Simon and Eugene discuss how far futuristic shows should project from the present, and coincidentally where electric bolt guns fit with extrapolating the progression of genetic engineering.  We discuss baddies in Bugs and which we would and wouldn’t like to come back and somehow we end up exploring British and American naming conventions.

Episode Synopsis

At an agricultural experimental station, a covert team strike the facility, causing a viroid to be sprayed directly on the experimental wheat crop.  The wheat die.

Team Bugs (because I refuse to call them Gizmos) are called in and Beckett shows a surprising amount of knowledge about viroids and horticulture for a spy dude.  The wheat was supposed to be a completely pest-resistant variety, but who would do that?

A nasty pesticide company, that’s who, and there are apparently none nastier than Pesticorp, run by Dr. Croll.  Beckett goes undercover as a pesticide buyer to infiltrate.

Meanwhile, Ros has used magic to create extra pixels from the research station’s CCTV footage of the raid.  She identifies a junior meteorologist as one of the infiltrators.  She and Ed go to a weather place to investigate.

Beckett intentionally tips his hand to Dr. Croll by showing him a photo of the viroid, which strikes a nerve.  He gives Croll a stylish wheat pin that goes with any ensemble, but it’s not just haute couture, it’s also a video camera gizmo, and Beckett gets enough info before the obvious design flaw destroys the camera, revealing the ruse.

He only just escapes the facility when he tricks a guard into firing an electrical bolt into a mirror, reflecting it back into the water.  Don’t ask.

At the weather place, Ed spies on the subject while Ros walks into their computer room and begins downloading data.  The suspect is getting a payoff from the head meteorologist, Pym.  The payoff doesn’t go well and Pym murders him with a genetically-engineered wasp with a lethal sting.

Ed, too, is nearly killed, and then suffers further when he falls into a room filled with bugs.  Fearless Ed is terrified of bugs and his escape from the bug room releases all the bugs, inadvertently dealing a setback to the baddies plans.

One bug hitches a ride on Ed and a study of it reveals that it’s exactly the right type of bug to infect with a viroid and spread that viroid to European wheat crops.  Bugs must be used because it is impossible to directly infect wheat with the viroid.  Further study reveals that this is a genetically-engineered bug created by Insect-Tech.  Ros goes to Insect-Tech, while Ed and Beckett attempt a break-in at Pesticorp to obtain the viroid.

It is a trap.  Beckett escapes the building, but while Ed also avoids capture, he remains trapped inside the building.

Ros learns from Insect-Tech that Pesticorp are taking delivery this very moment of a large quantity of the very bugs in question.  She goes to investigate.

Pym, the meteorologist, knows Ros is there and he tampers with her car, installing a speed-controlled, bee-delivery system,  hooked into her air conditioning.  A cool, overly-complicated, hi-tech killing device that he apparently brought for just this occasion.

Ros gives chase and the trap is sprung, and it would have been lethal if Ros hadn’t removed the top of her convertible.

The villain’s dastardly plot becomes apparent.  Croll and Pym are going to infect bugs with the viroid, then, when the weather is just right (hence the need for Pym) they’ll release the bugs via time-delayed release on weather balloons, wiping out the European wheat crop.  Then, they shall make a fortune selling the pesticide designed to kill the viroid.

Ed manages to destroy most of the viroid in the lab, and is trapped behind a deadly UV lamp.  Croll manages to get enough of it for the plan to proceed.  Beckett tries to stop the time-released bugs capsules, but (for reasons) can only set the timer to 5 minutes, hoping to release the bugs before they are infected.

Meanwhile, Ros tries to secure the antidote, but it is destroyed, along with Pym, by an over-zealous security guard. 

Ed, now on the roof, must battle Croll, sending him to his death, but a balloon is launched with seconds to go before the infected bugs are released.  Ros shoots the balloon, but Ed must overcome his phobia and hold the bugs in with his hand.

In prison, Marcel has made a fortune for the warden (and the prison) by investing in wheat futures.

John and Eugene ask the question, “why not vampires,” consider if racial prejudice goes away if you lose your pigmentation, and why Chuck Heston never gets a good ending in a film.

