Simon and Eugene discuss if this makes a good Dalek story.

Synopsis:

Part 1

The Daleks arrive on the planet Islos, planning to capture the Archive. The robotic defenders of the Archive resist in a futile effort against the might of the Daleks. The Dalek Strategist suggests that the robotic defenders might sacrifice all the life on the planet to serve their purpose of protecting the Archive at all costs.

The Emperor offers them a deal. Let us have it or we’ll destroy it. The robots surrender, but it is a ruse. They have used knowledge in the archive to open a portal to another dimension, found an entity there that would offer safe haven there for the Archive and the inhabitants of the city. All it wants in exchange is the Daleks.

Part 2

The Daleks flee to Skaro, being dealt significant damage along the way. When they arrive at Skaro, the Entity, which can traverse time, is already there and the planet is wiped out.

The few remaining Daleks travel to a planet that has a Dalek army in storage, guarded by a lone robot. They Strategist has it activated, but the robot has been got to by the Entity and reprograms the Daleks to think the Strategist is the Emperor. The Entity expects the Strategist to start a war with the Emperor, but he does not, and he has the Dalek army destroyed.

Part 3

The Daleks head to the planet of the Mechanoids. They demand an alliance, but the bluff is called, the Mechanic Queen has determined that the Daleks are all but wiped out. She enters talks with the Emperor while the Strategist talks with a Mechanoid scientist. Meanwhile the remaining minion Daleks get impatient and start a fight. They are destroyed by the Mechanoids.

The Emperor has an ace up his plunger to force the Mechanoids to fight: He’s lead the Entity to the planet, and it begins attacking.

Part 4

Forced to work together, the Strategist and the Scientist defeat the entity and send it back to it’s universe. Now, only the Emperor and the Strategist remain. The Mechanic Queen knows they have been used by the Daleks and she’s going to wipe them out.

She kills them both on the spot and the story ends.

Except she doesn’t. She tells them to go back to Skaro and she’ll be along shortly to wipe them out.

Part 5

The Emperor and the Strategist arrive back on Skaro, the Mechanoids soon arrive. The Emperor had more Daleks in reserve somewhere and the fighting begins. Outnumbered, the Mechanoids need an advantage. They capture the Strategist and offer him what he wants. He takes their offer. With their help, they use the same technique to eliminate the Entity on Mechanus to get rid of the Emperor on Skaro. But it was a ruse, the Strategist uses the weapon to eliminate all the Mechanoids.

Dalek victory. But then, Entity-controlled bits of dead Mechanoids tell them that they don’t know what’s coming.

Part 6

There is no episode 6.

I guess this is the end?

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Kenneth and Eugene discuss Order.

Synopsis:

A large, ornate and very expensive looking pyramid shaped spacecraft filled with cavorting druids hurtles perilously close to the sun. The cavorting druids turn out to be followers of Vahootie, and specifically, their spiritual leader, Brother 13. They are plunging into the sun so that they can transcend to heaven and be by Vahootie’s side.

Brother 13 is about to do some… ahem… meditation.. ahem… with his child bride, when brother Jacob, suffering from some last minute doubts that killing themselves in the sun is the right thing to do interrupts them. A quick laying on of hands and a blue glow is enough to renew and reinvigorate Jacob’s faith. Killing ourselves in the sun is definitely the right thing to do.

Nearby, the Transutopian makes a half-hearted, but doomed attempt to rescue them. Dante and Percy, experts on stupid, marvel at the insanity, or stupidity, the Vahootians. Lucretia is less down on the loonies, stating without evidence that the need to believe in something is just as important and food or shelter to humans.

We wouldn’t have much of a story if the ship just plunged into the sun, though, so at the last minute, leaving his followers to their fate, Brother 13, his child-bride and crazy brother Jacob escape in a shuttle, where they are rescued by Dante.

Brother Jacob, who is armed with a knife is immediately locked up. When Dante realizes that Brother 13 is the leader of the cult, and therefore the mass murderer of the ship full of Vahootians, he treats him rudely, but surprisingly nicely. He asks Lucretia to tend Brother 13’s wounds and lock him up.

Dante also asks Percy, the person voted most likely to be taken in by a cult, to take food to the mass murderer cult leader and his child bride. Brother 13 asks for his child bride to be taken out of the room with Percy, so that he can have a quiet word with Lucretia. First he demonstrates that he knows she’s looking for “the cluster” - could he mean the Divinity Cluster? - and that he knows she’s desperate to please her father. Thus caught slightly off guard, he then mind rapes her with his glowing blue hands, although Brother 13 calls it a “Rejuvenation of faith.” Soon she is beginning to understand that Vahootie is the answer.

Dante returns and finds Brother 13 and Lucretia having an amicable chat. To his credit, and my amazement, Dante seems to catch on very quickly that Brother 13 is “getting at” Lucretia. He sends her to confinement in her quarters until the prisoners are off the ship. Dante’s disgust of Brother 13 and what he represents is apparent, and when Brother 13 attempts to read Dante’s mind about his son and mind rape him, too, Dante hurts him and throws him in a cage.

In the cages, Jacob is beginning to have doubts again, he needs Brother 13 to perform a rejuvenation on his faith, but Brother 13 is tired of Jacob’s lack of faith and refuses. It’s very clear that when Brother 13 is unhappy, he’s a very nasty piece of work.

Meanwhile, Percy has handcuffed the child bride and is showing her around the ship. Percy tries to indoctrinate her into the cult of Billy Toonami, or at least come to a meeting of minds. It becomes clear that her faith in Brother 13 is slipping. Could it be that his mind-whammy is only temporary? Realizing now that there’s something more than just verbal persuasion, Dante orders Percy and the child bride to stay on the bridge and not let anyone in, including Lucretia.

Dante goes to talk to Lucretia, but she’s gone. She has gone to the cages and let Brother 13 and Jacob out.

On the bridge, the child bride grabs a gun and threatens Percy, but it is unloaded and the joke is on her.

Dante confronts Lucretia, Brother 13 and Jacob in the lockup area. Brother 13 orders Lucretia to kill him. When she tries, Dante shoots the gun out of her hand, but Jacob takes Lucretia hostage and knife point. Jacob drops dead to the sound of a gunshot as Percy shoots him from behind. For once, ignoring orders paid off.

Dante sends Lucretia back to her quarters, but instead, she locks herself in a cage.

Soon, they are handing the prisoners to the Authority officials on Mercury, and Rudolfo is very pleased by the large bounty they’ve collected for putting away a mass murdering cult leader.

Later Dante releases Lucretia, she seems to be back to her old self, and she immediately goes to open a secret channel to her father and warn him that Brother 13 is very dangerous, may have had contact with Novak, and have some knowledge of the Divinity Cluster.

On the transport shuttle, Brother 13 is mind raping the guards. Perhaps Dante will get another chance to put a bullet in his head someday.

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This time Simon and Eugene take a look at the second of the Dalekmania-inspired movies, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

Movie Synopsis:

Tom Campbell, constable, bumbles into a smash and grab jewelry store robbery and is koshed on the head. Running into nearby police box to summon backup, Tom passes out as he sees the inside of TARDIS, a time and space machine created by eccentric English inventor, Dr. Who.

When he awakens, the robbery is long over - very long over - for Dr. Who was just taking off on another trip in time and space and it is now the year 2150 CE and London is a ruin. Tom is cursorily introduced to Dr. Who, his granddaughter Susan and his niece Louisa. Without so much as a question, Tom quickly falls in as one of the team.

When TARDIS is trapped under collapsing debris, Tom and Dr. Who search for a crowbar in a nearby building. While investigating, Louisa and Susan are captured/rescued by Wyler and taken to a hidden resistance base. When Dr. Who and Tom return to TARDIS, they are surrounded by Robomen - zombie-like humans - and captured by the Daleks, who have invaded the Earth.

Dortmun, leader of the rebels, launches an infiltration attack on the Dalek flying saucer. Inside, Dr. Who and Tom are about to be robotized, luckily the attack disrupts the Daleks’ plans and Dr. Who and Tom escape, but are separated. Tom is trapped on the ship, while Dr. Who escapes with David, another of the rebels.

Louisa, who was part of the attack is also stuck on the ship and meets up with Tom as the ships takes off and heads for Befordshire, where the Daleks have a mineworks.

Susan and Dortmun, because he is in a wheelchair, had remained behind at the rebel base. Only Wyler returns from the disastrous raid and they decide to head to Watford. Susan leaves a note hoping Dr. Who will see it and follow her. Dortmun is soon killed by The Daleks as they escape London.

David and Dr. Who do return to the base, but fail to see the gigantic chalk note scrawled on the wall. Dr. Who decides to go to Bedfordshire to see the Dalek mineworks, knowing that it must be the key to the invasion.

Watford, which is on the way to Bedfordshire, is swarming with Daleks, causing Dr. Who and David to circumnavigate the town - possibly passing through Luton on their way to the mine.

Luckily, Wyler and Susan also find Watford too hot to handle, and Susan deduces that her grandfather will want to see the mineworks, so they press on to Bedfordshire. But first, they find some kindly ladies who are Dalek collaborators, who turn them over to the Daleks.

Dr. Who, David, Tom and Louisa all meet up and glean information on the mine. The Daleks have used forced human labor to manually dig a mine 2,890 kms deep. Having done this without releasing pockets of Stahlman’s gas or even Primord goo, the Daleks are now prepared to drop a bomb into the Earth’s core, blast the inner core (which is located another 2,260 kms deeper than the mine) out the backside of the planet like an olive pit, replace the pit with a pimento and fly the olive back to Skaro where they can occupy the planet. Although it’s not entirely clear if they’re trying to occupy Skaro from the Earth, or occupying the Earth as if it were an intergalactic bus as it passes the Skaro stop.

Luckily some well-placed wood planks are able to divert the bomb, cause it to detonate in the wrong place, releasing a huge surge of magnetic energy which draws all the metallic Daleks (but nothing else metallic) into the Earth’s core.

The Earth is saved and the Daleks will never invade again because magnetism will always be there for humans to use as a weapon against them.

Dr. Who returns TARDIS to the exact location it was before, but a few minutes earlier, allowing Tom the opportunity to capture the criminals is one easy swoop, masterfully accomplishing this without TARDIS exploding because it is occupying the same space and time it was before, nor Tom encountering his earlier self and running afoul of the Blinovitch Limitation effect.

The End. Stay tuned next time for the third movie in the series, The Daleks Chase Dr. Who, featuring Dr. Who, his granddaughter Susan, his second cousin, twice removed, Jennifer and a madcap London Bus Driver, Fred Scuttle.

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Episode Synopsis:

Dave, porn theatre impresario, and Jimmy, his right-hand man, meet up with Mr. Hubbard outside the abandoned Finnyland, a former indoor dolphinarium and now abandoned wreck of a building. Dave is looking for a place to open his newest porn theatre, and Finnyland might just be the renovatable dump he’s looking for.

The place is in a right mess as they hear Hubbard’s tale of running a dolphinarium. They had a dolphin die - their star and smartest one of the bunch, Buddyboy, and he just had to get rid of the others before they died, too, because that’s how dolphins do. Hubbard seems very upset by the whole thing - scared even.

While there, they find Lucy, a squatter, and former “employee” at the park. She’s a mousy, messed-up sort of young woman obsessed with the dolphins and Buddyboy in particular. Lucy clears off.

Hubbard wants a deal now, but Dave wants an inspector to come in. Looks like the deal is off, but as Dave is leaving, Hubbard hears the sounds of a dolphin and runs out and telling Dave he can bring in an inspector. He’s really scared now.

Back at Dave’s Peak-a-Boo club, after some gratuitous nudity, Dave is explaining to Jimmy that Hubbard is scared and desperate to sellout but he’s worried he might be mixed up with and afraid of the mob, and that could be bad for him. He’s having second thoughts about the deal.

Back at the theatre, Dave has got his inspector looking for things wrong with the building so that he can negotiate a better price. Lucy is there and she tells him about Buddyboy and how when he got sick the other dolphins tried to keep him alive. Although she doesn’t know what happened exactly before he got ill, Buddyboy had a mind of his own and wouldn’t do the routine as planned. Hubbard and the trainer had to show him who was boss. As she fantasizes about when the park was open, Dave hears the sound of a dolphin. Lucy passes out from exertion and lack of food.

Dave takes her and feeds her for more info. After getting more information, Dave surmises that Hubbard’s attempts to dominate Buddyboy left him fatally injured, but without marks -  allowing him to collect on the insurance money. He thinks that the presence of Lucy is causing his guilt to manifest.

Meanwhile, Hubbard has been hearing noises in his apartment and his health is failing. He needs to sell that property and leave on holidays. He fixes a meeting with Dave at Hubbard’s luxury apartment.

Hubbard’s lawyer strongly opposes the terrible terms of the deal on offer from Hubbard, but Hubbard will have none of it. He’s unwell, and he just needs to get rid of that property before he leaves on holidays. Dave shows up with a check for a fraction of what Hubbard is asking. He also brings in Lucy, which rattles Hubbard so much that he agrees to the absurdly small figure and even lets Dave take over his apartment. Deal done, Hubbard is gone.

That night, a triumphant Dave, in his new digs takes Lucy into his bed. He’s into it, but Lucy is indifferent about the whole mechanical process until she starts thinking about Buddyboy and then she goes wild in the sack. Dave is impressed. It’s always the mousy ones that really surprise you, innit?

Post-coital, Lucy heads to the bathtub and drowns herself.

...and what the hell did I just watch?

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Our series beings here with a look at the pilot TV Movie from May, 1975.

Synopsis:

We start mid-story with an invisible man, Daniel Weston, sneaking into a hospital, finding the information on a plastic surgeon currently in the operating theatre, and sitting down in the gallery, watching him work.

With nothing better to do while waiting, he takes the opportunity to narrate his story so far…

Dan Weston and his wife Kate are both research PhDs working on a top secret project at the KLAE Corporation.  They have spent a million and a half dollars and eight months attempting to develop a device to instantaneously teleport matter from one place to another; however, his work is a complete failure.

He does have something to show for it, though, and, although reluctant to give a demo before the process is stable, he concedes to giving a demo to the man who gets him money.  What he has developed is temporary invisibility of matter, both living and non-living.  While the process doesn’t currently last but a few hours, the potential overjoys his boss, Walter Carlson, who sees the enormous weapons potential in the process.  The military will be barfing money at them for this process.

“Hold on there a minute, Walter!  I am a principled scientist and you promised me that all my research would only be used for good, non-weapons purposes.”

“Name one.”

“Well, I can’t but… but… there MUST be something.  No military!”

Carlson backs down and promises, no military, but when he leaves the room he immediately calls the military.

Weston’s next development is a serum that can return an invisible animal to visibiliy on demand.  That night he can’t sleep, his mind racing with ideas.  He heads back into the lab and makes himself invisible.

Kate is furious with his irresponsible action but, it seems it works and Carlson is overjoyed.  With this incredible success, it’s time Dan finds out where the money has been coming from all along: the military.  Shocked, Dan refuses to do anymore work, and Carlson has the couple barred from the facility and escorted off the premises.

That night, Carlson’s assistant, Steiner, tries to make Dan see sense.  He points out that Carlson has him watched by agents and his phone tapped.  He has to play ball, but he won’t

That night, he breaks into his lab, makes himself invisible, grabs a supply of the serum and destroys the equipment, escaping into the night.  He returns to visibility, but his house has been overrun by Carlson’s people.  He takes a hotel room and calls to let Kate know he’s fine.  But he isn’t fine, for suddenly he starts to disappear again, and this time, the serum doesn’t work.

Naked and invisible, he heads out in search of his old friend Dr. Maggio, plastic surgeon.  Along the way, he tries to force a blind man to feed him and let him wait out the night indoors.  What he gets is a bullet from the feisty old blind man.

Now wounded, he finally reaches the hospital where Maggio works.  Flashback ends.

After surgery, and outside, he accosts Maggio, who had an inkling of Dan’s work.  He takes him home, tends his wounds and then devises a plan to make Dan the most amazing mask and gloves ever devised.  Wearing them it will be almost impossible to tell he is the invisible man.

First, he returns to Kate, and the disguise works until she touches his hands and face and she knows what’s he’s done.  He admits he has no choice but to go back to Carlson and ask to continue his research.  He does, but does not let Carlson know he’s invisible.  Carlson is skeptical, but will to give him a chance.

Back at the Weston home, Kate and then Dan are taken prisoner by Steiner and some fine folks he’s sold out to.  For 10 million dollars, he’s going to turn Dan over to another interested party.

On the way, Dan shucks his clothes, captures the van and he and his wife escape.  Letting his wife off to go get help, Dan appears to be killed in the car accident which also kills all the bad guys.  As the show ends, Dan reveals to Carlson and his wife that he’s alive and he’ll start work again soon – after his wife and he go back home for a little invisible on visible sexual action.

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For our Big 500, Simon and Eugene discuss the impact this ground-breaking film had on things to come and talk about some of the things that have not aged so well.

Surely, you’re not going to bring up the overt sexism?

Yes, we are, and don’t call us Shirley.

Movie Synopsis

In the 22nd century, the United Planet’s Cruiser C-57D under the command of JJ Adams comes out of hyperspace drive near the star Altair after one year in flight.  The are checking on the planet Altair IV and the scientific colony ship Bellerophon which travelled to Altair IV 20 years earlier.

Their arrival is greeted coldly by Professor Morbius, one of the Bellerophon crew.  He warns them of danger, but when they persist he invites them to lunch.  He reveals that he is the sole survivor of the Bellerophon.  The others either died when some mysterious planetary force ripped them apart, when their spaceship vaporized when they attempted to leave or, in the case of his wife, died of natural causes.  Morbius claims to be immune, but he warns that it will come back for them is they stay.

They are interrupted by by Morbius’ little white lie:  While he is the only survivor of the crew, he’s not alone on the planet.  He has a beautiful, teenage daughter, Altaira, (also know as Alta) who was born on the planet.  She’s never seen young men before and she likes what she sees.  The men of the C-57D like what they see, too.  They are 18, hyper-competitive, 24 year old perfect physical specimens of manhood, and they’ve been cooped up on a spaceship for a year.

Morbius also has an amazing robot, Robby, which he built as a hyper-capable servant. Only the ship’s cook seems hard up enough to take a shine to Robby.

In light of the news about the Bellerophon, Adams needs to contact Earth, that will require setting up communications equipment and partially dismantling the ship.  They’re going to be on the planet a few days, at least.

Executive Officer Lt. Jerry Farman sees this as an opportunity to teach Alta all about the important physical benefits of hugging and kissing.  Adams breaks this up and is furious… with Alta for dressing so provocatively and being a willing participant… or being unwittingly taken advantage of.  They fight over this and Alta is just all hot and bothered and doesn’t understand why.

That night, something invisible enters the ship and sabotages some of the equipment.

The next day, Adams returns to the Morbius residence to ask questions.  Alta is there and she and Adams begin to realize that they’ve fallen madly in lust.  It must be lust, right, since they’ve only actually known been in each other’s presence for about an hour.

The thought Morbius was in his study, but he wasn’t.  When Morbius emerges from a secret passage he catches Adams and Doc snooping through his papers.  He takes them on a tour.  Beneath them is a 20 square mile underground city, left behind 200,000 years ago.  This was the planet of the Krell, a civilization advanced a million years beyond mankind.  Overnight, their civilization died.  Their cities crumbled to dust.  All that remains is the underground machine.  Quietly working at its unknown purpose, and maintaining and repairing itself for 200,000 years.  Morbius has spent his life on Altair IV studying what he can of the Krell.

All he really knows is that the Krell were working on the ultimate advancement of their civilization.  Complete mastery of creation without instrumentation.  He has been able to get as far as he has because, while experimenting with one of the Krell machines, his brain capacity was permanently expanded.

Adams argues that this discovery must be reported back to the United Planets.  Morbius doesn’t want that.  He doesn’t believe mankind can deal with the technology and wants to oversee it himself.

Back at the ship, the crew have erected a force barrier around the ship.  Despite that, an invisible creature gets through the barrier, past the guards and kills Quinn, the communications officer.  Adams and Doc were with Morbius and Alta, and cook was getting drunk with Robby when Quinn was killed, so they all have an alibi.

The next night, the ship have the big guns setup, and something approaches.  Their weapons slow it down a bit, but are effectively worthless against the invisible creature.  It begins killing the crew, including Lt. Farman and then, suddenly, it disappears.

Back at the residence, Morbius awake from a fitful sleep at this desk.  Alta is screaming, having experienced a dream that seems to reflect the events at the ship.

Adams decides to evacuate the planet and heads to collect Alta and Morbius, even if it is against his will.  He and Doc also want to get a crack at the Krell brain enhancement machine.

While Adams tries to convince Alta to leave, Doc sneaks off and has a go at the machine.  It kills him, but not before expanding his brain and giving him clarity of what happened to the Krell.  The Krell machine translates pure thought into anything, anywhere.  The machine works, but what the Krell didn’t realize is that they still had a primitive Id in their subconscious.  The subconscious monsters wiped out their entire race overnight.

Morbius didn’t understand that, nor did he realize that, while his brain isn’t strong enough to use the machine directly, his subscious is strong enough to manifest the monster.  He is the unwitting murderer of the crew of the Bellerophon and the C-57D.  Confronted with the accusation by Adams and the fact that Alta has decided to leave with Adams, the monster is coming to kill them both.

Realizing the truth of the situation, Morbius throws himself between the monster and Alta and is killed ending the monster, too.  As his last act, he instructs Adams to put the Krell machine, and the planet itself, on self-destruct.

24 hours later, and a 100 million miles away, Adams, Alta, Robby and the remaining crew watch from the C-57D as the planet explodes like a supernova.

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Kenneth and Eugene discuss Past Lives

Synopsis:

On Saturn, a man, Eric, is apprehended for outstanding gambling debts.  His debt has been sold to the BioMycron corporation.  They use their debtors as human guinnea pigs, and he is injected, without warning with a substance that will most likely kill him in 48 hours.  In the turn of hair, this bumbling gambling fool becomes lethal killer, killing two of his captors, escaping and stealing a shuttle, the Carpathia.

Very soon, Rudolfo is assigning Dante and the crew of the Trans-Utopia with his retrieval.  He’s wanted alive and he needs to be delivered within 48 hours.  Dante just happens to be in the area.  Lucretia is shocked to learn that the fugitive is her ex-husband.  This leads to a bit of very awkward and not-entirely-good-natured ribbing.

On the shuttle, Eric is trying to reach the nearest medical facility to find an antidote, he can get there in time, but only if he flies through a meteor storm.  The Trans-Utopia follows, sustaining considerable damage before they are able to retrieve the fugitive’s ship.

Once captured, Eric disputes the story that Dante has been given.  He is not a janitor in the employ of BioMycron, and he did not murder two people, he killed them in self-defense after they injected him with poison.  Dante is seemingly unmoved, but back on the bridge, he does a bit of checking and BioMycron’s story doesn’t entirely hold water.  He asks Carravagio to perform a medical scan, which confirms that Eric has been poisoned and he will die.

Dante tries to get him to the medical facility, but with the engines damaged from the earlier hi jinx they cannot reach the facility in time.  With no qualified, responsible engineer on the crew, he must rely on Percy, as always, to do the job in time.

Dante decides to soliloquize to the audience about his dead wife being a data ghost in the machine, and then goes to ask her to help, since she is a doctor.  I’m not that kind of doctor, I’m a dead kind of doctor who doesn’t really exist.  Tell Carravaggio to do a better job scanning.

Carravagio does a better job scanning and then develops an antidote, which is given to Eric.

While all this is going on, Lucretia and Eric talk a bunch about their failed marriage, plus Lucretia has sexy time flashbacks.

Also, it turns out the antidote didn’t work, Eric will die soon.

Percy gets the engines working, but its too late.  Lucretia discovers a familiar name, Paquette, on the board of directors of BioMycron and sends a nasty voicemail to her dad.  He’d better not be part of this.

Eric convinces, first Dante, then finally Lucretia, to let him go in the shuttle so he can die in space.  They do, and, as the amazingly precise 48 hours elapses, Eric begins to glow… and his shuttle explodes.

Dante tries to talk to Percy, I hope you’re not upset you couldn’t get the engines fixed in time and a man died because of your incompetence.  No.  I’m an emotionally-stunted cripple and that doesn’t bother me.

“Does anything bother you?”

“My parents were killed, that bothers me.”

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Episode Synopsis 

The Rangers are attempting to rescue a hijacked transport, but they're hampered by budget cuts. Their stabilizers don't work, their boosters aren't there, and their shrowder, which is their version of cloaking device, stops working right when they need it. So they get to the transport and they're ambushed.

Doc is severely wounded, his arm blown off - just to remind you, his arm is mechanical - and they capture the guys, but one of them escapes by turning into globules of goo and like going through a wall or something. 

Back at the base, everyone's pissed off about the budget cuts and they want to get information from the guy who they captured, but he doesn't want to give information ‘cause he says he'll be killed if he gives information. And then he is killed. 

Boone gets in sort of a fight with Weiss, who is the guy that was in the credits that we mentioned earlier, that wasn't in the show last time, he's sort of a Colonel in intelligence and he's at the base and he's the Frank Burns character, except he's an authority.

He gives Boone, as a way of a peace offering, a synthetic artificial intelligence droid, which they dub Ringer, which they don't want. But as Doc is since serious wounded and has his spare arm being attached. And so they reluctantly accept him as the gift that he is. They try to capture the alien that murdered the guy in his cell but made it look like a suicide, but they fail cause their ship breaks down, even though Ringer has been ingratiating himself to the crew by fixing things and being just generally helpful - recalibrating guns, fixing stabilizes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 

They know that this is some sort of drug smuggling thing, but they can't prove it. And they know who is the bad guy. It's somebody named, it's a guy named Isogol but they can't touch him, but they go up and talk to him and they end up doing like a dual fight with him, with swordy things. And then they go out to the ship again, cause they're crafty.

They find out that Ringer is actually the first of a wave to replace all of the Rangers and they get very, very collective bargainingly angry about this whole thing. I think they're going to form a union and, and go on strike if this is going to happen because of automation.

But then they go out on this final thing to the thing they discover where the drugs are being smuggled. But then the alien tries to attack them again. It looks like things are bad, but it's Ringer to the rescue. And then, oops, it's not Ringer to the rescue because of some little minor glitches. And then they save the day, but they can't capture Isogol because they didn't have any right to do it. 

And the story ends happily with Ringer being put in a box and sent back to central.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the episode, During Barty’s Party.

Synopsis:

We open on a romantic scene.  An open-top two-seat sports car, parked on a country road, music playing on the radio and the screams of the amorous couple.

Angie, who lives nearby, is asleep, but their screams invade her dreams and deeply upset her.  When he husband, Roger, comes home from the city he finds her at home, blasting rock and roll music and, apparently, drinking bit heavily.   She’s nervous and feeling alone.  She’d tried calling him, but he’d already left the office.  She’d tried to visit their neighbors, the Gibsons, but they’re not home today.

There’s a rat under the floorboards making noises and it’s really bothering her.  She set the dog, Buster, on him earlier but he ran off out the door and hasn’t come back.  Roger brings a typically manly perspective to the situation, basically, “buck up, woman, you’re getting hysterical over nothing.  It’s just a rat.”  He stomps the floor and the rat is gone.

Angie points out the sports car to Roger.  It’s been there since I woke up from my nightmare sleep, door wide open.  Don’t you think that’s odd?

“Not really, no.”

While Roger attends to some unfinished business on the phone, Angie turns on the radio, listening to the program, Barty’s Party, a light mixture of inane banter and popular music.  On it, Barty notes a few people have been calling in from the country with reports of flocks of rats swarming.  Isn’t that funny.

And then the rat is back.  Or perhaps I should say, rats, for there are now more than one.

Roger refuses to leave and go out for dinner, as Angie asks, because he will not be ratted out of his home.  He calls the police to see if there’s anything to the whole rats story on the radio, but they’ve heard nothing and suggest ringing the council in the morning.

There are more rats.  And they are following them through the house.

Roger decides to whip up some chlorine gas to kills the rats, but when he tries to get water the line is clogged.  “It was the rats,” posits Angie.

“Nonsense,” counters Roger.

Angie calls Barty’s Party and tells them what’s going on, and it actually concerns Barty enough to try to send help, but before Angie can give their address, the phone line goes dead.  Then the electricity.  Roger loses it.  First trying to rip up the floorboards to pour in his chlorine mixture, and then finally succumbing to hysterical panic.

Angie formulates an escape plan using their fencing gear to help them get to the car.

Just when they are about to start, the Gibson’s return and they are overjoyed.  Shouting from the window across the way, “  We’re coming over, OK?”

And the rats are gone.  But soon they know why, as the Gibson’s are ripped to shreds by the rats in front of Roger and Angie’s eyes.

And the rats are back, and the doors are giving way to their relentless chewing.  As Angie helps the panic paralyzed Roger upstairs, on the radio, Barty is trying to reach Angie, thinking it might be a hoax, but he certainly hopes she really is a real person.”

We fade to black.

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Simon, a big fan, and Eugene, who has never seen it before, discuss Ghostwatch.

Synopsis:

Ghostwatch was a live broadcast on Halloween 1992, airing at 9:25PM on BBC 1, featuring veteran television presenters Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, and Mike Smith.  Oh, and also Craig Charles was along for the ride.

This documentary program is framed around live haunted house sitting by presenter Sarah Greene.  The house, located on Foxhill Rd has been the scene of a months-long investigation by psychic investigators.  For the live broadcast, the BBC have equipped the house with remote cameras, motion sensors, temperature detectors and has a hand-held broadcast camera that can also function as a thermographic camera.

The inhabitants of the house, divorcee Pamela Early, and her two children Suzanne and Kim, have been experiencing many strange things.  Thumping in the night, dishes broken, mysterious “presences” in the rooms, and, most disturbingly, strange scratches that appear on Suzanne.

Sarah, her cameraman, and soundman will spend the night in the house hoping to capture ghostly phenomena on video.

In the studio, Michale Parkinson hosts the program, along with Mike Smith who is in the telephone call in center taking calls from the British public on their hostly experiences.

Joining Parkinson on commentary is Dr. Lin Pascoe, psychic researcher who has been working on the case and also written a book on the subject, Angels of the Odd.  Remote from New York is Alan Demescu from CSICOP, an organization that investigates claims of the paranormal from a skeptical perspective.

Little happens for the first scheduled portion of the program, with mostly background, interviews with neighbors and phone-in callers taking up the time; however, an unusual pattern develops. Many of the callers identified a mysterious figure in some of the footage.  Footage that even Dr. Pascoe doesn’t see anything in and dismisses as the human mind seeking patterns.

Strange things begin happening, and when strong thumping begins, the ever-watching of the eye catches the culprit.  Suzanne has slipped off and is making the noises because that’s what you wanted to hear, she says!

The fraud exposed on national television, it looks as it there is little more to say, except that both Mrs. Early and Dr. Pascoe are adamant that this cannot be all there is.  The things they’ve seen cannot be explained by Suzanne faking things all along.

All across Britain, callers are contacting the program with bizarre stories of things that are happening right now.  Their clocks, like those in the house, have all stopped at 9:30.  Things are breaking, cats are screaming, blood is appearing on walls.  It seems mass hysteria is setting in.

As things continue to get worse in the house, with unseen cats screaming, more thumps and things breaking, and Suzanne falling into some form of stupor, her face and hands covered by scratches, the program stays on the air, interrupting the next scheduled program.

Electronics start to go haywire in the house, leading to a breakdown in communities with the studio shortly after the open up the boarded-up glory hole is opened and it appears that the soundman is injured, but soon the feed, if not the sound, returns and things look back to normal in the house.

A caller calls in, he was a social worker in the 1960s and he knows the tragic untold story of a secret “renter” who lived in the house.  A disturbed child molester that should have never been let loose.  He had delusions of a woman haunting him, and in the end, he hung himself with the owners were away on holiday.  Twelve days later they returned to find his body, eaten by the household cats that were trapped inside with him.  His injuries much like those described by the callers that saw the mysterious figure in the videotape.

At this point they realize that the video they are watching from the house is a recording from earlier in the evening, and when they recover the  feed, the ambulances and police are on the scene, with the soundman being taken away.  The family are mostly out of the house, but not Suzanne, Sarah nor the cameraman.

Things really start to fall apart, as electronics in the studio being to fail.  Dr. Dr. Pascoe realizes that the entire audience of the program, 11 million people, are acting as a sort of country-wide, massive seance, and the apparition is no longer confined to the house.

In the house, using the thermographic camera, the cannot find Suzanne, but they hear her screaming from the glory hole, and as Sarah tries to get in, the door opens, she crawls in and door slams behind her.  The transmission is lost as the studio is a disaster, being evacuated and in complete darkness.

A befuddled Michael Parkinson wanders in the darkness and then, seemingly passed, begins reciting a nursery rhyme as the program goes to black.

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John and Eugene discuss.

Synopsis:

On Mars, a survey teams finds something extraordinary.  Soon, investigative reporter Daniel Larwood arrives on the moon.  He and Kenzy know each other, she was his former journalism student, but she has become disenchanted with him.

On a shuttle, two pilots are taking a picture of a Martian.

There’s something up on the moon.  Alexi wants Spring to put the boot on Larwood.  An important curator, Dr. Philpott, for the Holdy museum is coming to meet with Alexi and it’s all top secret.  Not too top secret though, as there are rumors that life has been found on Mars.  Alexi must go to Earth to make a report.

A customs officer alert Colin to a strange find – a figurine that was hidden amongst surveying charges on the outgoing freighter to Mars.

Later, a pilot is killed when her shuttle crashes.  Kenzy and Anna Shoun find drugs amongst her personal effects in the wreckage.  It’s also discovered that, although she was a legit qualified pilot, there is no record of her arriving on the moon.

Larwood goes to meet someone clandestinely, but when he does, the man has been murdered, dying in his arms.  He, too, was a qualified pilot that was not recorded as arriving on the moon.

Spring has a chat with traffic control.  Things are going nuts there.  There’s an approaching window for Mars launches and things are really hectic.  In fact, Spring knows this all too well, as he will be on an outbound flight to Mars in his efforts to bring the Star Cops further into the frontier.  Traffic control was allowing the pilot to fly because they were freelance and had legit credentials.  They didn’t bother to check to see if they were on the moon legally because… why would they?

When Kenzy sees Colin’s artifact, she identifies is as probably a genuine Mayan sculpture – rare and worth of fortune, although why someone wants to smuggle it to Mars is a curiosity.

Colin has been following up on the drug case.  Customs doesn’t bother to check outgoing parcels heading to Earth because… why would they?  Colin has figured out that someone is making designer drugs on the moon and sending them back to Earth.  He finds them and, while bringing them back in, applies a bit of pressure until they crack and confess – but they had nothing to do with the deaths of the two pilots.

All the while, someone on the moon is searching the quarters of the dead pilots, the flight controller and Larwood.  They’re looking for something small.

Ms. Caxton, reporter, has arrived to interview Dr. Philpott.  It’s time to let the cat out of the bag, a Martian was found and is being brought back to the moon, then to Earth.  The Holdy museum has absolute unconditional rights to it and will not let it be seen by the public for two years.  During that time, it will be analyzed by scientists under the strictest of media blackouts.  It’s a bit strange why they won’t release pictures, though.  There was a rumor that someone was trying to sell pictures of it.

Spring puts Kenzy on watching the case with the smuggled artifact, which they put back in order to capture the culprit.  She is taken unawares and knocked unconscious.  Later, the artifact is packed with explosives.  It is on the same freighter Spring will be taking to Mars.

Spring leaves, and shortly after takeoff, the freighter explodes killing all on board.

The Star Cops are devastated, especially Kenzy, who decides to solve that case.  She goes to Alexi, who has recently returned to the moon and when she tells him about the two pilots being dead, he reveals the secret to her:  The pilots arrived unannounced on a Mars freighter that carried the Martian.  It was landed somewhere on the surface of the moon.  This was to avoid the media circus that would happen when the expected freighter arrived.  He drives her out to freighter, parked on the surface, which explodes as they arrive.  Someone is cleaning up the evidence, but what is the crime?

That night, someone breaks into Star Cops HQ and searches for something.  Kenzy surprises them in the act, and then, so does Larwood and Spring – who isn’t dead after all.  The villain is Philpot and he’s willing to blow up that section of the base to avoid capture.  A struggle ensues, he is overpowered, and the bomb defused.

Larwood had gotten wind of a connection between Philpott and the surveyor that discovered the “Martian” artifact on Mars.  The Holdy spent a ludicrous amount of money to get it, and Philpott engineered it so there would be a complete ban on anyone seeing it until he was rich and long-gone.  The pilots on the freighter decided they could get a bit of money by taking a picture of the artifact and selling it to the press.  For this Philpott killed them.  The artifact was a genuine Mayan figurine, similar to the one that Colin discovered being smuggled to Mars.  It had been planted (and found) by the surveyor on Mars.  They knew the ancient astronauts angle would play big since many people believe the Mayans were influenced by ancient astronauts.  A genuine Mayan figurine found on Mars would be irresistible.

Spring, as he was boarding the shuttle, got an idea of what was happening and didn’t board.  Instead, he waited after dark to see if the culprit would try to burgle they headquarters to find the picture.  It was there, hidden in an ID card for one of the dead pilots.

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Kenneth and Eugene discuss Frozen – the episode of Starhunter Redux, not the Disney movie.

Episode Synopsis:

Dr. Devin dreams of white corridors, surgical tables, sinister suited medics and a young boy, Ryan, strapped to the table. As he calls out to the boy, everyone turns and laughs at him with slightly pointy teeth. He awakes in the waiting room of a facility with white corridors, surgical tables, sinister suited medics where his son, Ryan, is strapped to a surgical table.

He is told that he will not be given access to the facility, which he deems not surprising, and that he is banned from all their facilities. “Please sign these papers and leave.” He agrees. It’s all very amicable.

However, the facility’s HR polices and practices are sadly lacking, for Dr. Devin walks out, unescorted and then, once out of sight, goes into the restricted areas, murders one of the sinister surgical medics at his son’s surgical table, takes the boy and leaves. Later, on the shuttle, he has a chat with his dead wife, who is standing there.

On the Trans Utopia, Dante and Lucretia have just imprisoned their old friend Etienne for art theft. He’s playing it straight this time, that is he’s sexually attracted to Lucretia and is trying to get some alone time with her - if you know what I mean. Lucretia is… not interested.

The Trans Utopia picks up a mayday from Devin’s stolen shuttle. It’s being chased by six raiders. They head to the rescue. While en route Etienne escapes, looking for alcohol and Lucretia.

They rescue the pair, but in minutes the raiders arrive and corner them. They want the boy.

Dante tries to barter for information about his son, Travis. They consider his offer. Why do they want the boy so much? He sends Lucretia to ask Devin why.

She doesn’t actually ask him that, but instead hears the story of why they’re on the run. Ryan had a congenital brain disorder, one shared with his mother that proved fatal to her. The Orchard financed Devin’s work into finding a cure, which apparently worked, but gave the boy the ability - while asleep - to, unknowingly and without direction or intent - cause other people to see images of dead people. Dead people who can only say basically what the living person thinks they would say… so really sort of a third-person projection of their own thoughts.

The Orchard wants to use this as a weapon… somehow. All this information about the organization she and her father work for causes her to forget to ask why the raiders are after the boy. (Although, we we do discover it, it doesn’t matter at all.)

Now everyone on the ship starts to see dead people. Lucretia sees her mother, Dante sees his son, Percy sees… herself. Hmmm, this could finally be an interesting wrinkle in Percy’s story. Maybe she’s dead and all a figment of Dante’s twisted, broken mind.

Lucretia tries to contact her father with no success.

The raiders don’t give Dante any info, and they decide to board the Trans Utopia. The first wave is repelled, but the second wave will be lethal. Everyone on board, the crew, Etienne, Devin and Ryan prepare to fight back, when suddenly, Ryan walks out and gives himself up to the raiders. Despite their ferocious track record and Dante’s certainty that the Raiders will destroy them once they have the boy, they apparently don’t because we never see them again.

Also, it wasn’t Ryan, it was apparently an illusion he manifested.

Etienne, it seems, is an Orchard courier and was there to deliver a new communicator to Lucretia because it was feared her old one was compromised, so she lets him go… I think. But he must agree to report back that the boy escaped. Dante takes Devin and Ryan to Titan. Also, Lucretia has something important to tell Dante…. But he doesn’t want to listen.

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Movie Synopsis

 It’s just another quiet evening at the home the home of Doctor Who and his two granddaughters, Susan and Barbara. Barbara’s young man, Ian Chesterton, is coming to call on her this evening.

It may be a quiet evening at home reading books and comics, but it’s also a momentous evening. Just sitting in one of the chairs is a the last piece of equipment that Doctor Who needs to complete years of his life’s work: TARDIS - a time and space machine that he has built, curiously in the shape of a London Police Public Call Box.

Since Ian, who is a bit of a klutz, almost sits on that piece of equipment, Dr. Who decides maybe tonight he should complete TARDIS. He shows Chesterton his fabulous machine, but Klutz-man Ian manages to launch them into space and time without a clue to their destination.

They find themselves on a burnt out planet in a petrified forest. Soon they discover a fabulous city, which Doctor Who and his precocious granddaughter Susan want to explore. Ian is scared and wants to go home. Doctor Who fakes that the fluid link is broken, forcing them to investigate the city for needed mercury to replace the fluid in said fluid link. But not before there’s a mysterious knock at TARDIS’ door. Outside they find no one but a mysterious box filled with chemicals. Doctor Who decides they have time to investigate that later, and leaves the box inside TARDIS.

In the city, they are captured by creatures enclosed in metal machines. These creatures are called Daleks. They are the descendants of the survivors of the war that destroyed the planet. They live in their city, encased in their machines, to protect them from the radiation outside. Outside are their ancient enemies, the Thals, horribly mutated creatures that wander the barren land.  

In their cell, the gang are getting ill, and Doctor Who realizes that they have radiation sickness. The outside environment has been lethally radioactive and is killing them. He realizes that the box must have been radiation medicine given to them by the Thals.

The Daleks realize that if they could get the medicine, they could leave their machines and their city. They force Susan, the only one well enough, to return to TARDIS and get the medicine. The Daleks plan to take the medicine and let the travelers die. It seems The Daleks may not be entirely nice guys.

Along the way, Susan encounters the Thals, beautiful, kindly, golden people who not only help her, but also given her even more medicine, just in case The Daleks don’t hand over the first batch to her family and friends.

The Daleks immediately discover the extra drugs but… they decide to let Susan give them to the gang, curing them from this plot complication. 

The Daleks also have Susan write a nice letter to the Thals asking them over for afternoon tea. It is, of course, a trap, because, as previously mentioned, The Daleks aren’t entirely nice guys.

The travelers escape and warn the Thals, just in the nick of time, and they all escape the city. Problem solved. It’s time to return to TARDIS and go home. Just one problem, Doctor Who left the fluid link back with The Daleks.

In the city, The Daleks begin to test the medicine. It turns out, the medicine kills them, presumably because they now rely on the radiation. They decide to explode a massive neutronic bomb and completely irradiate the planet, killing all the Thals and finally winning the war!

The Thals are pacifists and will not fight the Daleks, but Doctor Who, desperate to setback to get that fluid link, makes the leader of the Thals mad enough to beat up Ian. Having shown him that he can get mad and fight, it’s easy to convince the Thals to attack the Dalek city.

While Ian, Barbara and a team of Thals travel around the city, through a swamp of death, Doctor Who, Susan and the remaining Thals use mirrors to attack the front of the city. Both groups arriving just in time to battle the Daleks and stop the bomb.

With the fluid link returned, Doctor Who, Barbara, Susan and Ian bid a tearful farewell to the Thals and return to Earth. Just in time for the Roman legions to attack them.

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First up, Special Offer.  Has the mascot the Briteway supermarket come to life?  Or could it be something more sinister?

