“It’s easier to keep existing customers than make new ones,” said no one in this episode, as Travis and the gang are investigating a deadly new illegal drug on the market. Of course, Sherlock Percy has to try it herself.

Kenneth and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis

Titan City, Titan, Saturn Federation.  Two morons take drugs and beat themselves to death.

The crew of the Trans-Utopian are bored.  Crime has taken a holiday and they’ve got no work and nothing to do.  A private, person-to-person call comes in from Titan City for Dante Montana.  Travis inherits the call and they are soon on their way to Titan City.

He meets with a man called, Roan Gerick, an old friend of the Montanas.  His son has recently died, a victim of his own stupidity.  He took a new drug that’s been ravaging the streets called Anestha.  The drug not only surpassed your ability to feel pain, but it also causes a euphoric sensation whenever you experience something that would be causing you pain.

As a result, people who take it, inflict pain and beatings on their bodies until they die.  It’s all very nasty, even police captain Dalyet lost her daughter to the drug, so she’s working diligently to find Bliss, the code-name of the crime lord in charge of Anestha distribution.

She’s apparently not very good at her job, though, because, they’ve got no leads.

Gerick is asking for Travis’ help to find Bliss and shut down the drug distribution.  He takes on the job for a pittance, much to Rudolfo’s chagrin.

I mean, they weren’t finding any work anyway, and the few cases Rudolfo can find are beneath him, so he just grumbles mostly for no apparent reason other than being a jackass.

Not only is Dalyet useless as a cop, but she’s also kind of crap with security, too.  She gives Travis information about the case and samples of the deadly drug, because, I’m not sure…. I mean, if I weren’t totally convinced by the incorruptibility and motives of a dedicated cop far too young to have a daughter killed by Anestha, I’d almost suspect Dalyet of being the criminal mastermind behind this.  Nah.  That’s too obvious.

Dalyet does a bit of digging on Montana and uncovers that he’s an ex-Raider, and they were the drug runners back in the day.  She poisons the well with Gerick, who fires them, but, Montana is already gone to ground as part of his investigation, which involves contacting a martian named Frankel in charge of policing the martian drug scene.

Meanwhile, Percy proves she’s the apex moron because, instead of “analyzing” the drug Montana gives her, she takes it, and there’s a whole sequence with no consequence where Percy hurts herself and Marcus tries to stop her from hurting herself.

Travis calls in some old friends and is working his way towards finding Bliss, but then he’s beaten up, but not killed.  

The brain trust back on the Trans-Utopian buy into the theory that Frankel may actually be Bliss and Dante could be headed into a trap, so they go to the meeting, too.

Of course, it’s a trap because, in a surprise to absolutely no one, Dalyet actually is Bliss and Frankel is an old chum of Travis who owed him a favor.  Shoot out and victory for the good guys.

Gerick is once again fondly disposed towards Travis and loans him a hi-tech picture of him as a baby taken on a .25 megapixel digital camera and thermally printed. 

Face-burning snails, cursed idols, murderous spirits, and Ippei’s soul being ripped from his body by Prof. Ichinotani’s quest for knowledge – it’s all happening in the next two episodes of Ultra Q, The Idol of Goga & The Devil Child.

John and Eugene discuss.

The Idol of Goga Synopsis

At a shadowy underground meeting, an international art collector of dubious ethics anticipates the arrival of his newest acquisition, the Idol of Goga.  The idol is arriving in Japan in the hands of the Ambassador’s daughter, although neither she nor her parents know she’s being used as an unwitting mule.  After their arrival in Japan, an accomplice on the plane takes the idol and, when the daughter tries to get her doll back, she is kidnapped.

A man is following them and is almost killed as the getaway car is used as a booby-trapped decoy.

Aleen, the woman who toke the statue is taken to Mr. Iwakura, the collector, and turns over the statue to him.  The idol, of course, is cursed, and promises a curse of 6,000 years upon the “arrogant ones.”

Jun, Ippei, and Yuriko are investigating the theft and kidnapping.

The idol passes the authenticity tests, but Aleen notices that something is growing inside it, but Iwakura takes no heed.

Aleen is actually a fake and in cahoots with the man that was following them at the airport.

The statue’s eyes glow, then it shoots the face off of one of Iwakura’s men, then breaks, revealing a disturbingly large snail inside.

Aleen’s accomplice is circling Iwakura’s house and is identified by Iwakura’s men.  He’s also killed them.  While driving his car.  Which continues to drive.

Luckily, it passes Jun, Ippei, and Yuriko, and they chase the car down, and in a bit of heroics, Jun leaps over and stops the car.  Jun hears radio communications from Aleen telling her cohort where the statue is.  She doesn’t know he is dead.

The gang walks right into Iwakura’s house and asks the front desk if they’re holding a kidnapped child.  Turns out, that’s a good way to get escorted to an underground strongroom and sentenced to death.  Aleen has been rumbled, she’s been identified as Liang Ming, antiquities expert. She’s trying to escape with the girl.

