You make me ****ing sick.

Hey, if people weren't sick there'd be no need for doctors.
Specifically, as a matter of interest, why, or just in general?

Many reasons. But liking The Apprentice is just the newest.

Can it, General Hospital boy!

Hey, **** you! At least the drama on soap operas doesn't pretend it isn't scripted.

http://gainesvilletech.com/wp-conten...YoureFired.jpg

(And get a decent avatar while you're at it!) ;)

My avatar is awesome, whereas yours is too dark and resized too small to really make out the action.

:(
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/43/43409...6f9aef2b34.jpg

And now, just to further enrage Batty... :D
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...55/Applogo.JPG
The UK version of the show went on the air one year after the original broadcast, and is produced by the same team. In place of Donald Trump we have “wide-boy” millionaire Alan Sugar, originally Sir Alan and later Lord Sugar. The format is basically the same, with a few differences along the way.

Season one, episode one

In place of Carol and George we have Margaret and Nick, Mountford and Hewer respectively, Sugar's eyes and ears on the teams. He also goes to great lengths to point out that he and he alone has the power to decide who will be fired, as if he's laying down a marker, to tell the BBC or whoever makes the programme that they will not tell him who is to be fired, that it might be better for viewing figures if this or that person got the bullet or was kept. It's clear he intends to maintain total and direct control over the show, and he sets his stall out from the very start. He also makes it clear he is not impressed by diplomas, degrees or any other paraphernalia. One of his catchphrases will become “I don't like bullshitters”, and he doesn't. If someone is making themselves out to be other than they are, or is exaggerating the truth, he will not stand for it. He's also the one to coin the phrase “hiding in the long grass” that I used in the US version (although Trump never mentions or intimates anyone is doing this) and while his US counterpart is seen as a tough-as-nails boss, in terms of the show, he's a pussycat compared to Sir Alan.

Right away he leaves the candidates under no illusions, telling them this is a “job interview from hell”. They should know what to expect, and if they fail to perform he will have no hesitation in kicking them out. He's an East End boy (grew up in the East End of London) and a market trader, unlike Trump, who is a real estate entrepreneur, and he is much more curt and to the point about the candidates than Trump is. He almost insults them, and in later episodes and seasons will. He makes no friends and accepts no attempts at currying favour: the only way to win this boss over is to win the task, and win it big. And keep winning. He will be drilling down into the details of every task with the teams, and there will be no hiding place. Some of the candidates may come to regret ever having signed up for this!

The first thing the candidates have to do, having been split up into the traditional women vs men teams, is pick a name, and though the men come up with theirs --- Impact --- pretty quickly, the women spend over an hour deliberating until they finally come up with... First Forte? What the fuck does that mean? Something is either your forte or it isn't; you don't have a first or second forte!

As for the task? Well, just as Trump took his people back to basics by selling lemonade on the streets of New York, Sugar wants his teams to sell flowers on the streets of London. Furnished with £500 seed (hah) money, they will go out in the morning and whoever sells the most and makes the most money will win. Saira, in charge of the women's team, seems to be locking horns with another member, Miranda, shooting down her suggestions and cutting her off all the time, making it seem like she's not but in fact being quite rude and bossy (though I guess she is the PM and has to take control) while Tim, leading Impact, listens to suggestions including going door to door selling the flowers,

The Task
At Covent Garden flower market both teams have the opportunity to buy the flowers they want, at the best prices they can manage. The boys, on advice from one of the professional sellers here, go for lilies, while the girls seem confused and divided, and are late finishing, with many an argument on the way. As he often will do, Sugar has set up a pitch for each team, this time in Portobello Market, from where they can sell as well as do their other sales door to door or on the street. But when they arrive, all they see is a blank space. There is nothing to sell on, no stall, no tables, no display. The girls, arriving first, have used their charm to get a table from a nearby butcher shop so the boys decide not to compete for now, and go door to door instead. Matthew, who lives nearby, directs them to the places he believes they will be most successful.

As it turns out, whether intentional or not, Sir Alan has chosen for them spots in a fairly ordinary market, and there's little or no footfall. Nobody is interested and so the girls are having a hard time selling. On the other team, Paul turns out to be a selling phenomenon, charming, cajoling or wooing everyone he meets into buying the flowers. Even the traditional English downpour can't dampen his technique, and the girls realise (after two hours) that they're getting nowhere at the market, and move on. They begin to sell on the street, but Miranda makes an executive decision to offload some of her stock on a local shopkeeper at below cost price. That's never going to go down well!

As sales begin to move for the girls Saira seems to be the main seller, and as the day begins to wind down she decides they should head to King's Cross railway station, while the boys go to Baker Street. Probably a bad move, as they both find out to their cost. People on the way to or from trains are not interested in buying flowers. Nevertheless, the girls do manage to sell out before the deadline, as, a short time later, do the boys, but only by slashing prices to the bone, a tactic the girls have not resorted to (other than Miranda's earlier unsanctioned below-cost sale).

And now for a word...
This is a section I didn't run in the US version, because quite frankly neither George nor Carol really speak to the camera during the task, beyond the odd wink or look or smile or grimace. Nick and Margaret, however, frequently give their considered view as the task progresses, so here I'll note whenever they say anything about it that I believe is worth mentioning.

Nick (following First Forte): “They're running out of time. There are some good ideas in there, but they need to start buying or they'll be in trouble.”
(He's referring to the scatterbrain approach of the girls, who are trying to decide what they need to buy to “dress up” their bouquets --- ribbons, bags etc --- while not actually concentrating enough on buying the actual flowers.)

Nick: “I think they've got confused. This is an ordinary street market but there's no traffic here. It's a residential place, local people come here to buy their vegetables. I think they're going to stay here for about twenty minutes and get disappointed.”

Nick (yeah, Margaret is keeping schtumm it would seem!): “The only salesperson there is Saira. It's not pretty to watch, but it's effective. It's almost physical. It's a bit confrontational, but she's shifting the merchandise.”

The Boardroom
I should point out, there is a significant difference here to the US version. Whereas Trump's failed candidates can return to their jobs, a condition of Sugar's process is that everyone must give up their job to be selected, meaning that whoever is picked eventually is immediately available for work. However this also means that the other thirteen candidates are now out of a job, unless some under-the-counter/gentleman's agreement deal has been worked out, of which we are not advised. To all intents and purposes though, fourteen people leave their jobs to vie for this one, and thirteen are going to find themselves unemployed at the end. It does add a level of seriousness and tension to the show, and is I guess meant to ensure that the candidates work even harder to be the chosen one.

We'll find too that unlike Trump, Sugar will have much more to say in the Boardroom. He will use it as an opportunity to slap people down, point out mistakes and basically make his displeasure, if any, known to all concerned. He will not pull any punches and will be the star of the show in every way. If Trump is the kindly but somewhat eccentric old uncle, Sugar is the drunk, cursing, snarling one who throws things at people and tells them to get out. He is, really, not a very nice man and he doesn't care a toss who knows it. He's not here to make friends, or create a TV persona or market a brand: there's no “Sugar Ice” (!) “Sugar Cola” or “Sugar Dogfood”, unlike his American counterpart, who has his name and face on virtually everything he sells or is involved in. Sugar has one aim, and that is to make money, or in this case, have people make money for him and in the process show him who is worthy of becoming his apprentice. In this, he is both less, and more, of a showman than Donald Trump.

In a total reversal of fortune compared to the US version's first episode, the boys come in with the first win and beat the girls quite comfortably. Sugar is impressed, and says so. Miranda, not surprisingly, is taken to task over her early-doors cut-price strategy; Sugar says that the time to re-evaluate prices is maybe 4 or 5pm, near the end of the task, not 1pm. He says he detects an air of panic and he's not wrong. Also unsurprisingly, when asked who she wants to bring back Saira choose Adeneike, whom she had something of an argument with, and Miranda.

Behind the Boardroom Door
Not quite sure why, but the three of them talk in really low voices so it's hard to make out what they're saying, but I do hear Nick mentioning that Adenike was “a real thorn in Saira's side”...

And then there were three
Miranda's interrogation continues; Sugar tells her he can only see what she did as panic, no matter how she tries to justify it. Selling at a loss just cuts him up, it goes against everything he believes in. Adenike tries to claim she sold well when Sugar takes her to task but Nick shakes his head and says, as we saw, that Saira was doing most of the sales. She however then puts her foot in it when she blames her two teammates for not following her strategy, and Sugar reminds her that she herself told him a short time ago that she allowed some of her team to operate semi-autonomously, as they had greater experience in sales.

It looks like Miranda is for the chop, but as he will often do, Sugar surprises everyone and goes for Adenike, believing her questioning of the PM's strategy was unforgivable, even though Miranda's losing money for the team sticks in his craw. He tells her in particular she is lucky, and Adenike becomes the first one to be fired, which is just as well, as it's hard to remember the spelling of her name...

After the Firing
Generally, Trump tends to say something generic like “that was a hard one” but Sugar often does a little post-mortem of a few words, backing up the reason he fired who he did.

“That's the way I saw it folks. I think she was undermining exactly everything that was agreed.”

Thoughts in the cab
Adenike: “I am obviously quite a strong-headed person. I like to get my opinion across, especially when things don't seem quite right. If you're actually fired for not supporting a losing strategy, that's fine. I'm proud of what I've done, I'm proud of all my suggestions. The bottom line is I have been fired and you just have to accept it and move on.”

You're fired!
Name: Adenike Ogundoyin
Age: 30
Occupation: Restaurant Manager

I can't tell you all that much about her as she was the first to go, and didn't really distinguish herself other than by her disruption of the team and her questioning of Saira's decisions. It was she who wanted to target hospitals and funeral parlours, leading to Margaret's incredulous comment "You wanted to ring funeral directors in the middle of the night, and get them to step out on the pavement and buy sixty quid's worth of flowers from you? That was your strategy, was it?”

She came across as quite sullen, making you wonder why maybe she didn't put herself forward as leader if she thought she was so great, and was another, like Miranda, who refused to accept that she had made mistakes. She originally came from Nigeria, and very sadly, died in 2011 after collapsing at a meeting. There is no information on how she died.

Take me to your leader
First Forte: Saira was a good leader, per se, though she seemed to be one of these hands-on people who have to do everything herself, and she certainly didn't entertain any dissension in her ranks. As one of them put it, she was quite dictatorial, but it more or less worked. She's quite arrogant and condescending, as she says herself in her bio, people can see her as a little bossy. Indeed.

Impact: Tim certainly had a clear startegy and knew what he wanted to do. He used his people well, didn't worry about personal sales--- Paul was clearly the best salesman by a mile and he let him run with it, resulting in a huge win for his team --- and generally nobody seemed to step out of line or disrupt the team really. In other words, there was no Sam.

May the best team win?
Hard to say really, as this was only the first task and for me it looked like it could have gone either way. But compared to the squabbling, one-upmanship on the girls' team, Impact was an ocean of calm, so it's not too surprising that they won. Mind you, the last pitches were disastrous initially for both teams, but Miranda's “panic selling” earlier probably lost them a lot of their potential profit. Nevertheless, I doubt I could have called this.

Weeding out the weaklings
A little early but I saw nothing from Miriam, Rajm Sbastian, Rachel or Linday, an d Adele seemed to do nothing but complain.

The Front Runners
Again, too early to say but Tim and Paul seem to be the two standing out. Saira is good but her abrasive and condescending personality may lead her into trouble with her team.

Sight Adjustment?
Personally, I think selling at below cost price (twice) was a miscalculation Miranda should not have been able to come back from. I think she directly contributed to the team's poor performance, I think she made an unilateral decision that should have been cleared with the PM, and when called on it she did not hold up her hands and admit she had been wrong, she still tried to justify the unjustifiable. I suppose Sugar must have seen something in her but I would have fired her. Adenike was culpable too but not in my opinion as much as Miranda.

Adjustment required: 60%

Oops!
Not to harp on about it, but selling so early at so low a price was a serious flaw in Miranda's logic and, had the takings been a little closer and the girls just narrowly beaten I think she would have had to shoulder the responsibility for that.

The one that got away
For all the reasons already given, I believe Miranda is lucky still to be in the process.

http://cdn3.iofferphoto.com/img/item...-dvd-49003.jpg
And so we come to the Irish version. So who is the mogul driving this series? Well, in the US one we have a real-estate developer, in the UK one we have a computer giant, and what can Ireland muster?
Yeah.
A second-hand car salesman. :rolleyes:
http://blog.just-eat.ie/wp-content/u...iceIreland.jpg
To be fair, he's more than that, but this is where Bill Cullen made his name, buying up the failing Renault dealership in 1986 for the princely sum of one pound. After twenty years though the franchise reverted to Renault themselves, and in 2012 Cullen's business interests in the motor trade were put into receivership. This coincided with the cancellation of the Irish version of “The Apprentice”, though whether that decision had been taken before his financial difficulties surfaced or not I don't know, but like our attempts to ape the UK and US with “Who wants to be a millionaire?” I think Irish TV found that we are just too small a fish to swim with the big boys, and the costs involved in making the Irish Apprentice spiralled too far, causing it to be shut down.

Before it was cancelled though it lasted for four seasons (which is better than our WWTBAM, which only got one) and provided some great entertainment, and allowed for the peculiarly Irish brand of business to seep into the show. Some great (and not so great) characters came through, some careers were built or semi-built, and overall it was not at all a bad series. The final one again mimicked its counterparts across both bodies of water, pulling in stars and Irish notables for a “celebrity” edition.

My surprise at Cullen being our Sugar or Trump stemmed from the fact that I did not know him at all. If someone had asked me to name Irish millionaires, and possible “bosses” for the show, I would have thought maybe Michael O'Leary (Ryanair boss), Dennis O'Brien (newspaper and telecoms magnate) or even Gavin Duffy, who later featured on the Irish version of “Dragons Den”. You could have had Michael Smurfit, printing tycoon, Des Kelley (carpet supremo) or even Fergal Quinn, founder and owner of Quinnsworth and Superquinn, two of our biggest supermarkets. Any of these I would have known, or heard of, but Bill Cullen? Don't ring a bell mate.

In the end, he did a pretty good job, though like any boss on this show he was far from infallible and really showed his lack of experience with the media throughout the show's run. He also chose, in what I believe personally was a bad miscalculation --- his own partner (business and marital) to serve as one of his aides, which surely must have been something of a conflict of interest? How could Jackie Lavin give him honest feedback, even perhaps criticise him or disagree with him, as at least happened in the UK version from time to time, if she was, as we say here, “his mot”? To be fair, she did seem to act very professionally throughout and with a detachment that, in fact, left me unaware that she was in a relationship with Cullen, but I just think putting one of the two top jobs that close to home was a bad move.

Anyway, the show of course follows the very same format as the other two, and though it only lasted for four seasons in total it's definitely worth looking at. There are some small differences in how Bill approached the tasks, which we'll go through as we get to them.

Season one, episode one

Sticking closer to the UK version than the US, this even features the same theme music (Prokofiev's “Montagues and Capulets”), the birds-eyes view of the city, the walk across the bridge, the introduction to “the boss”: almost a carbon copy in fact. Probably something to do with the rules of the franchise, I assume. Oddly enough, even odder given how slavishly the Irish version sticks to its UK counterpart, Bill chooses to meet the candidates for the first time, not in his Boardroom, as do Trump and Sugar, but in front of the house he has procured for them in which they will be living for the next number of weeks. He introduces his advisors: Jackie I've already mentioned, and the other is Brian Purcell, former apprentice himself and PR guru apparently, though I don't know who he is. But then, why would I? I'm not, nor was I ever, in the field of PR, and in fairness, I had no idea who the advisors to Alan Sugar or Donald Trump were before they were announced.

The task, at least the first one, again mirrors that of its two companion shows: selling on the street. Bill began his career selling apples on Moore Street, one of our most famous trading streets, and this is what he will set the teams --- broken into men and women as per usual --- to do. Sell as many apples as you can, given the seed capital of 350 Euro, and return the highest profit. You know by now how it works, and someone in the losing team will of course be fired.

THE TASK
Oddly enough, Bill doesn't mention that they need to come up with a name for their teams, but I guess they suss that out (or have seen the other versions of the show) and the boys decide on Dynamo while the girls come up with Phoenix. Joanna Murphy takes leadership of the girls while Mark O'Rourke is Dynamo's PM. With typical Dublin dependability, the rain is lashing down as they set out to buy their fruit and head to Moore Street. It's always harder to sell in the rain, but the girls seem to be more energised, better organised and seem to be making a better job of it than the guys at this point. However the rain is a problem and nobody is selling well. Ronan on the boys' team is targeting a local business to see if he can get them to take a bulk order, while Joanna decides it's time to up sticks. She heads to the IFSC (Irish Financial Services Centre) where she hopes they will have better luck.

The boys have remained on Moore Street, using it as a base of operations and sending mobile units out to sell to shops, hotels, even hairdressers. The latter does not exactly work out for them, as their rather high prices are not going down well. They're also kind of wandering around, and have managed to pass both the shopping centres in the area. The girls are selling to hotels and restaurants, and getting bulk deals done. They seem overall to have more of a handle on how to do this. Two of the girls, however, have been detailed to sell outside Pearse Street Garda Station, which being a police station I have a feeling is illegal. But we'll see.

Speaking of things not allowed, the boys have included in one of their deals a bottle of champagne taken from the house. Now, that champagne is not theirs. Technically it belongs to Bill. Are they allowed sell it? More to the point, are they allowed to sweeten a deal using it? Again I'd have my doubts but we'll see at the Boardroom. In the end, Dynamo decide to down tools at 1.30pm, hours before they have to, selling off their surplus stock and heading to the Boardroom, while Phoenix set up at the Molly Malone statue on Liffey Street and create a little street theatre, making a buzz and generating more sales while the boys are on the way back already.

And now for a word
Jackie (following Dynamo): “No pricing, no strategy: the ones they sold they were just guessing. He asked the customer how much she'd like to pay for the bananas instead of knowing the price exactly. So, totally disorganised.”

Brian (following Phoenix): “There's a bit of panic setting in here, because Joanna is realising there's no throughput here; there's nobody coming through Moore Street at this stage of the day, and it's actually a bad day for selling anyway. So they have copped on pretty quickly that they should move, and that's I think what they're planning at the moment.”

Jackie: “It's very difficult to stop people on the street today; it's raining today. So they've got a much better deal going on. They've gone into the shop over there and got the manager to buy for the staff. That's a good deal, and now they're getting the idea that maybe this is the way to go today, being such a wet and miserable day. It's better to go into the shops and bring the business in there.”

Jackie: “This is absolutely ridiculous! They're after coming down here, the guts of half a mile, in the hope of getting maybe five Euro, while passing two of the busiest shopping centres in the country, the ILAC and Jervis Street, and it didn't dawn on them to go in there and try to sell. They're on the trail of hairdressing salons because they got a lead. It's lashing rain today: where are people going to be? They're going to be indoors.”

The Boardroom

As in the UK version, anyone wishing to participate in this show has had to show their commitment and dedication by giving up their own job in the hope of landing the one Bill is offering, and one of them is about to regret that decision. Both teams praise their PM, but of course that's easy to do before you know whether you've won or lost. It's when the result is announced that the perhaps false congratulations may turn to recriminations and accusations. As it turns out it's a very close contest, only fifteen Euro in it, but the girls trump the boys, barely. They're the winners by a hair.

Behind the Boardroom Door
Bill: “Well, Jackie. You were with the guys. What went wrong that they didn't get that extra bit?”
Jackie: “The team went wandering. They passed fantastic shopping centres where the people were.”
Bill: “People were in out of the rain obviously.”
Jackie: “Absolutely. It was teeming, absolutely teeming at this stage.”
Bill: “So the best guys were the ones left in Moore Street; were they connected with the other team?”
Jackie: “They were: I think the fatal flaw in that team was they stopped selling at half past one. They had the deal done for a hundred Euro that they were relying on to get them over the line, and didn't really go for it at the last hurdle.”
Bill: “What do you think?”
Brian: “Again I'm worried about the loss of focus, and that's where I think the story is.”

Return to the Boardroom
Mark, as PM, is quizzed by Bill on his handling of the subteam. Did he, he asks, even know where the other half of his team was? Yeah, says Mark, Grafton Street, which is unfortunate as the guys were nowhere near there: I saw a sign advertising the Abbey House, so they were obviously somewhere on Abbey Street, which is a long, long way from Grafton Street, at least ten or fifteen minutes' walk. Bill is not happy either with the idea of using the champagne as an “added incentive”. He doesn't say it's not allowed but he definitely says “Don't like that.” I think he feels they've cheated in a way and he doesn't like the wool being pulled over his eyes. If he's honest about it, I'm sure he doesn't like the idea of them including his champagne in their sales deals.

He's less happy with the guys' decision to stop selling so early. Did Mark not think of going back at 1:30 to pick up more fruit and try selling that, he asks? They still had three hours; two and a half anyway, allowing travel time back to the Boardroom. When Mark admits he “didn't want to take the risk”, that sounds like his death knell. If there's one thing an entrepreneur of any stripe hates, it's someone who isn't prepared to take a risk. After all, that's how they have got to where they are today, by taking chances and guessing right, gambling and wondering “what if” and then acting on that. Nobody --- not Trump, not Sugar, and certainly not Bill --- likes a man or woman who plays it safe.

Unfortunately, they then dig themselves deeper in when Ronan starts talking about the deals they made with the hairdressers and Jackie shakes her head. Never a man not to pick up on such signals, Bill zeroes in and asks for more information. What he hears somewhat takes the gloss off the lauded deal, as Jackie tells him they traipsed up and down Capel Street and Grafton Street and got about 140 Euro in total. When asked who should be fired, Mark is the obvious target and everyone agrees that he was complacent, a little timid and not willing to take the risks that might have won them the task, instead closing early and thinking the job done. Asked who he will bring back with him, Mark chooses David and Ronan.

Behind the Boardroom Door (reprise)
Bill: “Jackie, I get the feeling here that Mark is a good salesman and a very very poor leader. He's also admitted that he was not prepared to take a bit of a risk. That's not the type of fella I'm looking for, is it?”
Jackie: “Well, he lost the plot at that stage because he got overexcited when he heard that the guys had sold over a hundred Euro down on Grafton Street, and they said okay, that's it; we can fold up the tent now because the deal is done.”
Brian: “What did the third member of the party – David --- bring to the team?”
Jackie: “Well, David I thought was quite weak on sales generally, because he didn't have a clue about pricing and when he did make a sale he had to invite the other members of his team in to ask them what the price was. Stood back a fair bit from the whole process.”

And then there were three
Bill accuses Mark of being a good salesman but not a good leader; he says he did not manage the project well. Mark decides to try to divert attention from his poor performance by tackling David on his contribution, and David complains that he is being used as a scapegoat. Mark's reluctance, however, to take responsibility, or blame indeed, for his bad decisions is clearly annoying Bill. When he asks Mark if he should perhaps have appointed a leader of the subteam, and in not doing so, made a mistake, Mark refuses to admit that he is right.

It looks all up for Mark, and I think he's fearing the worst, but in the end it's the “hiding in the long grass” (although Bill calls it “high grass”; same thing) that rankles Bill most, and so he comes down on David. “The man who never makes a mistake never makes anything”, he tells him, and David becomes the first casualty of Bill Cullen's Boardroom.

“You're a real funny guy!”
Some of the bosses think they can crack jokes. Alan Sugar does it a lot, Trump not so much, Bill also gets in on the act. Here I'll be recounting his (ahem) attempts at humour, and how I believe they succeed or fall flat on their face. Just for fun, I'll award each joke a clown rating, from one to five.

Bill says: “The idea of the task is to make profit! And that doesn't mean Moses or John the Baptist!”
(Decent joke, original in its way and panders slightly to Catholic Ireland. Got to be a three-clown rating for that one.)
http://www.trollheart.com/clownrating3.png

Schoolboy errors
Given that this is their first attempt at the show, I feel that some slip-ups are expected, even forgivable, but some do not get addressed in later episodes, even in some cases in later seasons. One of the ones that really bugs me is how Bill departs when he has delivered the task. HE walks off. If you look at the US and UK versions, they both usher their teams out the door, or wait while they walk off, giving them the very clear impression of holding the power. When Bill walks off, the illusion is shattered, and I think it's the wrong way to go about it. Also, on occasions he almost seems unsure as to where he is to go, and uncertainty is not a trait we're supposed to see in the boss on this show. As I say, they never addressed this, and I don't know how someone did not realise that it looked frankly terrible. All they needed was a change of camera angle, but they never got to it.

Thoughts in the cab
David: “I think today Bill did make the right decision. I didn't put myself out there enough. I still got down to the final fourteen. I don't ever do regrets: it's important to keep a positive attitude and keep looking forward.”
(A weak sign-off from a weak candidate. Interestingly, of all the series this is the first time someone has actually agreed that they should have been fired. I would not question that decision; David came across as a very ineffectual candidate and despite his contention that he could be a “great leader” he showed no leadership qualities, and seemed ill-at-ease with the whole process. He was not at all comfortable selling and looked totally out of place).

Oops!
Surely one of the biggest errors, and one that was sure to set the seal on the failure of this task, was Mark's decision not to go back and purchase more stock, and to quit selling so early? With a mere fifteen Euro in the difference, even another half-hour's selling could have taken them over the line and won them the task. But Mark “didn't want to take the risk”. When he said “It's too late to go back now” I thought it must be about 3pm, but no: 1.30! Plenty of time. How could he even think of downing tools so early, when it was clearly evident that no matter how well or badly they did, anyone staying the full period of time stood a far better chance of winning. How often have tasks been potentially won in the last ten minutes? But quit early and you give yourself no chance, as indeed Mark's team did, and it's odd also that nobody challenged his decision. Not a good sign for the boys for the future.

The trek up Grafton and Capel Street in search of hairdressers who would buy their fruit was another place the boys slipped up. It should have been obvious, from the reaction they got at the second one, that the rest would see their deal as not worth what they believed it was worth. Let's not forget (as Dynamo obviously did) the first deal was sweetened by the addition of the champagne; without that, it's very doubtful indeed that they would have got the hundred Euro that was agreed. They were, literally, not comparing apples with apples (sorry, sorry)!

Take me to your leader
Dynamo: though he threw his weight around a lot and in fairness worked his arse off, Mark didn't seem to have a proper, clear strategy. He let the subteam wander off where they would, no instructions and no guidance --- to say nothing of nobody being in charge --- and he didn't even ensure the fruit was priced before they started selling it. When it came time to accept responsibility for the loss, he refused to and basically sulked, and then brought in one of the people who had made the largest single sale of the day, without any real explanation. Pretty poor leader altogether.

Phoenix: Joanna had much more of a handle on what was going on. Being older, and already running her own business, she knew the basics of what had to be done. She delegated well, praised good ideas and encouraged her team, and had enough business savvy and basic common sense to see that the Moore Street pitch was not working, and decide to move. Even then, she chose a spot that would attract some interest and attention, though she did I believe screw up with the assignment of the Garda station. Overall though, a far better leader who led her team to victory.

May the best team win?
For all the reasons above and more, yes. Phoenix were the better team. The boys sort of stumbled around in the darkness, trying to find a strategy that worked, while Joanna had her team organised and pumped, knew who was doing what, and came in very slightly ahead of her rivals, but in this contest a few Euro can make the difference, as indeed it did here.

Sight adjustment?
From everything he was saying, from his body language and the way Bill interrogated and blamed Mark for the failure of the task, to say nothing of the way the PM received that criticism, almost as if he resented it (“Who does he think he is, talking to me like that?” etc) I felt certain that Mark was about to walk. I was really surprised when Bill took a sharp left turn, almost at the last minute. I understand David was weak and nearly invisible, but he was not I believe responsible for the failure of this task. That blame lay squarely on the shoulders of a timid PM who did not want to take a risk and couldn't wait to get off the streets and back to the Boardroom, even though there were yet almost three hours left in the task. I know often the boss will not fire the PM on the first task, as they see it as a gutsy move for someone to stand up, but I really feel there was no excuse here and Mark should have been fired. Even his attitude led me to believe he was going, and I think he expected it himself.

Adjustment needed: 80%

The one that got away?
Obviously, from what I said above and before, Mark was very lucky to retain his place and get through to the next round. He's living on borrowed time already and he is going to have to really get his head in the game, to use his own phrase to David, if he wishes to remain.

Weeding out the weaklings
Just from the standpoint of how much, if at all, I heard from them on this first task I have questions about Derek, Avril, Orla (both of them), Stuart, Brenda and Shane. Of course it is only the first task, so we'll see if they step up, but haven't been impressed by any of these so far.

The front runners
Joanna obviously, as she won and made a good PM, but also Ronan, who negotiated the deal with the hairdresser (even if the rest of their similar deals failed badly) impressed me with his attitude and his ability to make deals. Nobody else really.

Famous last words?
David: “I don't come across as someone who shouts the odds, but then, sometimes it's the quiet ones you have to watch!”