Synopsis:

It’s just an ordinary day at Briteway’s, as small chain supermarket location and the manager, Colin Grimley, is giving words of encouragement to one of his employees, Noreen Beale, a mousy, overweight, pimply-faced, teenage girl. And by “words of encouragement” I mean he’s using his bubbly and effervescent management style to shout at her and explain how stupidly she’s stacking the cans of beans. While he is singling her out for the bulk of his ire, it is also true that the other employees and customers don’t really like Noreen, either. He really wants to fire her but as June, his senior underling, points out: They are desperately understaffed and you can’t fire someone just because you don’t like them.

Lest you think Mr. Grimley is only about shouting at his employees, he’s got a soft spot for the lovely Linda - or you might call it a hard spot. We know this because he’s enacting a letter-perfect recreation of a “How to conduct inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace” training film with her.

About this time, Noreen starts knocking things over and breaking them. She claims she didn’t do it, but no one believes her. When she says she thought she saw an animal, Grimley snidely remarks that it must have been Briteway Billy, the supermarket’s cartoon mascot. Noreen thinks that’s really funny and says it must be that.

It soon becomes evident to everyone that something is happening. Products are knocked off shelves, bacon is gnawed, packages burst open. People, including Grimley see things being moved about by something, but no one, except Noreen, catches a glimpse of “Billy.” Exhaustive searches of the store find nothing.

Grimley calls in Mr. Liversedge, from Head Office HR, to help with the problem.

Shortly after Noreen sees Grimley and Linda sharing an inappropriate employer/employee moment together, Linda is driven screaming from the store by “Billy” never to be seen again.

Liversedge arrives and Grimley fills him in. He says he’s sure it’s Noreen and wants to fire her. Liversedge wants to talk to her. He takes her across the street to a coffee shop and questions her, kindly. It’s clear she’s in love with Grimley.

Back in the store, Liversedge starts to convince everyone that Billy isn’t real. That doesn’t sit well with Noreen and Billy goes wild, destroying things all over the store. Liversedge has seen the proof now. This time Noreen says to Billy, “You’ve been very naughty, Billy.”

Grimley wants to fire her now, Liversedge; however, does not want that. Have you ever heard of a Poltergeist? Strange ghost-like behavior that always happens around troubled teenagers. That’s what Liversedge thinks they have here and the girl needs help not firing. He also knows that sometimes the kids know its them and sometimes they don’t, but he’s sure that Noreen is aware now.

Starting tomorrow, you will all be nice to her, and it’s all going well until a new potential cashier arrives to apply for the job. Grimley likes the cut of her jib and engages her in an innuendo-laden job interview process straight out of another corporate training film.

This does not sit well with Noreen and Billy goes ballistic. Products fall, burst and explode. The job candidate is rushed out of the store and, in a fit of pique, Grimley fires Noreen on the spot. He justifies it to Liversedge as a matter of customer safety and to be fair to him, it’s the first competent thing he’s said this whole time. Customers were in danger.

Later, as one of the customers is explaining to Grimley that it’s good riddance that Noreen is gone, she had the look of evil about her, Billy starts acting up again, causing a can to fly through the window destroying the help wanted sign in the window. Across the street in the coffee shop, Noreen sits, staring.

Liversedge arrives and goes to talk to her. Let’s go see your family doctor. No? Better idea, I’ll go get him, you sit here.

Grimley, alone in the shop, is tasked with watching her while not letting her see him. Soon, Billy is knocking things off the shelf and Noreen is standing right outside the door. In anger, Grimley runs at her, hurling abuse and manhandling her, demanding that she admit that she’s the cause of all the destruction.

…and then things go poorly for Mr. Grimley. No longer content with just knocking things off shelves and bursting boxes, the cans of food become projectiles, pummeling him to death.

Later, as the body is taken out on a stretcher, Noreen says, “He loved me, really. He said so.”

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Routine psychiatric evaluation of people living and working in the hostile moon sounds straightforward and reasonable, but this is Star Cops, so why would you think that? John and Eugene discuss Other People's Secrets.

Episode Synopsis: 

On a return flight to the moon, Devis and Kenzy are rudely awakened by Spring’s latest hi-tech cop gadget: A phone. On the moon, Alexi is introducing the Safety Controller, Wolfhardt to Spring, just as the fancy space communicator blows up, much to Wolfhardt’s disdain.

Elsewhere, engineer Hooper is being a right asshole to his assistant, Anderson. He doesn’t like her, he doesn’t respect her and he shouts at her a lot. She puts in for a transfer, which Alexi denies. He suggests that she try again. Hooper is under a lot of stress.

Alexi also introduces Spring to his latest great idea. He’s asked a psychiatrist to come to the moon and interview everyone. He wants his command staff and the Star Cops to all mandatorily volunteer as a show of solidarity and confidence in the importance of the interviews with everyone on the base. Spring agrees.

Spring contacts David and forces him into a game of bridge. Wolfhardt apparently plays and Alexi is trying to smooth over his visit. That doesn’t go so well then the bridge table explodes on them during the game.

Back in the service corridors, Hoopers threatens Anderson with a projectile tool and she’s had enough. The Star Cops are called in and Hooper is just as unpleasant to them, but he also indicates that there’s a saboteur on the base. Which is the sort of thing you’d expect the chief engineer to have reported previously rather than just continue to be overworked having to fix everything. Spring assigns David, a qualified engineer, to help Hooper and to snoop around.

Upon returning to the moon, Kenzy learns of the mandatory voluntary psychiatric interviews and she goes into a strop. “I am NOT being analyzed!”

Devis, when he learns that Dr. Parr is coming runs and hides.

Spring picks up Dr. Parr and she’s immediately an obnoxious person, not at all the type person a patient would be comfortable talking with. She tries to ply Spring with her analytic jujitsu but does little more than provoke him.

Hooper tells David that the card table was wrongly wired, it looks like there really might be some sabotage.

The interviews begin with Anna Shoun, but it doesn’t last long when Dr. Parr learns that Colin Devis is one of the Star Cops on the base. She seems distracted and disturbed.

In the service corridors, David finds his own evidence of sabotage, a device keyed to his voice print. He takes his suspicions to Spring, but there is no proof Hooper was behind it.

Alexi and Wolfhardt, apparently old friends, have a heart-to-heart about the problems on the base. Then they take a moon buggy out to watch the Earth and drink vodka. They open up a bit to one another.

The next day, Parr reveals to Alexi that Wolfhardt divulged some of the things they’d spoken about. He is upset by this, and goes to look for Wolfhardt.

David was supposed to meet Hooper, but he’s not at the designated spot, and David suspects he was sent there so Hooper could avoid him. We see a saboteur in maintenance workers’ overalls and carrying Hooper’s toolbox tampering with things in the service corridors.

Kenzy still avoids her appointment with Parr, so Devis goes in her place. Dr. Parr is one of Devis’ ex-wives, and there’s still that joyous spark of antagonism between them, which does not stop Devis from trying to jump her bones. She rejects his advances.

We see the saboteur and it is Wolfhardt, who accidentally causes and explosion and decompression of the base. Anna and Alexi are trapped in the mess hall with several others, Spring and Kenzy are trapped in a small closet and Devis and Parr are trapped in Alexi’s office.

David, Hooper and Anderson, who steps up in the emergency, must don space suits and fix the damage before the people aboard the base die of asphyxiation.

Strangely, the service corridors have not lost air pressure and Wolfhardt is injured but not suffering from lack of air.

Trapped and facing death, Spring opens up to Kenzy and explains about how his father was a criminal and that he brought him to justice.

In Alexi’s office, after much prompting, Devis and Parr get down to having sex before they die.

When the base seals are repaired, the only way to get air to the survivors is to use the air in the service corridors and open all the internal doors manually. With everyone breathing again, Spring realizes that Wolfhardt must be the saboteur and was in the service corridors. They rescue him. Cracked, he didn’t even realize what he was doing.

Parr departs, his mission unsuccessful, but leaving Devis with a smile.

The End

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Episode Synopsis

Rudolfo’s latest assignment comes with a VHS copy of a snuff film. On it, a woman seemingly talks a man to death while babbling about a mother’s love. Dante’s job might be to bring her in. 

Cut to next scene where Dante has brought her in, along with her son, Ajit, to Lucretia’s dismay. This isn’t a passenger ship - lock him up. Those are Rudolfo’s standing orders. Ajit isn’t guilty of anything, but since Nasreen, the murder suspect and her son were alone on Mimas, and the facility is abandoned, with no way off and life support failing, Dante brought the boy along out of humanitarian concerns.

Percy has other concerns about Ajit, as she wipes the metaphorical drool from her face at the thought of a boy being on the ship.

Later, Percy spies on Ajit through the security system while Dante does the same on Nasreen. When Dante goes to deliver food to the prisoners, she manipulates the dolt into defying Lucretia’s reminder that the boy needed to be locked up. Dante sets the boy free and sends him to the observation lounge to get a look at the universe. She also convinces him to come back with better food for her. When Dante sees Lucretia he reminders her, in no uncertain terms, that’s he’s the captain and she’s never to “correct” him in front of the prisoners again.

Percy has learned that Ajit is free in the ship and spends an inordinate amount of time deciding what clothes to wear and exactly what to say to him should she happen to “accidentally” meet him in the observation lounge. Carravagio warns against her actions.

Returning with better grub, Nasreen uses the not-confiscated medical scanner on her wrist to scan Dante - and put the whammy on him. She makes suggestions like, letting her go, and when he disagrees, he gets a headache until he relents. Soon, he’s her puppet. Lucretia protests, but Dante tells her off.

In the observation lounge, Percy and Ajit are getting along famously. Ajit asks for Percy’s help so that he can get away from everyone and leave, Percy thinks that’s a wonderful idea: She’ll let him escape (presumably in the ship’s only shuttle) and they’ll go off together. It’s not what Ajit had in mind, but he’s a teenage boy and she’s throwing herself at him like a cat in heat.

Lucretia is worried and has Caravaggio scan the tape, he finds hidden material which conveniently explains the entire story. Nasreen was working on a project designed to make violent prisoners manageable by altering their brains with magnetic pulses. This lead to the subjects being unable to disobey an order or they would die. The project was ultimately abandoned and covered up. Luckily, Caravagio, a simple cruise liner AI is able to analyze the video tape and develop a defense against the magnetic pulses, allowing Lucretia to be immunized against Nasreen’s device.

Now immune, Lucretia starts by taking Ajit back to a cell… but not for long because Percy lets him out again so she can try to force herself on him. He likes it, but warns her that his mom is dangerous.

Nasreen, fully in control of Dante, seems to encourage her son to “enjoy” Percy, with an implication that soon she’ll be fully controlled, too.  

Caravaggio manages to separate Percy and Ajit by replaying her absolutely cringeworthy prepping for their “chance” encounter. It works, but… Percy, in an act of revenge, reduces Caravaggio’s processing capacity to that of an idiot - exactly the right thing to do to the control systems of your spacecraft.

Nasreen’s control of Dante is so strong that she can simply tell him that he’s dying and he can do nothing else except die. This effectively blackmails Lucretia into surrendering, and then getting an upper hand again. She tries to force Nasreen to undo what she has done, but, she points out, that’s why the project was abandoned - we couldn’t reverse the procedure.

But, if she could, it would only be back on Mimas. Bu they can’t go there because Caravaggio is stupefied. Until Percy undoes what she did. 

On Mimas, Nasreen does the impossible and undoes the damage to Dante - so, obviously, the project should never have been abandoned. Rather than be stuck with his mother anymore, Ajit apologies to Percy and kills himself. Nasreen, disconsolate, zaps herself with the mind control device and, without anyone to tell her what to do, has nothing to do.

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Movie Synopsis:
A man named Sam is spying on the movements of some shipping containers.  He makes a report, via telephone box, to the answering machine of an unknown confederate detailing that more containers have arrived and that one of them is “hot.”  Before he can finish, his car has been backed up against the phone booth and a killer gases him to death, destroying his photographic evidence at the same time.

On a cow farm, Ewan is the man who received the answerphone message from Sam.  Ewan, in turn, calls and leaves an answerphone message for Dr. Spencer Quist, alerting him to the situation.  Ewan goes out to gather more info.

Dr. Neil Tannerhill is a theoretical physicist at a major university in England, leading expert on black holes, protégée of Dr. Quist, and a man who’s about to move, along with his medical doctor wife, Meg and children to work at MIT in the United States.  He’s been receiving cryptic postcards from Quist, another of which arrives today, containing equations.  Unable to figure out what the equations mean, nor how to operate a telephone to call and ask Quist what they mean, Tannerhill poses them to his post-grads to see if they can figure them out.

They are unable to completely solve them, but posit that two have to do with black holes and 1 may be about pollution.

A team from Special Branch and Military Intelligence search the farm where Ewan lives.  They discover he knows about the latest containers and has been in contact with Quist.  Special Branch warns MI that Quist is too high profile,  a national institution – they’ll need higher clearance to do anything about him.

Ewan is camped out recording the arrival and offloading of the containers in a pouring rain.  One of the containers breaks free, falls and wedges sideways in the loading chute and starting a fire.  The workman use another container like a hammer to try to unjam it in.  This second container breaks open dropping highly-radioactive fuel rods and causing a huge explosion and release of blue radiation.

On the base, MI take over the search for Ewan, and Ewan just escapes with his camera as they close in on his hide.  He evades them till morning, when he encounters the farmer from the farm where he lives and works.  He passes the camera off to the farmer, then sets off leading them away.  He is captured by MI and taken on a one-way helicopter ride out to sea.

Next we meet Luke Godwin and Dr. Terry Reilly, members of the Animal Nation Warriors.  Luke has received a fax ostensibly from Ewan asking for help, but it appears to be the wrong handwriting, but that will have to wait.  They’ve got something big planned tonight, and it’s not just sex on top of a building.

That night, Quist meets up with Tannerhill and his wife at an awards ceremony held by Autogene, a private research firm.  At the event, Quist tries to convince Tannerhill that his research can be used for military or evil purposes.  Tannerhill denies that.  His work is theoretical and about black holes, which have no practical purpose.  Quist also tells him that Tannerhill’s work may be taken up by the Pandora corp and they’ve been taking in nuclear waste at a disused nuclear plant.  Tannerhill is introduced to Hugo Cox, computer genius with intel on Pandora.

During a speech, Luke hacks a video of animal cruelty to play on the screens while Terry interrupts on behalf of the Animal Nation Warriors, who storm in protesting.  Quist cheers them on.  They escape to the roof where… I think they may have had sex.

Quist is detained by “the authorities” and held without questioning all night by MI. When special branch find out, they release him and suggest he should file a complaint.

Zeist, boss of Pandora, arrives at the nuclear plant and demands a status from Toby Ross, chief scientist.  Ross starts to enumerate the casualties, but Zeist twirls his mustachio and cuts him off, “No, no, I don’t give a damn about that.  What about the plant?”

It’s bad, our black hole is oscillating and it’s going to bust things up and destroy the UK if we don’t give it more power from the electrical grid.  “Nope, can’t do that, PR disaster, and people would find out.  Find some other way.”

Terry and Luke follow up on Ewan’s fax the next day.  It was the farmer who faxed them.  He lost his daughter to radiation and called in Ewan’s people to investigate.  He turns over the recorder to them and they are horrified at what they see.

Terry tries to get the tape to Quist, while Luke decides to break into the plant and gather evidence.  Luke scales the building just as Hugo hacks into the plants security cameras.  He watches him enter an airlock and then approach the black hole containment area.  The intense gravity pulls him to his death.

MI is following Terry, with plans to kill her making it look like an overdose, she evades them and gets to Quist’s home, but he is not there.  She leaves the tape in his mail box, but then calls and leaves an answerphone message for him.  Unfortunately, his lines are tapped and MI are onto it.

Quist has gone to see Tannerhill.  He must take up the mantle of Doomwatch, there is no one else.

Toby Ross was Quist’s other protégée and he is working for Pandora.  Pandora is privately owned but staffed entirely by military nuclear experts.  They’ve collected over 2400 tons of nuclear waste from the Ukraine, some of it weapons grade, and there is no oversight or accountability on them at all.

If Ross’ black hole experiment fails, there are but two outcomes.  Vaporizing the UK or a China syndrome meltdown resulting in the total destruction of the earth in just 1,230 years.  Either would not be a good result.

Quist returns home, finds the tape in his letterbox, but, exhausted, falls asleep in the chair without listening to his answerphone.  He doesn’t hear a call from Hugo, either.  Hugo is trying to tell him about Luke, and when he can’t reach Quist, he tries Tannerhill, who is at church and also doesn’t get the call.

MI breaks into Quist’s home and rigs the gas to explode, killing Quist and destroying to only copies of the full Doomwatch master tapes, thus completing a job that the BBC only aspired to.

Hugo and Tannerhill receive Quist’s legacy – digital copies of the Doomwatch files.  The torch now passes onto them.

At the funeral Ross is there and Tannerhill quietly confronts him.  Ross confides that there’s a problem and Tannerhill demands he get him in to see it.  He agrees.

Later, as Tannerhill prepares to go in, Hugo provides him with insurance. A classic “if I don’t return in a few hours, this story will be plastered all over the news tonight.”

Terry, unaware that Luke is dead, breaks into the plant to find him.  Hugo spots her on the hacked security cameras and warns her to get out.  She doesn’t heed his warning, even when she sees that MI have spotted her and are in pursuit.  With Hugo’s help, they are tricked into the airlock and then through the door that lead to Luke’s death.  Like night follows day, the bad boys from MI meet the same fate as Luke.

Tannerhill immediately assesses the situation and concludes they need to throw more power at it.  Zeist objects, but Tannerhill’s force of personality overcomes all and, after blacking out the entirety of the UK, the black hole is brought under control.  But black holes are forever and this one, once created, will never go away, nor will the potential it will destroy the world.

They must be ever-vigilant.

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Episode Synopsis

The story starts on planet Skaraab, where an expedition seems to be fighting our way through an incredibly dense jungle. When they arrive back to their spaceship, it has been destroyed by the incredibly aggressive vegetation in only two days. They send as escape pod with women aboard, asking for her to go get a specific person.

It is the year 2104: the planet is Fort Hope (Correction: the planet is Avalon, the colony is Fort Hope) home of the space Rangers in this particular bit of galaxy and captain Boone has just returned with his crew from another exciting and dangerous missing. It’s just in time for Christmas with his family and he's even cashed in two months leave, so he can spend a lot of time with his wife and his little daughter. 

Unfortunately, that escape pod - yes, it was aimed at captain Boone. The woman onboard has never met him, but she's brought information from an old friend, an ex ranger named Decker. 

Boone knows he must go rescue this man before the second sun rises on the planet Skaga and burns the surface off. 

He collects his crew. First alien named Zylyn, who was a Graaka warrior, a particularly nasty piece of work. Next, his pilot Jojo, a woman from a planet where, according to one of the other crew, women aren’t women. Then there's doc his mechanic - a cyborg.

Finally, a new member of the crew to replace the Backman who got his leg shot off, and that's Daniel the Rookie. 

Oh, I don't think his actual last name is Rookie. 

They fly out in their sling ship - that would be Slingship 377 - and try to rescue the people on the planet. Unfortunately, along the way the ship is forced to leave lightspeed because of a strange imbalance, which turns out to be the woman who's stowing away.

About that time, they're attacked by the Banshees. The Banshees are strange creatures that exist in a world of their own physics. And they fight them off.

And they head out to the planet where they get to the planet and they find out that Decker is actually the bad guy of the piece. 

And he's planning to use them to capture the incredibly dangerous weapon that can rule the entire universe. 

And then there's some fighting and, uh, the story comes to the inevitable conclusion, which is of course the bad guy is killed, Boone and his crew make it back for Christmas. 

And everyone's happy ever after. 

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Episode Synopsis

On Earth, famous concert pianist James Bannerman plays live before an appreciative audience. On the moon, an unfinished medical area, an unseen interloper breaks into and steals fertilized embryos.

The crime is discovered almost immediately and the Star Cops are called in and the base locked down. Spring learns that this is a political hot potato. The embryo’s belong to Madame Assadi, a rich and powerful Saudi widow of a notorious arms dealer. They are being held to ransom for $50,000,000. These embryos are her only chance to bear an heir to her late husband.  

She is a major donor to the medical area on moonbase, and is likely to both pull her funding, and cause other funding to dry up. But there’s more, base Commander Alexi let’s Spring know, if this crime goes unsolved, he and Spring will be most likely be have to take the fall for it.

New Star Cop Anna Shoun is on guard duty at one of the remaining base entry/exist points and she is attacked and overwhelmed, while the assailant escapes.

With the assailant now presumed to have escaped the base, Madame Assadi, against Spring’s recommendation, returns to Earth where her “authorities” can look into the matter. When she’s there, she gets a call from the embryonapper who, to prove he’s serious, burns one of the three embryos in acid.

Anna is taking a lot of shit from Devis. She’s new, inexperienced, frail and he doesn’t feel she belongs on the force; however, she persevers and is able to put together a reconstructive image of her assailant. The funny thing is: He looks just like famous concert pianist James Bannerman.

The lead seems doubtful, at best, but then they turn up a motive. Bannerman is the illegitimate son of genetic researcher, Dr. Teal. Teal was doing private research into a new branch of genetics and had accepted large sums of money for his research, including money from Madame Assadi’s late husband. When the research was banned internationally, Teal had already spent the money. The European courts held that he was not required to return the money.

Assadi, not bound by European law or basic morality, had Teal murdered. David Thoreau is dispatched to the Earth to conduct a genetic matching of Bannerman to the material found at the scene of the crime.

Bannerman is incensed. He’s being confined by the police and he’s got an airtight alibi for the time of the crime and yet, he is an exact genetic match for the evidence at the crime scene.

Alexi caves to political expediency and lets Madame Assadi know that they have a suspect. She immediately dispatches her agents to Britain to kidnap Bannerman and bring him to her justice.

The kidnapper contacts Assasdi and, having still not received the ransom, burns a second embryo.

In London, David is injured and Bannerman taken by Assadi’s agents.

Spring begins to put the clues together. Teal, was estranged from Bannerman’s mother and his son, but he cloned Bannerman and raised him as his son elsewhere, unknown to Bannerman. This child, Albi Teal, must be the embryonapper. He goes to Earth, along with Kenzy, to convince her that Bannerman is innocent and should be set free, if he isn’t dead already.

She is unmoved by his pleas, but Kenzy manages to get her to let them see Bannerman. He never met his father and knows absolutely nothing about the matter.  

Assadi doubts any of this is true, but it doesn’t matter, because, in her “culture” if you cannot punish the criminal directly, you just punish his family in their place. Bannerman remains a prisoner, awaiting punishment for the crime.

On the moon, the team figure out that the kidnapper is still on the moon, in an abandoned mineshaft. With David injured, Devis must take Anna along as backup on the armed mission to capture the villain.

On Earth, the Embryonapper has called again for the third and final time. Confronted now with the truth that Bannerman is not the criminal, Assadi lets him go. Who am I kidding? Of Course she doesn’t let him go, she’s an evil, nasty person from a nasty, barbaric culture. Albi seems positively pleased that his brother, who cared nothing for their father, is going to suffer.

With Anna in the moon buggy on standby, Devis enters the mine and is immediately incapacitated by Albi. As he prepares to destroy the final embryo, Anna arrives and threatens to shoot him. When Albi calls her bluff, it turns out she wasn’t bluffing, and kills him. The embryo is saved and Bannerman is let free.

On the flight back to the moon, Kenzy contemplates the difficulties they’ll have with clones in the future, as she spies a dead ringer for Spring in a another row of seats.

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I thought this very short audio message would be the easiest way to reach all of you.

As always, I’ll start this with a heartfelt “thank you” to you, our Patreon Patrons, who help support and offset some of the costs of the podcast.

When you sign up to be a patron, you’re promised “early access to all episodes and more…” and it is that “…and more…” that is a perpetual area of concern to me.

What should that “more” be? That question keeps me awake some nights.

Let me run through my though processes here:

We have, in the past, released some patron-only podcast episodes. It’s no secret, though, that there are only a handful of you supporting the podcast, so producing full episodes, that never see the light of day beyond less than 10 people is a bit self-defeating. Our goal is to get more people listening to the podcast, and our listenership is very much driven by title.

Episodes that focus on big-name, popular shows like Doctor Who or the Prisoner get measurably more listens. These aren’t subscribers, these are hit-and-run listens based on search hits.

That’s why special episodes like Quatermass and the Pit were eventually released to everyone. They are ammo in the arsenal that needs be used. To me, though, that feels a bit like I’m cheating you. I hope you don’t feel that way, but I certainly understand if you do. For the foreseeable future that is likely to continue. Episodes designated patron-only mean “episodes not currently planned or scheduled to be released to the general feed anytime soon.”  

We’ve put together some videos, but the logic remains the same - they need a wider audience to drive more listeners to the podcast.

We’ve experimented with live-streaming the recording of episodes, but, simply not enough people turned up, for both the patron-only ones and the publicly-announced and available ones to justify the added complexity.

We’ve considered recording some or all of the podcasts on video instead of audio, and then producing a video-only version for patrons, but… why would you want that?

Oh, I know the trend in podcasts these days is towards video podcasts, but, I don’t know about you but that’s not how I consume podcasts. I listen to them in my shell-likes when I’m out walking or driving. Video just gets in the way.

I may be biased, but it seems like watching our faces talk for an hour is more of a punishment than a reward.

So, I have a few things I’m going to put out there.

For on thing, Simon and I have recorded podcasts on both the Peter Cushing Dr. Who movies, and they’re not on our current release schedule, but I can prepare those and release them to you, so look for that.

And another thing is a couple of “lost” episodes. Back in 2013, David and I started recording podcasts for an obscure (and awful) TV series, that we both liked when it first came out in 1993. Recording with David, at the time, was logistically very challenging, and it resulted in audio files that were difficult to edit satisfactorily. We recorded the first two episodes and then decided it was more trouble than warranted for the material.

I ran across those recordings the other day and, for giggles, loaded the files up in my current editing workflow and gave them a once over. In the end I was able to put together a passable edit, so I think I’ll put that out there to you as a bonus and a curiosity. I’ve yet to take a look at the second recording.

Fully understanding that we may never finish the series, I will send out to you, mid-next week, our podcast of the pilot episode of the short-lived 1993 TV series, Space Rangers.

Also, one last thing. This one is strictly optional and completely a freebie for you folks.

Back in 2014, I wrote a novella which was an adaptation of a couple of scripts I wrote in 1998 for a local TV production. It was a space-adventure parody and the novella is entitled Spacefall. It’s available on Amazon, and it’s in top 6 million in actual printed books and it’s cracked the top 5 million best sellers in the Amazon Kindle store.

Drop me a note if you’re interested and I’ll send you a free copy of the eBook in PDF format.

Again, thank for being supporters of the podcast. Keep an ear out next week for the extra release of Space Rangers, and coming some time after that, the two Peter Cushing Dr. Who movies.

Until next time!

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Kenneth and Eugene discuss The Man Who Sold the World.

Episode Synopsis:

On Pluto, a bounty hunter confronts Mr. Kavon, he accuses him of being Dr. Novak, a wanted criminal, when he insists on a DNA scan to verify his identity, Belle, Kavon’s beautiful assistant, offers him cocktails, then shoots him dead with a gun concealed under the serving tray.

Aboard the Trans-Utopian, Percy is complaining about the food, and her homework, which she hasn’t been doing, but all the witty banter is interrupted by Rudolfo, who’s got a job for them. Every bounty hunter in the system is after Novak, who they all know is Kavon and that he’s living a high profile life as a metal supplier. Dante and team are ordered to get there quickly and take the prisoner.

There’s going to be a convenient plot complication though, every 28,000 years the Older Anomaly mucks about with Pluto and, by the most staggering of coincidences, the Trans-Utopian will only have 12-18 hours to get in and get out before the never-yet-observed-in-the-recorded-history-of-mankind anomaly hits Pluto.

Lucretia spends her travel time reviewing a Orchard briefing on the history of Callisto and the evil Dr. Novak who performed thousands of unethical and horrific experiments on the population before the Callistan rebels and the Lunar and Martian Alliances teamed up and overthrew the government of Callisto.

They arrive at Pluto and Lucretia is particularly gung-ho to bring Novak to justice. She was part of the troops that liberated an Callistan concentration camp and has seen the horrors firsthand.

Dante tries a clever ruse and pretends to be a metal buyer to gain access to the environment bubble on Pluto. Kavon lets him in, but it is the work of a few seconds to check the computer information and realize that the Trans-Utopian isn’t an ore carrier and that Dante is lying. He sends his goon, Rusty, to kill them, and his hostile AI program, Billy Ray, to disable the Trans-Utopian.

On the Trans-Utopian, Percy dances amongst the broken parts and bric-a-brac of the ship, when Billy Ray arrives. Caravaggio notices, but seemingly does nothing about it for a while, then when he does, he fails and Billy Ray takes over and starts destroying the ship.

Percy sulks about it and asks Billy Ray to leave. He doesn’t.

On Pluto, Rusty proves to be incompetent at his job as goon and is soon dispensed with, but not in any way incapacitated or restrained, by Dante and Lucretia.

Kavon sends Belle to kill them, and in a remarkably surprising moment of competence, Dante and Lucretia overcome her, too. This time retraining her, but she is soon set free by Rusty, who I previously mentioned was not restrained.

Confronting Kavon, they force him to take a DNA test to prove he’s Novak. He isn’t. But he sure talks like he is. They decide to take him back to the Trans-Utopian to run a full DNA test on him, although it is unknown to them that Percy is still sulking on the bridge while Billy Ray pilots the ship into the Older Anomaly.

On the surface, Belle and Rusty stage a rescue attempt. Rusty is killed, then Lucretia is taken hostage, then she escapes and recaptures Kavon. Dante threatens to kill him but Lucretia is especially keen to take him alive, in fact, the wants him to show her something - and they return to his lair.

Dante strikes up a friendship with Belle, shortly after Kavon inexplicably dumps her and headed off with Lucretia. Alright, friendship isn’t quite the right the word for it. Dante assumes that a women spurned is on his side. She says she isn’t, but he treats her like she is anyway. A little human kindness and compassion goes a long way.

We can dispense with the literally coyness now, Kavon really is Novak and he was conducting his experiments in an effort to unlock the Divinity Cluster. Dante and belle shows up, then Belle goes to get cocktails. She shoots Novak with the gun that she keeps under the drinks tray, and she gets killed by the bounty hunters.

They escape without the body.

Meanwhile, Caravaggio, who has spent most of the episode trapped inside a Nintendo GameBoy, asks Percy to turn on his anti-virus program, which she begrudgingly does, and Billy Ray is expunged just in time to come back and pick up Dante and Lucretia.

As they leave, everyone has a little time for a soliloquy.

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Movie Synopsis:

Nighttime on the Cornish island of Balfe and a grieving family bury the body of young girl in a shallow grave. This looks like a job for Doomwatch!

At Doomwatch’s ultra-modern, hi-tech command centre. Dr. Quist, and his staff, Dr. John Ridge, Colin Bradley and fan favorite Doomwatch team member, Dr. Dell Shaw, are reviewing the situation with regards to the island of Balfe. One year ago an oil spill occurred off the coast of the island, Dr, Shaw is being dispatched to the island to collect environmental samples to see how the spill, and the chemical detergents used to clean up the spill have impacted the ecology of the island.

Shaw arrives for an overnight collection mission and is met with the unfriendly locals, who don’t like outsiders. There’s no room at the pub, or the rectory, but the local police constable directs him to the Bothy, which he finds a room for the night, and the attractive, also outsider, school teacher, Victoria Brown. She’s also not particularly warm to Shaw and, when he spies an odd procession of people outside forcing a man down the path against his will, she closes the drapes and passes it off as folks “just going for a walk.”

The next day, while collecting samples, he spies a local watching him from a distance, with a shotgun. When he leaves his sample case behind to collect some gull eggs, he finds that his case has been disturbed, probably by his mysterious watcher.

Later, in the pub, he witnesses the locals interacting with each other. A simple disagreement over who pays the tab turns violence, but the constable quickly rushes the aggressor out of the pub.

Shaw sends his samples back to Doomwatch, then, over Quist’s objections, decides to stay a few more days on the island.

Later we see that the publican, Mrs. Straker, has her husband, who is obviously ill, locked in an upstairs room.

The next day, Shaw is playing shutterbug, taking pictures of all the locals without their permission, until Mrs. Murray tells him off for his rude behavior. He agrees to stop unless he gets permission first. On his way back to the Bothy, he finds two dogs fighting over something. When one runs away, Shaw tries to shoo off the other, but it attacks him savagely, but without injuring him at all. He digs into the ground to see what fascinated the dogs and finds the body of a dead girl, which he caresses rather disturbingly.

He reports it to the constable, who rushes to the scene, but the grave has been emptied and filed in. He dismisses Shaw’s concerns as being a mistake. Meanwhile, Mrs Straker, with the landlady’s complicity, searches Shaw’s room to find out what he’s doing. She also destroys his film.

Shaw has gone to Victoria Brown. He is visibly shaken by the revelation of the dead girl. While she seems disturbed at the news, she still won’t help. She’s an outsider, and she needs not rock the boat to be able to function. These people have enough problems already.

Back at the pub, Shaw overhears Mrs Straker talking with the Vicar. Maybe we should tell Dr. Shaw what’s happening. Maybe he can help?

“No,” says the Vicar, “this is God’s Devine plan.” 

“But maybe God sent Dr. Shaw?” 

“No, God is not so trivial as to use scientists to do his work.”

Later, Shaw tries to get Mrs. Straker to open up, but she doesn’t.

At Doomwatch, they’ve analyzed the samples and it’s all a bit weird. Everything seems to have an unnatural abundance about it. Quist asks for some fish samples. 

That night, Shaw sees the late night walking party again and this time follows them to an old barn. When they leave, he hears animal sounds inside and sneaks in. He is confronted with a disfigured man who attacks him and brutally beats him.

He awakes the next morning with Victoria looking over him. He was found on the beach, they said. He must have fallen trying to collect samples. He takes her to the barn, but the man is no longer there. He convinces her that he needs help to help these people.

Victoria gets a fisherman friend on the mainland to help collect fish samples since the locals will not. The samples are unusually large, and the fisherman comments that they’re all like that around the island, but the locals don’t export them and keep them for local consumption. The fisherman also takes them near Castle Rock, which is a prohibited area by the Royal Navy. It’s been that way for about 8 or 9 years. It’s on the opposite side of the island from the oil spill.

Returning to Doomwatch, the fish samples reveal that they have unusual levels of pituitary hormones. Excess pituitary hormones causes a disease called Acromegaly, the symptoms of which match the physical abnormalities of the islanders. Abnormalities that Shaw had assumed were from in-breeding. Just one problem, you can’t absorb pituitary hormones by eating them. Unless, it was a chemically modified substance.

Shaw goes to the Admiralty and speaks with Sir Geoffrey, who was in charge of the Navy dumping in the area. When he confronts him with the possibility that the Navy was dumping pituitary hormones into the sea, he dismisses the notion. We didn’t dump dangerous pituitary hormones into the sea, just safe radioactive waste. You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Quist sends Ridge back with Shaw to get underwater photos of the dump. Ridge finds the nuclear waster and also canisters of something else. Canisters which are popping open due to their proximity to the radioactive waste.

Shaw goes back to the island to try to convince the islanders to… do something… cooperate, I’m not entirely sure, While the rest of the Doomwatch team cause international incidents when word of the contaminated fish gets out. The also track down the canisters to a chemical company.

Ridge questions Sir Henry, head of the company. Yes, we did attempt to make a feed additive based on Pituitary hormones, but it failed and we disposed of the chemicals properly, by awarding the disposal contract to the lowest reputable bidder.

That company is based on the mainland, just across from the island of Balfe. Shaw and Victoria go there and collect an as-yet undisposed of sample of the chemical and give the owner the the company a bit of a tongue lashing for their irresponsible dumping.

On the island, Shaw tries to setup a meeting to discuss the issue with the islanders. They are getting distinctly hostile towards him. On his way to the meeting, he encounters young Brian Murray, grandson of the man that was in the barn. He too is getting the uglies and has been the person watching Shaw. He decides to trust him and agrees to go to the meeting.

At the meeting, Shaw explains Acromegaly, using Brian as his lab dummy, and he explains that it can be cured! You just need to go to the mainland for treatment for a year or so. Quist has a medical team ready to arrive. But they refuse to have their way of life destroyed, and when Shaw tries to call Quist to send in the team, they bring in some of the uglier of the uglies and threaten to kill him. But they don’t, and the police and medical team arrive and evacuate the island.

Chalk up another victory for everyone’s favorite Doomwatch team member, Dr. Dell Shaw!

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This week we look at In Warm Blood.

Episode Synopsis

 Spacecraft Pluto 5 is returning to the moon on automatic, but the crew are not responding to moon traffic control. The Star Cops’ David Thereaux investigates and discovers an intact spacecraft and a completely dead crew. They have mummified in the months since their death.

On an orbiting space research platform, a woman watches the news about Pluto 5 and cries.

Pluto 5 is owned by Japanese pharmaceutical giant, Hanimed, and they’ve run interference, preventing Spring from sending a boarding team until they send a corporate doctor to lead the investigation. Having been delayed for 48 hours, Spring is not happy about the situation when Doctor Shoun arrives, and even less happy when the Moonbase commander, Alexi, asks Spring to personally go check on a dear friend of his: a research scientist named Kristina Janssen, who hasn’t responded to routine communication for two days. Janssen is a biochemist working along on an orbiting space research platform.  

Spring must send Kenzy in his place, along with David, to board Pluto 5. What they find is a very hot spacecraft, over 41º, and the crew all dead, as if they died instantly. At first, it seems as if one of them is missing, but his body is soon found, too. He was attempting to repair a busted thermostat. Dr. Shoun doesn’t know what killed them, she is just a general doctor, not a forensic pathologist. It’s possible there is an invisible pathogen about the ship, and they treat it with full quarantine procedures.

Aboard the space platform, Spring finds the platform to be unusually hot. He also finds Dr. Janssen’s corpse, sitting in her chair. She hasn’t been dead long, but she intentionally stopped checking in two days ago. Spring suspects suicide, but it is unclear how she died.

Devis does a background check on Janssen and they learn that Janssen won a Noble prize for her research with space medicine, but later was the subject of controversy when it was learned that her human clinical trials had been on unwitting participants. Janssen worked for Hanimed.

Shoun reports back to Hanimed’s CEO, Richard Ho, that she recommends that the ship be destroyed with all aboard as a precaution. Ho seems pleased with that result.

The autopsy on Janssen shows that all her blood clotted at once and Spring has a working theory. Janssen learned of the fate of Pluto 5, knew something about it, destroyed all the information on her computer system, cut off communications and committed suicide. Spring suspects that Hanimed was testing medicines on the crew of Pluto 5 without their knowledge and Janssen, wracked with guilt, used whatever killed the crew on herself. He suspects it is the iron supplements supplied to the crew by Hanimed.

He confronts Shoun, trying to get her to betray her company, which is like her father and mother to her. She refuses and accuses Spring of using people. She leaves the moon and returns to Tokyo. This accusation hits Spring hard. Does he exploit people? Box thinks so.

On Earth, Shoun questions Ho, She wants to know if there is a connection between Pluto 5 and Janssen. He warns her to back off and calls on her unswerving Japanese cultural loyalty to the company to keep her in line.

Spring sends Devis to Earth to snoop around Hanimed, but he is immediately captured due to extreme incompetence. 

Soon after this, Dr. Shoun also infiltrates Ho’s office, with considerably more success. She is able to use his computer to find the connection. The crew of Pluto 5 was used as an unwitting test group. She calls Spring to tell him what she found out, but he’s mostly asleep, and she’s got an accent, and then she’s captured by security, cutting off the call.

Ho gives Shoun a dressing down. She is fired, barred from the company, her career is ruined and, he reminds her, Janssen knew the right way out of the situation. Shoun should follow suit.

Spring returns to the space platform where he is conducting tests on the mice that were left behind. It is here that Kenzy reaches him with word about Devis’ capture, and the demands of the Japanese government that Spring travel to Earth and personally apologize to Ho in a humiliating way.

And then the mice die.

Spring goes to Tokyo and surprises Ho at his club, in the steam room. Before introducing himself, he gives Ho some tea, then he confronts him with his suspicions. Ho admits nothing, but reminds Spring that he has no proof and Pluto 5 was destroyed. Spring lays out his suspicion. The drug was a failure because, if the temperature gets over 41º, the blood in the patient instantly clots. The Pluto 5’s thermostat broke, condemning the crew to death. Janssen committed suicide by administering the drug to herself and turning up the heat on the platform.

Spring plays bad cop and beats up Ho a bit. He also turns the thermostat up in the steam room, bringing the temperature dangerously close to 41º. He tells Ho he put the drug in his tea and when the temperature goes over 41º, he’ll die. Ho breaks down and admits what he did. Spring admits that he lied about putting the drug in his tea.

Back on the moon, the Star Cops learn Spring has recruited a new Star Cop: Dr. Anna Shoun.

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Kenneth and Eugene discuss the Siren's Song.

Episode Synopsis: 

A luxury sailing ship passes too closely to the Ganymede Ultra prison and is overtaken by desperate escaping criminals escaping from the facility.

Montana and the gang are sent to gather up escaping prisoners for the bounty, but when they overtake the hijacked ship, Petrakis, leader of the criminals kills his compatriots rather than let Montana have the bounty because, you know, he’s evil, and he apparently likes to inflict pain.

Petrakis was able to inflict this pain because Montana was, basically, an idiot, and when Lucretia calls him out for it, acknowledging that she’s right, and he quits. And Percy does, too. Right after they deliver their one remaining prisoner.

En route, the are commandeered (completely legally) by a military type, Major Bartlett, escorting a dangerous female prisoner somewhere top secret. Percy, of course, rebels in every way she can. An incredibly convenient and well-timed space anomaly damages the Trans-Utopian, and allows the female prisoner to escape. She releases Petrakis, perhaps on purpose, perhaps not. She does weird things, and exhibits weird powers, slowly eliminating the soldiers as she goes. She also mucks up the navigation of the Trans-Utopian, locking it on a course for the Uranian moon, Miranda.

Percy, once again acting stupid beyond her years, decides not to fix the navigation systems, and goes walkies where she manages to bumble from one escaped prisoner to another. First, she encounters the female, who pronounces Percy “good.” As a reminder, this is the prisoner who released the dangerous lunatic Petrakis, has sabotaged the ship and has slaughtered the soldier. Percy then tucks her into bed and plays music videos for her.

Percy then bumbles into Petrakis, who takes her prisoner as a bargaining chip.

Bartlett reveals that there is a secret base, Phoenix, in orbit around Miranda. It was completely quarantined many years ago because of the Omega 47 virus, which killed everyone. Recently, his prisoner, who goes by the name Ire, left that base on a shuttle, desperate to arrive at Earth. There were escorting her back to the quarantine. It seems that’s where she wants to go, too, as when they arrive, she heads back into the quarantined station.

Petrakis, enamored of his savior, also wants to follow her, taking Percy with him. Bartlett doesn’t care about Petrakis, and goes after Ire. He should have cared, because Petrakis shoots him in the back just before he can apprehend/kill Ire.

Meanwhile… Miranda, the entire moon, decides to explode.  

Ire is apparently a manifestation of an alien virus (Omega 47, perhaps?) that was unlocked when tapping the water ice on Miranda. It spread to humans and became sentient, thriving on the human sensation of pain, but now, it’s had enough pain and it dissolves itself, taking Petrakis with it, just before Miranda explodes.

The Trans-Utopian escapes just in the nick of time and it’s business as usual - the subplot of Dante and Percy quitting all forgotten.

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Episode Synopsis:

Things are getting all evangelical at a church hall meeting of the women of Housewives, a group of mothers concerned about permissiveness, filth, perversion and sex ed classes for kids by long-haired liberals.

