had certainly been terrorist actions and the threat of others, it shows that the attitude was perhaps not as concerned about such things being likely. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it and the simple fact is that in reality the authorities would always be first on the scene in such a situation, but then our team wouldn't be so special. We can always say that, much as Kanin didn't even have time to spare on ringing the doorbell at Gizmo's, he came right to the heart of the matter, presumably knowing who Ros was, and the expertise of the team she represented, and so felt the best and swiftest course was to involve her friends and colleagues.
Kanin's explosive entrance (even if it was only one of those air explosions, which always seems like a bit of a cop-out, and was in fact the second of the episode despite coming so close to the beginning - the door to the control room at the plant gets similar treatment from Pascal's people), reminds of the last time Gizmo's was subjected to forced entry: in Season 1 when Jean-Daniel paid a visit with Mr. Bazooka. This is a different Gizmo's of course, but he's another bald man and after we'd just suffered infiltration from JD's cousin Bixon in the previous episode, you'd be forgiven for being suspicious. But there was no time to ask for ID, Ros' life was in danger! I don't know whether the lack of JD scenes was due to them wanting a bit of variety, allow him to sink back into the shadows so we forget what's going on behind the scenes, or if it was simply a case of time constraints and they liked the episode enough they didn't want to cut anything out to make room for yet another prison scene. I'd love to know the history of such things, whether they discussed having JD there or it was never even considered, perhaps a break was wanted? The episode is large scale enough on its own without needing any grander schemes, but the addition of Kolveck, this representative of a third party interested in taking advantage of the plant being under outside control, could suggest a JD link: was he working for JD, or was it completely unrelated? Maybe the people he represented worked for JD?
These things neither detract nor really add much to what is a pretty rip-roaring adventure, but it's the kind of thing that's fun to speculate on after the fact. The important thing this time is that this is a Ros episode, she gets to do most of the action and saves the day at the end! Ed and Beckett seem very much her subordinates through distance - Beckett at least is never close by, he's the outside liaison, mainly working with Kanin or visiting the Exchange, while Ed manages to break in through the 'end of the world' tunnel, which was great, and mainly does what Ros asks of him. Ros gets to be the one crawling around in the air ducting for a change (don't know how she kept her smart suit so clean!), slipping about in this large complex with its various levels and locations. That's something I've always liked: the sensation of going deep underground where some deep danger lurks. In this case it's the reactor itself, but also the patrolling terrorists - although we see them use tasers again, it's only to blast the satellite dishes and security equipment (including Philips monitors that I used to run my Amiga on!), when it comes to people they aren't shy of firing real bullets, which ups the threat level as no one's going to be 'Star Trek'-stunned in this!
Ros' action credentials get a rigorous checking, and with some help from Ed she gets the job done, even if it includes knocking patrol leader Eckberg down a ladder shaft to his death. He fell straight down so he must have landed on his head, but that was better than landing on Ed, gazing up and grinning to distract him. Ed showed great faith in Ros at that moment because he never flinched even as Eckberg pointed the gun at him, and waited coolly for Ros to make her gambit. It's somewhat lost in the humour of the moment, but it shows how much trust there is between the main characters (as does the touching moment when Ed tells Beckett to keep driving if they can't stop the meltdown). There seems to be some trust between Ros and her friend that works at the plant, the first Alex we have on the series before the more famous one arrives next season. He's such a good friend that the episode ends with Ros going out with him, though we never hear of him again. Another name that would later become infamous crops up, but only in a literal blink and you'll miss it moment: Christa! Yes, now we know what Beckett's neighbour in Season 4 was doing before we met her, she was part of some protest or terrorist group of some kind… And it's telling that Beckett is the one to be doing the profile search… Okay, the picture doesn't look like the same person, and this woman is called Christa Van Marka, and it's a common enough first name, just not on this series and adding another black mark to Christa's name is fun to do.
It's not only character names that appear elsewhere than in this episode, some of the sets look strikingly familiar: I always used to notice the primary core, this location deep under the plant, looked suspiciously like the water refinement site in 'Manna From Heaven,' the place from where 'Mad' Sally was going to poison the nation's water supply, but various areas of the NRGen plant, both outside and in looked very much like The Hive building, so it's possible this was a regular location they were allowed to film at: there are those familiar circular stairways, the tiny square windows and the hefty metal doors. It could be that it was just another building designed by the same architect I suppose, but knowing how they'd used The Hive building before, and would do again, it's likely this was the same place, but it's cunningly disguised so you wouldn't notice unless you were studying the episodes carefully or watched them multiple times, both of which I've done. One other 'BUGS' location shows up, though this time only on a monitor: Jean-Daniel's mainframe room from Computer Recall is used to represent a similar sort of thing for NRGen - JD may not appear, but his presence is still felt.
