A Cage For Satan

DVD, BUGS S2 (A Cage For Satan)

Then it was all over. Well, not quite all, as thanks to the BBC's quick reaction to the success of the first ever episode, 'BUGS' was commissioned for a further two years right from the start, meaning whatever they did with Season 2 they were guaranteed at least a 3. There is some kind of irony in the fact that if it had been left to one season at a time for recommissioning, the series probably wouldn't have been brought back after this second year because it hadn't rated quite as well, with a lot of that put down to a greater degree of science fiction in the tone and style, something deliberately pulled back from in Season 3 (and perhaps the arc structure of the main story, requiring a little more commitment than complete episodic structure). And yet it was the third season's finale which would be a sequel to this finale's cliffhanger, that boosted the number sufficiently for a surprise fourth season to be commissioned (something they tried, unsuccessfully, with the end of that season, too!). Cyberax, or Jean-Daniel, may have been responsible for their nemeses' demise after all, except that their legacy was to give the series another lifeline. The vagaries of television… I'd actually forgotten entirely that this episode had a cliffhanger. We get the usual scene of happiness with the team laughing and joking together, if somewhat more subdued than usual thanks to the comatose fate of Roland, Ros' friend and Bureau Chief, they leave his hospital bed, then he flashes open his eyes… duh, duh, duuuurrrr!

An overarching plot may not have been as much to the general viewers' tastes at that time in the mid-to-late Nineties, when Saturday night TV was meant to be throwaway, light stuff (as it still is!), but for those hooked on the series (myself, for example), it was the ideal form - you had the best of both worlds, able to tell contained, individual stories, while also tying in to something grander that required developing and concluding, and it really comes into its own when the DVDs were your only source of viewing the series again, as well as showing how much continuity there was across the run as a whole. It's also fascinating to watch it in one run through because you notice how each season differed from the others. In Season 2 I felt Ros out of the characters, often came across as quite withdrawn or unemotional for the most part, whereas she'd been much more expressive in the first season, so I wonder if Jaye Griffiths was reacting to criticism? Or maybe the greater sci-fi tone that came in meant she felt she should be more subdued. It doesn't hold for Jesse Birdsall and Craig McLachlan, whose characters stayed the same, though Ed is much more tech savvy this season, no longer standing in for the audience who may not have been aware of much of the technology of computing and bugging, but, like Ed, had presumably been brought up to speed.

With this last two-parter of the season it was clear the series had turned a corner and become much more than it had originally been designed to be. It can seem far-fetched that Ros, whose friendship with Ed and Beckett had seemed so strong for so long, should be strained to the point she could believe they might be working against her, and there are things about Stephen Gallagher's script that don't bear as close a scrutiny as usual as he raced to the finishing line of the season, but Ros' predicament, or more specifically, her friends' predicament of not being able to tell her what's going on or they'd be condemning her to death, was a masterstroke. Would Ros go to JD for help when she knows he always wanted revenge upon those who incarcerated him, so how much more would he want that revenge when he's locked up again, for life? Or that her friends wouldn't be doing what they could to help her, unless there was nothing they could do. But in reality of course it wouldn't occur to anyone that their brain may have been infected with 'a time bomb ticking in your mind,' as Ed so aptly put it, merely knowing it was there enough to set it off. So with Roland missing, and presumably no one from the Bureau available, with her files removed and her friends whispering behind her back, what could she think?

I had forgotten what happened to JD, that he'd been taken to the Ultimax prison in Technopolis and sentenced to spending forty-six of any forty-eight hour period in unconsciousness, a solution that does seem, as Ros said, inhumane. The justification is that these are the worst offenders, the 'extreme social deviants' of all nations, and that in their dreams they're free. This sounds as hollow as the promotional videos that present Technopolis and Technopolis Tower as these attractive modern ideals, but in the typically cheesy marketing way. Can they control the brain patterns of the inmates, has technology got that far? Otherwise they may be living in nightmares, which some might say is what they deserve, but again, would be inhumane. There's no chance for parole, nothing for them to exist for, they may as well be dead. They practically are dead. But this is all part of the Technopolis dream. It seems the nations of the world have supported that dream insofar as they're happy to export their criminals to it, like Australia when it was the new world, but judging by the lack of people this is as much as they're willing to invest in, the vast majority of companies invited to the grand opening of the Tower not deigning to turn up (so Ros has the pick of hotel rooms - but surely asking for the Cyberax suite would be a mistake as that's the one that will be occupied, won't it, or was she actually ordering champagne there as a way of getting inside?). It's not even clear if there are any other prisoners, JD is the only one we see, so it could all be mere advertising spiel the warden spouts so proudly.