And then, the Minister is assigning Doomwatch to look into the matter. There are growing calls for a re-introduction of stricter obscenity laws and the Minister thinks Doomwatch should look into the issue of “Moral Pollution.”  

Quist is unable to see the relevance to Doomwatch’s mission, until he realizes, and the Minister confirms that this is all about political expediency. The Purvis Sub-Committee is looking into the issue, and Doomwatch should, too. Afterwards, if they conclude nothing should be done to change the laws, that would probably fit the political situation the best for all around. The Minister also lets Quist know that they’ve appointed his wife, Dr. Anne Tarrant to the Purvis Sub-Committee. Well, at least we know that Quist and Tarrant’s pillow talk doesn’t revolve around their working lives. Try not to picture Quist and Tarrant having sex in your mind.

As Anne begins to attend the committee meetings, she meets the other members, Lord Purvis, who seems a fair-minded and thoughtful committee chair, the Reverend Garrison, Mrs. Cressy, a clean-up campaigner and thinly disguised stand-in for Mary Whitehouse, Professor Fairbairn, a Psycho-sociologist, Steven Grainger, Educationist and Dick Burns, pop star. Their remit: To look over the laws of other countries, to study the legal analyses of these laws and their effectiveness, to review scientific research, to screen and analyze materials that might be considered obscene and then to render a recommendation back to the Parliamentary committee as consideration for potential parliamentary action.

Pressure starts early as Dick Burns is accosted by Mrs Catchpole, organizer of the local chapter of Housewives we saw earlier, and another thinly-disguised stand-in for Mary Whitehouse, as she tries to convince him that there will be blood if action isn’t taken to stop obscenity. Burns is the “swing vote” on the committee. He is also clearly upset by the woman.

Later, we see the Housewives protesting outside a play that features some naked people and sexy time, just as Anne Tarrant arrives to take in a play. They plead with her to think of the children and not go in! But when she continues to enter, violence erupts and Mrs. Hastings, one of the protesters, assaults Anne and hospitalizes her.

In hospital, Quist is now ready to put Doomwatch on the case, but Anne is more interested in why that meek-seeming woman could turn to violence. Quist promises to find her so Anne can ask her. Quist puts Neil Stafford on the case to find both Mrs. Hastings and Mrs Catchpole.

Neil isn’t having any of this because he’s got good, wholesome values and he already knows what Quist thinks about the subject despite them never having discussed it before. Stafford would shut this liberal permissive nonsense down.

With fist or gun? Asks Quist.

Laws, responds Stafford.

So, Legal fists and legal guns.

Nonetheless, he executes the assignment with efficiency and locates both women.

Back at the committee, the educated members point out that lack of education, experience and knowledge of human sexuality is creating an environment that is being exploited for capital gain, but is that a problem because, exploiting ignorance isn’t illegal. Educated people would laugh at most of the claims marketers make, but it isn’t illegal.

Next the committee watches a sex film. Burns finds the film unbelievable and funny.

Tarrant begins interviewing Mrs. Hastings. She feels terrible for what she did, so she agrees to a little psychoanalysis to find the underlying cause. She’s a single mother, with a troublesome 9 year old son, and a husband who left them two years ago. It wasn’t a good marriage. She’s so lonely and she took to hanging out with the Housewives group because it seems a way to help get her son back on the straight and narrow.  

Tarrant probes her sex life and reveals that she was (and is) ashamed of sex. That she felt her parents would find sex disgusting. That she was, in fact, unprepared by her parents and her education to deal with her own sexuality and lacked the mental tools needed. She leaves and does not come back when Anne asks her to imagine her parents having sex, perhaps even doing something a bit non-standard. It’s clear she is stunted and maladjusted.

Back at the committee similar lines lines is being discussed. Children are born full of love, it is the parents that give them absolute rights and wrongs, to discriminate between good and bad, when instead what children need to be given the ability to analyze and meet all challenges on their own. Failure to do that allows evil men to exploit these people and that is the fault of The System.

Quist gives Bradley the assignment of putting all the source documents from the Purvis Sub-Committee into Doomwatch (the computer) and have it spit out a Doomwatch-type conclusion. Bradly points out that morality isn’t something that a computer can analyze and he cannot do it properly.

“Just do it as properly as possible,” says Quist.

“There is ‘properly’ and there is ‘not properly.’ There is no ‘properly as possible.’”

Quist doesn’t relent and Bradley sets about the task.

Stafford interviews Mrs. Catchpole and she is quite the talker, babbling on incessantly. She is racist, and longs for a strongman to take over and clean things up and it all keeps coming back to a man named Balentyne, who funds them and, we see, periodically crashes stages to make his points about obscenity.

The committee turns its eye towards violence, and they screen a film that was shown on the BBC, after the watershed. It is a documentary and it shows Nigeria petty criminals being executed by firing squad to an eager crowd.

Burns is devastated. Those we people. Real people.

Quist goes to see Balentyne - I’d call him a thinly-veiled stand-in for Nigel Farage, but even Doomwatch isn’t that prescient. (Farage was only 8 when this aired.)

Balentyne is a horrid, but candid upper-class-twit-of-the-year type. He is a multi-time failure at standing for parliament, and he quite honestly tells Quist that he wants to be the dictator and that he is intentionally exploiting the ignorance of these women - and other groups - to bring himself to power. He thinks his candor is one of his better qualities.

He also makes some valid points - I hesitate to say it - valid points about the relative injustice in the world. About how the headlines read in horror about sex crimes, but millions die in Pakistan unheralded. People are ignorant and people are selective in what outrages them. And why shouldn’t he exploit that? Everyone else does, why shouldn’t he?

[Narrator stepping back in here: When I said he made some valid points, that all stopped with “why shouldn’t he exploit that?” Just to be clear. Back to the recap.]

Back at Doomwatch HQ, Quist reminds us that Hitler was a joke 10 years before he was elected to Chancellor of Germany on a platform of breaking down democracy. Just like Balentyne is now.

The committee’s report is in, as is Doomwatch’s computer analysis. The committee votes along expected lines, with Burns being the swing vote. Final decision - leave the laws alone. Doomwatch’s analytical conclusion - leave the laws alone.

That seems pretty conclusive, yet somehow I doubt this stopped being an issue after the early 1970s.

The end, or is it?

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John and Eugene discuss "This Case to be Opened in a Million Years."

Episode Synopsis
Kenzy is finishing up some routine business, an Italian engineer has been caught in possession of illegal substances and sent down to Earth for prosecution. As she closes the file, a launch failure results in a nuclear waste freighter crashing on the pad. Full radiation alerts are sounded throughout the moonbase. David seems particularly upset. The alert is soon called off as no leaked radiation is detected.

Spring gets a call from the Personnel department. All space staff are periodically required to return to Earth for vacation. He can either start his 7 day vacation on Earth - NOW - or he can be relieved of command and shipped back to Earth - NOW. He reluctantly chooses the former and heads off, leaving David in command and with instructions to investigate the freighter crash.

The company is Italian, and the controller, Santanini, isn’t terribly helpful. His company accepts nuclear waste from Earth, stockpiles it on the moon, then sends shipments of it into space for disposal. He objects to the Star Cops inspecting the containers due to continued radiation leakage. This suits David just fine as he seems particularly uninterested in being exposed to radiation. Colin; however, thinks something is afoot. Unfortunately, with David unwilling to push very hard, the moonbase commander won’t overrule the ban on health and safety grounds.

On the flight to Earth, Spring is saddened by the prospect of his first vacation since Lee was murdered, but he soon meets a nice Italian lady named Leena and they hit it off. She convinces him to go to Italy, where she’ll meet him in a few days in the catacombs.

Rome is a bust, after two days of continual rain, Spring decides to cancel his appointment with Leena and go somewhere else on holiday. But he can’t find her contact info, and when he inquires with Kenzy to check the personnel records of the lunar mining company that she said she worked for, Sunzec, there is no record of her. Curious, he sticks around until the scheduled rendezvous.

On the moon, Santanini, the Italian controller of the Italian nuclear waste company makes contact with the controller of Sunzec, an Australian… of Italian descent. Something nefarious is afoot and they meet clandestinely in the cafeteria. Santanini must make good on his commitments and get the shipment moving. Santanini asks for some exploded blasting charges. Kenzy sees them, but does not overhear the conversation.

At the Catacombs, Leena doesn’t show, but the Italian engineer that was put off moonbase on drug charges is waiting for Spring and tries to murder him. Spring kills him.

Later, Spring consults with the local police detective in charge, an Italian, but he doesn’t promise much in the way of assistance. Spring plans to leave immediately and then discovers large amounts of money have been deposited into his account. Returning to his room, he encounters someone planting drugs in his room. When he tastes them to see what they are, he falls into a hallucinogenic stupor, during which the Italian police detective and an Italian photographer arrive and take Spring’s picture. When he awakes the next morning, he returns to the moon early.

On the moon, Kenzy and Colin are still suspicious of both the Italians and Sunzec. Spring returns and is given the blasting charges supposedly found at the sight of the accident. It was sabotage, probably by the same engineer that tried to kill Spring.

Spring is charged with corruption and David put back in charge. He declares the case closed, but Kenzy goes to Sunzec for a poke ‘round with Colin as backup. She discovered that Sunzec has found Uranium 235 and is selling it illegally to lesser nations. She’s captured, but Colin saves the day.

Spring use Box and discovers that the launch was planned to allow it to swing by an abandoned space station, perhaps to smuggle something off the moon. Despite being relieved of command, breaks into the supposedly radioactive waste and discovers it’s Uranium 235. Santanini followed him and is about to kill him when David, overcoming his fear of radiation, saves the day.  The Italians have been beaten, for now.

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Kenneth and Eugene discuss Family Values.

Episode Synopsis:

Rudolfo monologs at the captive audience on the Trans-utopian, it is unclear if they are hearing a word he’s saying. Time seems to weigh heavily upon them. Dante shuts himself in his room and engages maximum privacy protocols. There he hooks up to a neural device and enters a virtual world where his wife, Penny awaits.

Penny, it would seem, is an incomplete data simulation of Dante’s late wife. This, too, is breaking down and will cease to function, but for now, it is their anniversary and Dante is feeling the loss. Penny thinks she can feel their son, Travis, nearby. “Please find him, Dante, so I can see him one last time before I die again.”

Meanwhile, Percy, ignoring maximum privacy mode enters Dante’s room and seems him, seemingly unconscious, hooked up to the machine. She leaves without alerting Dante to her presence.

They arrive at Mars and Rudolfo gives them something more useful than a monolog, he gives them an assignment. Apprehend Etienne, a small time crook.

Etienne and his accomplice/lover Brad are running a computerized shell game, and cheating, of course. Rumbled, just as Dante and Lucretia arrive, they flee for their lives out onto the terraformed desert of Mars, but to no avail, Dante and Lucretia catch them.

At the same time a Raider ship arrives, attacks and kills Brad. Unable to communicate with the ship because of Mars’ turbulent terraformed atmosphere, they must flee - that is until Percy uses their Birdseye drone, specially modified with explosives, to destroy the Raider ship. In the wreckage, Dante finds a wounded raider and his captive “son.”

Raiders are former Black Galaxy Marines that were used for secret biological testing. Those that didn’t die became sterile and, apparently due to frustrated daddy issues, decided to become a force of privateers who steal children to raise as their own.

Dante immediately recognizes the 10ish year old child to be his son, Travis, who he last saw 10 years ago when he was a baby. Never mind that it doesn’t make sense, dads just have a natural instinct about these things. They take them all captive and continue to return to the city and their shuttle. Unfortunately, more Raiders are on their trail.

Back on the Trans-utopian, having destroyed the Birdseye, Percy has nothing better to do that use this opportunity to break into Dante’s room and hook herself up to the Penny Arcade. She comes face to face with her late Aunt, who compliments her, tells her she shouldn’t have come, and makes her forget everything she saw. Caravaggio, aware of what has happened, uses fruit ripening gases to awaken Percy.

Back on Mars, they’ve got a problem. The Raiders are coming, they don’t have weapons to fight them off, and, if they managed to get back to their six-seater shuttle, which easily flew four people in last week’s episode, they don’t have room to carry five people.

It is at this moment that Dante remembers he has a portable DNA paternity tester which takes only seconds to administer. He tests the boy, but the device is broken… or is it? He’ll definitely have to take the boy back to the ship, but they’ll never make it with the Raiders tracking them.

Etienne, disconsolate over the death of Brad, volunteers to stay behind with the injured Raider, waiting for the others to arrive, giving Dante, Lucretia and the boy time to get back to the shuttle.

When the Raiders arrive for them, Etienne actually has a weapon on him that both ruins the reception on my television, and also incapacitates - or possibly kills - all the Raiders, allowing him to escape.

Finally back at the Trans-utopian, DNA tests confirm what everybody except Dante already knew, the boy isn’t his. They head out to return him to his real family, but before they get there, Dante and the boy share a bit of surrogate father/son time that Dante so desperately craves.

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Episode Synopsis
For reasons never adequately explained, Dr. Anne Tarrant is visiting the Weatheroak Maximum Security Medical Research Facility where she is given demonstrations of a new, cutting-edge technological procedure being tested on psychiatric patients. The Director, Dr. Hetherington and lead psychiatrist, Dr. McEwan are very proud of their technological marvel: Electronically stimulating the pleasure centers of the human brain to modify undesirable behavior. Dr. Tarrant is horrified by the obscene abomination.

She uses her “insiders track” to Quist to try to get him to look into it, but he insists that it doesn’t sound so bad and, anyway, it is absolutely not within Doomwatch’s remit.

Hetherington visits the Minister. His treatment is 100% successful, but he’s facing a lot of kickback from old-school Freudian psychiatrists who are threatened by his new, no-therapy treatment. There’s an appropriations meetings coming up next week and his technique could save immense amounts of money to the healthcare system. We wouldn’t want anything to go wrong.

What could go wrong?

“Oh, did I mention, one of those old-school Freudians stopped by my facility and didn’t like what she saw. It was Doctor Ann Tarrant.”

The Minister’s face is priceless. Soon, he’s on the phone to Quist, just to let him know he’s thinking about him and, we wouldn’t want any setbacks in Dr. Hetherington’s work.

Now, Quist is interested.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tarrant is talking with Dr. McEwan. She wants to evaluate his patient, Mr. Beavis, a violent sociopath “cured” by his technique. Beavis has been fitted with radio receivers - when his brain starts to exhibit violent patterns, he is pacified by the computer. Beavis is eager to talk with Dr. Tarrant - he is very proud of his cure.

Tarrant takes him for a walk on the grounds and pushes him about his background. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but rather wants to talk about his treatment. She continues to push and he gets violent. Back in the control room, they watch as the computer pacifies him, unknown to them in the struggle he we disconnected from the receiver. Dr. Tarrant falls and hits her head, and Beavis, panicked, runs to escape.

Later, Beavis rips the remaining equipment off and throws it away. Finds a small farmhouse and takes a woman and her children hostage at shotgun point. He is beginning to confuse the woman with his wife, whom he murdered. He is waiting for Dr. McEwan.

When McEwan arrives, Beavis releases the hostages in exchange for McEwan coming into the house with him.

While Quist, Tarrant and the police wait outside, they hear the sound of a shotgun.

McEwan comes out. Beavis killed himself with a shotgun blast to the heart. He also left a final will, leaving his brain to Dr. McEwan so that he can figure out why he went wrong.

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John and Eugene discuss Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits?

Episode Synopsis:
A salvage ship scores big. They find cargo module drifting on a course into the sun. They retrieve it, hoping to return it for a reward from the owner or salvage of the scrap. They’re also not above fudging the logs a bit to make it appear to have been a hazard to navigation, allowing them to collect a reward for clearing the hazard.

On Earth, Dilly Goodman contacts the Ronald Reagan space station, trying to reach her brother, Harvey, but they have not record that he ever existed, and even the module Z-13 that he assigned to never existed.

On the moon, Kenzy is not happy about the job duties she’s been assigned now that she’s back in the Star Cops. Spring clearly doesn’t trust her or want her on the force and is trying to make it miserable enough for her to resign. But she won’t. 

Spring is on his way to the Ronald Reagan to try to convince the Americans to allow him to replace Hubble, the American Star Cop that was caught on the fiddle in the previous episode. Second in command, David, must meet with the next Moonbase Coordinator, a Russian, who is replacing the previous coordinator that left after being rumbled for a crime by Spring and the Star Cops two episodes ago.

On the Ronald Reagan, Spring meets with American Commander Griffin. Griffin is a royal grade-A1 asshole as well as a comically stereotypical American. He’s not happy that Hubble was forced to resign. He doesn’t want “internationals” on his space station. He doesn’t trust Europeans, and he even thinks Spring has played into the Russian’s hands by having the moonbase coordinator replaced. He’s not going to cooperate, the State Department isn’t going to cooperate, and he’s going to make Spring’s stay as miserable as possible.

Dilly Goodman calls Star Cop HQ on the moon and talks to Kenzy. She explains that her brother has not only gone missing, but that everyone tells her that he never even existed. All this under the watchful eye of the new moonbase coordinator. Kenzy leaves for the Ronald Reagan to investigate.

She’s met by a distinctly cold shoulder by Spring because, not only is she not doing her assigned job, she still hasn’t resigned, but she also didn’t do a very good job of preparing for the case before leaving. She, and the others back on the moon, think there’s something fishy going on. Someone is manipulating things, possibly the Russians. There is literally no computer records of a Harvey Goodman existing anywhere. Ever.

Realizing this is a massive attempt to erase the man, Spring decides they need to look into this further. He lets Kenzy stay when it turns out there’s one person happy to see her on the Ronald Reagan - the American Commander, who like to show her fun ways to use his pool table.

Spring lets Kenzy endure a decade’s worth of #MeToo experiences while he breaks into the commanders office to study his computer files.

On Earth, David has gone to interview the sister. Her house is vacant, and he is knocked out from behind by someone working for Griffin.

On the moon, the salvage operators file their claim and move the capsule, designated Z-13, into a moonbase hanger to open and salvage.

When Griffin discovers Spring was in his office, he realizes the game is up. He offers Spring a deal - you forget Goodman and I’ll allow Star Cops on this base. Kenzy saves the day by recording that attempt at quid pro quo and forces Griffin to tell them what’s happening.

It goes something like this: Goodman was working, in an unauthorized capacity, on microbiology - something that is forbidden on the Ronald Reagan as too dangerous. Goodman discovered (or engineered) a space bug that could survive the vacuum of space, but accidentally released it, and getting himself killed. The Americans sealed up the capsule and dropped it towards the sun. Believing that no one would ever believe it wasn’t a US backed bio-warfare project, they decided to cover it up, erasing Goodman from all records, because they knew he had no family. So who is the so-called sister? She has completely disappeared, but Griffin believes that she is a Russian provocateur trying to use the Star Cops into embarrassing the Americans. Coincidentally, Hubble knew about this cover-up and had been blackmailing Griffin to keep silent.

With the Russian moonbase coordinator watching, the salvage people cut their way into the capsule.

Back on the moon, Spring receives a call from the “sister” and it turns out she’s not a Russian, she’s the press. He cuts a deal with her and she uses the power of the press to strong-arm the American’s into allowing Star Cops on the Ronald Reagan.

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Episode Synopsis:

Lucretia is helping Percy with her martial arts training. Important stuff, since Percy has entered a competition on Mars, their next port of call. One problem, Dante knew about neither the training nor the competition - of which neither he approves. Family drama ensues, leading to Percy and Dante refusing to talk to each other like a pair of children.

But no time to resolve that, Rudolfo calls, he’s got an easy assignment for them: escort two dangerous prisoners, already in custody, from Mars to the new maximum security prison on Mercury.

This new prison is only for the really, top-tier criminals. Fully automated and located on the permanent sunnyside of the planet. With no guards, there is no one to assist, bribe or take hostage in an escape attempt, and no way to survive outside for more than a few minutes if they did.

The police have no love lost with bounty hunters, and so they jerk Dante and Lucretia around. When they arrive to pick up the two prisoners, there’s only one. Much to their inconvenience, they must take the first prisoner back to the Trans-utopian, then leave him there while the two of them return to pick up the second one.

The first is a handsome young man, who is locked in a holding cell aboard the the Trans-utopian. As Dante and Lucretia leave to get the other, Dante warns Percy to stay completely away from this prisoner. Don’t even talk to him. He is highly dangerous.

No sooner than Dante and Lucretia leave, Percy is down at the cells having a heart-to-heart with the silver-tongued, murdering criminal.  When Caravaggio attempts to intervene for her safety, she hacks him into forgetting all about it so she can continue.

Back on the Mars station, the second prisoner escaped from the cops, and Dante and Lucretia must chase him down and capture him. The whole process, of course, took a whole lot longer than anticipated and during their absence, the prisoner, Jeremy, really wins over Percy.

On the flight to Mercury, Percy continues her secret visits to Jeremy. He uses her doubts about the incorruptibility of the criminal justice system to sow the seeds that he’s not really guilty of the things he’s been convicted of. While he doesn’t even try to get her to let him free, he does convince her to give him her camera, which is capable of recording and projecting a three-dimensional image of a person, then program it to say and do things. That way, he’ll have recording of her to remember her by in his long, lonely confinement on Mercury.

The orbit of Mercury will be tricky, Percy will need to change the orbit several times to keep the Trans-utopian in the penumbra or the planet, so she must stay aboard the ship and remain diligent. Instead she sabotages the ship and play act out her leaving the ship and running away with a Jeremy using hologram projections.

In another foolproof security component of the prison, people must arrive on the dark side, then a special, fully-automated, high-temperature resistant shuttle picks them up and transports them to the prison.

On the way, our villains start to get cocky, because they know something our heroes don’t. There’s an armed man up front, who shows himself. Forced to surrender their guns, they are tossed out on the sunnyside to die, while the shuttle returns to the Trans-utopian. To make matters worse, there wasn’t a guy, it was a hologram, and they make sure Dante knows it was Percy that made it all possible.

When the prisoners return to the ship, Jeremy tells Percy that Lucretia died in an accident and Dante is critically wounded and needs immediate medical attention. Against Caravaggio’s warnings, she lets them in. Jeremy immediately knocks her senseless - well, even more senseless than she’s been throughout the episode, but she’s able to come around enough to use the holograph projector to distract them, and escapes. She starts to sabotage the ship even more.

Things are looking bad for Dante and Lucretia, until they aren’t. The shuttle returns to pick them up. They blow a hole in the Trans-utopian to get back onboard. Finally Dante and Lucretia come face to face with the two criminals in a Mexican standoff. Percy sneaks up behind the bad guys and surprises them enough that our heroes get the upper hand.

They are locked in the prison on Mercury.

Leaving Mercury, Percy apologizes, somewhat, to Lucretia, for, you know, doing things so stupid that she nearly got them all killed. Then she has a conversation with Dante and he seemingly gives her the opportunity to leave the ship if she wants to. She doesn’t and it’s all smiles and family time again.

The end.

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Episode Synopsis:

A vicar is giving a sermon. It’s a bizarre rambling assemblage of incoherent thoughts. But it’s not just scripture, it’s other incoherent thoughts, and then the vicar collapses. In the pews that day, Dr. Anne Tarrant.

Weeks later, Dr. Quist is relaxing on a Sunday afternoon at Anne Tarrant’s cottage, the vicar’s wife shows up to update Anne on the vicar’s condition. He had lead poisoning, of all things! She takes a few jabs at Dr. Quist’s atheism and makes some commentary on declining church attendance. Quist shocks her when he reveals he practically lives with Anne now. Anne lets her off her shocked horse by letting her in on a secret. Quist and Tarrant are married, but Tarrant has kept her maiden name.

Back at Doomwatch’s super-duper new high-tech headquarters, Quist puts Bradley on looking into how the Vicar got lead poisoning.

In the Minister’s office, his inside man in Doomwatch, Neil Stafford is playing politics. He’s warning the minister that having two insiders in Doomwatch is counterproductive.

Bradley and Barbara’s investigation turns up that the vicar was always renovating cars - a passion of his - and not only did he strip the parts in high-octane leaded gas, but the ground near his garage is highly contaminated with lead from the exhaust fumes.

You know, John Ridge used to tinker with high performance cars, maybe he had lead poisoning, too? Quist hopes to get Ridge out of the nuthatch, where he is being held after attempting to kill millions of people, so the team investigate the lead angle, while Anne evaluates his current mental state.

During the investigation, at Ridge’s rented mews, Bradly and Stafford meet Ridge’s landlady’s maid, who keeps an eye on the place. She learns from them that Ridge is in a sanatorium.

Meanwhile, Richard Massingham, industry tycoon, is wining and dining his old friend the Minister. He wants him to understand, fully, that the car industry is vulnerable. If they want to make cheaper and better cars, and sell more cars, they need lead to remain in petrol. Those over-zealous Europeans have started to ban leaded petrol and even the American’s have fallen for this hysteria - just because the air in Los Angeles is bad.

Later Massingham’s son is kidnapped. Clues lead the police to a rich lady in the country - one of the stockholders in Massingham’s company. Yes, she and her driver and his wife, her maid, saw the boy but they didn’t see anything suspicious happening.

Stafford visits Ridge on Quist’s orders to evaluate him and who should turn up at the same time to visit Ridge? The rich woman’s driver - or I should say, Ridge’s landlord’s driver - or more specifically, Ridge’s landlord’s maid’s husband. She - the maid - is the kidnapper and he’s gone to Ridge for help. Ridge, still incarcerated gives the info to Stafford.

It seems the maid’s son died of lead poisoning, which she now believes is auto-industry’s fault, so she has kidnapped Massingham’s son, who is about the same age. What are her intentions? Revenge killing? A mentally-unstable plot to replace her son with another child. It’s never really clear. Could she be suffering from lead poisoning, too? Doomwatch look into that angle.

Massingham wants the minister to publish something in all the papers saying lead in petrol is safe so the woman will release the boy, but the minister, while a political animal, does seem to understand that lead really is bad and demures at the idea. He does reveal that Doomwatch’s investigation into the kidnapping reveal that the maid’s son probably died of lead poisoning from chewing on his collection of old-time lead toy soldiers. They will be publishing that in the papers, perhaps it will help.

Back at Doomwatch and, as an aside, Stafford points out the other mole in Doomwatch to Bradley and suggests he fire him. Ridge is also released from the sanatorium and Stafford gives him a ride home. When Ridge gets there, he discovers the maid has been using his flat to keep the boy prisoner, so all’s well that ends well.

Also, industry makes a pre-emptive marketing strike and announce a 25% reduction in lead in their products. Quist points out to Anne, a 25% decrease still leaves a massive amount of lead being released into the atmosphere.

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Episode Synopsis:

On Earth, there’s trouble at the mill as a computer system goes haywire blowing up a chemical plant, but it’s not a total loss, it gives the BBC stunt team a chance to shine in the chaos.

On the Moon, Spring and David are preparing for a trip to Outpost 9, a remote location, even on the moon. As they prepare, they discuss the pending dismissal of two Star Cops, Hubble and Kenzy. Spring has determined that they are bent cops, David doesn’t think he has enough evidence.

Security at Outpost 9 is tight, and the visit seems almost pointless. Dr. Chandri, head of the outpost cannot tell them about the research they do, but he’s picked up some potentially troubling news through his research. An organization of anarchists are planning on blowing up a space shuttle. He knows nothing save that they are called the Black Hand Group or BHG for short. Spring has more than a usual copper’s knowledge of computers and works out that Outpost 9 must be working on an Intelligent Listening System - a computer system that taps into a vast amount of broadcast information, and uses algorithms to sift through it and pick up information of use to the intelligence community.

All this information could have been imparted over the com link, and Spring is certain Chandri wants to tell him more, but he gets nothing more.

On Earth, they’re having problems in the Chunnel. The computers have diverted two oncoming trains onto the same track causing the trains to collide at high speed, killing hundreds. Like the chemical plant disaster, strange poetry appears on the computer screens before the disaster happens.

Kenzy, one of the bent cops, unaware that she’s about to be fired, arrives on the moon to meet Spring for the first time. She’s come with a great idea. An Australian company makes these new weapons, just made for space warfare. Just exactly the sort of the things Star Cops could use. Spring isn’t interested. He plays back a video of a detained perp giving her a bribe and now she’s fired. But she’s an Australian and she’s not going to take this lying down. At this point, she meets Colin Devis, the newest Star Cop - he was pretending to be the perp that bribed her.

David is not happy, Devis also attempted to bribe him, although he passed the “test” with flying colors. He has words with Spring; however, Spring pre-empts his outrage with a promotion to second-in-command of the Star Cops. David gives Devis his first assignment, go to Earth and negotiate a contract to purchase the weapons Kenzy showed them bypassing her and any possible profit she’d get from the deal.

Box has turned up very little information about the BHG, so he returns to talk to Chandri, alone. When he arrives, the pieces start to fall into place. Chandri has “discovered” the computer worm and how it infects the computers. It’s installed in a small piece of circuitry at the manufacturing plant and lays dormant until triggered by an activation code - a line of poetry, “O rose thou art sick.” The computers affected were made at the Chandri family business. In fact, he developed it himself and has used it, killing the other members of the Outpost 9 staff. His Intelligent Listening System that he’s been developing for some government is a failure, which Spring suspected because of the poor quality information provided about the BHG. Now, rather than be found to be a failure, Chandri will destroy Moonbase 9, and all the evidence, along with Spring. Spring overpowers Chandri and kills him with one of the new space weapons - which, incidentally, Chandri also developed. With the base set to self-destruct, can Spring escape in time?

Back on Earth, Devis is returning from his mission to purchase weapons. Coincidentally, he gets a flight with Kenzy, who is returning to space because she loves it out there. Any friends that she thought she had in high places got pulled out from under her by Spring’s cagey purchase of high-tech weapons. Miracle of miracles, the information from Chandri wasn’t a complete waste of time, this just happens to be the shuttle that the BHG plan to hijack and destroy. Devis and Kenzy take on the hijackers and, in a find piece of fielding on the boundary, Kenzy uses her Australian super cricket powers to catch a glass globe contains a deadly pathogen.

With Devis and Kenzy the heroes of the day, Kenzy uses her time on the news to brag up how brilliant Spring was for planting them on the shuttle flight to prevent the disaster. Cornered, Spring (oh, who did escape from Outpost 9) must reinstate her.

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On a new show we're looking at here on Fusion Patrol, we join the dysfunctional crew of the spacecraft, Trans-Utopian, a luxury liner re-purposed into a a bounty hunter's ship.  That bounty hunter is Dante Montana, man of few words, his co-worker Lucretia Scott, woman with a secret agenda, Percy Montana, child in desperate need of a military academy in New Mexico and Caravaggio, the ship's AI computer.

Also joining Eugene on this journey is co-host, Kenneth from the Sundry Thoughts blog.

This time:  There's something big happening to humanity.

Episode Synopsis:
3,000,000 years ago, a thing in space approaches the Earth. Like an egg, it cracks and spews on the planet. This will probably be important later on.

In the year 2285 a plot is brewing. A beautiful women solicits a prominent scientist into a little bathroom sex, at the climax of the act instead of shouting, “oh yeah, baby that’s the spot” she screams “You will never suppress the divinity cluster!” and then she explodes. Literally. In a ball of fire, killing the scientist. Well, at least he died on the job.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft Trans-utopia is returning to dock around the moon. Due to the relativistic speeds of its flight, it has been away four years, but only three weeks by their internal time scale. On board, Captain Dante Montana, his niece Percy Montana, Lucretia Scott and the ship’s eccentric anthropomorphic computer interface, Caravaggio.

Montana is having a meeting with an old friend, a stereotype of a Scotsman known as McDuff. That meeting consists of punching each other and then drinking - the traditional, stereotypical Scott’s greeting. McDuff needs money and he’s dying of inoperable brain cancer. Montana, a bounty hunter, offers him a job on his crew.

Lucretia meets with a man named Darius, her father, and he gives her an assignment. She must track down a scientist named Eccleston. Eccleston had been researching a series of 4 “alien” genes discovered in the human genome - and when we say alien, we mean alien - as in extraterrestrial. Eccleston claimed he knew what it was all about, then went on the run. He is on the moon and they must recover him.

Darius appears to a part of a powerful, but not necessarily unified, cabal known as the Orchard. Darius wants Eccleston alive. Others want him dead.

While Montana gets his assignment via Lucretia, McDuff is also accepting a commission to locate Eccleston, and McDuff gets there first, but Eccleston is super-human, and is able to inject McDuff with something that will kill him unless Montana helps Eccleston escape the station.

He has them go to Earth, and somehow he’s able to get them there at problematically fast speeds.

In the ruins of Los Angeles, Eccleston makes a broadcast to… everyone? Telling of the transcendence of man through the Divinity Cluster, but the Orchard cuts him off before he can finish the message. As the team fight off the Orchard’s security forces, Eccleston transforms into… something else… but not before curing McDuff of his brain cancer.

For double-crossing them, Montana kicks McDuff off the ship.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Doomwatch episode, Public Enemy.

Episode Synopsis:
In the town of Carlingham a healthy young boy kicks a football onto the roof of a factory. With the help of a neighbor, he climbs to the top to retrieve the ball. In seconds, he is dying, unable to breathe.

Doomwatch are soon called in by a local Alderman, Mr. Paine. He’s been asking Doomwatch to check out the local metallurgical plant, Carlingham Alloys, which he thinks is a health hazard to the town. Now that a child has died, they finally agree. Quist even thinks they should have checked it out earlier.

Geoff Hardcastle studied at school with Tony Lewis, chief metallurgist at the facility. Lewis is a driven hothead. Just exactly the kind of guy who would skimp on safety of he could achieve his goal. Lewis is working on a new, super-secret and potentially highly valuable material, Superstar - an enhancement of their previous material Omnistar.

As Quist’s team investigate, the plant discover the boy’s cause of death. His football broke an exhaust pipe on the roof, which vented beryllium vapor, killing the boy. Safety procedures were in place, but they were not adequate to prevent this from happening. Lewis reminds everyone that the boy was trespassing and had no right to be on the roof.

Soon thereafter, another worker dies, from the same thing. This time in a different place. Again, safety procedures were in place, but we’re quite up to the job.

The shop union foreman would be happier if Doomwatch would make some suggestions for the safety of the plant, and management is entirely onboard. Only Lewis maintains that their precautions are good enough.

Doomwatch make their suggestions, and the plant manager assures them he’ll get head office to go along with it. Everyone is happy, until the head office decides to close down the plant rather than foot the £100,000 renovation bill. The plant just isn’t profitable enough. All the workers will be relocated to Leicester, given new company housing and work in their state-of-the-art safe factory.

Except nobody wants that. Alderman Paine is a local businessman who runs grocery stores and dry cleaners, and he’ll be economically stressed. The families don’t want to leave. The union workers don’t want to go, but neither do the want to be laid off for six months if the renovations get done.

Quist and Doomwatch are now the public enemy and are called before a stakeholders meeting to be raked over the coals.

Quist stands his ground: He offers some alternate suggestions, all of which would mean some pain for some segments, and are rejected. They ask the government to pay, but the taxpayers won’t have that.

Quist boils it down to a simple point: Everyone wants a cleaner world, but nobody wants to pay for it.

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John and Eugene discuss the Star Cops episode, Conversations with the Dead.

Episode Synopsis:
A freighter bound for Mars, the Daedalus, has a wee problem. Its engines have fired at the wrong time and the freighter and crew are now on an uncorrectable course. The crew, while still alive, are considered dead.

On the Charles de Gaulle Nathan Spring isn’t adapting well to zero gravity. At his age, he is unlikely to adapt. Box informs him that the only solution would be to find a place that has gravity. He starts scoping out offices on the Moon.

Back on Earth, Nathan’s girlfriend and lingering personal plot complication, Leah is watering the plants in his apartment. She receives a highly encrypted secure message from Nathan, although she never get the chance to read it. The message says, “Your life is in danger.” She doesn’t need to read the message to know that, though, as a man breaks in and murders her in the apartment.

Sometime later, Spring has returned to Earth, where he is interrogated by Police Inspector Colin Devis and Sgt. Corman. Devis seems to be more than a bit of a jerk, both to Spring and his assistant. The computers tell him that this crime isn’t special. Spring wants to conduct the investigation himself, but that idea is shot down by Devis. The message from Spring was a fake, but tracing it turns up as a dead end.

On the Moon, David Theroux has gone to see Star Cops new digs, he’s also investigating the Daedalus’ accident. Sentiment on the Moon, which has never had any Star Cops, is decidedly cold. One crewman, Fox, is particularly opposed to them, but a colleague just says it’s because he was formerly romantically involved with one of the Daedalus’ crew and he’s taking it poorly.

Everything checks out on the Daedalus, no cause for the accident can be found. Though Fox is unwilling to talk, he makes an indication that he knows what the “fault” was on the Daedalus. David is beginning to think this may be a crime rather than an accident.

On Earth, Spring has returned to his favorite restaurant to drown his sorrows. Sgt. Corman meets him there. She’s an up-and-coming officer that’s hungry to solve the case and show up Devis. She knows Spring has continued to investigate and hopes he’s turned up something that she can use. Spring isn’t particularly nice to her.

On the Moon, David interrogates Fox, demanding to know what he thought the “fault” was. Turns out, he thinks the fault was that people allowed a couple in a relationship to pilot the freighter. It’s against the regulations, but somehow people turned a blind eye or even aided in getting the assigned to the same flight.

Spring receives a message from the killer, saying that he’s next. Shortly thereafter, he gets a phone call. Someone claims to know who murdered Lee and wants to meet him in a park, at night to convey the information.

On the Moon, the moonbase Administrator, Paton, has had an idea. Part of the cargo were his experimental human cryogenic chambers. While they can’t bring the ship back before the air runs out, if they could deflect the course so the Daedalus would return eventually, the crew could use the cryogenic suspension units. It’s a risk, but it’s their only chance. They prepare to try the daring measure.

In the park, Spring encounters a reject from a Mad Max movie rollerblading in the park. True to form, he is senselessly violent to Spring and beats him up - despite Spring being armed and alert to the possibility of trouble.

Just before the rollerblader does serious harm to Spring, the real killer murders him. (The rollerblader, not Spring) The murderer, still hidden from Spring, taunts him, but is scared off when Sgt. Corman arrives and fires a couple wayward shots at him.

Back at his apartment, Devis chews out Spring for his stupidity. Spring agrees, but there’s still something about this case he can’t quite see. The computers have decided the case isn’t worth pursuing, and is being closed. Feeling useless, Spring decides to return to space.

On the Moon, the daring rescue may have worked. The crew have entered suspension, and an explosive charge has been used to blow out an airlock. The expelling air deflects the ship onto a course that will be retrievable in 8 years time. It remains to be seen in they will be able to be successfully revived or just be frozen corpses.

Spring, now back in full Star Cop mode, has a chat with Paton. He knows Paton sabotaged the ship. Paton had been denied a permit to perform human tests on his suspension system. He arranged for his equipment to be on the ship, helped the unwitting pilots to be assigned together (I guess he’s a bit romantic,) programmed the anomalous engine burn and then, when no one else thought of it, he had to suggest the idea of using the cryogenics. He’s either committed murder, or, at the very least, the crew, if they return alive, can file civil charges. One problem, they haven’t got proof, and Paton knows it.

And so starts the awkward tenant/landlord relationship of the Star Cops’ new HQ on the moon.

Sgt. Corman turns on the moon. She’s tracked the killer to Charles De Gaulle station. She found her motive for the crime. The killer, John Smith, had a beef with the Star Cops on the moon and now he’s getting his revenge on the head of the Star Cops.

The killer has stolen a shuttle and is flying towards a controversial and secretive new American space station. Spring, David and Corman hop in another shuttle and give chase. As they approach, the Americans blow up the killer, and Spring reveals he’d figured it our. Corman and the killer were both British Secret Service and their mission was to get a look onboard that space station. If the Star Cops, which are politically neutral by treaty, were forced to pursue a criminal onto the station, the Americans could complain, but they’d have nothing actionable.

Spring was supposed to follow the killer onto the station, arrest him and send him back to Earth for trail, where the killer and Corman would be able to report back what they had seen on the station. Spring tipped off the Americans and, so warned, they blew up the station.

Back on Earth, Devis knows he’s been played, and while he knows he’ll never get a conviction, he’s going to make sure that light is shined on this nasty business. This will also end his career.

He asks Spring for a new job.

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Movie Synopsis:
We open on what appears to be flashbacks showing the day Simon broke River out of the Alliance experimentation facility. Paradoxically, even though this happened in the past, he seems to know quite a bit more about what was being done to River than he did during the TV Series. Actually, it’s a recorded replay that an Alliance Operative - a man without a name - is reviewing. River is a psychic and she was exposed to top members of the Alliance Parliament and they don’t like the idea that she might be carrying some of their secrets around in her head. The Operative will find her.

In the now times, Simon and Mal are arguing. Mal means for River to earn her keep and that means going on a mission to rob a security payroll. Mal threatens to kick the Tams off if he doesn’t back down.

The mission goes reasonably well until the Reavers arrive. The Reavers like nothing better than to kill, rape and eat humans alive. Everyone is afraid of Reavers. They escape - just, but Simon punches Mal for risking River’s life. Mal, in turn, kicks them off the ship. He will leave them behind on Beaumont.

On Beaumont, Mal and Jayne visit some local crime lords, working on their latest deal. River happens to walk into the same bar, sees a TV commercial and goes into full-on kick ass mode. She starts beating up and killing everyone in the room, even Jayne and Mal. Simon has followed her into the bar and shuts her down with a single word, which puts her to sleep. Apparently, she has been programmed with a safe word. A safe word Simon knew about all along, but never saw fit to use previously.

Mal brings the Tams back on the ship and locks up River.

We’re introduced to an old associate of the Serenity crew - one we’ve never met before - Mr. Universe. A tech head, but not an Ed Head, who monitors lots of communications. After intercepting the footage of the fight at the bar, he is able to ascertain that the commercial River saw contained a subliminal message intended to trigger her. He also can tell that someone else has already gotten hold of the same footage.

Meanwhile, Inara, who has left the crew and living on a training planet, gets a visit from the Operative.

The Serenity has gone to Haven, where Shepard Book now lives. He warns Mal that he’s up against an Operative and that’s nothing like he’s ever faced before.

Inara soon calls Mal for help on an obvious false pretext. Everyone knows it’s a trap, but they go anyway.

Meeting the Operative doesn’t go well, and Mal is handed his butt on a plate, but with Inara’s help, they escape.

The crew are uncomfortable with the current situation, and Jayne is downright put out about the Tams being back on the ship. Later, he decides to take matters into his own hands and dispose of River, but she bests him and takes control of the ship. Mal tries to talk her down and does, to a point. Since she saw the commercial, the name Miranda has been on her mind and she’s used Serenity’s computer to find Miranda. It’s a supposedly nothing planet far out past Reaver space. They’d be nuts to go there.

They return to haven instead where they discover it’s been wiped out by the Alliance, Book included, who dies in Mal’s arms. The Alliance Operative is killing everyone who has ever worked with them or granted them haven. All they have to do it turn over River and it will all be over.

Mal goes a bit mental, he forced the crew to use the corpses of the dead on Haven, and other bits of junk to disguise Serenity as a Reaver ship and they go to Miranda to find out what the mystery is.

On the planet they discover it is dead. All the people just died. In fact, they literally just gave up and died, for they find the wreckage of an Alliance rescue ship which reveals that Miranda was used as a pacification experiment. A chemical was pumped into the air designed to make the population less aggressive. It worked so well they just stopped and died.

That is, all but 10% of them, who became nightmarish monsters - the Reavers.

Now Mal has a crusade: The planets and all the people must know what the Alliance did, so they head back to Mr. Universe so that he can broadcast the info everywhere. The Operative and a fleet of Alliance ships is waiting there, so Mal brings along some friends - the Reavers. In the space battle that ensues, they make it to Mr. Universe’s control center, but not without casualties. Wash has been killed, and the crew are facing an impossible force of Reavers and are trapped in a dead end. They are slowly being beaten.

