Out of The Hive

DVD, BUGS S1 (Out of The Hive)

Saturday nights in the late-Nineties were special for one reason: 'BUGS.' In all the years I've been writing reviews for my blog I've never got around to giving this series the treatment it deserves and now seems like the time to begin. Twenty-five years ago, if I had seen into the future and witnessed myself writing about the series it would have made me very happy - it's not forgotten, it's not abandoned, a key part of my entertainment life lives on. It had been a while since I last watched the series - I made the effort to see this first episode on the 20th Anniversary of its debut, in 2015, but due to the necessity of investing so much time into writing reviews, I had put off actually getting back into the series as a whole. Not that I was there for the premiere when it originally aired on BBC1 on the 1st April 1995, no April Fool for the TV viewing public - I wasn't let in on the adventure until the third episode of Season 2, the following year, when my Mother deemed it worthy of my attention. And from then on I was hooked? Not exactly, the week after, I forgot all about it as I was playing outside with friends, but after that I never missed an episode? Not quite, there was one in Season 3 I didn't catch because we were on a family outing for the day and didn't get back in time… But other than that I was a dedicated fanatic! I cut out the episode synopses from TV guides and Radio Times', I looked forward to the next episode each week, and I hoped for its return each year.

'BUGS' was a unique proposition: a series that was a throwback to the kind of popular spy-fi series' of the Sixties and Seventies: 'The Avengers,' 'The Champions,' 'Jason King,' etc, an era that was more carefree and unrestrained in some ways, but with the shadow of the Cold War hanging over everything. This sense of fun, escapist adventure had been replaced by hard-hitting 'realism,' losing something in the process. 'BUGS' was a deliberate attempt to recall those days, and even included the creator of 'The Avengers,' Brian Clemens (credited with the story for this episode), as a consultant. The desire for such programming had grown out of the success the BBC had enjoyed with its weeknight schedule of countless classic series', be they the puppetry of 'Thunderbirds,' 'Captain Scarlet' and the other Gerry Anderson productions, to the various ITC creations already mentioned, as well as science fiction like 'Star Trek' - it was time to make an 'Avengers' for the Nineties, a fast, fun-fuelled drama for all the family, and that's exactly what we got. The characters were to be angst-free (at least to begin with - that all changed down the line), to enjoy what they did, and what they did was taking on criminals, shady East Europeans let loose after the break up of the Soviet Union, and homegrown villains of all kinds, but with a specifically technological bent to the stories that played up the gadgetry and daring escapades.

Right from this first scene we're immediately thrown into a high-security delivery run for a project of the utmost importance for national security, we meet a charismatic Australian called Ed, hired to fly the device to London, with armed guards around and a sense of importance from the off. Then before we know it, a faster, meaner, sleeker black helicopter is giving chase, firing warning shots and making it clear that Ed needs to land. NOW! It's a thrilling teaser, and to think they began the series with three helicopters (two in the chase, one filming the action), showed their intent to spend money and think big on this series. It paid off for the BBC with almost thirteen million tuning in, encouraging them to commission a further two seasons for subsequent years right away, and the legend was born! It's not enough to feature pure action, you have to have a decent story to back it up (though that doesn't seem to be the case for so many films and TV), and you can't rely on cardboard characters, they have to have personality and likability. They succeeded on all fronts with this episode, creating a trio of fast friends that are quick to put themselves on the line for their gut feelings about each other, their dedication to do what's right, but most of all, their enjoyment of danger and the exhilaration for adventure.