You're fired!
Name: David Neary
Age: 25
Occupation: Assistant Brand Manager

Not a whole lot I can tell you about this guy. He gave the impression of being very uncomfortable selling, not knowing prices and having to get other team members to confirm them. The fact that he's “only” an “assistant” doesn't, or didn't, speak well to his qualities as a leader: if you're a true candidate for the Apprentice one would assume you would be the top man or woman; nobody wants to deal with a right-hand-man (or woman). David also displayed something of an attitude of distaste towards the louder, more outgoing members of his team, especially Mark (shall we start calling him Lucky Mark? Let's start calling him Lucky Mark) who reciprocated; he could see David was a quiet, ineffectual man who would add little if anything to the team. He even remarked upon David's quietness before they arrived at the pitch, knowing that this would be a task in which loud, brash, confident patter would be required to sell on Moore Street, and he saw none of those qualities in the man sitting in the front of the car.

Whether the candidates actually give up their jobs or just say they do I don't know, but if they actually do jack it in then they're idiots, as there's a thirteen-to-one chance of their gamble not paying off. Who's going to bet on those odds? If David is one who decided to take the gamble, for real, then on the basis of his performance --- or lack of it --- here, I don't think they'll exactly be lining up to offer him a new position!

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Episode Four

Thanks to the opposition of His Majesty, opinion polls report a thirteen percent swing against Urquhart’s government and dissatisfaction with his policies. Urquhart agrees to give the BBC an interview, which interestingly the King has declined to take part in. A chance explosion at a block of flats however affords him an even greater platform, but people are more interested in the reactions of the King, who simply offers his assistance and says, and it becomes his unintended catchphrase, “Please let me help”, whereas Urquhart does not want to roll up his sleeve and get stuck in. The gulf between the two men, the different ways they approach and see things, could not be more clearly defined. Urquhart sees the disaster as nothing more than a photo opportunity, a chance to be “seen among the people”, whereas the King does not care about the political advantage of being there, he only wishes to help and do what he can. Urquhart can begin to feel a very cold wind blowing. He knows he is losing the people, and whether he cares for them or not, without them he is finished. It is their votes, after all, who put him in power, and they have the ability to topple him.

Elizabeth, seeing the sudden weakness in her husband, counsels him to hit back, and hit back hard. The first salvo is to leak to the press the rumour (which is actually true, but they neither know nor care) that David Mycroft is gay. Not a crime, certainly, but something that will hopefully shake the public’s confidence in His Majesty. “King’s best friend a shirtlifter?” crows Stamper. “How low can Palace morals sink?” Urquhart smiles his shark’s smile. He has something now to get his teeth into. Oh, something small, certainly, but the smallest wounds can be torn into huge, gaping gashes, given enough time. Stamper is, however, less than pleased to hear of his boss’s plans for him, should they win the election. Urquhart wants him to remain as Chief Whip, which does not at all fit in with Stamper’s plans, or validate what he believed he has been promised. Urquhart does not seem to care either way.

When he finds Sarah rifling through his filing cabinets looking for a file on Mattie Storrin, Stamper believes the time has come to play his hand, and has her brought to him, where he plays her the recording of what really happened just prior to Mattie’s death. It becomes clear now that this was the gloved hand that picked up Mattie’s dictaphone after she fell, and now he intends using it to bring about Urquhart’s downfall. Urquhart, meanwhile, goes to see the princess, to impress upon her in no uncertain manner that should he engineer the ascension of her son to the throne he will expect the new king to take, and follow, his “advice” ---- basically, toe the line and do as he is told. He does not want to replace one problem with another, younger one. The princess assures him their interests coincide and she will make that plain to her young son.

Back at the Palace, Chloe warns the King that trouble is brewing and that riots are foreseen. She suggests he go on a nationwide tour to try to get the people behind him and calm the tensions. He agrees, as she reveals her feelings for him and he reciprocates. Urquhart does his television interview, using the opportunity to drop the bombshell that has been uncovered by Sarah in her research, that the reason the gas main blew in the flats was because one of the residents was trying to bypass the meter. “Reckless greed”, he says stonily “and irresponsibility killed those people.” He then goes on to announce the reintroduction of National Service, in an effort to “Get our young people off their backsides.” It’s a pretty clever plan: if all the young people are serving in the military there won’t be too many of them protesting and rioting and causing trouble on the streets. And a spell in the army will soon knock the rebellious feelings out of them as they fall into line.

The King’s tour of the underprivileged areas goes well until a kidnapping of the monarch is staged (obviously Urquhart’s people) and then the Prime Minister is able to reveal that, despite His Majesty’s orders to the contrary, a crack team of SAS men has been shadowing the King and are able to spring into action when needed. It is a masterstoke: it turns the king into a pompous, naive, too-trusting fool and the Prime Minister into a pragmatic experienced man of the world who has only the safety of the royal personage at heart. The opinion polls begin to climb again in favour of the government. David Mycroft, under increasing pressure, resigns his post and reveals he is gay. Stamper tells Sarah he is going to wait until the result of tomorrow’s election is no longer in doubt, and when Urquhart has been re-elected he will go to the police with the tape. This will of course force the resignation of the Prime Minister and Stamper will take over his job.

Corder has had people monitoring the conversation though, and word gets back to Urquhart, who knows there is only one way to ensure his survival. As the results come in, a victory for the government, he sets about getting rid of the only two who could rain on his parade. As Sarah goes to meet Chloe at the Palace, believing that what she has is best in the hands of the King, her car explodes and Stamper is similarly dealt with as he arrives at the police station. Having won the election, Urquhart goes to the Palace to demand the abdication of the King. He refuses, but in his heart he must know it is the only course left open to him. He has lost the popular support: the people have spoken, and they have spoken for the Prime Minister. He has failed, and Urquhart will not suffer a monarch who opposes him, nor, at this point, will the people. He is finished.

And Francis Urquhart has, once again, triumphed.

QUOTES
Urquhart: “You do need me, you know; otherwise you haven’t really got a programme.”
BBC man: “True, but if I may say so Prime Minister, your need is the greater at the moment.”
(How true: Urquhart has lost touch with the common man --- not that he ever wanted to be in touch with him, Heaven forbid! But it must look like he cares, even if he does not. This interview will, if nothing else, get people to listen to him and allow him a platform on which to defend his government’s policies, and perhaps take a few shots at a defenceless king, while he’s at it).

Urquhart (to camera): “It’s not as easy as we thought, to fight a king. But I will not let him conquer me. Nothing will prise me loose. I am ready to do anything.”
(To underline the point, we see a replay of Mattie Storrin’s death plunge. Yes, in order to hold on to power, the PM is ready to do absolutely anything.)

Urquhart (to camera): “Every event is a photo opportunity in disguise, playing right into the hands of the king.”
(Urquhart cannot see, comprehend or believe that His Majesty, visiting the site of the disaster, is doing so for other than political reasons. He genuinely cares. See “A boy in a man’s world” for more on this)

The King: “I have no intentions of speaking to the press, or anyone else, other than the victims of this bloody disaster!”

Urquhart: “Your Majesty.”
The King: “Prime Minister.”
Urquhart: “We could have done without all this public posturing, Sir.”
The King: “I came to comfort my people, that’s all.”
Urquhart: “I’m sure they’re thrilled to bits, Sir. Pat a few heads if you must but no public speaking please. We don’t want you making an issue out of this now do we?”
The King: “Damn you, man! Don’t judge me by your own degraded standards! You may wish to make political capital out of tragedy; all I want to do is help.”
Urquhart: “You bloody hypocrite!”

Urquhart: “I thought Chief Whip again.After all, it’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”
Stamper: “You led me to expect it would be a senior cabinet post. You led me to expect it would be Home Secretary.”
Urquhart: “Did I? Well, perhaps it will. But you’re such a good frightener, Tim. You’d be wasted in one of those kid gloves jobs.”
Stamper: “Has it ever occurred to you that you presume too much?”
Urquhart: “Not in your case Tim, no. I think I know you rather well, don’t you?”
(He may think so indeed, but here is one of the few times Urquhart is underestimating his underling. He cannot even conceive of Stamper turning against him, and thinks that he can keep kicking him like a dog, that he will never bite. He believes he has him totally under his control, and does not see him as any kind of threat. He’s also correct: Stamper is not suited for higher office; he simply has not the finesse required for such sensitive posts.)

Sarah: “We don’t have to be enemies, Tim. I’m not going to be here for long.”
(Oh, how prophetic those words are, though she has no idea how literal that sentence will turn out to be!)

Stamper: “All I ever wanted to do was serve him, be close to him. But I see now what I should have seen all along. I was entirely instrumental to his plans. Disposable, like those little plastic razors you can get now. Apparently, you can get a couple of good shaves from them and then you just throw them away.”

Urquhart: “We are not a nation of social workers, or clients of social workers! We are not, please God, a nation of deserving cases! We are a fierce, proud nation, and we are still, God willing, a nation to be reckoned with!”

Urquhart: “We talk a lot about freedom, but do any of us really believe in it?”
Sarah: “I do.”
Urquhart: “Yes, perhaps you do. But most people don’t want it at all. Most people are weak and stupid and cowardly and contemptible.”
(Never has he been more honest about what he thinks of his fellow man. And there’s more. In one of the most chilling speeches --- private, of course: he would never dare say such things in public -- Urquhart outlines his thinking behind conscription...)
Urquhart: “The great beauty of conscription is that we can use these eighteen to twenty-three years olds to subdue their younger brothers in the towns and in those ghastly estates, and then we can think about exporting them: use the British fighting man to redress the balance of trade.”
Sarah: “You really mean that, don’t you?”
Urquhart: “Why not? Nobody wants these young people, not even their own parents. They have no skills, they have no education, they have no self-discipline. They are utterly useless, but were going to make them useful, Sarah. Like factory farming.”

THE FINAL CONFRONTATION BETWEEN URQUHART AND THE KING

The King: “Congratulations, Mr. Urquhart.”
Urquhart: “Thank you Your Majesty. Frankly, I would have thought you would have preferred to dispense with such pleasantries.”
The King: “Oh by all means. I’m heartily sorry that you’re still Prime Minister, but I’m not in the least downhearted. The tide is turning against you and I’m happy to have been able to have played my part in that. I believe you’ll be out within the year.”
Urquhart: “Your opinions, Sir, are no longer of any interest to anyone but yourself. You have risked everything in opposing me, and you have lost. I have come here to demand your abdication from the throne.”
The King: “The people won’t back you, Urquhart.”
Urquhart: “I shan’t need to consult them again, Sir. They have re-elected me. And I cannot and will not tolerate a monarch who is bitterly and publicly opposed to me. You must abdicate Sir; it is the only honourable course. You must see that.”
The King: “Oh well I don’t think you’re in any position to speak of honourable courses. I’ll continue to oppose you openly and publicly while I remain on the throne, and if I am forced to relinquish the throne I shall continue to fight you as a commoner. I shall welcome the opportunity, and I shall take very keen pleasure in defeating you in the polls.”
Urquhart: “I wouldn’t bet on it, Sir. I’m afraid you won’t be of much interest as a commoner. I doubt if anyone will be particularly interested in what you have to say. You have no constituency, you see. No powerbase. You represent nothing but one talentless and discredited family, and very soon you won’t represent even that. You will represent nothing. You will mean nothing. You will be nothing.”
The King: “Well, we’ll see. I spent my whole life preparing to be king.”
Urquhart: “I feel no compunction, Sir. You tried to destroy me.”
The King: “I didn't want to destroy you man! You wanted to destroy the monarchy!”
Urquhart: “Not at all sir,! Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I have no wish to. It is you I wished to destroy, not the monarchy. My family came south with James I. We were defenders of the crown before your family were even heard of. It is to defend the idea of a constitutional monarch that I now demand your abdication.”
The King: “You’re a monster, Urquhart!”
Urquhart: “You might very well think that, Sir, but your opinion doesn’t really count for much now, does it?”

URQUHART’S CLOSING SPEECH (TO US)
“Well, what would you have? Britain must be governed, and you know who will do it best. If you will the end, you must will the means. These things happen all over the world. Believe me, it’s all for the best. What’s the matter? You do trust me, don’t you? Of course you do!”

A boy in a man’s world?
Urquhart sees it as political posturing, and he does so because he is doing the very same thing when both he and the King visit the site of the gas leak at the flats. But the King genuinely does not see it as such. To him, this is almost as if he is not the king, and is just a private citizen offering his condolences and any help he can. Because Francis can conceive of doing nothing without there being something in it for him, some advantage, some payback, some sort of political capital he can cash in on, he does not believe that anyone --- never mind anyone in power --- would make such a journey without milking it for all it’s worth.

When he sees, to his horror, that the King is in fact true to his word --- he doesn’t talk to the press, makes no statements, not even to criticise Urquhart’s government, and this would be the perfect chance to do so --- he begins to realise that for the first time since he decided to take on the Palace he may be in danger of becoming out of his depth. If this is a war, then in this one almost random act of kindness as he runs down the embankment and asks to help with a stretchered victim, His Majesty may have scored, even unwillingly or unwittingly, something of a major victory.

And all of this happens because of the King’s naivete and his basic humanity. If this has been planned it could not have gone better, but it was not planned. It just happened, as things often do, and the popularity of the government, despite no actual conscious effort on the part of the king, begins to plummet.

But when the PM turns the King's innocence and gullibility against him, and turns the tide in the process, as he is so adept at doing, public opinion reverses as the people realise, or are shown, that this is not a man they can really trust to make the right decisions. His fight against Urquhart is in ruins, and when the newly-elected Prime Minister comes to demand he step down, there is no lonelier figure than his as Urquhart leaves the Palace, having explained why there is no alternative for the young king. At this point, he truly is a boy in a man’s world, and he is alone.

The betrayer betrayed

If he was thinking of turning against Francis before, the hammerblow of being told he is not going to get a senior cabinet post after the election makes up Stamper’s mind for him, and he decides to play his ace in the hole. He brings Sarah in on the fact that he has possession of the cassette out of Mattie Storrin’s dictaphone, a ticking time-bomb, a smoking gun that can shoot Francis right though the heart. Not only will it force his removal from the top office, it will land him in jail for murder, as he freely confesses to one and perpetrates the other on tape. Why does he use Sarah as his agent? You would have to think that he sees delicious irony in using both the object of FU’s obsession and the perceived rival for his place at the Prime Minister’s table to depose him, a female Brutus for Julius Caesar, and also, he knows that it will hurt Sarah, finding our that the man she professes to be in love with is a self-confessed murderer. It will either make or destroy her career, but to do either she will have to play the part Stamper wishes her to play, that of Judas. There is, for Stamper, a savage symmetry in that.

And now, as Sarah listens to his heartless plan for the youth of the nation, Sarah too know s that she must turn against Urquhart. The man is completely unprincipled, ready to sell the flower of their youth into eternal bondage, serving in foreign wars and essentially being hired out to the highest bidder, government-sponsored mercenaries, probably all under-the-table, very hush-hush, but he fully intends to do it. When he asks her the question he asked Mattie, just before he threw her off the roof, “I can trust you, can’t I?” she must fear for her life, but she keeps her feelings hidden, knowing that to show weakness now would be to sign her own death warrant, quite literally.

But it's at an end now: the idyllic romance, the thrill of it all, the proximity to power she has craved, all of that matters little now. She sees she is lying in bed beside a monster, a monster who will happily sell his country into slavery, install a police state if it means he can hold on to power. If he beats the King, if he manages to swing the election and is returned to power, there will be no way to stop him. He will ride roughshod over the populace like a dictator/emperor the likes of which the Western World has never seen, never mind the United Kingdom. She must stop him. Her heart has turned to stone, and it’s just as well, because this task is going to require one, to match that of the man who was her lover and is now her sworn enemy, the enemy of freedom, the enemy of all British people, and the enemy perhaps of all men.


The real Urquhart
We see again the true face behind the mask, as Sarah casually asks if it is ok if she doesn’t stay overnight with him and his face immediately darkens. It is very much not okay! How dare she have a ife? How dare she refuse to give him what he wants! What does she think she is: a free agent? Does she not know she belongs to him now, mind body and soul, and he should be the only one in her thoughts at any time? Husband? Who cares about her husband, or anyone else? She is his, and he should be able to command her any time he likes. She of course crumbles to his will, but now there’s something else in her eyes: fear. And he sees it. “Something’s happened”, he muses. “What is it? You’re not bored with me are you?” As if such a thing could be allowed to happen. But knowing incontrovertibly now what she does, she has much to fear. What lengths will this man go to to protect his secret, if he discovers she knows it? She recalls the words of John Krajewski: “They’ll probably kill you too.” Yes. Indeed.

We also see the Prime Minister’s true face when he realises he must destroy both his lifelong friend and his newest acquisition in order to ensure his own safety. He moans “I am in blood steeped so far” but he will not shirk this final task. Elizabeth helps bolster him against the pain, but once he has made the decision, we see his eyes turn to steely flint, and the man we know and loathe is starting directly out of those eyes, reminding us that nobody, no matter who they be, gets in his way.

“I couldn’t possibly comment”
Although the actual words are not used here, Urquhart floats out the old phrase one more time in his interview after securing the King’s safety, against the monarch’s stated policy.
Interviewer (of the king): “Heart of gold, but not safe to be let out on his own? Would that be a fair comment, Prime Minister?”
Urquhart: “You might very well say that. I could not possibly say that: I have far too much respect for His Majesty.”
And so, at a stroke, Urquhart shows himself to be a tough, no-nonsense man, ready to get in there and get his hands dirty, ready to risk all to save his “beloved” monarch. How could you not trust such a man? And how, after this, will or could anyone place any credence in anything the king says again? He could have been injured, or worse, had the PM not seen fit to disregard his orders and provide a safety net for him on his tour. THAT, surely, is the kind of man we want running this country, not some well-meaning but ultimately clueless king. It’s all going exactly to plan once again.

He also uses the phrase when he has his last meeting with the King, though it’s used in a different way. He says to the soon-to-be-abdicating king, “You might very well think that, but it doesn’t really matter what you think now, does it?”
And it does not.

The Urquhart body count

Lethal
Sarah Harding: Executed by car bomb, blamed on the IRA. Sarah has become a liability, and has damning evidence that could land Urquhart in prison. He simply cannot afford to let her pass that information on, and, knowing what she knows, he can’t allow her to live.

Tim Stamper: Thirty years of “friendship” or at least mutual respect (no, not even that: Urquhart never respected Stamper) means nothing to Urquhart when placed against his own survival, and he has Stamper killed by car bomb too, thus removing forever the possibility that anyone might uncover his dark, murderous past.

Nonlethal
David Mycroft: Although he does not die, his career is finished and he will be something of a pariah in the circles in which he used to move, and this is all down to Urquhart’s having his sexual preference leaked to the press.

The King: Of course, the biggest non-lethal casualty of Urquhart’s campaign so far. The Prime Minister has succeeded in doing what no other politician since Cromwell has done, forcing the abdication of a sitting king, taking on the Palace and winning. The ex-King will now be forced into normal life, have to get a job perhaps (though you would assume he would have money stashed away. Then again, he’s so naive you would wonder) and he certainly will never again be a problem for his erstwhile adversary.

The tower block deaths: We can’t in fairness (who ever said this was fair?) blame those on Urquhart. Even if the accident was due to poor maintenance and a lack of proper housing brought about by his government --- though if we are to believe Sarah’s research it was a jury-rig job gone wrong --- it’s too vague and indirect, like the way I released Alan B’Stard from responsibility for the possible deaths of the schoolchildren under whose school he stored the nuclear waste. With Urquhart’s bodycount, it has to be personal, more direct. And this isn’t.


Non-lethal Bodycount: 7
Lethal Bodycount: 5
Total Bodycount: 12

A final word
So, after successive attempts to thwart his return to power, after the very monarchy has been ranged against him, and with the possibility of his murderous past coming back to haunt him, Francis Urquhart has again wriggled free and come up trumps. If he could be compared to any insect it would have to be a cockroach: he flourishes in the dark and does not like the light, he scuttles here and there, spreading his disease and it looks like even a direct nuclear strike would be insufficient to kill him. He’s a survivor, almost always at the expense of others, and as we see here, he has no compunction whatever about sacrificing his allies, colleagues or even the very few who may mistakenly believe they are his friends, on the cold hard altar of his ambition. Slick and sticky with blood, this altar has seen many a victim, and will see many more before the man is finally brought to justice.

For now, Britain can look forward to another period of raw, naked consumerism, rising taxes, poor housing (not for the rich, of course), spending cuts and the slow and deliberate attrition of its youth as they are ground under the heel of Urquhart and his policies. Orwell once wrote: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping endlessly on an upturned human face.” Such is the vision that now greets a weary and weak Britain, as its new ruler in all but name tightens his viselike grip on the nation’s throat and stamps down hard.

The concluding chapter, “The Final Cut”, will show us how Urquhart stoops to new lows, and ascends to new highs as he prepares to feather his nest before retiring, having bled the country dry. But first, there’s yet another mind for him to mess with, another body to warm his bed, before the final reckoning is to be had, before Francis Urquhart, the untouchable man, has to finally face his past, pay for his sins and watch in horror as the books are finally, and ultimately, balanced forever.

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1.1 “Good luck, Father Ted”

The boring, dreary, barren Craggy Island is about to be livened up by the coming of Funland, the local funfair, and Father Dougal is excited about it. He tells Ted they have a “spiderbaby” in it, but the older priest is not convinced at Dougal's description of the thing. He's not interested in going to the fair, which disappoints Dougal, who's just a kid at heart. Ted then receives a phone call from the TV programme “Faith of our Fathers”, and is asked if he would take part in an interview, as they are making a special about priests in isolated communities, and you don't get much more isolated than Craggy Island! Ted, a shameless media hound at heart, is delighted at the opportunity to be on telly, but concerned as to how his fellow priests could screw things up for him if they got to talk on the programme, he pretends he is living alone.

This of course means he then has to lie to the other two (well, Dougal anyway: Father Jack lives in his own private drunken world and is barely aware of anything going on around him) when he sneaks off to do the interview, raising suspicions. Lucky for him Dougal takes Father Jack out for a trip in his wheelchair to see the local cliffs, however to Ted's dismay the young priest takes the opportunity to visit Funland, which coincidentally is where Ted is meeting Terry, the man from the TV. Unfortunately, due to a series of mixups Terry runs into Dougal, and only calling him “Father”, seeing a priest in front of him (and as Ted has said he lives alone) he assumes this to be his interviewee. Ted pales when he realises his curate is being interviewed in his place, but he has other things to worry about, as a bench he has sat down on turns out to be a makeshift fairground ride, and suddenly it's being hauled up into the air! He can only stare in horror as Dougal airs all his controversial views on air.

In desperation he falls off the bench to the ground, but the damage has already been done. The reputation of Craggy Island's priests may never recover!

QUOTES
Dougal: “They've got a spiderbaby.”
Ted: “What's a spiderbaby?”
Dougal: “Well, it has the body of a spider, but it's a baby.”
Ted; “How is it a baby? Is it wearing a nappy?”
Dougal: “Em, no.”
Ted; “Well, does it have the head of a baby?”
Dougal: “Em, no.”
Ted: "Well, if it looks like a spider, and it doesn't actually gurgle at your or anything, how do you know it's a baby?”
Dougal: “They keep it in a pram.”
Ted: “Dougal, are you absolutely sure of this? You're not mixing it up with a dream you had?”
Dougal: “No, honestly. I saw it on the news --- oh wait, actually now that you say it, it was a dream.”

Ted (catching sight of Dougal, with Jack, on a merry-go-round): “You were supposed to be taking Jack for his walk!”
Dougal: “Ah no, the cliffs were closed for the day.”
Ted: “How can cliffs be closed, Dougal?”
Dougal: “Okay, no, they weren't closed. They were gone.”
Ted: “The cliffs were gone? How could they just disappear?”
Dougal: “Erosion.”

Dougal: Look Ted! A fortune teller! Come on, we'll just go in and have one.”
Ted: “Don't be wasting your time on that sort of stuff, Dougal.”
Dougal: “Ah come on Ted! Sure it's no more peculiar than that stuff we learned in seminary --- Heaven and Hell, everlasting life and all that: you're not meant to take it seriously!”

John and Mary: A lovely couple!
Two of the funniest and most spot-on supporting characters are John and Mary, a middle-aged married couple who have about as much love for each other now as Hitler had for jews. They fight with alarming savagery but whenever Father Ted approaches they put on the most sickening show of affection for each other. A perfect and incredibly well-observed view of how people will --- or used to --- behave differently in front of a man of the church, afraid either of giving offence or having gossip spread about them.

John: “Will you get out of me way ye fat cow!”
Mary: “Ye've got a face on ye like a bag of tits!”
John: “Well at least that's one pair between us!”
(Mary goes for a knife and attacks John. Enter Father Ted and she hides the knife behind her back, the two cosying up to each other with tight smiles forced onto their faces.)
Ted: “Hello Mary.”
Mary: “Ah hello Father!”
Ted: “Hello John.”
Mary: “Will ye have a pack of toffos Father?”
Ted: “Ah no thanks, I'm actually on the way to be interviewed for a television programme.”
John: “Really? Ah, that's fantastic!”
Mary: “You know Father, I think you'd be brilliant on television.”
Ted: “Thank you.”
John: “Ah, I'd say you'd be a match for Gay Byrne or Terry Wogan, or any of them!”
Ted: “I think it'd take me a few weeks to get to their level! Have to go now, I'm trying to track down this film unit, and they probably want to do a few close-ups, master shots, this and that, sort of thing. Don't want to be late on set, get a reputation as a kind of Marilyn Monroe type. See you soon.”
(Departs)
John: “Good luck, Father Ted!” (Removing his arm from around Mary as if he's afraid he'll catch something) “Get them feckin' Crunchies out of the car!”


Those clever little touches
Tom tells Ted “Father, I killed a man!” but Ted ignores him, and later Terry remarks on a scar that he has. Tom is meanwhile reading the headline of the newspaper which announces “Madman killer still on the loose!” It's not remarked upon at all, and it's a pity they didn't carry it through as a running joke --- Ted and Dougal wondering about the killer and Tom constantly trying to confess while being ignored --- but they didn't.

When Dougal sees Ted through the window, he being outside, he decides to play a trick on him and takes a statue of the Virgin Mary, holding it up at the window and causing Ted to almost drop to his knees in fright. As Dougal apologises later, Ted opines “I thought it was Herself! That's the last thing I need right now!” Not the best thing for a priest to say, I would have thought!

Those not-so-clever touches
They're really reaching for material in this first episode. The opening joke sees Ted trying to arrange who will take mass, with Jack growling and glowering each time he's asked to oblige, and Ted agreeing to take each mass. Then Dougal comes down with shaving foam all over his face, and when Ted tells him about it he says he never even shaved this morning! :rolleyes: To say nothing of the “joke” when he stands at the window looking out, and says “God it's lovely out!” and we see footage of a tropical storm. Yeah, hilarious. :banghead:

But the worst and most pointless sequence is at the fairground, where for reasons unknown to me at least, a sort of guitar battle takes place between what looks to be one of the sound crew for the TV programme and a bald kid on a banjo. To make it even more awkward, some old fella is dancing to their shared tune. Huh? Did they really need to fill in that much time?

Notes
You are probably reading this and thinking “What? This is what it's all about? This? That was terrible!” And it was, I agree with you. The day after this aired, the general concensus at work was that it was crap. However, in a feat of almost miraculous (appropriate, I guess!) turnaround, the second episode improved vastly, and pretty soon Father Ted was the number one comedy on TV. Its Irishness is of course what makes it, and as it goes on and more characters and introduced and the humour becomes sharper and more on the nose, the situations get increasingly bizarre and we get to know Ted and Dougal, it all seems to make a crazy kind of sense. But this opening episode, were the series to have lived or died by it, would probably have damned “Father Ted” to cancellation before it even hit the air.

Luckily, it was given its chance and by the end of season one it was winning hearts and minds all across the British Isles, and of course in Ireland, and is now a cult phenomenon which has led to people saying “That's a very Dougal thing to do” or just yelling “FECK! DRINK! ARSE! GIRLS!” and everyone knows who and what they're talking about. Stick with it: it gets better I promise.

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I guess everyone's seen The Matrix by now, and agree it was a special film, at least the original was. But when you watched it first, for a short while it was hard to see where it was going. Everything seemed a little “hacker-takes-on-the-sytem”-ish until this scene made us all sit up and take notice, and realise that this movie was going to be just a little different. I'm talking about this one, where Neo, being interrogated by Agent Smith, suddenly loses the use of his mouth, as Smith smiles, in response to his captive's demand for his phone call, “Tell me, Mr. Anderson: what use is a phone call if you're unable to speak?” Whereupon Neo's mouth suddenly starts to close up, and then his face is completely smooth from his nose down. As he panics, disbelieving, Smith takes out some sort of mechnical/robotic probe, that looks like a huge dragonfly or something, and drops it on his belly, the loathsome creature scuttling along until it enters via his navel.