It’s the Omega Man!

Synopsis

Col. Dr. Robert Neville is a man with a problem:  He’s the last man on Earth, roaming the deserted streets of Los Angeles, but if he’s the last man on Earth, who is he shooting at?

Taking solace in his solitude by taking in a movie, Neville lets time slip away from him, and as sunset looms, he rushes home to his bunker, where he is attacked by, and successfully defends himself from albino Luddites.  Yes, Neville spends his days in solitude and his nights being taunted and attacked by the scarred remnants of humanity.

Through flashback, we learn that a 1975 Sino-Russian war lead to the deployment of a bacteriological weapon, that rapidly killed its victims.  Neville, a researcher into a vaccine, found himself dying of the bacteria and in a desperate gamble, injected himself with the latest experimental vaccine.  He alone survived as a human.

While most of the people died almost instantly, a subset of them were afflicted with albinism and extreme light sensitivity.  They die much slower, and many of them still exist now two years after the majority of the world died.  They have formed into an anti-science cult, called the family, led by former newsman Matthias.  Their goal is to build a new world, devoid of the technology that brought destruction to them, and personified by Neville, a creature of the wheel.  (Although,  they themselves actually seem to have no problem using wheels.). They spend their nights burning books, destroying things and places of knowledge and science, and trying to kill Neville, whom they hope to kill for his sins.

Neville spends his days seeking for the Family’s next, where, if he finds it, he plans to destroy them all because, you know, they’re plague victims and he needs to put them down like mad dogs.

Speaking of mad dogs, it looks like Neville is cracking up because one day, after two full years alone, he spies and chases a young woman.  He loses sight of her and is certain she was just a figment of his imagination.  It rattles him and he lets his guard down.  The Family ambushes him in a wine cellar and takes him captive.  He is tried, convicted, and sentenced to being burnt alive at Dodger Stadium.

As the flames are about to be lit, the stadium lights, long-dormant spring to life, blinding the Family.  A young man, Dutch, not a figment of Neville’s imagination, and Lisa, the also-not-a-figment-of Neville’s-imagination young woman that he saw the other day rescue him – at gunpoint.

Taken to a fortress in the Los Angeles hill, he discovers a small colony of children, seemingly unaffected by the plague – but that is not actually the case.  Some young people seem to have a natural resistance, but eventually, they too will change.  Lisa’s younger brother, Ritchie, is turning, and Neville switches back into doctor/scientist mode.

He tells them that he is immune and that he may be able to synthesize a serum from his blood to reverse and cure the plague.  Lisa accompanies Neville and Ritchie back to his bunkered home, which contains a laboratory.  After weeks, he succeeds in reversing Ritchie’s condition.  Now there are two immune humans and he can use both of their blood to inoculate Lisa, Dutch, and the others.  They plan to leave somewhere in the woods to start rebuilding.

Ritchie’s young and stupid naive humanity kicks in and he asks Neville if they shouldn’t cure the Family, too.  They are, after all, just thinking, feeling, sentient human beings who are victims of the plague just like everyone else.  Neville says they’re vermin that need to be put down.

The next day, Lisa goes to collect supplies before leaving the big city, and Ritchie decides that the Family deserves to know that there is now a cure and they can return to normal. A laudable attitude, perhaps, but Ritchie doesn’t understand religious fanaticism, and does not realize that the Family doesn’t want a return to the old world.  They think he was sent as a trap from Neville, so they kill him and go after Neville one last time.

Neville finds a note Ritchie left and goes to rescue him.  Lisa, returning late from foraging, suddenly transforms and starts following the mob heading towards Neville’s home.

Finding Ritchie dead, Neville returns home, having an epic battle to get inside, but he does, only to discover the now-transformed Lisa has let Matthias and the Family in.  They hold Neville and destroy his home, books, equipment, and art, before planning to kill him.

He’s got one last escape in him and he gets away, taking a bottle of his blood serum and Lisa with him, hoping to escape and cure her.  Escaping outside, Neville’s gun jams and Matthias hurls a spear into his chest.  It is over, now the Family can sleep in peace.

