Stealth

DVD, BUGS S1 (Stealth)

Not one of Stephen Gallagher's finest, but still entertaining. Like 'Shotgun Wedding' it's difficult to tie down exactly why this isn't up to the level of the first four stories, but part of it has to be that there isn't a lot to think about, making it much less fun to review. What it does have is the single biggest explosion of the series, where they blow up an entire warehouse as the team and the villains run for their lives, and as if that wasn't enough, shoot a car out of the roof to crash in burning wreckage behind the fleeing people! Impressive, to say the least. In terms of those 'BUGS' tropes it has its fair share of explosions and countdowns, as well as killing off a villain (so much for stealth, wealth and wellbeing for 'Uncle' Dave!), so it very much feels like a typical episode of the series, but at the same time there's something a little generic there that stops it reaching the heights. It must be something to do with the undeveloped foreign military angle that is the real danger of the episode - you think it's all about industrial espionage (real this time, instead of feigned as it was in 'Shotgun'), but in reality the two sisters, Sarita (a young Julie Graham), and Davina, are only amateurs trying to make some money and get revenge on 'Uncle' Dave O'Neill for putting their Father, Jack, out of business. There was potential there for some interest, but as they were keeping to the rules of the series to keep things lean and fast, we're not allowed to go deeper than offhand remarks.

The true villain is Major Cardenas who stalks the corridors of Tronix Automotive Design Group carrying a stun gun, or a taser, and not one of those where you fire off little metal hooks, the type of cattle prod where you have to get in close to administer the shock for maximum impact. He's clearly a hard, cruel man, and the workers of Tronix are scared of him and the 'deal with the devil' their boss has made. They've developed some kind of military vehicle that, well, is supposed to be frontline, top of the range technologically, but comes across as just a big-grey-ugly-truck-without-any-windows. I understand the need to keep Cardenas in the shadows as this mysterious figure, intimidating and deadly, pulling O'Neill's strings, but there was the danger that he'd be so mysterious as to be insubstantial, and the real problem with the episode are the demands of TV production which mean we get this high-tech battle tank and a high-performance car, and both of them look very basic and dull. The cheesy advert at the start sets up expectations, the Tronix Trancer is this sleek, beautiful model, but it turns out to be just a shell without anything worth stealing under the hood - when O'Neill called the models 'bimbos' it seems he wasn't far wrong as they do come up looking clueless after they've successfully pulled off a heist for very little reward.

The Gizmos team (which they never call themselves, it's always surveillance experts - maybe they felt the cutesy name would put off clients?), are called in to protect the real Trancer, hidden in the body of an ugly little road test model, clearly designed so the production can drive it around across mud and grass, do what they want with it and not worry about this highly expensive super car version getting scratched, when what we really want to see is Ed bunging a Ferrari or Lamborghini equivalent round dirt tracks since it's not something you normally see! Here, Gallagher's understanding of TV production comes to the fore, but I still think they could have done better than the piddling little car used as the prototype. And as for the ugly truck, even though it is grey and has no windows, driven by monitor internally (or automatically), like something out of 'Captain Scarlet,' it moves at a snail's pace and the AI controlling it knows to avoid people and objects so all you'd really need to do is box it in and it would be trapped. If we saw it acting more dynamically, perhaps Beckett has to leap out of its way or it rammed right through the Jeep, then there'd be a better sense of threat. In reality, the only danger comes from the nuclear power source inside, and that's only a problem because Sarita concreted dynamite to it! The truck itself isn't even consistent as O'Neill finds out when he fails to notice the big grey lump coming at him, it fails to stop, and crushes him against the plasma cage.