Mr. Universe is also already dead, killed by the Operative, but he left a final message to Mal which reveals a backup control center that is still operational.

Mal again battles the Operative and, through dumb luck, he overcomes him, broadcasting the message to everyone everywhere.

Meanwhile, River, protecting her brother has single-handedly killed all the Reavers. Next, it looks like she may have to kill all the Alliance troops, too, but the Operative has them stand down. The damage is done. River is no longer a threat because the secret is out.

He even arranges for Serenity to get fixed. What a nice guy he really is!

The crew, with River piloting, take of for what is no doubt a long-running series of movie adventures to come.

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Episode Synopsis:
It’s a jolly lovely summer’s day at the Elsdene School and the boys are preparing for a field trip to a pharmaceutical company after spending the night planning a heist. The boys seem a bit full of themselves but their teacher reminds them that people respect cleverness, but they don’t like prigs.

Later, at that pharmaceutical company, Ridge and Chantry are conferring with Mr. Prietland, director of the facility, about a new drug, K.27, that Doomwatch are evaluating. They will take a sample of the drug back to Doomwatch for evaluation and return it tomorrow. While they’re there, the first of two groups of schoolboys start their tour, and with a distraction, they conceal one of their members in a ventilation duct.

That night, he exits the duct, uses a high-tech gizmo on the safe and steals the formula for K.27, returning to the duct to await retrieval the next day by the second group of boys visiting the facility.

Ridge and Hardcastle arrive the next day to find the police there investigating the theft of the formula. They are treating everyone that was in the building yesterday as a suspect, including Ridge. And when I say “everyone” I mean everyone - except the field trip of school boys, since the son of the director attends that school.

Ridge notices something suspicious in the director’s office, but he doesn’t mention it to the police, instead, he and Hardcastle visit the school, where they see the children being trained in symbolic logic by a computer to work through problem-solving exercises. Ridge is apparently appalled at the amoral lessons and takes his concerns to Quist, who, upon learning that the visionary educator who setup the school died and passed control to his wife, gets a bit concerned, too.

Meanwhile, due to the crime, the second field trip was cancelled, leaving the infiltrator trapped in the air duct, potentially for several days. This; however, is not a problem, the students logical plan has allowed for this contingency. They have worked out a system to smuggle food into the facility (and presumably smuggle out human waste) to keep the trapped infiltrator alive until the plan is complete.

Quist visits the school and becomes more concerned that having computerized teaching machines doesn’t provide the students with the moral training that they need. Logic without emotion combined with receptive minds without ethical guidance is a terrifying prospect.

He also learns that the school is dangerously close to closing due to lack of funding. No slouches themselves at Doomwatch, they realize that the students have stolen the formula to extort money from the Prietland’s company for the return of the formula so that they can fund the school.

Soon, the ransom call comes in, and Prietland’s company authorizes the payoff. Hardcastle plants a tracking bug in the briefcase, and the money is thrown off a train, where the students collect it. They scan the briefcase for a bug and find it, taking the money and sending the briefcase on a wild goose chase.

Having received the money, the infiltrator comes out of the duct, places the documents back on Prietland’s desk, and escapes by breaking a window and running away.

Quist and Ridge confront Prietland with their suspicions and he admits, not only had he figured it out when Ridge did, but he son basically confessed to him when he begged for an alibi… and he’s OK with that, because the company can afford it.

Quist urges him to turn his son in, but he refuses. Then Quist drops the bombshell. His son planted the briefcase at Prietland’s home, setting this father up as the fall guy for the crime if it went wrong. Only by calling the police and turning his son in will he be able to prevent that from working to discredit him. He makes the call.

But, Prietland sees the bright side: His son is a minor, so the school will be responsible for the consequences and what an amazing businessman his son is going to make when he grows up!  Quist and Ridge can only frown in despondent agreement.

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What does murder and crime look like in the age of computers and space travel? And what constitutes being a good copper?  John and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis:

The year is 2027, and two events far, far apart seem to parallel one another. A man is swimming in a pond in England, while in orbit near the Charles de Gaulle space station another man is on a spacewalk. Both are taken unaware by two assailants and killed.

On Earth police Chief Superintendent Nolan Spring has suspicions about the growing case. The computer has ruled that it is likely an accident, but his instinct for murder tells him it may be something more. He pushes his underling, Brian Lincoln to investigate further.  Spring’s boss; however, doesn’t seem to like him, nor does he wish to waste time and resources on a case that the computer has determined to be an accident. He orders them off the case.

On the space station, Flight Engineer David Theroux is also a part-time Star Cop, and he thinks there is something fishy about the recent death of the spacewalker. It was deemed an accidental malfunction of the suit’s backpack, but his instinct for murder is telling him otherwise.

Spring has been maneuvered into applying for the job of Commander of the Star Cops (AKA, the International Space Police Force) - a job he doesn’t want - but his boss is going to make sure he gets.

Spring disobeys orders and orders Lincoln to continue investigating, which Spring takes astronaut training, and then an inspection tour of the Charles de Gaulle.  While there, Lincoln turns up clues, and Spring presses him to continue investigating. In addition to meeting David Theroux, and discussing his doubts about the spacewalk accident, he also meets David’s friend, the Flight Controller.

There’s also a popular politician on the station who goes for a spacewalk. He too dies from a mysterious backpack failure, and uproar on Earth begins. The Russians have a lucrative contract to maintain all the suit backpacks, and there are calls to break the contract and award it to someone else.

To his chagrin, Spring, although he has not even been offered the job, gets assigned to investigate the death.

He explains to David that the reason he thought the case on Earth was murder is because the body was too perfectly placed so that it appeared exactly as an accident. A technique professional killers use to fool the computer analysis into making a determination of accidental death.

After the information provided by David, he thinks something similar is happened up here. The suits all appear to be well-maintained and should have a 0% failure rate. People are killing 2% of the spacewalkers at a consistent interval to make the occasional murder, when necessary, indistinguishable from the background noise.

As part of his training, Spring must learn to spacewalk and, against David’s recommendations, he decides to go for a solo spacewalk before he’s fully ready, but he admonishes David to keep a close eye out for anything approaching him.

In the control room, it dawns on David - nothing can happen out there with the flight controller seeing it, therefore his friend the Flight Controller must be involved. Realization comes too late, though, the gun at the back of his head stops him from warning Spring that two blips are approaching him on the radar.

A dead spaceman is seen floating away.

Now David must be disposed of. The Flight Controller takes him to the airlock where he plans to stage an accident but, Spring, hiding in a spacesuit, cobbles the villain. He had already disposed of the two killers with a medical laser because he had been expecting them.

It’s revealed that a corporation was behind it because they would have benefited financially from unpleasantries.

Back on Earth, with a job well done, Spring gets a surprise. He’s been given the Commander’s job of the Star Cops. He refuses, but he boss makes it plain to him. You take it, or you’re finished her. Lincoln, who did such a great job solving the drowning murder has been promoted to his old job and while they can’t fire Spring, they can find him some work in data processing. Cornered, Spring takes command of the Star Cops, but he knows, it won’t be easy.

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Episode Synopsis:
River is wandering about the ship, as if in a dream, she sees the others and hears their thoughts, or what she thinks their thoughts, she sees a branch on the floor… then she comes around, the branch is a gun and everyone is very worried

There follows a lot of discussion about River.  Reveals how she killed three people with her eyes shut.  Mal thinks she’s a psychic, possibly an assassin. Mal must make a decision.

Meanwhile, a bounty hunter comes aboard the Serenity in space.  He captures the crew, but cannot find River.  River has become one with the ship, and she taunts the bounty hunter, revealing his thoughts.  Meanwhile, River engineers the rest of the crew out of the trap.

The bounty hunter finally realizes that River is part of serenity, she is on his ship.  She tells him she is willing to go with him, but Simon fights for her and is shot.

Mal also gets beat up, but… when the bounty hunter is making the crossing, Mal throws him into space.

River returns home.

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Episode Synopsis:
Hardcastle of Doomwatch is on the job at a lab in Ipswich.  The lab manager, Dr. Fane, is giving Hardcastle an earful of the problems he’s had running his lab, and the constant attacks and vandalism that he, his staff and his lab are under.  The attacks are the responsibility, Fane feels, of one Miss Lincoln – an animal rights activist and local crank.  Hardcastle may not be entirely convinced, but then he’s shot by someone attacking the lab and is sent to hospital.

With Chantry on holidays and Ridge out of the country, it’s Colin Bradley’s turn to shine.  Quist sends him to be in the line of fire and pick up where Hardcastle got interrupted.

The situation is that a young girl has died of rabies – something that is almost unheard of in the British Isles – and the coroner’s inquest it imminent.  The inquest had been postponed to give the Ministry of Health an opportunity to locate the infection vector and take immediate preventative steps.

Miss Lincoln has made accusations that Fane’s lab is responsible for the for the rabies case and the Ministry of Health had requested the Ministry of National Security to send in Doomwatch to investigate that possibility.

The inquest begins.

Mr. McAllister, from the Ministry of Health, testifies that, while they have found no vector, as yet, and that it must almost absolutely certainly be a dog.  There are other animals that can carry rabies, but it’s not that, it’s bound to be a dog, and the Ministry has quarantined several suspect dogs and ordered all dogs in the area muzzled until further notice.

Miss Lincoln, a virologist by training, asserts that Tsetse flies, which are used in the lab’s experiments, have gotten loose and might have been the vector.  Tsetse flies, like mosquitos, are blood suckers and have been known to be a vector for viral transmission.  Fane asserts that it is impossible for the flies to get loose, although Miss Lincoln presents a specimen at the inquest, claiming it was captured in the village.

Bradley testifies that, from Doomwatch’s research, it’s virtually impossible since Tsetse flies cannot carry the Rabies virus.  Further, though, he does understand and explain for the inquest Miss Lincoln’s concern.

Tsetse flies are related to fruit flies.  Fane’s project is to reduce fertility in Tsetse flies, which are a major cause of death and economic hardship in Africa.  Fane started by doing genetic research on fruit flies and then, through a process called passage (which, coincidentally, can create blue spiders) moves the successful fruit fly results into Tsetse flies.  Fruit flies carry a harmless virus, the Sigma virus, which is related to rabies, but does not exist in Tsetse flies.

Lincoln’s hypothesis is that the fruit fly virus, Sigma, through the passage, entered the Tsetse flies, where it then mutated into something indistinguishable from rabies.  Those flies then escaped from Fane’s lab and infected the girl.

In his opinion this is also virtually impossible and it is without doubt dogs, and while there was no sign of a bite on the dead child, Rabies can be transmitted to a skin lesion via licking, and that must be how she contracted the disease.

Further, to the uproar of the community, he recommends shooting all dogs in a five-mile radius.

Quist comes to Ipswich to convince Hardcastle to check himself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders.  They’re just too short-staffed and he needs him back on the job.  They bump into Bradley in the pub and decide to stick around for the end of the inquest.

When the inquest resumes, McAllister reveals that he’s just received word that one of the quarantined dogs has tested positive for rabies and that the infected dog had been collected from none other than Miss Lincoln!  All eyes in the court turn towards Miss Lincoln!

But no!  She says, that dog was a stray I rescued, shortly after dogs broke out of Dr. Fane’s lab!  All eyes turn back towards Dr. Fane!

Hardcastle has an idea, and he and Quist leave to check it out.  The hotelier’s son, Harry, was friends with the dead girl.  He loves dogs.  He has a dog bite on this arm and he’s been stealing food for dogs.  Quist and Hardcastle find an abandoned building and the remaining dogs at large from Fane’s lab.  They also find Harry, holding a rifle on them – the very same rifle that shot Hardcastle.

It seems Harry has been listening to Miss Lincoln and it’s put ideas in his young, impressionable mind, radicalizing him into a lab terrorist… and when I say, ”lab terrorist” I mean a terrorist who targets labs, not a terrorist who is a Labrador retriever.

They talk him down and take him to the hospital, then return to the inquest.  They reveal that Harry stole the dogs from the lab, hid them in the abandoned building, took his friend, the dead girl, to see the animals where she got infected.  The rabid dog, still not showing signs of the disease, then escaped and was picked up by Miss Lincoln.

“So, Dr. Fane, take a look at this picture of the rabid dog.  It’s got docked ears.  That’s illegal in the UK, so this must have come from Europe.  Where did you get the dogs?!”

And all eyes turn back towards Dr. Fane.

“I just bought them,” says Fane, “from the hotelier!”

And all eyes turn towards a minor character that’s barely played a part in this episode, but now we learn has a deal with a smuggler to bring him contraband schnapps from Europe, and, when there’s a demand, dogs.

Exonerated, Fane is relieved, but Quist rounds on him, “You run a sloppy lab.  Get your act cleaned up!”

The end

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Story Synopsis:

Triffids are plants bioengineered by the Soviet Union to be an efficient fuel additive. They are unique in that they can move about and can sting animals to death - or at lesser intensity - blind them. Bill Masen works at one of the triffid farms, and he accidentally was blinded by a triffid sting. Now he recuperates in a hospital, waiting to see if his sight has been saved.

Sadly for the bandaged Bill, on the night before he gets his bandages off, he misses the greatest light show the world will ever see. An astral phenomena bathes the earth for 24 hours with an amazing light show in the night sky.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, though. Neither are there free light shows. The next day, everyone who saw the show is blind.

Bill, now one of the few sighted people left in the world, meets up with Jo and begin their adventures in a world turned on its head.

Oh, and the triffids have escaped and they are hunting down the blind humans like a feast.

Bill and Jo first meet up with a group planning to go to the country and setup a polygamous compound. Blind women can produce sighted babies and so they must breed up a new generation of humans to take back the world. Bill and Jo decide to join in, but then…

…they are captured by Coker, a sighted man who feels that everyone should stay in the city, helping the blind get food until help arrives. Since they refused to do so on their own, they are imprisoned and chained to work gangs. Bill and Jo are separated.

A disease begins to kill off everyone, and Bill manages to leave his work group when they all die. He cannot find Jo, but he finds the name of the place to where the group had been intending to go, Tysham, and, along with a repentant Coker, who also saw all his blind people die of disease, they head out.

They find Tysham, but the group has already splintered into two factions. Those that remained at Tysham felt that good Christian values and morals must be maintained, and the two groups agreed to split. Coker tries to convince them that they cannot just rely on God’s grace and must start doing things to save themselves, but they refuse and the pair leave, looking for the other group. Bill hopes that Jo is with them.

They cannot find the group and Coker decides to return and try to make them see sense. Bill remembers a place on the South Downs where Jo mentioned her self-sufficiency-minded fiends had a farm with a well and wind power and a generator that might make a good retreat. He travels there, and along the way recuses a young girl, Susan, from the triffids.

Bill finds Jo and they are reunited. Bill goes back to check on Cocker and Tysham, but the group is dead of the disease. There is no sign of Coker.

Bill and Jo spend six good years together with her 2 blind friends. In that time, Susan becomes as a daughter to them and grows up, and they have a child, as do her friends. Good years, that is, save for the fact that they are under constant siege by thousands of triffids.

Coker arrives via helicopter, he survived the disease at Tysham and found the other splinter group. They’ve settled on the Isle of White and freed the island of triffids. Others are colonizing the Channel Islands. He invites them to come live with them - he especially needs Bill, a man with bioscience training on triffids to help make the fight to retake Earth.

The group decides to go, but first they want to spend one more summer on their farm. Alas, the next day, a tank pulls up with representatives of the newly-established, and not-elected government. They are setting up the new order. The are apportioning land to sighted people and requiring them to take on 10 blind people for each sighted person as, effectively, slave labor. The sighted will be feudal barons under the authority of the government. Just one problem, only 2 sighted adults are allowed, Susan will have to come back to HQ with the soldiers and be assigned… suitable duties.

That night, they get the soldiers drunk, sabotage their tank and escape, heading for the Isle of White.

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John and Eugene discuss this uplifting - and final - episode of Moonbase 3.

Episode Synopsis:

Moonbase 3 is getting ready for the arrival of a distinguished visitor, Nobel-prize winning, octogenarian physicist, Sir Benjamin Dyce. Dyce may have been sent to the moon to get him out of the way - he’s been causing some waves back on Earth.  

Dyce arrives and he’s a joy to everyone - and when I say “joy” I mean cantankerous ass.

Back on Earth, it’s Bastille Day, and the staff throw a party for Michel LeBraun, and it’s going well until Dyce arrives and gives a scathing indictment on nationalism and how all it ever does is cause problems.

He uses this moment to explain about the current controversy he’s embroiled in.

A project, which he initially pioneered, Project Arctic Sun, is underway. He proposed it decades ago, but the idea was shelved. Now, the Russians and the Americans have entered a joint venture to put it in place. Just one problem: Dyce has come to a new conclusion. The planned project will detonate a self-sustaining nuclear device high in the atmosphere and create a new, artificial sun over the arctic, making vast new areas of land habitable. 

Dyce has re-analyzed the project and his new findings are that, rather than create a sustained nuclear reaction, it would instead cause a chain reaction, igniting all the hydrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere and destroying all life on the planet. The party fizzles out after having been brought down with his certainty that life on Earth will shortly be extinguished.

Helen wonders how Dyce will react when Arctic Sun comes to pass and nothing happens.

No need to worry about that, though, because, that night, Moonbase 3 loses all contact with the Earth. The other moonbases have lost contact, too. Looking down on the Earth visually, instead of a beautiful blue/green planet, all that remains of the Earth is a grayish ball of gas. The Earth is dead and the people of the moonbases are the last remaining humans in existence.

The End

Oh, no, wait, not it isn’t. There’s the story of what people do when they know everything they’ve ever known or loved is dead, and know, with certainty that, without supplies from Earth, they too will soon die.

Caulder and Tom Hill develop a system for euthanizing everyone on the moonbase painlessly. Michel and others spend their time getting drunk. Bruno even takes that it bit father. First, he starts with the wandering hands on the female crew and then, after trying Michel’s “getting drunk plan,” tries to rape Helen.

But all is forgiven in the morning.

Dyce advocates for the crew of the moonbase to record every bit of human knowledge and information so that, possibly millennia later, when other life finds the moon, mankind will have left a legacy.

Strangely enough, it is only now that Tom comes up with the idea of using the lunar shuttle to take someone back to earth to find out if everything is indeed dead. Tom, the best qualified astronaut, must remain behind to keep the base operating (and throw the “kill” switch on Caulder’s command.) Bruno volunteers, but then chickens out and finally Michel makes the one-way mission to a dead world. 

Dyce is steadfastly opposed to sending a ship. The act of sending a ship will give the moonbase personnel hope, and hope will destroy them…. because, apparently hope is bad.

When Michel hits the atmosphere, contact with him is lost, too.

Caulder gives Tom the order: in 24 hours, rather than drag things out, just surprise everyone by killing them.

As the staff, unknowingly, enjoy their final dinner, Caulder goes out of his way to make it a great night for all, and with less than thirty minutes to go before sweet oblivion overtakes them, a televised game show from Earth pops up on their TV screen, which they’d apparently left turned on.

All the signals return, too. Earth is still there, just bathed in a highly-ionized atmosphere that is finally dissipating. Michel contacts the base. Things are fine on Earth - except for the 20º planetary temperature loss.

Dyce was wrong, but that is his prerogative as a man. But mankind cannot be allowed one single mistake.

The end

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Firefly episode, Heart of Gold.

Episode Synopsis:
On a charming planet, moon or planetoid stands the brothel Heart of Gold, and to this brothel comes a man named Rance, who terrorizes a pregnant whore named Petaline. “If that baby is mine, it’s coming with me!”

Nandi, the madame, calls her old friend Inara for help. Inara brings the crew of the Serenity. After sizing up the enemy, Mal decides to run, taking the whores with them, but they refuse to leave. As they are Mal’s kind of stupid, he decides to stay and help them fend off the attack that is coming from Rance.

Nandi - a defrocked , bona-fide Companion who left the Order and learned to say, “ain’t” - takes a bit of shine to Mal and gives him one on the house. She realized - because of her Ninja-like Companion training, no doubt - that Mal has a thing for Inara, but after Inara finds out “what they done” and is brought to tears by it, Nandi again uses her ninja-like Companion skills and realizes that Inara has feelings for Mal, too.

Wait, what? There’s been simmering sexual tension aboard the Serenity and we never noticed? How did that happen?

The fight begins and the baby decides now is the time to be born because of course it does! With the help of an insider, Rance gets inside and attempts to kidnap the baby, but is thwarted by Inara. He escapes, but not before killing Nandi.

Mal goes for revenge and captures Rance instead of killing him. He brings him back to the whorehouse where he is promptly killed.

Back in space, wallowing in their sorrow, Mal and Inara start to confront their feelings for one another. Inara knows what she should have done a long time ago. She informs Mal she’s leaving.

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis:
Our story opens on the ugliest building they could find in the stock footage library - a horrid cement block of 1970s Council flats. Here we meet a harried, squalid little family without access to adequate birth control. The head of the family is Mr. Heatherington, and he’s late for work at the Council Planning office, and the crying children and crowded lifts aren’t calming him down much. If fact, he runs right under a car, killing himself in the process - and he does so right in front of Fay Chantry, intrepid member of Doomwatch.

Meanwhile, Quist is being pressured by the Minister of Somethingerother for a report on a development, but Quist’s report isn’t ready yet. While he will get a report out, there just isn’t sufficient scientific research out to reach a conclusion. His gut instinct, though, is against the project.

It turns out the project is a continuation of the horrid block of flats that, it seems Fay Chantry is now living in. In fact, she’s been planted there by Doomwatch for the last six weeks to produce the report on the success or failure of this type of planed development, and she is feeling stressed. 

He quarters are cramped, she gets constant obscene phone calls, wolf whistles in the hallway, apathetic neighbors, inadequate elevators, building failures, pathetic windows and truly, truly hideous doors.

She’s also feeling that the Council Planning Office is stonewalling her about aspects of the construction, and even implies, to Mr. Grant (from the Planning Office) that there might have been something shady going on during construction.

The next day, Chantry is granted access to Mr. Scobie, in the Planning Office’s Records department. He makes accusations, in front of Grant and Chantry, that they’re all in the developer, Langley’s, pockets, and that there’s a huge scandal. He grows violent and they leave. 

Ridge comes to see Chantry to urge her to finish, but she tells him she cannot take it anymore. She explains the stress she’s been under.

Meanwhile, Langley is wining and dining Quist, where they have a philosophical debate about the future of planning and development in the UK. Langley sees standardization and mass production as the logical way forward while Quist advocates for more organic and, some would say, eccentric growth patterns. They both acknowledge that growth and resource pressures are problems that need to be addressed, but Quist is not sure Langley’s approach is the right answer. 

Langley wants to know what will be in Quist’s report, but warns him that Fay Chantry is prejudiced against him and grinding a not-at-all-impartial axe against him.

Later, when Ridge reports back to Quist, he tells him Chantry appears to be suffering from a case of the vapors or something, because, you know…. womenfolk, amirite?

This confirms Quist’s worst fears. He heads to see Chantry.

Chantry, meanwhile, goes to visit Scobie at home (he also lives in the same building) only to find that, he had a violent, nervous breakdown and is being held, sedated, totally incommunicado. When Quist arrives, Chantry realizes that the man who died also worked in the planning office. Could it be he was murdered?

They visit the wife, and she confirms he was afraid, since shortly after they’d come here. Quist takes this to the police, who basically laugh at him, so, he agrees it was a dumb idea and takes Chantry off the assignment. 

Back at the apartment, Quist is attacked by a rowdy group of children, and when the eldest Heatherington child goes after him with a hammer, Chantry tries to run them both over with her car. Well, technically she was only trying to run the child over. Quist is not convinced.

While Chantry packs up that night, her lights go out, and she locks herself out of the apartment. She goes to the caretaker, who is put out doing caretaker duties on his off time, but he goes to help anyway, probably not just because Chantry is sexy lady and promised to “pay him” for his services.

Quist, returning to London via car and dictating a report based on… basically nothing… starts to compare the apartments to battery chicken, but when he realizes chickens are nasty animals, the light bulb goes off and he heads back to Fay. Finding her about to kill the caretaker with his hammer.

Chantry was suffering, like the other residents, from the (somewhat paradoxical) isolation and overcrowded conditions, resulting, progressively in a loss of self-identity, insecurity and fear. In his report he proposes a Royal Commission be formed on the roots of violence in modern society.

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John and Eugene discuss Castor and Pollux. 

Episode Synopsis: 

A satellite in Earth orbit fails and must be repaired by the Moonbase 3 team. At the same time, Caulder is hosting the Russian General in command of Moonbase 2. Russia is about to launch an ambitious Mars probe commanded by Dimitri, a young hot shot astronaut who grew up idolizing the famous Tom Hill. He jokingly asks Tom to come to Mars with him and you can tell, Tom would really love to go, but he has duties to Moonbase 3.

One of those duties is to pilot the repair ship and fix the broken satellite, but a freak accident locks the ship and satellite together in spinning death flight into deep space. Tom Hill will die, as Michel points out, because there is no practical hope to mount a successful rescue.

Caulder refuses to give up and has the rescue mission prepared anyway. Unfortunately, the only pilot on Moonbase 3 good enough to carry off the tricky mission is Tom Hill himself. But on Moonbase 2, Dimitri is just the kind of astronaut who could get the job done.

Moonbase 2’s commander refuses. Dimitri is too valuable to risk only a week before launch of the Mars mission.

Nonetheless, Dimitri shows up at Moonbase 3 ready to fly the mission to rescue his hero. Between Tom and Dimitri, they hatch a daring, but highly risky plan to rescue Tom. Michel is completely against the plan as it will almost certainly result in the loss of both astronauts and their ships.

Apparently, Dimitri has done this against orders and when the Kremlin and the European Space Commission find out, the moon dust hits the fan. Caulder is relieved of command and Michel is put in charge.

While the rescue mission cannot be stopped, the risky maneuver can, and the Russians demand that it not be attempted. Michel is capable of stopping it, but a key portion of it must be executed from Moonbase 3 and he can prevent that. But he doesn’t, and the plan works, and everyone is safe, and the Russians score a huge PR win back hope and are ecstatic about the successful rescue.  Caulder is back in charge.

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis:

 Stopping at a space station to take on supplies and attempt to fence the Lassiter, Mal and Zoe are surprised to receive a package in the mail. The package contains their dead friend and former war colleague, Tracey. His last request: To return his body to his parents on St. Alban’s. Of course, Mal and Zoe must take their comrade home.

Then things start getting interesting, Federal types are trying to locate the crate and they track it down to Serenity and give chase, finally catching up with it and demanding they turn over the crate. Mal realizes the crate is being used to smuggle something valuable but, after the search proves fruitless, has Simon perform an autopsy on Tracey to see what is inside of him. Turns out Tracey wasn’t dead and, luckily for him, getting cut into was sufficient to get him to wake up from his drug-induced artificial death.

Tracey is smuggling organs. His insides have been scooped out and replaced with artificially grown organs. Once delivered, his own organs will be returned to him…. And I can EVEN see how that was supposed to work! Nonetheless, he has double-crossed the people he made the deal with and plans to sell the organs at a higher price to someone else. Someone else who doesn’t have his original organs to replace… and I can’t EVEN see how this is plan!

Unable to elude their heavily-armed perusers, and having been played for a sap by his former comrade, Mal agrees to turn Tracey over to the rogue federals. Tracey doesn’t like that idea and holds the crew at gunpoint, taking Kaylee hostage. Until Mal kills him.

The end

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis:

It’s War of the Worlds, you know it already it. In fact, do we even need to bother? A question the writer of this adaptation no doubt asked himself many a time, but like him, let’s be precursory and get it over with so we can move on with what we want to say.

Martians come to Earth and land on Horsell Common, where they cross paths with a pair of cohabitating, unmarried, fornicating socialists, and also the Secretary of the Minister of War who happens to be the estranged brother of one the the aforementioned cohabitating, unmarried, fornicating socialist.

They get separated, they travel, they come back together, and travel some more as the Martian colonial war machine tramples the might of the British Empire under it’s spiky boots. Then the truth comes out. The Martians are eating human, but it gives them a tummy ache and the die, but not before everyone in our largely uninteresting band of fellow travelers is killed and eaten, except for Amy and her unborn child, George Junior.

Years in the future, Amy roams the wastelands of an Earth turned into a Martian surrogate. It is a world of infertile red Earth, Martian weeds, red skies and a sun that is mysteriously millions of miles further distant than it should be. Amy, and her son, are searching for her missing husband. And when I say husband, I actually mean her cohabitating, unmarried, fornicating socialist partner who’s actually been dead the entire time, and she’s known it all along, but her sad, pathetic existence has no point but to keep looking

When word comes through the grapevine that her husband has been found and is returning, she dares hope, despite the fact that she knows him to be dead for years. It turns out it’s Ogilvy, a minor character from the early part of the story who, for probably plot and economic reasons is both the chemist this ruined world needs right now and the astronomer that discovered the Martian launches and the first Martian landing.

The Earth is dying, George Junior is dying, the Village is dying, babies aren’t happening, crops won’t grow except in graveyards and the remnants of humanity are falling into jingoistic patriotic and religious mindsets to explain the world around them.

But Amy’s got an idea. Maybe it’s the Typhoid that killed the Martians and maybe Ogilvy can make a serum which they can use as a Martian weed killer. Which he does, and it works, but the village leader won’t hear of such nonsense! That’s not in keeping with the narrative that God and the good ol’ British Tommy defeated the aliens.

That night she smashes it all up, but sees a green plant, and gets religion. Then end.

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Episode synopsis:

Following the coordinates obtained from Percy Shelley, the Doctor and the gang arrive on a planet in the far future where there are 7 remaining humans. She has them set up defenses against the Cybermen, that fail. The Cybermen are lead by the Lone Cyberman, who is a nut case who wanted to be a Cyberman, but got rejected as inferior. Isn’t that how Hitler got his start?

The team is split, with Graham, Yaz and some humans escaping in a rickety old space ship, while the Doctor, Ryan and some human steal a cybership.

They all make their way to a planet which is home to the legendary boundary. A mysterious gateway for escape to some random part of the universe. Along the way, Graham’s team capture a cybercarrier, complete with a LOT of dormant Cybermen.

The Doctor, in the faster cybership, gets there first and inspects the boundary, which shows Gallifrey behind it and belches forth the Master.

Oh, and there was some stuff with a guy who was a policeman, but he died, but actually he didn’t, somewhere.

End of part one.

Part Two.

The Master forces the Doctor to go to Gallifrey. He imprisons her in the Matrix while at the same time, inviting the Cybermen to come through and visit.

Incidentally, Graham’s team escape from the Cybermen.

The Master shows the Doctor a story about the origin of the Time Lords. One of their early explorers discovered an immortal child and adopted it, returning to Gallifrey. The child was immortal because it could regenerate. The power of regeneration was copied from the child and the Time Lords were created, limited as there were to only 12 regenerations - unlike the the child.

The Child was the Doctor, who apparently is erased, forced back to childhood, and starts all over again once in a while. The purpose: To save the universe while allowing Gallifrey to maintain a policy of nonintervention.

The Master is mad because the Doctor really is special and he owes his existence her.

So, being nuts, he’s saved all the Time Lord bodies and he’s converting them to a new race of immortal Cyber-timelords.  

Oh, and somewhere along the way, he dispensed of the Lone Cyberman with no difficulty whatsoever.

Most of the Matrix has been redacted, so the Doctor’s story is still a mystery we’ll probably have to suffer with as long as Chibnall is calling all the shots, before it’s forgotten like a bad shower sequence on Dallas.

The Doctor escapes by blowing up the Matrix. That would be the Matrix that contains all the memories of all Time Lords, past and present, thought all time. The Doctor blows up that Matrix by… and I’m not making this up… remembering everything she’s done… in an ordinary TimeLord lifespan.

Anyway, having killed the Lone Cyberman, the Master took the Cyberium into himself, and confronted with the possibility of an immortal cyberrace with the ability to regenerate, the Doctor has the humans blow up the cybership, killing all the Cybermen.

The Doctor sends her friends home in a TARDIS and then goes to detonate a bomb which contains the Death Particle, a spurious non sequitur devised by the Cyberium to destroy all organic life in the universe. Detonating this bomb will destroy the Master, the cyber-timelords, the spare bodies in the refrigerator and all organic material on Gallifrey.

Of course she can’t do it, so one of the human characters, who turns out at the last possible moment to be one of the idiots who thought sending the Cyberium BACK in time was good idea, blows up the bomb instead and the Doctor escapes in another TARDIS. Retrieving her own TARDIS and then being captured and imprisoned forever by the Judoon in a prison that wouldn’t keep River Song secure on a Friday night.

The end

Oh, and no spoilers here, but both the cliffhanger and our Christmas/New Year season has been ruined already by the title of the next episode.

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Music clips featured in this episode:

• Doctor Who Theme 1972 Delaware Version by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
• City Music 1 and 2 from the Daleks by Tristam Cary
• Zoe’s Theme from the Mind Robber by Brian Hodgson
• The Android Invasion Episodes 3 and 4 from the Android Invasion by Dudley Simpson
• Chromophone Band from the Macra Terror by Dudley Simpson
• The Destruction of Charlie Rig from Terror of the Zygons by Geoffrey Burgon
• Into Argolis from the Leisure Hive by Peter Howell
• Battlefield Suite from Battlefield by Keff McCulloch
• Getting That Bike from The Woman Who Fell to Earth by Segun Akinola
• The Sea Devils from the Sea Devils by Malcolm Clarke 
• The Mutants from the Mutants by Tristam Cary
• Space Adventure Pt. 2 from the Tenth Planet by Martin Slavin
• Three Guitars Mood 2 from An Unearthly Child by Derek Nelson
• Cryin’ All Day from the Unicorn and the Wasp by the Frank Ricotti All Stars
• The Company from the Invasion by Don Harper
• Sidereal Universe from Tomb of the Cybermen by Paul Bonneau
• Space Time Music Pt. 2 from Web of Fear by Wilfred Josephs
• It’s the End... from Logopolis by Paddy Kingsland
• The Master’s Theme from the Mind of Evil by Dudley Simpson
• Silurians Suite from Doctor Who and the Silurians by Cary Blyton
• The Caves of Androzani (Alternate Suite) from the Caves of Androzani by Roger Limb
• I am the Doctor from Doctor Who Series 5 by Murray Gold
• The Doctor Forever from Doctor Who Series 3 by Murray Gold
• A Good Man (Twelves Theme) from Doctor Who Series 8 by Murray Gold
• The Doctor from Doctor Who Series 11 by Segun Akinola

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Episode Synopsis

It is June 1816, and in a completely atypical fashion, the Doctor has decided to pop in at a famous moment in history just for her companions to sniff the air around some famous historical figures and then leave. They’ve popped back to the infamous night when Lord Byron challenges his guests, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin AKA Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Dr. John Polidori to write the most terrifying ghost story imaginable. It is the infamous night that gave rise to Mary Shelley’s story, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.

But Percy Shelley isn’t there, and the others are more interested in parlor games to pass the time than writing ghost stories.

The Doctor detects an evil vibe in the house, plus there are apparent ghosts and animated human bones flittering about the place. Then the walls go all funhouse on them, except no one is laughing. During this time, ghosts feed Graham some lovely nom noms.

Percy is found in the coal cellar. He has been infected by, and become the guardian of, the Cyberium. A database of a bunch of stuff from the future about the Cybermen… and the Lone Cyberman wants it back. You know, the one Capt. Jack warned everyone about. About which he said, “whatever you do, don’t give it what it wants.” Yeah, that Lone Cyberman.

Not coincidentally, the Lone Cyberman, who’s name is Ashad, is here, too.

The Cyberium will kill Percy if it stays in his head. If he dies, Earth’s history is irrevocably altered and all the companions probably won’t have existed. The Doctor takes the Cyberium into her head, so the Lone Cyberman threatens to destroy the Earth to get it unless the Doctor does the one thing she’s been warned she must not do.

So, of course she does it. History and the planet are safe, but the future has been threatened.

For some reason, the departure of the Lone Cyberman also undoes all the ecological disaster that was the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora the year earlier.

Also, it now seems like Lord Byron’s poem, Darkness, is not about the apocalypse, but about the Doctor. Byron scholars will be confused for centuries.

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Simon and Eugene discuss where does the Doctor get their orders from.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Can You Hear Me?

Episode Synopsis

 The year is 1380, in the Syrian city of Aleppo, and Tahira, a mentally ill woman who gets her kicks by stealing things is returning, hastily to the hospital she is staying in. She asks Maryam, a hospital worker, if she’s prepared for the coming of the things, but, she hasn’t, because they don’t believe her. Big mistake - the monsters come and take them away.

The Doctor returns Yaz for something at a particular date and time. She’s close. She only misses by 77 minutes.

The gang leave the Doctor to spend a single day catching up on their lives. For the Doctor, time weighs heavily on her hands, until (unbeknownst to her) a mysterious man in black appears briefly in the TARDIS, followed by a noise coming from 1380 Allepo, which she decides to check out.

She arrives in the empty hospital and waxes poetic to the audience about how enlightened islamic 14th century mental health care was, as you do.

She encounters Tahira, cowering in fear, and one of the monsters, hereafter referred to as a Chagaska, (Actually, I’m kidding, I’m not going to mention them again) which runs away when Tahira tells it to leave the Doctor alone. There are not many clues to be found, but luckily every last member of the gang calls at this exact moment. They’ve all been reconnecting with their disinteresting lives and something weird has happened.

Ryan’s friend has been having bad dreams and now is seeing the mysterious man in black from his dreams in his room. Yaz had a dream and saw the same man in black in her parents’ flat and Graham had a telepathic call for help from a woman trapped in an orb projected into his brain.  

Altogether in the TARDIS, along with Tahira, they plug Graham into the telepathic circuits and off they go to an orbiting space platform, which is monitoring what appears to be the collision of two planets, somehow suspended at the last moment by the very orb Graham saw in his psychic episode.

It’s a prison! Never one to miss the opportunity to rescue someone locked up in a prison without doing any research, the Doctor sets about using the TARDIS to free the woman inside.

The man in black now captures Tahira and the gang and sets them to dreaming their nightmares. He confronts the Doctor, explaining that his name is Zellin, and he is one of the immortals and that playing with the nightmares of humans passes the time for him.

She’s got him thwarted though, she’s released the prisoner he was holding in the orb, because she’s clever.

Except, the Doctor has forgotten, occasionally, prisons are actually to incarcerate naughty people. IN this case, the naughty one is Zellin’s partner in crime, another immortal. Between them they caused untold suffering to the people of the two worlds, until they rose up and imprisoned the worse of the two immortals in the orb. Oops. The Doctor has been played for a fool. Zellin needed someone clever enough to unlock the prison so that his partner could escape.

The Doctor is captured and placed with the others, while the immortals go to Earth and cause tasty nightmares, but the Doctor soon escapes and, with very little effort, imprisons both the immortals back into the orb.

Oh, and Ryan convinces his friend to get mental help, Yaz remembers the time she needed mental help and Graham opens up to the Doctor about his fear of cancer. It is a heart full plea for connection and help, which the Doctor bungles spectacularly. 

Our heroes leave to destroy Big Finish’s story, the Company of Friends.

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Simon and Eugene solve all of Earth's pollution problems... or, failing that, they discuss Praxeus, the latest episode of Doctor Who from the folks who brought you Kablam!

Episode Synopsis:

It’s a tale of three threads. In one thread, UK astronaut Adam Lang is lost on re-entry, only for his estranged husband, Jake, an ex-copper, to receive a text message from him asking for help. The message originates from Hong Kong, where he meets Yaz and Graham, who are investigating strange energy readings. They find Lang, strapped into an alien machine, and rescue him from the Hazmats who have imprisoned him.

There’s the thread of two travel vloggers, Gabriela and Jamila, visiting Peru who discover not only a lot of garbage, but birds that attack. When Jamila goes missing, Ryan turns up investigating the mystery of the birds. They discover Jamila, dead - sort of- in a nearby inexplicably deserted hospital. She is soon covered with a strange, alien skin condition and explodes into a pile of dust.

And finally it’s the thread of a missing US submarine, and the lone sailor the Doctor rescues, after he washes up on the shore of Madagascar, near a research facility looking into cleaning the oceans of micro plastics. And when I say, “rescues,” I mean drags ashore only to watch him get covered in a strange, alien skin condition and explode. Also, the research facility is being watched by flocks on non-native birds.

In each of the first two threads, the Doctor turns up to retrieve the team members and takes them all, minus Yaz and Gabriela back to the research facility in Madagascar, where, with the help of scientist Suki she tries to piece together the clues to the mystery.  

Yaz and Gabriela stayed behind in Hong Kong to investigate the alien lab, and later impulsively travel through a teleport where they find the missing US submarine.

A dissection of one of the dead birds reveals that it is stuffed full of plastic, and at this moment, the 2x4 swings forth from the television set, smacking the viewer up the back side of the head with today’s moralizing. Humans are poisoning the planet with all their plastics. These plastics break down into micro plastics and are ingested into everything, even humans. An alien bacteria that eats plastic has come to Earth. But instead of contenting itself on eating all of the plastic all over the place (even in the planes flying in the sky) they instead concentrate on eating the plastic in birds and in humans. This has the unfortunate side effect of making birds die and fall from the sky, but making humans explode.

The Doctor and Suki, along with some helpful Earth-based enzymes, seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough. Gosh it’s quite the convenient coincidence that Suki has a well-equipped lab working on micro plastic related research. That is until Yaz reports in from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Readings on the alien dookicky thingy pinpoint a point right there in Madagascar.

And the gig is up! Suki is an alien working to save her people from the nasty alien plastic-earring bacteria named Praxeus. Just to be clear, the bacteria is named Praxeus, Suki is still named Suki.  

It was Suki who brought Praxeus to Earth because humans are a special kind of destructive monster. It took her people scouring THREE galaxies to find a planet that had been screwed this badly.  

Suki disappears but not before giving her thanks to the Doctor and a warning - Praxeus is a smart bacteria, and its coming for her. And indeed, the Praxeus infected birds do a poor man’s Hitchcock on the gang, attacking everyone yet not managing a single scratch.

Back to the TARDIS, where she tests the experimental antidote on Adam. If it doesn’t kill him, she’ll have found a cure. They pop to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve Yaz and Gabriela. They also find Suki, who dies, not entirely of Praxeus, but rather the combination of the Doctor’s experimental cure, which Suki tried on herself, Praxeus and her alien biology. It makes things worse and she explodes. Too bad she already transmitted the “cure” back to her people - I hope they don’t try it.

Adam recovers, and with a clinical trial sample size of two - with one fatality - the Doctor rushes to use Suki’s spaceship to disperse the “cure” into the Earth’s atmosphere. Suki’s ship has a malfunction and Jake has to fly it into space because being a space man is easy, and he disperses the kill or cure into the atmosphere, spreading it to entire planet. And as the ship explodes, the Doctor rescues Jake.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Fugitive of the Judoon.

Episode Synopsis: 

It’s Gloucester, modern day, and in what is not at all a contrived coincidence or metaphor, it’s Ruth Clayton’s birthday, but apart from an anticipated birthday cake from her husband Lee, it’s just a typical day flogging walking tours of Gloucester. Little does she know, uninvited guests are coming to crash the party.

She stops by her local coffee shop where the creepy proprietor, Allan, tries, once again, to convince Ruth that her husband is a dangerous man. He has no family and checks out weird books from the library. He’s even compiled a dossier on Lee Clayton. Of course, Allan’s just jealous.

In the vortex, the Doctor is in a mood, and her companions try to tease it out of her, but they only get so far before the TARDIS picks up a containment warning from a Judoon platoon near the moon. And when I say “near the moon” I mean “on the Earth,” where the Judoon do not have jurisdiction. They have erected a containment field around Gloucester and are searching for a fugitive. The Doctor reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, or something not nearly as cool, and lands the TARDIS within the field.