The next day, Dutch arrives with the kids to see the destruction.  He finds Neville, still dying.  He hands Dutch the serum, and the unresisting Lisa, and dies.  Dutch and the kids leave for the mountains.

Kenneth and Eugene discuss the Starhunter Redux episode Becoming Shiva and ask the question, are the terrorists playing Grand Master-level chess or deaf, dumb, and blind pinball?

Episode Synopsis

In a disused, restricted section of Ring Shepard Station, in orbit around Saturn, Salvatore and Nailson, two terrorists from Terra’s Children plant a bomb, and they leave.  To their surprise, two civilians enter the unused area just as the bomb is about to detonate.  Nailson wants Salvatore to stop the explosion, but he lets it continue, killing the two men in addition to damaging the station.  This is the first time Terra’s Children have killed people.

The cops from Jupiter Federation are concerned about this change in tactics by Terra’s Children.  They are a radical group dedicated to the cause of rehabilitating the Earth, and they’ve chosen to do this not by rehabilitating the Earth, but by attacking other planetary federations that have no jurisdiction or political control over the Earth.  Rumors are that they’ll be striking Syn City 10 next.  Because the Ring Shepard crime was out of their jurisdiction, they’ve hired Travis Montana to capture Salvatore, the leader of Terra’s Children, and turn him over to Saturn authorities.  Somehow preventing a crime in their jurisdiction is complicated by their previous crime being committed in another jurisdiction, hence the need for Montana and the Gang.

In Syn City, Salvatore and Nailson have gone to great lengths to enter undetected and now they privately discuss their next action. Nailson is distressed that they’ve started killing, but Salvatore thinks it’s time to step up the pressure on the people who have no jurisdiction over the fate of Earth.  He detects Nailson’s reluctance and they split up.  He plants a bomb in a busy area.

Nailson, suspicious of Salvatore, follows him, disables, and begins disarming the bomb.

Although they were careful to avoid detection, they weren’t careful enough to evade the facial recognition technology of an antique luxury liner’s hospitality AI, and Travis and the Gang soon have an ID on Nailson, and a tail on her.  Callie takes her down and they lock her up on the Trans-Utopian and head for Saturn.

Travis wants information on Salvatore from her and he’s willing to play nice to get it.  She won’t budge.  Callie and the others just want to torture her for the information, but Travis says, “no.”

Meanwhile, they discover that Nailson was disarming the bomb.  Hmm, interesting.  Good thing they didn’t torture her.  Maybe she’s a terrorist with a heart of gold.

At Ring Shepard, something goes wrong.  They’re not allowed to dock and are required to bring the prisoner over by shuttle.  They also insist on sending over their own security to inspect the Trans-Utopian.  This is, of course, all a ruse. Terra’s Children have infiltrated Ring Shepard’s security and harbor master’s office.  The inspection team is really an invasion team intending to take over the ship.  Travis returns and gets lucky, killing the infiltration team.

Now, without consulting anyone, Percy tortures Nailson and gets the info they need, the location of Salvatore and his base, which is on the smallest moon of Jupiter.  It’s going to be a tricky navigational feat, but after a meaningless lesson from Caravaggio about LaGrange points, they get there.

Inside, Salvatore and his terrorist cronies are easy pickings.  In fact, it’s almost too easy.

Travis, on his lonesome, takes three handcuffed prisoners back to the Trans-Utopian in a shuttle and leaves behind Callie and Rudolfo to guard three more very docile and smug prisoners.  Callie detects a bomb that will kill them all and she and Rudolfo run to another shuttle and head back to the Trans-Utopian, leaving the three smug prisoners to die in the explosion.

Onboard the Trans-Utopian, professional bounty hunter Travis Montana is unable to escort three handcuffed prisoners on board his own ship and they escape and take his gun.

Onboard the shuttle, Callie and Rudolfo come across orbital simulations that indicate they’ve been planning things for months, because…. Somehow you can tell that from simulations?