Technopolis is a ghost town, a blank slate, which appears to have no real future judging by what we see. They have extreme levels of enforcement, with armed and armoured soldiers available on instant demand, showing they keep their security very seriously, suggesting the mindset of a fascistic state (and oddly, everyone there speaks in English accents). Or it may simply be that with Cyberax in all the systems, Ed and Beckett were branded terrorists who should be shot on sight. How Beckett managed to smuggle explosives aboard an aircraft in order to get into this place shows how clever he is (and that this was before the 11 September attacks on America), each of the team have great skill that if they were to use for personal gain or turn on the others, would prove a real challenge, just as Ros proves to them, decking Beckett with a single punch and locking him and Ed in the hotel room, just as she'd previously padlocked them into the basement of Gizmos (still never named on screen as such), this episode, despite mostly taking place in Central Europe, giving us our best look yet at the red-walled HQ which wouldn't return the following year, sadly, despite how swish and modern it looked, visually marking how successful the business had been for them. Ed and Beckett being locked in wasn't the only parallel plot point, we also have another person being punched out (JD by Beckett at the site of the human processor room), and two people killed, then brought back. Poor Dr. Briggs and his assistant from part one, if only the same treatment had been given to them…

Mind you, Ros only halted her walk into 'the light' of death because Beckett called her back to him, something that wouldn't have worked with the others! I know that sequence can be seen as silly and cheesy, but I've always found it to be really affecting - that Ros was pretty much gone, but the voice of her friend could call her back, and she turns and smiles, it's really well staged and was probably the hardest part of the whole story to visualise, because how do you show approaching death? That ending and the cliffhanger after it are the best things about the episode. I don't feel there was as much horror about the idea of human microchips as when we were first introduced to the idea in part one, the closest we come to a chilling moment is when Beckett stumbles upon the room full of comatose victims from the Bureau and there are three more beds waiting for him and his team, like coffins to be filled… Cyberax clearly wanted them alive, and it's even stated in dialogue, so why was it trying to tell Ros its true nature when she's in the hotel room? Other than the obvious wish to have some drama with Beckett charging in and smashing the screen! It could also be pointed out that once Ros has heard the trigger from Beckett and uttered the fateful final words of Cyberax victims, she doesn't rush off and kill herself but sort of stands around. This could be because she has such a strong mind and her will was still intact for a few moments longer than others, since she tells Ed it's not too late.

This line of reasoning is bolstered by the encounter Ed and Beckett have with her former tutor at the Science Faculty, Dr. Talbot, another great mind, another willing to sacrifice himself to get us closer to defeating Cyberax. That whole sequence was great: sinister and hopeless, but a real sacrifice. Instead of having a way to commit suicide, Talbot has locked himself in a room, but he still destroys the Cyberax device, then sinks back, his body intact, but his mind gone. What was the plan? He says the devices are in every institution in the land, so did they need more minds or were they thinking of future expansion when the Bureau's people were no longer enough to contain the virus? JD's plan seems to be some kind of world domination in all but name, telling Cyberax if he wants an army, a government or a nation it will provide it or it will die. By then, having come back from the dead when his cell monitors flatline thanks to it all being connected to Cyberax, he's much more erratic, the experience hasn't helped him become more sane, it's lost him his sinister calmness. With the Cyberax issue of technology being spread around as Trojan horses, it's even more relevant to today when cyber-warfare is more common than physical combat, both Russian and Chinese forces attacking the West, and the West continuing to seek a technologically dependent society, perhaps to our doom? There have been events just like this one where foreign companies have been selling technology to us which may include security nullifying code and infrastructure in their products or software, by which they could one day take control.

It's frightening stuff, but back then it was much more in the realm of fiction than reality (the same for image recognition which is also a dangerous reality), but then 'BUGS' was ahead of its time: both in theoretical sense and in the idea that it was the near future. Now of course it doesn't look futuristic, but at the time they always had incredibly fast computers when consumer tech was severely limited, a wealth of gadgets, most developed by Ros, giving them the edge when it came to those who would abuse technology for their own ends. In some ways it's surprising how watchable the series remains because although much of what we see is outdated (you can always tell a TV series' age by the computer monitors, especially), it didn't rely solely on wowing viewers with tech, it was the friendships and teamwork of the main three that made them so likeable and a joy to spend time with. This season there'd definitely been a concerted effort to give them a more stylish edge, mainly in the clothing, also in the smart environs from which they worked. The vehicles they used were part of that, though Ros' yellow car dated to early in the first season. While the Jeep (there right at the start of the series), would continue to be used in Season 3, this was the end of that car, sadly (in the previous episode as it doesn't appear in this one), though it was probably the only one she ever owned that didn't get blown up or smashed at some point. Perhaps she donated it to a motor museum before that could happen, as a tribute to its faithfulness?