The Judoon are cataloging all people within the area in search of the fugitive and just generally terrifying the fine folk of Gloucester because they are, after all, space rhinoceroses. When they confront Allan he suggests they go after Lee Clayton.

Unobserved to the TARDIS team, Graham is scooped up by a teleport where he meets Capt. Jack Harkness, who was trying to grab the Doctor in a stolen spaceship.

Back on Earth, the Doctor bluffs past the Judoon and starts talking to Lee (who behaves very suspiciously) and Ruth, who is clearly clueless. Lee’s concern seems to be keeping his secret and getting Ruth to safety. The Doctor sends Yaz and Ryan out to stall the Judoon further, but they are scooped up by a teleport where they meet Capt. Jack Harkness who was trying to grab the Doctor in a stolen spaceship.

Wow, failed to get the Doctor twice in a row, is there some form of Judoon level 7 containment field in the area? There is? Oh, that explains it.

The Doctor takes Ruth to the nearby cathedral, while Lee confronts the Judoon and Gat, the controller of the operation. Gat and Lee are old friends, and she kills him, but not before he sends a cryptic text message to Ruth. “Follow the light. Break the glass.”

The Judoon surround Ruth and the Doctor but, suddenly Ruth, as if acting on instinct, kung fus the entire Judoon squad and sends them packing. She is confused by what just happened.

The message from Lee leads Ruth and the Doctor to the lighthouse where she grew up. While the Doctor pokes around, Ruth is drawn to an emergency “break the glass” thingy, and she does.

On the grounds, at Ruth’s parents’ grave, the Doctor finds not bodies, but a buried Police Box. What?! Says the Doctor.

Ruth arrives, now wearing an uninspired cosplay outfit. “I’m the Doctor, this is my TARDIS.” What?! Says the Doctor.

Back on the the stolen spaceship, instead of explaining, Capt. Jack gives cryptic warnings about the Lone Cyberman for the companions to take back to the Doctor. IN a rush, he sends them on their way.

Inside the buried TARDIS’ control room, which, I might add is cooler than any TARDIS we’ve seen since the reboot, the Doctor explains - no she doesn’t. They don’t know what’s going on and they argue, of course. Then Gat arrives, who is from Gallifrey, and used to work with the Doctor, despite the fact that the Doctor doesn’t know her, and now needs to kill her, but the Doctor gives her a rifle that backfires, killing her. The Judoon are sent away due to a contract technically, and the Doctor uses the TARDIS to drop off the Doctor near the TARDIS.

What?! Says the audience.

The Doctor is dazed and confused, but her team are supportive, and then alarms go off. The end of Act II of an unknown number of Acts

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Simon and Eugene discuss inconsistent policies and procedures concerning historical figures and the timeline.

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If you picked Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi, you are right!  However, in this episode, Simon and Eugene talk about Nikola Tesla's Night or Terror.

Episode Synopsis:

The Twentieth Century is dawning and Nikolas Tesla is having a bad day. He’s trying to find investors but it’s a hard sell. Things go from bad to worse when a man is found dead, probably by electrocution, at Tesla’s Niagara Falls facility, Wardenclyffe.

That night Tesla discovers it wasn’t his equipment at fault, someone stole some of the equipment. He also finds a mysterious floating orb and pockets it - just as the Doctor arrives and a cloaked man tries to kill them with a gun repurposed from the props department.

Uncloaked, the man appears to be the walking corpse of the man killed earlier.

They escape, along with Tesla’s secretary, Miss Skerritt, on a conveniently passing train, which also happens to have Graham, Ryan and Yaz, in period costume, on board. They go to New York City, or thereabouts.

Here Tesla is greeted with protests. The public is up in arms about his deadly Alternating Current work. A public outcry flamed by Thomas Edison, who champions the alternative current, Direct Current.

Studying the orb, the Doctor recognizes it as an Orb of Thassor, but it’s been repurposed to be something else. About that time, they spy a spy spying on them. He’s Edison’s man, so the Doctor, Graham and Ryan rush to confront Edison.

Edison, it turns out, is a nasty man, but he’s not guilty of the attempts on Tesla’s life. How do they know this? Because Edison’s spy is also a dead man and arrives and instantly kills everyone working at Edison’s Invention Factory for no obvious reason and then, less successfully, attacks Edison and our heroes.

(Note to self: remember to ask “why did the dead guy show up at Edison’s Factory and try to kill them after the later reveal of what they’re really trying to accomplish with their plan?)

Our heroes, and Edison, flee and escape, warning Yaz by mobile phone that dead people might show up… oops, too late. Dead people show up and whisk Tesla and Yaz away before the Doctor can arrive in the TARDIS.

Tesla and Yaz find themselves on a spaceship above New York. It is the ship of the Skithra, a scorpion-like, colony species and their queen - who is most definitely NOT the Racnoss queen - they have been searching to capture Tesla because he is smart and he can make things go. The Skithra are a scavenger species, stealing technology where they can find it and making it their own.

The Doctor takes Edison and fetches Miss Skerritt in the TARDIS. Skerritt reveals that Tesla had received signals from what he thought was Mars, so they go to Tesla’s Niagara Falls lab, study the readings, find the spaceship and then, for reasons not explained, the Doctor announces she cannot take the TARDIS to retrieve them, so she uses some dodgy teleport technology she picked up at a bazaar to pop up the ship, confront the Skithra Queen with some harsh words and narrowly escape with Tesla and Yaz.

Back at Niagara Falls, the Skithra threaten to destroy the entire population of the Earth if Tesla doesn’t surrender, so he agrees, but the Doctor doesn’t. They turn Tesla’s wireless power transmitter into a powerful weapon by connecting it to the TARDIS. They also use the TARDIS to generate a force field.

There’s just one catch, for reasons not adequately explained, the TARDIS, a device powered by the immense power of a captive black hole cannot power both a grotty little force field and an electric lightning generator at the same time. This means the force field has to be turned off for 30 second before they can blast the Skithra ship into smithereens. Destroying the ship will kill the queen, and the others of the colony will be… probably dead, too. Maybe. Or perhaps just angry giant scorpions.

One more catch, the queen isn’t on the ship, she led the battle. But the Doctor gives her another stern lecture about how she’d given her a chance and she was too stupid to take it and now the universe will not mourn them once she’s killed them. She then tricks her back onto the ship, and Tesla blasts it. But instead of destroying it, it just flies away. Making us all wonder why it didn’t just fly away a long time ago and search for a planet with better technology than primitive little early-twentieth century earth.

Things are looking up for Tesla now that he’s saved the world, right? Asks Yaz.

Oh no, says the Doctor, he dies penniless and mostly forgotten. But the things he thought of were later thought of by other people and made real and revolutionized the world. So, yeah, happy endings all around.

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Simon and Eugene discuss whether the Doctor has changed into a SJW.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Orphan 55.

Episode Synopsis:

Graham wins an all-inclusive vacation at Tranquility Spa, unfortunately, the vacation begins before they can adequately prepare as they are immediately teleported from the TARDIS to the spa. Seemingly unconcerned by being isolated from the TARDIS and with only the clothes on their backs, the gang immediately split up to enjoy the amenities. All except the Doctor who pokes around looking for trouble.

In the spa control facility, Kane and Vorm are dealing with both a virus incursion into the spa systems and a breach. An alien lifeform has entered the spa.

Yaz meets Beni and Vilma, an elderly couple and intrudes on their special moment as Beni is about to propose - signifying that one or both of them are dead meat walking.

Ryan finds trouble almost immediately, when a vending machine gives him a Hopper Virus. The Doctor cures this by pulling his ear and having him sneeze in a plastic bag, then sucking his thumb. A virus remedy that every Microsoft Windows administrator knows by rote. While Ryan is recovering he meets, and rather successfully, chats up Bella, another guest at the resort.

With a creature on the loose, the guests are asked to come to muster stations, disguised as a drill. But when Ryan sees security with a gun, he and Bella follow to find out what’s happening.

The Doctor has found the control room, hidden in a linen closet. She quickly deduces that, not only has a virus been attacking all the systems, including the now-inoperable teleport, but that something has gotten in and is killing the guests. She redirects all the guests to the linen closet - at least all that are alive or bother to listen. Amongst those that failed to listen: Ryan and Bella.

The Doctor repairs the ionic barrier, a biological filter that forces the creature, known as a Dreg, back out of the spa.

With the creature expunged, it is now revealed that this spa is a “fake-cation” location, a walled-in simulation of a vacation, typically located conveniently in cities so that people don’t have to travel to an “exotic” spa, but this one is different, it’s built off-world, on a planet known as Orphan 55. Orphan planets are worlds where the 1%ers are able to escape their dying world, leaving behind the others - one might even call them the “dregs” of humanity - to die. Somehow on Orphan 55, life has survived.

Beni has somehow gotten outside, and Vilma pleads that they go get him. Kane reluctantly agrees and everyone left piles in the van and heads out across the wastelands, but when it becomes apparent that the Dregs have him, Kane wants to turn back. Vilma pays her to continue on. The Dregs lay a trap and the vehicle is destroyed. Casualties start to mount up as they make their way to an access tunnel. They reach a teleport, but then Bella throws a metaphorical bombshell. She’s the saboteur that unleashed the virus because she has mommy issues. You see, Kane, unknowingly, is Bella’s absent mother, and Bella is disproportionately upset about it. In fact, she’s here to burn the place to the ground in a fit of pique. She is about to be killed by a Dreg when Ryan rescues her by pushing her, and himself, into the teleport, returning to the spa. Alas, there’s no more power to use the teleport again, and the others must continue through the tunnels on foot.

At the base, Bella reveals she’s got not just metaphorical bombshells, she’s got real ones, too, and goes about planting them… sort of with Ryan’s help. Certainly, Ryan puts up little or no resistance.

In the tunnels, the Doctor discovers they are on the planet Ravalox - sometimes call Earth - and it’s been destroyed by global warming. This greatly distresses Yaz and Graham, but, what can you do except demand accountability and action from your elected officials, and/or overthrow the capitalistic system which exploits people and resources, generating a filthy rich class of elites who can afford to abandon their world leaving the poor behind in the thoughtlessly ravaged world their own apathy perpetuated?

The Doctor runs out of oxygen because, just like I’ve been saying for years, she talks too much, but she’s able to refill from the Dregs because… they oxygenate. Kane appears to sacrifice herself to save the Doctor.

Finally back at the control room, the Doctor hatches a bit of a plan. Nevi and Sylas (two characters I haven’t bothered to mention up to this point because they’ve been mostly superfluous) are to fix the teleport, but Sylas - Nevi’s son - runs into the danger area in a fit of pique because he’s mad at his dad.

Does anyone else think that writer Ed Hime is mad at one of his parents because they don’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming and wrote this episode in a fit of pique?

Apart from the fact that Sylas is actually the brains of the pair, they also need Syrillium 4 to power the teleport, and they only have Syrillium 3. I know what you’re thinking, why not just add two Syrillium 3s, and subtract 2, but apparently you can’t do that, but you can take a Hopper virus, conveniently stored in a plastic bag in the Doctor’s pocket and infect Syrillium 3, transmuting it into Syrillium 4, because apparently that’s how computer viruses and particle physics do…

There’s some running about, rescuing the boy, setting off bombs, getting the teleport working, there’s a surprise moment when Bella sacrifices herself to save the others, and then Kane shows up to sacrifice herself (again) to help Bella sacrifice herself and they all escape back to the TARDIS for downer lecture from the Doctor about the Earth’s future being a choose-your-own-adventure book and it’s not too late to pick the right choices, otherwise, humanity will turn into a race of vicious, carnivorous, CO2-breathing, cruel monsters.

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Episode Synopsis:

Part One

Operatives are attacked all over the world by strange creatures pushing through the walls. The Doctor and her fam (and if I never hear the word “fam” again it will be too soon) are “collected” by C, head of the MI6. The agents have all had their DNA re-written, and that can only be unearthly technology. The world calls on the Doctor to save them.

The only clue, all the operatives were following up leads associated with Daniel Barton, CEO of VOR, the nightmare technology company that started as the world’s most successful search engine and then branched out into servers, phones, home automation and anything else they could think of. You know, like Google, only fictional - supposedly.

The Doctor wants to enlist the aide of Horizon Watcher - the MI6 agent known only as O - (that is, apart from being know as the Horizon Watcher) - who operated MI6’s X-files, until C fired him. C is killed by a sniper shot, and the glowing aliens attack the Doctor and the gang, but they escape in the TARDIS.

The Doctor drops off Yaz and Ryan in San Francisco, where they are to do some undercover digging into Barton, while she and Graham travel to the Australian Outback to confer with O.

Using spy gear, Yaz and Ryan first manage to finagle an interview with Barton in the guise of journalists, then forge his ID and break into his office to download the info on his computer. Interesting side note, a scan of Barton’s DNA reveals he’s only 93% human. In his office, they are almost caught, but learn that Barton is working with or for the aliens.

In the Outback, the Doctor and O confer, but the glowing aliens attack. They manage to escape, taking O with them, and infiltrate Barton’s enormously convenient birthday party. After the Doctor confronts him, Barton goes on the run, eventually flying off in his private jet. The Doctor and the gang manage to get on the plane but then the big reveal…. O isn’t O after all, nor is he the Horizon Watcher - he’s the Master - he’s in league with Barton and the aliens, and there’s a bomb on the plane. The Master leaves with the aliens just as the bomb goes off and the Doctor is somehow transported to another place.

Part Two

Onboard the frontless plane, Ryan finds several plaques with his name and info on them leading him to recorded instructions and software from the Doctor to gain control of the plane and let it fly automatically to its original destination.

The Doctor, alone in the strange place meets Ada, a 19th century woman who apparently visits frequently, but knows not why. She helps the Doctor escape back to 1834 London, where the Master attempts to kill the Doctor, unsuccessfully. The Doctor meets Ada’s associate, Charles Babbage, and like a calculating machine, the Doctor puts 2 and 2 together and realizes this is Ada Lovelace, pioneer of computer algorithms.

There’s a weird sculpture, called the Silver Lady in Babbage’s study (which we, the audience, had seen in Barton’s office in the 21st century) which the Doctor deduces is a McGuffin and sonics it, cause her and Ada to be transported to 1943 Paris, where they meet Nor Khan, British agent, and are pursued by Nazi’s lead by…. you guessed it… the Master.

Back in the future, Graham, Yaz and Ryan and are the run. Barton has brought the full weight of his technology to bear on them and they are tracked, wanted for hijacking and on the run in a surveillance state. Graham takes them to somewhere that he thinks is off the grid, but he is wrong. The aliens find them, but they are saved by Graham’s soft shoe dance routine - and a pair of laser shoes borrowed from MI6.

The Doctor arranges to meet with the Master on the Eiffel Tower, where he can’t help but blab a bit about how he found out about the aliens, gave them a better plan, will destroy the human race, then dispose of the alien when they are of no further use to him, too. He also drops a bit about Galiifrey being destroyed - again - but doesn’t elaborate.

The Doctor has laid a trap, giving the Nazi’s false information that the Master is a double agent for the British and the Nazi’s are coming. The Doctor, Ada and Nor escape in the Master’s TARDIS.

Graham, Yaz and Ryan think they’ve been clever, allowing themselves to be located by Barton’s team, then capturing their car and using the GPS to take them to Barton’s base, which is an empty warehouse with the dead body of his mother. (Barton killed her earlier because he has mommy issues.)

Barton is giving a speech and he reveals to the whole world how terribly stupid and naive they’ve all been, giving his company access to everything about their lives. Their location, family, friends, thoughts, bank accounts, children… everything and now that he has all that, he implements the plot - which has virtually nothing to do with any of that. He’s just using their phones to re-write their DNA and turn the entire human race into DNA-based hard drives to store the aliens’ massive porn collection, or whatever it is that they need to store on unreliable, organic, prone to mutate, age and wear out hard drives.

But that doesn’t work because the Doctor fixed it all not to work off-screen between scenes. She also reveals the Master’s perfidy to the aliens and they get upset, taking him with them back into exile in their own universe.

The Doctor makes a brief stop at Gallifrey to discover it has been destroyed and gets a recorded message from the Master saying, that he actually destroyed Gallifrey because they lied to them all about their nature and it really upset him.

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Eugene and John take a listen and decide if our wandering moon's adventures are beginning again, or should they already be over.

Episode Synopsis: 

The year is 1999 in an alternate timeline without so many Republicans and Earth has a freaking moonbase, near light speed travel and a space program interested in manned spaceflight!

John Koenig, the original commander of Moonbase Alpha is returning to take up the post once more during the final phase of the Meta Probe - a manned flight to a planet five light years away.

What Koenig does not know is that a strange illness is killing the pilots on Moonbase Alpha, including the flight crew for the Meta Probe. Koenig has been sent by Commissioner Simmonds to ram through the final stages of the Meta Probe at all cost.

On Moonbase Alpha, Dr. Helena Russell has been particularly frustrated with Simmonds and outgoing commander Gorsky. She has been desperately trying to save lives, but Simmonds and Gorsky have kept her cut off from Earth, unable to consult medical experts. Simmonds wants no wind of a problem getting out before the Meta Probe launches.

Koenig arrives on the base and meets his old friend and colleague Victor Bergman. Bergman fills him in and Dr.Russell gives him an earful. She knows Koenig is just another puppet of Simmonds, there to do his dirty work. What she did not know was that, despite being committed to the Meta Probe, Koenig doesn’t like what he’s finding out and demands Simmonds give Dr. Russell access to the experts.

Koenig sets about methodically to try to solve the problem, but it is clear that the situation is very much a threat to the Meta Probe and Simmonds doesn’t care how many people die as long as the probe launches on schedule.

Simmonds tries to convince Koenig that it is all worth it by playing for him a top secret recording of a complex signal being sent to Earth from Meta. There’s signs of water, atmosphere and what appears to be a non-natural signal being set to them. There’s a strong chance the is intelligent life on Meta.

The moonbase is filled with tourists, even schoolchildren, all there to see the Meta Probe launch. With the deaths mounting up and no clue as to what is causing them,Koenig, against Simmonds wishes, orders the evacuation all non-essential personnel. Simmonds removes Koenig of command and heads to the moon to take command himself.

One of the tenuous leads was that all the affected pilots routinely visited nuclear waste dump Area 1, and while there is no radiation leakage, a strange rise in heat begins. Bergman and his team analyze all the data, and the Meta signal and a pattern begins to form.

There was a mysterious, off-the-records shipment delivered to Area 1, even though it has been closed for years, and the signal from Meta is not being beamed towards Earth - it’s being beamed directly at the moon. Somehow, the signal, the mystery boxes and the nuclear waste are creating Exotic Matter and as Simmonds arrives, Area 1 explodes.

Now, Area 2, which is massively larger, is beginning to show the same heat rise. Simmonds allows Koenig to stay in command as the Alphans attempt to break up the nuclear mass in Area 2. As things get worse in Area 2, Koenig orders the Meta probe to launch early, reasoning that the only answers to this mystery are on Meta and even though it’s 5 years away, it’s their only hope.

Something goes wrong. The Kueller drive aboard the Meta Probe runs at hyper-power, combining somehow with the erupting Area 2 and creating a traversable wormhole, launching the moon out of Earth’s orbit into outer space.

With no hope of ever returning, and the real possibility that Earth has been utterly destroyed, the Alphans must make a new home for themselves amongst the stars, their first stop - the planet Meta, which the moon is now approaching.

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Episode Synopsis: 

A young man is improbably going for a swim in the waters off the Scottish coast. He encounters a strange yellow substance floating in the water and dies. He has been killed by mustard gas.

John Ridge wants to investigate, but Quist is uninterested, but relents anklets Ridge proceed in his search for the source of the mustard gas which he suspects is the HMS Woodstock, which sunk with a cargo of mustard gas. An old friend of Quist’s, and famous scientist, McArthur was commander of the ship, and Ridge proposes to start his investigation there.

The mustard gas crisis plays little or no further part in this story.

McArthur, despite having a regular BBC radio program hasn’t actually been seen in two years, and absolutely no one will give Ridge permission to see him. The runaround lasts for weeks, until Quist’s deigns to write a letter to McArthur asking for Ridge to gain an audience. That request, too, is reject and the runaround continues, but wheels have been set in motion.

Privately, at McArthur’s him, McArthur’s daughter, Flora, wants to let Quist see her father, but her husband, Dr. Seaton, doesn’t want Quist to find out about the scientific advances they’ve made with McArthur. Flora expresses her concern that her father isn’t really alive.

The BBC confirms that McArthur does not show up to record his program, but instead supplies them, pre-recorded, months in advance. Next, the newspaper reports that the stock of McArthur’s company is taking a beating upon rumors that McArthur is actually dead. Ridge and Hardcastle plot get to the bottom of the mystery and plan a trip to Scotland to get in to see McArthur once and for all.

No need, says Quist, McArthur is holding a press conference tomorrow in London.

Ridge attends in the guise of a journalist. McArthur explains that he has been very ill, but is now quite well, although he has turned over operation of the company to his son-in-law, Seaton. Ridge manages to corner him about the Woodstock, but his answers are unusually vague. He memory is not what it used to be.

After reviewing the BBC tapes, Ridge - and Quist - are convinced the man at the press conference was an imposter. Indeed, back at the McArthur home we (the audience) learn that the man at the press conference was McArthur’s look-a-like cousin, acting on Seaton’s instructions and coaching.

Ridge and Fay head to Scotland to demand to see McArthur.

Meanwhile, after consulting with her father, invites Quist to visit, but he does not receive the invitation until Fay and Ridge have already arrived. When knocking on the front door fails, Fay creates a diversion and Ridge attempts to break in. Both fail, and Seaton threatens prosecution, but when Ridge bites back that withholding information on the Woodstock which may kill again is tantamount to murder, Seaton relents and they await Quist’s arrival.

When Quist arrives, we learn the truth, McArthur had a fatal illness that slowly creeps up through the body paralyzing and destroying, but McArthur, the brilliant scientist and Dr. Seaton, have replaced virtually everything except McArthur’s head with machinery. He is alive, not in pain, lucid and 100% onboard what what has happened to him. He has cheated death, he may even be immortal. Soon even his head will become paralyzed but they have prepared for that contingency, too. They are working on a method by which he can use his brainwaves to communicate with them via yes/no pulse and, with time, perhaps even morse code.

Flora doesn’t really think her father is truly human anymore, but she cannot switch him off. She loves him. Seaton is too caught up in the work to be able to consider ending it. Flora wants Quist to talk McArthur into ending it all.

Quist and McArthur have discussions. McArthur thinks that he is better than human. Soon he will be pure thought, unfettered by the physical - capable of making his own reality. Quist sees it as a living hell, locked in the dark, unable to adequately communicate, divorced from the physical reality that makes us human. McArthur accuses Quist of being unable to see beyond the physical. McArthur espouses the duality notion that his brain is just a repository for his mind - a separate, non-physical manifestation of what he is and what he can become. He even hopes to remove all emotion, for that, too, is surely just left overs from the instinctive animal part of the human being.

Slowly though, McArthur comes around and, in a final conversation with he daughter, tells her that it is time to let him die. Later, with Quist and Fay still there for support and with her father, oblivious in the other room, Flora shuts off the machinery and McArthur quietly dies.

Oh, and Ridge found the ship and the mustard gas problem was remediated.

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John and Eugene discuss the Outsiders

Episode Synopsis: 

Important research continues at Moonbase 3, but Helen Smith has concerns about two of the scientists. Drs. Partness and Conway. Although Partness is working on important fuel research, he’s working at a desperate pace. Perhaps he knows his days on Moonbase 3 are numbered - and, indeed they are - Caulder is sending him back to Earth. No one likes him and Caulder hasn’t forgiven him for illegally making the explosives that killed two staff members.

Conway, on the other hand, just becomes distant, as if he’s lost somewhere else. Neither of their psych reports indicate a problem, but Helen relies less on them than she used to. Caulder teases her a bit that she may be treating Conway as more than a patient… and while she denies it, later, she is in his room kissing him.

Conway feels like he’s living in the wrong world. Sure, things are better, but maybe they aren’t.

Caulder has got his own problems, an observer from Earth is coming up to scrutinize their work. They need results and they need them now. Both Partness’ and Conway’s projects could be the success story they need to keep the base funded.

Conway succeeds! A jubilant Caulder comes to talk with him about it and also gives Conway some other good news - Partness’ project has made a breakthrough, too! Now he’s got two highly lucrative successes to show off when the visitor arrives in just a few hours. Conway is surprised his friend Partness didn’t tell him about his breakthrough.

Dr. Hauser from Earth arrives and Partness demonstrates his new form of nuclear fuel to much fanfare. Rather than wanting to celebrate, Partness conscientiously wants to clean up after his demonstration. Too conscientiously, because the technician discovers Partness falsified the demo.

This kind of fraudulent action could get the base closed down, so Caulder must cover up the incident. At least they have Conway’s complete success.

Afterwards, Partness and Conway have a conversation. Partness knows how to fix his problem, he’s sure the real breakthough will be soon. Conway envies him. Even with this setback, he wants to continue on. Conway doesn’t not feel that way even in his success.

Later, someone takes an unauthorized moonwalk out onto the surface. They fear Partness is committing suicide, but it is Conway, his work complete, on the surface that removes his helmet so that he can hear the great silence of the moon.

Caulder allows Partness to stay to make his breakthrough because Caulder had faith in Conway and Conway had faith in Partness.

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis: 

Things are looking bad for Mal, he’s naked, stranded in the desert. Oh wait, the storytellers can’t create appropriate tension without a flashback.

Let’s start this story again, knowing, as we do, that it’s not going to end well.

Mal is on an uninhabited planetoid where he meets an old way pal and fellow Firefly smuggler, Monty. The good friends are happy to see one another until Monty introduces his wife who happens to be Our Mrs Reynolds (Whom we know as Saffron from a few episodes ago but Monty knows as Bridget). Mal and Saffron/Bridget fight. Monty intercedes and, perceiving that Mal is telling the truth, abandons Saffron/Bridget on the planetoid, with Mal.

Mal aims to leave her behind to die, even though she tries to pitch a 1,000,000 credit robbery.

Back on the Firefly, Inara wants words with Mal. He’s hiding on petty jobs and staying away from places where she can get work, they argue when Inara denigrates Mal’s criminal mastermind status.

This prompts Mal to let Saffron/Bridget out of the box that he was hiding her in and pitch her robbery plan.

The plan goes something like this. They go to the planet Bellerphon, break into the house of a rich dude, steal one of the only two remaining first laser pistols, chuck it in the trash, reprogram the trash truck to deliver the trash to a remote desert location, then fence the pistol for a cool million. Inara, upset that Mal and the crew are stupid enough to go along with Saffron/Bridget’s plan, leaves to do business.

The plan goes well except Jayne gets hurt trying to reprogram the trash shuttle and the owner walks in on Mal and Saffron/Bridget during their break in attempt.

But it’s ok, it’s turns out that Saffron/Bridget is actually his long-lost wife, Yolanda, and the touching reunion gives Mal enough time to get the laser into the trash. The victim hasn’t been completely fooled and he’s called the authorities on Mal and Saffron/Bridget/Yolanda, but they escape and head to the rendezvous with trash.

On the way, Mal engages in a little psychoanalysis of Saffron/Bridget/Yolanda. She’s genuinely upset, her tears are honest, and Mal has finally seen the naked women inside the brilliant, beautiful, evil, double-crossing snake.

On the Serenity, River has intuited that Jayne sold them out on Ariel. With Jayne now injured, Simon has him, unconscious, and under his knife. When Jayne comes to, he is paralyzed. No worries, just a medical precaution, says Simon. He confronts Jayne about his betrayal and explains that Jayne is safe because he is a medic and he would never hurt him and they are on the same crew. River; however, lets Jayne know she can kill him with her mind.

Mal is an idiot and when he gets a bit empathetic, it’s revealed that Saffron/Bridget/Yolanda was, once again, playing him. She gets his gun, drops him, naked, in the desert, and heads off to recover the loot, where Inara has already recovered the laser, gets the drop on her and leaves her for the authorities.

Mal, is naked, stranded in the desert, but he’s won.

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This is a short special announcement to give you an idea of what’s coming up through the rest of 2019 and into 2020.

Throughout the month of December 2019 we will be continuing our coverage of Firefly, Doomwatch and Moonbase 3.

We’ll be kicking off January 2020 with the special episode where we add Big Finish’s new Space: 1999 - Breakaway into our episode-by-episode coverage of Space: 1999.

After that it’s Doctor Who season and we will be covering each episode as it airs. That will take us through the first part of 2020.

With regards to the release of Doctor Who episodes, we’re gonna be trying something just a little different again this year. For starters, we will be returning to our old format of releasing Doctor Who episodes as soon as we can after the episode initially airs.

We release our episodes at 12:01 AM local time to me (UTC -7,) which is essentially end of day Sunday. Doctor Who airs on Sunday, and it will be logistically impossible for us to watch the episode of Doctor Who, record, edit, and post a podcast episode by our normal release time. Therefore our podcast for an episode of Doctor Who will be released on Monday, eight days after airing.

Two-part episodes will be combined into one podcast episode. So, for example we know that the first part of the first story, Spyfall, will air on January 1, with the second part airing on Sunday, January 5. We will record the episode as soon as possible and release it on January 13.

If there are any other two-part episodes, this will result in a week’s skip in the release schedule and we fill in a special episode on those weeks. We’ve got some great special episodes coming including the BBC’s 1981 Day of the Triffids and the 1960’s Dr. Who movies with Peter Cushing, so keep an eye out for those.

For our patrons on Patreon, we realize that it will be impossible for us to release the Doctor Who episodes of full week in advance of the regular release as we normally do for our valued patrons. 

So this year, we have a series of special Doctor Who-related sidecar episodes which we will release on the normal Patreon release date, and then just as soon as we complete the editing of each regular Doctor Who podcast, we will release those into the Patreon feed.

Following the close of the Doctor Who series, we will resume with our regular programming. As you may know Moonbase 3 and Firefly are coming to a close. We’ve got some great stuff coming up to follow that including Nigel Kneale’s Beasts, Star Cops and Starhunter Redux - plus some other surprises!

Thanks for being a listener!

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Web of Fear.

Episode Synopsis: 

The Minister of Health and Duncan, Permanent Secretary at a mysteriously connected Ministry that somehow occasionally seems to hold Doomwatch’s fate directly within their purview, are relaxing in a steam bath at a health farm on an island. A third person in the steam bath falls ill with what looks to be Yellow Fever.

The island is quarantined.

Quist has been desperately trying to get the Minister of Health to consider one of his proposals and sees the Yellow Fever outbreak as an opportunity to (a) offer Doomwatch’s help and expertise and (b) corner the minister about the policy decision.

Quist and Dr. Chantry, with Yellow Fever inoculations in arm, head to the island.

At the staging area, on the way to the island, the Doomwatch team meet Dr. George, an expert on infectious tropical diseases and Dr Griffith and his wife. Griffith is a research scientist who, some years ago presented a groundbreaking paper - or it would have been if Quist (and others) hadn’t ground Griffith’s 15 year research project into so much dust under their heels within hours - and with the paper, the man himself.

Griffith must get to the island where he has been doing research. He fears that his agricultural research will be destroyed when they spray the island to kill all the Yellow Fever carrying mosquitos. He is denied from the island.

So he goes anyway, in secret, in a desperate attempt to gather moth samples before the spraying.

More people at the health farm are falling ill, despite the fact that no one is really noticing a mosquito problem around the Farm. Dr. George says it looks like Yellow Fever, but the cells are slightly different - it might possibly be a new variation of Yellow Fever.

Griffith is a man obsessed. He must complete his research and it must be perfect before he publishes this time; however, the spraying begins before he can collect specimens on the far side of the island. He sends his wife to the apple orchards near the health farm, while he explores the old tin mine hoping that moth specimens will have found their way in and be shielded from the spraying. The moths should be easy to find, his process causes them to turn blue.

After he leaves, his wife notices that the spiders that ate the moths have also turned blue. What could that mean?

Ridge has been called to the island and spots Mrs Griffith taking moth samples in the orchard. Quist assigns him to follow her.

In the spider-filled mine, Griffith falls ill and cannot make his way out unaided.

When Ridge finds her at the mine, she’s worried about her husband who should have returned by now. He takes her back to the farm where, after comparing notes, they postulate a new hypothesis. The disease isn’t Yellow Fever, but something similar that started with the harmless virus applied to the moths and triggered a new virus when inside the spiders that preyed upon them. The spiders, in turn, pass the virus into their webs. People who came in contact with either spider or web have been exposed to the disease.

Ridge must go to rescue Griffith in the mine while avoid contact with all the spider webs, which he eventually does.

With the island quarantined and the source of infection identified, the outcome is hopeful that the disease has been contained; however, Griffith has died. His death will stand as a warning to all those working in the field, which is currently woefully unregulated.

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Episode Synopsis: 

On the surface of the moon, scientists Adam Blaney and Bill Knight are working on an antenna installation. Bill begins to act delirious, his oxygen supply running out. Adam rushes to him, shares his air supply, and they make it safely back to the base.

Back at the base, Dr. Kate Weyman, head of the Cora project that both Adam and Bill are working on, has made a costly mistake. By accidentally leaving an override in place, she has damaged a critical computer and it will take days to repair. It will literally be faster to get a replacement flown up from Earth.

Unfortunately, about this time, the Director General calls and tells Caulder that the budget is tighter than ever. All projects MUST come in on schedule and under budget. There will be no replacement computer from Earth. Tom Hill and his technical staff are assigned around the clock to work on the computer.

After Bill’s brush with death, he’s ready to chuck his promising career and return to Earth to be with his wife, who he is convinced is cheating on him. Caulder cannot spare him and Helen arranges a call to his wife, who assures him she still loves him and wants him to stay on the base.

Adam intimates to Tom that Kate is interfering with his repairs, which annoys him. He also spreads rumors that Kate might be a bit old and starting to make mistakes. He tries to convince her to falsify her report about the computer accident and say it was a faulty microswitch, otherwise, it might end her career. Back when he was on the Venus probe mission, they never had to report things like that.

Kate contemplates falsifying the report, but ultimately doesn’t. She files her report with Caulder - and her resignation. Caulder puts Helen on the case.

To keep the Cora project going while the computer is being repaired, Adam suggests that Bill go out to a remote radio station and do some observations for a few days.

Helen tries to get a better handle on Adam. Adam had been in the running for the Venus Probe, but was passed over because he has an irregular heart. While Helen pries, Adam also playfully probes Helen for information about her and, before long, they’re an item.

Adam takes Bill out to the remote station, on the way, he makes it sound like Caulder forced him to stay and the call to his wife was staged. This gets Bill in a lather just as he’s left isolated at the remote station.

Caulder and Helen begin to get suspicious that, perhaps, the Cora project is being sabotaged. Could it be that Bill has been causing all these incidents all along?

Just about then, Bill calls and threatens to destroy the equipment if they don’t come get him and put him on tonight’s shuttle back to Earth. Caulder accedes to his demands.

Adam rushes out to get him, and Helen goes along.

At the station, Bill gets a bit calmed down, then drugged into taking a nap. While napping, Adam suggests that he and Helen have a little adult time while the kid is asleep in the other room. Helen feels this is inappropriate and rejects him. Adam doesn’t take it well. He’s conflating Helen’s rejection with his rejection from the Venus Probe.

On the way back, a surly and reckless Adam drives them off a cliff in an effort to kill Helen. Luckily, they don’t make cliffs or gravity like they do back home on Earth and they all survive. Moonbase 3 rescues them.

It seems that Adam has the gift of spotting anyone’s Achilles Heel and exploiting it with his gift of gab. He’s been playing everyone, when he’s not trying to murder them.

But, according to the brilliant Dr. Helen Smith, he’s been doing it subconsciously, and probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.

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Episode Synopsis: 

Following the success of their raid on Ariel, the crew of the Firefly are sitting pretty with cash in their pockets. Simon and River are especially buoyed because he has been able to devise new treatment regimes and River is showing signs of improvement. But all that ends as they prepare to sell off the last of their ill-gotten gains. The little green monster of jealousy rears his ugly head when Wash, tired of listening to Zoe and Mal’s endless war stories about the times they’ve had together, decides it’s time for him to start building a few stories with Mal, too.

Wait, did I say “with Mal?” - Come to think of it, wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to want to build stories with Zoe instead? Ok, never mind, back to the story.

Wash sabotages the launch sequence of the shuttle, blackmailing Mal into taking him along instead of Zoe. Little does he know, Niska, whom Mal upset all the way back in the Train Job when Mal failed to turn over the stolen goods as promised, has located them and sends a team to bring Mal in. Wash gets picked up, too.

Not only does Niska like to make an example of people who cross him, but he likes to torture them and keep them alive several days beforehand. It’s this character-flaw that allows Zoe time to attempt to trade all their recent monetary gains to Niska in exchange for Mal and Wash. Niska accepts a partial offer, all the money but one Wash is released. Only Wash and Mal’s severed ear. Zoe and the gang now lead an assault on Niska’s space station and rescue Mal. Niska escapes to cause havoc again some other day.

Simon reattaches Mal’s ear and they head off, leaving the crew to wonder, why is Shepard Book such an expert with weapons and assault tactics? And leaving Kaylee troubled by how lethal River was during the assault.

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Episode Synopsis: 

It is 1971, during the Golden Age of jet air travel, when luxurious planes plied the skies serving Victorian-era foods in aspic… and it is at the tail end of a series of rapid turnaround London to Los Angeles to London luxury flights that Dr. Quist finds himself disembarking his plane and being whisked immediately to a meeting at #10.

Quist appears to be drunk and is sent home. The Minister sees this as his chance to get rid of Quist, once and for all!

Back at Doomwatch HQ, Barbara, who was also on the trip, isn’t at peak performance either. The team hear about Quist’s drunken appearance at #10 and put two and two together - or more accurately, they put 11.25 hours and 11.25 hours together and realize that Quist and Barbara have been traveling almost an entire day back and forth across timelines and are showing signs of extreme jet lag. Fey Chantry begins testing Barbara’s reaction times.

Doomwatch informs the Minister that Quist was just jet lagged, but he is dismissive of the idea because he has Quist’s doom in his sights. He orders Quist to take two weeks leave and contacts Ridge and orders him to go to America to give the presentation Quist had been sent to give.

Quist had been suddenly called back to London because the Prime Minister got wind that Quist was going to blame all major threats to our environment on the doorstep of governments. Ridge is instructed to not do that in his version of the presentation.

Ridge; however, is a cunning bastard, and forces the Minister’s hand, making him travel to America to give the presentation, and then he will have to immediately return to the UK and have an important meeting. Ridge anticipates that the Minister will be impaired, just as Quist was. The Minister knows this is what Ridge is doing, but scoffs at the notion that he will have problems.

Quist; however, gets wind of Ridge’s plot and puts a stop to it. He demands that, if the Minister is impaired in America, he ask for a postponement on the presentation. America is thinking of setting up their own Doomwatch and it is too important to let the Minister botch it up.

On the flight, the Minister is entertained by Ainsley. The gregarious Scotsman from America who had previously flown with Quist and showed him and Barbara a great time.

Back in Britain, the pieces are starting to come together. Ainsley is employed by a firm in America. Their clients are a who’s who of US and UK companies that wouldn’t want the Doomwatch concept to spread to the United States and who would favor the UK version having less influence.

Ainsley is using the fact that the effects of jet travel across timezones is very similar to the techniques used in brainwashing. Ainsley uses the flights to sway his victim - in this case, the Minister. He encourages him to eat, drink, smoke and not get any sleep, and even whisks him away from more food and activity while they layover in New York. All the while, working on getting him to change the speech he’s preparing to give.

Alerted to Ainsley’s mission, the Minister’s staff try to stop him, but Ainsley has it all sewed up. A rush of reporters storm the Minister, hitting him with loaded questions. Just as he’s about to say something seriously regrettable, he has a heart attack and falls to the floor.

Ridge, who did all the right things to minimize jet lag on the flight, picks up the speech and heads into the conference to delivery Quist’s original presentation.

Later, it appears the Minister isn’t dead, but Quist is angry at Ridge. The Minister is the only person that can keep Doomwatch afloat - he must continue on.

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I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe:
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain.
Time to die.
- Roy Batty

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Movie Synopsis: 

Rick Deckard is a former Blade Runner: A special cop charged with retiring (read: hunting down and killing) rogue Replicants. Replicants are artificial humans that are used as slave labor on Earth’s colony worlds, but outlawed on Earth itself. Replicants can have superior strength and intelligence than the humans that created them.

Deckard is coerced out of retirement when four Replicants have found their way to Los Angeles and attempt to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation - the company that designs and builds them.

Deckard starts his investigation at the top of the Tyrell Corporation with Eldon Tyrell, CEO and master designer of the Replicants. Blade Runners employ the Voight-Kampf test, a physiological test to measure emotional responses to a series of emotionally-charged questions. Replicants may be physically equal or superior to humans, but their emotions are under-developed. After several years, they begin developing their own emotional framework without the benefit of a human lifetime of experience. For this reason, Replicants have a fixed, four-year lifespan.

Tyrell has Deckard demonstrate the test on a human first, his secretary Rachael. After 5 times as many questions as usually required, he determines that Rachael is not a real human. She is a Replicant and doesn’t know it herself. Tyrell explains that she is a new development, a Replicant with artificial memories copied from a real person.

Elsewhere, Roy and Leon, two of the Replicants intimidate the designer of their genetic eyes. They want information about themselves: their inception dates and programmed lifespans. He does not have access to the information - only Tyrell does.

He gives them the name of another genetic designer, J.F. Sebastian, who has access to Tyrell.

Later, Rachael calls on Deckard at his apartment, trying to convince him that she’s a real human. When he proves otherwise, she is heartbroken and leaves in tears.

Pris, another of the Replicants, seemingly homeless, turns up on the doorway of J.F. Sebastian’s apartment building. Sebastian magnanimously invites the vulnerable (and beautiful) Pris into his apartment for food and shelter.

Later, while following up leads, Deckard tries to get Rachael to join him at a club, but she turns him down.

Deckard’s leads bring him to Zhora, the fourth of the Replicants, working as a stripper in the club. She runs and he “retires” her in the streets outside. Unbeknownst to him, both Rachael and Leon see him commit the act.

Leon, overwrought at Zhora’s death, attacks Deckard and nearly kills him, but Rachael uses Deckard’s gun to retire Leon before he can land the killing blow.

Shaken, Deckard and Rachael return to his apartment where Deckard... asserts himself... for some post-killing sex.

Pris has spent the night at Sebasatian’s and now Roy arrives, saddened over Leon’s death. Sebastian knows they’re both Replicants and seems sympathetic to them. With a little friendly persuasion, Sebastian agrees to take Roy to meet with Tyrell.

Roy doesn’t get the answers he wants from Tyrell. There is nothing Tyrell can do to extend their lifespans, so Roy kills him... and Sebastian.

Deckard investigates the death of Sebastian and discovers Pris, and after a brief struggle, retires her, just as Roy returns.

Roy is overcome with the loss of his friends at Deckard’s hands, the failure of their mission, and he has reached his natural termination date and beginning to fail. He taunts, hurts and terrorizes Deckard, pursuing him onto the roof.

When he corners Deckard, instead of killing him, Roy sits down and retires in front of him.

Deckard returns to his apartment to find Rachael, now a fugitive replicant, sleeping. They escape together.

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John and Eugene discuss Behemoth.

Episode Synopsis: 

A team of astronauts are working on the surface, conducting experiments in the Mare Frigoris. There is some strange disturbance from under the surface. Later, when they fail to check in, it is discovered that they, and all their equipment, have disappeared without a trace.

Although searching continues, Caulder is basically helpless. He calls the Americans, who agree to assist in the search, but there is little that can be done for the missing researchers, who will have run out of air before search teams can arrive. The mystery of the missing men begins to cause stress and concern amongst the crew of Moonbase 3.