The colour palette of the episode is achieved very well, mainly through the environment this time rather than the characters' clothing. While Beckett wears a mustard coloured shirt as the brightest example of clothing in the episode, and with the red backdrop of Gizmo's his main location, Ros and Ed are much more muted, she in trouser suit of blue jacket and grey trousers, he also in grey trousers with what appeared to be a purple jumper, though you never see it clearly as he doesn't take off the leather jacket that was the character's trademark. They're both seen in a lot of gloomy shots with little lights around, but it's things like the garish yellow backdrop of electrical hazard cabinets, or faces cast in blue light that adds colour this time, while the terrorists' colour of choice is a full red, Pascal's lips the same colour as if to mark her out as the leader. She's a cold, calculating person with no compassion or mercy in her, first shooting the guide without cause, other than to show her intentions to the other hostages, double-crossing Travis, her man on the inside, when she no longer needs him, and setting up her own private deal with Kolveck: ten million for the core isotope triggers which she never tells her boyfriend Lacombe about. He too, has a very sinister way about him that makes you wonder if they can even trust each other - the way he calls her 'lover' in that tone of voice recalled Brian Brody and his wife Juliet from 'Down Among The Dead Men,' and it would be easy to imagine one of the pair ending up the same way if they hadn't both died.
Lacombe is chased by Beckett in his big action moment of the episode, driving too fast and overturning his van full of money when Ed activates a bridge to stop him getting over it. That's not strictly Beckett's fault, Lacombe was in control. When it comes to Eckberg, Pascal and Kolveck, however, Ros was responsible for them, pushing Eckberg down the ladder, shutting the 'flood door' before the other two could drive through, and she doesn't seem to be too concerned about it. I'm sure Kanin and NRGen advocated all she'd done if the authorities ever had shown an interest in prosecution, because obviously we can't have vigilantes going around killing people, even if they do deserve it! About the only bad guy that didn't die was Max, the security guard at the Exchange who was in on Lacombe's plan. I was expecting him to get gunned down by Lacombe once he was no longer needed, but he instead gets shut in the vault thanks to Beckett's intervention, which may well have saved his life, unless he ran out of oxygen before anyone remembered he was in there…
There aren't a whole lot of gadgets in this one, it's more about using computers and laptops to avert catastrophe, but one thing that does stand out are the coin transmitters, a pair of coins that act like walkie-talkies. The only problem is that the little electronic lights that demonstrate to us this isn't just an ordinary coin the production is trying to get us to believe has communication abilities, would give away that it's not a real coin, and I assumed the whole point of it was to disguise a communications device! Still, it was fun, shame it never appeared again, just one more of Ros' genius devices on her ever flowing production line, presumably. At least we get Ed riding his bike again, as he should - in fact we learn he has multiple motorbikes, not just from the fact he uses a 'dirt bike' stunt type (so Ros can do a jump), instead of a more traditional road bike, but he says at the end that's the last time he lets Ros borrow one of his bikes. She certainly cut a groove, or whatever they call it, speeding down the escape tunnel, performing jumps in her posh suit, tripping the exit, then racing back to lock in the triggers before everything went up - in the best tradition of the series everything came together brilliantly at the end as each of the team's lives were at risk, with derring-do, quick reactions and bold, split-second choices rushing out of the screen.
Perhaps the buildup getting to that end sequence was a little slower than we think of in the series, but there was some added interest from Kolveck adding a new player in the game, a third party to up the ante. Did he really have Pascal's money waiting at the other end of the tunnel, or associates waiting to shoot her? We'll never know. It's odd to see Ed and Ros switch roles, with Ed in control of the computer system while Ros rides his bike, but it's something that's often worked. Beckett being on the outside emphasises their solitariness, though it was good he was able to get to the other end of the connection at the Exchange. Their security doesn't seem all that good from the fact Beckett is able to walk straight back into the building claiming he lost his pager (same as Lacombe being able to smuggle in an automatic weapon to use on the guard's birthday party!), you'd think they'd have someone with him rather than let him wander the halls unaccompanied, unless he charmed whatever receptionist was there. I enjoyed his spiel about his boss making him wear it, as Beckett doesn't have a boss at this stage, but he would do the following year! The actors' traits were coming out a little more by this time, so when Ed's on his bike again, it feels right, but something else mentioned is after Alex breaks his handcuffs with a fire axe he says another inch to the right and he'd have never played guitar again, something we'd never seen Ed do, but which Craig McLachlan certainly did.
