A Sporting Chance

DVD, BUGS S1 (A Sporting Chance)

It's not often a TV series makes me reconsider my point of view on a subject, but this particular episode did: when Dr. Hunter describes sport as a harmless conflict, a safe form of rivalry between nations I suddenly thought: 'there is a point to the Olympics after all!' If you didn't know from what I just wrote, or from the title, this is a story about sport, so it's fitting that it begins (against type considering we get all three of the main characters in the teaser), with Ed undercover at the International Sporting Academy teaching a martial arts masterclass. Okay. How many times have we seen the man beaten in fights this season, or failing to get an easy upper hand on villains? Or not showing quick enough reactions? And yet we're supposed to believe he's actually a highly acclaimed martial artist who knows his stuff and has fought internationally? Or is this a role he's putting on undercover for Dr. De Freitas so they can work out what's going on with Hunter's shady Tri-meserone research? But if it is a cover, wouldn't these students know if he was genuinely a champion? I know people weren't looking things up on the internet much in those days, but the impression is that he's high up in the sport and he looks it, too, as he takes on Jason and finds him a handful. Except the non-martial artist Ed would find a chopsocky student a handful and we're supposed to see this as being a surprise to him because the drug is improving Jason's performance, so what's going on?

To make matters more complicated, later in the series Ed does become known for his hand to hand combat skills, but then that was probably a reflection of this episode. And it's not that he couldn't have learned the moves and been shown to be a natural at it, speeding through the grades to become an expert in no time. On the other hand to hand, it is the sort of role he'd happily jump into without thinking too much about it: sure, give me a few lessons with a top coach and I'll pose as a top coach myself, mate. That's exactly the attitude he'd have. This more realistic and slapdash explanation is lent credence by the fact that Ros and Beckett are watching and discussing it and she says Beckett could have done it, as if it is an assumed role. At the same time, Ed isn't going to be such a good actor as to pull off a man with 'world class experience,' even if these are only students. Unless it's their first day, which it clearly isn't because they're in the trial for Hunter's drug. It's all thoroughly confusing. One thing I did like about it (and forgot until I saw the name in the end credits), was that Jason, Ed's opponent, was played by the series' stunt guy, Nrinder Dhudwar, who I think also tended to double for Ros. It makes sense that they wouldn't have wanted to put Craig McLachlan in danger, so having the stunt guy fight him would be safer than another actor doing the moves, and this is Dhudwar's only credited acting role in the series.

Talking of credits, Kane, the unstoppable be-ponytailed action villain who chases Ros, smashing through a glass door, climbing up the outside of the lift (there's a lot of lift-related climbing - Ed, Ros and Beckett all climb up the inside of one, too!), and cornering her on the roof, was played by Adam Caine. I wonder if they came up with the character's name first or saw his and thought 'that sounds scary, we'll use it'? There are also a couple of well-known TV faces in the likes of Ian McNeice (whom I later came to know best for his role as Bert Large in 'Doc Martin,' still going to this day, though sadly recently announced the tenth series will be its last), and Michael Jackson! Okay, actually Michael J. Jackson, but I've seen him in other things, too, most notably the original 'Highlander' TV series. In Easterhaus he plays what was becoming a typical role in 'BUGS,' some dangerous terrorist-like advisor to nasty regimes, full of plots and cruelty, as shown in the way he treats De Freitus and Ros when they're in his power, or the fact he'll happily create a ball-bearing timing mechanism for his bomb, to ramp up the terror. I'd say the best moment of the entire episode is when he backs into the lift to make his getaway and only when the doors close does he hear or sense the final ball-bearing clicking into place before it rolls down and sets off the explosion that he'd have happily used against all the sedated guinea-pig athletes that have been kept under in this mysteriously unfinished building. He'd have got on well with the likes of Major Cardenas and Da Silva from previous episodes, and you can only imagine what damage would have been done had such villains worked together - then again, they'd probably have ended up killing each other…