Ed is the obvious poster boy for this attitude with his insistence on taking risks even in the little things (like climbing up his neighbours' balconies to get to the top floor of where he lives instead of taking the stairs!), his jovial self-confidence brimming from every pore (trained Hive operative Ballantyne can't quite hit the enemy 'copter, but Ed takes one shot while piloting at the same time and takes out the rear rotor, sending it spinning down to its doom), and a willingness, nay a strong urge to take on whatever challenge he's presented with (twice on Sundays!). He is the action man, clearly suited to the stunts he takes on, and always my favourite character, but the others aren't shy about making instant decisions and doing the unexpected - that's another area where this episode excels: you never know quite what's going to happen next. Beckett's framed for the stealing of a tape (very sloppy, leaving that drawer open!), which he actually was stealing, so it's not really a frame, but he only did it for the best intentions, though that isn't going to be easy to explain to the boss, especially when that boss is the crooked employee at The Hive. Thrown into a whirl of confusion we're meant to be on Beckett's side, clearly, and we know Mr. Moore, the Security Chief, is dodgy, but we don't initially guess that Cottrell is, too, as his reasonable behaviour attests. But rather than hang around to explain, which shows how little faith Beckett has in his employer, he chooses to push his way out and leap from the balcony of his house, just in time to find Ros Henderson whom he'd arranged to meet!

It couldn't be more fun, and yet somehow realistic - the way these characters meet isn't contrived, it comes across as natural, though within extreme circumstances. We instantly learn who these people are: headstrong, maybe a little reckless, but willing to take immediate action in order to achieve what they feel is right. Okay, so that could be a description of the villains, too, but they're up against double-crossing murderers whose greed for money, and perhaps power (going by the sinister enjoyment on Cottrell's face as he manipulates an American satellite news channel with SACROS), means they will stop at nothing. Sure, they're a little petty, they don't have any agenda other than for their own gain, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous than other threats we'd see later: businessmen gone bad, foreign militaries, psychos… The 'BUGS' team show themselves to be somewhat vigilantes who are happy to operate outside the law (for much of the series), and you don't see them calling in the police - probably because they doubt they'd be believed and time is of the essence. Maybe it was the wrong message to be giving out, but this isn't supposed to be a lesson in morality, it's entertainment, but fortunately entertainment with true heroes that are about justice rather than rules, rather like superheroes, except they don't have special powers.

No, they have something better: skills. Something that someone can learn and hone. Ed is the physical one, he knows all about vehicles, from motorbikes to the motorbike of the sky: the helicopter. He's a fighter (though he conveniently forgets his martial arts training, which we learn about later in the season, when dealing with Beckett, whose own training takes over as he thinks Ed is working for the villains), but more importantly, he likes people and wants to help them - he warmed to the rather sarcastic and straightforward Ballantyne (who seemed to have so much character to him in his few scenes that I wished he'd been found alive and returned as a recurring character), and for his sake was willing to do whatever it took to find out what happened to the guy. It helps that he sees Ros has decided to help this Nick Beckett (Ed's the only one who doesn't get a surname - at any point in the series!), and her judgement is good enough for him. Again, they're apparently only neighbours (a fun reference to Ed actor Craig McLachlan's best known role to that point), but Ros is pretty easygoing so you can imagine them meeting one time when he climbed up her balcony as he did in this episode. It's sad that we never learned how they did first meet, but it speeds up the bonding process by the fact that two of the trio know each other already.

They all share something in common: a slightly rogue attitude, particularly Ros and Beckett who check each others' history out on The Hive's mainframe (as a portentous version of the theme music plays, beautifully illustrating that this is a moment of change in their lives that will affect them forever). Beckett's always had a problem with authority, not that you'd know it as he seems pretty respectful around the senior members of the organisation here, but I wonder if he was already on probation for past offences or slight misdemeanours and we had caught him when his tail was down and he was in somewhat penitent mood. Ros too, has a history of minor infractions that show she may be a slightly antiestablishment figure, most notably playing a prank on the Foreign Secretary, which suggests a political activist of some kind. It's mostly speculation as we're only given slight hints and suggestions for us to read between the lines, but I like that we have that space to form the characters and their pasts in our own minds. Ros quickly demonstrates how capable she is, when we first see her she's master of her domain at Gizmos - at first I wasn't sure if there were other employees there as while she's explaining how to use one gadget, there are a couple of other people in the background, but when Beckett rings up we see she's simultaneously assisting this pair, so they must be customers, too. She's happy to work with no questions asked, and all it takes is Beckett's clear distress and a short explanation for her to decide which side she's on when picking him up at his place.