Ed also finds himself climbing horizontally along pipes again (like the escape in 'Hot Metal'), after being handcuffed to a pipe (like Beckett in 'Down Among The Dead Men'). There was one moment which looked like a genuine mistake: when Ed rides into the tunnel he skids and then there's a line which could very well have been added after the fact, where he says this place is a deathtrap. If it was added in in response to the skid then I like that attention to detail and the fact they kept that moment in instead of doing another take. It's possible it was all planned, but it's not really important to the story, other than, I suppose, as setup for Ros chasing the villains at the end. I loved Ed's line about keeping the lid on the kettle, a nice analogy for this boiling reactor that's getting too hot without the triggers. Usually computer voices remain entirely calm and emotionless, so it made a change to hear one that was getting more and more agitated, almost panicking. I think a calm voice in a life or death situation can be more chilling since a computer has no actual concern about what's happening, it's just following its warning programming, but it fits with this series that instead it gets more and more agitated: you're all about to die, get out before it's too late! The only thing is, as great as Ed and Alex' solution to giving Ros more time by letting out the coolant so it sinks down to the reactor, it made the stuff look less dangerous than earlier when Ros pulled Ed out of harm's way - here he's getting a face full of the stuff and is fine!
****
Was this the series' answer to 'Die Hard' and all those subsequent spinoffs and copycats? It's probably the closest thing, and when you think that film was only a few years before this, it seems likely it was some kind of influence. The difference being that I actually like this and it doesn't rely on lots of swearing and violence to make an exciting story, something that was always a strong point about the series. Saying that, it is a little bit bloody: we linger unnecessarily long on the post-smash bodies of terrorist Pascal (played by Samantha Beckinsale, who I think is the sister of Kate), and the mystery man Martin Kolveck, not to mention that the poor tour guide showing the group round NRGen is shot by Pascal for no reason other than she seems to dislike fat men! Add to that a high number of deaths on screen (Lacombe, her partner at the Currency Exchange House in the Financial District, murders three security guards in cold blood!), and the fact that Ros was directly responsible for three of them and the body count is pretty high! Perhaps this reflected the stakes in this takeover of the split isotope fusion reactor plant, that its destruction would result in a five mile-wide crater, causing the deaths of who knows how many people, so our team didn't have time for finesse when dealing with such people. And what people they were, these terrorists purporting to be from the Pro Earth People's Front, though in reality the Front part was an actual front for criminal activity: no less than clearing out the vaults at the Currency Exchange.
It seemed like a lot of work to go to for a van load of notes, but I suppose, like Alec Guinness' character in 'The Lavender Hill Mob' Lacombe was on the inside and saw how it could be done (though he wasn't coming up for retirement so decided to make his own). It was certainly audacious to create such a massive diversion by taking over a power plant in the name of nature and provided us with a sizeable sense of scale in what was being attempted, and in reflection, what our team were trying to prevent. It was so big that it's one of those cases when you wonder why Kanin, the representative of NRGen (how did he know about the Gizmos team, was a mate of Alex?), didn't have a direct line to the army or government forces - say, armed police, anti-terrorist organisations who train for such eventualities. But then this was in the years before planes were flown into the Trade Centre in New York, and while there had certainly been terrorist actions and the threat of others, it shows that the attitude was perhaps not as concerned about such things being likely. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it and the simple fact is that in reality the authorities would always be first on the scene in such a situation, but then our team wouldn't be so special. We can always say that, much as Kanin didn't even have time to spare on ringing the doorbell at Gizmo's, he came right to the heart of the matter, presumably knowing who Ros was, and the expertise of the team she represented, and so felt the best and swiftest course was to involve her friends and colleagues.
Kanin's explosive entrance (even if it was only one of those air explosions, which always seems like a bit of a cop-out, and was in fact the second of the episode despite coming so close to the beginning - the door to the control room at the plant gets similar treatment from Pascal's people), reminds of the last time Gizmo's was subjected to forced entry: in Season 1 when Jean-Daniel paid a visit with Mr. Bazooka. This is a different Gizmo's of course, but he's another bald man and after we'd just suffered infiltration from JD's cousin Bixon in the previous episode, you'd be forgiven for being suspicious. But there was no time to ask for ID, Ros' life was in danger! I don't know whether the lack of JD scenes was due to them wanting a bit of variety, allow him to sink back into the shadows so we forget what's going on behind the scenes, or if it was simply a case of time constraints and they liked the episode enough they didn't want to cut anything out to make room for yet another prison scene. I'd love to know the history of such things, whether they discussed having JD there or it was never even considered, perhaps a break was wanted? The episode is large scale enough on its own without needing any grander schemes, but the addition of Kolveck, this representative of a third party interested in taking advantage of the plant being under outside control, could suggest a JD link: was he working for JD, or was it completely unrelated? Maybe the people he represented worked for JD?
