Hot Metal

DVD, BUGS S1 (Hot Metal)

What stood out to me most of all in this one was how much wild goose chasing there was. So many times characters attempt something, it's all set up to that point… and then they fail, or they're diverted, or cut short. It was so strange! It starts, obviously, at the beginning, where terrorist-for-hire Joseph Da Silva attempts to break into Millennium Metals to steal 'R6,' a highly efficient superconductor with special properties developed by ex-employee Charlesworth. He goes to all this trouble of getting one of the security guards on side to get intel on the place and let him in. He uses this incredible piece of technology that can neutralise noise so as to make it possible to set off an explosion without alerting security, he pulls all this off without a hitch only for the guards to become suspicious and head down to the vault or wherever it is they keep their precious metals, in these cages or safes, and Da Silva is foiled. The teaser ends rather lacklustre (especially considering all those gold bars around), with the villain running off into the night. It's not the first time we've seen a failed attempt at burglary for a unique intellectual (or otherwise), property, in fact it happened in just the preceding episode, so right away I'm feeling a sense of repetition here, and the failure to end the teaser in an exciting way doesn't give the episode the zing that it needed and is expected from the series.

The next failure happens when our team turn up as specialists to find out what happened, how, and to protect the R6, which they end up having to do by stealth since the neighbours, some other big company, have a policy of not giving out their security footage to any old Australian in a leather jacket who walks in and tries to start schmoozing the secretary! That seems like a reasonable policy, it's not like our people are the police, they're not obligated by law to hand it over. So they have to steal it, and Ed's fine with that, he gets to do some climbing up a building, which is always fun for him, except this time he has to hang around twiddling his thumbs, which for him is far worse than any danger (although later in the episode I'm sure he wished he could be back twiddling thumbs!), waiting for Ros' program to download the forbidden footage that will show what happened in the case of the silent explosion - a tangent: I was thinking as Da Silva's assault was happening that even if he could turn off the sound, there would still be vibrations running through the building, so I was pleased that this is actually commented on by the security guards, putting it down to some kind of Earth tremor. I also liked the moment in the teaser where Da Silva demonstrates his sound neutraliser to partner in crime, Charlesworth, where we see the explosion, but all we hear are the spit of sparks landing outside the blast radius and the crackling of fire, since he obviously doesn't have an anti-sound to cover those noises.

Actually, while I'm on the subject of the noise destructor, or whatever it was called (I don't remember it being given a specific name), and though it may be silly to pick holes in something so clearly out of all reality, but how would that work? It's all very well pointing something at an explosion and cancelling out the sound there (after all, that tech has come into fruition with noise-cancelling headphones, so it's not as far-fetched as it may have seemed - not to mention directional speakers that can only be heard if you're in a direct line with them, silent to those outside that specific area), but we don't live in a 2D world, the sound would be travelling away from the centre in every direction and clearly he doesn't have little satellite dishes set up all around the explosion, and above and below, so some sound would surely be heard. It's one of those things you just have to accept, and maybe we can get around it somewhat by saying that the loudest of the sound was dealt with since the worst part of it would be travelling away from the solid material that was being blasted, back towards the dish. The extremes of suspension of disbelief have to be taken to new heights with the tag scene at the end, which, while no doubt one of the more humorous close-outs for an episode, is even more silly: they somehow have just the 'resonant frequency' of Ed's voice and so silence him as he goes on about mountaineering, but a voice isn't made up of one tone so I don't see how it would be possible, as funny as it is!

Okay, so we've had both heroes and villains cut short from doing what they set out to do, although technically not so with Ros' gadget as she managed to get enough of the tape recording to get the explosion - it's just at the time it seems like they hadn't got what they set out for when their espionage is ended prematurely thanks to a changing of the tapes earlier than expected - I actually like it when a plan in these of sort of stories in film and TV goes wrong as it shows how well the heroes can improvise, or that they are in fact human, capable of making mistakes, as seen again in the hotel when Ros and Beckett break into the room next to Da Silva's, but after listening in for anyone inside, when Ros opens the door she finds a shocked maid! Very funny. The next time plans are cut short is when Da Silva goes to kill Wallace for being a liability, turning up in a white coat at the hospital and assumed to be a doctor. It's only because Beckett got there first to bug Wallace's stuff that Da Silva can't hang around to do the job. Note how weedy Wallace the security guard is - we already know he has no moral backbone because he was willing to go along with this villain against the trust that his employers had given him in the position of protecting their assets, but he's taken out with one blow to the shoulder blades, hospitalised, apparently quite seriously, and later goes to Da Silva like a crybaby snivelling he never said he was going to hurt him! And yet Beckett gets a similar punch to the back from Da Silva and he's immediately up and about chasing after the guy!