(from about 3:10 in)
We're then hit with a double whammy as we see him wake up, and think “Oh well, it was all a dream” before we realise that the world he is living in is the dream, and the cold harsh reality of the Matrix is about to become the most real nightmare he has ever had.

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Episode Three

One of John Boy’s big drugs shipments has been intercepted by the Guards and Fran is not a happy man. However there were two containers and one has got through. John Boy decides all of this is his --- Fran’s got impounded. He says that’s how it is and nobody is going to dare to contradict him or point out the very clear fact that this was all one shipment and Fran should be due some of the gear that escaped the attention of the Gardai. John Boy has already lost money, and he doesn’t intend to share any of his good fortune with his partner. In an unusual move, he pays Darren for the hit on Stumpy, which was supposed to have been part of what the young lad owed John Boy.

When Fran learns that one of the containers got through without being seized, he’s rightly angry and believes he should be getting his cut. Nidge discovers something distressing in the shower, but he has to rush to join Tricia, who has gone for an ultrasound. Darren, wracked with guilt over the killing of Stumpy, goes to see his mother, who has of course no idea that the young man who stands on her doorstep offering his condolences, and who she invites in to look at baby pictures of her son, is the very man who pulled the trigger that ended his life. Disconcerted with what he sees as blood money from John Boy, Darren gives it all to Stumpy’s mother. Nidge heads to a tryst with Linda, and she confides in him that she --- or Fran --- one of them anyway is unable to give her a baby. So his talk of his son-to-be really cuts her, not that he cares.

There’s a confrontation when Fran appears at the pub where John Boy and the gang are drinking, demanding his cut of the drugs.But he’s outnumbered and has to slink away, as they all laugh. He’s back soon enough though, and armed. John Boy is hit but only in the shoulder. The brief partnership is obviously dissolved in the most violent of manners. Fran is now an enemy. After Mary gives Darren an old kettle she had for Luke, remembering that he had said he had none, the young transient is so delighted that she remembered that he immediately takes it as a sort of love token, and begins to form ideas that, were Darren to be able to see into his friend’s mind, would probably get him more than a severe kicking. John Boy comes up with a savage plan to draw Fran out of hiding. He tells Nidge to throw a pipe bomb into his house, and he specifies that it must be when Linda is there. He wants a body. This is no idle warning, no empty threat: he wants to hurt Fran, and knows how to do it.

This will have massive repercussions for Nidge, though he does not know it, in season five. But for now, although he doesn’t really want to do it he knows he has to, and to him it’s just really another fuck-hole lost; he doesn’t care a scrap about Linda --- we saw that when she started getting upset about not being able to have children. he is, and always will be, only ever interested in himself. But he doesn’t want to do it, and he seeks advice from Darren, who tells him that if he has to bomb the house he must make sure to do so when Linda is not there, and to hell with John Boy. He can always say he thought she was there. What’s John Boy going to do? Have another hit taken out on her? Once Fran’s house is bombed he’ll come out of hiding, and that’s the whole point of this. Isn’t it?

But he goes ahead. To be honest, he must see her there as he walks up to the window of the sitting room and she’s watching TV. The explosion leaves her with severe facial injuries, and she can see from Fran’s reaction that he’s more concerned with how she now looks --- she’s also had to have her breast implants removed, as they had been punctured and the silicone was leakign into her bloodstream --- than how she feels. He never once touches her, apologises (though he must know it’s because of him she’s lying in a hospital bed and could have been lying on a slab) or offers any support. It’s like one of his favourite toys has been broken, and now he doesn’t want to play with it anymore. Nidge and Trish have to move to a safe house in case of retribution, which does not go down well with his wife.

Now as far as Fran is concerned all bets are off, and he will go after John Boy, Nidge, their families, anyone connected with the gang. He’s actually ready to die if he can take JohnBoy with him. But again it’s not about revenge for Linda; it’s a case of wounded pride, tit (sorry) for tat and a chance to get his own back for this attack on, literally, his own front door. John Boy sets Tommy the task of eliminating him, while Darren gets word from Rosie that she is on her way home. Debbie continues to spiral into a nightmarish descent into drug dependency, and John Boy continues to believe the ghost of his brother is haunting his apartment.


QUOTES
Nidge (looking at the ultrasound): “It’s like Alien!!”
Tricia: “Would ya shut up?”
Nidge: “It is!”

Luke: “How much is in there?”
Darren: “Dunno. A couple of grand at least. It’s blood money is what it is.”
Luke: “Sure it’s only money.”

Nidge: “Don’t you think we should cut him in on a quarter though?”
John Boy: “What am I now? Vincent de Paul? You give him your money if you feel so bad about it. You gonna do that? No, you’re not, ya fucking prick. You’re a great man at telling me I should be giving shit away… Stupid fuck! I mean, who are you to be telling me what to do with my money anyway? Christ, Nidge: you slow or what?”

Darren (talking to Nidge about his dilemma): “I don’t see what the problem is here. Just wait till she’s out and bomb the place.”
Nidge: “Nah. He’ll know.” (John Boy)
Darren: “How will he know? He’s God now is he?”
Nidge: “No. No, but he might be the other fella!”

John Boy: “You know in Sicily they write everything down. Don’t even trust the Pay-As-You-Go. That’s how they never get caught.”

John Boy: “Don’t give this to someone else. You take control of it. And don’t be coming back to me if all you did was wreck the gnomes in their front garden. I want blood on the floor. Think you can do that, Nidge?”

Fran: “Anyone who’s anything to him (John Boy) is fair game now.”
Dean: “They’ll have contracts out on you.”
Fran: “I’ll be on the move 24/7. They’ll want to get up very early to catch me out.”
Dean: “And how are we gonna get him?”
Fran: “I’ll do it meself. I don’t give a bollocks who he has protectin’ him. They don’t wanna end up dead takin’ a bullet for that scumbag. They’ll take his money but they’ll duck under the table if anything happens . And I don’t care what happens. I’d die a happy man if I could get him first. I would.”


Fran the man

We see Fran cutting up meat for his dogs, blood and all, and from the cold fury with which he attacks the meat it could be John Boy’s corpse he’s hacking up. To be honest, it could quite easily be human meat, the body of someone who pushed him too far, owed him money or just looked at him the wrong way. He’s obviously adept with the meat cleaver he uses, and you’d have to accept that it’s been employed in other than butchering animal carcasses.

Mirror, Mirror
When Nidge accompanies Trish to the hospital they decide that they want to know the sex of her baby, and are told it’s going to be a boy. Nidge is delighted --- “I knew it! Another little Nidge!” --- but there is hurt and disappointment in his wife’s eyes. Having to live in a harsh man’s world, and knowing that the chances are that Warren will one day end up participating in “the family business”, it’s clear that she had been hoping for a girl. A girl is less likely to be pressed into the service of the gang, less likely to be pulled into the dark world Nidge inhabits and which casts a cloud over Trish’s life every day. Also, a little girl would have been just the thing she needed to take her mind off what her husband does, and give her someone to lavish her love on. Not that she doesn’t love Warren, but a mother and her daughter have a very special bond, one it now seems Trish is not due to forge.

When Darren goes to visit Stumpy’s mother, he’s perhaps struck by how little she seems to know of the life her son led. She talks about “all his little friends” coming round to the house, and how some of them were at the funeral. How would she feel if she knew that almost all of them considered her son a rat, and that one of them decreed a hit on him, and that the man sitting smiling in awkward sympathy across the table from her is the man who put the bullets into his brain that took his life? She talks about the alarm system Stumpy had installed in the house, almost immediately prior to his murder. The irony couldn’t be clearer: he could protect his mother but he could do nothing to protect himself from the gang once it was decided that he had betrayed them, whether it was true or not.

FAMILY

It’s funny in a twisted kind of way that as Nidge gets stripped, preparatory to having sex with Fran’s girlfriend, he starts talking about the baby that’s on the way, sharing his thoughts about the woman he is about to cheat on with the woman he is cheating on her with. Talk about ironic! It’s also a really good touch that, as Linda confesses she would love to have a baby and waxes all thoughtful about it, Nidge glances at his watch! He’s only short of saying “C’mon willya? I’ve places to be, and Fran will be back in an hour!”

MONSTER BEHIND THE MASK

For a man who sneered at him at the end of season one, “What do you think I am? An animal?” when Darren tried to ensure that John Boy would not go after his sister while he was away, the gang boss is quite ready and willing to perform the most heinous deeds to achieve his ends. Earlier he warned Stumpy not to run, as if he did “Who’ll take care of yer ma?” pointing to the very clear threat that his mother would become a target if they could not get Stumpy himself. And now he calmly and with a smile arranges for Fran’s wife to be killed, or at least very seriously injured. It doesn’t matter a thing to him that Linda has nothing to do with the gang, has done nothing to them, and if he knew Nidge was screwing her that would mean nothing either, except he might not trust him to carry out the bombing.

John Boy is perfectly willing to sacrifice an innocent --- a woman, who has done him no harm and whom he may have passed the time of day with at some point, or been introduced to --- in order to flush out Fran and allow him to get his revenge. When it comes to his agenda, and his wishes, people are just pawns to John Boy, to be moved, taken, sacrificed as he sees fit. It’s all a game to him, and he’s intent on being the winner every time. So now, who’s the animal, and was Darren right to fear for Mary’s safety?

And then there’s Nidge.Though he agonises over the bombing and even confides to Darren that he doesn’t want to do it (though he stops short of telling him why: Nidge doesn’t trust anyone, and won’t give them any ammunition with which to cripple him) he still goes ahead, knowing that he is at best maiming and at worst causing the death of the woman he’s having an affair with. Of course, we don’t ever once think he’s in love with Linda --- he’s already told us that he “doesn’t give a fuck about anyone, not even Trish” --- Warren is the only one he cares about. But given that he’s screwing the woman you would think there would be some small scrap of emotion there. And in fairness there probably is, but when it comes down to a choice between his life and hers --- he probably feels John Boy will have him “clipped” if he fails him, and we would not be surprised ---he’s prepared to sacrifice her, just as his boss has said.

Darren, on the other hand, as Mary has pointed out, really is not cut out for this life. Though he can be a cold-blooded killer when it’s needed (and truth to tell, he probably relished the opportunity to settle the score with Stumpy on one level) he later feels terrible about it, so much so that he goes to Stumpy’s mother and tries to comfort her, eventually giving her the blood money he got from John Boy for killing her son. You can’t help but think this is not going to end well for Darren. He’s already living on borrowed time, and the one thing you can’t have in this criminal gang is a heart. It will eventually get you killed.

Chasing the Dragon
One fatal mistake everyone (except, it seems, Darren) make here is to “sample the merchandise”. If you’re going to sell drugs it’s probably best to keep a clear head, but everyone from John Boy down indulges. We even see here that his lawyer takes a snort when invited. This sort of handing over of control to the drug has already resulted in one of the operations getting busted because the guys were too stoned or high to get out when the Guards arrived, is slowly killing Debbie and is messing up John Boy’s head. We’ve seen Nidge partake and although I can’t remember, I think Fran does too.

When your life may depend from day to day on having your wits about you, it’s probably counterproductive to be messing with the shit, but then again, when it’s all around you and everyone is doing it, avoiding it may become a harder task than it would seem. Nevertheless, in the end it will be instrumental in bringing down everyone, from the highest to the lowest.

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1.3 “The unquiet dead”

Having travelled to the very limit of the future (for Earth anyway) and to the point of the destruction of our home planet, we're now back two hundred years, in Victorian Britain, where we see a man mourn the passing of his grandmother. But all of a sudden, the corpse reaches up and tries to strangle him! The undertaker, seeing this, greets the scene with the air of a man who is thinking “not again!” and indeed calls to his assistant, as he tries to wrestle the lid back onto the coffin against the struggles of the recently dead grandmother, “We've got another one!” He is however unable to prevent the corpse from overpowering him and heading out onto the street. He takes his assistant, Gwyneth, with him to retrieve her, but they have no luck locating the old lady until Sneed, the undertaker, tells her to “use the sight”, whereupon the young woman seems to be able to see into the mind of the recently-deceased older one, and sees that she had been, before she died, looking forward to meeting a “great man, all the way from London”.

We quickly find out this is none other than Charles Dickens himself, as the scene changes and we see him preparing to go onstage, world weary and bereft of ideas, feeling worn out and as he says himself, “like a ghost trapped and doomed”. But the show must of course go on and so he walks out onstage to read from his classic favourite, “A Christmas Carol”, it being Christmas Eve. However as he comes to the part about Scrooge's knocker turning into the face of Marley, the elusive corpse, which happens to be sitting in the audience, glows and from it issues forth a noxious gas, which approaches the stage, scaring (if you'll pardon the terrible pun but I couldn't resist!) the Dickens out of the narrator, who steps back in horror.

Both Sneed and Gwnyeth, tracking the old lady's corpse, and the Doctor and Rose, newly arrived, hear the screams of panic at the same time and rush into the theatre. As the Doctor leaps onstage, asking Dickens where the phantom, which is now streaking around the theatre like a bat, came from, Rose, investigating the corpse, is knocked out by Sneed who tells Gwyneth “She's seen too much!” and they take her with them as they depart with the corpse. Inside the theatre, the phantom seems to be sucked into a gas lamp, and vanishes. Rushing out onto the street the Doctor is just in time to see Rose being carried away and grabs a hansom cab to pursue it. When Dickens remarks that the cab is his, the Doctor has him come with him, still not knowing who he is. When the author's identity is revealed, the Doctor is beside himself with joy. He gushes so much and compliments Dickens on his books, and seems to have such a knowledge of them, that the writer thinks better of his original intention of calling the police, and, especially when he realises there is a lady involved, settles back for the chase.

Back at the mortuary, it seems whatever was onstage and lately in possession of the old lady has returned with them, and as Rose regains consciousness it flits into the bodies of two other corpses. The Doctor and Dickens arrive, demanding entry, and the Doctor notes the unusual activity in the gas lamps, and rescues Rose just in time. The corpses say something about opening a rift, and that they are dying. They plead for help before leaving the two bodies, which then collapse, dead again.

When things have settled down, Sneed tells them that this sort of thing has been happening for a while, that the house is rumoured to be haunted --- which is a good marketing tool for an undertaker, certainly provides the correct ambience! --- while the Doctor says the activity is due to a rift, a weak point in time which is separating dimensions, and through which these gaseous beings are coming. Dickens doesn't believe a word of it: he may write such fanciful tales but he puts no store by them in the real world. To him, there is a vast difference between the world of fantasy that he writes about and real life. Rose finds out about Gwyneth's “sight” when she realises that the serving girl has correctly deduced that Rose's father is dead, though nothing has been mentioned of him. She also probes deeper, unwittingly, almost involuntarily, seeing through Rose's eyes the city of London in her time, and further, to the TARDIS and the infinities of space.

Just then the Doctor appears; he's been listening and he tells Gyneth that she is the key to this whole mystery. Growing up right on top of the rift, she is the only one who can solve the puzzle. He decides to hold a seance, and during this alien beings appear, first as only gaseous entities like they saw in the theatre and the mortuary, but as Gwyneth, under the Doctor's urging, allows them through her, they stand as blue outlines of humanoids, and ask the Doctor to take Gwyneth to the rift and make the bridge. They explain that they are a race called the Gelth, whose physical form was destroyed during the Time War. They are now trapped in a gaseous state and want to use the bodies of the dead to clothe themselves.

Rose is shocked. The aliens say “your dead go to waste”, but she doesn't see it that way. The Doctor, without human morals and ethics, can see nothing wrong with this. He does not believe in a god, and even if one exists, what would he need with the empty shells of people who have died? All they're going to do is rot in the ground. Why not let these disenfranchised aliens use them, if it will help save the last of their race? They argue, to the point where the Doctor makes it very clear that his word is law, and if Rose does not like it he can drop her home. However in the end, as it should be, the choice is Gwyneth's to make, and she decides to help. The weakest part of the rift is of course in the morgue, so that's where they go and Gwyneth establishes the bridge through which the Gelth enter our world.

But all is not as it seems. Once across, the Gelth reveal that there are indeed only a few of them --- a few billion! --- and their aim is not salvation but conquest! Far from being a poor dying race they are alien invaders who now intend to make Earth theirs. The Doctor is suitably chagrined to find he has been lied to and fooled so easily. What do they say? There's no fool like an old fool? Trapped by the aliens, the Doctor and Rose are in a bad situation but Dickens has run off, spooked by what he has seen. Unnoticed, he has made it out to the street where inspiration strikes. Turning the gas laps off he forces the gas into the air, drawing the creatures out of the cadavers...? I don't really follow that logic, but anyway it happens and the Gelth are reduced to their gaseous forms. Now all that remains is for Gwyneth to return them whence they came.

But there's a problem. She isn't strong enough. She does however, at the Doctor's urging, realise that millions will die if she can't stop the Gelth, and so she agrees to hold them in this place, in their gaseous form, and produces a box of matches... As the trio run for the door, she strikes the match.
Dickens, his ennui thoroughly banished now, and assured by the departing Doctor that his books live, literally, forever, returns to London reinvigorated, and with many new ideas for forthcoming stories. Sadly, he is due to die next week and so he will never write them. But he will never forget either the time he met the mysterious traveller and his glamourous companion, nor the servant girl who saved the world, even if nobody will ever know of her heroic sacrifice.

QUOTES
Sneed: “The stiffs are getting lively again!”
(These are the words of a man who is above all things pragmatic. He has seen other corpses left in his charge walk, and though he can't explain it he seems to somehow accept it, and it just becomes another burden, another onerous part of his job)

Sneed: “Now hurry up! She was eighty six: she couldn't have got far!”

Sneed: “Stop prevaricating, girl, and get the hearse ready. We're going bodysnatching!”

Rose: “Leave her alone. She's exhausted and she's not fighting your battles.”
(The Doctor and Rose have obviously had a conversation --- a heated one, by the look of defiance and exasperation on Rose's face --- about this, and while he wants to use Gwyneth to allow the Gelth to cross over and save them, she is against the idea. But more than that: it's not just what would be seen as the desecration of human corpses, that the dead would walk again, reanimated by an alien force, and how that might be explained in Victorian Wales. There seems to be something inside Rose telling her that this is what this man does. Even though she has known him only for a short time at this point, she recognises that he uses people; he moves them like pawns on a chessboard, in this enormous and galaxy-spanning contest he is playing, and if sometimes they have to be sacrificed, well, that's just the game, and the ends justify the means. But she is a simpler entity, and does not see why those who have nothing to do with these intergalactic intrigues must be pulled into them. In time of course she will see she is wrong, and that the Doctor strives to preserve all life, but that he just sees things differently from his perspective, one we could never hope to understand or share.)

Rose: “You can't just let them run around inside dead people!”
The Doctor: “Why not? It's just like recycling.”
Rose: “Seriously though: you can't.”
The Doctor: “Seriously though: I can!”
Rose: “But it's just ... wrong! Those bodies were once living people. We should respect them, even in death!”
The Doctor: “Do you carry a donor card?”
Rose: “That's ... that's different!”
The Doctor: “It is different, yeah. It's a different morality. Get used to it or go home!”
(This is the first time we really see the Doctor angry. The petty ethics of this human are getting in the way, complicating what, to him, is a near-perfect system and clouding it with superstition (as he sees it), morality and judgement. He can see no downside, but Rose can. In the end, she will be proven to have been right, however right now the Doctor is warning Rose that there is more of this to come, and that if she can't cut it out here, where the rules are different, she may not be the right stuff for this kind of life. As Q once said to Picard: it's dangerous out here, not for the faint hearted! In other words, if you want to play with the big boys, toughen up and face difficult decisions.)

The Doctor: “What about me? I saw the fall of Troy! I saw World War V! I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party! And now I'm gonna die, in a dungeon. In Cardiff!”
(It's clear this last is the most galling of all to the time traveller. What a way to go!)

The Doctor (on seeing Rose in her dress): “Blimey! You look beautiful! Considering...”
(He qualifies this as “considering you're human”, but you can see the sudden hesitation, even fear or uncertainty in his eyes. He realises he's paid this girl whom he hardly knows quite a compliment, and the Doctor is not known for such extravagance and displays of emotion. He's not used to it, and quickly looking away he shuts it down immediately, but both of them know that something very special has happened, and unspoken words have been said.)

Questions
Why is it that the Doctor never seems to have to change, to fit in with his surroundings, yet his companions do? As Rose goes to run out into what is now Victorian Cardiff, he checks her, in her sweatshirt and jeans, and advises her she had better change into a dress. Yet he goes out dressed exactly as he always is. I know the idea of psychic paper: is the entire form of the Doctor a kind of variant of that? That people see what he wants them to see? Can he bend their reality, their perception of him, so that he seems to fit in, seems to be wearing clothing appropriate to the time and/or planet he is visiting?

When Dickens, shaken by what he has seen and worried that he may have “got it wrong”, asks has his life been wasted, both in the charitable causes he champions and his writings, why does the Doctor not reassure him that, far from being a useless or misguided or wasted life, his destiny is to become one of the true immortals, to live forever in the hearts and minds of people and to be forever copied, translated, imitated and celebrated as long as humans are around? Yes, he does so later, near the end, but right now, at this moment, the greatest author of our time is having a crisis of confidence. Why does the Doctor not give him the reassurance he needs? Perhaps it's because he has yet to drop the bombshell of being a time traveller. Yet, he could certainly give some words of comfort, and he does not.

When Rose makes the very pragmatic observation that the Doctor's idea to allow the Gelth to inhabit corpses is doomed to failure, as there were nothing of the sort in 1869, he gives her an irritated speech about “everything being in flux”. He says time can change like that (snaps his fingers) and yet much of his personal mission is to stop things occurring that are not meant to have done, as we will see in future episodes. So if this happens because the time lines are changed, surely he should be trying to prevent it? Or is this just lazy storywriting? As A Time Lord, the Doctor has control over time, but that does not mean he can change it, or allow it to change, willy-nilly. What about cause and effect? Has he considered that if the Gelth survive they may turn out to be evil (as they do) and may in fact alter the very course of galactic history? Has he thought about the ramifications such a momentous decision may have on the future? Has he worked out all the pros and cons? No: he sees an alien race on the brink of extinction and his innate (for want of a better word) humanity makes him want to do all he can to save them. But even more importantly than that, he is determined that he will force his will on anyone who gainsays him, and he always --- always --- believes himself to be right. Today, that will change, as his immovable certainty and confidence in his superiority will be shaken to its very foundations, and he will find that, even though he has lived for almost a thousand years, even he can make a mistake, make the wrong call, and sometimes it needs another living being, who is seeing the situation from a different angle, to show him he is wrong.)

Laughing in the face of death
The Doctor: “I'm such a big fan.”
Dickens: “How are you a fan? In what way do you resemble a means to keep oneself cool?”

Dickens: “What the Shakespeare is going on?”

The Doctor: “Now don't antagonise her: I love a happy medium!”

Evolution of a Timelord
At this point I think we can see that the Doctor is still relatively alien --- compared to how human he ends up after a while. He sees the idea of using human corpses as “vehicles” for the Gelth as not only not abominable, but as quite clever and even useful. He sees it as a solution to a problem, a justified use of resources. He can't see beyond the logic and pragmatism of the approach to be able to even begin to understand Rose's horror at the idea. His interaction with humans has been, up to now, so far as I know from the older series, rather minimal in that he spent a lot of time on alien planets and never really crossed paths with humanity, other than his companions. But as this series is going to involve a lot of human interaction, he is going to have to become less the alien Timelord and more the understanding human. He may wish Rose (and later companions) to follow his code of conduct, think as he does, reason as he does and have the same values and ethics as he, but in time he will realise that it's a two-way street, and if he wants to keep company with humans he is going to have to start to think, act and even reason like one. What may seem perfectly acceptable to him may be abhorrent to his human companion, and this is the first example of such a thing, if you discount his rather so-what attitude to the destruction of the Earth in the previous episode.

The look on Rose's face when she sees the Doctor emerge from the house, alone, tells you all you need to know about how she feels at this point. The Doctor had promised to save Gwyneth, but he never really had any intention of doing so. Well, maybe he had but when push came to shove he knew he had to leave her to her fate. Rose is crushed: this man she had believed could fix anything, make anything right, do anything, has failed her. He has been unable to save Gwyneth, and Rose can begin to see that, brash and confident as he may be, the Doctor is not omnipotent. Sometimes, he's just a man.

And sometimes he is the Doctor, and knows all. Or thinks he does. Perhaps in these instances he's unintentionally being more human than he realises, as it's basic compassion that leads him into believing that the Gelth are deserving of a chance of peace. Despite what he says about animating human corpses, he realises that this cannot be a long-term solution, and offers to take the aliens somewhere that they can rebuild and fashion proper bodies. He doesn't realise he's being played, and that Rose, the stupid, inexperienced, emotional Earth girl, was right all along when she opposed the plan. As she will be again. And again.

This is not the last time that the Doctor will be fooled by perhaps listening too easily to a creature's pleas, or more likely, believing he knows better than everyone else. At times, his arrogance will very nearly be his undoing, and by extension, that of those close to him.

Enemy mine
We're not told a whole lot about the Gelth, just that they were involved (possibly on the fringes of, or even as victims of) the Time War and that the ones that remain are the only survivors. Of course, they lied in order to try to trick their way into invading Earth, so that may be horse hockey too, but it's clear that the mention of the Time War has a profound effect on the Doctor, as he is known to have fought in it, been a central figure in it. Was it used as another ploy? Did the Gelth know who the Doctor was? Beings of pure energy, existing in gaseous form (at least, now) they cannot gain a foothold in our world without using host bodies, and when it becomes clear they are going to get what they want, a bridge to the other side, they reveal themselves to be a violent, hateful, warmongering race of conquerors. It seems unlikely that they were in any war they did not triumph in.

In the end, they are presumably all destroyed when they are held in the arch, the weakest point of the rift down in the morgue, the point at which they crossed over, and Gwnyeth destroys the house. It's interesting to note, though it was probably only done for effect, that when they seem poor, doomed, homeless souls they manifest as blue, and when their true nature is revealed not only do they turn red but they sprout horns! Labouring the point much?

I do wonder though how long they've been trying to get through? Gwyneth says they have been speaking to her all her life --- she calls them “her angels” --- and her mother knew of them, so it's possible they sang to her, too, just waiting for the time when someone with the proper knowledge, experience and technology would come along and allow them to be released, or as it turned out, unleashed. Perhaps they've been trying for centuries.

A long and lonely life

In his time, the Doctor has done many things, most of them good, but there are things he would change, and times when he has had to do that which goes against his nature. The Time War is one of those, and although I don't know the full details I do know that he virtually wiped out the Dalek race --- and one would assume there was a lot of collateral damage involved in that. So when the Gelth mention that they were left homeless thanks to the Time War, he feels responsible. This is probably a calculated ploy: the Gelth know who he is and how to push his buttons. Trying to make amends, the Doctor agrees to allow the aliens to cross over, and too late sees that he has indeed been played. But when you have the deaths of countless billions on your conscience, this is always going to be a trigger word.

True Companion
Again Rose demonstrates that she is not just along for the ride. The Doctor has had feisty companions before, certainly, but most of them have seemed to accede to his authority, bow to hs wisdom. Rose is the first of a new breed: a modern woman for a new century and a new millennium, and she will be more instrumental to his plans than he could have ever imagined. Really, at the heart of it, all the Doctor wants is company on his lonely, seemingly endless voyage through time and space. But Rose will turn out to be much more than that.

Here, she openly defies his plan to allow the Gelth through, seeing it as a horror when he sees it as practical. She stands up to him --- something few of his previous companions have done --- and he, angry at her for not toeing the line and bringing what he sees as outdated moral baggage along with her, snarls that she can go home if she doesn't like it here. But in the end he has to apologise as it turns out he has made the wrong decision and it looks very likely that they will both die at the hands of the Gelth. It's only the quick thinking of Charles Dickens --- a man from the nineteenth century able to see a solution where a man who has all of time and space at his command cannot --- that saves the day, and that must humble him. It's vindication for Rose though, vindication she would probably have preferred not to have, given that it's meant the death of a girl she was beginning to see as a friend, an innocent, and the near enslavement of the Earth.

But she's learned now that she can challenge him. The Doctor, despite his age and experience, is not infallible. He is not a god, and he sometimes gets it wrong. And she must be there to point out when he does, and to resist him, explain her position, propose an alternative course of action, or just simply dig her heels in and say “No!” when necessary. Although he is technically her protector --- she knows little of the vast realms of time and space, and he seems to know all or most of it --- she must also at times act as his guard, against his overconfidence, his arrogance and his belief in himself when she knows he is wrong. She must be the little pin that bursts the balloon of his self-confidence, and not be afraid to deflate his ego when it needs taking down.