Something the sight of this plastic sheeted building with its medical beds of comatose-like patients invoked, were the Cyberax victims and the sense of this abandoned project secretly continuing, like the Technopolis Tower from Season 2. It makes me think scenes like this inspired some of what they did there, so in that sense it was quite a formative episode. In the same way it also features some of the most science fictional technology we'd seen yet, specifically that forcefield barrier which wouldn't look out of place in 'Star Trek,' but which somehow exists in the 'BUGS' world now. I think the swirly red lines snaking across the barrier were a visual effect too far for the time, and it would have been more effective to stick with the glowing red border around the edge, especially since Hunter shows how dangerous it is by stupidly touching it and getting a shock. I did like how when Ed and Beckett leap through after temporarily disabling it, it suddenly snaps back on and singes the end of Beckett's trousers with a sizzle to reinforce the damage it could do to human skin. The sense of danger is one of the episode's strengths, and something else that makes it feel like a transition towards the Season 2 style where the team were often alone without backup and investigating various buildings. Having said that, they seem to have spent half their time breaking into or escaping out of generic futuristic-tinged buildings throughout the season, except this one is more ominous thanks to its particularly tricky entrance or exit, bricked up walls in the staircase, only the one lift shaft for access.

I did spot a flaw in the continuity regarding this, as the receiver beacon is shown to be off when the team first visit the building, but subsequently it's shown that the red light means the system is active to prevent entry and has to be switched off. There's also the small matter of the building apparently being just across from the Sports Academy which you can see in the glass reflection when Ros is on top of the latter, so it shouldn't have been hard to track down the hideout! What I do like is that the team are often doing things together, there's a lot less of the splitting up we often see, the trio are breaking and entering with each other, and the team that break and enter together, stay together, yes? We also find out something about Ros: quite different from the boffin stereotype you'd expect, when she was at school she was actually quite the athlete, being the 1500m champion, even though she runs in the most ungainly manner whenever we see her - a subsequent injury perhaps? I sort of wondered if one reason we so often see her in the long coat was to disguise her awkward running, but probably not! It's good to find things out about the characters and even though the plan was to keep things simple and not give them too much dimension beyond being good people that perform heroics on a regular basis, anything that lasts more than a few episodes can't help but throw in facts and details about character and past that begin to add up.

The colourful nature of the series continued with the wardrobe, as usual, with Beckett in green, Ed in orange and Ros in blue or yellow. Interestingly, at some point each of them wear a full outfit of their colour: Beckett with his green overalls as the health and safety guy inspecting the electrics in Hunter's office, and the green tracksuit at the end; Ed wears the orange top with orange trousers, and even Ros wears a full yellow tracksuit. It doesn't mean anything, other than proving the series' intention to be bright and colourful, but it was fun to notice, and if judging by Ros' bright yellow car (which isn't seen in this episode), that must be her favourite colour. I must also say I loved her hair clip in the shape of a pack of coloured pencils - very original! The colourful outfits can't disguise the danger the characters put themselves into, however. Just as Ed and Beckett got to show their daring by leaping from one floor down to another in 'Manna From Heaven,' Ros has her turn in the floor-leaping spotlight here, during her chase with Kane. I'm not sure why she didn't try to exit the building at that point, instead choosing to go up in the lift, but maybe she needed to catch her breath and thought she could outfox her pursuer by going up instead of down?

I'm not really sure what Kane would have done to her, either, as, other than a bad temper (and looking like the villain from 'The Karate Kid Part III'), he was just one of the test subjects, not part of Easterhaus' super soldier plot, and in fact he even gets rescued by Ros along with the other victims of Tri-meserone - we don't see him wake up as we do Jason, and you'd think he might have kicked up a fuss on seeing Ros again, but apparently he meekly followed everyone else out in the evacuation. The scene where he pursues Ros was one of the best moments as he just keeps coming, and when she, and we, think she's safe, he suddenly appears at the back of the glass lift and smashes into it, then proceeds to make his epic and superhuman climb. I did think when he was perched above her on the roof that she should probably move away from him because he looked like he was about to throw up! But even when the team first visit Easterhaus' secret base they nonchalantly climb up the inside of a lift shaft in a thirty-storey building which just looked so dangerous - one slip and kaput. The character development goes as follows: Ed is a champion martial artist, Ros is a former 1500m champion, and Beckett? They just reiterate that he's afraid of heights (and give him the chance to put the facts straight: it's not heights he has a fear of, it's falling!). Not very complimentary for the leader of the gang, but it was fun to return to it as previously it was Ed who'd called out Beckett's issue when they were on top of the lift in 'Manna From Heaven' and this time it's Ros, as if to put the boot in further!