Here we see an example of her unique driving abilities as she manoeuvres her car at intense speed, eventually causing the pursuing Hive operatives to crash spectacularly (it's been over ten years since one of theirs has been killed in action, but that number was about to go up if they weren't careful around Ros!). Spectacle was one of the remits of the series, and right from the terrific explosion of the enemy helicopter in the teaser, they succeeded. Nowadays I tend to associate explosions with poor plotting, eye candy used to thrill and excite without the need for depth or sense, but in 'BUGS' they pulled off some fantastic stunts that only serve to put the fate of the characters in the forefront of our minds and create superb tension in so many episodes because we know that people do die in this series. It happens here, both heroes and villains are close to death, but obviously the heroes win out and the villains don't make it. It's usually their own fault, however, and that's important because we don't want to see heroes going out shooting the enemy. For one thing that makes things too easy - if you can use the same tactics as the villains, where's the moral high ground? It's more of a task to beat them without resorting to their evil ways. So they didn't give the team weapons, their weapons are their minds and the willingness to put themselves at risk for the greater good, and that's inspiring. It's far from the lazy choices that so many modern writers make as standards for what is heroic have dropped. These people aren't antiheroes, they're the genuine article!

Helping them in their goals are Ros' shop of gadgets (we get to see a fair few of them, from pen microphones to helmet cams). Gizmos seems to be a sort of consultancy for all kinds of bugging and technology, and we know Beckett has had dealings with this business before because he had a contact there, 'Terry.' This throwaway name would go on to become an actual character in the fourth season, testament to the series' appreciation of the details of the world they were creating, another part of the series that really drew me to it. Not as much on the first viewing as I didn't watch analytically or pay attention to every little thing, plus it was a one and done situation, there was no chance to re-watch episodes in my house as we didn't have a video recorder (ironic then that in a household that was so behind technologically, this and 'Star Trek' would be my favourites!). Even then I enjoyed the continuity of Jean-Daniel (the series' eventual recurring villain), or returning organisations such as The Bureau, but it was on getting back into the series during the 2000s when the DVDs were released that I really noticed how much detail and continuity there was, and as that's something I've always been drawn to, the credibility of a fictional world, it made me love the series in a new way.

Gizmos operates outside of authority, unlike The Hive, which is the government listening agency, so it made sense that Beckett would end up agreeing to the proposal made by Ros at the end of this episode - not that we hear what she had in mind, but we can guess judging by how well the three of them worked together. This first adventure is all about helping Beckett clear his name and at the same time prevent nefarious villains, made up of a mole and a foreigner, the insider and the outsider, from gaining the upper hand. But was that really achieved? The baddies were roasted, it's true, hoist on their own petard, literally, but Beckett felt he couldn't return to his employer. Clearly he isn't on the run any more from the authorities otherwise he's be in hiding or watching his back every moment of the series, but it's not very clear what the result of all that happened was. Perhaps he was sacked for taking matters into his own hands in going after Ballantyne - he must have been a good friend the way Beckett becomes quite emotional when trying to get to the bottom of what happened to him. But he must have been cleared of having anything to do with stealing SACROS since the villains made themselves plain - there could have been security cameras in the storage room where Cottrell cold-bloodedly shoots the friendly storeman who requires Dent's authorisation before he'll let SACROS out. I suspect Dent wanted it all swept under the carpet as it shows his leadership up poorly when his own Chief of Security, as well as an executive in the organisation, were both exposed as corrupt.