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2.3 “When aliens attack”

Tagline: “Proudly made on Earth”

We’re briefly back in 1999 as Fry delivers a pizza to a TV station run by Fox. As he accidentally spills beer over the console the screens go blank: he’s knocked Fox off the air! He’s not that bothered though, until our old friend Lur from the planet Omicron Persei 8 arrives with a fleet in tow, complaining that the show “Single Female Lawyer” has been interrupted and that his fleet will attack Earth unless something is done. Unfortunately it is Zapp Branigan who is put in charge of the defence of Earth, and the effort fails miserably. It’s not surprising, since his great strategy is for all the ships to fly directly into the path of their enemies’ weapons, clogging the area with wreckage! Even Bender, who cares little for humans, has to comply as his, and every other robot’s patriotism chip has been activated.

When Fry realises that the aliens want to see a TV show that has been off the air for a thousand years, he hits upon a crazy plan, but it’s the only one they have. They must act out the episode and transmit it to Omicron Persei 8. Leela takes the role of the Single Female Lawyer and they act it out. Terribly. But the Omicronians seem satisfied, until the end, when Leela ad-libs and they don’t like what she does, saying it is against the whole ethos of the show.

QUOTES:
Fry: “So, this is really a TV station?”
Tech: “Ah, it’s a Fox affiliate.”

Tech: “Oh my God! You knocked Fox off the air!”
Fry: “Meh, like anyone on Earth cares!”

Amy: “How do I look?”
Farnsworth: “Like a cheap French harlot.”
Amy: “Ewww! French?”

President McNeal: “Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to really knuckle under. To get down on all fours and really lick boot, give our alien masters whatever they want…” (After Lur makes it clear it is “McNeal” they want) “Er, as I was saying, Mankind would rather die than kowtow to outrageous alien demands for this McNeal. Whoever he is.”

McNeal: “And now, the man who will lead us in our struggle against these aliens, fresh from his victory over the pacifists of the Gandhi Nebula, twenty-five-star General Zapp Branigan!”

Lur: “We will raise your planet’s temperature by one million degrees a day for five days, unless we see McNeal at 9pm tomorrow. 8 Central!”

Amy: “There aren’t any copies.”
Farnsworth: “No, there wouldn’t be. Most videotapes from that era were damaged in 2444 during the Second Coming of Jesus.”

Lur: “Prepare the water cooler, that we may gather around it later to discuss things.”

Lur: “If McNeal wishes to be taken seriously why does she simply not tear the judge’s head off?”
Lur’s wife: “It is true what they say: Women are from Omicron Peresi 7, men are from Omicron Persei 9!”

Leela: “Fry! There’s nothing else here! You only wrote two pages of dialogue!"
Fry: “Well, it took an hour to write: I thought it would take an hour to read!”
Leela: “What are we supposed to do now?”
Fry: “I don’t know! Just say anything, as long as it’s compelling, mesmerising --- a tour de force!”

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Where all the world’s greatest monuments now reside in New New York, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Big Ben and The Sphinx. Seems in 2600 they elected a supervillain president and he stole them all. They are now on permanent display at “Monument Beach”.

Also, beachwear is now in a can. When Nibbler eats the top part of Amy’s bikini she simply sprays another one on.

A new business venture has also sprung up: Professional Beach Bullies. using the time-honoured kicking-sand-in-the-skinny-guy’s-face routine, big burly guys antagonise smaller guys with hot girlfriends, allowing the guy the chance to take them on. The Bully takes a dive, and the skinny guy pays him fifty bucks. The girl then thinks her man is a hero. Everybody wins!

PCRs
The biggest of course is the quite obvious reference to Ally McBeal, that bloody show with Calista Flockhart about a “single female lawyer”.

Laughing at the mirror
A new section wherein I’ll catalogue the amount of self-referential and self-deprecatory jokes that are made in the show. It’s said that if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at, and “Futurama” proves very much a case in point throughout the series.

Here, general TV (with a heavy emphasis on their network, Fox), is shown up several times. When Fry spills beer over the console and knocks Fox off the air he shrugs that nobody cares, and before that when he comes into the TV station the guy at the desk qualifies the station’s being a “real TV station” as “Well, it’s a Fox affiliate!” Later, Fry explains about TV audiences: “People don’t want clever and unexpected! Clever makes them feel stupid and unexpected scares them”, backed up by Lur’s almost immediate broadcast from the ship that the changes in the episode are unexpected and scare them. Later again Fry says he knows the secret of TV, that by the end everything is back to the way it was, as the episode underlines this by returning Fry to the state he was in at the start of the episode, lounging around watching television.

Branigan’s Law
Zapp as ever steals the show, with some memorable and stupid quotes, such as

Branigan: “If there’s an alien out there I can’t kill I haven’t met him and killed him yet! That’s why I’m ordering all available ships to report for duty. Anyone without a ship should acquire a weapon and fire wildly into the air!”

Bender: “Permission to volunteer for a suicide mission!”
Zapp: “You’re a brave robot son, but when I’m in command, every mission is a suicide mission!”

This total beauty:
Zapp: “If we can hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!”

Zapp: “What the hell is that thing?”
Kiff: “It appears to be the mothership.”
Zapp: “Then what did we just blow up?”
KIff: “The Hubble telescope!”

But you have to wonder why anyone would put him in charge of anything, least of all the defence of the homeworld. His campaigns all seem to have taken place against much weaker and possibly defenceless opposition (The Retiring People of the Assisted Living Nebula, New Eden, and now The Pacifists of the Gandhi Nebula) and he has not the slightest idea about strategy, his plan being to attack in wave after wave of ships until the wreckage clogs the way.

A robot called Bender
In fairness, this is not a Bender episode, it’s very Fry-centric, but we do learn that all robots on Earth (and presumably elsewhere too) have an inbuilt Patriotism chip, which can be activated in times of war or national emergency, overriding their software and making them into soldiers, whether they want to volunteer or not. The chip does not impact upon their intelligence, only their free will, as Bender, having volunteered for a sucide mission, goes “Oh crap! Stop it!” realising the chip is controlling what he says.

We also learn from this that Bender can cook food and make drinks in his stomach, as he makes burgers when they go to Monument Beach and later in the ship is drinking a Martini he has made. He harbours a desire to be a TV director, something that will surface again, and he is of course not in any way averse to using the opportunity to advertise his wares: “We’ll be right back after these messages from Crazy Bender’s Discount Stereo!” He has of course great admiration for the unnamed supervillian who was elected president in 2600 and whose face now adorns Mount Rushmore beside the other four presidents (he probably dreams of one day joining them, though being Bender he would likely have all the other faces removed and four of his own set in the stone!)

Those clever little touches
When the monuments are being destroyed by the alien attack fleet, one tiny ship comes and destroys the sandcastle Fry had built: “This is the sort of castle King Arthur would have lived in”, he had said proudly before its destruction. “If he was a fiddler crab.”

A while back I checked out the music parodies that cropped up in The Simpsons, but owing both to the small amount of them and the lack of decent YouTube availability (honestly? Holding the phone up in front of the TV and you can't even hold it still for a minute or two? Why bother?) it died a fairly quick death.

But songs weren't the only things this show put its own spin on. Come with me now as we explore how Groening and Co. lampooned pop culture and shamelessly ripped off scenes from some of the best, and worst, to hit the silver screen. Grab your popcorn and join me as we check out
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The first one I want to look at is a movie I personally have never seen, but that doesn't matter, because I know the final scene and it's this that has made the movie famous, along with a song or two.
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You know the bit I'm talking about, I'm sure, where at the end Richard Gere goes into the factory and sweeps Debra Winger off her feet, carrying her out of the factory to the guitar theme of “Up where we belong”? Yeah, we all know it, or know of it. In case you don't, here it is.

The Simpsons then parodied this when, after having a fight and not talking, Homer is working in the nuclear power plant when Marge walks in (reversing the gender roles here, but that's The Simpsons for ya!) and kisses him. Naturally, she can't carry big fat heavy Homer out, so he picks her up and yes, she takes his safety helmet off and puts it on her own head, just like in the movie. Here is their version.


Then of course there's their classic homage to this suspense thriller. I've only seen the 1991 remake but thought it was bloody hilarious (wasn't meant to be, but DeNiro just hammed up the role so well I couldn't help but laugh) although it's originally a sixties classic starring the one and only James Stewart.
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There are too many scenes to do them all here --- The Simpsons episode was based more or less on the movie, and was even entitled “Cape Feare” --- but the one I really like is this, when DeNiro is in the cinema, trying to make things uncomfortable for Nick Nolte and his family, smoking a big cigar and laughing uproariously. This is it.

Now, when The Simpsons do it they again reverse the trend. Sideshow Bob is in the cinema in front of the Simpsons, laughnig and smoking a cigar. Homer is getting annoyed and leans forward to tell him to knock it off but then sees something funny on the screen and laughs even louder, lighting an even bigger cigar and causing Bob to turn around and drawl “Oh now really! That is too much!” Sorry there seem to be no clips of it but I've managed to track down two stills, which hopefully will convey the idea to both of you who have not actually seen the episode.
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The last one I want to look at this time is the infamous movie that really propelled Sharon Stone both to almost instant fame and into deep controversy, and made her a pariah among lesbians, gays and transgenders for her depiction of a bisexual killer in
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There's really only one scene that could be taken from this pretty terrible movie really, like the bunny boiling in Fatal attraction, and we all know what it is. But in case you don't, here's the infamous leg-crossing scene that wore out a million videotape heads and made men around the world delighted that such a feature as PAUSE existed...

Oddly enough, it seems hard to find the scene in English, but I got it here in Ukranian. And anyway, you don't care about the language, do you? ;)

Then the Simpsons briefly but very cleverly parodied this, having Groundskeeper Willy being interrogated in the episode “Who shot Mr. Burns?” Willy is of course wearing his traditional kilt, and again in a reversal of the original, when the cops watched lasciviously as Stone crossed her legs, the cops here grimace and try to look away as Willy does the same. Eddie, one of Wiggum's officers, actually points a gun at him and snarls “This is your last warning about that!” Classic.

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Title: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Released: 1989
Writer(s): William Shatner/Harve Bennett/Dave Loughery
Director: Harve Bennett
Starring: All the usual Star Trek crew plus: Laurence Luckinbill as Sybok, David Warner as Federation Consul
Runtime: 106 minutes
Budget: USD 33 million
Boxoffice: USD 66 million
Critical acclaim: Very low
Fan acclaim: Mixed, but not euphoric
Legacy: First where Shatner directs (and writes). First Trek movie to guest star God, as it were!
Enterprise: NCC-1701A

The first Star Trek movie to follow the three-picture arc begun in The Wrath of Khan and completed in The Voyage Home, this next step in the franchise was basically charting unknown territory, possibly even making a case for using the title of the next movie. But as far as Star Trek goes, The Final Frontier is about as good a title as you can get. But did it live up to its grandiose title?

It could be said, jealous of his co-star, the late Leonard Nimoy's successes in the director's chair for the previous two movies, William Shatner was determined to put his mark on this one, outside of his acting, and not only directed it but also wrote most of the story outline. It would in fact turn out to be the penultimate Star Trek movie with the original cast, as the franchise bowed and made way for the younger guns of the Next Generation series.


So then, the story...

On the planet Nimbus III, deep inside the Neutral Zone and known as “The Planet of Galactic Peace”, (don't know why: it's a godawful dump in the middle of a godawful dump of a desert, of which the planet seems to be principally comprised) a man walks across the desert, meeting others who follow him. He seems to have a power for taking people's pain onto himself and ridding them of their burdens, and in wondering gratitude they join his quest. He reveals himself to be a Vulcan, and says he needs a starship in order to carry out his quest.

Meanwhile, Captain Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy are taking some r&r, which for Kirk means climbing rocks in Yosemite National Park, for Spock means watching Kirk climbing rocks in Yosemite National Park and for McCoy means doing his best not to have a heart attack as he grumbles about the irresponsibility of climbing rocks in Yosemite National Park. The mysterious Vulcan proceeds to take hostage three consuls --- Romulan, Klingon and Federation --- who have been sequestered at the ironically-named capital of Paradise City, and the Enterprise is detailed to respond to their emergency call for help. Scotty and Uhura, on board the ship, can't believe it: the Enterprise is in bits, going through a major refit and in no condition to undertake any mission, never mind an emergency one! There's a skeleton crew onboard and its command officers are, as I mentioned, on holiday! Nevertheless, it seems there is no other ship in Starfleet (where the hell do they all get to?) that can respond, and this is an order of the very highest priority. Kirk and co are recalled and the ship limps out into space. A Klingon Bird of Prey is also responding to the distress call, though Captain Klaa, in command, seems more interested in taking on Kirk and bolstering his own reputation than helping the hostages.

When the Kirk and the others view the hostage tape however, it seems that the three consuls are now saying that they voluntarily surrendered themselves to what they call “The Galactic Army of Light”. Of course, Kirk probably reasons this was said under duress, probably at gunpoint, as in most hostage videos. They have requested a starship to negotiate for their release (on the way; you want mayo with that?) but when Spock sees the tape he believes he knows the hostage taker, the man in charge of this “Army of Light”. He remembers a brilliant Vulcan whom he knew in his youth, who rejected logic and embraced emotion, and so was banished from Vulcan. As the Enterprise reaches Nimbus III Spock detects a Klingon Bird of Prey also en route: this would be our friend who was bored shooting the Voyager probe earlier, and he is wired for battle not compromise, although they don't know that. Still, he is a Klingon: what's not to predict about their reaction to their people being taken hostage?

With the transporter still out of commission, it's left to Kirk to effect a rescue “the old-fashioned way”, and so a shuttle stuffed with Starfleet marines heads down to the planet's surface. Now we get the most embarrassing scene in any Star Trek movie, ever, as Uhura plans a little “distraction” to divert the guards. This consists of her dancing lasciviously, silhouetted against the moon, singing a love song. Oh dear God! Who ever thought of that idea? It works though and the assault on Paradise City is short and triumphant... until the “hostages” turn their weapons on Kirk and demand he surrender!

The Vulcan at the centre of the whole operation now arrives, having spent the last while speaking to Chekov, whom he believed was in command of the Enterprise. He introduces himself --- to Spock, mostly --- as Sybok, and does indeed seem to know the other Vulcan. Instead of the perhaps emotional reunion Sybok had expected though, he is greeted with nothing but contempt and shock by the Starfleet officer. Intending to take the Enterprise, Sybok makes hostages of the landing party and accompanies them in the shuttle back up to the ship, but just then the approaching Bird of Prey cloaks, and Chekov, left in temporary command, orders the shields raised. The Galileo cannot dock at the moment. Sybok's plan has hit a bump.

When Klaa hears Kirk's transmission, and knows that he is onboard the shuttlecraft, he orders course altered to intercept the smaller vessel. Kirk decides that he must engage in a risky manoever: foregoing the tractor beam to allow the absolute minimum time the shields must be dropped, he intends Sulu to fly the shuttle in manually. It's less than a graceful landing, but they make it just as the Bird of Prey achieves target, and then the Enterprise warps away before the Klingon has time to retrain his weapons.

Now that they are safely onboard Enterprise, Sybok and his people herd the crew to the bridge, where, under the Vulcan's mind control or persuasion, call it what you will, they all agree to accept him as their new commander and alter course as he directs. Sybok's power appears to be some sort of advanced empathy: he can detect the “hidden pain” in every person and “share it with them”, transferring it to himself (one assumes) and relieving the person of the burden they have carried for years. It may be an old feud, a loss, a chance missed, a lover spurned, a life not led. Whatever it is, Sybok seems able to tune into it, lessen it, remove it. And in gratitude for this “miracle”, the person in question follows him and does as they are bid.

Taken to task by Kirk as to why he did not shoot when he was ordered to, thereby allowing Sybok to gain control of the Enterprise, Spock admits that Sybok is in fact his half-brother; they are both sons of Sarek, though with different mothers. This of course stayed Spock's hand when he could have killed the renegade. Kirk now understands, but he still doesn't have to like it. At the moment though, there's not a whole lot they can do about it, as his ship is under the control of this Vulcan for who knows what purpose and on a heading to who knows where, and they are trapped in the brig, prisoners, betrayed by their own shipmates who seem to have sided with their captor.

Now that they are underway, Sybok reveals the purpose of his quest: he believes he has found the fabled planet of Sha Ka Ree, the planet where all creation is believed to have begun. It lies in the centre of the galaxy, he says, beyond the Great Barrier. Kirk is aghast: no ship has ever traversed the Great Barrier, he says, and none can reach the centre of the galaxy! Spock tells him that the search for Sha Ka Ree was what drew Sybok away from Vulcan (although I thought he said his brother was banished?) and that if he has found it... Kirk worries about Spock's loyalties, now that he knows Sybok is family, but just then Scotty blows a hole in the wall of the brig and they are free, and he has to put such reservations to one side for the moment.

They make it to the emergency communication room and put out a distress call, which is supposedly answered by Starfleet, but has in fact been intercepted by Klaa. Sybok captures them and demonstrates to Kirk how he helps people face their pain, doing this for McCoy and Spock, both of whom are forced to confront painful episodes from their pasts and thereafter fall under his control. Or do they? Spock seems to be able to resist this brain transference thing, and although Sybok has taken his pain, McCoy's connection to his two friends proves stronger than the Vulcan's attempts to sway him, and the three remain together. Sybok now tells them, as the ship approaches the Great Barrier, that he has been given a vision --- by God, no less --- and that the supreme being awaits them on the other side of the Barrier. Now Kirk knows, as he had feared, that Sybok is completely mad. And so much more dangerous.

However, when they do after all make it through the Barrier (with, it has to be said, a depressing lack of trouble or effort, much less than I would have expected) they find that there is in fact a planet there, and Sybok is convinced --- as is about anyone now --- that this is indeed Sha Ka Ree, the fabled cradle of creation. Kirk, given back command of his ship, arranges a landing party, to consist of Spock, himself, McCoy and Sybok, to go down to the planet and check it out. It seems to be a fruitless quest: the planet is desolate, barren, devoid of all life although lifesigns were detected when the ship was in orbit. Suddenly, out of the ground a huge chamber forms, and a blinding white light issues forth. And there, in the centre of that light, rotating like a modern Max Headroom, is a massive bearded face.

The face of God?

It speaks to the four, bidding them welcome and congratulating them on their bravery in making it to the planet. However when it declares its intention to use the Enterprise to travel away from this planet, something does not seem right to Kirk. He questions why God --- if this is God --- would need a starship to get around? Could He not just leave whenever He chose? His questions are met with a brutal barrage of energy from the being's eyes, also directed against Spock when he speaks out, and it becomes clear this is NOT God, but simply a timeless, evil entity who has been imprisoned here for crimes unnameable and that it is using Sybok to effect an escape, masquerading as God and placing the vision of Sha Ka Ree in his mind, using his own thirst for knowledge to ensure that the Vulcan could be manipulated like a pawn.

Having realised his error, Sybok uses his power to confront the alien, telling it to “share its pain” with him, while Kirk orders a torpedo burst upon the creature. This does not of course kill it, but it gives Kirk time to have Spock and McCoy beamed off the planet --- all three cannot go at once as the transporter is only partially functioning. Before Scotty can beam Kirk up though, the alien attacks and to complicate matters, Klaa has reached the Enterprise's co-ordinates, seeing the ship badly damaged and demanding Kirk be handed over. Spock turns to General Korrd, the Klingon Consul who had been "taken hostage" on Nimbus III, for help, and the ex-hostage upbraids his subordinate for an unauthorised attack on the Enterprise. As Kirk faces death at the hands of the alien being, the Klingon Bird of Prey suddenly appears and blasts it to hell. It is soon revealed that General Korrd has taken command, and that in fact Spock is the gunner who despatched the alien. In essence, this means that logic has triumphed over religion, and that Spock has literally killed God!

Receiving an embarrassed, humiliating apology from Klaa, Kirk is returned to the Enterprise and the whole movie comes full circle as it ends with them back on their interrupted holiday in Yosemite, singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”.

QUOTES
Kirk: “Even as I fell, I knew I wouldn't die.”
McCoy: “Oh? I thought he (pointing to Spock) was the only immortal one.”
Kirk: “No, I knew I wouldn'd die because you two were here with me. I've always known I'll die alone.”

Kirk: “I haven't sung around a campfire since I was a boy in Iowa! What shall we sing?”
McCoy: “Camptown Races?”
Kirk: “Pack up your troubles!”
Spock: “Are we leaving, Captain?”

Spock (later, after the singsong): “Captain?”
Kirk: “Yes, Spock?”
Spock: “Life is not a dream.”
Kirk: “Goodnight Spock.”

Spock: “I was trying to comprehend the meaning of the lyrics.”
McCoy: “It's a song, you goddamn green-blooded Vulcan! The lyrics aren't important! What's important is that you have a good time singing it!”
Spock: “Oh, I'm sorry, Doctor: were we having a good time?”
McCoy: “God! I liked him better before he died!”

Kirk: “All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.”
McCoy: “Melville.”
Spock: “John Masefield.”
McCoy: “Are you sure about that?”
Spock: “I am well versed in the classics, Doctor.”
McCoy: “Then how come you didn't know Row, Row, Row Your Boat?”

McCoy (after they pass the Great Barrier and behold Sha Ka Ree): “Are we dreaming?”
Kirk: “If we are, then life is a dream.”

Scotty (looking through the hole he has just blasted in the wall of the brig): “What are ye standin' around for? Do ye no' know a jailbreak when ye see one?”

Kirk (having organsied the landing party for Sha Ka Ree): “Well don't just stand there! God's a busy man!”

Kirk: “Excuse me? What does God need with a starship?”
McCoy: “Jim! What are you doing?”
Kirk: “I'm asking a question.”
God: “Who is this creature?”
Kirk: “Who am I? Don't you know?”
Sybok: “He has doubts...”
God: “You doubt me?”
Kirk: “I seek the truth.”
McCoy: “Jim ! You don't ask the Almighty for his ID!”

Spock: “I was thinking of Sybok. I have lost a brother.”
Kirk: “I lost a brother once. I was lucky to get him back.”

Spock (as Kirk goes to hug him): “Please Captain: not in front of the Klingons!”

Parallels

There are a few small ones: the probe destroyed by Captain Klaa in the Bird of Prey is in fact shown to be our own Voyager, which both harks back to the first movie with V'Ger and shows our own hubris, that we expect alien civiliasations to pick up our probe and listen to what we have to say, rather than just blasting it out of the stars. It's quite a metaphor really, when you look at that one probe carrying the shared knowledge and history of the human race, and the Klingon laughing at it as being just space garbage, and using it for target practice.

The shuttlecraft that brings Kirk, Spock and the other holidaying crew back to the ship is the Galileo, the only one (so far as I can remember) to be named during the original series, when it featured in its own episode, “The Galileo Seven”.

When Scotty is having trouble with the Enterprise's onboard systems, prior to departure, one of the logs he is trying to fix flashes and beeps and says “Good morning Captain”. This is the very phrase, word for word, that greeted Captain Styles when Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior in Star Trek III.

When they approach Nimbus III and a signal is received from Paradise City asking what their intentions are, Kirk responds again almost word for word the same way Khan did when the Enterprise, trying to hail his stolen ship the Reliant, attempted to establish communications in The Wrath of Khan: “Let them eat static!”

The search for the planet Sha Ka Ree mirrors the quest for the mythological planet of Eden in the original series “The way to Eden”.

Houston, we have a problem!

This guy Klaa is an idiot. To my knowledge, there is no war between the Klingons and the Federation, therefore he has no sound basis on which to attack the Enterprise. Yet he blatantly, and without any orders from Central Command, targets the ship and continues to hunt it. He thinks himself a mighty warrior, but what Klingon would attack a defenceless shuttlecraft, as he had intended to do? How would that play as a “glorious victory” in the songs to be sung of him? Surely he is pissing on everything that the Klingons hold dear, staining his honour and also putting, had he known it, one of his own generals in mortal peril?

When Kirk tussles with Sybok as they exit the shuttlecraft, the rifle is kicked away and Spock picks it up. He points it at Sybok and Kirk screams “Shoot him!” This is not something Captain Kirk would do. Shoot a man (assuming the rifle has no stun setting, or at least is not set on stun), without a trial or a chance to tell his side of the story? Knock him out, certainly. Nerve pinch him maybe (do nerve pinches work on Vulcans?) but shoot him? That's a very uncharacteristic reaction for Kirk I feel. But, why, if he could not shoot him, did Spock not at least incapacitate Sybok? Even if the Vulcan nerve pinch would not work on him, he could have punched him out, hit him over the head with the but of the rifle, slapped restraints on him .. but no. He just back the rifle. Spock, you big pussy! Of course later we learn why he was so reluctant to hurt Sybok, but still, I believe the taunt stands.

In general, I've always had a problem with the idea of Klingons using the cloaking device. I mean, they're supposed to be warriors, unafraid of anything, and with a strong sense of honour that drives them. So how is it honourable to sneak up unseen on your enemy before attacking? Would not proud Klingon warriors prefer to face their foe out in the open, winning a glorious victory through force of arms and strength of numbers, superior strategy, courage and guile, rather than due to some --- let's not forget --- Romulan technology that allows them to hide until the moment of the kill? Certainly, as warriors they would have stalked, in their ancient history, wild beasts and for those purposes stayed to the shadows, waiting for a chance to strike. But these are not animals they hunt. These are men, and men should have a fighting chance.

I just feel the whole idea of the cloaking device goes against everything the Klingon Empire stands for, and I'm surprised they use it. If, for instance, the Federation had the technology and not them, I feel sure that they would be villified in statements like “The humans cannot face us in a fair fight! They must strike under cover of darkness and invisibility, hiding like cowards in the shadows!”

The constant idea of the Enterprise being the only ship that can carry out this mission also annoys me. I know it's integral to the plot, but surely they could have justified it better? A simple "All ships out on manouevres" or "Nobody in range" maybe, but not just the fact that Kirk, and only Kirk, is trusted to negotiate this hostage situation? And considering his ship is basically in a flatpack state at the time, ready to be rebuilt, it makes less sense even than in the first movie, of which we shall endeavour to speak no more. How must the rest of the commanders and captains in Starfleet feel? "Here I am, twenty years in the service with commendations up the wazoo, a powerful starship at my command, ready to go into battle, but no. They send me to the Rigellian Cluster to catalogue nebulae and give the plum job to that Kirk again. What's he got that I ain't got?"

Laughing in the face of death

As Kirk ands McCoy begin the ardorous climb up several levels of the ship, the turbolifts being inaccessible, Spock appears wearing a pair of anti-gravity boots, like the kind he used when, back on Earth in Yosemite, he rescued Kirk when the captain lost his grip and fell down the cliff.

Memorable scenes and effects
The crossing of the Great Barrier is a very effects-laden one, and probably took up a lot of the film's budget, the largest yet for a Star Trek movie up to this point (this movie had more than the budgets of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock put together). Just a pity it's over so quickly.

There's a very touching scene when Kirk, unable to believe the ship has penetrated the Great Barrier, looks in wonder and his hand slips down the mockup of a ship's wheel whereon is a plaque saying “To boldly go where no man has gone before” as the original Trek fanfare plays. Very well done, guys. Very well done.

The scene right at the end, where Kirk stands alone against the might of this godlike creature (does he not know who he's dealing with, this guy?) on top of a cliff, and then out of nowhere the Bird of Prey rises up behind him like an avenging angel and destroys the alien, is really excellent. I'm not quite sure why, having despatched "God", Spock turns the ship's disruptor towards his captain. Perhaps the Vulcan was having a little joke, no? :rolleyes:

Themes and motifs
The most obvious one of course that runs through this is faith. Faith, whether it is real or imagined, manufactured or ingrained in us from a young age, can make us do amazing things, things both wonderful and dreadful. Kirk has faith in his ship, and in his comrades, and this does not prove to be misplaced, although to be fair the rest of his crew fall rather easily to Sybok's blandishments.

The Unknown, always a constant in any science-fiction series, and so much more so in Star Trek (One of Picard's first speeches to Q: “If you'd earned that uniform you're wearing you would know that the Unknown is what brings us out here!”) beckons like a scary and yet enticing hand, and as Sybok says, the Great Barrier at the end of the galaxy is the physical representation of that universal fear. Even Kirk, for a short moment, seems ready to believe that the being they stand before could very well be God. Well, why not? But of course it is not: that would never do, would it? And the creature is revealed to be just an evil alien pretending to be God.

Friendship, as ever, gets our heroes through just about everything and sustains them through the worst times, while pain, another constant theme running through this film, drives us on and often causes us to surmount even the toughest obstacles. Sybok wants to take away everyone's pain --- whether for his own purposes in recruiting them to his cause or as a truly altruistic gesture is never quite established --- but Kirk doggedly holds on to his, reasoning that a man needs his pain. It is this which sustains and pushes him at the worst times, and he believes that without pain a man is probably not really a man at all.

And then there's religion, of course. Sybok is like a prophet, a John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness, looking for his saviour. But unlike the herald of Jesus Christ, the Vulcan is not prepared to sit and wait for God to come to him: he intends to go and seek him out. And in so doing he creates a kind of a religion of his own, a cult of personality based around himself in which anyone will do anything he asks. He takes away pain and asks those whose pain he removes to follow him. Is he, in this regard, any different from Jesus curing the lepers? But he does have, at least all of the time we see him, an ulterior motive, so his curing of people, as it were, cannot be seen as a purely selfless action, with nothing expected in return. He does expect something: loyalty and obedience, and he gets it.