Salvatore releases Nailson who, it turns out, has been faking all along.  She’s all for killing the can dwellers in retaliation for her child dying of cancer because cancer sucks, but it apparently sucks less in space.

Their diabolical, intricately-plotted scheme is to use the Trans-Utopian to ram Adrastea into a collision with Jupiter, killing 3 billion people.

Salvatore leaves everyone else aboard the Trans-Utopian and heads out on a shuttle to escape.  Luckily, the shuttle Callie is on has a particle beam and she disables Salvatores shuttle, so, rather than die himself, he agrees to stop.  Nailson; however, is still bent on committing suicide and continues.

Travis saves the day by shooting Nailson.

John and Eugene ponder if eggs might have chains in the Rainbow’s Egg and marvel at the ejaculating alien in Challenge from the Year 2020.

The Rainbow’s Egg Synopsis

Two truckers are transporting a highly dangerous vaguely egg-shaped container of enriched uranium to a new industrial city in the country.

They see blooming bamboo, which is an ill omen, then they see a golden rainbow, and finally, a monster emerges from the ground wrecking the road, the tuck and clearly killing both truckers in the avalanche and fall off the precipitous cliff.

Meanwhile, a group of precocious kids also find a bamboo flower, but Grandmother doesn’t tell them it’s a bad omen, instead, she tells them that when the bamboo blooms and if you find the rainbows egg, it will grant any wish.

The kids wish to restore Grandmother’s ability to walk, so they begin the hunt.

Yuri, Jun, and Ippei are out searching for the truck so that Yuri can file a story.  They find the two truckers who aren’t fatally or even very badly wounded after all.

They tell of the golden rainbow.

Eventually, Jun surmises that the monster, Pagos, which was recently seen in Beijing eating uranium might be here.  They warn the new industrial city.

Meanwhile, the kids find the Uranium, and, thinking it’s the rainbow’s egg, with chains attached to it, they attempt to haul it off somewhere.

Pagos arrives and starts to trash the industrial city.  They are hesitant to use their new neutron missiles because they do not know where the uranium is and it might explode.

When they learn the kids have it somewhere else, they kill the monster.  Also, Grandmother gets up and walks.

Challenge from the Year 2020 Synopsis

The Japan Defense Force sights a UFO and scrambles fighters.  They are destroyed, therefore no one believes it happened.  Lt. Col. Amano is disgraced.

Soon thereafter, people start disappearing, literally in front of the eyes of other people, including Yuriko.  Her boss doesn’t really believe her so she goes to the only logical place, her friend Jun.  As it happens, Lt. Col. Amano has also approached Jun for help with his mystery.  He can only work on one mystery at a time, so he chooses Amano’s problem first.  They fly out over the ocean to the spot where the UFO disappeared.  There’s nothing there, so obviously it was radar failure and Amano was tired.  Somehow relieved by that, they turn back, only for Jun to disappear mid-flight when he is touched by a mysterious blob of liquid.

Ippei had noticed that the events seem very similar to a book called Challenge from the Year 2020 written by the insane professor Kando.  The book purports to detail a series of alien abductions by aliens known as Kemur.  If the book is right, the people disappearing are being transmitted to the planet Kemur in the year 2020, where their bodies will be used to extend the life of the Kemur race.

The liquid attacks Yuriko but she gets lucky and escapes.  Now a believer, her boss arranges for her to have very unimpressive police protection in the form of Detective Udagawa.

The Kemur put in an appearance.

Before we proceed with the following sentence, get your mind out of the gutter, this is a family-friendly program!

The Kemur make people disappear by ejaculating a viscous liquid from a hole at the very tip of their heads.

Based on the information in the book, Ippei and Amano try to contact insane Professor Kando, who was let out of the mental institution because he was incurable.  Much like health care in the United States.  Kando has already been removed, but he left behind the K-Miniod, a device that can emit X-Channel Light, something that will defeat the Kemur.

It turns out Udagawa isn’t actually a bumbling cop, but is actually well-informed, having been insane Professor Kando’s best friend and the person who committed him to the mental institution.  While he saves Yuriko from one attack, he loses her in a second.