Meanwhile, Goga continues to get bigger, burning more faces and generally wrecking the facility.  In the chaos, Iwakura and all his men, save one, are killed.  That man, prior to his boss’ death and destruction of his entire building by a giant snail, was tasked with killing Liang Ming, and he will carry out his orders to the letter.

At military HQ, Liang Ming suggests blasting the snail’s eyes with caustic potash and explosives to blind it, giving them the opportunity to burn it.  Ippei gets to shine as Bazooka Shoulder Man and, in the confusion, Iwakura’s killer is squashed by the snail.

Potash and fire do the trick and the snail is destroyed.

The Devil Child Synopsis

A series of mysterious roadway accidents in the early hours of the morning are mysterious.

Jun, the gang, and even Professor Ichinotani are enjoying a night out at a magic act.  They witness a child, Lily, being hypnotized and then seemingly projecting a ghostly image of herself.  Ichinotani seems troubled.

He thinks Lily may have an unusual bioelectrical field that allows her to be easily hypnotized.  Experimenting on Ippei, Ichinotani splits his soul from his physical body to demonstrate to Jun and Yuriko.  “Demonstrate what?” you may ask.  Beats me.  That Ippei is a perfect lab rat, perhaps?

Ichinotani is, as always, exactly right.  Each night, the girl’s father hypnotizes her to sleep and in that state, her soul leaves her body and kills people just to gather little trinkets.

When Jun confronts Lily about her growing collection of trinkets, she says she doesn’t know where they come from.  She just wakes up and they’re there.  Also, sometimes when she wakes up she has blood on her face and hands – as you do.

This has got Ichinotani really worried.  He thinks the child’s soul wants to kill the child’s physical body, and, indeed, the two are walking, hand-in-spectral-hand down railway tracks at night, waiting for a train.

Ichinotani has a soul integrator device and Ippei uses it to re-integrate the soul into the child, just in time for Jun to leap out and snatch the child away from the oncoming train.

While Godzilla has, in recent years, undergone a successful translation into the Hollywood movie-making machine, in 2016, it also underwent a renaissance revival in Japan with the release of Shin Godzilla. Like the very first Godzilla film, this was a movie with something to say about contemporary Japan, and it says it very well. John and Eugene discuss.

Movie Synopsis

An underwater disturbance in Tokyo Harbor causes breaks in the Aqua Line, a 10km underwater tunnel in the bay. Government officials are mobilized into meetings to deal with the problem, which appears to be geologic or hydrothermal in nature, but the situation on the ground is changing rapidly, with reports of some form of marine creature in the bay, this calls for more meetings, and more meetings arising from the meetings.

One ambitious young minister, Rando Yaguchi, tries to press past the fossilized response of the government to deal with the problem, which continues to “evolve” as first, the creature starts moving up the Tama river, pushing water and debris into Tokyo like a tsunami and then evolves the ability to walk on land.  

Time for more meetings to determine if they can use the SDF to defend Japan from a creature – it’s not permitted in the charter, but maybe they can do an emergency thing?  After more meetings, the PM authorizes an attack with helicopters.  The creature evolves again and rears up on its hind legs and flops to the ground.  The attack is called off when unevacuated civilians are spotted in the area.  The creature returns to the sea.

Time for more meetings, more press conferences, more uniform changes, and official ministerial visits to the affected area to survey the damage.  Laws are even passed authorizing emergency funds and relief.

Yaguchi is put in charge of a special response team. He collects a team of lone wolves, nerds, troublemakers, outcasts, academic heretics, and general pains in the bureaucracy and sets up a flat organizational structure in order to analyze the situation.  They have plenty of laptops, chairs, and photocopiers to deal with the situation.

Their analysis indicates that the creature is in some way nuclear in nature.  The US wants in on the action for some reason and sends Senator Patterson’s young, ambitious, and half-Japanese daughter, Kyoco Paterson to coordinate with Yaguchi’s team.

It seems the US Department of Energy already had a heads up on this creature, which they’ve codenamed “Godzilla” in English or “Gojira” in Japanese.  It’s tied somehow to rogue nuclear scientist Goro Maki who discovered that nuclear dumping led to sea creatures becoming adapted to the radiation and mutating into something now dubbed Godzilla.  After leaving incomplete clues for the DOE, he escaped to Japan, where he went missing.

Godzilla creates new nuclear isotopes inside itself and the DOE would like them, please.

Maki’s boat was found abandoned the day Godzilla first appeared and his personal effects contain complete information, but it is indecipherable.  They do; however, begin to formulate a plan, that, if Godzilla is nuclear, perhaps they can freeze him with blood coagulants.

Godzilla returns near Kawasaki, and the government decides to fight it there before it reaches Tokyo because… you know… Tokyo is more economically important.  Godzilla has evolved again and doubled in size.

The SDF attacks with helicopters, missiles, and tanks, to no avail.  The US, in the spirit of cooperation and “yay, we get to play with some of the big guns” sends in Stealth Bombers.  