But is there a deeper message here? Are we being warned that God can wear many faces, and some of them are not so glorious to look upon? And that we should not perhaps so blithely accept that any being who seems godlike is in fact God, or a god? Everyone, even the pragmatic McCoy, seemed to believe that the alien was God; it was only Kirk's reasonable quesiton that set doubts in anyone's mind, doubts which grew and then coalesced as the being began punishing Kirk, and then Spock.

But religion has caused people to do some of the most heinous things, and wars of bloody carnage have been fought over whose god is the real one, so it's clear religion has a power all of its own, and that people's beliefs can be used, manipulated, shaped to the ends of whomever has the strength of will to control and bend them to his own will.

Does this movie deserve its reputation?

Often cited as one of the worst Trek movies (though I personally doubt anything can, or ever will, trump the first one) this has also been said to have been the movie that almost killed the franchise. It's not hard to see why. Part action-movie --- the first hour or so concerns the taking of the hostages on Paradise City and Starfleet's attempts to rescue them, Die Hard style --- and part existential theological discussion, it's almost the film that can manage to offend everyone. Again, like some of the other movies, there is virtually no space battle at all. The ony shot we see fired in anger misses the Enterprise, and then there's Spock's shot that destroys the alien on Sha Ka Ree (or whatever the planet is) but that's not in space so doesn't count.

There's again a little too much humour and virtually no drama. Nobody dies. Nobody. Not even one of the ambassadors, who surely would have been expendable --- although I guess they had to retain Korrd for the rather silly resolution of the poorly planned Klingon part of the plot, such as it is --- and so far as I can see, not even one crewman gets injured. At least in Star Trek IV Chekov fell and was close to death. There's just no real tension in the movie and as I already said, the crossing of the Great Barrier is done almost in a single bound. Bo-ring. The effect is good, but only that. Even “God” is something of a letdown, dissolving into basic energy after the photon torpedo hits.

There's little personal conflict. If Spock had gone over to Sybok's side, then there would have been a dilemma for Kirk. But no: he stays loyal, and though he loses his brother it somehow doesn't have the impact we expected it would, and Sybok's sacrifice at the end is very much telegraphed from an early point. Scotty has most of the best lines, but even at that they're poor, and Uhura is reduced to alternating between dancing sexily in the moonlight (Lord preserve us!) and trying to come on to Scotty, embarrassing for both of them. Also stupid, as there was never seen to be any sort of attraction or sexual tension between these two, neither in the series nor in any of the preceding movies.

So what are we left with? Something of a shell really. A rather aimless plot that, rather like Sybok himself, wanders all over the place looking for something to do before finally finding God and blowing him up. Yeah. Says it all really.

Overall, I think the movie does deserve its very poor rep; it's a weak start for Shatner as a writer, not the best as a director either, and it's really hard to find, even among the main cast, any performance that really stands out. In the end, Sybok, rather like Khan, steals the show. Not that there's too much to steal.

All I can manage in this case then is a poor
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2.3 “Spiders”

Someone has managed to hack into MI5’s mainframe and has in the process cut off two agents who were in the field and in need of help. Suspicion falls on one Gordon Blaney, a school teacher and member of a socialist group, SFM (Socialist Freedom Movement), known to be well funded and to engage in cyberterrorism. The SFM use a socialist paper, “Red Cry” to contact each other and get messages through. Danny is trying to infiltrate it by getting in touch with the editor, James Crowe, himself a violent anarchist suspected of other crimes. Zoe is sent in undercover as a teacher to the school to try to pump Blaney for information, a situation she is not happy about.

When it becomes clear that Blaney is using the school’s computers to held Crowe infiltrate MI5, Zoe, having become better acquainted with the teacher, thinks something does not add up. He’s not the type, she says, to make his bed with anarchists. The more she sees about how important the kids he teaches are to him, the less she can believe he is in league with the “Red Cry” editor. Danny’s cover is blown when one of Crowe’s associates gets suspicious, and about to lose their target MI5 have to step in, arresting them both. Zoe arrests Blaney at the scene. However he does seem to be what he says, and not involved with Crowe, though he shares some of his views. He says all he was doing in the IT room was installing modems for the pupils to use.

As it turns out, he’s telling the truth. The hacker is a young kid, a pupil whom Zoe, in her persona as Jane Graham, escorts home when he’s being bullied by other kids. Peter is being coached by his father and is trying to break into the MI5 mainframe from his home. A message is sent once he hacks into the mainframe to advise cryptically that a nuclear device or some sort of radioactive material is at the school, and it is evacuated, but it turns out to be a decoy, a chance to allow Peter to get into the MI5 hide and thereby gain access, via the computer systems that have been left there, to the full computer mainframe. As the device he used to trick MI5 that there was radioactive material at the school was found in the shed in which Blaney and Zoe had tried to comfort the kid after he had been apparently bullied --- obviously a ruse as can now be seen --- it has to be either Blaney or Peter, and when Zoe is confident Blaney is innocent she races to Peter’s home.

In fact, he turns out not to be called Peter at all, but Noah: Noah Gleason, the son of Victor Gleason, MI5’s man in Greece, who double-crossed them and was working with Albanian terrorists, who kidnapped him and the boy and killed the father. Noah’s psychosis is so strong that he believes his father is still alive, and here with him, urging him on to revenge. After Zoe has explained to him what he’s doing, what could happen if he goes ahead and uploads the files on the personal details of the agents in the field that he’s downloading, um, Tom comes in and hits escape and stops the program? See “Hard to believe?” for more.

So Noah was setting everyone up, from Crowe to Blaney, photoshopping images and diverting intelligence, laying a false trail which MI5 followed while he took the opportunity ot get into their system and try to destroy them from within.

QUOTES
Zoe: “One of these days I’m going to get a bump on the head and all these people I’m supposed to be are going to fuse together in my psyche and I’m going to be one hell of a schizophrenic!”

Zoe: “I’ll do my job but I’m not just going to forget those kids!”
Tom: “Look, if SFM succeed in destroying our national network we’ll be useless to this country as we were to Anthony and Cleopatra, and that means those kids’ lives will be in danger. That means everyone will be in danger. So .. wear a tight sweater tomorrow.”
Zoe: “What?”
Tom: “I’ve been watching him all day. He obviously fancies you, so you need to build on that connection.”
Zoe: “A-any particular sweater in mind?”
Tom and Danny: “The blue one.”

Blaney: “I think whoever’s playin’ you is playin’ you good, cos you’re not only barkin’ up the wrong tree, you’re in the wrong flamin’ forest!”

Harry: “The Angel of Death is over us.”

Zoe: “What about Blaney?”
Tom: “He’s being relocated, with our apologies. He gets book tokens, I think.”

Ghost of Victor Gleason: “Just remember the spider my boy. When her web is destroyed, what does she do? She builds another one, even more beautiful and complex, and she catches many flies.”

Harry’s world

“Quite beguiling, isn’t it?” he says to Zoe, as she voices her doubts about Blaney’s intentions. “The simplicity of the outside world: dinner bells, detention, names on chipped coffee mugs. You enjoy being part of something ordinary.."

When Zoe expresses doubt that Blaney may be a terrorist, that he seems to be genuine, Harry doesn’t want to know; his world does not have time for emotional considerations; he can’t be second-guessing himself and he certainly can’t, and wouldn’t, let the fact that a suspect “seems a nice sort” weigh on his opinion of him professionally. Harry deals with facts, not feelings, numbers not hunches and his world is ruled by empirical data, like a scientist. He can’t afford doubt, because it can lead to decisions which can have horrendous, even fatal consequences.

On the incarceration of Noah in a “safe place”
“See, you always knew where you were with a public school traitor. Just look for the bearded pipe-smoking sodomite with a copy of E.M. Forster under his arm.”

Laughing in the face of death

In a high-risk job like being an MI5 agent you have to take your comic relief and humour where you can. As they bug the school where Blaney works, Danny snaps good-naturedly at one of the techs: “No running in the corridors!”

As Tom and Malcolm watch Zoe’s performance as a teacher in the classroom, Tom breathes “Give me an Afghan drugs deal any day!”

With unbelievable irony, the only room they can’t bug is the IT room, as it’s being refurbished and they’re afraid the decorators might find the device.

Big Brother is watching!

The hide, or monitoring station for MI5 outside the school turns out to be a workmen’s hut, inside which all the listening equipment is set up. Nothing less likely to draw attention than one of those ubiquitous huts we see every day when there are road works to be done, gas mains to be laid or whatever.

Other lives
I’m going to start chronicling and detailing the various identities Spooks have to assume in the course of their work, and how if at all they differ from their own personality.

Zoe is given a false identity as Jane Graham, a young English teacher who had a canoeing accident in France. She’s also holding down the persona of Emma, a legal secretary, which is how one of her friends ---- none of whom, of course, are aware of her real identity or her true occupation --- knows her. It’s quite a balancing act.

Danny is Ray, a freelance journalist who professes left-wing socialist sympathies in order to get close to Crowe at “Red Cry”.

Hard to believe?
After all the tension, the warnings from Noah not to touch his computer as it downloads the sensitive data from the MI5 mainframe because “you never know what might happen”, Tom just walks in, hits escape and aborts the download. Just like that. What if it had some failsafe in it that would automatically complete the download and then email the files to a pre-arranged address? He took a hell of a chance and, on the face of it, was very irresponsible. I thought at least he was going to pretend to be Noah’s father, try to convince him to shut off the program, but no: he just does it himself?

Worst ending since season one’s “Traitor’s Gate”.

Collateral damage
A label that could certainly be said to apply to Gordon Blaney, used by Noah Gleason as a pawn in his game, totally blameless and yet he loses his job and his standing, and must now be another of those forever bound by their signing of the Official Secrets Act. Just another leaf blown in the storm MI5 kick up when they put an operation into place, and which they seldom if ever clear up behind them.

The Shock Factor
I guess it’s twofold really. First, there’s the red herring of Blaney being the terrorist when it turns out to be the kid after all, and then when we see his father talking to him, urging him on, to find out that he is in fact dead and only living in Noah’s mind is something of a startler certainly.

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2.3 “The Wapping conspiracy”
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New character!
Jeff Dicquead, played by Berwick Kaler, intrepid reporter whose career exactly mirrors Alan's, in reverse. As B'Stard rises through the echelons of power, Jeff falls further down the chain, this reflected in the newspapers and rags he ends up working for. He doesn't figure prominently in the series, but it is amusing to see how Alan treats him, and how far he falls. Here he is reasonably gainfully employed, announcing himself as working for The Star, one of Britain's top tabloids.

Having been made the Parliamentary Secretary for the newly-formed Young Ladies' Recreational Society (like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse!) Alan is hosting a reception at his home when damning accusations of sexual impropriety air on the television. Shocked, his guest all leave and Alan, after a searing row with Sarah in which they each accuse one another of the grossest marital infidelities, (all probably true) determines to take the newspaper making the allegations to court. After Piers, as his defence counsel, makes as expected a mess of things, Alan decides to defend himself, and makes mincemeat of the defendant. The journalist, Arthur Cox, crumbles and admits he made the whole thing up and faked the pictures, and Alan has won the case.

But of course it's never that simple. It turns out that the whole thing was concocted between B'Stard and the journalist, in order to split the damages from the case. When the “disgraced” reporter calls around to celebrate and collect his cheque however, Alan double-crosses him, recording the conversation on a pocket tape recorder, which now gives him the opportunity to take another, proper case against him, this time for accusing a Member of Parliament of attempting to pervert the course of justice! Well, if you will make a deal with the devil...

QUOTES
Schoolgirl (looking at a statue of a politician): “Excuse me, Sir, who is this?”
Alan: “Search me! Some obscure, forgotten politician? Roy Hattersley?”
Other Schoolgirl: “He can't be that obscure if he's got a bust.”
Alan: “Well, you've got a bust and nobody gives a toss who you are!”

Alan: “I have had just about enough of you! There's always one: ugly, fat, acne-ridden swot, with glasses and overactive subaceous glands who has to show off to make up for his or her --- and in your case, I'm deliberately hedging my bets! --- physical repugnance! What's your name?”
Schoolgirl: “Agnes Tebbitt!”
Alan: “Oh. Er, any ... any relation?”
Agnes: “Niece! Favourite niece!”
(Norman, now Lord Tebbitt was a high-ranking politician in Thatcher's government, and very much one of B'Stard's superiors. For our American friends, she might as well have said her name was Agnes Bush!)

Alan: “Mister Speaker: isn't it odd that it's always fat ladies with mustaches who call me a sexist pig, whereas attractive, leggy one with long golden hair tend to shout “More, Alan, more!””

Alan: “Pardon my wife, Dame Cecily: she's blind in one eye,” (when out of earshot) “or she will be, in about ten seconds flat! Sarah! What the hell has gotten into you?”
Sarah: “If it's any of your business, darling, a rather butch usher from the public gallery!”

Alan: “Sarah, why are you deliberately trying to sabotage my career?”
Sarah: “Well why shouldn't I? You sabotaged my career.”
Alan: “What career?”
Sarah: “Shopping. If you want a loyal, devoted Tory wife by your side pay off my credit card bill.”
Alan: “Well I would, but it's a choice between paying your dress bill and personally financing Britain's independent nuclear deterrent!”

Sarah: “Shall I tell him about the old English sheepdog, and why we had to have all his fur cut off?”
Alan: “Well at least Bonzo was a mammal! Let's talk reptiles! Let's talk about Brian, the obliging iguana!”
Sarah: “At least Brian was grateful, and it lasted more than thirty seconds.”

Jeff Dicquead: “Alan! Alan! Jeff Dicquead, The Star. Are you confident of winning this case?”
Alan: “No, I'm expecting to lose, but I want to waste the judge's time, incur crippling legal expenses and render myself persona non grata in every home in Britain.”
Dicquead: “Can I quote you on that?”
Alan: “I doubt it: I used some rather large words.”

Prosecutor: “So what would you say, Mrs B'Stard, if I were to tell you that I can produce a witness --- a young court usher --- who will testify that you performed an obscene act on him using a Jerusalem artichoke, a pair of jump leads and, not to put too fine a point on it, a pencil sharpener?”

Proscutor (after the judge and the girls have sang “Ging gang gooly”): “Thank you My Lord: the court is alive to the sound of music. But to return to the more sombre melodies we must sing down here, and particularly to Tracy Hopkin, aged 15, Pamela Green, aged 15 and a half, and Ralph, a crossbreed collie, age unknown.”

B'Stard's closing (and opening) speech: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Look at this pathetic, evil, subhuman man. Can you be surprised that he hates me? I'm witty, I'm infinitely better looking, I drive around in a Bentley and I have a beautiful wife. Whereas you (turning to the defendant) are a malformed, scropulous, clapped-out old alcoholic who's only got a job because all the quality journalists resigned when your newspaper moved to Wapping.”

Machinations
Even for a B'Stard scheme this one is up there. Alan gets together with a journalist from one of the tabloids to concoct a libel case. He, shocked at such allegations, will take the paper to court, at the appropriate dramatic moment the journalist will fold, agreeing he set everything up, and the paper will pay half a million in damages to B'Stard, who will split it with his partner. But a quarter of a million is of course not enough for the greedy Tory, and he stabs the journalist in the back, claiming to be outraged by the suggestion that it was all a setup, in the process not only pocketing the half mil but surely earning more in damages from his erstwhile partner personally!

The User and the Used
And of course, in the same way, Arthur Cox is used by B'Stard. He uses him when it is expedient; pretending to promise to honour the agreement he makes with him but then using him as a patsy when he realises he can. Whether this was in his plan all along or he simply decided in the flush of victory that he wanted to keep all the money (and preserve and indeed enhance his reputation) is unclear, yet in a way he's playing a dangerous game here. As it is, the case has gone his way and nobody suspects anything, but when the second court case comes up (if it does and Cox doesn't settle out of court to avoid a possible prison sentence) and the seed of doubt is sown, perhaps some people may begin to think that you know, yeah, it was all a little convenient the way Cox just broke down so easily and with so little prompting. Maybe there is something in his accusation after all...

What is love?
Although they manifestly hate and loathe each other, B'Stard realises the importance of presenting a united front for the cameras and asks Sarah to support him. He realises that if there were to be any hint of acrimony or disharmony (it can be assumed that Sarah's extramarital dalliances, to say nothing of his own, are kept strictly private and everyone thinks they have a good marriage) might serve to damage the case. But Sarah hates him and wants to see him fail. So how to convince her? As ever, diamonds are a girl's best friend, and Sarah demands a share of the damages in return for playing her part. Ah, young love!

PCRs
B'Stard exhorts a party guest to have more sherry, enthusing that it is South African. This is in a time when the evils of Apartheid were still in force in South Africa, and it was considered bad taste to buy or use anything from that country. This just serves to show what a right wing Tory bastard the MP is.

The B'Stard bodycount

Non-Lethal: Arthur Cox: Although not killed, the journalist's career certainly is. He probably handed in, or intended to hand in his notice before or after the case, and now that he has been implicated in another scandal he has no chance at all of ever getting a job with any newspaper. His dreams of retiring on the proceeds of his shared scam with B'Stard have been shattered by the Tory's betrayal of him, and he has nothing left to live for. We don't find out what happens to him, but I'll bet he becomes a hopeless raging alcoholic living under a bridge somewhere, assuming he doesn't top himself.

Non-lethal Bodcount: 6
Lethal Bodycount: 4
Total Bodycount: 10

And isn't that...?
Peter Moran is played by Andy Serkis, best known for portraying Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie series.
Peter Woods and Richard Whitmore, both television newsreaders, appear as themselves in the fictionalised broadcasts of B'Stard's supposed indiscretions.

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Season One, Episode Three

Called to the scene of a stabbing, Sam is amazed to find that the factory that stands where he is now will one day be the flat he lives in. Or lived in. Or will live in. In fact, the victim is sprawled, he can see with certainty, under his very own kitchen table. The victim, one Jimmy Saunders, has been marked for something like this, as he has been defying the factory's union, which wants to slow the process of replacing men with machines as new looms are brought online. Hunt believes his maxim that “whoever speaks first, did it” will serve him, as it has in so many other enquiries, but Sam not surprisingly wants to take a more considered, forensic approach. A bet is made. Hunt hates “Commies”, which is how he sees these union workers, so is naturally biased, whereas Sam is of course more open-minded.

While Hunt is engaged in busting open lockers at the factory in search of the murder weapon, believed to be a long-bladed knife, Tyler finds a footprint near one of the machines and they take an impression, sending it back to the station to confirm the size. Sam is however disappointed to find that a witness identified a man seen leaving the factory around the time of the murder, and the police sketch conforms almost exactly to that of Hunt's suspect, Ted Bannister. Evidence is mounting up against him, and then he breaks and confesses. But Tyler is not convinced. Ted says he threw away the knife he used to kill Saunders, but neglected to dump the bloodied shirt he wore, which has been recovered by CID. In that situation, what would you make sure you got rid of? The knife, which could be anyone's and without DNA testing here in the seventies impossible to prove was the weapon, or the shirt with the victim's blood on it?

Hunt of course is happy: he has his man, the mill can open again and more importantly, he has won his bet and shown Tyler once again that he is the guvnor. Tyler has a chance to bolster his reputation though when he stops rival DCI Litton from the RCS (Regional Crime Squad) making off with Dodds, the fence they arrested, by telling him the guns they found on him are in fact fake, made of wood. He points out, in a speech shown below in the “Quotes” section, how embarrassing it will be for RCS if they arrest the fence on this flimsy, and incorrect, premise. Litton has no choice but to hand Dodds back over to Hunt's people. Score one for them! He is of course lying about the guns. They're real enough. So real that Tyler gets Dodds to make the drop, as the CID swoop and find that ... the buyers have scarpered out a broken back window! Hunt is not happy!

Meanwhile, that's one problem but there's a greater one Tyler has to solve, and a man's freedom hangs on it. He knows Ted Bannister is not guilty, but if he isn't then why did he confess to the murder? Surely to protect someone? He decides to bring in Ted's son Derek, and his fiancee, who is pregnant with his child. The father and son talk to each other but Ted maintains his guilt, while Derek seems to want advice --- “Tell me what to do!” he cries. Just then forensics come back and confirm Sam's worst fears: that the blood on Tim Bannister's shirt is that of Saunders. It looks as if they do, after all, have their man.

That night, a troubled Sam has another dream wherein he sees the girl from the BBC TV testcard, and she advises him to give up, lie down and sleep, forever. As she says this, we can hear the sound of a heart monitor slowing, slowing, going towards flatline. Suddenly though he wakes up shouting “NO!” At the station the next morning, the time-of-death report on Saunders confirms that Bannister could not have killed him: both he and his son were in the pub at the moment the crime was committed, and were seen by witnesses. So we're back to square one. But if Bannister is not protecting his son, who is he protecting? Why did he confess?

Back at the factory, Sam notices that the belts on Saunders' machine have been replaced: they are brand new. He suddenly forms a theory. Saunders was not murdered at all. He was the victim of a terrible accident when the well-worn belts of the loom he was working on gave up the ghost, snapped and flew back at him like a whip, killing him instantly. Under pressure of this new information, Ted Bannister admits that he had gone to the factory to see Saunders and have it out with him, but that by the time he got there the loom had done its deadly work and the man was already dead. Panicking, lest the accident be the cause of the mill closing down and losing all their jobs, he changed the belt and cleaned up as best he could but took so long that he ended up being caught in the frame for the supposed murder. He is of course now let go. But there's a twist.

As Tyler disconsolately runs through the interview with Tina, Derek's fiancee, he hears her talk about picking up a bag, and realises to his horror that she was involved in the heist of the guns Dodds was fencing. They realise Derek and some of the other factory workers plan a wages hit, to take place at the factory tonight, and they tool up and head over there. They manage to stop it, but not before Derek has Hunt and Tyler at his mercy, at the end of a shotgun. Fired up, he refuses to put down his weapon and is shot by Hunt while Sam tries to reason with him.

QUOTES
Tyler: “Chris, I want you to record the shape of this blood.”
Chris: “Wot?”
Tyler: “Blood spatter analysis, by D.H. Crombie?”
Hunt: “I'll wait for the film, thanks.”
Tyler: “Oh, you'd like the book: it has pictures!”

Tyler: “I agree that departmental protocol suggests we hand the case over to RCS, inasmuch as the evidence thus far obtained, however diluted from its original perceived significance would indeed benefit from investment by a police body more experienced and equipped to process it through to court.”

Hunt: “Is my name Coco?”
Tyler: “What?”
Hunt: “Why are you trying to make me look like a clown?”
(Is this a very, very clever pointer to the followup series “Ashes to ashes”, which featured a clown as its central character? Or indeed, the BBC girl with the clown that Sam keeps seeing in his dreams?)

Hunt (as Tyler practice aims his revolver): “Yeah, but can you hit anything or not?”
Tyler: “You should see my Playstation scores!”

Hunt: “Drop your weapons! You are surrounded by armed bastards!”

MUSIC
“Ballroom blitz” (The Sweet)

Opening music, kind of sets the tone for the episode. It really comes into its own when Hunt reverses the Granada at speed down the road (it being a one-way street) with a burger crammed into his mouth, and just for good measure, hits a pile of boxes (why are there always piles of boxes?) and sends them flying, totally seventies cop-show style!

“Wishing well” (Free)
Plays out of the tape recorder Tyler has been using to interview Bannister, as Ray remarks how useful these things are.


“Gypsy” (Uriah Heep)

Plays during the stakeout as the guns are paid for and Dodds returns with the money

PCRs
Jeering Tyler's blood spatter pattern picture, Ray sneers “Oh that's nice! You should send that to the gallery at Vision on!”
(Vision On was a kid's programme, run by Tony Hart, where children would send in their artwork and if it were deemed good enough it could be kept in the gallery and shown on TV during that segment of the show)

Learning from the master
As he walks along the road and a kid on a bike nearly bumps into him, Tyler yells “Oi! Keep it on the road or I'll come round to your house and smash up all your toys!”
This he of course heard Hunt say in the first episode, and despite his initial dislike of the man and his methods, it seems Sam is realising that some of those ideas do work. In fairness, the “kid” is about fourteen or more, and doesn't look like the type to play with toys, but I guess that could be said to refer to anything he uses for entertainment, like his record player, TV set or even his bike.

Tinfoil hat time?
As Sam returns to the squad car, his radio crackles with a message: but not a message from the station. This is like an instruction from somewhere else; a medical sort of voice, a nurse perhaps, who advises “We know you're in there but your levels of response have decreased. Don't give up!”

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2.3 “The witch of Elsdon”

Having seen something in a dream, Robin leads his men towards the village of Rufford, where they come across what seems at first to be an honest carter, transporting grain. But Robin has the inside track, and demonstrates that there is in fact money --- lots of it --- in the sacks of grain, and that the man who gives his name originally as James is none other than the Sheriffs's tax collector, Gregory of Bedford. Making short work of his escort --- who suddenly appear when it is clear the ruse has not worked --- the outlaws take their spoils back to their lair. Meanwhile, in the nearby village of Elsdon, a woman is being tried as a witch. Gisburn accuses her of holding the villagers under her spell, though she claims he is only trumping up these charges as she refused his sexual advances. Abbot Hugo, brother of the Sheriff, is presiding and in no mood to listen to the woman's pleas of innocence. As in almost every witch trial, she is found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, along with her husband, who also stands accused. It's clear Gisburn has cowed the villagers into signing false confessions, but what chance has an ordinary, harmless woman and her husband got against the power of the Church? They are both to be taken to Nottingham for the execution, to take place in four days.

In good spirits after the trial, the Sheriff's mood soon sours when he gets back to the castle and hears that he has been robbed! He blames Gregory, says he sold him out, and nothing the tax collector can say will save him from the rack. Now, suddenly, Robin and his men are a problem. When they were, as the Sheriff sees it, carousing in Sherwood Forest, they weren't his concern. But now, they're taking food out of his mouth, money out of his coffers, and he is not going to stand for it! He concocts a plan to use the condemned woman, Jannet, the accused witch, as a way of dealing with the outlaws. Knowing of her skill with plants, he offers her and her husband freedom if she will go into the forest, befriend Robin and his men and drug them, leaving them helpless and at the mercy of his men. With no other option, and the promise of a far more painful and lingering death than just hanging if she refuses, Jannet agrees.

Having “escaped” into Sherwood and come under the protection of Robin and his men, (especially Will Scarlet, who falls for her) she tells them that the Bishop of Leicester is due to pass through there in a few days. Initially worried that the rich cleric will be too well guarded, Robin eventually gives in to greed and necessity --- and probably does not want to seem timid in front of his men --- and they agree to waylay the fat prize, at Darkmere. But as they make their plans they are suddenly struck down over dinner by Jannet's deadly potion, and fall into a swoon. All but Marian who, having quarrelled with Robin over not being seen as one of the team and being left behind all the time (bloody women!) :rolleyes: is sitting at the shore of the lake when Herne appears to her, to warn her of the danger. When Jannet returns to Nottingham to advise the Sheriff she has done as bid, he orders Gisburn to head into the forest and take care of Robin and his men. He has, of course, no intention of keeping his promise to her, but he needs her to lead his men to where the outlaws lie helpless.

Luckily however (though not for Gisburn!) Marian has been able to revive them and they are all fully capable of taking on the Sheriff's men (though they feign unconsciousness, to gain the upper hand). Gisburn is captured, as is Jannet, and Marian has sympathy with her predicament and the terrible choice she had to make. So does Robin, though Will is less pleased when he learns she has a husband! Robin hatches a plan to free Thomas, her husband, and returns to Nottingham, dressed as Gisburn, to force the Sheriff to hand him over. Hostage for hostage, Gisburn for Thomas, but there's a problem: the Sheriff hates Gisburn and would be happy to see him dead. So Robin has to “convince” him that he really does want his knight back, at the point of a sword. When faced with death at the hands of the outlaw, the Sheriff suddenly realises that Gisburn is, after all, indispensable, and the exchange is made.

Quotes
Abbot Hugo: “Thous shalt not suffer a witch to live: Exodus. Neither shall you use enchantments. Leviticus? Leviticus.”

The Sheriff: “What a paragon of virtue you are, Gisburn! I'm really most impressed. If she'd tried to bewitch me, I'd be inclined to let her!”

The Sheriff: “I shall have to be very careful in the future, Gisburn.”
Gisburn: “My Lord?”
Sheriff: “Of you, Gisburn. Especially when you don't get what you want.”
Gisburn: “I don't understand, My Lord...”
Sheriff: “Don't you?”
Gisburn: “The woman was a witch, My Lord!”
Sheriff: “Of course she was. And a very pretty one!”
(The Sheriff is letting Gisburn know, in no uncertain terms, that he does not for a moment believe his story of the woman being a witch, and knows that Gisburn is ony taking revenge on her for not succumbing to his advances. The Sheriff will, however, completely fail to bring this important fact to the knowledge of his brother, and will allow Jannet to die, condemned for something she did not do. He really does not care either way, but he's warning Gisburn he had better not try that shit on him!)