These things neither detract nor really add much to what is a pretty rip-roaring adventure, but it's the kind of thing that's fun to speculate on after the fact. The important thing this time is that this is a Ros episode, she gets to do most of the action and saves the day at the end! Ed and Beckett seem very much her subordinates through distance - Beckett at least is never close by, he's the outside liaison, mainly working with Kanin or visiting the Exchange, while Ed manages to break in through the 'end of the world' tunnel, which was great, and mainly does what Ros asks of him. Ros gets to be the one crawling around in the air ducting for a change (don't know how she kept her smart suit so clean!), slipping about in this large complex with its various levels and locations. That's something I've always liked: the sensation of going deep underground where some deep danger lurks. In this case it's the reactor itself, but also the patrolling terrorists - although we see them use tasers again, it's only to blast the satellite dishes and security equipment (including Philips monitors that I used to run my Amiga on!), when it comes to people they aren't shy of firing real bullets, which ups the threat level as no one's going to be 'Star Trek'-stunned in this!
Ros' action credentials get a rigorous checking, and with some help from Ed she gets the job done, even if it includes knocking patrol leader Eckberg down a ladder shaft to his death. He fell straight down so he must have landed on his head, but that was better than landing on Ed, gazing up and grinning to distract him. Ed showed great faith in Ros at that moment because he never flinched even as Eckberg pointed the gun at him, and waited coolly for Ros to make her gambit. It's somewhat lost in the humour of the moment, but it shows how much trust there is between the main characters (as does the touching moment when Ed tells Beckett to keep driving if they can't stop the meltdown). There seems to be some trust between Ros and her friend that works at the plant, the first Alex we have on the series before the more famous one arrives next season. He's such a good friend that the episode ends with Ros going out with him, though we never hear of him again. Another name that would later become infamous crops up, but only in a literal blink and you'll miss it moment: Christa! Yes, now we know what Beckett's neighbour in Season 4 was doing before we met her, she was part of some protest or terrorist group of some kind… And it's telling that Beckett is the one to be doing the profile search… Okay, the picture doesn't look like the same person, and this woman is called Christa Van Marka, and it's a common enough first name, just not on this series and adding another black mark to Christa's name is fun to do.
It's not only character names that appear elsewhere than in this episode, some of the sets look strikingly familiar: I always used to notice the primary core, this location deep under the plant, looked suspiciously like the water refinement site in 'Manna From Heaven,' the place from where 'Mad' Sally was going to poison the nation's water supply, but various areas of the NRGen plant, both outside and in looked very much like The Hive building, so it's possible this was a regular location they were allowed to film at: there are those familiar circular stairways, the tiny square windows and the hefty metal doors. It could be that it was just another building designed by the same architect I suppose, but knowing how they'd used The Hive building before, and would do again, it's likely this was the same place, but it's cunningly disguised so you wouldn't notice unless you were studying the episodes carefully or watched them multiple times, both of which I've done. One other 'BUGS' location shows up, though this time only on a monitor: Jean-Daniel's mainframe room from Computer Recall is used to represent a similar sort of thing for NRGen - JD may not appear, but his presence is still felt.
The colour palette of the episode is achieved very well, mainly through the environment this time rather than the characters' clothing. While Beckett wears a mustard coloured shirt as the brightest example of clothing in the episode, and with the red backdrop of Gizmo's his main location, Ros and Ed are much more muted, she in trouser suit of blue jacket and grey trousers, he also in grey trousers with what appeared to be a purple jumper, though you never see it clearly as he doesn't take off the leather jacket that was the character's trademark. They're both seen in a lot of gloomy shots with little lights around, but it's things like the garish yellow backdrop of electrical hazard cabinets, or faces cast in blue light that adds colour this time, while the terrorists' colour of choice is a full red, Pascal's lips the same colour as if to mark her out as the leader. She's a cold, calculating person with no compassion or mercy in her, first shooting the guide without cause, other than to show her intentions to the other hostages, double-crossing Travis, her man on the inside, when she no longer needs him, and setting up her own private deal with Kolveck: ten million for the core isotope triggers which she never tells her boyfriend Lacombe about. He too, has a very sinister way about him that makes you wonder if they can even trust each other - the way he calls her 'lover' in that tone of voice recalled Brian Brody and his wife Juliet from 'Down Among The Dead Men,' and it would be easy to imagine one of the pair ending up the same way if they hadn't both died.
