Manna From Heaven

DVD, BUGS S1 (Manna From Heaven)

Lennox is another client that doesn't tell them the whole story, so caught up with his life's work is he, to the point that he's not an entirely sympathetic character. If it wasn't for the greedy Zander and his associate, mad Sally, he could be the villain. After all, he was willing to put consumers at risk by selling them the idea that Phodex, the 'food for the next millennium,' grown from some kind of pondweed, as Ed describes it, was safe, when in fact it was most definitely not, becoming toxically poisonous when exposed to ultraviolet light! If his motivation had been clearly altruistic, to help the developing countries of the Third World then he might not have seemed so uncaring, but the only impression you get is that he's after selfish motivations such as money and recognition. At heart he doesn't seem a bad sort, but it appears his vision has clouded his judgement to the point where he'd rather sweep the unfortunate death of employee Fricker under the carpet and not discuss it. You'd think there'd have been an investigation over the death from some kind of food body, or at the very least, the local constabulary, but this is the world of 'BUGS' where the law rarely appears, even when the fate of the entire city is at stake with Sally's plot to flood the water system with contaminated, and therefore deadly, Phodex. She makes Lennox look like a teddy bear as she's pure evil and you have to wonder what it was that got her to that point - did she hate her life as a lab technician so much?

She's happy to murder Zander in cold blood, well, perhaps seething with rage at getting only a twenty percent share in the ten million blackmail money they try to extort from Lennox, and seems to relish the idea of the streets full of corpses. Maybe she's just angry at being in a powerless position in the world and why should she not have anything she wants? Also, she's clearly unhinged as she repeatedly knocks her head back against the water tank, but she must have hidden her psychotic personality effectively to succeed at infiltrating Lennox' New Earth Foods, or even holding down a job at all. Zander, by comparison, is merely an extortionist with no plans to actually put lives at risk, other than the goons he hires who all seem to end up dead: first there's the two balaclava-ed burglars he sends in to steal a sample of the Phodex (why not simply have Sally steal some, after all she's allowed to stay behind after everyone else has gone so it surely wouldn't have been so difficult, but then we wouldn't have had the exciting opening), who end up in the same position as Wyman in 'All Under Control': driving very fast into the underside of a flatbed, only this time they explode in fiery style. The whole opening sequence would be replayed to some degree in Season 2's 'Bugged Wheat,' something that stands out for me as this was the first episode of the series I ever saw.

Later, Zander has at least two more men tailing Ros and Beckett as they transport the prepared Phodex to a restaurant launch where delegates from countries far and wide have attended to see this mystery food solution (Ros getting pride of place right next to Lennox at the table for some reason!), and after waiting till they got into a tunnel, trying to shoot up Ros' yellow car with automatic weaponry! Call me strange, but this seemed a little extreme - I know there are potentially huge sums of money involved, with Zander's Hennessy Brock plc, the shark of the food market, desperate to swallow Lennox' research, whether to bury it as a rival or use it for their own ends. Do they know at that point about the toxicity of the Phodex? If so, why would they want it? Or are they just trying to stop the launch? They didn't seem to actually hit the car, so either they were very bad shots or they were only trying to put Ros off and make her stop. If they were trying to stop her and they wanted the Phodex then it would seem barmy to let it crash and burn. At the same time, presumably, Sally is gearing up to get in and activate the toxins, but that could have been a contingency plan after the failure to capture the samples. But if she could get in without being spotted (through the air ducts, which as Beckett earlier suggested when he and Ed were about to infiltrate Hennessy Brock, it was too obvious), why not just steal the food if that was the goal? The villains' plans were not always complementary, it seemed.