Sheriff: “If Robin Hood want to prance around Sherwood worshipping Herne the Hunter, or any other bogeyman, why not let him? He can paint himself bright blue for all I care! There's a price on his head, and sooner or later someone is going to earn it. One of his merry men, I shouldn't wonder.”
Gisburn: “And the Lady Marian?”
Sheriff: “What about her? Poor girl's gone native! He'll tire of her. It's only a matter of time. One woman and half a dozen men: it's a perfect recipe for disaster!”
(Here the Sheriff is giving us an unusual point of view. Robin Hood is an outlaw, sought by the Crown and openly defying the authority of both the King and the Sheriff, yet the Sheriff seems content to let him be. He seems unaware of, or uncaring of the following the wolfshead is massing behind him, or maybe he just can't countenance that these English peasants could in any way threaten his rule here. This thinking will of course change, as he realises just how dangerous Robin is, not only as a man and as an outlaw, but as an ideal. He will later say “You can't kill an idea, Gisburn”. And he will be right. But at the moment, he is utterly blase about the whole prospect. Like Gisburn's spat with Jannet, he simply could not be bothered.)

The Sheriff: “I will not have Jews in Nottingham! Whip them to the gates!”
(Hitler would be proud!)

Hugo: “Why don't you have their heads mounted over the gate? That's what I'd do: as a permanent reminder to the other rabble!”
Sheriff: “I'm not a gamekeeper, Hugo. And what about the stench? Are you forgetting that the prevailing wind blows from that direction? I want them forgotten as quickly as possible.”
(Of course he does. A dead martyr is the last thing the Sheriff wants, a permanent reminder that you can stand up to the King. Or him. For a while at least.)

Sheriff: “Well? Where's the villain's head?”
Robin: “On the villain's shoulders!”

Robin: “You can kill a man with that feather, or you can save his life.”
(The pen is, truly, mightier than the sword. Or in this case, the quill.)

Robin: “It wasn't Gisburn's life I bargained with, it was the Sheriff's. And now he'll hunt me till one of us is dead.”
(And so it begins).

Parallels
Interesting that once they've disarmed Gisburn, the outlaws put him on a ducking stool and dip him in the river, an ancient torture used to determine if someone was a witch or not. Given that the episode focuses on a so-called witch, can that be coincidence, or poetic justice?


Questions?
When asked how he knew about Gregory’s grain containing the sheriff’s silver, Robin says “A little bird told me”. Which little bird? Is he speaking of his dream? But in that dream, he had no idea what he was looking for, as he told his men “We’ll know when we find it”.

What was the deal with the Bishop of Leicester? Was he on the way? Or was it just a ruse, and if the latter, why? It’s not like Jannet led them into a trap or anything, so why mention it at all?

How did Marian save the band? We saw her being told by Herne cryptically to go back, but when the Sheriff’s men arrive in the forest Robin and his crew are all recovered. What did she do to arrange this, and how did she know how to counteract the herb, if indeed she did? Just rushing back to the glade was not enough to save them. We’re not told what she actually did, if indeed she did anything.

Nothing’s forgotten
No indeed. The Sheriff will not forget that he was made a fool of by Robin Hood. Outfought by the outlaw and at swordpoint forced to agree to his bargain, humiliated in front of his brother the abbot, he will now hunt Robin with a vehemence and dedication the exact opposite to the lackadaiscal approach he showed in his speech at the beginning of the episode. Now, it’s personal. Not only that, he has seen too how much of a figurehead and a rallying point Robin and his men can be, and how that can threaten his authority. Robin Hood is a real threat now, not just an annoyance as he originally believed, and that threat must be dealt with.

Gisburn, too, will not forget. He has been taken prisoner by Robin’s men, stripped and humiliated and finally sent back like a ransom to his master, in disgrace and no doubt with many laughing behind his back, though of course not to his face. A knight, Guy of Gisburn will see this as an intolerable blemish on his honour, and will wish to avenge himeslf on the Wolfshead.

Nor, finally, will the people, the poor villagers, forget how Robin helped them and shared out the grain from the Sheriff’s stock. They were willing to bow to his tyranny before, giving up Jannet and Thomas, even though they knew they were innocent, but the Sheriff will have a harder time grinding them down now. The people have a new hero, and they will be willing to hide him, stand by him, perhaps even die for him if necessary. Robin of Loxley is the embodiment of all the hatred, fear, anger and resentment simmering in England at the rule of the Normans, and his will be the avenging hand that will strike for the common man.

Houston, we have a problem!
Yes, yes, it’s only episode three (technically two, as the first one was a two-parter) but even so, this is pretty weak. I mean, the two storylines don’t hang together at all. There’s no real link between the “witch” and the tax collector, Robin’s stealing the money and grain doesn’t impact on the plot, other than to begin to cement his relationship with the villagers and to wake the Sheriff up to the threat he poses, the Marian-wants-to-be-one-of-the-boys idea is boring, even if she is the one who (somehow) ends up saving them all. But the real problem I have is with Robin’s plan to save Thomas.

Does he really think that the Sheriff cares about Gisburn and will ransom him? He would be happy enough to hear that Robin had cut the man’s throat! He barely tolerates him, certainly does not like or value him, and berates him every chance he gets. He thinks he’s useless, not a thinker, too rigid in his approach and hardly ever smiles. Perhaps the outlaw is unaware of the tetchy relationship the two share. Perhaps. So Robin has to change his tack, and go for the Sheriff himself. It seems like an obvious ploy --- your life for his --- but couldn’t he have come up with something better? It really does look like a plan half-cobbled together at the last minute, and doesn’t do the series --- or Robin himself --- justice. Plus he goes there alone, but just happens to catch the Sheriff and Abbot Hugo without their guards? Thankfully the series picks up with much better writing soon, but this is on the whole just pretty painful.

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Season One, Episode Ten
“ A very important passenger”

Callon is approached by a mysterious stranger who asks him to take an important passenger on board one of his ships which is heading towards Italy, however the stranger will not reveal the name of the person. He is offering to pay handsomely, but the secrecy of the endeavour and the implicit danger makes Callon shy from the offer. He does though volunteer James Onedin, making a very good case for the unlikelihood of anyone suspecting this “important passenger” to be travelling on such a small ship. He also points out that the Onedins are in need of cash, and will jump at a third of what Callon is being offered by this mysterious gentleman. Thinking about it, the stranger decides that maybe it is not too bad an idea and does indeed approach James, but contrary to what Callon told him, Onedin does not jump at a hundred pounds, but is very suspicious as to why Callon --- whom, he is told, recommended his services to the gentleman who wishes to remain anonymous --- turned down the commission.

In the end, James is able to extract four hundred pounds from the man, more than Callon was to have been paid, and is sworn to secrecy. Robert, though somewhat in awe of his brother's bargaining powers, is delighted to see that they now have enough to buy his shop: once James returns with the passenger safely delivered, as this is a half-now-half-later deal. Still, it's more money than they've seen in a long time. Bad news follows good though, as he is told by Anne that Mister Baines will not be sailing with them, having been taken ill at a hostel. Luckily for him, there just happens to be a replacement looking for a berth, and he signs the man on as mate. He in turn picks the crew, and thankfully James is able to leave on time, the passenger turning up at the very last moment and jumping on board even as the ship slips its moorings. There's trouble brewing of course though: the new mate, Medcalfe, seems to know who their passenger is, even if the captain does not, and the helmsman, Santos, grins that it will be an honour to kill him.

We do find out that the mysterious man who offered the money, and shepherds the stranger on board, goes by the name of Sir George. Not that you couldn't tell from his speech, manner, bearing and dress that he is a man of social standing, but it's interesting to have it confirmed. The passenger also mentions that he will someday repay the Prime Minister's kindness, so we know he has moved in the very highest echelons of British society and government. An important passenger, indeed!

When James discovers that the passenger has a pistol in his possession, he takes it from him, advising him that as captain the rules are his to enforce, and he does not allow firearms on board. He is, however, intrigued by the design of the pistol; a new one, in which the chamber revolves, allowing for more than one shot before it must be reloaded, unlike most other pistols of the time. Despite his contention that it is for self-defence only, the passenger cannot prevent Onedin from taking it from him. In the fo'csle, the two assassins discuss how best to murder the man James Onedin has just deprived of his only means of protection, but the mate says they must wait till they are out further to sea; it must look like an accident, he tells his crony.

James, on receiving sealed orders from his passenger (“It is best you do not know who they came from”) is annoyed to find that he is being told to divert to Sardinia, and certainly irked by the fact that this man seems to have taken over his ship. He again tries to discern the identity of his passenger but is rebuffed, told that such information may endanger his life. Back in Liverpool, Robert is approached by Callon, who lets him know that, although he had to knock down the elder Onedin's shop to make way for his new dock, he has another for sale. On board the Charlotte Rhodes, the assassins make their move, tired of waiting for a fair wind and running out of patience, and time. Their efforts are thwarted by James, however, who pushes the assassin's target out of the way as a freshly-cut rigging rope allows the sail to drop on him. Furious, James tells the mate to bring the seaman to him.

However the passenger tells him that he has a suspicion this was more than just an accident, and when he hears that not only has the man in the rigging not sailed with Onedin before, but that none of the crew have, his eyes harden with a steely realisation. When Anne relates the tale of Baines's mysteriously taking ill, only hours before the ship sailed, he postulates that the regular mate of the Charlotte Rhodes may have been poisoned, and in exchange for the return of his pistol, he reveals to James and Anne his identity.

He is Giuseppe Garibaldi, known to history as the man who united Italy's warring principalities into one strong country, and there are of course vested interests desperate to ensure he never returns home to carry out his campaign. His assassination would cause political unrest back home, so he theorises that an accident has been arranged to make certain he never again sets foot on his home soil. The incident with the sail, he tells Onedin, was just the first such; there will be others.

Robert, seeking advice, goes to see Albert Frazer, who counsels him not to buy the shop Callon is offering. Why, he asks, did Callon not put the shop up for auction, and force the highest price for it? Why is he being so accommodating to a man whose entire family he professes to hate? And more to the point, should Robert sign anything and James not carry out his commission, thereby forfeiting the other half of the fee, Robert would be indebted to Callon, an agreement sealed, and the magnate would not be long about seizing Onedin Line assets if Robert could not meet his commitments. No, don't touch it, says Albert. There's something very wrong with this deal. He tells Robert to prevaricate; he will find him a better property.

The assassins have decided to take Garibaldi out when they land at Gibraltar, but given that he has no cargo for there James has decided not to bother and is continuing on. This puts a crimp in the plans of the men, and Garibaldi wonders why James does not take the opportunity to change his entire crew here? James however is loath to pay them all off, as he must do if they are to suspect nothing, and will take his chances. Garibaldi is doubtful, but he must commend the man's bravery, if not his fiscal prudence. Robert has a visit from Albert and Elizabeth, who tell them they have heard of a chandler hard by who is soon to sell up, and that Robert should move fast. When he hears the price though, Robert laments that he has not enough to cover the sale, and Albert “generously” offers to buy his Onedin Line shares. Tempted (the idea of gonig back to being a simple shopkeeper without having to run all his decisions by his brother is indeed diverting), Robert declines the offer, probably knowing that James would hit the roof were he to allow Frazer to gain an interest in his business.

The crew plan a mutiny, and put it into effect just as Garibaldi pleads for Onedin to change his plans and land him at Sardinia first, whereas James wants to meet a bonus deadline by unloading his cargo first . Taking Onedin hostage they bring him out on deck and confront Garibaldi. Medcalfe tells the general that if he gives himself up Onedin and his wife will not be harmed, and Garibaldi begins to walk towards him. Before he gets in range of the assassin's flintlock pistol though, Santos declares “He is for the knife!” and advances towards his target. Garibaldi draws his pistol and requests permission to fire it into the air, as a last gesture and proof that he died like a soldier. Seeing no harm in this, Medcalfe allows it. He is of course unaware of the new pistol, and thinks Garibaldi has used his only shot. He discovers his error a moment later, when the general levels the (to the assassin's mind, empty) pistol at Santo and fires, and the knifeman goes down. Taken by surprise, Medcalfe allows Onedin to get the jump on him, but quickly recovers. Garibaldi, pointing the pistol at him, tells him to let the captain go, but Medcalfe believes that the most that the general's gun could contain is two cartridges. This time, his error proves fatal.

As they head towards Sardinia, they are overtaken by a Navy frigate, which, the captain (an admiral, no less!) tells them has been waiting for their arrival. It will escort them to port and the Navy will supply men to replace the dead crewmen, though this will of course all be kept secret. Garibaldi leaves the Charlotte Rhodes to begin his mission, full of gratitude for and somewhat in awe of Captain Onedin's courage, taken with Anne's beauty and grace and with, according to Robert when they return to Liverpool, a very good chance of succeeding in uniting his country.

Robert is less happy when, on advising his brother that he has bought the chandler's shop that Albert suggested to him, he is told that it will be run not by him, but by the Company. Well, it was the money for the voyage that bought the shop, and as James archly points out, it was he who ensured Garibaldi's safe passage back to Italy, and did he but know it, helped both make history and birth a nation in the process.

Quotes
Anne: “You don't really mean royalty, do you?”
James: “For that kind of money, he can be the Devil incarnate!”
(And you feel that, were he to need passage and offer that sort of cash, James would have no problem shipping the Prince of Darkness wherever he needed to go!)

James: “Ask too many questions and you'll never be rich!”

Anne: “Oh! I thought it was my husband, Sir.”
Garibaldi: “It is my misfortune, ma'am, that I am not.”

James: “You find it necessary to carry a weapon?”
Garibaldi: “Ah, that depends on which country I am in, Sir.”

Garibaldi: “I do not enjoy good health in my limbs. I hope my country will use me before I break up!”
(Very appropriate, as at the time of this episode Italy was a fragmented country, as he goes on to explain to Anne, and he is to be the one to reunite it into one whole)

James: “Does he think he's chartered the ship?”
Anne: “I think he does. James, he's used to having orders obeyed.”
James: “Has he told you who he is?”
Anne: “No, but clearly he's no ordinary passenger.”
James: “Aboard my ship he is.”

James: “My passenger's name, please, for the ship's log?”
Garibaldi: “Am I a passenger? Not freight: very high value freight, for four hundred pounds?”
James: “How do I know that it's not in my interests to know your name?”
Garibaldi: “I have powerful enemies set against me, Sir, who would prevent this voyage if they could. If you transport me wittingly you may set them against you too!”
James: “I'm not concerned with your state among men.”
Garibaldi: “Not men, Sir. Nations!”

Anne: “James, this is more important than any bonus!”
James: “Aye, it would be. If I was convinced”
Garibaldi: “You doubt my word?”
James: “You plan to overthrow the armies of both France and Austria: you think I'm going to gamble my bonus day on that?”
Garibaldi: “Your own Minister Gladstone gambled his entire career because he spoke out about men he saw rotting in Neapolitan jails!”
James: “You think if I land you first it'll help to free one of them?”
Garibaldi: “I do! And when we have freed all our people you will never lack for trade in Italian ports.”
James: “But if you fail, General, I'll be banned from every port in Europe controlled by your enemies!”
(A sticky problem indeed: who to bet your money on? The already established powers, though they be poised to go to war and destablise the entire region, or this seeming dreamer who intends to take them all on and win? Whichever way he lays down his coin will determine the future of any business Onedin intends to carry out in the Mediterranean.)

Garibaldi: “Are you on their side, Jackie?”
Jackie: “Oh I'm on the side that wins, Sir. Have to be.”

Tightfist
Even though, as Robert points out to him, the chandler's shop was sold to Callon out of necessity born from James's absence, the younger Onedin brother does not see it that way. Robert wants James to use the profits from their voyages to enable him to buy back the shop, but James has other plans. Even though he is directly responsible for the loss of Robert's livelihood, he is not willing to help him out. When he (theoretically really, and just to make a point) asks Robert how much he would need to buy a new shop --- or his own back --- he then has to remind his brother that there is also the cost of outgoings, stock... by the time they're through, he has almost doubled the amount Robert said he would need.

When Robert accuses him of being able to find the money quick enough if it were a new ship they were discussing, James angrily reminds him that they are in the shipping business. To which Robert, equally angrily --- and, it must be said, rationally and validly --- replies that chandlering is shipping business. When Robert pushes the issue though, James pulls rank on him, telling him that his eighty-five percent shareholding makes him the decision maker, and he has decided that The Onedin Line cannot afford to buy a new chandler shop. End of meeting, end of subject.

James is quite aware that a man who will offer one hundred pounds for a passenger's berth and then quickly ups the offer to two hundred can be convinced to go to three hundred, and when he hears that it was Callon who recommended him, he knows something is afoot. Why didn't his rival accept the fee? What is there about this passenger --- for whose passage this man who will not give his name is prepared to pay far more than the standard fare for a passenger ship to a man whose livelihood is in cargo --- that Callon did not like the sound of it? And how can he use that to his advantage in this negotiation? Answer: he beats the man up to four hundred, a one hundred percent increase on what Callon would have been paid. He knows there is risk, and he expects to be paid accordingly.

Manners and mores
It's typical of Victorian society that even the small gesture of kissing the hand of a lady he does not know earns Garibaldi a stern, even shocked look from Anne. It's the tiniest of breaches of social etiquette, but she frowns at him as if he had made an improper suggestion. But of course he is Italian, and they do things differently over there, even then. Of course, it may be more than that: Garibaldi is a powerful man with a magnetic, almost irresistible charm and personality, and Anne may, despite herself and her loyalty to her husband, be experiencing the very slightest beginnings of attraction to him, and wish to distance herself from that.

She is also scandalised to hear that Garibaldi has been married more than once, although he contends this is only “in my heart”. She cannot reconcile the debonair, graceful and charming man before her with the faithless rogue and womaniser he tells her freely that he is. In Victorian society, of course, marriage was for life and to be divorced was almost unheard of. As we have seen previously with Elizabeth, for a woman to leave her husband is sheer folly and looked upon with the utmost repugnance; an act of irreconcilable shame. For a man to do so is perhaps just as bad, but a man will always get the benefit of the doubt, here in the nineteenth century. However, Victorian men hold their honour and their values in great esteem, so even if they do cheat they will hotly deny such accusations, perhaps even fight duels over them. It is not quite so much the fact that Garibaldi cheats that is abhorrent to Anne Onedin, more the blase indifference, almost pride with which he confesses it to her.

The Industrial Revolution
The nineteenth century in England was of course a time when some wonderful inventions came to light, from the steam engine to the cotton mill, and here I'll be looking at when these inventions are introduced as part of the storyline, and if, at all, they contribute to it.

Garibaldi shows Onedin a new type of pistol. Unlike the ones popular at the time, which fired a single shot and had to be reloaded (basically a portable version of the musket) this one has a revolving chamber. This means, of course, that it can fire several shots without needing to be reloaded. Its ingenuity, even its existence passes most people of this time by, so that James is interested in it, but more to the point, it actually saves Garibaldi's life, when the would-be assassin thinks he has discharged one shot and there is no further danger from the gun.

History lessons
Garibaldi explains to Anne how volatile the situation in Italy is at that moment. Both France and Austria lay claim to parts of the country, different kingdoms, and he fears they may both go to war over them. If so, the war will of course spill out into the rest of Europe. The only real way to prevent this is to make sure that both powers are driven out of Italy, which he intends to do. Should England, which is neutral in the conflict, be seen to be openly supporting Garibaldi, it will make enemies for her of both France and Austria, who may indeed decide to war against her, or at best will be poorly disposed towards her in the future. So Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister of the time, is giving his aid in secret, in the hope of both preventing war in Europe and uniting Italy, thus stabilising the whole area without having been seen to have been involved.

It's hard to think of Italy as other than the single country we now see on maps, yet we should recall, if we're old enough, the reverse plight of Yugoslavia, which, after many years of wars, broke up into separate countries, the countries we know today, like Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia. Indeed, to a degree, the breakup of the old Soviet Union can also be a case in point. I'm not quite sure though where we can find a similar example of a country which was split into separate kingdoms coming together under one flag.

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Season Two: "The coming of Shadows"
2.17 “Knives”
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I suppose it's just being American, but so many drama shows have to shoehorn in their homage to sports and it just annoys me, particularly when it's pretty much nothing to do with the episode. Star Trek: Deep Space 9 was a culprit, even using baseball as a way for Sisko to try to explain the linear nature of human existence in its very first episode, and don't even get me started on “Take me out to the holosuite”! Shows from Criminal Minds to Grimm and Homeland to Medium take any opportunity to force these little sporting cameos upon us, and as a non-American it annoys the hell out of me. Even JMS can't resist bowing to his favourite sport as we open on John Sheridan taking batting practice, of all things, as a way to release the pent-up aggression and frustration he's feeling from, as he tells Garibaldi, “an eight hour session with the League of Non-Aligned Worlds”. The security chief tells him that he's lucky: Garibaldi would trade banging diplomatic heads together for having to spend time in the “B5 Triangle”, an area in Grey Sector in which odd things have been happening, and which has acquired a reputation for being haunted. Interested in such things from an early age, Sheridan decides to check it out. Meanwhile, Londo is attacked from behind by a figure who holds a knife to his throat, but when he is then told “You are doomed, Paso Leati!” the Centauri ambassador turns, to hear the deep, rich voice and see the smiling face of his old friend Urza Jaddo, who has come to see him on a matter of great urgency.

Sherdan descends into the bowels of the feared and mysterious B5 Triangle, where he finds a wounded Markab, but when he tries to help the alien it leaps towards him, touching him and pressing its hand to his face. Overcome by shock and horror, Sheridan jumps back and the alien slumps against the bulkhead, dead. Soon after he returns though he starts feeling odd: seeing strange visions, sights he does not recognise, a planet he has never seen. Sights he does recognise, too, such as a winged alien called a grylor which once stalked him on Janos VII: it appears in his quarters and attacks him, but when he shoots at it it suddenly is not there anymore. Garibaldi, drawn to his quarters by the gunfire, but on the way there anyway with the forensic report on the Markab, tells him that the doctor concludes that the alien bashed his own head against the pipe: it was suicide, but they can't work out why.

Jaddo drinks long into the night with Londo, but when the conversation turns to talk of war, and the rise again of the Centauri Empire, it's clear that Scoutura does not share Londo's passion for the “old days”. He tells Mollari that a faction within their own government was responsible for orchestrating the reignition of the war with the Narns (whom he appears to sympathise with, a very rare trait indeed in a Centauri, other than Vir), and that further, this same faction was also instrumental in removing the old prime minister and setting up Cartagia as their puppet on the throne. Londo seems shocked (though surely he's not that naive?) but not as shocked when he is told by his friend that he and his House are to be declared traitors to the Republic. Londo of course agrees to stand with him; his star is on the rise and his word carries much weight at court, so he is a powerful ally.

When he realises that what he sees next, the ship his wife died on, explode in front of Babylon 5 when it was known it crashed over Zha'dum, Sheridan knows something is going on and he gets himself checked out by Franklin. The doctor, however, can't find anything medically wrong with him. He attributes these visions to possible stress, but Sheridan is not so sure the solution is that simple. Franklin puts him on administrative leave, starting now. Londo contacts Refa, confident he can shut down the resolution to have his friend declared a traitor, but Refa tells him it is already done, and that if he stands with Jaddo, he may end up being taken down along with him. Furious, Londo reminds Refa how he got to be in the position he is in, but Refa will not relent. The resolution will be passed, must be passed.

Garibaldi advises Sheridan that they have found out one thing about the dead Markab: that he passed through Sector 14, the same point in space where Babylon 4 briefly re-emerged from its time loop in season one's “Babylon squared”. Sheridan is amazed: he was totally ignorant of this occurrence, but it's not surprising, Garibaldi tells him, as Earth Force sealed all records and classified the incident under the highest secrecy level. Luckily, not only was he there personally but he managed to make a copy of the events, which he hid away and which now he passes on to his captain. Londo meets Urza and tells him that he is safe; Refa will look after everything, but Jaddo spits the name, telling his friend that it was Refa who brought the resolution before the Centaurum, and who will no doubt make sure it passes. He is dismayed that Londo would ally himself with such a man, and the long friendship is strained as Londo leaves the party uncomfortably.

Before he can though, Scoutura has a shock for him. A blade, a kutare, which was supposed to have been a gift, a symbol of their alliance against Refa, now becomes a challenge: a duel to the death, which Londo reluctantly accepts, stung by Jaddo's inference that he is “as cowardly as your friends”, men who strike in the shadows and through agents, who are seldom seen but whose hand is detectable in every dark deed woven in recent times in the Empire. Vir shakes his head helplessly at the stupidity and futility of it all, but there is no going back. The duel will take place in two hours. “Make your peace with the gods”, Jaddo advises him. Sheridan meanwhile sees a vision of his parents, and knows what he must do. He takes a Starfury and launches, without telling anyone where he is going. Ivanova sends Garibaldi after him, and he tells him he is heading for Sector 14. Once there, a sort of jump point opens and something expels from his body, flowing into the wormhole before it closes. Sheridan collapses, and Garibaldi shepherds his Starfury back to the station.

The duel does not go well for Londo. He is outmatched, and he knows it. Jaddo was ever the better fighter, and as his friend scores hit after hit, with Londo unable to make a mark on his opponent, Vir fears for his master's life. Indeed, step by step, Londo is pushed back until finally he is knocked to the floor, but as Jaddo raises his sword for the killing stroke, Mollari strikes upwards and kills his old friend. As he dies in his arms, Jaddo tells Londo that he wanted to die with honour, so that the stain of disgrace which will be passed upon him by Refa's resolution will not adhere to his family. Under the rules of Centauri society, Jaddo's family becomes spoils of war, the property of the victor and therefore part of Londo's House, and so they will come under his protection. This was his plan all along --- at least, once he realised that Londo was allied with Refa and his hope for a pact with his old friend was in tatters.

Sheridan tells the staff that he realised he had somehow taken onboard some alien intelligence: it had been “in” the dead Markab who, unable to make sense of the images it was being sent, went mad and killed itself, whereas Sheridan figured out the sequence and its meaning. The grylor (fear), then the Icarus exploding (loss) and the parents (home), all leading to the inescapable conclusion that the alien inside him was trying to get home. He reasons it lived in the strange anomaly that resides in Sector 14, and to there he returned it, happy to not only be free of it but also to have managed to help it get back home.

QUOTES

Sheridan: “When I was a kid I used to love to wander through all those creepy places. Haunted houses, forbidden paths, Indian burial grounds: it was like candy to me. Couldn't get enough of it.”
Garibaldi: “Just don't go in there alone, ok?”
Sheridan: “Aw, that's half the fun!”

Vir: “Every generation of Centauri mourns for the great days when their power was like unto the gods. It's counterproductive. Why make history if you fail to learn by it?”
(In this one sentence, Vir in his innocent yet wise way has summed up the entire Centauri way of thinking, and their problem. Yes, they are a race who long for the old days, but as we will see later, and as we are somewhat seeing with Londo, if that power is handed back to them they would and will make the same mistakes their ancestors did. It is, in fact, an unbreakable cycle of tradition and violence.)

Garibaldi: “Maybe next time you'll listen when I tell you not to do something.” (Pause at a hard look from Sheridan) “Sir”.

Garibaldi: “Hey, it happens. I once saw a whole chorus line of purple wombats doing showtunes in my bath tub. Course, I was pretty drunk at the time!”

Jaddo: “ A resolution is about to be brought before the Centaurum, declaring me and my House as traitors to the Republic.”
Londo: “You're joking! They could never prove such a thing!”
Jaddo: “These days, the mere accusation is enough.”
(So it was in Nazi Germany: just accuse your neighbour of being a jew or a sympathiser, or say they spoke out against Hitler, or any other little excuse that the Gestapo needed to take them away, and there was no proof required, and no defence possible).

Franklin: “Seven months ago you were commanding a starship on on The Rim. Suddenly you're put in charge of a small city in space, just as a major war breaks out. Your diet changes, your sleep is constantly interrupted, you face a major crisis every other day. On top of that, you're not sure if you can trust the people who put you here in the first place. That's a lot of stress!”
(And you think there's pressure in your job?)

Londo: “Urza is a friend, and more, a duelling comrade. My House and his have been allied since the earliest days of the Republic! I will stand up for him.”
Refa: “This is unfortunate. The political reprecussions will be very grave. House Jaddo is crumbling, and anyone who stands with it will crumble as well. We will try to protect you, of course, but if your link with this man gets out, you may no longer fit in with our plans.”
Londo: “I fit in with your plans? Perhaps you are forgetting who made your plans a reality, and how it was done?”
(This surely must be the first inkling Londo gets that a) perhaps he aligned himself with the wrong faction --- something he is already beginning to regret and rethink, and b) that Refa is already growing so overconfident that he may soon believe he can do without Mollari. It may be time to start thinking about moving some pieces on the chessboard!)