That shows signs of promise, but Godzilla now evolves a new ability, first fire breath, then laser breath, wiping out one of the stealth bombers.  It’s payback time and the US planes attack from behind to avoid the laser breath.  Now Godzilla launches lasers from his spines, wiping out the US planes.  He burns the city, slicing buildings, and setting fire to everything.  The attack also kills the fleeing Prime Minister.  Yaguchi’s team survive, mostly, because they were too junior to get a helicopter evacuation and had to go by car and on foot.

Godzilla goes dormant.

It looks like Godzilla can evolve to do anything, and reproduce asexually.  It will destroy the entire human race, so, the US team heads off to prepare to nuke Tokyo, which they manage to get approved through the UN Security Council because Russia and China already wanted to nuke Japan.

The new interim PM is a senior time-server, with no spine to stand up to the US.

Finally decoding Maki’s document, Yaguchi’s team develops a plan to defeat Godzilla without nuking Tokyo, if only they have the time to pursue it.  With the help of France, to create a delaying tactic, and international cooperation between governments, private industry, and NGOs around the world, Yaguchi’s plans come together.

In an epic and clockwork-precision executed plan involving drone airstrikes, controlled demolition, sea-to-land missile attacks, big ol’ cranes, and even trains, the plan is executed and Godzilla is frozen with under an hour to go before the nuclear strike.  Japan is saved, but the clock remains set at 3,526 seconds to nuclear attack if Godzilla stirs again.

On the tail of the frozen Godzilla, strange humanoid Godzilla-like lifeforms appear to have been emerging. 

Simon and Eugene discuss how efficient it is to rob a bank using a power station, how not to dress a set to look like a real building site, and isotope implosions and the difference between fusion and fission.

Episode Synopsis

Ros is getting a tour of the NRGen Split Isotope Fusion Power plant, arranged by her friend, Alex.  She is, unfortunately, there when terrorists from the Pro Earth People’s Front take the station for ransom. She avoids detection as the other occupants are either killed or taken hostage, including her friend Alex.

The forces of NRGen make a big entrance at the headquarters of Team Bugs (because I refuse to call them “Gizmos”) demanding that they help resolve the crisis.  NRGen have conveniently brought in a command and control center specifically connected to the power plant to make this easier for Beckett and Ed without Ros being there to hack in.

Pascal, leader of the Pro Earth People’s Front, makes their demands:  No fusion, go solar, save the Earth, blah, blah, blah.  It doesn’t really matter what they’re asking for, Beckett knows it’s a ruse.  No one has ever heard of the Pro Earth People’s Front, and Pascal doesn’t show up in a search of the database of faces of people who’ve ever attended a rally to save the Earth.  This is the 90’s – they must be after money.

A review of the power plant plans reveals an escape tunnel under the facility, which Ed decides to try to use to enter the plant.  The NRGen representative tells him that the tunnel is still under construction and he’ll never get in that way.  Ed tries anyway and discovers the tunnel isn’t so much under construction, but rather it is completed and being used as a storage room.  He easily gains access to the facility.

Meanwhile, Ros has reactivated security cameras and has been feeding info to Beckett.  They’ve uncovered two things.  First, that Pascal has a confederate outside in the Financial District, where the real crime is going to take place, and second, that an arms dealer, Kolvek, has been monitoring what the terrorists have been doing and offers them a bonus of ten million if they’ll steal the Isotope triggers while they’re there.

Pascal goes along with the deal, to the misgivings of Travis, the inside-man confederate that helped them gain access to the power plant and its workings.  Removing the triggers will result in a 5-mile radius fireball, which would be an impressively big boom, even by Bugs’ standards.

Ed and Ros meet up, but their presence is detected and they are on the run.  They manage to overcome one of the terrorists and take his headset, keeping them one step ahead of their pursuers.

Beckett learns that the target is the Currency Exchange, but he is assured that the security system is absolutely invulnerable.  Beckett knows that invulnerable security systems are just another Saturday when Team Bugs is around.  One of the executives at the Security Exchange is Lacombe, Pascal’s confederate on the outside.  Beckett plants a bug.

The plan goes into execution, which is this: They shut down all the power to the city and build up enough surplus that they can channel it all at the Security Exchange, rendering their security system brain dead, then they send micro pulses of power to the Security Exchange tricking something into believing something is still doing something by way of, I don’t know… Power Over Ethernet or something?

Anyway, Beckett sorts that out, getting Lacombe killed in the process.

Ros whips up a hacking program that will help them eventually, but they’re just doing it on a laptop, and battery technology being what is it, Ed has to go looking for a fill-up.  He gets captured.

Pascal takes the triggers, starting the 10-minute countdown to boom town.  As she escapes, Kolvek meets her at her escape route:  A Jeep placed at the end of that impassable tunnel.  Ros chases them down on Ed’s motorcycle and gets them both killed, recovers the triggers, and gets them back in place just in time – with a cold helping hand from Ed.

Kidnapping at the speed of light?  Is this the cunning and lucrative crime bonanza of the future?  Kenneth and Eugene discuss Torment.