He traces the Kemur and Yuriko to an amusement park and they shoot Kemur in the head.  He then enlarges himself and menaces everyone.

Amano and Ippei manage to use Tokyo Tower to emit a beam of X-Channel light, knocking Kemur down.

Kemur then ejaculates on himself and disappears.

The missing people reappear.

We kick off our Series Two of Bugs coverage with the two-part openers “What Goes Up…” and “…Must Come Down.” (In that same order.)

Simon and Eugene discuss Bugs.

What Goes Up… Synopsis

Because I refuse to call them “Gizmos,” Team Bugs have been called in by the Space Technology Agency or STA to ensure the security of the Rex satellite launch.  Rex is a top-secret mineral prospecting satellite being launched via a small, only-recently democratic, South East Asian island nation.  Rather than refinancing their national debt or just defaulting on it like everyone else, they’ve bet their entire bankroll on this satellite launch.  They hope that it will immediately identify underground platinum deposits that they can exploit.

But, there’s a problem.  There seems to be someone inside the program working against them.  While Ros and Beckett handle the security review, Ed has been placed undercover in the astronaut/payload specialist training program.  In a training accident, he is nearly killed.  One of his fellow trainees is not so lucky and dies.

The satellite uses a newly-developed fuel cell technology, which is progressing too slowly.  Ros and Beckett check it out and are nearly killed by the scientist in charge of the project.  Before they can question him, though, he is killed when his car explodes.

Later, we see someone plant a bomb in one of the trainee simulators, and moments later, Susan Vornholt, mission commander, assigns Ed to use that simulator.  He narrowly escapes death by being just too awesome for words.  One of his fellow less-awesome trainees is not so lucky and dies.

Later, on the way to a weightlessness test for the entire team of trainees, Vornholt catches Ed slipping off and reporting in.  Just as she starts to accuse him of being the saboteur, the trainee van blows up.  Vornholt and Ed narrowly escape death.  All of the rest of the trainees are not so lucky and die.

It looks like the World Bank are just as mustache-twirling villains as any other bank, and they’ve decided to call in the loans of the beleaguered little southeast Asian island nation.  They’re going to have to launch within 18 hours.

Ed, being the only trainee not to… uh… bomb out of the training program, volunteers to fly on the mission as the payload specialist.  So, it’s off to Guyana for Ed, Vornholt, and Rex for the launch of the space shuttle Excalibur.

Ros hacks into the STA’s mission control so that she and Beckett can comfortably watch the launch from their offices (presumably with popcorn) rather than watch the launch from the actual mission control, to which they have security access.  (Technically speaking, even the actual mission control isn’t the actual mission control, that’s in Guyana.)

From the comfort of their offices, 20 some minutes away from the action, they check the cameras that mission control wouldn’t bother with during launch and Beckett notices the fuel cell is leaking.  That could explode, so they call mission control.

Except that the baddie, which has been revealed to be Mr. Zito, the head of training, has cut the communications lines.  Beckett hops in the car and races to the STA.  Ros, trying to reach a special receiver she gave to Ed, climbs a secret Hive listening tower to tap into their microwave dish.

Beckett is intercepted by Zito and locked up.  Ros reaches Ed and warns him but Zito inserts himself into communications between the shuttle and Guyana mission control, preventing Ed’s warning from causing the mission to be scrubbed.

Beckett escapes and warns the mission controller at STA, but, there’s nothing they can do except finding the baddie and re-establish communication with Guyana.

Ed tries to get to the cargo hold and release the fuel cell before launch, which he does, but not until after the shuttle launches and he’s nearly killed in the process.

Beckett finds Zito, but he escapes.  Communication is re-established, and Beckett and Ros chase Zito in a high-speed car chase, ending with Zito’s car exploding.  

Oh well, can’t win ‘em all.  Guess we’d better get back to mission control and leave this burning car in the streets.  There are no police in this universe, but there are probably street sweepers.

As they leave, a fire-proof-suited Zito climbs out of the exploded car and laughs at their stupidity.