As a precaution, Caulder makes Mare Frigoris off limits until further notice. This does not sit well with seismologist Dr. Heinz Laubenthal. He’s conducting critically important research that in Mare Frigoris but he refuses to reveal any details as to why it is so critical to Director Caulder. Caulder is unmoved and keeps the prohibition in place.

The normally tight-lipped Laubenthal begins to get chummy with another scientist at the base, Dr. Stephen Partness, he agrees to give Partness some of his precious computer time in exchange for some help with his research. Laubenthal also reveals a bit of the nature of his research to his assistant.

Michel Lebrun is having problems with Juan Benevente, not only can he not understand Juan’s outrageous accent, Juan is concerned that there is a potentially major solar storm coming as well as a hurricane on Earth. Juan is torn, the hurricane may or may not be significant, as might or might not be the solar storm. If they fail to warn Earth of the hurricane, it could cost lives. If they alert Earth unnecessarily, they could be scoffed at and future predictions could be ignored. Lebrun is a stickler for the procedures and does not see a problem with following them, but, in a concession to Juan, he takes the concern to Director Caulder to decide.

Caulder listens to Juan, who explains it a bit better the second time around. The solar storm may knock out all Moon-Earth communications at exactly the time they need to warn Earth of the hurricane. Caulder has an easy solution: Warn Earth now, but make it very clear that it is a premature warning because they might be incommunicado when they have their final results.

Caulder discusses the missing scientists situation with Tom Hill. Tom is still bearing a grudge after the team building stunt Caulder pulled on the in the last episode and isn’t too sympathetic to Caulder’s dilemma. The scientists are most certainly dead. They may never know what happened to them. Should he write them off and get back to work? Should he lift the prohibition on Mare Frigoris?

…and then there is an explosion. The Seismology section has suffered a total depressurization. Killing Dr. Laubenthal and one other crew member. The exterior wall of the section and Laubenthal have been destroyed by some unknown, explosive force… which originated outside on the surface. It is revealed that Laubenthal had not stopped working on his Mare Frigoris research because he believed he was on the verge of a major discovery concerning life on the moon.

Morale on the base just keeps getting worse, and then a worker repairing the section wall discover a mysterious, snake-like trail in the lunar dust, leading back towards Mare Frigoris. Morale really starts to plummet as scientist Dr. Peter Conway starts speculating that Laubenthal was searching for life and he found it. That life didn’t like being probed and killed the scientists and later followed Laubental back to the base and killed him, too.

Lebrun and Tom hear him out and dismiss the idea as impossible and illogical, but, they put him in charge of investigating the incident.

Helen has a talk with him. She knows he doesn’t really believe there’s a lunar monster and he’s just speculating about it because it amuses him, but can he turn it down a bit? Morale was already low and it’s getting lower now that rumors of a lunar monster are spreading.

Research work all across the base is grinding to a halt. Stress is high, mistakes are being made, people are resigning and trying to leave. In one incident, a jumpy surface worker is startled by a co-worker and damages his suit in a panic. Other workers refuse to go out on the surface until the base is armed.

The Chinese at Moonbase 4 call and threaten Caulder. They’re heard the rumors about the lunar monster and they will not abide by the propaganda campaign being waged on them. Even the American base commander calls to see what’s going on with this rumored monster.

Caulder has got to squash this before word gets back to Earth. He and Tom take search parties out to Mare Frigoris to see what they can find.

Back at the base, Peter is making progress in his investigations. With the help of Laubenthal’s assistant and Dr. Partness, Conway puts the pieces together - there is grave danger in Mare Frigoris, he must warn Caulder.

Remember that solar storm we mentioned earlier? Yeah, that one. It just happens to be preventing communication between the base and the search parties. Peter takes a moon buggy and rushes after them.

At Mare Frigoris, what appear to be moonquakes are causing problems with Caulder’s team, the ground is literally swallowing them up. Conway arrives, and with Tom’s help, they rescue Caulder’s team, and they find the bodies of the missing scientists.

Back at the base, it’s all wrapped up neatly with a bow. Laubenthal had discovered permafrost under the surface of Mare Frigoris. The seismic charges that the researchers had been using were amplified by the subsurface water causing subsidence and swallowing them.

After the research ban on the crater, Laubenthal was unable to gain access to the seismic charges he needed, and so convinced Dr. Partness to make smaller, unsanctioned seismic charges so he could continue his work. While these improvised charges were smaller, and therefore unlikely to cause subsidence, they were constructed in a less-safe fashion. An actual moonquake detonated the charges outside the seismology section.

The mysterious snake-like trail in the lunar dust was just a pattern formed by the quake, but the worker’s mind, predisposed to the idea of a lunar monster interpreted it as a trail.

Laubenthal has died before he could announce his great discovery: water on the moon. While this is a tragedy, it will be a big feather in Moonbase 3’s cap.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Ariel.

Episode Synopsis: 

The Serenity arrives on the planet Ariel, one of the Core Planets in the Alliance. While most of the crew are hoping to spend some time off the boat, Mal and Zoe are distinctly hostile to the idea of setting foot on a Core Planet, and Mal forbids anyone from leaving the boat. Everyone except Inara, who is legally obligated to subject herself to a two-day medical evaluation as part of her Companion’s License requirements.

River attacks Jayne with a knife because, you know, she’s crazy, which leads to some hard feelings on Jayne’s part. Mal confines River to quarters at all times and Simon admits that, yes, River’s condition is getting worse.

Simon comes forward with an idea for a job. He plans an intricate heist to break into the local hospital where the gang can steal extremely valuable medical supplies, and at the same time, he will be able to take River to a 3d medical imager and run diagnostic procedures on her, hoping to find out what’s been done to her.

The plan starts and goes by the numbers - that is until it is revealed that Jayne has cut a deal with the local police to turn in Simon and River for the reward. That plan, too, begins to go wrong when the police aren’t willing to share the reward with Jayne and the people who want River - the mysterious men with blue hands - aren’t willing to let any witness, including the police, live.

Jayne stages a breakout and, with a little supporting help from Mal and Zoe, they escape the men with blue hands, and lift off the planet with their ill-gotten booty.

Simon, unaware that Jayne betrayed him, is very appreciative that Jayne saved him and his sister.

Mal, not so naive, threatens to kill Jayne for betraying his crew. Only time will tell if Jayne actually learned the lesson Mal was preaching.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Iron Doctor.

Episode Synopsis: 

In a hospital, George, an old man is ecstatically happy. He’s just received word that his first great-grandchild has been born and has been named after him. Better still, the child will be brought to see him next week. It is a gleaming ray of joy and hope for the old man.

Pity he won’t live to see his grandchild as it is his sudden, somewhat mysterious death that kicks off the events of this story. Alas, George, we hardly knew you.

Dr. Quist, along with several other VIPs happen to be touring the hospital about the time George dies. Quist and the others are being shown the hospital’s Computer Therapeutic Unit: A computerized patient monitoring and treatment system that has produced some amazing results - extending the duration and quality of the lives of terminal patients by months in some cases. George was one such case.

Patients are hooked up to the computer, which monitors their condition continuously, running their readings through massive databases, making diagnoses, adjusting treatment equipment hooked up to the patients and alerting doctors or nurses to conditions that need attention.

It’s an amazing system with an impressive success rate. Even Dr. Carson, the attending physician in the unit has to agree. Nonetheless, he has misgivings. It’s still not a human and it is potentially making life or death decisions on behalf of the patients.

Carson suspects that the computer is discontinuing active treatment on the patients when it decides the costs outweighs the benefits. The computer does make these recommendations, but an oversight committee acts upon them. In every case, the committee has overridden the computer’s recommendations.

When Whitaker, the administrator, rejects Carson’s notion, Carson takes them too Doomwatch. He has no proof, so Quist sends him packing.

And then, he immediately assigns his team to investigate, anyway, headed by Dr. Chantry who interviews Whittaker.

Whittaker, proud of his successes, is somewhat helpful, but resists full cooperation. Meanwhile, another patient dies when the computer stops administering to him.

Carson, within earshot of the computer’s monitoring, demands that Whittaker stop the computer and investigate. Instead, he suspends Carson effective at midnight tonight.

Carson tries to convince the sister to abscond with the patient data for one of the fatalities and get it to Doomwatch for analysis. She has reservations about the program, but refuses, so Carson takes it upon himself before his midnight deadline.

Instead of taking the data tapes, he opens the computer and tampers with the circuit boards. Having completely disconnected one of the circuits from the data and power bus, the board still somehow manages to electrocute him. The fall causes a serious head injury. He is hooked up to the computer for treatment.

More worried now, the sister steals the data tape and gets it too Doomwatch. Their analysis, combined with Hardcastle’s information that the computer is actually a modified War Games computer designed to evolve and defend itself lead Quist to realize that the computer probably did try to kill Carson and will certainly do so again, if he survives his brain surgery.

While Chantry, unaware of the threat, observes the operation, Quist, Ridge and Hardcastle rush through the dangerous streets and navigate the traffic lights of Britain to warn Whittaker.

Whittaker still refuses to believe, so Quist has his team, with the help of Whittaker’s IT guy, Godfrey, shut down the computer when it stops treating Carson. Godfrey is able to purge the computer’s memory of Carson and, when turned back on, the computer begins to treat Carson once more.

Even in the face of all that, Whittaker doesn’t want to believe, but when Godfrey backs up Quist, Whittaker accepts responsibility.

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 Episode Synopsis: 

On the moon, the director of Moonbase 3, the European moonbase, is not having a good day. He’s got to go to Earth to defend his budget, which is already inadequate, and his second in command, Michel Lebrun, and base doctor, Helen Smith, want him to make a decision grounding his personal shuttle pilot. The doctor cannot cite any evidence that he is unfit to fly and neither wants to ruin the man’s career on a gut feeling, so the director signs off on his fitness.

That was a mistake. The pilot is suffering from a bit of paranoia and delusions of grandeur, and when a minor malfunction happens on the flight, he insists on fixing it himself in flight via spacewalk. That, too, was a mistake, as he comes detached from his tether and hurtles to his death.

Alone aboard the craft and unqualified as a pilot, the Director panics and attempts to fly the ship. Mistakes just keep happening and his inexperience leads to the destruction of the shuttle.

On Earth, the European Space Commission votes to appoint a new Director. The French want to appoint the base’s second in command, a Frenchman, as Director, but the British have a better idea: Let’s appoint a British person, and as the British are the chair of the commission, the British David Caulder, lecturer at Oxford, is appointed.

On the moonbase, Michel is upset he didn’t get the promotion, and, as he prepares for Caulder’s arrival, prepares his resignation. Both Dr. Smith and director of operations Tom Hill try to convince him that he must not resign. A resignation will be interpreted as an admission of guilt for his part in the accident and his career will be ended.

He relents, at least until the anticipated inquiry into the accident occurs.

Caulder arrives and announces that there will be an investigation and he’ll be conducting it. No outsiders.

Caulder rushes the inquiry very quickly, interviewing all of the involved staff in short order. The interviews reveal that the three major command staff had reasons to doubt the pilot’s suitability to fly, yet none was willing to act upon it. His report calls all of them on the carpet, suspending them. They, along with Caulder, leave to face a tribunal on Earth the very same day.

On the way to Earth, the shuttle is violently rocked, the pilot announces that they’ve been hit by a meteoroid, and they must make an emergency landing on the moon. Their radio is non-functional, damaged in the accident.

The pilot has a full air supply, but the others only have a 30 minute transit supply. While the pilot remains to repair the radio, the command staff must work together and try to walk to a nearby seismologist’s station.

When their air runs out, the American Moonbase commander comes along in a moon buggy and rescues them.

It was all a ruse on Caulder’s part. His criticisms remain: All three needed to step up and make the trough call to ground the pilot, and his fake emergency landing demonstration was to reinforce upon them that, on the moon, they must absolutely rely on one another to survive.

His real report to the Commission says no one but the pilot was to blame.

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis: 

 Two stories told through a series of flashbacks:

The first: The Serenity, while in very off-the-radar space suffers a critical engine malfunction and fire. Zoe is critically wounded, the Serenity is dead in space and the life support systems are inoperative. Without the necessary replacement part and with no practical chance of survival, the crew evacuates in the two shuttles, hoping they will find help before they run out of fuel. Mal remains behind hoping someone will answer their distress call. When help does come, it comes with a double-cross that very nearly costs Mal his life, but in the end, all is well.

In the second story, we follow the story of how Mal first bought the ship, despite Zoe’s reservations about the ship and his plan to avoid the Alliance.

We see how Wash came to be hired as the ship’s pilot, despite Zoe’s reservations about him.

We see how Kaylee and Mal were introduced - enough said.

We sit in on the contract negotiations between Mal and Inara when she rents the shuttle from him.

And finally, we see Mal, Zoe and Jayne’s first meetup and Mal’s progressive recruitment techniques.

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Episode Synopsis: 

 In a secondary school some students sabotage another student’s science experiment, making it so that it will explode. The results go… pretty much exactly how any rational person would expect them to go. The student is burned and has glass lodged in his eye.

At Doomwatch, Dr. Chantry is helping visiting scientist, Mr. Ensor, do chromosomal studies. It’s clear Quist isn’t a big fan of this project and believe sEnsor is making too much from his extremely limited data. Ensor is studying the effects of men possessing double-Y chromosomes and how that influences their violent behavior. Chantry is helping him study blood samples taken from prisoners.

At the school, the three boys are on the carpet, and while only two of them were actually active in sabotaging the experiment, all three stick together and will not rat on one another. The victim faces the potential loss of his eye and the perpetrators face expulsion.

Ensor is there, too, and after the boys leave, he begins expounding on the fruits of his work and that in light of who one of the three students is - Stephen Franklin, an adopted child, it may make sense.

Unbeknownst to Ensor or the headmaster, Stephen was the one child who did not actively participate in the prank.

When the two culprits are given an essay on “environment versus heredity” as their punishment, but Stephen is expelled from school, Stephen’s father is irate. He pieces together that, somehow, the school is assuming that Stephen has double-Y chromosomes and is, in effect, predisposed to violence and bad behavior and therefore must have been the instigator of the prank.

Mr. Franklin also happens to be a journalist, and through the wildest of coincidences, happens to have written several articles popularizing the view that Double-Y chromosomes lead to violent individuals. He takes his plight to Doomwatch.

Quist knows of Mr. Franklin, and he does not appreciate a journalist who simplifies scientific data to the point where it is easily misunderstood by the layman, and he has no sympathy for him.

Ridge, meanwhile, through his constant sexual activity, has discovered that the blood samples Chantry has been analyzing aren’t from prisoners, but happen to be samples extracted from students at Stephen’s school, where Ensor has been carrying on his research. This angers Chantry, who has been lied to, but softens Quist’s heart - just a little.  

There’s still one mysterious question: Ensor hasn’t gotten around to taking blood samples from the older students yet. How does he seem to know that Stephen is Double-Y?

Quist puts Ridge on the case. Ridge puts Hardcastle on the case - who has apparently been hiding in a broom closet at Doomwatch for the last few weeks.

Stephen runs across his father’s articles on Double-Y chromosomes and puts two and two together for himself - he runs away from home and heads to Gatwick, because he’s a bit of a plane enthusiast.

Ridge talks with the other two pranksters. One admits that Stephen tried to stop them, and that he even told the headmaster that Stephen wasn’t at fault, but the headmaster dismissed his comments - his mind already made up.

Hardcastle tracks the boy down to Gatwick, where he tries to commit suicide on the runway.

Ridge and Quist discover that, 10 years ago, Ensor had worked at the care center that Stephen was adopted from and must have collected his chromosome data years ago.

Hardcastle saves Stephen, and with Doomwatch’s intervention, he is readmitted to school, and Ensor and the headmaster is given a bit of a talking to by Quist.

“We may yet be proved... ...to be the sum total of our chemical components, but until that bleak day dawns, I suggest we treat ourselves and our children as responsible, even moral, beings.”

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In this unused segment from episode 436, Simon and Eugene Kaylee and Simon's drunken night. 

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis: 

A radar post observes the arrival of yet another meteor. Under orders for secrecy, Capt. Dillon goes to investigate. The meteorite, broken, is found in a field, where a stunned farmer sits. His wife, in a panic, frantically worrying about her husband. Dillon and his men are under orders to do nothing about the meteors, but it’s damned curious and he decides to disobey his orders. He knows a guy that might make sense of it.

Meanwhile, Prof Bernard Quatermass has just suffered a major failure in his professional life. His new, nuclear-powered exploratory rocket model, the Quatermass II, has gone off like a nuclear bomb in Australia. Oops. Good thing nobody lives in Australia. It’s backup ship, in Britain, has just been checked and it suffers from the same problem that caused the explosion. The design will have to be scrapped and Britain’s plans to expand the Empire to the moon are now gone.

It is to this dejected and beaten Quatermass that Dillon brings the meteor fragments. Quatermass and his team are intrigued. It’s an odd shape and indications are that it broke up after impact. Assembling the pieces, it’s hollow. Dillon explains that there are lots of these, and there was a big scare about them almost a year ago. After which, the government ordered the whole thing top secret, to avoid further panic.

Quatermass and Dillon investigate, first the farmer, who isn’t feeling well, and very unfriendly and unhelpful. They stop at a local pub and learn that the farmer isn’t typically like that and weird things are going on, ever since the government tore down an entire village and built their top secret research center at Winnerdon Flats. Quatermass and Dillon investigate and, ignoring the keep out signs, enter the facility grounds. A meteor comes down. Intact. Dillon reaches it first and it cracks open. For a moment, Quatermass thinks he sees something on Dillon’s face. Guards arrive, force Quatermass to leave, but take Dillon for medical care. Dillon tells Quatermass to leave him alone and go.

Quatermass meets a tramp, hiding in the wreckage of the village that was torn down. He tells him about the goings on and the new, pre-fab town that was built for the workers. They’re not very friendly. Not like the village that was torn down. On the ground, there are thousands of meteor fragments.

In pre-fab town, Quatermass is given a cold shoulder. The facility pays them well and asks silence in return. They don’t even have local police. It’s handled by the security from the base. Quatermass encounters a young girl who is acting strangely, and discovers she has a strange mark on her hand where she touched one of the meteors when is came down. He is run off before he can learn more.

Back at the rocket base, Quatermass’s team have reconstructed the meteor and it appears to be a small ballistic vessel of some kind.

In London, Quatermass first tries to enlist the police to help find out what happened to Dillon, but they are under orders to leave the research facility at Winnerdon Flats alone - by orders of Quatermass’ own ministry. Next he goes there and his contact, Fowler, clearly has some reservations about the project, too. He introduces him to MP Broadhead, who is also on a tear about the Winnerdon Flats facility. The plant is supposedly producing a new synthetic food in a top secret method to get a jump on the other countries, but spy satellites have found at least two other identical facilities in Brazil and Siberia. He takes Quatermass to a hearing, where all the other members are strangely zombie-like, and do not care what Broadhead is saying. Then Quatermass notices the same mark on one of them. He tells Broadhead privately, then he confronts the men with his reconstruction of the meteor ships. They are agitated and he is evicted.

Later, the conference room is empty, except for an insensate Broadhead, who now has the mark. Guards from Winnerdon Flats arrive and take him away, but not before telling Quatermass and Fowler that his investigation is over and everything at Winnerdon Flats is in order.

Fowler introduces Quatermass to Ward. Ward is in public relations and he’s been escorting top brass, politicos and celebrities to Winnerdon Flats on a regular basis. Weird drill, though, he just drops them off and never brings them back. But they do find their home somehow. Using Ward’s pass, the three of them go to the plant. The plant appears to be near completion and the non-infected workers have been given a few days off.

Back at the rocket base, Dr. Leo Pugh is talking to Paula, Quatermass’ daughter. Leo is a brilliant mathematician - the man that does the orbital calculations. He tells her all about how, in his childhood, he teachers used to make him perform mathematical tricks and tell him he was destined for greatness. It is a rambling, non sequitur speech that most certainly identifies Leo Pugh for a pivotal death later in the story.

At Winnerdon Flats, Quatermass and the gang investigate, without much resistance or interest from the zombie-like guards and workers. Quatermass recognizes the facility as being similar to their moonbase design. The domes would be used to recreate an alien atmosphere. Ward slips off to get into the dome. He succeeds, but is covered in the slime from the dome - deadly to humans and certainly not a revolutionary artificial foodstuff - at least not food for anything from Earth! Ward dies. Quatermass gets a sample of the slime and a device Ward handed him and they get away.

The rocket team have realized that swarms of meteors on such a trajectory must be coming from somewhere astronomically nearby. Leo’s math powers allow them to find the object, half a million miles out and approaching Earth. They calculate that it stays in a special orbital location, approaching and backing away from the Earth periodically. At its closest point, they release the meteors.

The composition of the slime leads them to believe the invasion is from the outer planets, most likely a moon of Saturn, and the device Ward recovered is a booby-trap, much like the meteors, containing an alien primed to take over a person.

Knowing that people are infected and controlled up to very high levels in the government, and fearing that the “final” invasion, to populate the completed dome is imminent, Fowler returns to the ministry to do some secret digging, and Quatermass contacts a journalist, Conrad, to break the story. Quatermass also has his team prepare the Quatermass II to fly to the alien asteroid, knowing that it is, effectively, a nuclear bomb.

Just as Fowler has made an important discovery, he also discovers one of the booby traps, and plays no more part in this story.

Quatermass takes Conrad to the town, tells him the story, takes him to the local pub where the locals are celebrating. Quatermass tries to warn them about the danger, but they don’t listen. Just then a meteor smashes into the pub. Within moments, zombie guards arrive searching for the meteor, but it is broken and they leave without it. Now, hundreds of the meteors are falling and the zombie guards are scouring the marsh recovering them. Quatermass sends Conrad to break the story, while he must go to see the dome.

At the pub, Conrad tries to phone in the story, with the locals listening, he tells his editor that he was infected when the meteor hit the pub and he’s fighting to get the story out before it is too late. The locals, overhearing the accusations, storm the facility. When the guards open fire on them, they take up arms and start fighting back.

Looking into the dome, Quatermass sees what he feared. Inside: a writhing, growing, ammonoid creature.

Quatermass meets up with the revolting workers, who have taken the dome control building. Quatermass explains they can kill the things in the dome by pumping pure oxygen in, which they start to do. Increasingly desperate, the facility controllers offer a truce to take them over to the dome and show them. Some of the workers agree, despite Quatermass’ urgings to the contrary. When the oxygen soon stops flowing, they discover the workers, killed and shoved into the pipeline to form a plug with their bodies. Enraged, the leader of the workers fires a captured bazooka at the dome, destroying it.

Quatermass escapes because he had a gas mask and finds Leo outside. Leo had come to find him, but was nearly killed when the deadly gas escaped the domes.

Back at the rocket base, preparations for launching the rocket have gone wrong. Dillion has returned with soldiers and taken control of the rocket silo.

Quatermass, with Leo’s help, seem to reach Dillon and convince him to let the launch go through, and, Quatermass and Leo take off for the alien asteroid.

As they reach the asteroid, Quatermass confronts Leo. He suspects he was overtaken by the aliens outside the facility. While Quatermass preps the rocket to explode, Leo escapes outside with a gun. When Quatermass follows, Leo explains that they’re going to use the rocket to carry even greater numbers of aliens back to Earth and will now kill Quatermass. When he fires, the recoil sends Leo hurtling into space. Quatermass, all the while listening to the sounds of Leo calling for help over the radio, returns to the rocket, launches the return capsule and detonates the nuclear motor, destroying the asteroid.

Dillion and the others are now free of the control and back to normal. Quatermass has succeeded. Quatermass looks at Leo’s empty chair knowing that his friend, tumbling helplessly in space towards his death, is free of the aliens, too.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Jaynestown.

Episode Synopsis: 

The crew of the Serenity arrive on Canton, where they are to pick up some illicit merchandise. Canton exports mud for high-tech ceramic production and costs are kept low by the use of indentured servitude and low regard for the conditions of the workers, who are known as “Mudders”

Jayne is nervous and adopts a disguise because four years earlier, he was involved in a robbery gone wrong against the local magistrate. All are amazed to learn that his botched robbery was a windfall for the Mudders and now they have turned him into a local Robin Hood type hero, believing that he stole the money and gave it to the Mudders. They have even erected a statue of him in town square.

Mal concocts a plan to use Jayne’s fame to distract the town while the move the merchandise to the ship.

Not everyone is happy with Jayne’s return, including the local magistrate who does not appreciate Jayne stealing his money and Jayne’s former partner, who he betrayed, and has been imprisoned by the magistrate in a hotbox for the past four years.

Inara, meanwhile, has a client - the local Magistrate, or more specifically, his son. The Magistrate wants to make a man out of his son and has hired Inara to end his virginity. Inara is sympathetic and teaches him how to be a man.

In front of the entire town, Jayne and his former partner have a confrontation. The later spells out to everyone what Jayne really did four years ago and prepares to kill him. A Mudder saves Jayne’s life at the cost of his own and Jayne dispatches his formal partner. He tears down the statue of him erected in the town square.

Unbeknownst to the crew, the Serenity was locked down by the port authority so they could not get away, but, behind the scenes, Inara arranged for the lock down to be lifted.

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Simon and Eugene discuss "No Room for Error"

Episode Synopsis: 

In an isolation ward, a young woman lies stricken with typhoid. The prognosis is grim: This and several other cases appear to be a new, drug-resistent strain of the highly-infectious disease. Nothing in the arsenal of wonder drugs has any effect on it.

British Associated Pharmaceuticals (or BAP) has a potential new wonder drug, Stellamycin, but its approval for use is being held up by the bureaucratic red tape of Doomwatch.

By the absolute wildest of coincidences, Quist has just made a job offer to a potential new member of the Doomwatch team, Dr. Fay Chantry. She has excellent qualifications, both a research scientist and a medical doctor, but she’s not sure she can commit to the job, for a variety of reasons. Amongst other things, she doesn’t want to impede scientific progress, which she perceives Doomwatch may be doing. Quist assures her that isn’t so, but she has other reservations.

Quist understands her hesitancy, she is, after all, a woman, and they don’t have the same priorities as men, and process decisions differently - emotionally instead of logically, even. He seems to try to convince her that, if she works for Doomwatch, there’ll be no sex for her.

I might be misinterpreting that conversation.

Oh, and the wild coincidence I mentioned? Dr. Chantry did her research science at BAP, developing Stellamycin, and during her strange conversation with Dr. Quist, the head of BAP, professor Lewin, calls her in Quist’s office and tells her about the typhoid outbreak and that Doomwatch is holding up approval of their wonder drug.

See? Dr Quist, you’re impeding scientific progress and life-saving drugs.

“No, we’re not,” says Quist, “we gave our approving report to the ministry six weeks ago. They haven’t acted on it. I’ll get onto the Minister right now and see what’s the hold up.”

Even though she’s not yet on the staff, Quist sends Chantry to BAP to get the wheels greased for immediate distribution once he gets it cleared by the Minister.

Professor Lewin at BAP wants Chantry back in the worst possible way, and pulls out all the stops to try to re-recruit her. She’s been gone for a few years, having left after an incident involving (and being involved with) another scientist at BAP, Nigel, and things haven’t changed.

Lewin isn’t so sure, and asks Nigel to show her around. Wink Wink.

Doomwatch’s report of Stellamycin has some contraindications, but Quist gives his personal recommendation to the hesitant Minister that, in a limited capacity, for the purposes of treating this typhoid outbreak only, Stellamycin appears safe and effective.

Back at BAP, Nigel drops the bombshell to Fay: I’m divorced! There’s nothing standing between us now! Come back to me, Fay! Let’s go to the pub and talk about it.”

Stellamycin is provisionally approved and treatment begins. 

Professor Lewin allows Nigel to offer Fay a job, but, he says, "...it’ll only be for a year or two before she quits. You two will get married, you’ll be together day and night, that won’t be good, then she’ll want to stay home and take care of the house and babies, but, that’s fine."

Unfortunately, one of the typhoid patients who was almost dead is now completely dead, after adverse reactions to Stellamycin. A couple more patients are showing similar reactions. The hospital administrator stops use of Stellamycin just as Nigel’s daughter contracts typhoid and is admitted

Doomwatch forms a provisional hypothesis: One of the contraindications was that Stellamycin should not be given in prophylactic doses. If those patients who had adverse reactions had previously been treated with small doses of Stellamycin, this would be consistent with their symptoms, but since Stellamycin wasn’t on the market, that wouldn’t be impossible, right? Unless there was a breach in protocol.

Nigel thinks it’s utter tommyrot and scoffs at the idea! He convinces Fay to administer Stellamycin to his daughter.

Ridge tracks it down to a single school - the school near BAP - and the school Nigel’s daughter attends. A test of everything at the school finds nothing, but perhaps the milk furnished to the school had previously been contaminated? That farm had been a feed test farm for Stellamycin.

At the farm, Ridge finds the smoking gun. BAP didn’t retrieve and destroy the leftover Stellamycin and workers at the farm broke protocol and used it as an udder wash for the milk cows, imparting low-level doses to some of the students. Including Nigel’s daughter, who has had adverse reactions to the drug.

Nigel realizes that this is the kind of cock up that kills people, including possibly his own daughter, but worse, it ruins reputations, destroys careers and breaks up relationships. Yes, it seems Nigel has lost it all.

But, all is well that ends mostly well. There’s just one loose end: Will Dr. Fay Chantry join Doomwatch? 

Quist, it seems, knew about her affair with Nigel from her security check, and intentionally sent her to BAP to get all that out of her system, because, you know, women! Amirite?

But it looks like Fay might be joining the team. Maybe.

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Episode Synopsis:

 On an Earth colony world a man, Medok, causes a scene during practice for a celebration. He’s seen creatures in the colony at night. His cries are branded as hallucinations but he runs away before they can restrain him.

He is inadvertently captured by the Doctor, Jamie, Polly and Ben who are thanked for capturing the dangerous man and taken back to the colony as guests. Everyone there is very cheerful and works very hard. But the Doctor has his suspicions and wants to talk to Medok. He releases him from captivity.

That night, the Doctor finds Medok outside after curfew, the encounter the Macra, giant crab-like creatures. They are recaptured and Medok naively believes they’ll have to believe him now.

The leader of the colony is the Pilot, but he is overseen by “Control” an unmoving photo of a face on view screen. Rather than get the Doctor in trouble, Medok lies to the Pilot, telling him that the Doctor was trying to convince him to surrender. Medok is sent for rehabilitation.

Control orders the Doctor and gang to be subjected to hi-power adaptation while they sleep. Only Ben is weak-willed enough to be overcome by the insidious brainwashing and turns the Doctor in for sabotaging the equipment.

Polly leaves, trying to get away from the traitorous Ben, but she encounters the Macra. Ben finds her and helps her escape, but when they return to the pilot and try to corroborate the Doctor’s tale that there are Macra, Ben denies the Macra exist. 

They convince the pilot to show them the “real” controller, not just a photograph on the screen. When Control allows it, it is the same man, but ancient. A broken wreck of a man willing to do anything his unseen captors tell him.

The Doctor,Polly and Jamie are sentenced to working in the gas mines, and the voice of Control makes everyone else forget what they saw.

The meet up with Medok, who is also in the mines. He protects the Doctor by getting him assigned above-ground work in the control room. The Doctor agrees so that he can find a way to cause mischief.

In the mine, Jamie escapes down a forbidden tunnel. Medok attempts to follow him but is killed by the Macra. When Ben betrays Jamie again, gas is pumped into the tunnels to incapacitate Jamie. The gas also serves some other, sinister purpose.

The Doctor reverses the gas flow, just in time to save Jamie, but he and Polly must escape down another forbidden tunnel, where they find the Control room - filled with Macra running the colony. The Macra needs the poisonous gas to survive. Gosh, if they’d needed poisonous gas to survive, we could have just given them all our car pollution!

Escaping and then returning to see the Pilot again, the Doctor convinces him to go see what he’s discovered. Control go crazy, deposing the Pilot and demanding their capture. After the Pilot sees the truth, they are trapped in a tunnel, with the gas being pumped in.

Ben regains his senses when his friends are in danger and, with the Doctor’s coaching, causes a gas explosion, killing the Macra. The colony is saved. The Gang escape the planet before the Doctor can be named the new Pilot. 

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Deep Space Nine has always been a polarizing facet of the Star Trek universe, with the opposite ends being that it’s the worst thing ever to being Star Trek’s finest hours.

While I tend to favor the position that there are many ill-advised departures from the core principals of Star Trek at the heart of DS9, there are nonetheless, some good Star Trek stories and characters scattered throughout.

In fact, Deep Space Nine is the series that managed to change my position from “All Star Trek must be consumed immediately” to “meh, why bother?”

I have, however, recently knuckled under and completed an end-to-end viewing of DS9. The series, as a whole, is quite fresh in my mind.

But… that’s not what this mini-podcast is about, I just wanted you to know that I side somewhat more with the unfavorable view of DS9 - largely because I feel, for the purposes of drama, DS9 abandoned the “this is the human we can be” in favor of “this is the human race we can pretend to be.”

Which brings us to What We Left Behind. This documentary was crowdfunded and spearheaded by Ira Steven Behr, writer and executive producer on DS9.

It’s not a particularly balanced retrospective, nor would I expect it to be considering that it came from one of the principal architects to the show and was paid for by fans of the show.  

I don’t even require “balance” from a retrospective. It’s totally OK to do a positive look back on something fondly.  

But where this documentary crosses the line for me is its portrayal of DS9’s critics.

Throughout the documentary, “real” fans are interviewed on camera with sound bites talking about the great things in DS9 or the things that resonated deeply with them.

Criticisms are handled very differently. The critics themselves are not portrayed on screen, but their words are instead read off of sheets of paper by members of the cast, laughing at them. Perhaps that’s suitable for a late-night comedy program à la Jimmy Kimmel’s Celebrities Read Mean Tweets, but it doesn’t work here.

Further, I can’t help feeling that, while the positive comments are modern, reflecting the entirety of the show, the critiques feel like they were probably online forums posts from before or just after the premiere of the show, making them outdated and without the clarity of hindsight.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say the technique, “… doesn’t work.” 

It does work. 

It does exactly what it’s intended to do - it dehumanizes and ridicules dissenters. It drives a wedge deeper between groups of people - and that angers me.

They present a curated subset of outdated, dissenting ideas in a mocking way, laughing at them as they do. They are setting this up as “real people on our side” and “caricatures on their side.”

It too closely mirrors the sorry state of current political and social discourse where one side tries to gain political power by excluding, misrepresenting and marginalizing rather than including.

Criticism, mockery, and laughter all have their place, but as presented here they are antithetical to the very core principals of Star Trek… and perhaps that, too, sheds some light on the problems with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

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To be clear, I have no horse in this race other than Big Finish get fair chunk of money from me every month because they put out a LOT of high-quality audio dramas - the kind that the British still get on radio but are almost nonexistent in the United States. These are the kind that push all the right buttons with me:

Doctor Who, Blakes 7, Sapphire & Steel, The Avengers, the Prisoner, The Omega Factor, The Survivors and Star Cops to name a few. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s exactly the kind of shows we like on Fusion Patrol.

And clearly they are fans, in the best sense of the word, because they care about these series and they do quality work.

Which brings us neatly to Space: 1999.

If you were with us as we went through the original series, you know that it’s a show and a premise that I still hold a great deal of affection for - despite some quite considerable shortcomings along the way. In our conclusion of the series, we opined that what Space: 1999 needed was someone to come back and give it another try. In fact, I think I even suggested that I’d like to see Big Finish give it a try because I think that they would give the show both a loving, faithful and considered approach.

And so on September 13, 2019 - the 20th anniversary since the moon was blasted out of Earth’s orbit, and 42 years since the series originally premiered, Big Finish will be releasing a 167-minute, feature-length re-imaging of the pilot, Breakaway starring Mark Bonnar as John Koenig and Maria Teresa Creasy as Doctor Helena Russell.

Another box set of four episodes, either new or retellings of original series episodes will follow in 2020.

Bonnar will be familiar to listeners of Big Finish’s Doctor Who adventures as the actor portraying the renegade Time Lord known as the Eleven.

In addition to being an actual, tangible product which you can order right now from the Big Finish website, this is, to me, the first piece of news or even speculation about a possible future for Space: 1999 that has me excited.

Only the future will tell, but I’ll be there for the Alpha’s newest journey into the unknown.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Children of the Stones.

Synopsis: 

Professor Adam Brake and his son Matthew arrive in the small village of Milbury to conduct a 3 month research project .  Milbury is built inside a neolithic stone circle and Adam has come to conduct measurements on the magnetic properties of the stones and the general area.  

As they learn about their new home, they discover that things are stranger than they could imagine.  Most, but not all of the people are the village are “happy” and seem a  bit-trancelike.  Their children, in school, demonstrate prodigious mathematical skills.  Only the recent arrivals in the village seem normal.

Matt and Adam make friends with Sandra and Margaret.  Margaret is the recently-arrived museum curator and Sandra is her daughter.

At the head of it all is the village leader, Mr. Hendricks, a famous astronomer and discoverer of the Hendricks Super-Nova.  He seems to have a sinister agenda.

Strange events begin to pile up.  The stones can impart electro-psychic shocks to Adam and Matt.  Matt begins to be able to get psychic visions, and perform psychometry, the ability to remote sense activities while touching an object associated with the target.

A year before their arrival, Matt found and bought a painting that appears to depict Milbury’s stone circle during some form of supernatural event - a beam of light emitting skywards from the center of the circle while people stand, in awe, circling the light.  In the distance a man and a boy run away from the light.  The picture appears to be a key to an event that has happened before and might be happening again.

Each day it seems more and more of the normal people show up transformed into the Happy Ones.  One day day, Dr. Lyle - the semi-retired local doctor has to leave town to visit an old patient.  Matt inadvertently psychically reads the events from Dr. Lyle’s gloves.  As he attempts to leave town something stops him.  The next day, he and his son have joined the Happy Ones, leaving only Adam, Matt, Margaret and Sandra.

The transformation seems to coincide with a dinner invitation from Mr. Hendricks, who has an extensive computer system and atomic clock in the disused church which he and his butler Mr. Link uses for precise astronomical calculations of his super-nova.

When Margaret and Sandra are next and turn up the next day as Happy Ones, Adam and Matt decide to abandon his research and leave.  They are stopped at the edge of the circle and find themselves trapped in Hendrick’s house, awaiting their fateful dinner appointment time with the next conjunction with the super-nova.

With some clever use of an oscilloscope, they manage to throw off the timing of the event and leave, pretending to be Happy Ones.  Unaware that the timing is off, Hendricks is caught in the beam instead and chaos ensues.  The villagers are transformed into the stones as Adam and Matt escape to sanctuary.

The next day, the village has been “reset” - the villagers are normal, then know Adam and Matt, but they are no longer Happy Ones and seem to have no recollection of any of the events.  Adam and Matt still decide to high-tail it out of town.  As they leave,  a new person arrives, Sir Joshua Lytton, looking very much like a young Mr. Hendricks.  He is greeted at the manor house by a young-looking Mr. Link.  Not only is the village in a circle of stone, it is in a circle of time, too.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Our Mrs. Reynolds.

Episode Synopsis: 

On a remote planet, Mal and the gang rescue a settlement from bandits that have been praying on the town. The townsfolk throw a big party for the crew and there is much drinking to be had.

Upon departure the next day, Mal discovers his wife aboard the ship. What wife you say? The one he got married to the prior night without realizing it. Unable to return her to the planet due to issues with local law enforcement, they take her to the next planet, Beaumont.

The young woman, Saffron, wants to do her duty as Mal’s wife. Mal does not want this and the rest of the crew make his life a misery with their jokes and assumptions about him taking advantage of the poor girl. 

While Mal tries to get Saffron to stand up for herself, she continues to try to convince Mal to give it a try, eventually, when she turns up naked in Mal’s bed, all ready for him, he finally begins to succumb to her charms - only to find himself drugged and unconscious by her lipstick.

Next, she plies her charms on Wash on the flight deck. She nearly succeeds, but Wash’s fidelity to Zoe is at least unshakeable enough to delay her success long enough that she grows tired and just knocks him unconscious. She sets the ship on a new course, sabotages the controls and communications, seals the flight deck and makes her way for the second shuttle. There she encounters Inara, so she attempts to seduce her, but Inara sees through it, but not before Saffron gets the opportunity to escape in the shuttle.

Inara rushes to Mal, whom she thinks has been killed, but when he stirs, she kisses him, succumbing to the lingering drug on his lips. Later, Inara will claim she fell and hit her head rather than admit she was drugged kissing Mal.

When everyone finally comes around, they break into the flight deck and fight a desperate battle to regain control of the ship. They have been placed on course to a carrion house - a salvage operation that collects ships and either breaks them up for parts of sells the ships whole. To do this, ships are hijacked and sent on a course through a device called a net: an electronic death machine that will kill all living beings onboard when it passes through.

Unable to alter course in time, Mal comes up with a desperate plan. Jayne must use his favorite gun, Vera, to shoot a critical failure point on the net just before they pass through. He succeeds and, for good measure, puts a couple bullets through the window of the carrion house, killing the occupants when the window fails.

As things return to normal, Mal realizes Inara didn’t hit her head and was instead knocked out by the poison lipstick. He confronts her and she agrees to tell the truth… and then Mal snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by gloating that he knew Inara was seduced by Saffron and kissed her! 

Fade to credits on Inara’s stunned face.

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Ben and Eugene discuss The Islander.

Episode Synopsis: 

John Ridge is fingerprinting a group of bucolic, but slightly inbred-looking people. They feel he’s treating them like criminals and they start trashing the place. Outside, a man, Isaac, sees the disturbance and calls Dr. Quist.

When Quist arrives, the police are there and things are calmed down, a bit. Ridge with his super-spy training probably wouldn’t have been overpowered by the mob if he hadn’t been sick with the flu.

Quist has a bit of a townhall session with the people, explaining to them what they already know, but the audience needs to understand. This is a compound, filled with displaced South Pacific islanders from the island of Saint Simon, which was evacuated due to a massive earthquake that rendered the island unsafe.

As a population of people that have been isolated from 150, they present Doomwatch with a fascinating opportunity to study the genetic differences they may exhibit having been cut off for so long. They trust Quist. He and his people are the only ones that have advocated for them. But they’ve been in England six months and the way of life is alien to them. They having no homes to call their own, nothing to do and feel they are not suited for the world they find themselves in. The leader of the group, Thomas, wants to return to the island.

Thomas’ son is Isaac and he has decided that he needs to find a way to integrate into their new world. He interviews for a job at a tea cake factory in London.

Quist goes to the Ministry to find out what can be done for the islanders. It’s bad news all around. Doomwatch is forbidden from conducting any further tests on the islanders before the press get wind that they’ve been using them as Guinea Pigs. Further, the official explains to Quist that, despite the appears of being self-sufficient, the island has been increasingly farmed out and the fish supply is dwindling. For many years, the UK has been supplementing them with materials and food from Fiji. Now that Fiji is independent, there is no more lifeline for them and the island cannot support them.

Even more, now that the Chinese have nuclear weapons, Saint Simon is a prime location for an early-warning base.

In short, the islanders and UK citizens and are free to do whatever they want, but they cannot return to the island.

Isaac gets a job, but it’s clear he was hired because the boss thinks he can exploit the hard-working, but naive islanders. Also, he can get some good publicity by “helping out” by giving them jobs.

Thomas comes down ill with the flu and is rushed to hospital. Other start coming down with the flu, too.  Isaac’s mother is convinced that living in England and having no purpose in life is what’s killing Thomas., but the doctor assures them he just has the flu.

Back at Isaac’s job, the boss is genuinely impressed with him, and is thinking of putting Isaac on a management training program. This is interrupted by news that Thomas is seriously worse. Arriving at the hospital just in time for Thomas to tell him to “take my people home” and die. The islanders are suspicious, but Quist and the doctor are adamant, they’re not keeping anything from them.