This episode you notice more going on with the clothing than usual. They start out in the same outfits from part one, showing it's coming right after, then when Ros has made her decision to visit JD and get some answers she's changed into a red jacket, as if she means business now, or like a warning that she's getting warmer, closer to the solution that is a danger signal. Beckett changes to a yellow shirt and Ed to a blue one, and by the end when they're all back together in one shot, standing side by side, they represent the primary colours, red, yellow and blue, as if they've come back together and things are as they were. I don't know if this was intentional or simply a side effect of the kind of bright clothing they always wore that were part of the distinctively optimistic colour palette of the series, but it has been fascinating to follow the looks across the episodes and what it could denote. The direction was once again mostly impressive, especially earlier in the episode with great shots like Ros talking to someone we can't see as the camera swings around her, until finally resting on Dr. Talbot, or the beautifully framed moment when she and Ed meet on opposing escalators, speaking in the middle of a diamond. Later, either because the story becomes more dramatic so there's less time to focus on the look, things didn't seem quite so neat and tidy, but in places it showed real creativity - I loved the lighting of JD's cell, black, except for this single light from above.

The big question is about the villains. Did they survive the blast from Beckett's bomb? He only has a few paces on them before the server room goes up and manages to escape, we don't see how close they were to the blast, only the aftermath of their blackened bodies lying on the floor. The thing is, during Season 3 we learn JD's body was never recovered - if we hadn't seen the bodies then we might have assumed they'd been disintegrated in the explosion, but we don't have that luxury. Could JD have somehow crawled away and survived? Would Cassandra have tried to shield him in some way? I can certainly imagine him using her as a shield if he had time, especially in his erratic frame of mind compared to the careful and considered villain he'd been. Then there's the ending of Season 4 where a chauffeur kidnaps Ros and Beckett, and that's the persona we first met him in at the start of 'Pulse.' I think most people who really followed the series really wanted it to be him. I'm not saying a Season 5 would have been more likely if Gareth Marks had made a cameo at the end, I suspect most casual viewers probably weren't that bothered either way, but it would have been better for us fanatics! And what was Cassandra's connection to her boss: gratitude for saving her life, desire for the riches and power she saw he was capable of winning?

You actually feel a level of sympathy for Cyberax by the end, even though you know its end goal would have been to survive and JD's lesson in having the hold of death over it would have likely taught it to be even more ruthless in its quest. That's why Roland was so terrifying as the personification of Cyberax later - there's no more cute CG head any more. The gradual changes in that head were nicely done to show its continuing development: at first it's just a baby, then it's a full-grown head, then it speaks through ripples in its forehead and gains blinking eyes. The design was strong, even though it was relatively crude, it shows what was possible with computer graphics even back then. Cyberax wasn't the only graphic example as Technopolis Tower itself was a real building except for the upper part, which was an extension added by graphics. Though the place was still filmed in Canary Wharf, they did a good job of selling it as this empty, nondescript, anonymous city, whose only denizens seem to be either law enforcement that come out on cue, or statues, even while using certain buildings we'd seen before - the tubular dark glass building had been Kamen & Ross in 'Down Among The Dead Men,' for example. Even some of the internal sets weren't above being reused, as Dr. Talbot's glass partition looks suspiciously like the STA observation area which was also used in 'Bugged Wheat,' though this time Beckett makes an end of it by smashing his way through. Even the mainframe footage from 'Pulse' gets another airing as part of the Technopolis videos, already seen in 'Blackout' earlier this season.

Cleverly, we see JD as part of the construction coordination on the video, which suggests his plans have been very long term. Who knows when these buildings were built, but it must have been more than a year ago, which would put it before 'Pulse' when we first saw him. Suddenly, the wrongheadedness of Technopolis makes more sense when you think such an evil brain may have been integral to its fruition… I appreciate the subtlety of things like that, the same way we never hear the episode title spoken in this episode (it was mentioned in 'The Bureau of Weapons'), or JD unexpectedly saying "Baa," when Cassandra goes off to carry out his bidding, tying back to his comment in the previous episode: "Women are sheep." He was a truly great villain, almost inarguably the best of the series, not just for his relative longevity, but for the suave and deadly manners and that you never knew quite what he'd do. If he had continued as the more unstable version we saw following his death and revival, I don't think he'd have been anywhere near as compelling, but he would never be forgotten as long as the series lasted. Cassandra, too, worked well, though she had a lot less development than in her debut episode and had become merely a lackey by this point.

This episode, coming as it does at the end of, basically, a trilogy, with 'Schrodinger's Bomb' being the opening part, is not quite as strong as the other two. Maybe this is because Gallagher had to gather up all the pieces to tie up the season and JD arc, so there were less creative opportunities, maybe it's because things had to be wrapped up quickly. But we never fully understand why Ros should go rogue on so little evidence after they'd been through so much together. A line about the virus eating into your sanity could have solved that, adding paranoia to the already real conspiracy against her finding out the truth. But despite any flaws in the telling it remains a rip-roaring ride and is still one of the best episodes of the series. It's a shame to say goodbye to this season as it's the one that has always meant the most to me for being where I joined it, an essential part of late childhood. At the same time I'm ready for the more naturalistic, slightly more character focused direction of Season 3, and it really does make it a different experience watching the whole series through in one continuous run.

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