Episode Synopsis

Old man Santiago’s got a problem.  His parents were kidnapped 50 years ago, and now the kidnapper, Darnell, wants ransom to return them unharmed.  They’re just a pair of scared kids, but Santiago doesn’t have the money, but he promises to get it.

While this is happening, Rudolfo has problems of his own.  One of his exes is demanding her owed child support, which Rudolfo is behind on.  Without that money, she can’t send their 16-year-old daughter, Serena, to a correctional camp for the summer and so, the Trans-Utopian becomes that summer vacation for her.

When she gets to the ship, she spends her time pissing everyone off and trying to jump Marcus’ bones.

Instead of paying the ransom, which Santiago can’t, he decides to engage Montana and the gang to take down the kidnappers.

It’s an interesting kidnapping racket.  Santiago’s parents were kidnapped when he was just a boy, then taken on board the kidnapper’s spaceship at near-luminal speeds out to the outer planets and returned 8 months later – relative to their own timeline.  However, because the ship traveled at high relativistic speeds, 50 years have elapsed for Santiago.

They arrange to monitor the money exchange and it all goes wrong when Santiago decides to… I don’t know.  Something.  Anyway, shots are fired, and Rudolfo is hit.  Darnell escapes with the parents.  Santiago blames Montana and the gang because. I don’t know.  He doesn’t seem the most coherent of people.

A cunning plan is hatched.  Montana guesses that Darnell will take their ship up to speed for a day or two and return and try again. (That’s 2-5 months for us mere mortals.). So, the cunning plan is to… pursue Darnell’s ship, and while the Trans-Utopian also has an anti-matter drive, it’s flakey.

Rudolfo suggests detonating a torpedo near the enormous anti-matter ball sack hanging off the back of Darnell’s ship.  This scares the bejeezus out of them, but they don’t surrender, so they use lasers to cut the ball sack off.  Cut free, the ball sack, which is filled with highly dangerous anti-matter that could explode on an astronomical scale, and the ship go opposite directions, but then, the ball sack hits the ship anyway, and then, it hits the Trans-Utopian, too, because… #DramaNotPhysics.  Darnell surrenders and agrees to fly the disabled ship back to Syn City and turn over the parents, which for some dumb reason apparently makes sense to and is agreed upon by Montana.

Serena is actually quite impressed with her worthless father and decides she wants to stay.  But when Rudolfo tells her no, she contacts Darnell and asks to… I don’t know… run away with him?  Despite the fact that she’s never met the man, and knows nothing about him except that he’s a kidnapper.

Montana and Santiago meet Darnell and the parents are set free, ready to continue their happy life with a son that’s twice as old as they are and in a world that’s passed them by.

While waiting for Darnell, Serena meets Marcus’ old friend Vaela, who, as a fellow stripper, takes pity on the girl, but does nothing to stop her from going off with Darnell, who is promising her a dream life in the outer worlds but is, of course, just kidnapping her to ransom back to Rudolfo.

The gang catches up to them before they leave and another shoot-out occurs, and Rudolfo gets shot again.  Father and daughter reconciled and it looks like the Trans-Utopian has a new crew member.  Maybe?  But somehow I doubt we’ll ever see her again.

John and Eugene look at two more episodes of the cult classic, Ultra Q.  This time we ponder the connection between rare butterflies and the Yeti, plus, what happened to the stunt octopus after filming his big scene.

Metamorphosis Episode Synopsis

A mountain expedition comes across some bones and footprints.  Could it be the yeti?!

The editor sends a couple of reporters.  Yuriko begs to be assigned but then is distracted by her friend Ayako who has come to her for help.  She’s been lying about breaking up with her fiancé.  She’s got a feeling that he’s the yeti!

Yuriko goes to Jun for advice, but he laughs her off, but eventually, they all go to see Professor Ichinotani.  He listens to Ayako’s tale.

He fiancé, Koji, was an entomologist.  They were in the mountains hunting butterflies when he spied what he thought was an Amazonian Morpho butterfly.  He chased it and they became separated.

Ayako finds Koji face down on the floor of a cave being molested by a giant butterfly.  Koji claims he’s been poisoned by the butterfly and runs off to find a drink of water.  He ends up face down in a swamp.

Ayako searches the mountains for days when, eventually, she finds Koji, still face down in a swamp and giant-sized.  We’re talking Incredible Colossal Man-sized.  He seems almost subhuman and she runs away.

Now, months later, with the reports of the yeti in the same mountains, she’s convinced it’s Koji.

Jun transports the gang to the mountains.

Now bearded and sporting an impossibly-sized loin cloth, Koji – or should I say, the yeti her has become – is causing problems for a village.  It doesn’t help that the police start shooting at him, causing him to trample the village in rage.

Yuriko gets the story and has scooped the assigned reporters, but she omits the detail of the yeti’s identity.

Ayako desperately wants help for Koji, and the girls convince Professor Ichinotani to deploy his Thermal Atomic X-Ray device.