Neither was their goal for money - if Lennox has sunk all his time, energy and finances into Phodex how is he going to pay a ten million ransom? It would have been better to wait until he'd had success with the Phodex and then blackmail him. Story logic wasn't a high point of this episode, it must be admitted! What was a high point were the interactions, friendship and support between Ed, Ros and Beckett, as always. Ed and Beckett get to go off and do some action when they break into Hennessy Brock, or technically walk in, under the guise of technicians from JBS Security (another organisation that would recur), setting off the company's alarms, tapping into their phone line and pretending to be representatives from the alarm company thanks to Beckett's portable printer and the natural human desire for a loud noise to be switched off as quickly as possible - good psychology there (Harris, the guy who thinks he's calling JBS, was played by John Leeson, best known as the voice of K9 in 'Dr. Who'!). There's a whole sequence where they're going up and down on top of a lift with a glass frontage, which looked great, but it was the moment when the pair actually leap from one floor down to the next that impressed me. You can see it's the actual actors doing it, and while we don't see what Jesse Birdsall jumped onto, you almost see the whole jump Craig McLachlan made from climbing over the railing to leaping down a whole floor. If he was breaking his fall with something soft it was well disguised, because although we don't see soles touch floor, it's not far from that!

The chase in the tunnel was equally thrilling when Ros is swerving to avoid various vehicles and the pursuers eventually come a cropper off the side of another car and go crashing over onto their side in spectacular fashion, one of the best stunts seen on the series to this point. Another set of goons taken out by their own carelessness, Zander must have been pulling his hair out. I expect he hired these men, they weren't employees or anyone of importance, that's the impression, just faceless Bond villain lackeys to be killed off. Again, you'd think the police would be alerted by all this reckless driving and firing of guns, but maybe there wasn't CCTV in the tunnel and that's why they waited until being in there to make their move. Makes you wonder who was going to clean up all that mess, though! And the Gizmos team would surely be under some form of investigation after they were chased so forcefully. There must be a reason they don't get the authorities involved again, especially when the city's water supply is in danger, but then it would take too long to explain and the team might not be in a position to do anything about the ultimatum in time if they were tied up talking to detectives or whomever.

While the boys get to be part of most of the action, it's Ros who proves most heroic once again - even as she's falling victim to the deadly Phodex she stays at her post, guiding the others in their work. Interestingly, Beckett's the one who goes after what he thinks is Zander, but is actually Sally, while Ed does the tricky technical wizardry of opening the time-lock safe (which didn't look a foot thick as noted!), containing the seed material which can be used to create an antidote for Ros, Lennox and delegates, presumably. You'd think Ed would be put on the physical side of things while Beckett might work better with the tech, but it shows the roles could be somewhat interchangeable. Ed's come a long way from his fear of touching the computer in 'All Under Control,' but it is a slightly different situation. In both cases Ros' life was at stake, but this time what he does with the device isn't going to cause her immediate danger, it's more about him failing to get into the safe that will kill her. Ros heroically soldiers on in her backup until she collapses and only Ed's coaxing can bring out a last little bit of strength in order to get to Lennox on the chair downstairs at Gizmos, and both Ros' courage and effort, and Ed's motivational encouragement are inspirational to see. Witness the contrast between the selfless team and the selfish Lennox in the fact that he only divulged the fact there was some seed material at all at the last possible moment, since it must be the last supply of Phodex after the lab had been fired, while Ros just wants the team to stop the villains poisoning more people, don't worry about her.

Beckett, using all his services training, comes upon Sally at the water pumping station (which reminded me of a Water Temple from 'Zelda,' which shows what the makers of the games based it on), but comes up short, getting captured too easily. He manages to use a diversion to attack her and kick her gun away, but in the process she goes over the edge of the railing with a long drop to the concrete floor - this was another great moment as Beckett is shown to be conflicted in whether he should try to help her up, or whether to stop the Phodex from entering the water supply. It's a split second hesitation, but in the end he has to take the greater number of lives into consideration - he tells her to hold on, so he's not going to let her drop despite what she's responsible for. I feel like characters in modern TV would just let the villain drop without remorse, but back then these were true heroes, and though Beckett is unsuccessful in saving her, his intent to do so is made clear. It's the fate of most 'BUGS' villains to be blown up, shot, or killed off in some other way, but it's rare that the team have an active role in taking them out, it's usually inadvertent or their own fault they die. Something else you wouldn't necessarily get now is a Biblical solution to a problem: the code to get into the inner part of the safe is 'Manna,' Ed gets it because it's an 'M-A' word and it pops into his mind as the food God sent the Israelites in the desert, but would most people know such references now, since a whole generation or more haven't been exposed to the rich cultural heritage of the Bible as the bedrock of Western culture?