That is, until the doctor discovers that Thomas died because of a liver problem. Some condition that he had previously but was worsened to the point of fatality by the flu. Others will die, too.

Quist informs the Ministry and discovers a survey is going to the island. Quist tags along and takes Isaac, too. While the science team does a general survey, Quist studies environmental factors. He finds something.

Back in England, they put the pieces together. During WWI, an American ship, the Arizona Star, was sunk by a U-Boat 100 miles west of Saint Simon. The Arizona Star was carrying a cargo of mercury, in containers that, under the best of conditions would break down in 50 years. That mercury is now contaminating the ocean and the fish that the islanders have been eating all their lives. The birds that eat the fish, poop on the farmlands and contaminate them, too. The island has been killing the inhabitants slowly for years.

Just one problem, the islanders most definitely want to go home now, and the ministry, trying to be nice have agreed to let them vote on the matter.

Quist must now put his arguments before the community and try to convince them to stay.  They thought they were living in isolation from the rest of the world, but the world isn’t as small as it once was.

His warnings fall on deaf ears and they return to the island.

As a farewell gift, Isaac gave him his family bible - on original from when they left England 150 years ago. Inside the inscription tells of their thoughts on the world back then.

“We leave behind us an England of low wages and high prices; one law for the rich and another for the poor; a land of smoking factories, prisons, workhouses and mines where children slave ten hours a day.

We set sail to find a land where we can live and work as one man, where there will be no rich or poor; where there will be no idlers and all can exist by the sweat of their brow.”

Always the downer, Ridge shows Quist a newspaper headline. The Chinese have launched an ICBM and a South Pacific early warning system is being planned.

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Episode Synopsis: 

Aboard a space station, something sinister involving people and a ball has happened. The sinister Skagra leaves with his ball. Meanwhile, at Cambridge, a researcher named Chris Parsons stops in at the rooms of Professor Chronotis to borrow some books. Unbeknownst to him, he borrows a mysterious book from Chronotis’ library.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Romana have come to Cambridge to visit Chronotis, who is a retired Time Lord friend of the Doctor, living at Cambridge for the last three centuries. He called the Doctor to get him to return a book, the Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey, one of the relics from Rassilon’s time. 

Skagra wants that book, too, and by what seems to be the most tortured of coincidences, the Doctor and Romana have turned up on the same day as Skagra which also happens to be the day when Chris Parsons inadvertently borrowed said book which had been just fine for the last three centuries. Skagra kills Chronotis by sucking his mind dry into the sphere.

Comedy ensues as bicycles are ridden around Cambridge. While the Doctor pursues Chris and the book, and Skagra pursues the Doctor and the book. Meanwhile, Claire a colleague of Chris’ gets drawn into the mystery when Chris attempts to analyze the book and discovers it has some very, very weird properties.

Skagra gets the book, and imprisons The Doctor, Romana, K9, and Chris Parsons aboard his invisible spaceship. Skagra sucks the Doctor’s mind dry and learns that the Doctor didn’t know what the book meant, so he forces Romana to use the TARDIS to take him to his command ship. 

The Doctor, like Chronotis, has been killed by the Sphere. Unlike Chronotis, the Doctor isn’t really dead. He defeated the mind drain by using one of his time-honored strategies: pretending to be stupid. The ships computer knows the Doctor to be dead. The Doctor uses this to argue, "logically," that since he was an enemy of Skagra, but now he’s dead, he must therefore be an ex-enemy of Skagra. An ex-enemy is not a threat and therefore anything he asks of the computer cannot possibly be a threat to Skagra. The computer accepts this and cooperates with the Doctor. Sans TARDIS, the Doctor uses the ship to try to go in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Claire, not knowing that Chronotis is dead is waiting for him to return in his rooms, and accidentally launches his rooms into the time vortex, for - you see - Chronotis’ rooms are a TARDIS. Chronotis, no longer dead, then shows up and, demonstrating some very un-Time Lord like powers, works with Claire to get his TARDIS more operational.

The Doctor has returned to the physical point where Skagra came to Earth from. It is the think tank, the Institute for Advanced Science Studies. He finds the now much, much older, wizened and mindless scientists that Skagra nefariously did things to at the beginning of the episode. He stole their minds, too. They were the greatest minds in the Galaxy. The Sphere is a device for collecting minds.

Skagra has taken Romana to his command ship where he wastes a lot of time not really explaining his nefarious plot to become the entire universe, but first he must find the forgotten Time Lord prison planet: Shada, to which the book is the key. 

On Shada is the most infamous of Time Lord criminals - Salyavon: A Time Lord with a unique gift - the ability to project his mind into others - just like Chronotis did earlier when nobody but Claire was looking.

The Doctor and Chris track him down, as does Chronotis and Claire. Things go awry and Skagra gets to Shada, discovers that Salyavon is missing, then discovers that Chronotis is Salyavon. With Salyavon’s mind in the sphere now, again, actually, since he already mind-sucked Chronotis, who has been Salyavon all along, Skagra has the ability to project his mind into every living organism in the universe.

But he’s got the Doctor’s mind in there, too. The Doctor, with the help of a stylish helmet that he whipped up in the TARDIS, is able to defeat Skagra and imprison him in his ship.

Chronotis, now alive again, once more, returns to Cambridge to live out the rest of his retirement in peace. The end.

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Simon and Eugene discuss Safe.

Episode Synopsis: 

Mal and the gang have arrived on the planet Jiangyin to unload the cattle they smuggled in the previous episode.  River has been having unusually fits and Mal order Simon and River to go away during the cattle transaction.  They wander into town, as does Yaylee and Inara.  There’s not much to the town, but River comes across a group of Irish Folkdancers and joins in with wild abandon.  Simon is pleased to see his sister having a good time.

The cattle deal, as completed, goes south, with lawmen showing up to arrest the buyers on an unrelated charge.  A shoot out occurs and Shepard Book is critically wounded.  Meanwhile, Simon and later River are kidnapped.  With no medical help available on the planet and Simon missing, Mal takes Shepard Book and leaves the planet to find medical attention.  Simon and River watch as the Serenity takes off and flies away.

Simon and River find themselves amongst the hill people.  A group who kidnap offworlders with skills they need.  Simon, as a doctor, is badly needed indeed, and despite his protestations about the ethics of kidnapping him, he does what he can to help the sick.

The only viable place to take Book is the Alliance cruiser Magellan, to which he reluctantly goes.  Initially, they refuse to help – they’re not a public hospital, but when Book shoes them his identicard, they immediately path him up without questions and let the Serenity leave unmolested.

River exhibits signs of telepathy, with is too much for the simple hill people, who accuse her of being a witch.  They sentence her to be burned at the stake.  Simon protests and ultimately chooses to be burned in the fire with his sister, but just in time Mal and the gang arrive just in time to be the Big Damn Heroes and save the day.

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Movie Synopsis: 

A spacecraft from Earth plows through space at near light speed. Alone in the cockpit, George Taylor muses about the world he’s left behind forever and the future of mankind. At their current speed, centuries have passed on Earth in what has been only six months to them. Everything he knows is gone to dust, but does man still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor’s children starving? He joins the remainder of his crew in suspended animation.

They awaken when the ship crashes in a lake on desolate world. Only three of the crew have survived and they escape the sinking craft to reach the shore. It isn’t promising, it seems a desolate, uncompromising world and they have but three days of rations.

After a long trek, they encounter lush fields and primitive, mute humans. When they are attacked by gun-wielding, horse riding gorillas, Taylor is separated from the others, shot in the throat and captured. Unable to speak, he tries to convey his intelligence to Dr. Zira, a Chimpanzee scientist on animal behavior.

Trapped in a world upside down, Taylor makes friends with Zira and her fiancé Cornelius and also begins to learn that the Minister of Science, an orangutan name Dr. Zaius has a particular interest in him. When he attempts to escape to avoid castration, Taylor manages to regain his voice and shocks the apes with his ability to speak.

Brought before a tribunal of the ruling Orangutans, Taylor is unable to convince them he is from outer space. The fate of the other astronauts is made known to him. One had been killed in the raid that captured Taylor, the other was lobotomized and is now a vegetable. With no corroboration, Taylor has no hope, and the orangutans make a show of demonstrating that Taylor isn’t really a reasoning, intelligent creature. Zira and Cornelius try to make a case that Taylor is a missing link between apes and humans, who must be their primitive ancestors. This is scientific heresy and they are indicted on charges.

Zaius talks privately with Taylor. In private, it’s clear Zaius understands Taylor’s intelligence is real and knows something more, but he believes Taylor to be from a tribe of advanced humans somewhere on the other side of the Forbidden Zone. If Taylor will just confess and give over the info on his tribe, they won’t cut off his nuts and lobotomize him.

That night, now fugitives from the law, Zira and Cornelius spring Taylor from his cage and they escape to the Forbidden Zone. There, Cornelius, an archaeologist, had previously found the remains of an ancient civilization. When they arrive at the dig, Zaius and his gorilla soldiers aren’t far behind. Taking Zaius hostage, Taylor forces him to give Cornelius the opportunity to present his evidence.

What Cornelius has found is all too familiar to Taylor: Eyeglasses, dentures and an artificial heart valve. Zaius dismisses Taylor’s explanations, but he cannot dismiss the talking human doll. Trussed up, Zaius reveals to Taylor that he knew man came first and that he was an evil, destructive creature who destroyed himself and turned a paradise into the Forbidden Zone.

Taylor leaves and heads further into the Forbidden Zone - a free man searching for answers. He finds them when he comes across the ancient ruins of the Statute of Liberty. The Planet of the Apes is Earth. Taylor has been home all along.

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Ben and Eugene discuss Invasion.

Episode Synopsis: 

Hardcastle and Ridge are in Yorkshire for a bit of nitrate measurement in the caves. They’ve employed two local lads, Dave and Reggie, to do the cave diving to collect water samples and have supplied them with some top-quality underwater gear for their work. While a storm brews outside, the boys go underwater and never come back up.

The entire village is called out to search for them and, although the villagers are concerned, the boys have a reputation and have “gone lost” before in the caves and turned up on their own later. Hardcastle and Ridge are very concerned, though, as they sent them into the caves and feel responsible.

A survey of the geology and topography of the area suggests that there might be more openings to the cave further on, in a property known as Wendsdale Grange, which is an old manor house, now abandoned, with electric fences, copious “keep out” signs and an armed military presence keeping everyone out.

Greated with military stonewalling, Ridge learns nothing about the facility, save that the soldiers are wearing unusual boots and carry shotguns rather than rifles. His call to the Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary are put off - Ridge doesn’t need to know what’s going on in top-secret Wendsdale Grange.

Back at the pub, they learn from a local that the house stands as it once did, complete with furniture and strange silver men walking the balconies.

With Quist out of the country, Ridge decides to do a little breaking and entering. He doesn’t get far before he’s caught. Quist is called back and before the Parliamentary Secretary. After some persuading, Quist is filled in. During and after the war, the house was used to develop germ warfare. Five years ago, an accident occurred and the house was contaminated. The project was shut down and the entire area was closed off. Now, the military are enforcing a strict quarantine, patrolling the grounds, keeping people out and killing all animals that get onto the property. Everything killed is tested, and the entire area is constantly being monitored by scientists. Their precautions have proven adequate, so far. Quist demands to see inside the house himself and he and his team are allowed in.

Meanwhile, the boys have turned up. They decided that, while they had that fancy equipment, they could do a little extra exploring and they’ve turned up unharmed, and begin going on with their lives.

In the pub, Hardcastle notices a bottle that has been opened oddly. He saw one like it back at the Grange, and, he surmises, if that bottle had been opened years ago if would have had a layer of mold, but it didn’t. Ridge also sees a local girl carrying some baubles that look like the chandelier at the grange. She says the boys gave it to her.

They return to the Grange and inspect the bottle and the chandelier. They also see that two antique dueling pistols are missing from the wall. Searching the basement, they find a loose flagstone, leading to a well that, no doubt, leads to the caves. 

It’s clear. The boys have been holed up in the Grange, unaware that it is contaminated with the highly contagious killer bug, and they have stolen the pistols to sell. The search is on, but they have left town to see an antiques dealer.

Quist and the military have no recourse. While there is an inoculation to prevent the loss of human life, the village must be evacuated, the families sent away, the livestock, animals and pets must be put down and burned and the exclusion zone expanded to include the village - a ghost town which will never be inhabited again.

The only good news, the boys never reached the antiques dealer, and fell ill before they could stop at a fun fair, potentially infecting hundreds of others.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Shindig.

Episode Synopsis: 

Another bar, another bar fight, it’s just another day for the Captain of the Serenity.

Heading in from the wildest frontier, the Serenity is making a stop on Persephone and pretty much everyone except Mal is looking forward to some time on the ground

Inara is lining up customers - or at least one customer for the entire stay - and she’ll be attending the biggest social shindig of the day while she’s there. Mal just doesn’t like the way she conducts business and not only is he unable to not show that to Inara, later he also takes it out on poor, innocent Kaylee when she remarks how beautiful a dress is she sees in a shop window and compares it to how beautiful Inara’s clothes are.

Mal is captured by Badger, a local crime boss he’s had prior dealings with. (Or has he? See Firefly: Heading: Episode Order: Sub-heading: controversy.)

Badger wants Mal to do a smuggling job, which, since Mal is a smuggler, seems quite a fitting relationship. It seems, however, that Badger has a problem, he’s a bit of a lower-class citizen and cannot make the connection with the prospective client. Mal, being a stuck-up arrogant fellow, should fit right in. Mal agrees, he is to meet the prospective client at the very same ball that Inara is attending.

He’ll need a date, though, and so, despite his absolutely horrid comments to Kaylee about her and the dress she fell in love with, Mal buys it for her and takes her to the ball.

At the ball, Kaylee experiences what it’s like to be the new girl at a posh high school in a 1980’s teen comedy movie. The bitches are bitches to her, until she’s rescued by a kindly old man. Soon Kaylee is the hit of the space-ship nerds guys who just really love a girl who knows her way around an engine.

Meanwhile, Mal isn’t doing so well. The contact isn’t that interested in doing business with him until Mal gets annoyed with Inara’s paying customer, Atherton, and hits him. Silly old Mal doesn’t realize he’s just metaphorically backhanded him with a white glove and agreed to sabers at sunrise where honor will be served.

One positive, the prospective business contact hates Atherton, too, and, should Mal prevail, he’ll let Mal be his smuggler. He’s quick to point out that he won’t prevail. Atherton is the finest swordsman in all the land because of course he is.

Mal knows nothing about sword fighting, although Inara tries to help him, he just can’t help being an ass to her repeatedly.

The next morning, Mal gets his butt handed to him on a plate. Inara pleads for his life, offering herself permanently to Atherton, but Mal uses the distraction to beat Atherton... although, I'm thinking that’s probably cheating.

Mal doesn’t kill him, leaving him disgraced forever, and he gets the smuggling job - taking cows to market.

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Ben and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis: 

Apollo, Sheba, Starbuck and Cassiopeia are on a…. let’s call it a double-date. Apollo takes them all for a surprise. A celestial chamber, high above the Galactica’s engines. A room not used in over 100 yahrens that opens up onto the vastness of space so that navigators could fix on stars for navigation... manually.

Apollo has been fixing it up, repairing the disused equipment. While there, a strange signal comes in on a Gamma frequency - a long obsolete type of communication. Apollo thinks it might be from Earth. With Boomer’s help they investigate. His conclusion: it might be a reflection of a nearby signal, or it could be a primary signal that has travelled 10,000 yahrens or more.

The Galactica begins searching and finds a solar system in the path, they dispatch a patrol to investigate. What they find is a Cylon Basestar, guarding the rim of this galaxy and blocking the Galactica’s path. The Basestar is still unaware of the Colonial Fleet and faced with the alternative of backtracking a long way to go around… some thing or other, Adams decides to attack and hopefully destroy the basestar before they can muster an effective defense or call for backups and reveal the fleet’s position.

While the fighters prepare, Apollo hatches a crazy plan - a plan which Starbuck is all too eager to go along with - that involves flying Baltar’s Cylon raider to the basestar, getting inside and sabotaging the scanners before the attack begins, blinding them to the approaching Galactica.

Adama doesn’t like the plan, but he knows how to make it work. He offers Baltar his freedom in exchange for intel on the inside layout of the basestar and the normal operating procedures. Baltar agrees and, if they survive, he will be released - and marooned - on a habitable planet.

The plan doesn’t sit well with others, too. Cassiopeia and Sheba have words for Starbuck and Apollo, respectively. Cassiopeia is quite direct: She loves Starbuck and why does he have to volunteer for all the high-risk, certain death assignments?

Sheba on the other hand is less direct, but the situation is no different, she has come to realize that she is in love with Apollo and does not want to lose him. Nonetheless, our heroes have a mission to fly and they can’t be concerned about the feelings of hysterical womenfolk, by gosh.

Boomer also wants to go along with them, but he’s responsible and has a job to do - leading Apollo’s squadron. As a parting gift, he gives them something more practical than a kiss goodbye - he gives them a very, very important piece of high-tech felgercarb that will allow the Vipers to know which Cylon Raider has Apollo and Starbuck onboard, and therefore not destroy them in combat. I think we all know how well they’re going to look after that critical piece of kit.

Apollo and Starbuck infiltrate the basestar and their mission is a total success with only one casualty: the electronic gizmo dies a heroic death. The Galactica’s attack is a complete success, and the basestar destroyed.

…and Apollo and Starbuck survive because Boomer actually paid attention to one of Starbuck’s jokes.

Later, in the celestial chamber, Apollo is still waiting for the return of the signal. He still thinks it’s from Earth. Some routine ship-to-ship chatter that has spanned the stars, but since they have no automated monitoring and recording technology on the Galactica, he must sit and wait, hoping for something more. Starbuck convinces him to leave and attend the victory ceremony. After they leave a signal comes in, unseen. 

The Eagle has landed.

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Ben and Eugene discuss the second series opener, "You Killed Toby Wren."

"You Killed Toby Wren" is a follow-up episode to the Series One finale, "Survival Code," one of the missing episodes.  For more information on Survival Code, see this link at the Variant 14 blog:  https://variant14.wordpress.com/category/s1e13-survival-code/

Episode Synopsis: 

Our story opens with a tense scene. Toby Wren is suspended beneath a pier, attempting to defuse a ticking nuclear bomb, while Quist and Ridge watch nervously from a shack at the other end of the pier. With 60 seconds to go, the bomb disposal boys arrive, but it’s too late, Wren has successfully defused the detonation charge. Or has he? There’s one more wire and he has dropped his cutters into the sea.

When the estimated detonation time passes without a boom, Quist is overjoyed… for all of about 5 seconds until the explosion goes off, killing Wren and the bomb squad. It is, at least, only a conventional explosion and the nuclear fuel had been dropped into the sea.

The Minister is overjoyed! Quist has been a pain in his butt since the beginning and now he can finally get rid of him over his mishandling of this situation. Now there will be a tribunal, after which he’ll be able to get rid of Quist once and for all.

Back at Doomwatch, things aren’t happy. Ridge is very much about blaming Quist for Toby’s death, and he is openly hostile to Quist. He’s completely out of sorts and barely has time to put the mash on Barbara Mason, Ms. Honeysett’s replacement. Ms Honeysett fell ill after the death of Toby and returned to Yorkshire. Ms. Mason has arrived at a very bad time at Doomwatch.

A man called Hardcastle is trying to reach Quist, but instead bumps into Ridge at the pub. He tells him that he needs Doomwatch to stop the work of his former mentor, Professor Hayland, preferably without exposing and ruining the man in the public eye. He is doing genetic hybrid research and has created chickens with human heads.

Ridge is called to the Minister, where he sounds out Ridge on being the new head of Doomwatch. Not the old Doomwatch: an exciting new Doomwatch with more power, more staff, more exciting stuff to do, it just relies on Quist being gone. The words are never spoken, but the Minister is relying on Ridge to crucify Quist at the tribunal.

Ridge returns to tell Quist what happened, but Hardcastle is meeting with Quist, and when Ridge discovers that Quist is strangely dismissive of an intervention on Hardcastle’s request, Ridge goes on another righteous rant, prompting Quist to fire him on the spot.

The Minister’s Permanent Undersecretary isn’t entirely against Quist, and sends him to speak with a psychologist, to get a report on his mental health for the Tribunal. At the session, Quist confronts his guilt over the development of the atomic bomb and the death of his wife, who also worked with and died on the Manhattan Project.

Ridge; however, has decided that he has the moral high ground and needs to shut down Hayland’s hybrid abominations and uses his magic penis powers to seduce Dr. Lennox, an associate of Hayland, into getting an opportunity to see what’s happening at the facility.

Inside he sees both a chicken AND a monkey with a human head and is disgusted. He threatens to shut all the animal experiments down, but Lennox calls him out and shocks him further by revealing they don’t need the animal hybrids anymore - they’ve got willing human women helping them - including herself and she’s already pregnant with a hybrid. If their night of passion had been three months earlier, Ridge could have been the father to one of the hybrids. This shuts him down completely. Honestly, I’m not sure why.

At the tribunal, Ridge gives testimony. His testimony isn’t unfavorable to Quist. He praises the man as having the most amazing brain and warns the tribunals science expert that Quist will cut him to ribbons. Ridge says, while he argued against Quist’s actions at the time, in retrospect, he sees Quist was right all along.

Later, Quist does cut the science expert to ribbons. Not only is Quist cleared at the tribunal, but also gets a date with the psychologist. A proper date - not another therapy session.

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Please enjoy this no-charge, patron-only bonus episode.

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Simon and Eugene discuss "Bushwacked."

Plot Synopsis: 

Traversing remote space, the Serenity crew take the time to enjoy some form of team sport, but the levity is interrupted by a proximity alert. Nearby, a drifting cargo ship converted to settler ship and a dead body. After some debate, and for differing reasons, they opt to board the ship.

At first, they find a ship abandoned suddenly, with meals half eaten in the galley, and a ship’s log entry interrupted mid-sentence. And while the first signs are that a life-pod got away, a fortune in valuable seeds was left behind. Then they find the bodies, strung up in the rafters. Mal understands what happened and makes to get away, immediately.

They find a survivor, who attacks Jayne. The survivor is mad, and while they take him back to Serenity, Mal is convinced he’d be better off dead. It was space-bogeymen, the Reavers, that attacked the ship.

Book argues that the bodies should be given proper rites and, surprisingly, Mal agrees, much to Inara’s surprise and approval.

But Mal has a second motive, he knows the Reaver’s probably booby trapped the ship to destroy any would-be rescuers, and indeed they find one attached to Serenity. While much of the crew is unaware and over on the settler ship, Kaylee succeeds in defusing the bomb. They head on their way.

No sooner do they leave, they are taken in by an Alliance cruiser patrolling the area. They’ve got a bulletin about a firefly-class ship that is harboring fugitives Simon and River, so they detain and question the Serenity’s crew. They do not find them because Mal has stashed them on the outside of the ship in spacesuits.

Mal warns it is the Reavers that destroyed the ship and crew and not his crew engaged in piracy, but his warnings fall on deaf ears until the survivor from the ship, mad with what he’s seen, begins to take on the characteristics of the Reavers and begins killing the Alliance crew and escapes back to the Serenity.

Mal offers to help search the ship and, when the Alliance commander is nearly killed and Mal saves his life by killing the survivor, the Serenity is allowed to leave - without the spoils of their salvage operation.

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Ben and Eugene take (apart) the Celestra.

Episode Synopsis: 

Adama presides over a ceremony to honor Cmdr. Kronus, former Commander of the Battlestar Raikon and Adama’s former commanding officer. Kronus is being promoted to “fleet” commander of the industry ships for his sterling service getting amazing efficiency numbers from his ship, the Celestra. Kronus is a stickler for military decorum and order.

During the ceremony, Starbuck sees Aurora, Kronus’ pilot. She is an old flame that Starbuck thought dead at the massacre on Caprica. When he tries to talk to her, she’s cold, unforgiving that he didn’t bother to find out if she was alive and, as he tries to makes sense of what happened, he manages to jeopardize his relationship with Cassiopeia. Aurora leaves Starbuck to return to the Celestra, but unbeknownst to him, she’s up to something sneaky - obtaining navigational data from the Galactica’s computers without proper authorization.

Starbuck cannot leave well enough alone. Apollo attempts to talk him out of heading to the Celestra to talk with her but instead gets talked into going along.

On the Celestra, Aurora, her current lover and a team of technicians sabotage the ship, take weapons and attempt to secure a shuttle. The Celestra stops for repairs and, since they are minor, the fleet continues on. The rebel plans fails when their element of surprise is lost and Apollo and Starbuck arrive unannounced. They are defeated, imprisoned and Kronus orders Apollo and Starbuck to return them, and himself, to the Galactica to file formal charges.

Now, Kronus’ Executive Officer, Charka, sees his opportunity to take permanent command of the Celestra. He and the bridge crew supply Apollo with the wrong flight coordinates. A course which will take them far away from the fleet and out of range of return or help. When they reach the point of no return, he orders the ship to go dark and, using the now-repaired engines, heads to rejoin the fleet.

On the shuttle, Aurora tells a tale of slave-labor aboard the Celestra. The rebels thought that the whole fleet was like that, while Kronus was completely unaware as it had been Charka’s doing all along. With the help of the rebel technicians, they rig up a way to find the Celestra and return to it. Out of fuel, Apollo and Starbuck manage to land the shuttle and attempt to take the bridge.

During the battle, the ship is plunged into an uncontrolled nose-dive, which Kronus sacrifices his life to correct. Apollo, Starbuck and the rebels are victorious and Charka and his evil band are put away for good.

The Galactica crew gathers again to honor Kronus, this time in death.

Meanwhile, Cassiopeia forgives Starbuck.

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Ben and Eugene find out.

Episode Synopsis: 

Men, poorly outfitted in protective gear are working a fish farm, injecting the fish with hypodermic needles, as you do, when a fight breaks out between the foreman and one of the workers. It seems to be all about thumping their chests and proving who is the most manly. The fight is broken up when the Colonel, the plant owner, arrives and fires the troublemaker. He tells the foreman that their local MP has just been made Minister of National Security and that a visit may be in the offing. He also reminds the foreman and all the men are to be wearing protective gloves - which they aren’t, but they immediately put them on - just long enough for the Colonel to leave the room. As this is Doomwatch, the viewer is left in no doubt that the fate of these men isn’t promising.

The new Minister of National Security is on Quist’s mind, too. As Quist’s new superior, he has called a meeting. Quist realizes that Doomwatch has a negative perception - they don’t do things - they prevent things. One could say, they hold back progress. Quist concocts the idea that Doomwatch should come up with series of “positive” programs to propose to the Minister to show that they aren’t all about breaking things. He asks Toby to come up with some ideas that might be pitched.  Ideas that could impact the Minister’s local constituency.

It turns out to be the typical, “You guys are a bunch of negative nellies, spoiling everything and antagonizing things. Lay low on my watch,” meeting. Quist returns to Doomwatch and declares that they will not lay low.

Toby’s brilliant plans go out the window, but not before some curious data has come out of the computer. One of the valleys in the Minister’s local constituency has the highest incidence of divorce in Great Britain. That’s curious.

So too is the fact that it has a very high incidence of drunkenness - and not what you’d expect: a bunch old coal miners drinking beer down at the pub. Their poison of choice is a very un-welsh-miner-like gin. Which is not very many of them at all. And there’s been incidents of cock fighting, which strikes Quist as very odd indeed. Sure, he can imagine English people doing that, but not the Welsh! Cock fighting is all about a sexual frenzy!

(Naive me: Up till this point in my life, I always though cock fighting meant roosters.)

Ridge puts it indelicately - imagine, a bunch of burly Welsh miners, daintily sipping gin, giving their wives the cold shoulder and watching cock fighting.

Quist thinks it sounds like a job for Doomwatch and sends Ridge in undercover as a reporter to find out what’s going on.

First Ridge visits the cockfights, which he finds quite disturbing. Also, it turns out that cock fighting really is about roosters, and if that’s what gets people into a sexual frenzy, the last remaining dregs of my faith in humanity just got poured down a urinal.

Colonel Smithson is very helpful with Ridge’s inquiries, he wants the publicity. His farm is basically a standard battery farm for chicken and turkey and he’s happy to show it off - all but a couple “trade secret” areas, that is - which includes the fish we saw previously.

Ridge tours the facility and is disturbed by what he sees. Not that there’s anything wrong, just that battery farming is an unpleasant business.

Back at Doomwatch, the computer has turned up something interesting. Colonel Smithson, when he was in the military, was assigned to a project involving secret chemical weapons. One of those weapons would chemically dissolve the bones of an enemy. It was abandoned due to problems with the health of the workers on the project, specifically, chemical castration resulted.

That night, Ridge is not so keen on eating chicken or turkey, but luckily, Smithson has provided one of his new fish products for Ridge to try. It’s called Tastaway Trout and, amazingly, it has no bones! Unaware of the information about the chemical weapons, Ridge eats the fish, but, he has the presence of mind to break into the kitchen and secure a sample to send back to Doomwatch for analysis.

The next day, he visits the quite attractive ex-wife of the foreman. They’re divorced because he couldn’t… satisfy her urges anymore and she took to looking for it elsewhere. She makes it quite clear to Ridge that he could satisfy her urges right now, if he’d like. Amazingly, he wouldn’t like, and leaves.

Quist approaches the Minister and requests a formal inquiry. The Minister is reluctant but takes Quist to see Col. Smithson to confront him. Smithson denies everything, but also refuses to touch the fish in the same fashion as his workers. The Minister, to his credit, realizes that Smithson is aware of the problem and hiding it and authorizes the inquiry.

The foreman overhears the conversion and realizes that he and boys have been castrated and the Colonel knew about it. He surreptitiously trips the Colonel, who falls in the fish vat.

Quist is convinced the submersion will be fatal and he saw the foreman trip Smithson. Quist covers for the murderer and also posits that, even the Colonel would probably agree that, when all the men in the farm find out what he’d done to them, dying now was his best option.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Train Job

Episode synopsis: 

It’s Unification Day - the happy celebration of the victory of the Alliance over the Brown-coated rebels, and Mal and Zoe, two former Brown Coats spend their time in a pro-unification bar. Mal is clearly itching for fight, and he gets one. A fight he would have foolishly lost his life over if Wash didn’t fly into the rescue with the ship. 

They leave for their next job that they have lined up.

The Serenity and her crew arrive at a skyplex to take on a job from a highly unsavory character, Niska.  Times are tough and you have to take jobs where you can find them. Niska tells them about the job: it’s a train robbery of supplies to be stolen from the Alliance. He also demonstrates just how nasty he will be to them if they fail him by showing them the trussed up corpse of the last person who didn’t do what he wanted.

No problem, Mal is a professional and a man of his word and he has no compunctions about stealing from the Alliance - they’re the enemy.

The heist goes mostly to plan, with Mal and Zoe, on the training, managing to get Jain board and hoist the stolen goods onboard the Serenity overhead, but there’s a squad of Alliance troopers on the train. Mal and Zoe aren’t caught, but they can’t get off the train, either, and must ride it to the next stop where everyone is detained for questioning. They also learn that the materials they stole were essential medical supply for the folks living in the town of Paradiso

As the deadline to make the swap with Niska approaches, a wounded Jain wants to abandon Mal and Zoe and make the appointment. The others, with Simon’s help, eventually convince him to wait.

Inara comes into town and using her high-class position as a Companion, convinces the sheriff that Mal is her runaway indentured man, and they are released into her custody.

Now free to make the appointment, albeit a little late, Mal announces they’re not going to make the swap. He won’t take medicine from the settlers - probably because the locals don’t care for the Alliance.

Niska’s men didn’t take the late appointment well and came looking for the stolen goods. A fight breaks out with the crew of the Serenity eventually winning. After some gentle persuasion, Niska’s men take the downpayment money back to Niska with a message from Mal, “We’ll try to stay out of your way from now on.”

Mal returns the medicine but is caught by the sheriff. Having overheard that Mal was returning the medicine, he lets him go because he knows times are tough and you have to take jobs where you find them, just sometimes a man can’t stomach the job when he knows it's wrong.

Meanwhile, men in blue gloves are searching for River.

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Ben and Eugene discuss this Experiment in Terra.

Episode Synopsis: 

Picking up from last week’s episode, the evil Eastern Alliance enforcers, along with the Borelean Nomen have escaped the Galactica. Rather than recapturing them, Galactica’s fighters are pursuing them, hoping to follow them back to Lunar 7.

Apollo is separated out and captured by a Ship of Lights. As he was mostly dead the last time he was there and his memories were erased, he remembers nothing of the previous experience. He is introduced to John, one of the beings that has taken human form to interact with him. Apollo must go to the planet Terra and stop a devastating war. John can’t help him, though, so he’s on his own and just like that, he’s approaching the planet Terra in his Viper.

Back on the tail of the evil Eastern Alliance ship, Starbuck detects Apollo’s absence but spots his locator at the extreme edge of detector range. Starbuck heads off on a one-way trip to rescue him.

On the planet Terra, Apollo really isn’t capable of getting with the program quickly enough. The Beings of Light have granted him a protective aura which makes him appear to be Major Charlie Watts - a bit of a scoundrel who is missing in action. He is met by Brenda, Charlie’s former girlfriend who was directed to Apollo’s landing site by John. Brenda’s father is in the Presidium, the ruling council of the Terran Nationalists, the democratic opposite to the evil Eastern Alliance.

Because Apollo is too stupid to figure out the situation that was clearly explained to him by John, he manages to convince Brenda not that he’s an alien lookalike of Charlie Watts sent to impersonate him and stop a war, but instead that he’s Charlie Watts gone nuts. He’s captured, sent for medial examination, and then locked up.

It turns out that the President of the Nationalists is preparing a massive peace treaty with the evil Eastern Alliance and he’s been locking up everyone that might oppose peace with the evil Eastern Alliance. Charlie Watts is one such person.

Meanwhile, Brenda’s father returns from a secret mission with evidence, but not proof, of some of the atrocities being carried out by the evil Eastern Alliance. He’s locked up, too - as is Brenda.

Now for the part you didn’t see coming: The evil Eastern Alliance has signed the peace treaty as a ruse. They plan to stage a massive surprise nuclear first strike and wipe out the Nationalists on the eve of peace.

Starbuck arrives and, after John grants him a protective aura, he breaks out Apollo and the others. Apollo must go to the Presidium, tell what he knows about Paradine and Lunar 7, and denounce the President’s peace treaty for what it is: A foolish attempt to placate an intractable and evil enemy.

Meanwhile Starbuck tries to get a signal back to the Galactica. The Galactica had already noticed the location of the missing pilots and left the fleet to intercept, traveling at light speed.

The Galactica arrives just in time to use its lasers to destroy the nuclear barrage while still in space. The evil Eastern Alliance think that the Nationalists have a new super weapon that renders their nuclear arsenal useless and so, once again, sue for peace, this time on the Nationalist’s terms.

The Nationalists, knowing that they don’t have a new super weapon, nor will they in the future, agree to talks from a position of false superiority. Peace, based on a wholly false premise seems assured.

Apollo returns to the Galactica, but before he does, John reveals to him what he needed to know: Terra is not Earth. Their journey continues.

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This also may have nothing at all to do with the episode.  Find out as Ben and Eugene discuss Train and De-Train.

Episode synopsis: 

In a forest in Sussex the animals are dead and John Ridge is investigating them. Meanwhile, Toby Wren is put on the job of finding out if any new pesticides are being released by British companies.

At a British pesticide company chief chemist Ellis is being given some unusual hints. His parking spot is removed, he gets a new secretary without warning, they remove the carpet from his office, his phone disappears, and the head of the company is avoiding talking to him. Whatever could it mean?

When Toby Wren visits the company he overhears what they are doing to chief chemist Ellis. It seems that they are trying to give him a hint that they want him to leave. Instead, since he has a contract, they transfer him to a new job, a lesser job.

This doesn’t sit well with Toby. Ellis happens to be his former tutor at Cambridge, and a man that he has great respect and fondness for. This also means the Toby takes an instant dislike to the head of the chemical company, Mr. Mitchell.

Mitchell doesn’t really want to cooperate with him, and they delay turning over samples of their new chemical until after they’ve already started shipping it.

Quist is out of the country, so John Ridge is in charge. Ridge hatches a plan to smuggle Toby into the facility and have him obtain a sample of the chemical surreptitiously. They do this however Toby is caught.

Toby gives the head of the company a piece of his mind about the way they are treating Ellis and the head of the company uses a tape recorder to capture Toby’s rant. 

Mitchel uses the tape to try to leverage Quist - who is now back in the country - into not investigating. Quist has no choice but to fire Wren.

However, Quist knows that, because Mitchell tried to leverage him with the tape, he has something to hide. 

Ellis dies. Suicide. Later, both Wren and Mitchell receive copies of Ellis’ suicide note. While Mitchell destroys his copy, Wren uses his to confront him and force him to admit that he forced Ellis to perform unauthorized tests to which Ellis objected. Mitchell is forced to cooperate and gives back the tape of Wren.

There is justice in the world as, soon thereafter, Mitchell loses his parking spot and isn’t invited to important meetings. The De-Train leaves at noon.

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Note, viewing order will be more DVD order than Fox airing order.  We begin with the intended pilot, Serenity.

Episode Synopsis: 

A group of soldier are pinned down in Serenity Valley, all looks lost, but one soldier, Mal and his sidekick Zoe stage what looks like a good effort to save the day, but fail.

Six years later, they’re working criminal salvage operations for the syndicate. When a deal goes bad, they have to find a new, more risky place to unload their hot property. To help pay the bills, they also take on passengers - A preacher, a surgeon and an undercover cop (although they don’t know that.)

Drama unfolds as it is reveled that the cop is not after them, but after the surgeon and the precious thing he stole - his sister, a brilliant child that has had awful things done to her by the Alliance.

Trying to unload the hot merchandise results in an ambush, which they successfully outmaneuver as well as escaping from the Reavers, really nasty frontier wild men and they kill the cop. The preacher, the surgeon and his sister stay onboard for a while.

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Episode synopsis: 

In a future sooner than you think, the world is divided into two groups - the elite High Drives, who live in Apathy Control and the Low Drives, the masses who live outside. Those in Control spend their time living a luxurious life and providing televised media programming designed to keep the masses docile and apathetic.

Nat is the producer of the top-rated daily show, Sportsex - a program of live sex acts.  

Nat is having a sexual relationship with Misch, the hostess of the program. In addition to producing the live broadcast of the program, Nat’s duties also require that he “screen” the potential contestants for the program. It’s a big year for Nat, as it will soon be time for the Sex Olympics, a program he will be in charge of.

Coordinator Ugg, the controller of programming, comes to visit. He’s from the old days and he remembers why they do what they do. In the old days they used to prevent things from getting on television, something they called “censoring” but then they learned that by showing things, people made do and didn’t do things. In short, “Sex is not to do, Sex is to watch” - the brith rate of the overpopulated planet started plummeting. It’s an important job that they do, keeping the world “cool.”

The latest computer assessment of Nat indicates things aren’t so good. He’s not as cool as he should be. Ugg wants to help, but Nat can’t quite express why he feels the way he does. He literally hasn’t the words.

40-45 sexual partners ago, Nat used to be with Deanie, who now runs a program called The Hungry Angry Show, where people eat and throw food at each other, which keeps food consumption down amongst the Low Drives. Deanie has concerns about their daughter, Keten, now nine years old. Children are reared in nurseries, but parents sometimes visit. Deanie things that Keten may have been identified as a Low Drive and may be cast out.

Deanie also has a current sexual partner, Kin, the man who does the drapes on the Art Sex Show. (Double entendre warning, Kin really does the drapes - get your minds out of the gutter.). He’s deeply troubled and wants to do pictures. Pictures that make you hurt. Nat is fascinated with the idea of a picture that can hurt and agrees to see Kin’s work.

Meanwhile, Ugg has a new mandate down from the computer. The Low Drives need something more. Computer thinks they need to laugh, so all programs are re-tooled, even Sportsex and Art Sex, to include humor. The initial efforts don’t go well.

Kin shows his pictures to Nat and Misch. The are horrible, distorted drawings of faces in pain. Nat cannot take his eyes off them, Misch is repulsed by them. Nat know that they can never be shown to the Low Drives and tells Kin to give it up.

Kin cannot give up, he is driven to convey his feels to the people, so he breaks into the Sportsex studio during broadcast and attempts to lower himself down in front of a camera and show his pictures. Security chases him and he falls to a horrible death on camera. The audience loves it because it’s funny. Something bad happens to someone else, not them. Another case of Watching, not Doing.

Laser, the clearly ambitious sub-producer of Sportsex suggests that maybe that’s the angle they need. People watching random things happening to other people. Nat comes up with the idea of putting a few people on an island, with no contact with the outside world, and broadcasting what they do 24X7.

Deannie, distraught over Kin, volunteers to go. Nat agrees to go, too. Perhaps this is his answer to the yearning that he’s had? It will be called the “Live Life Show”

Deannie and Nat take Keten with them so that they can form something that used to be called “a family.”

On the island, they have a hut, with no modern conveniences, wild sheep and rabbits, minimal supplies and seeds to get the started and a self-destructing guidebook to get them started. They also have a camera in the ceiling of their hut, which broadcasts continually. 

The “family” begins to bond, but then, they find Grells and Betty in their hut. They are inhabitants from the other side of the island. Nat feels betrayed by Control and is upset, but Deannie suggests they could learn a lot from people who already know how to survive and eat on the island.

Ugg is concerned that Laser has broken the deal with Nat, but Laser explains, I’m just setting the scenery. It’s a show, stuff’s gotta happen.

Back on the island, Grells teaches Nat to catch crabs, but while he’s gone, Keten falls and seriously injures herself. Deannie does an impromptu job of sewing her wound shut, but they have no knowledge of medicine. Keten had been scared by something, which we learn was Betty trying to muster up the courage to come warn them about Grells.

Nat, now outraged at the interference of having others on the island, destroys the watching eye in their hut. He does not know that there are other, hidden cameras. Laser remarks, “they think the show has ended, now it has just begun.”

Control is ecstatic about the audience reaction. Fear & worry…. The audience are eating it up because they can experience it without it happening to them. Laser thinks soon, they’ll get to experience grief, too.

Next morning, they find a strangely docile Grells sleeping on their doorstep. He explains that Betty is dead, perhaps she fell getting eggs. They run him off, believing that he had something to do with her death.

Back at Control, this is confirmed. Grells is psychopath, who was put into exile 12 years ago when he killed someone during auditions for the Sex Olympics. If only that murder had been televised, they’d have know about this breakthrough in television 12 years earlier! Grells gets a temporary sense of peace after a kill, but Control know he’ll soon be coming back for more murder.

Keten dies of infection. Deannie and Nat, in particular, struggle with understanding grief. He feels it but cannot understand it.

They bury Keten and while they are out, the suspect Grells is nearby. Nat goes defensive and send Deannie back to the hut. Inside, Grells is waiting. He bolts the door and begins killing her. Nat desperately tries to break down the door and when he does, he brutally murders Grells.

The audience is over the moon with excitement.

When Grells is dead, he turns to Deannie and discovers she, too, is dead. His grief in unconsolable, the audience’s appreciation is a a peak and Laser’s triumph of television is complete. Only Controller Ugg stands in horror screaming, “he’s still alive!”

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Ben and Eugene discuss Baltar's Escape.

Episode Synopsis: 

Since the arrival of the Eastern Alliance Enforcers and Apollo and Starbuck’s prisoners, the Council have been getting increasingly upity. It seems the civilian government is chaffing under the yolk of Adama’s oppressive military regime and also, they seem, once again, to ignore the obvious danger and opt for an unrealistic policy of peace with a merciless opponent.

They rescind the state of emergency declared after the Cylons destroyed their worlds and return the fleet to civilian control. They also return the military to civilian oversight and Siress Tinya is appointed Council liaison to the Galactica - to make sure that the military follows Council orders.