They return to the mountains and first Ayako tries talking to Koji.  Failing that, Ichinotani shoots him and he wanders off.

Later, they find him, back to normal.

Fury of the South Seas Episode Synopsis

At night, a fishing vessel is at sea in the Ocean Of Death.  Aboard, the captain and his son, Yuzo.  They are attacked by a giant octopus and the ship is sunk.  Only Yuzo survives and he washes ashore on Compass Island where he is found and nursed back to health by Anita, a native of the island.

The editor gives Yuriko the plum job of going to the island to investigate the shipwreck and the legends of the Ocean of Death.  He’s sending Jun and Ippei and even paying bonuses.

So, for some reason Yuriko doesn’t want to go, but she relents when they also send along Minami, a dynamic interpreter.

On the island, one of the locals doesn’t like Yuzo – perhaps he is jealous of the attentions Anita is paying to him.  The beating of Yuzo is stopped when Jun and the gang arrive, because that gives the islanders someone new to dislike.

Things aren’t going well when Sudar, the giant octopus god of the island arrives and threatens Anita’s younger brother.  No one will try to save him,  except for Jun.  His act of heroism gets them dispensation to stay on the island.

The find Yuzo, who is now obsessed with avenging his father’s death by killing Sudar with his own hands.  Sudar has killed many people on the island, including Anita’s father and older brother, but he is also their god, and they worship him and do not bear him ill-will.  For that reason, Anita will not tell them where Sudar’s nest is.

Yuzo uses the tried and true Christian Missionary argument with Anita:  “Your beliefs are all wrong.”  Like countless other native lambs throughout history, she agrees and gives them the info.

Jun and Ippei boat to another island to call in an air strike to kill the monster.  In their absence, the villagers capture all the others and prepare to burn them to death.

When the air strike finally arrives, Jun and Ippei use the confusion to release Yuriko and the others.  Unfortunately, the air strike only angers the monster, which comes ashore and starts trashing the village and the villagers.

Yuzo uses this opportunity to try to kill the massive beast with spears.  When Jun and Ippei join in, along with playing accompaniment on a shotgun, they manage to kill the beast.

Having helped destroy their village, kill their god, and wipe out their dominant belief system, Yuzo is permitted to stay on the island to contaminate them further.  Yuriko and the others return with a story for her newspaper.

Simon and Eugene discuss memory and learning in SciFi shows in general and using scifi as a MacGuffin rather than a way to explore the human condition in Bugs in particular, and we’ll be talking about the physics of ejecting from a stealth jet, and how the Bugs vision of the 1990s is purely private with no state or public sector.

Episode Synopsis

Two men expertly infiltrate an airline’s secure areas and lay a trap that leads to the destruction of a fuel depot.

Team Bugs are hired by Mr. Bixon of the highly-suspiciously named Global Committee for Economic Equilibrium.  Strate Air is an up-and-coming small airline that’s preparing to make a big mark on the industry.  A cartel of proper airlines have paid an operative named Jerome to put Strate Air out of business.  The GCEE doesn’t want that to happen.

Somehow Jerome’s plot involves an electronics firm that is developing a direct cerebral encoding device – a machine that can beam learning directly into the brain.

While Beckett gets a personal demonstration of the device from Selina, head of the company, Ros learns more about the technical aspects of the device in hopes of understanding how this is tied to Strate Air.  While there, Jerome steals the device and the strangely-specialist-topic-for-an-experimental-learning-device of the Khazbek language.

Ed infiltrates Jerome’s HQ and discovered Jerome is hiring a pilot and trying to teach him the Khazbek language.  Ed just escapes with his life, but the pilot dies trying to kill Ed.

They try a new tactic.  Ed goes undercover as a pilot and is hired by Jerome.  He has a Dervish – Khazbekistan knock-off of an American stealth fighter.  He also has a Storm Burst missile, which can destroy a plane but make it look like it exploded in a fireball.

Beckett realizes that Jerome will need to kidnap Selina to make her work the machine, and he tries to warn her, but it’s too late, and they are both kidnapped.  She is forced to program both Ed and Jerome to read and understand Khazbek.

Ros has become suspicious of Bixon, and well she should, for he has been bugging them.  He claims it was because time was critical, but Ros still has her doubts.

The caper goes down like this.  Jerome’s associate hacks a navigation beacon, allowing them to draw a Strate Air passenger jet (including Mr. Strate, CEO of the company) off course.  Ed and Jerome, in the Dervish, will intercept the jet and destroy it with the Storm Burst making it look like a catastrophic pilot failure.  For good measure, Beckett and Selina have been strapped to a bomb with only just enough time for them to escape on the timer.

Ros defeats the navigation beacon hacking

Ed thwarts the plane plan

Beckett and Selina escape in the nick of time… get it?  Nick of time?  Nick Beckett?

Finally, Ros discovers that Bixon was an imposter and does not work for or represent the GCEE, but who was he?