What really makes the episode is the support and care between the characters, while they also have a lot of fun, such as when Beckett teases the strait-laced Glass, Lennox' main assistant, who impresses the need to drive carefully with the Phodex in the back, saying Ros has only just passed her test! Or Ed jokes about Beckett having a fear of heights when they're on the lift - I also loved the way he gleefully and confidently leaps down onto the top of the lift, no concern about it at all. The team also look at their most stylish, with Beckett in his trademark smart jacket and green shirt, Ed in his leather jacket and this time a yellow top, and Ros in a violet cardigan over a violet top combination. I'm not a clothes type who's interested in all that, but how they're presented helps to define the series for its slickness and quality, and while in some episodes they look a bit silly (like when Ed and Beckett were going aboard the submarine in 'Down Among The Dead Men,' for example), here they were most chic while still incorporating the bright colours the series favours. It's also good that we know who these people are - when Sally's lie about Ros clocking off early to go to the hairdressers is told to her friends they instantly know it's out of character, and if we hadn't already seen what had happened to her, so would we! Sally doesn't realise what kind of woman she is - not that she can't have her hair done nice, we've certainly seen that (such as at the function Roland Blatty invited her to in 'Assassins Inc'), but she's more preoccupied with typically masculine interests such as electronics and computing.

Still, Ros should have alerted someone before going into the Phodex lab when she lost contact with Sally, but that shows her sense of care and responsibility was strong enough to override her own safety. I loved the little touch of the oxygen meter going up in the background when Ed, Beckett and Lennox eventually arrive to rescue her and leave the airlock open. That's the kind of attention to detail I appreciate. Something else I appreciate is them not keeping us guessing on the identity of the mole for too long, rather than dragging out an unnecessary mystery. There were only three characters we'd met at the place anyway, Lennox, Glass and Sally - was it supposed to be a clue that she had a prominent mole on her cheek? Clearly it wouldn't be Lennox because he was dedicated to his own work, and Glass was about as empty and transparent as his name suggested. Right from the start when he's saying the lab has perfectly adequate security you know this guy isn't going to be the most switched on, though that could have been seen as being a suggestion he was the spy and his apparent guilelessness was a diversion. But he's shown not to be the most thoughtful guy, mentioning the accident an employee died in that his boss doesn't like to talk about and immediately alerting Ros' suspicions and making her want to know more!

The episode doesn't conclude in quite such a barrel of laughs as it usually does: they're all sitting around reading at Gizmos, a nice picture in itself - maybe waiting for the next job to come through, perhaps having a tea break, who knows (more importantly, was Beckett reading an issue of Amiga Action?), but they talk of ordering a takeaway and Ros admits she isn't feeling hungry, wryly suggesting it was something she ate. It was much more downbeat than usual, perhaps in deference to the fact she'd almost died, which put a more serious spin on the episode, though it wouldn't be the last time. Some or all of the team are often put at risk of their lives, but not usually in such a personal and unavoidable way as being poisoned, so it was fitting there was some subtle acknowledgment of that. It always amuses me that Lennox goes down first because he ate before anyone else, but he only had one pea! I'm glad they referred to the futility of bringing in medical help as without the antidote there's nothing could be done, but at the same time, they aren't medical experts so I wouldn't be so quick to write off the talents of doctors, it would be better to be in professional care than falling on the metal grating of Gizmos, but then Ros wouldn't have been able to make her heroic journey down to get Lennox' organiser, despite weakness and blurred vision. She's always dependable, and so are her friends, and that's what makes seeing the series again such a joy. I'd previously felt this was relatively the weakest episode of the season, but I enjoyed it more this time through older eyes, so much that I wouldn't mind seeing it again, which I didn't feel about the last couple of episodes!

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