Lacombe is chased by Beckett in his big action moment of the episode, driving too fast and overturning his van full of money when Ed activates a bridge to stop him getting over it. That's not strictly Beckett's fault, Lacombe was in control. When it comes to Eckberg, Pascal and Kolveck, however, Ros was responsible for them, pushing Eckberg down the ladder, shutting the 'flood door' before the other two could drive through, and she doesn't seem to be too concerned about it. I'm sure Kanin and NRGen advocated all she'd done if the authorities ever had shown an interest in prosecution, because obviously we can't have vigilantes going around killing people, even if they do deserve it! About the only bad guy that didn't die was Max, the security guard at the Exchange who was in on Lacombe's plan. I was expecting him to get gunned down by Lacombe once he was no longer needed, but he instead gets shut in the vault thanks to Beckett's intervention, which may well have saved his life, unless he ran out of oxygen before anyone remembered he was in there…
There aren't a whole lot of gadgets in this one, it's more about using computers and laptops to avert catastrophe, but one thing that does stand out are the coin transmitters, a pair of coins that act like walkie-talkies. The only problem is that the little electronic lights that demonstrate to us this isn't just an ordinary coin the production is trying to get us to believe has communication abilities, would give away that it's not a real coin, and I assumed the whole point of it was to disguise a communications device! Still, it was fun, shame it never appeared again, just one more of Ros' genius devices on her ever flowing production line, presumably. At least we get Ed riding his bike again, as he should - in fact we learn he has multiple motorbikes, not just from the fact he uses a 'dirt bike' stunt type (so Ros can do a jump), instead of a more traditional road bike, but he says at the end that's the last time he lets Ros borrow one of his bikes. She certainly cut a groove, or whatever they call it, speeding down the escape tunnel, performing jumps in her posh suit, tripping the exit, then racing back to lock in the triggers before everything went up - in the best tradition of the series everything came together brilliantly at the end as each of the team's lives were at risk, with derring-do, quick reactions and bold, split-second choices rushing out of the screen.
Perhaps the buildup getting to that end sequence was a little slower than we think of in the series, but there was some added interest from Kolveck adding a new player in the game, a third party to up the ante. Did he really have Pascal's money waiting at the other end of the tunnel, or associates waiting to shoot her? We'll never know. It's odd to see Ed and Ros switch roles, with Ed in control of the computer system while Ros rides his bike, but it's something that's often worked. Beckett being on the outside emphasises their solitariness, though it was good he was able to get to the other end of the connection at the Exchange. Their security doesn't seem all that good from the fact Beckett is able to walk straight back into the building claiming he lost his pager (same as Lacombe being able to smuggle in an automatic weapon to use on the guard's birthday party!), you'd think they'd have someone with him rather than let him wander the halls unaccompanied, unless he charmed whatever receptionist was there. I enjoyed his spiel about his boss making him wear it, as Beckett doesn't have a boss at this stage, but he would do the following year! The actors' traits were coming out a little more by this time, so when Ed's on his bike again, it feels right, but something else mentioned is after Alex breaks his handcuffs with a fire axe he says another inch to the right and he'd have never played guitar again, something we'd never seen Ed do, but which Craig McLachlan certainly did.
Ed also finds himself climbing horizontally along pipes again (like the escape in 'Hot Metal'), after being handcuffed to a pipe (like Beckett in 'Down Among The Dead Men'). There was one moment which looked like a genuine mistake: when Ed rides into the tunnel he skids and then there's a line which could very well have been added after the fact, where he says this place is a deathtrap. If it was added in in response to the skid then I like that attention to detail and the fact they kept that moment in instead of doing another take. It's possible it was all planned, but it's not really important to the story, other than, I suppose, as setup for Ros chasing the villains at the end. I loved Ed's line about keeping the lid on the kettle, a nice analogy for this boiling reactor that's getting too hot without the triggers. Usually computer voices remain entirely calm and emotionless, so it made a change to hear one that was getting more and more agitated, almost panicking. I think a calm voice in a life or death situation can be more chilling since a computer has no actual concern about what's happening, it's just following its warning programming, but it fits with this series that instead it gets more and more agitated: you're all about to die, get out before it's too late! The only thing is, as great as Ed and Alex' solution to giving Ros more time by letting out the coolant so it sinks down to the reactor, it made the stuff look less dangerous than earlier when Ros pulled Ed out of harm's way - here he's getting a face full of the stuff and is fine!
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