…an associate of Marcel’s, of course, perhaps even his cousin, but Team Bugs don’t know that.  Yet.

Join John and Eugene as they listen to and talk about Big Finish Productions’ second Space: 1999 boxset, featuring the stories Mooncatcher, Earthbound, and Journey’s End.

Mooncatcher Synopsis

11 months after leaving Earth’s orbit, the Alphans are celebrating the birth of the first child on Alpha – everyone except Paul, that is, who’s a big party pooper.  While on watch in Main Mission, he intercepts a transmission from an object designated Delta One.

Reluctantly, Koenig agrees to allow Paul and Victor to investigate the object.

It is alive, and it captures spacecraft to feed upon the crews.  Eagle 5 is caught, and Paul and Victor are infected by the creature’s feeding apparatus.  As the creature penetrates their minds, they begin to hallucinate.  Paul, in particular, begins reliving his ill-fated love affair and engagement, which fell apart because of his commitments to Moonbase Alpha.

Koenig and Dr. Russell fly out in a rescue Eagle and free the others, returning to Alpha, but Delta One is following them.  Alpha personnel evacuate to the deep-level safety zones.

Alpha is being assaulted by polyps from Delta One.  Although Morrow and Bergman are supposed to quarantine in the eagle, Morrow decides to leave.  The rest of the Alphans begin to experience the mind-influencing effects of Delta One.

Only Helena and Simmons are bloody-minded enough to resist the creature.  Morrow leaves Bergman on a mission. 

Bergman arrives in time to stop everyone from walking out onto the surface.

Morrow launches Eagle 10 with nuclear waste aboard.  Delta One takes Eagle 10 into itself and it explodes, killing Delta One and Paul Morrow.  

Who am I kidding?  They’ll never kill a major character like Morrow.  He placed the Eagle on remote control and wasn’t aboard.

Earthbound Synopsis

At the regular command meeting, John Koeing opens the floor for issues.  Commissioner Simmonds once again brings up his idea that they should work towards building a new Kueller drive, recreate the wormhole, and return to Earth.  Koenig shoots him down – it’s impossible and this isn’t a democracy.

And with that, Simmonds’s like-minded followers spring into action, taking Main Mission, and, indeed, all of Alpha, by force.  Time to invoke a little democracy into the fate of the Alphans.  Koenig will make a fact-based case for continuing with their existing plans, and Simmonds will appeal to the emotions of the Alphans.  A vote will be held for the direction of Alpha.

Not literally, of course, Alpha will continue on its course, but how they set their priorities, and how they allocate their time and resources.

John, Helena, and Victor make the case that they don’t know where Earth is, they do not have the resources to build spacecraft, and you cannot change the laws of physics and invent faster-than-light travel.

Simmonds tries a different approach, “We’re the best, and as long as we dream, nothing can stop us.”

That shit works and Simmonds narrowly wins the vote.  Project Earthbound will commence immediately. He then cannily turns command back to Koenig saying, “I just promised them that you’ll deliver them to Earth.”

Time passes and they keep running up against the wall we call “reality” and they’re burning out senior staff, like Sandra.  Cultural divides have formed between the brutish thugs walking the halls and the so-called Main Mission Elite.  They think they’re stalling and that perhaps a few beatings might get them motivated.  Helena is forced to stun one of them when they attack Sandra outside the Medical Section.

And then an alien spacecraft on a collision course with Alpha comes along, but there are no Eagles to defend Alpha as they are all out looking for resources, on Simmonds orders.  Alan Carter makes it back just in time, but lasers don’t work, so he rams the craft with his Eagle, causing it to crash, destroying his ship, and killing Alan Carter.

Who am I kidding?  They’ll never kill a major character like Carter.  He survives the crash, just barely.

Setting up a connection to the alien craft, Koenig, Bergman, and Dr. Russell board the ship.  Inside they find cryogenic sleepers.  When a re-waking cycle on one of the chambers seems to go wrong, Russell tries to help, but it causes the death of the occupant.

The other awaking alien grabs Helena and has a mind-meld with her, learning what happened, our language, and that she was trying to help.  He forgives her.  In fact, he’s quite reasonable and nonaggressive.

They were heading to Earth, but their ship got confused because it was looking for Earth’s moon before finishing the journey to Earth.  Now that they know of the error, the ship can continue to Earth.

Simmonds seizes upon this and suggests, in private, to Koenig that they should seize the alien craft for a return trip to Earth.

Journey’s End Synopsis

While Victor is studying the Caldosian ship, the remaining crew awakens and communication is lost with Bergman.  Simmonds leaps to the worst possible scenario, and Helena automatically defends Zantor and his people.

It has not escaped anyone’s attention that Helena seems to be very defensive of Zantor.  Could she be under some form of mental influence?  John has a heart-to-heart talk with her trying to find out if she is under the ‘fluence. She explains how deep her connection to Zantor is and that she and John “missed their moment.”  Koenig didn’t even know there’d been a moment.