It could also be that with the destruction of SACROS, a piece of kit that took ten years to develop, Beckett's name was mud. Even though he wasn't actually responsible for its destruction. Oddly, you could be forgiven for thinking Ed blew up the villains' car in midair since his helicopter is hovering right where they explode. But he didn't have any missiles and it's long been a question whether the car was supposed to explode like that or not until it hit the ground. I suspect it was more likely a stylistic choice rather than a stunt gone wrong because such stunts are always immaculately planned and executed to the tiniest degree to prevent danger to anyone, plus the way it was filmed it seemed to be meant to go off right in the middle of frame. It doesn't make much sense, of course, unless SACROS had some kind of charge inside it as a last resort to be used against unauthorised access. I can imagine Dent ordering the device to go off if he heard about Cottrell… It's not meant to be thought about, but it was quite incongruous with the general reality of the episode which was so well shot and performed. For example, it really looks like Ed (or a stuntman), was abseiling down the side of The Hive (the first example of what my family would call a 'BUGS' building - the steel and glass constructions that looked slightly futuristic), and climbing in through an actual window rather than a studio built set, and this on-location filming was yet another part of the series that created a stronger reality and a natural tension to scenes.

Stunts in those days all had to be performed for real, there were no CGI sets or stand-ins back then, computer graphics limited to what was seen on computer screens. When characters die in the series you really feel it, and while the team aren't responsible for directly killing people, they could be responsible for failing to save them, if that were their duty. That's a question for debate, about whether it's right for the villains to be saved from themselves to face the consequences, but in reality it's often a case of practicality - Cottrell and Elena are so intent on getting away they fail to observe the road ahead is unfinished. Ed doesn't help by showing up in his 'copter, distracting them, but it's their own fault they die. Still, it would have been better if they could have been captured, not least to make it easier on Beckett, who probably wouldn't have lost his job if he came back a hero to The Hive, dragging the villains in one hand, and carrying SACROS in the other, but then we might not have had the same series since he wouldn't need to work with Ros and Ed. I could see it still working out to a similar degree, he could be a consultant to them and find his loyalties tested between them and his employer, and that might have made for just as compelling a drama, but I like the way it ends as you're wondering what the series proper will look like with the three of them working together. It would probably have been closer to what Season 3 became when they joined the establishment, becoming The Bureau, but I like that there was some progression across the series and that they began as wildcards for hire, free to pursue whatever clients or situations came up rather than being having specific missions foisted upon them by a hierarchy.

The series is very much set in the time it was made in the sense of an impression of post-Cold War threats (Elena even has a Russian-like rendition of something close to the Bond theme), though the idea of the series was to make it a generic, slightly futuristic city of undeterminable origin. It's never mentioned that they're in London, and it would only be apparent if you knew Canary Wharf Tower, the famous pointed landmark in the background of so many episodes, or the DLR, Docklands Light Railway that plays a significant part in the investigation into Ballantyne's disappearance. Elena Johnson (probably not her real surname!), has a history with Cottrell (whose first name is given as John in the novelisation), which adds a bit of depth to the pair, that there's some loyalty there. They use Moore and then discard him, shockingly blowing up a floating restaurant and who knows how many people with him, Ed narrowly avoids being a victim of the blast, which further demonstrates how serious these people are. We might have thought Elena was the vicious one until we see Cottrell shoot one of his own subordinates rather than threaten him or knock him out. You could say Ed's guilty of the deaths of the soldiers in the helicopter that pursues him, but then it was him or them and you can presume he had some authority to take action since he's working for the government, even if as a hired hand, and Ballantyne's the one to start retaliation. Furthering the idea of Ed's character is the fact he glibly throws out a line about videogames, which were on the rise in the Nineties, so they weren't averse to adding references to make the series part of the zeitgeist (Spider-Man also gets a mention when Ros refers to Ed's climbing ability), despite the deliberate design to be indeterminate in location and time.