Ed and Beckett are practically interchangeable in this story, perhaps one reason why they both wore red as if to highlight this similarity? Ed wears a more orange red top while Beckett has the darker red and it's a more distinguished shirt, but they're usually portrayed in different colours (Ros is in purple this time, for example). Ed gets the easy assignment of hanging off the building, but as if not to be outdone, Beckett gets down to the lower floor of the hotel by climbing out the window above, much to Ros' incredulity. Was Beckett showing off to her, was he trying to show that he was fine, as he said, after the surprise beating he was handed from Da Silva, or, and this is more likely, did he simply believe that was the quickest way to get down there (what happened to the fear of heights in 'Manna From Heaven'? Or was it not that high up, I can't remember how many staircases we see), and this was the kind of thing he did in his past career? It's certainly not the first time he'd leapt over a balcony in a hurry as that's exactly how he escaped the Hive operatives at his apartment in 'Out of The Hive'! Beckett also gets to do a lot of the running around while Ed is, well, tied up, shall we say, for much of the episode. He's usually the helicopter guy, but this time it's Ros, along with Georgina Kent, their liaison at Millennium, who go up in the chopper to track the R6 (Ros even showing her rifle proficiency by firing a bug onto Vermeer's secure truck, which looked a lot like Major Cardenas' ugly truck from 'Stealth' - could even have been the same vehicle with a new lick of paint).

Beckett and Ros chase after Da Silva and once again it's a wild goose chase and leads to nothing, the wily villain leaving Wallace's bugged bag right on top of Ros' yellow car as if to show he's not to be trifled with. Then a bit later, when Ed's tracked Charlesworth to an abandoned mill of some kind, an old building next to a river that's being used as his hideout and lab, he's caught, but instead of being executed as Da Silva had shown himself to be quite capable of doing to Wallace, the pair leave him tied up in front of a small quantity of R6 and some motion detecting beams that, if broken, will play the tone 'R6 loves to hear,' blasting the whole place, and Ed with it, to smithereens. The cruel side of this capture is that the answering machine of the phone will also play that tone so Da Silva can set it off any time he wants. At the time it seemed like a daftly elaborate way to put a character in jeopardy without reason when it would make more sense to kill Ed and be done with it. Until later, when Ros and Beckett catch up with him and he uses Ed's position as leverage, and then it all made sense - he's the sort to have contingency plans, a proper deadly type who almost seems as if he could be too much for the Gizmos team to handle. Charlesworth, on the other hand, is much softer and also quite naive - just like Elverson in 'All Under Control,' he wants to profit from his invention, but is used by a killer. The R6 has incredible potential as a weapon - just send anyone you don't like something made of it then play the correct frequency and blow them up, and yet Charlesworth claims he just wants to make money, he doesn't want to kill people!

Adding to the sense of time-wasting in the episode, Ros goes to all the trouble of putting in countless bugs, sensors and cameras to protect the R6 at Millennium Metals, but forgets to check it's still there, and it isn't! Even the villains don't know what's going on as Vermeer, the company's boss, a supposedly straight arrow, has stolen the R6 for himself out of the blue! It's chaos and no one seems to have a clue - even Kent doesn't believe Beckett's warnings at first, getting shot for her trouble and taking a tumble down some stairs. Beckett seems to show her some attention - at one point he says he'll meet Ros at the car with no obvious reason for why he couldn't go with her, unless he wanted to speak privately to Kent. Then there's the fact she's one of the few clients to actually be invited to Gizmos, their headquarters. I know Lennox was there in the previous episode, but he wasn't invited over after the job was complete and yet there's Georgina Kent at the end hanging out with them. Beckett also shows his affection for Ros in the episode and you definitely get a sense of deepening friendship between them in the concern she shows for him and reassurance from him that he's fine. It's not overt, but considering where the series went later it's not that strange to see the inklings in these early episodes.

There's a stronger connection between Kent and the series than might be apparent, or more specifically, the actress who played her, Caroline Loncq. In the mid-to-late 2000s when I was really into the series after its triumphant return on DVD I created several issues of a fan magazine, 'Bureau 2,' and I had planned to get in touch with as many actors who had starred or appeared in the series as I could, to see if I could create a bank of information as there was so little out there other than some occasional coverage in TV or sci-fi magazines of the time it was on. I didn't end up contacting that many people (met Craig McLachlan, contacted Jesse Birdsall and Jan Harvey, no reply from Steven Houghton or Paula Hunt), but I'd heard in online discussions that Caroline Loncq might possibly play Ros in a revival! I'd heard about this potential revival from McLachlan himself in 2007 (either it was a mischievous joke by him or something that was sadly abandoned), and so I wrote to Loncq in the form of a short interview, potentially for an issue of 'Bureau 2' that I never got around to making. So here is the exclusive on that:

