A pair of Ultra Q episodes this week as we travel from the lush jungle vegetation of Tokyo to the frozen wastelands of Antartica as deadly prehistoric flowers and creatures threaten mankind.

John and Eugene discuss Mammoth Flower & Peguila is Here.

Mammoth Flower Synopsis:

On an empty street, a policeman meets an untimely end as he spies a strange underground disturbance and then part of a building falls on him. Welcome to the Unbalance Zone.

Jun and Ippei are picking up fliers for his airline at an advertising agency in Tokyo, but the building a mess. They claim that it was a localized earthquake that hit only their building. While that seems unlikely, what other explanation is there? Mi-chan, an employee at the agency, tells them about something strange in the nearby moat. They head out to see it.

Before they get there, they meet their reporter friend, Yuriko, who is investigating the story. She goes with them to see the object in the moat. It’s strange alright.

They go to talk to their acting scientific advisor, Professor Ichinotani. He says that, having not seen it himself, that he can’t hazard a guess what it was, but somehow predicts it’s “roots” will be back elsewhere in the area.

And soon they are, as giant root-like structures burst into the basement of a building, capturing a hapless worker. The roots are covered in thorns, which suck the blood out of their victims.

This will never do, so the police decide to act.

It’s postulated that a bulb is below the ad agency building and may soon sprout. Professor Ichinotani suggests that it is a giant, prehistoric mutant flower. Why giant? Because things were big back in the day of the dinosaurs.

It does in face sprout, destroying the building and nearly killing Ippei and Mi-chan.

Professor Genda wants to have a day to study it before it is destroyed, but Ichinotani doesn’t think they should. When the giant flower bursts out the building at a rapid pace, and starts spewing poisonous pollen, Genda changes his mind and provides Jun the means to destroy the flower. Fixed Carbonic Acid.

Jun drops a Fixed Carbonic Acid bomb on the flower while the military flamethrower its roots. The Mammoth Flower is no more.

Peguila is Here Synopsis:

Jun is, inexplicably, traveling to the Japanese Antarctic research base. As they approach, a strange fireballs passes over, causing some distress to the icebreaker he’s aboard. It’s here that he meets the new base doctor, Yoko Kuhura.

In addition to new personnel for the base, the ship is bringing supplies for the winter and is scheduled to be there for just over a week. A sudden freak winter storm threatens their timetable, and they will have to leave a week early or they risk being locked in the ice all winter. Despite the killer chill, the team works frantically to offload the supplies that the base needs to survive the winter.

Jun is actually here to investigate the disappearance, and presumed death, of Nomura, a biologist missing for three years. He’s here at the request of the base commander by way of Professor Ichinotani. Nomura left behind notes that refer to something as Peguila, but nothing more.

As the temperatures plumet at incredible speed, they witness a snow cat and its driver, Ito, be lifted into the air and be blown away. Jun notes that a similar freak cold spell preceded the loss of Nomura.

Yoko was actually Nomura’s fiancée and she’s come to the base hoping to find answers. That night, both she and Jun, independently, decide to go searching for Nomura – in an unexplored area, without telling anyone, during a freak winter storm, in the dark. Neither gets past the parking garage, when the snow cat inside the garage lifts magically into the air. Also, Ito, the missing man, half frozen, comes through the door.

He is in shock, and will be for a week, but later, while Yoko is tending to his injuries, he gets up and threatens her saying, “it was Nomura.” He is overpowered by the staff and sedated.

Yoko rushes out in a snow cat searching for Nomura. Jun and a couple others follow her in another vehicle. They find her with a dog, which the base commander recognizes as the same dog that was lost with Nomura three years ago. The dog has somehow stayed alive our here in the ice fields. He has been faithfully guarding the frozen body of Nomura, buried in the ice.

And then Peguila appears, a giant monster that shoots cold rays and has the power the nullify gravity. He launches them all into the air, but is scared off by the barking of the dog. Everyone survives and the discover that the dog has survived by eating moss.

Back at the base, another sudden cold blast begins, harkening the approach of Peguila, and while some of the base scientists are skeptical that a giant monster is on the loose, Yoko explains that the dog ingested the moss, which contains a substance called Pegumin H. In a test, Pegumin H killed a seal and she hypothesizes that Peguila left the dog alone because he was infused Pegumin H.

As the monster approaches the base, destroying its buildings, the scientists load the Pegumin H into a weather rocket and fire it at Peguila. While it doesn’t kill the creature, it does seem to annoy him enough that he becomes a fireball and flies away.

A cairn is erected for Nomura at the base and Yoko spreads earth from his home town, Tokyo, around it. Jun catches the boat out.