Londo: “Nothing can stop this. A new day is coming for our people, a great day. And I can help you be a part of it.”
Jaddo: “You cannot build an empire based on slaughter and deceit!”
(Funny, that's what just about every empire has been built on. What does JMS think happened? The Ottomans, the Romans, the Nazis, the Carthaginians, all said “Sorry, would you mind awfully if we annexed your country, enslaved your people and plundered your resources? Thanks a bunch, very kind.”??? :rolleyes: Slaughter, betrayal, rape, conquest, imprisonment and greed: these are the basic building blocks of any empire!)

Vir: “Disgrace is preferable over death!”
Londo: “There was a time when I would agree with you, Vir, but not now.”
Vir: “This is insanity!”
Londo: “Insanity is part of the times, Vir!”
(Indeed...)

Londo: “The blood is already on my hands. Right or wrong, I must follow the path to its end.”

IMPORTANT PLOT ARC POINTS

This episode is not central to the overall plot, though it's not quite self-contained either, as it certainly begins to map out a pathway for Londo which will take him to a very dark place indeed, and in his own heart, I think he has realised this. He also surely realises that it is far too late to change his mind now, despite Vir's urging at the end of the episode. The die is cast, he has made his choice, and he must live or die by it. Or, to be more accurate, millions across the galaxy will die because of what he has done. There are a few other almost semi-strands of the plot just kind of encroaching on this story, almost like wisps of fabric from an unseen tapestry blowing intermittently through a half-open window, tantalising us with possibilities, ideas, clues, none of which can really mean very much or be deciphered at this early stage, but which soon, very soon, will show us the whole dread picture, or most of it anyway.

Sector 14
Arc Level: Orange
As already shown in season one, this is an area of space that is highly unstable thanks to what appears to be some sort of fluctuating tachyon field surrounding it. We've seen how Babylon 5 used the field to arrest its journey backwards through time, and now it seems there are creatures living there. What other surprises has this sector of space, classified by Earth Force, for us in the future?

The Centauri Court
Arc Level: Red
As no doubt even those of you who have been paying only the most fleeting attention to my writeups can tell at this point, one of the main powerbases for the coming war is on Centauri Prime, where the new emperor, the unhinged nephew of the late Turhan, Cartagia, plays at being ruler and does not realise he is being controlled by factions within his own government. We see here that Refa is in a position of power himself, and quite willing to dispense with Londo should he have to. But is this just a bluff? After all, Mollari remains the only link to Morden and the Shadows: Refa does not yet know how he pulls off these daring raids, what his source of intelligence, to say nothing of his own powerbase is, so were he to sever ties with Londo he might find himself cut off from this mysterious power.

On the other hand, he may reason that Morden (though of course he is unaware even of the man's name, to say nothing of his existence or his position in the power structure) once he realises Mollari is out of favour, and therefore no longer any use to him, may seek a new contact, and Refa would of course ensure that he would fill the ambassador's shoes. One thing is clear: he wishes to take out Jaddo and he will not be gainsaid, even by the man whom he once counted as his biggest and most powerful supporter. This attitude must also show Londo that he has created a monster, one which may need to be put down before it turns on him.

At any rate, much of what happens throughout the galaxy from a point very soon on will revolve around the Centauri court, and as Londo has dreamed all these years, his beloved empire will soon once again have its hands on the levers of power. What it does with them is completely another matter.

The Icarus
Arc Level: Red
Not so much the ship itself, which Sheridan only sees in a brief hallucination as the alien tries to communicate with him, but what it represents, as already laid out partially in “In the shadow of Zha'dum”. There is much to be discovered about the fate of Morden, who was of course a passenger on that ship, and that of Sheridan's late wife, as well as a shocking revelation which will lead to .... but that would be telling, wouldn't it? ;)

One Good Centauri

I really have to feel for Vir in this episode. He's such a peripheral figure. It's like when two old friends meet and there's a third in the company who is not in the circle; they feel left out, and are usually made to feel that way. While in the opening scenes of the episode Londo and Vir are reminiscing about Centauri opera, and even end up singing a duet, once Urza Jaddo arrives Vir is pushed to the sidelines. Jaddo hardly acknowledges him (as a supposedly royal Centauri I suppose he looks on Vir more as a servant, and someone not worthy of his notice) and there's a touching scene where Jaddo and Londo raise a toast, and Vir tries to join in but is unable to clink glasses with them, completely ignored. I'm reminded of Homer Simpson, trying to fit in when he went to try to get the job at the nuclear power plant and found himself the outsider among college buddies who had gone to school with Smithers, or Meg in Family Guy, who seems in one scene to be enjoying herself with a bunch of friends, only for us to realise as they move on and she stays in the cafe that she was just sitting with them, not part of their group.

Even when Vir commends Londo for sticking up for Jaddo and trying to defeat the resolution, Mollari ignores his praise and just orders him to start contacting his people. Later, as the two agree to the duel, Vir can be seen in the background shaking his head and rolling his eyes, and when he tries to comfort Londo later, on the death of Scoutura, Londo is inconsolable and will not listen to Vir's advice to use the tragedy to realise that he is on the wrong path and do something to change it, instead fatalistically declaring that there is no turning back now.

Questions?

What exact threat did Jaddo pose to Refa and his accomplices? He seemed to have powerful friends, and was vehemently opposed to the new emperor and the manner in which he attained the throne, but was it just this that sealed his fate? He tells Londo that he knows of the conspiracy to murder the prime minister and place Cartagia on the throne. Did he have proof? Is it this that makes him a target? He also seems, oddly for a Centauri, to have sympathy for, even empathy with the Narns. Is it this that Refa and his colleagues are afraid of, that if Jaddo were to gain enough popular support he could challenge the war against their age-old enemy and perhaps turn the tide of opinion against the emperor? Or do they even fear that he may make a play for the throne himself, organising a coup? With Londo's help, that might succeed, which could be why, though he disguises it with a thin veneer of contempt and regret, Refa fears the union of these two old friends, and must remove Jaddo by any means possible?

I'm sorry to say that I believe none of these questions are ever answered, and with the death of Urza Jaddo we are simply left to theorise that the old Centauri got in Refa's way, and nobody does that for very long.

Why were all files on Babylon 4 sealed and confiscated by Earth Force? Why should the present hierarchy care if there was some phantom sighting of an earlier station, an unexplainable (at this point) event? Has Clarke something to hide about the predecessor to Babylon 5? Did his people sabotage it, somehow sending it back in time for some reason? Could they? Are Psi Corps involved? Or is it the Minbari, who have great influence over the purse strings of the present station, who have demanded, or requested, total secrecy on the matter? And if so, how can they be sure that those who were there will not blab? Sinclair has been reassigned, so we know he is very much where the Minbari can keep an eye on him, but Garibaldi is not exactly known for being tight-lipped, and now we see that he passes on the information he has to his new commander. Why didn't Earth Force have him reassigned too, away from B5 and its new captain?

Absent friends

Significantly, neither of the main alien ambassadors, G'Kar or Delenn, are in this episode even for a moment. As I think I said before (been so long since I wrote one of these) G'Kar can probably be assumed to be back on his homeworld, helping in its defence or trying to get people to safety. But Delenn, considering Sector 14 was mentioned: you would have thought she would have been involved, especially if, as theorised above, her people have a special reason for wanting that sector of space to remain off-limits. Of course, without Delenn there is no Lennier, though that's not always the case. However, there is no sign of her attache this episode.

Sketches
Londo Mollari

We get more of the youth of the Centauri ambassador filled in for us in this episode. We learn that he was part of a duelling society, and had the name Paso Leati while his friend Urza Jaddo, his House linked to Mollari's from “the earliest days of the Republic” (you wonder how the Centauri measure time: is everything “from the earliest days of the Republic” and then after that? ) was called Scoutura, this meaning “the silent beast”, while Londo's referred to his being as crazed as the animal called the leati, which I think we can assume is some sort of lion or big cat. It's intimated quite strongly that the two men both loved the same woman, whom Jaddo ended up marrying, and it is perhaps ironic that in the end, Londo gets what he wanted all those years ago: Jaddo's wife will, on his death, become part of Londo's family, and she will be under his protection. However, we already know Londo has, or had, three wives, two of which the emperor, before his untimely death, allowed him to divorce in season one's “Soul mates”, so even with only one left he's hardly likely to want a second! Not to mention that he killed her husband!

We get too a sense of the darkness crushing in around Mollari, as he begins to realise what he has done, what he will yet do, and how it will affect just about everything in the galaxy. He is either too proud though, too stubborn or even too pragmatic (or, one might postulate with no real degree of irony, afraid) to try to retrace his steps now. He could go to Sheridan, tell him what he knows, and unaware that the captain already knows about the Shadows but knowing he has met Morden, whom he ordered released as “a guest of the Centauri Republic and under their diplomatic immunity” in the previous episode, perhaps act as an inside man for Sheridan and his allies. But he does not think about this: he is a lost soul, and truth to tell, he is enjoying the sudden power and recognition that has come his way. He is, to put it in the parlance of the forties, a “big man”, and he does not intend to let that go.

So he will walk this road alone, with the shadow of what he has done forever falling over him and dogging his steps, as Vir tries to sway him onto the right path, but, true to his friendship with Londo, will never abandon him, even when things get really bad. Vir will always be there for Londo, even if Londo may not return the compliment.

General notes:
While this is a decent episode and has something of a shock ending, it has many many flaws. Some of this may be due to the fact that it is one of the few that JMS did not write himself, but farmed out. Though it has to be said the main plot is very well written and with just the right amount of tragedy and a very realistic ending, the subplot with Sheridan and the “hitch-hiking alien” is poor, ripped right out of the worst episodes of the likes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and in essence it doesn't add much to the story other than give the captain a role in an episode in which otherwise he would not figure. The “Sector 14” idea is really nothing more than a clumsy setup to ensure he knows about Babylon 4, as perhaps JMS realised one day that the captain could not have been aware of this event, and needed a way in for him, because after all, it will be integral to the later plotlines. The idea that Sheridan could figure out the messages being sent to him by the alien while the Markab could not is a little disparaging of the aliens: they're quite a religious lot, as we'll find out in the next episode, and should really have been more in tune with what was being broadcast. But once again, a human has to save the day.

Franklin has little or nothing to do in this episode, nor indeed does Ivanova. Garibaldi is the only one who sees any action, and that's mostly because he's the one who follows Sheridan's Starfury to Sector 14 and retrieves him, but other than that all he does is talk to the captain about baseball, and in the process hand over his unauthorised recording of the events of “Babylon squared”. It is a thin subplot, and there's not room to stretch it to allow the other main characters do much, if even anything, within it.

Darkness Rising

As we head towards the climax of season two, and towards the “great war” of which Sheridan speaks in the opening titles, I'll be showing you little clues that point the way towards the outbreak of this mighty conflict, which will actually in effect stretch over two more seasons. Without of course giving anything away, I'll just be nudging you and saying “remember that. That's going to be important.”

The first inkling we have of a great darkness coming --- other than the dire predictions that Delenn and, to a lesser extent, G'Kar and even Kosh have made leading up to this --- is when Londo declares that his path is set, his people are on their way back to what he believes as their rightful place as rulers of the galaxy, and nobody and nothing can stop what is to come to pass. Although belligerent and cocky, there's a certain sense of unease, even fear and dread as he speaks, realising that events which he put in motion (or which he allowed himself to be the agent of setting in motion) are far darker, deeper and more terrifying than he had at first realised.

2.18 "Confessions and Lamentations”
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An overdue Markab transport turns out to have been subject to some unidentifiable virus that has killed everyone on board; Sheridan is incensed to learn that Warren Keffer has been conducting unauthorised excursions in pursuit of the strange ship he once saw in hyperspace (see “A distant star”) and orders all such activity curtailed, as he knows this is a Shadow ship Keffer saw, and the importance of not playing his and Delenn's and Kosh's hand too soon. Franklin is concerned that there have now been four deaths of Markabs on the station, all apparently due to natural causes. Something is not right. It turns out that all the Markabs on the vessel - which is towed back to Babylon 5 and which the Markan doctor there initially demands is sealed, but is overridden by Franklin, who has discovered the truth - as well as the four “natural deaths” on the station are due to the contraction of a disease known to only have existed once in Markab history, on one island whose inhabitants were noted for being promiscuous. The Markabs believed, when the population was wiped out, both that it was a judgement from their gods, punishment for the wickedness of the islanders, and that the plague had been confined to that island.

Now that it has resurfaced, it is a taboo subject, somewhat like AIDS was originally, and the stigma attached to it is one of great shame to the aliens. The Markab doctor, Lazarenn, tells Sheridan and Franklin that within a short time, every Markab on the station will contact the virus and die. Research on the subject has been so minimal, with the Markab believing only the impure are affected, that Lazarenn does not know if the disease is transmissable to other races. When he finds out about the fact that his friend has been working, under almost no budget and with complete opposition from his government, on a cure, Franklin directs the entire resources of Babylon 5 towards helping him.

Sheridan issues an executive order placing Babylon 5 under quarantine, and when the word gets out as to why this is happening, a climate of fear descends on the station, which turns to hatred, as such things often do. When a dead Pak'Mara is found, seemingly healthy, Franklin worries that the disease has begun to jump species, and other races could now be susceptible to its effects. Dr. Lazarenn, scandalised by the treatment of his people as they are called in for tests to see if they are infected (essentially implying they are immoral) declares that they will segregate themselves from the rest of the station, gathering together in one place, which Franklin warns is the worst possible thing they could do. Concentrating in one group will only speed the progress of the disease, but Lazarenn will not relent, and believes their purity will save them from the wrath of their gods.

Franklin is mildly disgusted when, on ordering his doctors to enter an isolation unit wherein the dead Pak'Mara lies, they all shuffle their feet and look around, reluctant to do so and possibly expose themselves to the virus. He snaps that he will go in, but then Lazarenn appears and offers to take his place. He will remain within the isolation unit, and comment and observe from there, thus preventing any possible spread of the disease to medlab. Delenn comes to Sheridan with an odd, but brave request: she wishes that she and Delenn be allowed enter the place where the Markab have segregated themselves, in order to minister to, comfort and help the aliens. Sheridan is staggered at her generosity and - well, for the want of another word, humanity - after all, she does not know that the disease will not affect Minbari, and it well may. She is willing to risk death for a people she hardly knows, just to bring them solace and to ensure they don't die alone. Choking back emotion, the captain agrees.

In the isolation unit in medlab, Dr. Lazarenn begins to show symptoms, and knowing his time will be up soon, exhorts Franklin to start running some tests while he can. Inside the Markab area, Delenn and Lennier wander through an atmosphere of despair, fear, panic and bitter hope and desperation, trying to bring what words of comfort they can to a people they know are beyond all hope. There is nothing they can to to stop the disease, merely ease the passing of those who are infected by it. Perhaps it will be enough. The tests on the Pak'Mara come through, and it is not good news: the plague has jumped species. This time, though, Franklin is in no mood for hesitation from his staff, and orders them to autopsy the alien and look for some answer, something they can use to defeat this plague. Smarting at the lash of his tongue (and perhaps at their own cowardice) they rush off to carry out their orders.

Finally, a cure, or a possible cure, or at least something to combat the plague, is discovered, and Franklin rushes to the isolation area to begin distributing it to the Markabs. But when the doors are opened, there are only two living beings left standing: Delenn and Lennier, among a sea of Markab corpses. Every single one of them has died.

QUOTES
Keffer: “There's something out there!”
Ivanova: “Yes, there is. There's something out there. There's also something in here. The something in here is me giving you a direct order. If there's some part of that sentence you don't understand, Lieutenant, I'll be glad to explain it to you for the next four months while you watch Zeta Squadron go on missions without you!”

Delenn: “You were asleep.”
Sheridan: “Oh no no: I was meditating.”
Lennier: “The sound you were making, this is part of human meditation?”
Sheridan: “Oh now, I don't snore.”

Franklin: “They were all killed by some sort of plague or disease that was brought onto the station by your people. Now I want to know: how contagious and how terminal?”
Dr. Lazarenn: “It is one hundred percent terminal, and one hundred percent contagious.”

Garibaldi: “When people get scared they start looking for scapegoats. Trust me, this is gonna get real ugly, real fast.”

Lazarenn: “How do I know this is not a conspiracy on the part of your world to destroy my people? For all I know, this disease was planted in our drinking water, our food. Nothing happened until we began coming here. Perhaps it is your own immorality that has contaminated us!”

Ivanova (on monitor): “Some of the more extreme human groups think they've come up with the solution: wipe out the Markabs, wipe out the problem.”
Sheridan: “Seems we've heard that before.”

Sheridan: “They're not your people, Delenn.”
Delenn: “I was not aware that similarity was necessary for the exercise of compassion.”

Delenn: “All life is transitory, Captain. A dream. We all come together in the same place, at the end of time. If I don't see you again here, I will see you in a little while, in a place where no shadows fall.”

Delenn: “Lennier, she has been separated from her mother. Please find her.”
Lennier:”How?”
Delenn: “Faith manages.”

Lazarenn: “Sometimes the test is not to find the answer, but to see how you react when you realise there is no answer.”

Barman: “Hey! What do you call two billion dead Markabs? Planetary redecoration! Ha ha! News! News gives me the creeps. You know, I heard it was the Vorlons who poisoned them. You know how they are!”
Franklin (sotto voce): “Nothing changes..”

Parallels
It's quite ironic that the doctors and nurses on Franklin's staff, sworn to preserve life and give theirs if necessary in the furtherance of their practice, shy from entering the isolation unit, yet when faced by a Markab, who is certainly infected by this disease - which could quite easily be fatal to humans too - and who holds out his hand for assistance, Garibaldi, the tough guy who usually professes if not an aversion to then a general tolerance of aliens, has almost no hesitation in gripping the Markab's hand and helping him up off the floor. A pretty stunning moment, encapsulating in one tiny scene the fact that the security chief has more humanity and more self-sacrifice in his little finger than the whole of medlab, Franklin excluded.

IMPORTANT PLOT ARC POINTS
None really: the only real reference to the plot at all is Keffer's quest to discover what the Shadow ship is. Other than that, it's a self-contained episode that, in effect, you could watch without having seen any of the rest of the show. And surely one that, had you watched it and not been a fan, would encourage you to get into the show. (Also see new section “Together we're stronger”)

QUESTIONS?
It's an unsubstantiated rumour, even a wild accusation that the barman voices at the end of the episode, but could it be true? Is it possible that the Vorlons had some hand in the destruction of the Markab people? Were they some sort of experiment, for later use in what is to come? A whole planet used as laboratory test subjects for a new (or very old) biological weapon? Imagine the power any race would wield if it held such a weapon, and controlled the antidote, assuming there is one. It's food for (very dark) thought.

Absent friends
Just as Delenn did not figure in the previous episode, but more than makes up for her absence here, so this time there is no sign at all of Londo or his attache. G'Kar remains an unknown quantity, and if the Vorlons had anything to do with the Markab extinction, Kosh is not around to confirm or deny, or more likely, be inscutable about it.

Together we're stronger
We see from this episode that some sort of attraction is beginning to develop between Delenn and Sheridan. This section will concentrate on how, whether it be individuals, races, fleets or whole planets, the coming war will only be won by a concerted, joint effort, and old enemies are going to have to work together. Season three and four, particularly, are an exercise in and example of what can happen when people put aside their differences and work together. It will also highlight how this can go badly, sometimes tragically wrong.

As Delenn prepares to enter the Markab isolation area, Sheridan, touched by her willingness to sacrifice herself (something that will be picked up on and expanded in an episode or two) asks her, next time she sees him, to call him “John”. This, coupled with the dinner he attends near the opening of the episode (a return of the favour for when he invited her out to dinner shortly after her transformation: their first date as it were) shows that he is no longer seeing her as an ambassador only, as an ally or even as an alien: feelings are starting to grow inside his heart (and, he must hope, in hers too) that will hopefully burgeon into something far deeper. When she touches his face and promises to meet him “in a place where no shadows fall”, there is of course added significance in the choice of words here, given the name of their enemy.

SKETCHES
Ambassador Delenn

We have heard much about the Minbari ambassador; how she sacrificed her very identity at the end of season one to become this new hybrid, and how this has been received by her peers, leading to her being dismissed from the Grey Council by Neroon and the others. We have seen how she abhors violence but is prepared to use it when there is no other choice (particularly in “All alone in the night”, when we get an inkling of the steel that resides beneath her otherwise placid, almost unassuming shell) and now we see how great her capacity for compassion is.

Realising there is nothing she can do to save the Markab, unless Franklin comes up with an antidote or cure in the eleventh hour (in the event, it's the twelfth hour and far too late when he does) she requests permission to go into the isolation area and try to comfort the aliens. She does not at this point even know if she will survive: the virus could very well affect her people too, and Lennier, unquestioning and unafraid, ready to follow her into fire, accompanies her without a word of protest or caution, wanting only to serve her, and if necessary, die with her. She is not making a grand gesture here: she does not announce it to the station or have a big crowd gather to watch her make the entrance. She does so quietly, without fuss and without the slightest hesitation. In this one selfless act, she shows herself to be more human than anyone else on the station.

While inside, she relates a story to a Markab child she had befriended before the plague was confirmed as on the station. She tells of how, while quite young, she got lost in the city but found her way to the temple (presumably, though it's not confirmed, of Valen) and stayed there, believing she would be safe. She fell asleep and awoke to find a mighty figure looming over her, smiling. The apparition (again, we must assume this was Valen) told her she would be all right, that he would not allow any harm to befall “one of his children”, and shortly afterwards she was reunited with her parents as they found her in the temple. Yes, the story has an uncomfortably direct parallel with one of the parables in the Bible, almost ripped off, you could say, but it does show her faith in Valen and that he was watching over her even at that early age. Given what we will learn in season three, this account might very well be fanciful, exaggerated or even the dream of a lost child, but it does clearly illustrate the fact that, even then, the gods of the Minbari were looking out for Delenn, aware that she was someone special, with a destiny to fulfill, a great task to perform. Again, when we get into about mid season three, this will take on much greater significance and may even suggest an explanation.

The parallel of course is obvious: Delenn is telling the Markab child that she, too, was lost once but was reunited with her parents, mostly through having faith. Just at that moment, in a perfect example of pin-sharp writing, Lennier arrives with her mother. The joy of seeing this child reunited with her parent though is immediately tempered by the sudden stumble of the child, as Delenn and Lennier realise/remember that all of these people, all of them, are fated to die, and there is nothing they can do about it. They may have managed to have produced one moment of joy for both child and mother, but it is fleeting. A small victory, perhaps, but the true defeat lies ahead.

After her ordeal, Delenn is typically philosophical about the future, hoping that people will learn from this tragedy and be kinder to one another, and also not hide behind religious dogma and superstition when danger threatens. She is of course engaging in wishful thinking, as we see by the callous attitude of the barman in the final scene. But if nothing else, this whole episode has shown her that life is indeed precious, and if she has feelings for John Sheridan, it may be time to share them with him.

Messages
You'd have to be blind not to see the clear message being put across through the story of the Markab plague, and although Franklin compares it to the Black Death of the fourteenth century, it's of course more closely linked with the rise and spread of AIDS in the 1980s. Fear, distrust and paranoia turn to vengeance, retribution and accusation as the Markab are blamed for bringing the disease aboard the station, and Lazerenn relates how many of his people, believing the planet itself had become cursed by immorality, left to go to other worlds, thus propogating the spread of the disease. Ignorance and pride, mixed in with a healthy (or not so healthy) dose of religious fervour and panic, led those who believed they were pure to abandon their homeworld, never believing or even conceiving that they too were infected, and that by travelling they were condemning others to their fate.

It's not mentioned whether other races fell ill outside of B5, but what is incontrovertible is that the Markab race, as a whole, has all but ceased to exist now. Franklin postulates that some random Markabs may survive on distant planets, but they will be few and far between, and probably in hiding when the word spreads about what has happened. It's clear too that, had the Markabs stayed separated and accepted the help of medlab, the virus could have been beaten before it was too late. As ever, fear, distrust and a belief that their god would save them led the Markab to inadvertently speed up the spread of the disease, and their own destruction. It may be that here, JMS is saying that if we ignore epidemics like AIDS and SARS, try to isolate those who are infected instead of helping them, we may end up doing more harm than good. Fear is the real enemy, and it only triumphs when we give in to it.

There's also the age-old message of governments protecting themselves by ignoring a problem. Not wishing to be the ones to admit that their people may be immoral, the Markab government refused to fund any research into the disease, leaving Lazarenn basically on his own. They were more worried about losing their positions and their power than in helping save their people, and even indeed themselves. In a way, they brought about their own destruction. Harking back to my “Together we're stronger” section, this is proven to be the case when Markab (or at least, Dr. Lazarenn) and human doctors work in concert to try to determine what the disease is, how it works and how it can be defeated. Add in Delenn's self-sacrifical and selfless compassion offered to the dying aliens, and you have perhaps one of the first and best (if ultimately futile) examples of races working together for a common goal, without thought of territory, religion or any differences.

This ain't Star Trek!
Along with season one's “Believers”, and yet to come season three's “Passing through Gethsemane”, this is one of the saddest and most moving episodes in the series. I was wiping away tears while writing this, and they were nothing compared to the amount I wept when I saw this originally. Another example of how Babylon 5 was so different from Star Trek, or any other science-fiction series, where almost always (though, to Star Trek: the Next Generation's credit, there were some “dark” storylines and the good guys did not always win, to say nothing of Deep Space 9) there was a last-minute solution and the day was saved. In that universe, a dead crewmember suddenly coughed and was not dead after all, or a planet doomed to destruction had the catastrophe averted at the eleventh hour. In Babylon 5, this does sometimes happen but not always, and this is a fine example of a time when it does not.

Watching this for the first time, anyone who was unfamiliar with the series would be expecting, as Franklin and Sheridan rush to the isolation area with the cure, that they would be in time, and it's a great shock and a cold water-barrel of reality dumped over our heads when the doors open and there is not one single Markab left alive. Yes, there is a cure, but there is no longer anyone who can benefit from it. It's a sobering piece of writing, fantastic drama, and though it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, you come to realise that taste is the real world. In the real world, the hero does not always triumph, the guy seldom gets the girl and the bomb usually does go off. Though this is just drama and not real, it at times comes so close to reality that you have to remind yourself you're watching a TV show.

Now that's good writing!

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2.12 "Nightshifter"

The guys are investigating a case in Wisconsin in which a trusted employee robbed the place and then shot one of the other employees when he discovered her and tried to turn her in. The robber, a girl called Helena, then went home and committed suicide. Another ex-employee of the bank, Ronald, which was also robbed, maintains that it was not his friend that did it. He says it had his face, but was what he calls a mandroid. He has CCTV footage and startles the brothers when he shows them a freeze frame on which they can clearly see the “laser eyes”, as he calls them, which they have seen before, on the shapeshifter in season one's “Skin”. They pretend it's nothing and fob him off, but now they're worried. If another of these things is on the loose ...

They pose as security specialists and check the cameras in the bank to see if they can spot the shifter. Just as they do though, Ronald charges in with an assault rifle yelling “This isn't a robbery! Everybody down!” and assumes control. Dean tries to win his confidence, telling him that he believes him: there is something in the bank, but it's no mandroid. Mandroids don't exist. No, this is a shapeshifter. As Ronald forces all his hostages into the bank's vault, he and Dean explore and find a pile of shed skin. This is not good. Dean and Sam had traced the shapeshifter to be the bank manager but if it's shed its skin then it could now be anyone.

In the vault one of the hostages, the guard from the bank, starts having breathing problems. He could be having a heart attack. Sam hesitates while Dean finds a body, ostensibly the guy who is right now helping the guard and demanding he be let out. He's the shapeshifter, but as Dean confronts him he attacks him and escapes. Dean pursues him. An amateur at this, Ronald passes by an open window and is shot dead before Sam can save him. Dean releases the bank guard, and they find that the shifter has changed again: another pile of skin. Now they have no clue who they're looking for. Then things take a turn for the worse.

The FBI arrive, and they know about Dean. The lead agent, Henriksen, has been tracking him and (thinks he) knows all about him. He gives Dean and Sam a chance to surrender or his team is coming in hot. Meanwhile Sam finds the dead body of Sherry, the female hostage who had become so enamoured with Dean's bravery. Back at the vault, they drag Sherry out, ready to kill her but she faints, which surprises them: it's not the sort of behaviour they would have expected from the ruthless shapeshifter. Then they see the “dead” eyes of the other Sherry opening and realise that it is the shifter. Once again it escapes. The feds enter the building in full assault mode.

Sam and Dean kill the shapeshifter using a silver letter opener (?) and then down two feds and take their uniforms, making their way out of the bank. However they are now, as Dean says, screwed. The feds are after them and they will be on their trail. As if their job was not difficult enough already...