The villains, while sometimes seeming a little over the top (but then they were fanatical, so it fits as a character trait), were also among the more devious the team had faced. Forgetting the fact that they failed to spot the Gizmo's team right outside their building as they drove out, despite pausing to pull out onto the road (they had a lot on their minds), they cleverly used the team's own bug to set up Ed and Beckett for destruction by feeding them false information that led them to the glass bridge - a place where Easterhaus sidekick, Hex, used homing seeker missiles from a luggage rack on top of his car. I was just thinking it was odd to have such a bulky case up there and then it opens up to reveal rockets! Apparently an endless supply, too, as I can buy a couple of them, but they keep popping out! It was very much like 'Assassins Inc' where the device had a camera on it so Hex could watch with glee as the projectile homed in on the target. Turned out to be attracted to electronic equipment, which could be a liability, especially in this series where everywhere is full of high-tech stuff! There was another little glitch in logic as once Ros gets free from her torture chair of weights pushing down she tries to contact the boys, but she'd been told they were dead. Unless she disbelieved Hex and trusted her friends were harder to kill than that.

The team succeed in the end, of course, and once again manage to execute the villains in such a way that it was really only self-defence: Ed gets to try out his newfound martial arts skills against a Tri-meserone enhanced Hex, knocking him back onto a damaged generator for an electrifying ending. And of course Easterhaus backs himself into the bomb-laden lift to seal his destruction, so it really wasn't their fault and I'm sure the authorities would see it that way… On the other side of the coin, this could also be said to be their least successful mission so far since the client gets killed! I can just imagine prospective future clients looking through their list of testimonials: Roland Blatty - 'well they messed things up to begin with, but came through in the end.' Dr. Lennox - 'they were a great help, I only had myself to blame for almost dying.' Erm, there's a bit here that isn't accounted for, what were you doing that week? Ah, well we don't talk about that one… As with all the villains' deaths, De Freitus' wasn't their fault, she was simply shot, but it's not really good enough to avoid blame if the client is murdered! It did ram home the reality that Easterhaus was serious and quite able to kill with impunity if he felt like it, and it was a shocking moment, I expected her to get winged, as Hunter does, but no, she actually is killed, shot to death with a gun.

The weapons they carried looked a bit unique with this bulky sight on top, perhaps to emphasise their foreign nature or the futuristic feel of the series. Guns aren't the only tech seen as we get Dr. Hunter administering injections with what looked like an air-base model rather than a needle, something else that made it seem cutting edge, much like the hypospray in Trek - back in the Nineties they were talking about injections that operated by firing powder into the skin by high-powered air release, but it doesn't seem to have taken off, sadly, as we still all have to have needles shoved in - they're probably much cheaper and more effective, but along with flying cars it's one of those things that makes the future we're now living in a little less futuristic than we might have hoped back then! What may have been a direct Trek reference came when Dr. Hunter utters a variation on the famous doctors' lines in the various series (inspired by Dr. McCoy in 'TOS'), "I'm a doctor, not a magician!" It would probably have passed by the majority of casual audience members just tuning in for a fast-paced Saturday night action drama, but I'm sure Writer Colin Brake was well-versed in pop culture so it seems likely to be deliberate.

'A Sporting Chance' didn't strike me as quite as terrific as I remembered it being when I first saw it seventeen years ago, but Easterhaus' demise is still brilliantly dramatic - it may not make sense to have such a countdown installed other than for a sense of the theatrical, but it certainly did the job in that regard. The closeness of the team, the fact they can laugh with each other and also face such deadly threats, the fact they don't give up, but keep trying, such as Ros freeing herself from the restraint, and the willingness to help the victims, even when they'd terrorised her (Kane), shows the goodness of the characters and their qualities. The episode even has a modern message about not interfering in drugs, something that wasn't listened to at the time as we know how many athletes have been caught over the years, even in the last decade, and though it's hardly a Trek lecture, branching off into the more comic book idea of super soldiers, it added weight to the story. I don't think I've mentioned the book series that came out to accompany Season 2 in 1996, which packaged two episodes per release, but for some reason I always think of the novelisation of this episode more than the others. Maybe it was just the cover with Hex holding a gun to Ros' head, I don't know. It's been a long time since I read them, but I think they covered over some of the plot holes and cleverly wove the stories together, and they also have the distinction of being about the only merchandise out there other than the video and DVD releases, so they sit proudly on my shelf to this day. The series was gearing up to its finale and the introduction of its most famous villain, Jean-Daniel. Next in 'Pulse'!

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