The problem with Victor was a miscommunication, but Simmonds is still in favor of seizing Zantor’s ship.  Helena strongly opposes that.  In the absence of action on Koenig’s part, Simmonds tries to take the ship, but he is thwarted by Koenig and Bergman.  Zentor offers to take one human back to Earth, Helena.

Everyone on Alpha knows how close Koenig and Russell have become – everyone except Koenig, perhaps, and they all try to tell him to go first for the girl.  Even Simmonds knows that Koenig needs Russell by his side for Alpha to succeed.

Helena decides to go, and John, being the standup guy he is, lets her go.

This doesn’t sit well with Simmonds, and he storms the ship, destroying the cryo pod.  He doesn’t want to return to Earth, but he cannot allow Helena to go.  Zantor’s ship is already preprogrammed and will take off in moments.  Paul arrives trying to stop Simmonds, so he gets stunned.  Forcing Helena to flee the ship, Simmonds tries to drag Paul out, but he doesn’t have time.

The ship departs, but the Caldosians are asleep and Paul has no cryopod.  He apologizes via comlock to Sandra and tells her he loves her before his signal cuts out.

At the next command briefing, Alan Carter is promoted to Moonbase Controller, and Simmonds offers his apologies.  He was only trying to save Helena and to save Moonbase Alpha. 

Bergman reveals that Zantor gave him an artifact picked up on an alien world containing what they thought to be Earth writing.  It is in Sanskrit, and Kano will set to work translating it.  Perhaps man’s destiny is in the stars.

Koenig addresses Alpha.  While they will re-prioritize their workloads, he re-commits to continuing project Earthbound.

Kenneth and Eugene ponder the notion, “how bored does a holovision audience have to be to sit and watch a completely unedited feed?” and also, “do they watch when they go to the bathroom?”

It’s Starhunter Redux’s Third Thing.

Episode Synopsis

Matilda is the saccharine, bitchy host of a holovision program called the Third Thing.  Next week’s show is coming up fast and she demands that producer Julian and his… let’s call her aide… Nasdine, come up with something good for the show.  Something that takes ordinary people doing extraordinary things transforming them into extraordinary people in the process!

Terraformers, people working to resolve difficult political situations, police, teachers, doctors?  “No.  DULL DULL DULL.  Bring me… BOUNTY HUNTERS!”

About that same time, two erstwhile bounty hunters, Marcus and Percy are complaining about the fact that they’re always doing the mechanical, engineering, and grunt work of carrying bottomless ball boxes that they’re best suited for, rather than the glamorous, exciting bounty hunting that the pros are doing.  Marcus resolves to demand a job from Travis.

Jobs appear to be pretty slim on the ground, though, as Travis and Callie can’t find any work that isn’t beneath them.  In comes Marcus demanding a job, and then in comes Rudolfo with a job – a documentary by famous documentary producer Julian for the Third Thing.

Travis, a man who has a face likely to get him in trouble with the Raiders doesn’t really want his face plastered all over the airwaves.  It’s a lot of money, though, so they agree to send Marcus and Percy, with support from Callie, to pick up a repeat offender that’s absolutely so bad at being on the run, he just keeps getting picked up.

Marcus has a hole drilled into his brain and has a camera attached to his optic nerve so they can get a camera feed.  Percy is unsuitable.  Go figure.

They go to Io city, and things start turning bad quickly.  Tremayne, the target of their bounty, is meeting with Raiders, and then a gunfight breaks out and an innocent woman is killed in the crossfire.

Marcus and Percy pursue, and, during this, we learn that the entire thing is being broadcast live on The Third Thing, with Matilda giving remarkably insightful commentary. 

For the show, the First Thing is Marcus and Percy.

The Second Thing is Tremayne, because, he’s been wired up, too.

Rudolfo, back on the ship, watches the Third Thing, realizes there’s a problem, and heads for assistance.

Nasdine is having second thoughts about being a participant in this criminal endeavor that has already gotten one bystander killed.  She’s reminded she’ll never work in HV again if she backs out now so, she continues to be an accessory to the crime in progress.  Until she’s shot and killed.  To her credit, she does sort of try to warn Marcus before she’s killed.

When the audience votes to let the villains get access to extra intel on the location of Marcus, things look very bad until Rudolfo arrives and saves the day, by subduing the Raiders.

That is until the Third Thing is revealed…. It’s the pointless third-act story complication!  The staple of such hack shows as The Third Thing and Starhunter Redux.  What is it?  Callie has been taken by more Raiders who are also acting as cameras for The Third Thing’s eager audience.

Rudolfo sweeps in with a flourish, pretending to be the Director of The Third Thing, and subdues them.  All is well that ends well.  They torture and humiliate Julian a bit in an airlock, and then they get paid, and both sides agree not to press charges against each other, and they all live happily ever after.

There is that slight coda at the end where we learn that Ruldofo knew all along what type of show the Third Thing was. So, there’s that. 

The end.

Does music soothe the savage beast? When does a scientist cross the line from brilliant visionary to quack? Do you know someone who wears sandals, and do you know where they came from?