Firstly, I asked Caroline if she actually did the stunt where Kent rolls down the stairs after being shot. She replied, "No, I didn't do the stunt myself, thankfully, as it was a metal staircase. In fact I worked recently [this was written in 2008] with the stunt coordinator of that episode (on 'Affinity' for ITV), and once we'd established where we knew each other from, which took some time as 'BUGS' was a while ago now, he reminded me that the stunt was a bit of a nightmare from his point of view as the staircase was steep and made of metal. Which of course he didn't know until the night. I seem to remember freeze-framing the fall on my video and think there are a few frames when you can see the stunt woman's padding through the jacket. She was much shorter than me, I recall, but, ah, the magic of film: when you cut it together you don't notice a thing. I think I started to fall then she did the roll on another take, then I picked it up at the bottom. It was at night at Three Mills in Bow and the fire stuff I remember looking very impressive on the night." Clearly she was an eloquent and thoughtful person to include so much detail - not to say anything bad about Birdsall, because he's great, but when I wrote to him he admitted his memory was none too good and the series was a long time ago!

My second question was how much time she got to spend up in the helicopter to get the chase scenes: "I recall spending at least half a day up in a helicopter, which was great. It all takes a while as each time you do a pass you have to fly back to where you started, and there is a great deal of shouting over headphones above the noise of the rotor blades as instructions are relayed. Helicopters cost a fortune so I'm sure we did it all in one day, though I do remember that it lasted for ages and I got the most amazing views of London to look at." Again, far more than a single sentence reply, which I was very pleased with at the time! My final main question was on her memories of working with the stars of the series: "Jesse Birdsall was a nice guy, very into his record company which reissued old blues tracks. I remember him telling me about trying to find the descendants of the musicians who had made the original recordings so that he could pay them royalties, which endeared him to me. We listened to great blues in his trailer on one of the hanging around days. Craig McLachlan was delightful, really good at his job and Jaye I knew a little bit already and have always liked. We probably talked about dogs since I had, and still have, a lurcher, and she had a hound of some description, greyhound I think. All three of them had been filming the series for a while so they were well in the swing of it and I remember it being a happy job with a nice atmosphere where it was easy to get on with the work and have a bit of a laugh at the same time."

A lovely depiction of the 'BUGS' production behind the scenes which there is so little material about, so I'm glad to be able to share these little insights with those who are interested. The most important question I had, which I left till the end was about the proposed return of the series and whether rumours that she was up for the part of Ros, were true: "I haven't heard anything about a new production of 'BUGS.' Your spies are partly right in that I was in the running for the part of Ros in the original series, but it went to Jaye and she did a great job of it. I'm sure if they did do some more they'd keep the original team together, though if they wanted me for a long running villain, or heroine, I'd be there at the drop of a hat!" Reading this back now I wish I'd got in touch with more of the actors who appeared in the series if they were as kind to respond like this as Caroline was, for which I'll always be impressed (she even signed a photo of her character which I'd taken from a screenshot of the episode!). I must admit I thought it was a strange rumour that Ros might be played by someone else (especially of a different ethnicity!), but this explains it - she was one of the people who went up for the role originally. As much as I wanted the series to come back at that time in 2007/2008, I'm not sure I'd want to see it revived now as too much time has passed and modern TV would probably demand much more swearing and questionable content, so perhaps best to leave 'BUGS' as the fairly innocent, yet exciting drama it was, though I do wish they'd had a two-part special back then to wrap up the cliffhanger ending!

I've never done an interview piece as part of a review before, maybe it doesn't fit in, but my reviews are more like commentaries than typical review material and I've always thought it would be good to get these little nuggets of information out there somewhere and this seemed the best way to present it. I hope Caroline's career is still progressing well. As for the series, and particularly this episode, I feel it was going reasonably well, but at the same time these middle episodes were the relative lull before the series improved with the last couple of stories. It's not that 'Hot Metal' was in any way bad, it was in fact quite good, enjoyable, and as always it's just a joy to see the characters interact. But it didn't quite have the tension it needed, other than the moment Ed has taken matters into his own hands and is in the midst of making his escape, climbing along the handily placed pipe above those laser beams, while the sound of a phone ringing hasn't been so sinister since, oh, 'Assassins Inc' when those villains used a bomb activated by phone! One question that has always plagued me ever since seeing the episode, however, is what did Ros say to Charlesworth when she had him by the collar and we see her speaking to him in the background? I don't know if even a lipreader would be able to get anything out of that since she's side on, too! I imagine it's something like 'if anything's happened to Ed, you're done for, mate,' but we'll never know. One thing that seems clear is that they must have created the title montage after filming this episode because it includes a lot of imagery from here, and whether it's just the familiarity of seeing those clips over and over, or not, they were especially evocative of the characters - indeed, until the DVD release they were a tantalising glimpse of a first season I'd never seen.

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