It's difficult to say this has prevented the series from ageing, because obviously everything does, but it helped to sell the series to other countries at the time because it could be any major city. There's an argument for Britishness being a draw for foreign markets, but perhaps that wasn't as clearcut as it has been subsequently with 'Dr. Who' and James Bond keying in to our culture in order to present it to the worldwide audience. Having an Australian probably gave it an exotic feel, and featuring three actors who'd all been in soap operas gave it some profile. A cast of two men and a woman was part of the inspiration from the ITC generation, but some tropes had a modern makeover, most notably Ros being quite capable of saving herself, Ed arrives just in time to see her little car tipped over the edge of a scrapyard conveyor belt (why not just shoot her, was it easier to dispose of the body in the crusher?). It adds to the unexpectedness of the series, never knowing quite what will happen next, or what action will suddenly be required, and with countdowns and hairsbreadth explosions galore the series would play up the tension terrifically. The technology is obviously going to date it, those bulky Philips monitors (I wondered if they were running Amigas, but probably not in a top government service in 1995, the PC had sadly taken over by then), the analogue media of DAT tapes and Sony Walkmans, even SACROS appeared to have a slot for a floppy disks!

Yet the threat posed by the crooks is still just as relevant. Perhaps the internet is more important than satellites today, but they're also integral to communication and keeping all this technology functioning, so to have anyone, even our own government with the power to affect them at any time, would be a concern. One thing I'd never thought of in all the many times of watching this episode (and I've seen it more than any other of the series since I was given the video twenty years ago), was where SACROS actually came from? We see it delivered to the heliport (and again, I like the realism that a helicopter can't just be parked anywhere for the sake of story convenience, and they use that later to the advantage of the drama when Ed specifically says it, and has to go and pick it up from some airport or something), via Hive van and then Ed's flying along the coast, so presumably it was developed at some coastal research lab. Perhaps it was to make the chase more scenic, and if that was the case then it worked! Something else I noticed on this viewing was a parallel between Elena and Ros: there's a scene where Elena leaves Moore at the restaurant, excusing herself before blowing him up, then the next scene Ros and Beckett are looking at her computer when she also excuses herself and pulls off a trick on Beckett, using a voice synthesiser to create Dent's voice which shocks him, though it was only a demonstration to show how he was duped.

I love how Ed smashes through a window to save Beckett's life as Elena is about to shoot him to death, but even more I love the fact that when she rushes away, stopping only to shoot at him, he bravely follows her, merely ducking to avoid the reprisals! It was admittedly quite a puny gun, but it looked like it would have been fatal all the same. The villains were pretty good, Cottrell in particular seeming quite reptilian in his movements and mien. The directing should also be lauded, I especially like the sinister moments such as Cottrell lit from below or when he walks out of The Hive and observes Moore, the camera pulling back almost in slow motion, the music complementing things perfectly. The theme music is absolutely top-notch, and seeing those opening titles again brought tears to my eyes. What was so great about them originally, was not having seen Season 1, they were full of images of episodes I'd never seen with all the possibilities and mystery added to a series I already was blown away by. That shot of Ros with the lens on her eye in particular always stood out, but it would be almost a decade later before I'd finally get to see the first season in all its glory, and that was an exciting time when the DVDs were being released, having only had one video to remind me of how great the series was.

It was a terrific video, the first two episodes, and 'Out of The Hive' is much more poignant and resonant when seen after watching the rest of the series because it was like they knew just how much these characters would mean to each other and to the audience, so when they're setting them up it's done in such a perfect way. I don't know it would have had the same effect if you actually watched it right from the beginning. In actual fact, this wasn't the first episode filmed, so they had a few episodes to get used to their characters before they made the all-important premiere, and that probably helped, too. Because for me it's always been one of my absolute favourites, being that ideal blend of cool action sequences, a fast plot, but best of all, a brilliant handling of the characters. Yes, it does end with them all laughing cheesily at a joke, like some old episode of Trek, but that's in the spirit of the series' they were using as their template, and whose legacy they were following, while adding in more sophisticated special effects and a greater sense of realism despite the fantastical technology and the one step removed from real life in things like the police not investigating these people (though in that regard we can at least accept it in this episode on the basis that The Hive probably wanted everything hushed up). It's lovely to return to these characters and this time, a favourite that has been overlooked for far too long, and an excellent beginning for the series.

*****