About this time, Baltar enlists his fellow prisoners, the Borellian Nomen and the Easter Alliance Enforcers into a planned prison break. Using the release and transfers of the Enforcers to the Galactica to star peace talks, The Nomen stage an escape, freeing Baltar and the Enforcers.

They capture the transfer shuttle and head to the Galactica, where the meet and imprison the Council of the Twelve, demanding that Adama release them or the Council will be killed.

Boxed into a corner, Adama hatches a plan to retake the prisoners, and turns himself over to Baltar as a hostage.

Apollo and Starbuck, along with Baltar’s Cylon pilots, execute a daring plan and save the day; however, the Alliance Enforcers are allowed to escape so that they can be tracked back to Lunar 7.

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Ben and Eugene pick up where they left off in 2013 and discuss Doomwatch, the 1970s BBC show with a pessimistic view of scientific accountability.

Episode Synopsis:

Environmentalist Bernard Colley and his daughter Dana pull up the lighthouse of Tommy Gort just in time to see him mindlessly walk over to the cliff and fall off.

Meanwhile, at Doomwatch HQ, Quist is in a foul mood.  The government wants to shut him down and he’s working too much, taking on too much responsibility and it’s driving the staff to fits. 

After a showdown, Quist agrees to take a few days off. He goes to Kent to visit Bernard Colley - an old friend of his who has also happened to call Quist and asked for his help with sound problems coming from a nearby research facility.

Bernard’s investigation revealed that Gort was seeing the Fires of Hell. Soon, Bernard sees them too when he is subjected to strange sound and visions. At first Quist dismisses the problem, but later, when it happens again and Bernard has a fatal cerebral hemorrhage, he takes it very seriously, calling Wren and Ridge up from London to do some testing at the nearby base.

While they're at the base, Quist does tests at the lighthouse and he too is soon subjected to the strange sound and visions. Ridge and Wren; however, turned up nothing, although it is clear that the secret T9, liquid rocket powered plane project is being kept secret from them.

When they discover that Quist has been incapacitated and is going on about visions, Ridge decides to put him in a home in an effort to spin a story about overwork which will allow the Doomwatch office to continue functioning in his absence.

Just before they leave, Wren must go to the lighthouse to recover some equipment left behind by Quist and when he arrives, it is just as another sonic episode is ending. This time the housekeeper has been struck down.

Wren has a theory. 

Quist, feeling a bit better, has Ridge setup a meeting with the head of the research facility and the hatchet man from the Minister that Quist works for. At the lighthouse, Quist maneuvers them into staying behind to prove that Wren’s hypothesis is wrong. His theory: it’s not the testing of the engines on the ground, it is a daily overpass by the test plane traveling at mach speeds combined with the unique shape and position of the lighthouse that is causing a standing wave of sound, strong enough to break glass, induce the eye to produce visions, and cause brain damage.

Wren was right and the day is saved!

But not really because all this military stuff is too important to stop so... we’ll just tear down the light house and then continue.

The End - or is it?

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Simon and Eugene discuss the 1973 planned pilot movie, The Norliss Tapes, with some strong ties to Dan Curtis' Night Stalker and Night Strangler movies.

Episode Synopsis:

David Norliss is a recognized-name author. He’s been working on an advance from his publisher to write a new book debunking the supernatural.

His publisher is distressed when Norliss calls hims and says, “I can’t write the book. I need to talk to you - now.” But when Norliss misses the meeting, his publisher starts to worry. And worry he should; Norliss has gone missing. The only clue to his disappearance: The cassette tape notes that he’s left behind. His publisher starts with tape #1.

It recounts a prologue to Norliss’ adventures - how he started researching and debunking the frauds that prey on the gullible who believe in the supernatural, but then he’s approached by Mrs. Ellen Cort, recent widow of the wealthy and famous artist, James Cort, who died of natural causes.

She’s sought out Norliss because her sister is a friend of Norliss and mentioned his research into the supernatural.

Recently, late at night, while living alone in the giant mansion left to her by her late husband, her dog goes nuts and leads her to her late husband’s studio. There, a zombified version of her husband tries to kill her, but she narrowly escapes. The Sheriff, although taking the crime seriously, doesn’t believe the more fantastical elements of the story.

Norliss decides to investigate. He learns that Cort was struck with a rare, debilitating and fatal brain disease, after which he became entangled with Madam Jeckiel, a proponent of the supernatural, and that, in exchange for some unknown promise, he was given an antique ring, the Ring of Osiris, which he never took off and specifically left instructions in his will that he be buried wearing. He verifies that Cort’s body (and the ring) are still in the family crypt.

And then the murders start. The Cort zombie kills a young woman and drains her body of blood. The local sheriff investigates, but tries to keep a lid on the more fantastical elements of the story - this being the same sheriff who didn’t wholly believe Mrs. Cort’s story, either.

Norliss interviews Langdon, the gallery owner who worked with Cort; who has shown a marked interest in the ring and also introduced Cort to Madam Jeckiel. Legend has it that the ring is Egyptian and is the symbol of immortality. While Langdon reveals nothing useful to Norliss, Norliss lets him know he’ll never get the ring because it was interred with Cort.

Soon, Langdon tries to steal the ring from the crypt, but is killed by Cort.

Norliss visits Madam Jeckiel who is also unhelpful, but warns him and Mrs Cort away from the mansion. It is the house of Sargoth now.

Returning to the studio, because Norliss is convinced that is the key to this mystery, they find a new statue, a work in progress, with fresh clay nearby - and then they are attacked by Cort. Once again, they barely escape, this time Cort demonstrates his incredible strength by ripping the door of the car off.

The sheriff investigates but he dismisses the more fantastical elements of the story - even after they discover Cort’s body is no longer in the crypt.

Ellen’s sister returns from her trip and goes to visit her sister, unaware that the mansion is now vacant. Unable to get in, she stops at a nearby hotel for the night. Soon, Cort breaks in, kills her and takes her body.

Norliss has been researching and has discovered a series of prohibition-era tunnels under the estate connecting the studio and the crypt, and had he the clay analyzed and learned it is 40% human blood. He also conducts some chemistry experiments of his own, but that’s for later.

Meanwhile Madam Jeckiel visits Ellen Cort and confess that she had been used by the powers of darkness; that Cort made a deal - after he died, he would come back to life and make a statute that the demon Sargoth would transform into a new body, and then grant Cort eternal life upon success.

If they can just find the body and remove the ring before sunset, it will all end. They go to the mansion despite it almost being sundown and without Norliss, and discover the tunnel, the missing dead bodies and Cort, who kills Madam Jeckiel but lets Ellen go free.

Norliss arrives with a plan: Let Cort finish the statute. He will surround it with a circle of blood and when Sargoth comes to life, will set the blood on fire - which is an impenetrable barrier for supernatural beings. The plan works and the studio is burned down. 

The charred body of Cort, but not Sargoth is found.

There is no answer to the disappearance of David Norliss on tape 1. Perhaps on tape 2? 

His publisher begins to listen.

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Ben and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis: 

On long range forward patrol, Apollo and Starbuck encounter a strange, unresponsive spacecraft of unfamiliar design. Their scanners indicate life inside and they bring it back to the Galactica. 

Inside, six humans in suspended animation. The technology and symbology all indicate that this is not some far-flung outpost of the Twelve Colonies, but humans from a completely different lineage. Could they be from Earth? If only they could ask them, but being suspended, they are poor conversationalists.

Debates about what should be done with them spring up all around the fleet. While Doctor Salik and Doctor Wilker attempt to revive the sleepers - with the possible risk of their lives, Apollo becomes increasingly adamant that they must put their ship back on course and let them go. Adama, loathe to let their first possible contact with Earth get away, is reluctant be sympathetic. No matter, though, the Council take the decision from him and order the sleepers be awoken.

Before that happens, two of the sleepers, Michael and Sara, awaken, but then Michael attempts to leave the ship, the crushing, oppressive atmosphere of the Galactica begins to kill him.

Realizing that these people will spend the rest of their lives inside decompression chambers if they don’t just die - Salik and Apollo hatch a plan to get them back on course and follow them to their destination - the planet Paradine.

Paradine is one of the colony planets of the planet Terra. A colony of the Western alliance. It is also the home of Sara’s father. Sara, and her children, with the help of Michael and his child, escaped the colony of Lunar 7 with the promise of living on Paradine with Sara’s father. Paradine; however, has been destroyed by the Eastern Alliance, leaving only a few scattered families on an abandoned world.

When they arrive, with Apollo, Starbuck and Cassiopeia in tow, they learn that Sara’s father is dead.

Their flight from Lunar 7 did not go unnoticed, neither did their ship’s escort by the two Vipers. An Eastern Alliance Destroyer heads to Paradine to investigate.

While Starbuck gets lost in the airless basements of a dead city, Sara destroys the Vipers so that Apollo will stay with her because, “[she’s] seen the way [he] looks at [her].”

They find Starbuck moments before it was too late, the Eastern Alliance baddies are incompetent baddies as they are easily overcome by the Colonial Warriors, and they escape Paradine, taking the Eastern Alliance Destroyer and crew back to the Galactica.

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So too have Ben and Eugene as they have gone along with them ever step by misstep of the way.  Here now we look back on that journey and reflect on what we learned.

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode synopsis:

A man is chained to a wheelchair in a filthy room, filled with stacks of newspapers. Another man pushes the wheelchair over a yellow line and down a long hallway and into a room. Later, the second man pulls the blood-soaked wheelchair back across the line with a rope.

Perri Reed is having a birthday and a surprise party which she knows about because “…[she’s] a good reporter.” Carl Kolchak is working late that night on a series of missing person’s cases. There’s nothing connecting them, but he’s got a gut feeling about it. Perri tries to get him to call it a night and come to her party.

She leaves, but before Kolchak can follow her a stranger arrives acting as if he knows Kolchak and asking him for his answer. When Kolchak doesn’t understand, the man, Paul, kidnaps him.

Now chained to the same wheelchair we saw earlier, Paul demands that Kolchak give him his answer that he promised. Paul is clearly deranged, but Kolchak is eventually able to ascertain that this man was two doors down from him at the insane asylum and that they talked a lot. Kolchak remembers none of it.

Paul believes that Kolchak has been sending him secret, coded messages in the articles he’s been writing about the missing persons. The most recent message promises an answer to his problem with the Old Man.

The Old Man is, for all intents and purposes, the Devil. He first appeared to Paul when he was having shock treatment and he has been both inside Paul’s body and in the back bedroom ever since. The Old Man wants Paul to cross the yellow line, but instead, to keep him quiet, Paul sends people he’s kidnapped down there to appease the Old Man.

Meanwhile, Jain is getting worried that Kolchak didn’t show up for the party and eventually convinces Perri that something might be wrong.

When Paul’s social worker arrives, Kolchak tries to engineer an escape attempt. Instead, Paul sends the social work over the yellow line to die.

Kolchak plays along and starts to write Paul’s story - the idea being that if he’s writing codes, it’s unconscious and by writing Paul’s story, he’ll reveal the answer. It is, of course, just a stall technique.

Kolchak tries to prove to Paul that it’s all in his head and that he is the killer. He has Paul use the thermal camera to prove there’s nothing in the room, but there is something. Just then, the badly wounded social worker comes out of the room, he pleads for help, but Paul insists it is the Old Man in disguise. The social worker does seem to know an awful lot about Carl Kolchak, his wife, her murder and even casts suspicion on Paul by claiming he was temporarily released and in Vegas the night Kolchak’s wife was killed.

While Paul “deals” with the social worker, Kolchak is locked in a room. He sees Perri arrive and signals her over. She comes in to help Kolchak. They have a touching moment were Kolchak reveals that he’s afraid to let people get close to him. She helps Kolchak free of the wheelchair, but Paul comes for him before they can get away. Paul is enraged. He has decoded the message in Kolchak’s latest work, which tells him to “Cross the yellow line” and he thinks Kolchak is trying to kill him.

He sees Perri and insists that she’s the Old Man and she’s tricking Kolchak. He shoots and kills her. Blinded with anger, Kolchak beats the crap out of Paul and drags him across the line and throws him in the room. The door mysteriously slams shut and locks. Kolchak then sees Perri alive and not wounded and then she disappears.  The door opens again and Kolchak investigates. It’s filled with the bloody bodies of the missing people and the dead body of Paul - nothing more.

Later, it is apparent Perri was never there and Kolchak now believes that something was talking to Paul through him.

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First, Starbuck may have found his long-lost father, but the reunion may be a short one if the con man pretending to be Starbuck's father is killed by the fearsome Borellian Nomen who are hot on his trail.

Second, Starbuck fights for his freeddom when he is implicated in the murder of of another warrior.  Can Baltar save the day?

Episode Synopses: 

The Man with Nine Lives

12 Sectons after Baltar’s surrender and the departure of Count Iblis, the Galactica continues on the mysterious course provided to them by the space angels.  The outlook amongst the fleet is hopeful as there are increasing signs of the trail left behind by the colonists who headed to Earth.  Blue Squadron is on furlong aboard the Rising Star, where Starbuck is trying to convince Apollo to back his surefire gambling system at cards.

Meanwhile three Borellian Nomen, brutish, isolationist colonist who rarely mix with the other colonies appear to be on a blood hunt, searching for a man they know as Capt. Dimitri.  The man they are pursuing is a con man named Chameleon, and we clearly see him use his silver tongue to con others.  Realizing that he is being pursued and having heard a news program on Starbuck talking about Starbuck being an orphan, he manages to introduce himself to Starbuck.  He lays the foundation work to convince Starbuck that he might be his long-lost father, which Starbuck swallows, hook, line and sinker.  Apollo and Boomer aren’t as convinced.  Under the Colonial Warriors escort, they take him to the Galactica for genetic testing, effectively getting him out past the Borellian Nomen and off the Rising Star.

Cassiopeia runs the genetic tests, while Starbuck feels increasingly betrayed by his doubting friends, Apollo and Starbuck, and begins to make plans to resign and spend his time with his new-found father.  The Borellian Nomen, still on their blood hunt, come aboard the Galactica as new Warrior recruits.  It all comes to a head when the Nomen confront Starbuck and Chameleon in the Alpha hanger bay.  They escape, but it is time for reckoning.  Chameleon admits that he was on the run from the Borellian Nomen.  He had posed as Capt. Dimitri and conned them out of their money, discovering, at the same time, that they were amassing weaponry for their eventual takeover of the fleet.  He saw Starbuck on the news and used the story to con Starbuck into taking him to the Galactica for safety.

There’s just one wrinkle - the results are in and Chameleon IS Starbuck’s long-lost father.  He swears Cassiopeia into never telling Starbuck so that he won’t throw his career and friends away.

Murder on the Rising Star 

The Triad championships are getting heated. Apollo and Starbuck are up against a tough opposing team, featuring the particularly aggressive Ortega, who has been nettling Starbuck for years.  During the match he repeatedly fouls Starbuck until they are both ejected from the game for fighting.  Starbuck utters some regrettable words, such as, “I’ll kill him” and, when Cassiopeia breaks up a fight between them later, “This is only delaying the inevitable.”

As with all good 1970’s TV, you can’t say “I’ll kill him” in front of witnesses without the person in question ending up murdered, and so it is with Ortega, found dead in the locker room, shot with Starbuck’s laser.

Apollo, although unskilled and untrained as a Protector, takes on the job of protecting Starbuck at the murder tribunal.  The Opposer offers a self-defense plea deal but Starbuck refuses because, you guessed it, insists he didn’t kill Ortega.

Starbuck decides that, with the court of public opinion against him and having an incompetent and inexperienced Protector, he’d be better off escaping from the brig, stealing a Viper and living his life on some lonely planet - oh, if only he knew - but Apollo talks him down and he returns to the brig.

The trail to find the real killer leads first to a mysterious name, Karibdis, that Adama knows of.  Karibdis was Baltar’s protege who sabotaged the defense network on the night of the Cylon attack, but no one but Baltar knows what he looks like.  The trail then leads to a Pyramid dealer on the Rising Star.  On the night the colonies were destroyed, he bribed Ortega to let him aboard the Rising Star, leaving some poor child behind to die.  Well, that’s it then, problem solved, he must be Karibdis and killed Ortega.

But no!  Maybe he isn’t.  Ortega let three people bribe him into letting them onto the Rising Star - any one of them might be Karibdis!

Apollo hatches a cunning plan.  He lets the three think that he doesn’t believe that any of them are the killer, and that Ortega was killed by a man named Karibdis and that he’s going to go collect Baltar to identify him.  Knowing that the real Karibdis will be forced to make a move to kill both Apollo and Baltar to keep his identity hidden.

While Boomer bumbles through being Starbuck’s Protector pro tempore, an audio drama plays out aboard the Galactica shuttle as Karibdis makes his move.  Shots are fired, followed by silence, and then…

…Apollo is alive, Karibdis is dead, Starbuck is deemed innocent, and Baltar has saved the day!  Hurray!

At the next Triad tournament, Starbuck receives a standing ovation.

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Episode Synopsis: 

2409 days after the moon left Earth’s orbit, Alpha encounters a strange probe in space which paralyzes all the Alphans except Maya, who is singled out and subjected to excruciating pain.

After the probe releases her and the others, the probe dissolved and is replaced by a Dorcon spacecraft.  Maya is fatalistically paralyzed in panic.  The Dorcons want her brain stem to make immortal.  There is nothing the Alphans can do against the greatest empire in the galaxy to protect her.

The Dorcons and their Counsel Varda want to make their leader, the Archon, immortal.  The Archon’s nephew, and heir to the Archon’s throne, doesn’t really want his uncle to be ruler forever.

Koenig refuses to turn over Maya, and the Dorcons start blasting the crap out of Alpha.  Some of the crew start to rebel, suggesting its better to give Maya up to save their lives.

Koenig threatens to kill Maya rather than turn her over and the Dorcons halt their attack.  Next they teleport a landing party down and simply take Maya.

Koenig leaps into the teleport beam and follows them back to the Dorcons’ ship.

There, Malik helps Koenig escape, but leads him astray so that he can get to and kill Archon before he is made immortal, blaming the crime on Koenig.  Archon is killed, but in the confusion, Koenig and Maya escape into the ship.

Confronted by Counselor Varda for the murder of the Archon, Koenig blames on Malik, which Varda realizes is true.  In a shootout with Malik, Varda is killed, but the antimatter engine is damaged.  The Dorcons and their new Archon are killed in a massive explosion.

Alpha sails off one last time into the sunset, their fate never to be revealed.

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Simon and Eugene discuss the Night Stalker episode, Timeless.

Episode Synopsis: 

In a park, a man finds a decomposing body, the coroner, Aaron Shields, rules it accidental death.  Alex Nyby calls in Kolchak because he thinks the coroner is wrong.  The face of the dead woman was bitten by an unidentifiable animal clean through to her brain.  Question, the coroner dismisses this as the cause of death because of the lack of defensive wounds on the body.  The victim didn’t fight back, therefore these wounds were post-death.  It all seems perfectly plausible.

At home,  Dr. Shields seems visibly upset when his mother, Marlene, is getting all dolled up to go out with a gentleman caller.

Nyby, on his own time, does a thorough body examination of the corpse and finds something - a small hypodermic injection mark hidden in a mole.  He reports to Dr. Shields who contacts both the police, to report it as a homicide, and to Kolchak.  Shields takes the credit for the discovery.

Marlene’s gentleman caller catches a glimpse of Marlene without her “face on” and she really needs a lot of work.  She’s a lot older than she appears.   Ahh, vanity, eh?

Jain has a lead.  He introduces Kolchak and Perri to Titus, the morgue attendant - that it, the Beacon’s newspaper morgue.  There in the dusty tomes of history, they’ve found another set of 3 murders, in 1970, that match the dead woman.  Three bodies, found in parks, with their face bitten into the brain.

Kolchak contacts the retired detective on the case and learns that the women were alive when their brains were eaten.  Anesthetized and helpless, those poor women were conscious as the watched the killer chomp into their faces.  The murders stopped when the trail led to a Doctor Russel with access to the anesthetic used.  The doctor killed himself.

Meanwhile, Perri tracks down the dead woman’s supervisor.  The dead woman was a realtor and often showed houses, all alone, to strangers.  It’s almost a perfect setup for someone to go missing.  Perri meets the supervisor and it’s Marlene.  They meet, all alone, at one of the houses.  Marlene has nothing to offer, but she pervs on Perri’s beautiful, young skin and reveals to the audience that she’s about to inject Perri with a hypodermic, just as clients arrive to see the house.  Perri escapes, but never knew she was in jeopardy.  She gives Marlene her card before she leaves.

Back at the newspaper morgue, three more murders, in 1935 are discovered and three more in 1900.  Kolchak realizes the killer must be incredibly long-lived.  Maybe the murders stopped in 1970 because three was enough and maybe the killer wasn’t really dead.

Kolchak gets the corpse of Dr. Russell exhumed to see if he’s really dead.  He’s dead. Dr. Shields confirms that and points out the bullet damage to the face.  Nyby points out that the pattern of the wound isn’t consistent with a short-range suicide and, Shields, in front of Kolchak and a police detective, is force to concede that this was murder, not suicide.

Meanwhile, Marlene’s gentleman caller tells her he knows her secret, and that she doesn’t need to “cover up” for him.  She, ominously tells he she never wants him to leave.

Shields confronts his mother.  He tells her he had to perform an autopsy on Dr. Russell.  “You told me he killed himself!  You murdered him, just like you’re going to murder me!” he weeps.

“No, no, he wasn’t strong like you, but it was necessary.  The police were asking questions and when I killed him, they stopped asking questions.  Don’t worry, I’ve got this all under control.”

Perri, having dinner with her parents, has been disturbed by this case.  It’s made her question her choices and she discusses the case with her father, a doctor.  He latches onto the weirdness of it and suggests that maybe the killer was after the pituitary gland at the front of the brain.  In some cultures the pituitary gland eaten while still alive is believed to prolong life.

At that moment, Marlene calls Perri and says she has more info.  Can you come to my home right away?  Of course she can.

Nyby, doing more digging, discovers and earlier victim from a month ago.  Her death had been accidentally misclassified as natural causes by none other than Dr. Shields.  When Kolchak can’t repack Perri, he rushes to Shields home.

Marlene injects Perri while Shields, in a panic, watches.  Perri tries to flee but finds herself in the room with the dead gentleman caller.  Marlene has set up that she’s going to kill Perri, eat her pituitary gland while she watches, and then blame the crimes on the dead gentleman caller.  As she is about to bite into Perri’s face, Shields shoots and kills her, just as Kolchak and the police arrive.

The case the the Night Face-Biter has been solved.

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...of the Daleks...

...on New Year's Day, no less.

Simon and Eugene discuss the Doctor Who 2019 New Year's Special, Resolution.

Episode Synopsis: 

In the Ninth Century, based on the context of the story, in what might be presumed to be England, epic armies came together to battle the most deadly foe the planet Earth has ever faced.  They prevailed and they follow up their victory with possibly the dumbest plan in the history of the universe.  The body of their slain foe is cut into three parts, sent to the three corners of the Earth where, a lone guardian will sit on the remains for all eternity making sure that…. Hell, I don’t know what they were expecting, but there they sat, for centuries.

Except for the one guardian who got killed and the deadly remnants just lay beside a road, unmolested for so long that it got covered up, in situ, and preserved for our new archaeologists friends in Sheffield to dig it up and, on New Year’s day, 2019 they re-animate the body, which promptly teleports the other bits back together and forms into a squid-like thing.

The Doctor picks up an Earth alarm of alien activity and tracks it, where she and the gang on on the trail of the enemy - which turns out to be a Dalek sans casing.

The Dalek has taken the body of the female archaeologist and is using it as a make-shift transport machine in order to take over the Earth.  

As it attempts to collect parts to further its mission of taking over the Earth, Ryan’s dad shows up for some heart-warming family holiday special fodder.  He’s apparently an engineer peddling microwave ovens door-to-door.  I didn’t catch the brand name, but I think it was “Chekov’s Gun Microwaves and Plot Devices, Inc.”

Between raiding a high tech firm collecting alien technology and a scrap merchant’s farm, the Dalek, using the female archaeologist’s strong arms and some mean blacksmithing skills, builds a new Dalek casing.

Next the Dalek proceeds to a major communication hub to send a signal to the fleet.  With Ryan’s dad’s help - and his wicked microwave skills - they defeat the Dalek’s plan, mostly, but the Dalek escapes and takes Ryan’s dad.  Blackmailing the Doctor into returning him to Skaro in the TARDIS.

The Doctor tricks the Dalek by opening up the TARDIS to a super-nova, but it looks like Ryan’s dad will die too, until Ryan can overcome his Dyspraxia and hold his father’s hand, saving him for being sucked into the super-nova.

With the Earth saved, the gang leave.

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Ben and Eugene discuss the War of the Gods

Episode Synopsis:

Silver Spar squadron are buzzed by strange, super-speed lights in space, and then go missing.  Apollo, Starbuck and Sheba investigate a nearby planet for clues and discover a gigantic destroyed spacecraft and Count Iblis, a seeming survivor.

Returning him to the fleet, Iblis is evasive and is having a seductive effect on the fleet.  As he promises (and delivers) on more and more things, the fleet is poised to elect him their new leader.

One of his miracles is deliverance of Baltar, who does, indeed, turn himself in.  He recognizes Iblis’ voice as that of the Cylon Imperious Leader, and Iblis seems to acknowledge him as an old friend.

When Starbuck and Apollo investigate the crash again, they discover something terrible.  As they are about to show it to Sheba, Iblis forbids it, and in a contest of free will, Apollo is killed.  Iblis disappears.

Returning Apollo’s body to the Galactica, Starbuck and Sheba are picked up by the lights, where they are revealed to be space angels and they restore Apollo to life and return them to the fleet - with a gift : The course to Earth.

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Simon and Eugene discuss.

Story Synopsis:

Respected scientist Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group is drawn into a strange mystery when fossils of human ancestors are discovered at an excavation at Hobs Lane.  Dated to 5 million years ago and representing a missing link in man’s evolution.  The paleontologist Roney rushes against the clock to collect the fossils before construction work begins again

Things get strange when what appears to be a German unexploded bomb is found at the site, and now everything gets shut down while the bomb disposal squad examines the mysterious object.  Quatermass pulls strings to get Colonel Breen of the BXRG, his official second-in-command, but actually his planned replacement to intervene with the bomb disposal group and do some study.

The so-called bomb is something quite different.  Non-metallic, hollow, with traces of five million year old radiation, it seems if the fossilized humans may have been inside.

Strange noises begin plaguing the people, and Quatermass takes an interest in local legends of ghosts that have rendered a nearby building uninhabited.  The area and even the name, Hob’s Lane,  have a long supernatural tradition.

Then an interior hatch is opened and inside are three arthropod corpses.It eventually becomes clear to everyone but Col. Breen that this is a spaceship, not a German bomb.

Quatermass and Roney hypothesize that the ship came from Mars and that, these creatures may have been tampering with mankind, making him into the creature he is today.  And that these creatures may be the source of many of our legends about the supernatural.

Breen and the Ministry dismiss this idea in favor of their own concoction, that the ship is a hoax perpetrated by the Germans at the end of WWII that went wrong.

And while Quatermass and Roney gather more evidence that ship’s strange construction is having more and more effects on people in the area, the Ministry opens up the site to the press to peddle their German hoax story.

An accidental influx of electrical power to the spaceship and all hell breaks loose.

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Episode Synopsis: 

Two religious zealots stand prepared to build a temple when their god appears before them.  That can’t be good.

3,407 years later, the Doc and the Gang pick up multiple distress signals coming from the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos.  A planet whose name literals means “disintegrator of the soul.”  Armed with Neural blockers to prevent their souls being disintegrated, they go to investigate.  On the planet they find the wrecks of many spacecraft and one survivor, Patraxi.  His memory has been damaged by the planet, but with the addition of a neural blocker he begins to remember, with things coming back just often enough to keep the mysteries going and reveal info as needed throughout the episode.

They discover that Tim Shaw, erstwhile Stenza from the Doctor’s regeneration episode has been trapped on this planet and is manipulating the Ux - the previously mentioned religious zealots - to turn whole worlds into trophies - rendering them devoid of life in the process.  The fleets of ships were races attempting to bring Tim Shaw to justice for his atrocities.  

Graham vows to kill Tim Shaw, while Tim Shaw vows to exact revenge on the Doctor by making Earth his next trophy.

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Let's try that again: Cmdr. John Koenig and the Alphans encounter a nonsensical planet.

Ben and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis:  

2310 Days after leaving Earth’s orbit, Alpha has been surveying a promising planet for two days.  There is a strange, inaccessible alien structure, but otherwise the planet seems deserted.  

While everything looks good, John Koenig has imposed a strict quarantine on eating or drinking anything until it’s all been checked out.  That is, unlike all the previous planetary surveys when they just started munching the moment they arrived.

But it’s not the local foods they need to worry about, first a disposable crewman sees a mysterious light and goes murderously insane, nearly killing Tony and then Tony sees the light with similar results.

On Alpha, Maya reviews the survey results and everything looks amazing.  It looks like Alpha may have found a home!

Koenig and security track down and eventually subdue Tony, who lapses into a coma.  They must get him back to Moonbase Alpha immediately.  Koenig and Carter take Tony back to Alpha, but the Eagle starts to malfunction.  It literally is falling apart as they fly  On the planet, the quarantine period is over and everyone who ate or drank anything dies.

The Eagle crashes.  Everyone makes it out alive, but the other Eagle is suffering the same fate.  All their metals and electronics are corroding, the atmosphere is turning lethal and all the food and water is poisonous.

Using solar cells from the alien structure and plastic transmitter bits, Koenig and team build a transmitter, ordering that Alpha refrain from any rescue attempts.  No one is to come down to the planet.

Given a direct order, Helena decides that she mustgo down to the planet because perhaps her frozen face can halt the planet from turning into a lethal death trap for everyone.  Maya decides to join her because of course she does!  While they have no helpful new information and no plan to help, they do have a plan to get down there.  They’ll use Alpha’s carbon fiber re-entry glider for a one-way trip to the surface.

Fortunately, they gain access to the alien structure and find the Captain’s logs explaining how this alien expedition arrived on the planet and it was a paradise, but soon everything turned to poison.  Then they discovered there is a power alien life form on the planet that, when it attempts to communicate, drives everyone insane and ultimately dead.

Helena and Maya crash the glider, but escape OK.

The aliens had created a suit to try to communicate with the alien, but a flaw in the suit resulted in the alien leader going insane and dying, too.  Koenig and the gang fix the suit, Koenig talks with the alien, which had no clue that any other beings existed.  It also learns that it accidentally killed all those other beings and feels much regret.  The planet returns to normal and Bill Frazier in the orbit Eagle returns and picks everyone up to go home.  The moon is moving out of range and they must abandon this planet.

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Episode Synopsis: 

In a wild part of Norway, the Doc and the Gang find a creepy, barricaded house.  They notice someone peering out a crack from within and go to investigate.  Inside, they find a lone, blind girl named Hanne.  The house is besieged by a monster.  Her father barricaded the house to protect them, but four days earlier, her father went missing, taken by the monster.  A monster which, like clockwork every day, makes its presence known from the woods.  The gang hole up in the house and wait for its arrival.

Soon they discover a strange mirror in Hanne’s father’s bedroom.  The mirror is a portal to somewhere else.  The Doctor, Graham and Yaz go through the looking glass, into the Upside Down looking for answers.  Inside, they encounter Ribbon of the Seven Stomachs, an implausibly motivated character in an implausibly explained universe.  He agrees to show them where Hanne’s father went in exchange for the Sonic Screwdriver.  He is; however, eaten by an implausible swarm of flesh moths when he attempts to double cross the Doctor.

Meanwhile back in the real universe, Ryan discovers that the monster in the woods is just a sound system timed to played recorded roars at the same time every day, but before he can tell anyone, Hanne has escaped through the mirror looking for her father.  Ryan follows her.

The gang find another portal through which they pass, finding another universe mirrored to the one they left.  Once there, they encounter the real monster of the story, Erik, a loathsome, pestulous scumbag of a human being, who also happens to be Hanne’s missing father.  A monster so foul that he imprisoned his blind daughter in a remote house in the middle of nowhere, with limited food supplies, no heat, no electricity and paralyzed her with fear by engineering a fake monster to terrify her and keep her in place just so that he could live an idyllic life in a parallel universe where it seems that his wife is still alive.

From a nursery story the Doctor was once told, she deduces that this is the universe of the Solitract, a thing so inimical to the the other universes that it had to be banished to form its own universe, where it exists all alone.  Both the Solitract and the real universe will be destroyed if they continue to interact, because OF COURSE THEY WILL BE.  The Doctor must get Erik to return.  A curveball is thrown when Grace shows up and now Graham has reason not to leave, either.

Things are looking bad, but then, Hanne - but not Ryan - manages to pass through the portal into the Solitract’s universe and she uses her comic book, blind-person super powers to instantly detect that the person her so-called father has abandoned her for is a fake.  When Graham realizes that “Grace” isn’t worried about Ryan being trapped, he rejects her for the fake she is and is ejected back into the Upside Down.  One by one they are all rejected (and are ejected by) the Solitract.  All except Erik and the Doctor.  The Doctor uses the fact that the Solitract has no loyalty to Erik and trades herself as the perfect companion for the Solitract, which promptly ejects the superfluous Erik.

Unfortunately, with even one person in the Solitract’s universe, both universes are still collapsing and the Doctor convinces the Solitract to eject her as well, leaving the Solitract behind in the form of a frog that never got kissed and turned into a prince.

Back in the real universe, everything is going to work out fine for Hanne and her disgusting, scum-bucket father.  Similarly, it looks like Ryan has finally accepted Graham as his grandfather.

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Episode Synopsis: 

Doc and the Gang arrive in Lancashire just in time for the dunking of an old woman, an accused witch, and despite the Doctor warning her gang not to interfere with history, once again her companions…. Oh, wait, this time the Doctor interferes, but it is too late.  The old women has drowned.  #Sad  But at least she wasn’t a witch.

At first, the Doctor passes herself off as King James’ Witchfinder General to Becka Savage, the local landlord, but then, in one of those awkward moments, King James turns up and it appears her cover is blown, but King James accepts the story with one minor correction:  Obviously as a woman, the Doctor can only be the WitchFinder General’s assistant.  Graham is taken to be the Witchfinder General.  Luckily, King James doesn’t appear to know the people he has appointed to office.

The Doctor discovers that Becka has been purging the village of suspected witches for months and her fervor is unabated.  King James is equally as fervent and they set out to save the entire village’s souls, even if it means killing them all.

Yas discovers that the women who have been killed have been resurrected as Mud Zombies - animated corpses, filled with alien mud.

As the Doctor’s investigations bring her increasingly in conflict with Becka, she finds herself accused of witchcraft.  Finally, the gang must wield torches and go on a hunt to end the menace that threatens to fill the world with mud.

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Episode Synopsis: 

It’s late at night and two office workers are burning the midnight oil working on an actuarial presentation.  The man expresses his gratitude that his co-worker has worked so hard to help him.  She, in return suggests they go for a drink.  Could this be the start of something?  If we cared, we’ll never know, because they hear the sound of someone in the deserted building.  Soon, they are both dead, mummified.

Peri awakes to the morning papers where she discovers that Kolchak has a front page story on the murders.  Except her contact on the story at the police department says it wasn’t a double murder.  Kolchak claims to have a source - a confidential source.  She reminds him that last time he had a confidential source, it turned out it was just him.  He takes to the crime scene where they break in and see that there is evidence of a third person in the room.  The also discover a strange gel on the floor, which Kolchak foolishly touches and burns his finger.

The next night, another office worker is killed.  This time he makes a run for it, reaching the elevator before his pursuer.  Part way down, the elevator stops and the man is killed, mummified like the others.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this episode, it is that, while Peri sleeps, news happens as she awakes to another kolchak byline about the third murder.  Her police contact extorts a date from her to get the “real” story according to the police.  That story - illegal use of diazinon - a pesticide only suitable for outside use - had been illegally used in both office buildings.

Peri demands to know Kolchak’s source and so he takes her to the morgue where they meet with his “source” who gives them more information.  All victims had abrasions on their necks, but weren’t strangled.  Also, he’s found the gel-like substance on one of the victims necks and he’s obtained a sample for Kolchak.  This time Kolchak doesn’t stick his finger in it, but instead they take it to a chemist for analysis.

It’s a highly active synthetic astringent.  Which leads kolchak to leap to the conclusion that the killer must be able to excrete this substance from his hands and then suck the water out of his victims.  Peri thinks that’s a bit of a stretch.

Another night, another victim - this time the victim survives.  Why?  They surmise it is because he is an alcoholic and has diminished electrolytes and magnesium - apparently what they killer needs to survive.  Ok, when I say “they” surmise, I mean Kolchak pulls out his butt.  Peri rightly asks why the killer can’t just drink gatorade and take magnesium supplements.  

Jain’s pictures of the crime scene produces results, the find a security person at all the scenes.  Investigating him, in his creepy lair, which they break into, they discover more corpses.  They have a run in and Kolchak gets the killer on the run.  Cornered, he nearly kills Kolchak, then leaps from a bridge onto a passing truck.  He escapes.

In the aftermath of the killings, Peri and Jain reveal to Kolchak that one, just one, of the mummified victims had the strange mark on the wrist.  A mark that was not there before her death.  The mystery continues to deepen.

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Episode Synopsis: 

In the Vortex, something is on an intercept course with the TARDIS.  Unable to avoid it, a Kerblam! Delivery robot materializes on the flight deck and delivers a package for the Doctor.  Inside, a Fez - clearly indicating the sender doesn’t have Kerblam! Prime - and a note for help.  The Doctor and the Gang decide to investigate.

They arrive at the Kerblam! Headquarters, an entire moon converted to retail sales.  Kerblam! Is the largest retailer in the galaxy and while 90% automated, by law they must employ 10% organics in their workforce.  

Posing as workers, the gang go undercover and discover that the organics are going missing and they soon learn that evil doesn’t come from soulless machines but rather from the hearts of men.

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Episode Synopsis:

Yaz has a grandmother, Umbreen, who emigrated from Pakistan to the UK decades ago, but Yaz wants to know more about her, so she convinces the Doctor, somewhat reluctantly, to go visit her in her youth.  They find themselves in a rural area in 1947, where they meet the young Umbreen on the day before her wedding to a Hindu named Prem.

None of this is right.  Yaz knows that her grandmother lived in the city and was married to a Muslim man.  She must get to the bottom of this mystery.  The Doctor remains reluctant until she encounters aliens who seem to be killing people, starting with the Hindu holy man who was going to perform the marriage ceremony.  The aliens are Thijarians, a well-known race of assassins that the Doctor has only heard of.  It seems that they are here to kill someone.

Meanwhile, history is unfolding. This is also the day that Lord Mountbatten announces the partitioning of India into two countries, India for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims.  The start of a turbulent time in the sub-continent’s history that lead to millions of deaths and much suffering as religious differences boiled over.

Even Prem’s brother is staunchly against the wedding between a Hindu and a Muslim.

The Doctor gets to the bottom of the Thijarian mystery and now they must let history unfold.

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Episode Synopsis:

Boomer, Athena, Boxey and Muffet are spending time in the Rejuvenation Center when the Cylons launch a massive attack.  All squadrons are launched to intercept but it is soon clear that the Cylons do not intend to engage the Vipers.  While the Vipers use the opportunity to blast the Cylons out of existence, two Cylons make it past and attack the Galactica.  

The first is intercepted just short of the Glactica’s bridge, but the Cylon ship, packed with Solium causes considerable damage to the bridge and Adama is critically wounded.  The second, similarly equipped Cylon crashes into the Alpha landing bay.  The explosions result in the ships internal emergency doors being sealed, trapping Boomer and the other in the Rejuvenation Center.

Massive fires rage on the Galactica, and with the sustained damage, it’s only a matter of time before the heat causes the Galactica’s solium stores to explode, destroying the ship.

While Boomer tries to get his little band of survivors to safety and places all their hopes on Muffet, the mechanical daggit, Apollo, Starbuck and Sheba attempt to douse the landing bay fire from their vipers.  To complicate matters, Dr. Saylik needs to operate on Adama, but daren’t due to the fluctuations in the power energizers.

When all other attempts to suppress the fire fail, Apollo and Starbuck undertake an almost suicide mission to place explosives outside the Galactica’s hull.  The explosions will rob the fire, and the inside of the Galactica, of oxygen, extinguishing the fire.

The plan works, but an untethered Apollo and Starbuck float off into space, never to been seen again.  At least, until Sheba finds them.

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Episode Synopsis: 

While looking for junk, the TARDIS Gang find a sonic mine and set it off.  The next thing you know, they find themselves on a hospital ship, heading away from the TARDIS.  While the Doctor reluctantly agrees to go with the ship to its base where they can be returned to the TARDIS, another little problem crops up along the way:  A Pting.  AKA, a Space Gremlin.

While the space gremlin literally starts eating the ship out from underneath them, an expectant alien goes into labor, sidelining Graham and Ryan with doula duties, the base hospital has decided to destroy their ship rather than risk contamination, the Doctor and a space general, who’s sicker than she lets on, must save the day.

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Episode Synopsis

2306 days after leaving Earth’s orbit, Alpha discovers two planets in their Eastern quadrant.  An Eagle is dispatched to investigate.  Onboard, John Koenig and Medical Technician Dispensable.

They discover an amazing, Earth-like planet, with high-tech cities, but instead of investigating a big-budget alien city, they investigate a low-budget box in the countryside.  Around the box, lots of dead bodies.  The box is a teleport and out steps a man, who promptly keels over and dies.

Koenig radios back to the B-string team at Moonbase Alpha, who hypothesize that there’s something deadly in the air.  Something that humans are immune to.  They leave immediately and learn that the cities, too, are dead.  Everyone on the planet is dead.

As they leave, they notice the planet’s moon has a breathable atmosphere, too, and life signs, so they go to investigate and promptly crash.

They come upon a hunt where a man is being chased by cat-suited space babes with whips.  The space babes kill the man, also Medical Technician Dispensable hits an electronic barrier and is reduced to burnt clothing.  Koenig is captured.

The planet is a prison and all the prison staff are space babes, most of whom have whips. The prisoners are political.  No one but the warden, Elizia, and her chief security officer, Sares, know that life on their planet is extinguished.

Prisoners continue to serve out their sentences and, when released, are teleported to the planet, where they drop dead almost immediately.  No one is the wiser.

Now, Koenig threatens to upset the apple cart.  He knows the truth, but since no one believes him, I guess that’s not a problem.

A rescue Eagle arrives but they are tricked into believing Koenig and Dispensable are both dead.  They leave.

Koenig tries to escape, but that goes mostly nowhere, but he does retrieve an emergency homing beacon from the wrecked Eagle.  It can not transmit through the prison’s force field, but he has an idea.

He surrenders and is returned to the prison.  He maneuvers himself into the the teleport, Elizia threatens to blow it up, but her staff, ignorant of the death that awaits them at the other end, don’t want to lose their chance to go home.  Koenig forces her hand and teleports himself down.  If she refuses to follow, everyone will know the plague is true. The only way she can prove herself is to teleport down and return.

Rather than be killed by her staff, she teleports down with an eye on killing Koenig as revenge.   She doesn’t last long enough.

The rescue Eagle picked up the homing signal and has returned to rescue John Koenig.  They return to their rock in space, leaving behind a high-tech, uninhabited, earth-like planet that is not harmful to humans.

http://fusionpatrol.com/?p=1862

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Either way, Ben, Simon and I want to thank you for your support, and, apart from recording the podcast as promised, I'm releasing it to you early.

It'll show up in the regular feed in a few weeks, but for now, this is for you only!

(Oh, and, of course, we're not charging for this one!)

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How will they react to the second episode of Space: 1999, Matter of Life and Death?

(This contains both versions timed for the NTSC and PAL DVDs)

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