MUSIC
Styx: “Renegade”


PCRs
Dean refers to Sam as Agent Johnson, one of the two FBI agents from Die Hard

Dean's FBI badge shows his name to be Jack Bauer (from 24) and later Jack Ryan, fictional character in novels by the late Tom Clancy

Sam's ID is Han Solo, from Star Wars. Odd he gets away with such an unusual and well-known name, but I suppose nobody looks too closely at nametags.

Dean tells Ronald he wasn't exactly a smooth criminal; referring possibly to the Michael Jackson song of the same name.

Ronald references Terminator 2 , Arnie's blockbuster followup to Terminator.

Ronald shows the guys a copy of Fortean Times, which mentions the Cybermen, one of the recurring enemies of Doctor Who.

The ARC of the matter
Not a massive amount of arc material here, but a few plot strands join up as season one's episode “Skin” returns to haunt the guys, Dean still being seen as the murderer in St. Louis and hunted by the FBI, who are now closing in.

2.13 "Houses of the Holy"

In Providence, Rhode Island, a bored woman watches TV when suddenly an electrical storm knocks out all power, but amazingly, her TV comes back on, the screen filled by a Televangelist, who seems to be speaking to her directly, telling her to prepare for the coming of angels. As she turns towards the door, she sees a bright figure outlined there, impossible to make out, but seemingly made of light. She smiles... The next we see of her, she is in an insane asylum, having been committed there after stabbing a man to death. Posing as a doctor there, Sam asks her why she did it and she tells him that God sent one of His angels and told her to do it. She is utterly convinced she carried out God's will.

When he returns to Dean, who is laying low after the robbery, he tells his brother that he believes the woman, Gloria (really?) is not insane. She is the second person in this town to kill and claim to have been told to do so by an angel. Oddly, though he readily believes in demons (can't help but; he's seen them after all) Dean seems ill-disposed towards crediting the existence of angels. Going stir-crazy at the hotel, by his own admission, Dean suggests they check out Gloria's apartment, but Sam says he has already done so. Nothing. However, he does remember the woman saying that she saw a sign outside the door of the man she killed, who lived in the same building as her, so they head over. When they get there though all they see that could have triggered Gloria's attack is a plastic Christmas decoration in the shape of an angel. Dean scoffs, but Sam remembers something the girl said.

“He was guilty to his deepest foundations”, she had told Sam, and as they explore the cellar they come across scratches on the wall and a human fingernail. Digging where they found it, they uncover a skeleton. Evidently, whoever or whatever spoke to Gloria had some inside knowledge about this guy she killed. Meanwhile, the “angel” visits another person, and guided by it, he kills a guy as he opens his door, led there by the blinding white presence. When the brothers break into the victim's house and check his computer, they find he had been in the process of setting up a meeting with a thirteen-year-old girl. The rendezvous was supposed to take place today.

They then find another link between the three victims, that they all attended the same church, Our Lady of the Angels. Of course. As they leave the church they see a shrine, and the priest, Father Reynolds, tells them it is for one of the other priests, a Father Gregory, who was killed two months ago in a carjacking. There wasn't even time, he tells them, to administer last rites. Since then, he's been “praying for deliverance”. Things are beginning to slot into place now. The brothers head to Gregory's grave, but when they arrive Sam sees a statue of an angel begin to vibrate, a blinding white light and he collapses. When Dean finds him, he tells his brother he has actually seen an angel. Dean is of course skeptical, being aware that some demons and spirits can read minds, and thinks Sam is being used.

Dean decides the only way to convince his brother that it is the spirit of Father Gregory and not an angel who spoke to him is for them to call it forth, and they arrange a seance to be carried out by his graveside. But as they return from the stores with their necessaries, Sam suddenly sees a man on the pavement outlined in brilliant white light, and knows he has been given a sign that this is the man he has been told by the angel he must stop. Dean believes this means his brother will, if necessary, kill the man, and while the other three victims (or two at least) have been proven to be, in Dean's words, world-class pervs, and this man most likely is carrying some dark secret or about to perpetrate some horrible deed, Dean does not want Sam jumping the gun. And so he jumps into the Impala and heads off in pursuit of the mystery man, leaving Sam to go back to perform the seance.

As he does, Father Reynolds walks in and aghast at this desecration, as he sees it, of Church property, is ushering Sam out when a blinding white light suffuses the nave and indeed, as Dean had predicted, the spirit of Father Gregory rises, to his fellow priest's total astonishment. However when he claims to be an angel, his fellow priest reminds him that angels are supernatural, divine beings who serve God. A man cannot become an angel, and what Gregory is doing is wrong: it is not the work of God, it is vengeance. Dean meanwhile shadows the man marked out by Gregory for Sam, and indeed he does turn out to be up to no good, pulling a knife on his date. But Dean stops him and the girl is saved. When the guy drives off, Dean heads in pursuit.

Back at the church, Father Reynolds convinces Father Gregory to allow him to perform the last rites, and the confused priest's spirit is finally at rest. Dean tracks the would-be killer until they end up at a railway crossing, where a truck carrying metal pipes swerves, one of the spikes smashing through the window of the car Dean's quarry was driving and he is impaled, dead as a can of spam. Dean begins to wonder, despite himself, if there is after all some higher power at work, and if possibly, it might be protecting them.

MUSIC
“Down on love”: Jamie Dunlap


“There's a good times a comin'” : Doug Stableton
(No video available)

“Knockin' on Heaven's door” : Bob Dylan


WISEGUY

After Sam has told him there is more lore on angels than demons, he responds with “Yeah, there's a ton of lore on unicorns too. I hear they shoot rainbows out of their asses!” Sam sits down, shocked. “Wait”, he says, as if trying to wrap his head around the concept, “You mean unicorns don't exist?”

BROTHERS
The root of Dean's refusal to believe in angels seems to have its source in disappointment. He and Sam have seen demons, devils, all sorts of dark creatures, but never once have they seen anything even approaching an angel, or even a good spirit. Having conversed with demons, learned that Hell exists and that his father is suffering there, Dean seems angry that Heaven, if it does exist, shows no interest in sending its agents down to help them do battle against the forces of Satan. If God exists, shouldn't He be giving them some aid here? And if He does not exist, then doesn't that just skew the whole good/evil balance very much in the favour of the latter?

Dean believes there are no angels - probably believes there is no God either - and he is depressed, angry and feels like someone who has been promised something and then found out it was all a lie. He wants Heaven to exist, but as he says to Sam, he believes in what he sees with his own two eyes, and no evidence of God, Heaven or angels has made itself known to him. Therefore, to his mind, none of these things exist. For a demon hunter, he's amazingly pragmatic.

However, later in the episode we find that the actual reason he refuses to believe in angels is that their mother used to tell him that angels were watching over them - in fact, it was the last thing she ever said to him, and he knows she was wrong, because they lost her, and they lost their father, and Dean himself is now lost, even though he won't tell Sam about it.

We also learn that, to Dean's amazement and almost derision, Sam prays. He prays every day, something his brother did not know or even suspect about him. I guess, in their line of work, you'll take all the help you can get.

In what I consider a fantastic piece of writing, there's a total turnaround in the end, worthy of the best of JMS. Sam, who believed in God and angels, has had his faith shaken by seeing proof that Gregory was not an angel, and has begun to re-evaluate his beliefs. Dean, on the other hand, the eternal skeptic and scoffer at the concept of a higher power, has seen with his own eyes what he believes may have been the will of the Almighty carried out in the freak execution of the guy he was chasing, and it's so off-the-wall, the way it happened, that he's beginning to believe. So the positions have been, for now, completely reversed.

The “WTF??!!” moment

Sort of isn't one, really, unless you count the inexplicable death of Dean's quarry, but that doesn't really qualify, not to me.

PCRs

I don't know if it's meant to be one, but given Supernatural's use of images and themes from music I wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, the priest at Our Lady of the Angels says “I guess we could all use a little divine intervention”, which is almost a direct quote from Alison Moyet's hit “Love resurrection”.

As part of their hastily thrown together summoning kit, Dean buys a Spongebob Squarepants mouse mat!

Gloria asks Dean archly “You mean, am I stark raving for Cocoa Puffs?” A presumably American version of our Coco Pops, a popular breakfast cereal for kids.

Dean says “Roma Downey made her do it” speaking of Gloria. Roma Downey is a character in sickly-sweet TV series Touched by an Angel

Dean asks Sam disparagingly if he is “Mister 700 Club”. A religious news talk show

Dean again: “You've got to wait for some religious Bat signal, eh?” I sure as Hell am not explaining that one!

Sam this time: “Seance, eh? I hope Whoopi is available!” Reference to Whoopi Goldberg's role as a psychic in the movie Ghost.

Finally, the very title of the episode, like many of them, is a PCR which refers to the Led Zeppelin album of the same name.

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2.4 “Fry and the Slurm Factory”

Tagline: “LIVE from Omicron Persei 8!”

After almost choking on a bottle cap from a can of Slurm (why is a bottle cap inside a can? Don't ask stupid questions, meatbag!) Fry and Bender are delighted to find that they have won a trip to the Slurm factory as guests of the mascot of the most addictive soft drink in the galaxy, Slurms MacKenzie, the original party worm! Mind you, this comes after they have already checked out ninety thousand cans of the drink using the professor's new f-ray, which can see through anything, including metal. Having found the golden cap and won the contest, Fry Bender and the crew head to the planet Wormulon, where Slurm is made. Here they are given a guided tour of the factory. Interesting though it is, with stories of a secret ingredient that makes Slurm so addictive, Fry is soon dying of thirst, but no drink is offered.

In desperation, he tries to lean out of the boat which is travelling over a river of pure Slurm but falls in and, unable to swim, has to be rescued by Leela. Separated from the tour, they, along with Bender (“Why did you jump in?” asks Leela, to which the robot replies “Everyone was doing it! I just wanted to be popular!”) are sucked into a whirlpool which takes them down into a sewer and discover that not only is what they thought to be Slurm something entirely different, but there appear to be two factories. One, behind the door marked “fake” is the one they have been touring, while the other, marked “real” leads them to the actual Slurm production chamber, where they find...

Slurm is actually the excretions of a huge mother-worm, a massive queen who is squeezing out the noxious substance into cans on an assembly line. Horrified, they give away their presence and are pursued by the guards. Captured, they are sentenced to different fates: Bender is to be made into Slurm cans (174, to be precise), Leela is to be submerged into raw Slurm and will become a Slurm Queen while Fry is given concentrated super Slurm that is so addictive he can't even tear himself away from it to rescue his friends. He manages to drag the tank with the Slurm in it over to the controls and releases Leela, who then saves Bender. As they make for the exit they run into Slurms MacKenzie, who reveals he is sick of being the original party worm and will help them escape if they will take him with them back to Earth.

In the end, he sacrifices his life by bringing down the roof of the cave upon the giant mother worm and allowing Fry, Leela and Bender to escape. Farnsworth relates the whole sordid story, the secret of Slurm and its origin to the Bureau of Soft Drinks, but when Fry hears they are about to ban the drink, he says the professor is senile and making up stories, and so the evidence is ignored and buried, and Slurm will continue to be the number one soft drink in the galaxy.

QUOTES
Zoidberg (asked to look at Bender, who is feeling ill): “I'll have a look but I remind you I'm an expert on humans, not robots.” (Shines light in Fry's eyes)
Fry: “I'm not Bender! I'm Fry!”
Zoidberg: “Really? I thought you were the robot!”
Fry: “Nope! Human!”
Zoidberg: “All right, all right! Spare me your life story!”

Bender: “All right! The original party worm! Are you ready to get down, get funky with us?”
Glurmo; “He'd better be: that's what we pay him for, right?”
Slums (sheepishly): “Right!”
Glurmo: “In fact, Slurms has to party all night, every night, or he's fired!”

Zoidberg (to the others, about Fry): “I didn't have the heart to tell him. It's fin fungus. He'll be floating upside-down by morning!”
Glurmo: “Welcome, friends, to the wonderful world of whimsy that we like to call Slurm Centralised Fabrication Unit!”
Farnsworth: “Who are those horrible orange creatures?”
Glurmo: “Why, those are the grunka-lunkas. They work here in the Slurm factory.”
Farnsworth: “Tell them I hate them!”

Hermes: “So you're telling me I could fire all my staff and hire grunka-lunkas at half the cost?”
Glurmo: “That's right. They think they have a good union but they don't. Essentially, they're slaves!”

Fry: “Grab my legs and lower me into the Slurm so I can drink.”
Leela: “I will not: that's moronic!”
Fry: “Fine! I'll let go and swim around in the Slurm, and drink as much as I like!” (He does) “Help! Leela! I can't swim!”
Fry: “My God! What if the secret ingredient is ... people?”
Leela: “No, there's already a soda like that: Soylent Cola.”
Fry: “Hmm. How is it?”
Leela: “It varies from person to person.”

Glurmo: “So, you discovered the secret ingredient in Slurm. That concludes the portion of the tour where you stay alive!”

Slurm queen: “You (Leela) will be submerged into pure royal Slurm, which in a matter of minutes will transfer you into a queen like me!”
Glurmo: “But Your Majesty, she's a commoner! Her Slurm will taste foul!”
Slurm Queen: “Exactly! That's why we'll market it as New Slurm! Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!”

Fry: “Don't worry about grandpa sir! He's always making up crazy stories!”
Farnsworth: “I'm not your grandpa! You're my uncle, from the year 2000!”

PCRs
Fry worries that the secret ingredient in Slurm may be .... people! But Leela assures him there's already a drink called Soylent Cola! It's a clever reference of course to the cult sci-fi movie Soylent Green. If you don't know the movie I won't ruin it for you.

Of course, the biggest and most obvious PCR is the fact that the whole episode is a homage to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Futurama are not the first to try this - both The Simpsons and Family Guy put their own special spin on the story - but I believe they came closest to really nailing it. From the grunka-lunkas to the purple-coated, top-hatted Glurmo and from the competition to win the golden bottlecap to the general layout of the place, it could be no other. Plus they take some great swipes at Coke!

Those clever little touches
As the competition is announced, a rapid-talking voice reels off: “No purchase necessary, unless you wish to enter the competition. Odds of winning mathematically insignificant!”

Feeling ill and running a temperature (of 900 degrees!) Bender is invited to lie down on the couch by Hermes. The couch is immediately incinerated, at which Hermes snaps “You're payin' for that!”

As Leela and the Professor play scrabble, the professor is looking dumbfounded at his tiles, which if arranged slightly will form the word “Futurama”!

In the Slurm shop there are four sizes of t-shirt: small, medium, large and mutant! The mutant sizes have four arms!

A robot called Bender
An incorrigible thief, Bender can't resist stealing things, and even when it becomes clear that it's the theft of Amy's watch that has been making him sick, and he apologises and they hug, he nicks her ear rings!

As they flee from the monster worm in the sewers below Wormulon, they run up against a chasm, but Bender saves them by extending his body like a bridge. Afterwards he coughs and demands payment.

When they find themselves having come full circle and are faced with the queen worm again, Bender says “I brought the prisoners, Your Majesty!”

Calculon/All my Circuits
We see a brief clip of the show, as Calculon finds his evil half-brother in bed with his wife. “You may be my evil half-brother” he glowers, “but there's no law against killing the other half!”

My God! It's full of ... Robots!
As they head out with the F-ray in hand, looking for mischief, Bender and Fry are passed by what Bender believes to be a sexy robot lady, but when he uses the F-ray on her he discovers to his dismay that she is not all she seems. “That's no lady!” he gasps, to which the robot sneers “Down Chico! One more upgrade and I'll be more lady than you can handle!” Quite why a male robot would desire to be a female one is a question I can't answer, but it's damn funny.

2.5 “I second that emotion”

Tagline: “Made from meat by-products”

There's also a pre-episode clip, where we're told “Futurama is brought to you by Glagnar's Human Rinds: they're a buncha cruncha muncha human!” And we see an alien eating a bag of said snacks.

Bender has had it with Nibbler, Leela's pet alien, getting all the attention. When they find out what age he is and throw him a birthday party, it's the last straw for Bender who takes the little guy and flushes him down the toilet. Leela is heartbroken but Bender just laughs, until Profesor Farnsworth fits him with an empathy chip. Now he can feel what Leela feels, and he does not like it. So when the emotion becomes too much for him he decides to flush himself down the toilet to seek out Nibbler and return him to Leela. Hot in pursuit, Fry and Leela follow him, even though Amy worries that there are rumoured to be mutants living down there.

These rumours turn out to be true, but luckily these mutants are not interested in eating brains (isn't that zombies, anyway?) and are quite friendly. Until, that is, Leela lets slip that Nibbler may be the dreaded bogeyman of their culture, El Chupanibre! Then they advance on the trio and take Leela prisoner, hoping to offer her up as a sacrifice to the monster. But when Nibbler appears the mutants point to something behind him: a huge scaly monster! Nibbler is not El Chupanibre: that thing is! Problem is, hampered by Leela's emotions Bender is unable to save them. So he advises Leela to forget about Nibbler, and think instead of all the things she could buy if she didn't have to take care of him. Think about herself for once. It works, and Bender defeats the monster, the four of them take their leave of the mutants and return Nibbler to the surface. Has Bender learned an important lesson? What do you think, meatbag? ;)

QUOTES
Bender (after having been released from the giant can-opener Leela was using to open Nibbler's food can): “Stupid can opener! You killed my father, and now you've come back for me!”

Farnsworth: “And so we say goodbye to our beloved pet Nibbler, who has gone to a place where I too hope one day to go: the toilet.”

Farnsworth: “I'm installing an empathy chip.”
Fry: “And that will allow Bender to feel emotions?”
Farnsworth: “Yes, if by allow you mean force.”

Farnsworth: “Now I'll just tune it to Leela's emotional frequency...”
Bender: “My God! I'm overcome with feelings! I'm experiencing a powerful yearning to ... cram my gullet full of mackerel heads!”
Zoidberg: “That's me, baby!”
Bender (after some adjustments): “Now I'm afraid that I'm not as smart as Leela, but at the same time I'm relieved that I'm cuter than her!”
Amy: “Uh, that's me.”
Fry (whispering): “Thanks for covering!”
Bender: “This time I'm missing Nibbler, and I'm feeling nosy and opinionated.”
Amy: “Bingo!”
Hermes: “That's Leela!”

Amy: “Hey, do you know what would cheer you up? You should get yourself a puppy.”
Leela: “A puppy. Nibbler loved to eat puppies!”

Mutant 1: “Mutants? Perhaps it is you who are the mutants!”
Mutant 2: “Puh-leeze, Duane! Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

Fry: “Wow! You guys worship an unexploded nuclear bomb?”
Mutant 2: “Yes but nobody's really that observant. It's mostly a Christmas and Easter sort of thing.”

Mutant 1: “Our only hope is to offer El Chupanibre a snackrifice.”
Mutant 3: “Yes! An unspoiled virgin!”
Leela: “I volunteer!”
Mutant 2: “Nice try, Leela, but we've all seen Zapp Brannigan's webpage!”

Bender: “Listen to me Leela, I'm an expert at not caring! The secret is to stop giving a rat's ass about other people and start thinking about the things you want, the things you deserve! That the world owes you!”

Farnsworth: “Bender, you're not going to believe this, but the empathy chip burned out, so the emotion you felt for Nibbler was actually your own.”
Fry: “Hah! I guess Bender learned an important lesson about respecting other people's feelings after all!”
Farnsworth: “No, wait, I'm wrong. It was working at triple capacity!”
Bender: “And I still felt barely anything! Goodnight losers!”

PCRs
The unexploded bomb in the church is of course a nod back to the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes. They also get a good dig in at Christianity!


Sign of the times
Outside the animal clinic: Virtual pets debugged!

As Fry levers off the manhole cover to allow them descend to the sewers, it's embossed with the logo of The PJs, a very short-lived cartoon series on Fox.

Those clever little touches
As Leela waits at the vet to have Nibbler seen to, there's a man with a cat on his lap and next to him, a large cat with a tiny man on her lap!

When Bender is asked to make a cake for Nibbler's birthday, he grins evilly and says he'll make a cake they'll never forget, to accompanying ominous music. Next we see him cackle and take rat poison out of the cupboard .... and deal with the rats in the kitchen. Then he goes to make the cake.

Calculon/All my Circuits
Bender watches an episode where Calculon is given some bad news: “Your entire family perished when the plane flown by your fiancee crashed into your uninsured home, and you have inoperable cancer!”
(Okay: how does a robot even get cancer??)

New for 2017...
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media...gzpnyntz7s.jpg
Coming soon.
Ish.

:shycouch:

Have you just started watching Game of Thrones?

Of course not. I'm fully up to date, waiting for the new season.

2.6 “Brannigan begin again”

Tagline: “Not Y3K compliant”

After making something of a hash in opening the new DOOP (Democratic Order Of Planets) headquarters (he tried to use the ship's laser to cut through the ribbon and instead, well, cut through the entire space station, destroying it!) Zapp Brannigan is stripped of his rank and dismissed from the DOOP . At his trial Leela, happy to pour on the misery, testifies against him, but to her annoyance Farnsworth allows him and Kiff to join Planet Express. Kiff is delighted that someone actually praises his work when all he has been used to is being put down by his commanding officer, however they join at a time when Fry and Bender are annoyed at Leela's taskmaster-like mode of command, and it's not long before events conspire to allow a mutiny, where Brannigan takes over. Having taken an instant dislike to the Neutrals, around whose planet the ill-fated new DOOP headquarters (backup HQ: New Jersey!) had been orbiting, Brannigan decides to launch a sneak attack on their planet, hoping to redeem himself. The fact that the Neutral “war machine”, as he calls it, is a figment of the Captain's imagination, and that the Neutrals are not arming for war (they're neutral, after all: they're even a beigey grey colour and have no expression) matters not to Brannigan, and the mission is on.

However when they realise that Brannigan's masterplan involves them crashing the Planet Express ship into the Neutral capital, killing them while he escapes in “the only space suit”, Fry and Bender change their minds and run to Leela, realising what a loon Brannigan is . As the ship hurtles towards destruction, locked on course by the now departed Brannigan (who has taken a very unwilling Kiff with him - “Look Kiff! I have a child's spacesuit you can wear!”) Leela formulates a desperate plan to collect all the dark matter in Nibbler's tray and throw it into the ship's furnace, thus giving the vessel the extra boost it needs to break free and abort the death dive.

When the story comes out later, again in DOOP court, Zapp tries to claim credit for the rescue, but Leela is about to have her revenge when the Professor urges her to tell the truth: if DOOP don't take back Brannigan he can stay on as captain at Planet Express. Faced with this unnerving prospect, Leela chooses the lesser of two evils and supports Brannigan's fanciful account, allowing him to be the hero. As a result, he is reinstated as captain and returned to the DOOP, but at least now Leela won't have to put up with him at work!

QUOTES

Farnsworth: “Good news everybody! We have a mission to further the noble cause of intergalactic peace!”
Bender: “No. Watching cartoons.”
Fry: “Sorry.”

Leela: “What are we delivering?”
Farnsworth: “Something without which no ribbon-cutting ceremony could proceed: the ceremonial oversized scissors.”
Leela (taking the scissors): “We'll get them there are quickly as we can.”
Farnsworth: “All right, but don't run with them!”

Fry: “DOOP? What's that?”
Farnsworth: “It's similar to the United Nations from your time, Fry.”
Fry (showing incomprehension): “Uh...”
Farnsworth: “Like the Federation from your Star Trek program.”
Fry (smiling): “Oh!”

DOOP leader: “I can think of no better place for this centre of diplomacy than here in orbit around the Neutral Planet.” (Turns to president) “What are your thoughts on this momentous occasion, Your Neutralness?”
Neutral President: “I have no strong feelings one way or the other!”

DOOP leader: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ribbon-cutting ceremony of DOOP's magnificent new headquarters, a fitting home for an organisation which has fostered peace throughout the universe. Even between the insectoids and the space lizards!”
(As she says this, a spotlight moves to zero in on the representative of the space lizard race, who is at that moment swallowing the delegate from the insectoids. He hastily spits him out and waves in an embarrassed way as he shakes the thing's feeler.)

Brannigan: “I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kiff. With enemies you know where they stand. With Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me!”

Brannigan to Leela: “You're under arrest. How do I know these scissors aren't part of a Neutral plot?”
Leela: “But these scissors aren't even sharp! (they're giant safety scissors) Who could we harm with them?”
Brannigan: “The Yarn People of Mylar IV? So, a plan to assassinate a weird-looking alien race with scissors. How very Neutral of you. It was almost the perfect crime, but you forgot one thing: rock crushes scissors.” (Thinks) “But ... paper covers rock, and scissors cuts paper! Kiff, we have a conundrum. Search them for paper. And bring me a rock.”

DOOP leader: “And now, to cut the ribbon, the legendary DOOP captain who just returned from a triumphant carpet-bombing of Eden VII: Zapp Brannigan!”

Brannigan (to Fry): “What makes a man turn Neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?”

Brannigan: “One day a man has everything, the next day he blows up a four hundred billion dollar space station and the next day he has nothing. It makes you think.”

Brannigan: “So continues the epic struggle between good and neutral. Now, in the name of all that is good and honourable, we'll contact the Neutral president with a message of peace, then blast him. Fly the white flag of war!”

Bender: “Leela, save me! And yourself I guess. And my banjo. (after a pause) And Fry.”

Neutral official: “Your Neutralness! It's a beige alert!”
Neutral President: “If I don't survive, tell my wife hello.”

Prosecutor: “Your Honour, I'm just a simple hyper-chicken from a backwoods asteroid, but if it please the Court, I'm gonna call the whole jury!”
DOOP leader (now Judge in Brannigan's trial): “I'm going to allow this.”
shortly afterwards: “The vidence against Zapp Brannigan is strong. However in light of his years of service and the incompetence of this hillbilly prosecutor, I'm afraid I'm going to have to dismiss all charges.”
Leela: “Dismiss all charges? Your Honour, I know the case is closed and you've rendered your judgement but I want to testify.”
Judge: “I'm going to allow this.”
Brannigan: “I'd like to cross-examine the witness.”
Judge: “I'm going to allow this.”

Leela: “Hurry! I don't want to die at the age of twenty-five.”
Bender: “Honey, unless we hit a timewarp, I wouldn't worry about it!”

Zapp: “And so when Captain Leela panicked, perhaps distracted by female problems, my quick thinking allowed me to do whatever if was I did to save the day.”
Judge: “Leela? Is this rambling tale of magic and heroism true?”
Leela: “Well, actually...”
Farnsworth (whispering): “Atta girl! If they don't take him back we can keep him on as captain!”
Leela: “Your honour, it's all true. My female incompetence, Zapp's catlike reflexes, the stuff that made no sense: all of it!”

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

In the opening scene, Bender and Fry are playing some sort of hologrammatic version of chess (in something of a homage, I believe, to the sequence in Star Wars) and Fry makes a move that annoys Bender – basically, his horse stabs Bender's bishop to death. Bender then looks at the board intently, looks up and growls “Get him fellas!” and all his pieces attack Fry. It's a good twist on the by-now banal idea of playing a hologame, though you have to wonder a) how Fry can even comprehend a game that's based on chess, b) why Bender would bother playing the same game and c) what damage exactly Fry thinks these little pixellated characters are likely to cause him?

A robot called Bender

For the first time in a while, not much Bender in the episode, which pretty completely focusses on Zapp. Not surprising, with a title like that, but Bender has disappointingly little to do. He more or less follows Fry into mutiny (rather than instigate it, as we would normally expect, and take over himself), he has few lines and even the denouement only features him because the dark matter is too heavy for Fry to lift on his own. Essentially, he becomes exactly what a robot is these days: a tool, a machine to be utilised. There's little of his usual wisecracking humour (a few lines, but for Bender staggeringly little) and he really has no real impact on the story. Take him out completely, and other than being used as a hydraulic jack by Fry at the end, you would not miss him, and that is something we can rarely say about Fry's robot buddy.

PCRs
Not that many, though what this episode does well is reference their own culture. There are plenty of aliens present at DOOP headquarters for the official opening, and many are from previous episodes. I note a water man from My Three Suns, a robot elder, the alien who was used to advertise Glagnar's Human Rinds at the beginning of one of the episodes, one of the aliens that weren't allowed to watch the All My Circuits movie. Later in the jury we see one of the little snail-like creatures employed by Slurm, Elzar, or one of his people, and the judge herself, also the leader of DOOP, looks like one of Kiff's race, perhaps the only other one we've seen up to now.

As they struggle to make ends meet, Kiff and Zapp turn to selling their bodies on the street. Zapp wears a cowboy outfit similar to that worn by Travolta in Urban Cowboy.

As they head off to their new life in civvy street, Harry Nilsson's “Everybody's talkin'” plays.

And the books? I have still to finish the last book unfortunately.

I haven't read the books. Yeah, I'm one of them...
:shycouch:

You totally should though. They're pretty amazing, if a bit longwinded, but they're so good that you don't care cause you get to read more of **** you want to read.