Somehow the beams of energy, whatever they're supposed to be, don't go through the truck, enabling the trapped Ed and Davina to escape by going through the inside and out the back, but I'm not sure how these beams were still active as you'd presume they need to have sensors at both ends to make the 'circuit.' But anyway, this is 'BUGS,' you often don't get explanations of the tech, and at least we do get something somewhat futuristic (apart from all the black walls and roving spotlights that make this especially Nineties feeling), in the self-driving vehicles. Back then such ideas were just becoming feasible, 'Tomorrow's World' showed just such a thing in the late-Nineties, but it's really taken another twenty years for it to come to reality, although I still don't see driverless cars replacing normal ones any time soon. But it was something technological to latch onto, and that's what the series always needs. The idea that the AI (or built-in intelligence as they call it), takes over if you drive recklessly was a good one, and a personal affront to Ed, in full pomp as the pursuer enjoying himself immensely, although, again, the actual execution of the sequence fell short of its potential, as gamely as Craig McLachlan tries to revel in the 'speed' of the pursuit. It should have been an adrenaline-drenched action scene where we see this car effortlessly catching up with a motorbike (like the beach race in 'The World's Fastest Indian'), to the sisters' awe, but we never get any reaction from them and the way it was filmed didn't evoke intensity or speed, sadly.

If it had, then Ed's frustration would have been mirrored by the audience as he was just about to catch the spies and then the intelligent system takes over and puts him out of the race. It fell a bit flat, and Ed doesn't have the greatest of episodes as he also gets bested by Davina when he tries to take the case in their workshop, again you expect him to be a martial arts expert, but he still isn't! He was also tricked into giving up the prototype by having a grease gun held against his neck, and ends up held in the plasma cage discussing the plot with Davina, and even with McLachlan's charisma, the character doesn't come off as well as normal because of all these incidents. As always, Ros is in control and you have complete confidence in her - she finds the email bug, she alerts them that the prototype is being interfered with, and she joins Beckett to try and stop the ugly truck, so it's a good episode for her and you always feel confident things will be alright when she appears. Beckett is the consummate leader, both he and Ros talking themselves out of being fired by the quick-tempered O'Neill and never losing his cool. He's the one who has to play action man as he and Ros try to disarm the power source, a role reversal of sorts, though Ed is out of the picture rather than swapping positions.

They keep to their personal colours, Ed in blue, Beckett in green and Ros in red, but otherwise the episode isn't that colourful, mainly greys and blacks - this would be something of a taster for the direction Season 2 would take, what with stun guns, dark rooms and a greater impression of science fiction than the kind of approach more commonly seen in Season 1, which was a lot more naturalistic and found the team fighting against villains motivated by money and operating through wacky schemes. If there were episodes I'd recommend for tone and style this wouldn't have been my choice, which makes me think it simply wasn't pulled off here as well as it should have been. We're not told enough to invest in what happens, we're really kept out of the loop on O'Neill, Cardenas and the sisters, and the series relies on its terrific interplay between the main trio which is what keeps it fun. We see Ros' determination when she states she's never walked away from a job yet, and I can believe it, dating back to the days she was running Gizmos alone, and I always believe in her ability, she's a very reassuring presence even when she's panicking (which doesn't happen this time). Paul Cray (a young John Michie), is the sort of nice guy she usually liaises with, but he turns out to be a huge coward, rushing to an airport to get a flight out of the country, anywhere will do, which shows how little faith he had in the team to prevent nuclear devastation.

Then we never hear what became of Major Cardenas and his dodgy foreign military, so O'Neill is the only one to suffer, but then he seemed like he brought it all on himself by making illicit deals with foreign powers. Out of the holes in the plot, and there weren't many, the one that stood out was how Sarita and Davina could have ensconced themselves in the cover of the tearoom on the route Ed was taking for the test drive. Because unless they held the real owner of the tearoom hostage out the back, they must have arranged to get the job, do it for several days and hope the car would actually stop there! It was a bit of a long shot. But it does get tidied up a little bit when Beckett says those girls knew exactly where they'd be, the route planned days in advance. And it was only Davina who seemed to be working in the teashop, Sarita getting the data on the car. Still, it was a bit of a desperate and far-fetched plan, but it was also good fun - I especially loved Davina setting off the fire alarm to warn her sister they'd been rumbled, and of course the surprise bike launching out of the back of the van, so the episode had its moments. I quite enjoyed the ending with Ed and Ros playing Scalextric at Gizmos with the truck's power source - when Beckett asks how long they'll be, Ros replies 'about twenty, twenty-five years,' which would put it about now then!

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