Primordial Amphibian Ragon Synopsis

An undersea volcano forms near the fishing waters off Iwane Island.  The island is the home of Professor Ishii, a somewhat discredited undersea geologist who has predicted that Japan will sink under the ocean.  Yuriko sees the lemonade side of the boring assignment because she happens to know Professor Ishii’s younger sister, Fumiko.

Jun and Ippei chopper her out first to photograph the volcano, and then to visit Iwane Island.  Jun stays with Yuriko on the island while Ippei leaves with the chopper.  The encounter Professor Ishii trying to convince the village head to send a vessel out to the volcano to gather data.  Ishii is worried that Iwane Island is going to sink soon.  Since he’s largely discredited and sending a boat is dangerous and expensive, the request is denied.

One fishing captain went out anyway and he’s returned with a strange, capsule-like object that got caught in his nets.  Ishii borrows it for analysis.  He checks it against a book, which I can only guess is entitled Tobin’s Ancient Life Guide, and finds a match.  The object is the egg of an anthropomorphic amphibious lifeform called Ragon that lived 200 million years ago in the oceans at 5,000 meters of depth.  Bonus fact: Ragons have the intelligence of gorillas or higher.

The discovery of the egg is of little interest to Ishii, he’s more interested in what it “proves.”  The volcano is rising from a depth of 1,000 meters.  Ragons lived much deeper, at 5,000 meters.  This leads to two inevitable conclusions (1) Iwane is going to sink and (2) Ishii doesn’t understand what an amphibian is.  We’re just going to ignore that second one because this story does.

An adult Ragon comes ashore and starts terrorizing the villagers, and eventually traps our main characters in Ishii’s remote home.  They discover that music soothes the savage beast (and, like the rest of us, radio announcers do the opposite.). Using a transistor radio, Jun leads the creature out to a cliff, where he is trapped and would no doubt have been killed if it weren’t for the timely intervention of Ippei and the helicopter… no, wait, sorry.  If it weren’t for the timely intervention of an earthquake, plunging Ragon off the cliff.

The island is going to sink real soon now and everyone is rushing to the harbor to escape via boat.  Jun and Yuriko are still quite a ways away from the harbor though.

In the harbor, Ragon appears and menaces everyone, preventing them from getting to the boats.  The egg hatches and Fumiko that the Ragon is just there to retrieve its baby.  She hands it over and the Ragon leaves.  The islanders hop in the boats and escape without Jun and Yuriko, who are still quite a ways away from the harbor.

As the island plunges into its final death throws jun and Yuriko would no doubt be killed if it weren’t for one of the boats returning for them… no, wait, sorry.  If it weren’t for the timely intervention of Ippei and the helicopter.

Space DIrective M774 Synopsis

Yuriko, Jun, and Ippei are returning to Tokyo on a cruise ship.  Yuriko, unlucky at cards, goes out on deck to get some fresh air.  She finds a child’s doll, sees a shooting star, and the doll talks to her.

“I am Zemi from the planet Rupen.  Warning: The Monster Bostang has come to Earth.”

Terrified, Yuriko tosses the doll overboard.  Jun and Ippei don’t believe her.

The next day, back in Tokyo, Jun and Ippei are flying the plane, when the plane is taken over.  The plane flies back to the airfield by itself.  When it arrives, no one is aboard.

Jun and Ippei are lost somewhere when they see a lone building in the middle of nowhere.  The building is actually a quite stylish cafe with questionable foot traffic placement.  There are also no customers or staff, only a jukebox that plays an interactive two-way message for Jun and Ippei:

“I am Zemi from the planet Rupen.  Warning: The Monster Bostang has come to Earth.”

Jun is, for once, skeptical.  Their plane was taken over remotely, they were deposited without their awareness in the middle of nowhere, a stylish cafe equally in the middle of nowhere, and a jukebox that can talk with them, claiming to be an alien and warning them of a monster.  None of that’s good enough.  We need to meet in person.

OK, Zemi says, meet me at the library tomorrow.

While this is happening, the undersea egg that arrived from space hatches, and out pops Bostang, a manta ray-like creature, which destroys an oil tanker.

They meet and she now goes by the name, Kiyomi.  “Well, good enough for me,” says Jun, “what can we do about this monster?”

They tell the Navy, who don’t believe it, but they let the gang, along with Kiyomi go out on one of their naval ships, where they find the creature.  They’re just about to attack when Kiyomi lets them know their weaponry isn’t good enough and their only hope is to run silent and hope it goes away.

Later a cruise ship comes near and it, too, is ordered to stop and wait.  

Hours pass and finally Bostang surfaces again and heads to the cruise ship.  Rather than see the 500 passengers killed, the Naval vessel powers up to distract Bostang and then attacks it.

In the nick of time, jet fighters arrive and make short work of Bostang.

Later, Kiyomi explains that her mission is done and now she will remain on Earth and live as an Earth person.  She reveals that there are many such aliens living undetected on Earth, perhaps even the person sitting next to you.