Ed manages to jettison the fuel cell before the sun rises on the shuttle, and things are looking good until the Star Shield space laser defense system goes active and shoots the shuttle.  Ed and Vornholt are either dead or as good as dead.

…Must Come Down Synopsis

Forces of chaos are at work in the country of Kituma.  The duplicitous vice-president wants to take down the president and seize power, to that end, he has enlisted Mr. Zito to cause the Rex satellite project to fail.  In addition to the chaos being introduced to the Rex satellite launch, he is also staging a series of “fake” terrorist attacks to force the president to resign.

Things are looking bad for Ed and Vornholt aboard the Excalibur.  Shot by a deadly space laser, the cargo bay doors have opened and the robotic arm has extended, then broken.  If they are unable to bring the arm in, they cannot close the doors and they cannot return to Earth.  Worse still, the STA was paid to deploy that damned satellite, and deploy that damned satellite they must do.  There are loans that have to be repaid, and no bank in the world is going to cut you some slack just because your satellite launch was nearly blown up by a saboteur and attacked by a space laser!

All Ed has to do is spacewalk, replace the satellite’s fuel cell, manually release the docking clamps, input the super-secret activation code (which no one except the president of Katuma knows,) and deploy the satellite.  Let’s hope none of those claps are stuck!

Meanwhile, Beckett must make nice with his ex-fiancee, who happens to be a GNC news reporter on the ground in the presidential palace in Kituma.  All regular communications with Kituma are disrupted by the terrorist attacks, but GNC has a dedicated, uninterrupted satellite communications channel.  Beckett needs her to get the code from the president.

Ros has her work cut out, too.  Sure, she could easily hack into mission control, but regaining control of the Star Shield Space Laser system is beyond her.  She’s going to have to track down where Zito is overriding it from and gain access there.  Why does she need to get control of Space Shield?  Her plan is to use it to precision cut the robotic arm off of Excalibur, allowing them to close the bay doors.

Back in space, darn it, one of those clamps is stuck, but remember, the banks are waiting,  so Ed will have to manually detonate the exploding bolt, which destroys his tether launching him into space.  Luckily, he carries a cricket ball in his pocket, and he’s able to throw that, generate some force, and get back to the shuttle.

It might not be a cricket ball.

Ros finds the signal, with Beckett hot on her trail.  Zito makes his reappearance and gets the drop on Ros, but she and Beckett mostly overcome him – although he does escape again.  Space lasers to the rescue!  Ros cuts the robotic arm off in the nick of time and the Excalibur can proceed home.

With the satellite operating, platinum is discovered within minutes and Katuma is saved!  Except, it isn’t.  The president, unaware of this, is on the verge of resigning.  Beckett must call in another favor with his Ex to get word to the president about the platinum.   She begrudgingly helps him.  Pity he hasn’t got anything to barter with that would appeal to a reporter.

Zito tries to stop the transmission but is thwarted again by a defective fire suppression system.  He escapes once more, but this time he has backup help in nifty uniforms… and they kill him.

Since Vornholt is injured, Ed must pilot the Excalibur in for a landing.  Sadly, Ed’s time as an astronaut must remain a secret, because the world must never know that any old riffraff could go into space.  That privilege is reserved only for billionaire riffraff.

Percy gets some lovin’ from a spaceman.

Kenneth and Eugene discuss.

Tick tock, goes the clock.  It’s the penultimate 13th Doctor adventure, Legend of the Sea Devils.  Simon and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis

The year is 1807, and the infamous pirate Zhen Yi Sao is assaulting a statue of a sea devil over the protestations of one of the locals.  The statute cracks, and out pops a sea devil, killing the local.

The Doctor and the Gang arrive, possibly searching for the lost 16th-century Portuguese ship, the Flor de la Mar, or, if not, Dan is remarkably well-versed on the subject.  Nonetheless, they are in the wrong place at the wrong, sort of.

They meet Zhen Yi Sao, AKA Madame Ching, and the sea devil with a sword.  The sea devil has killed mostly everyone in town and quickly escapes the Doctor’s simplistic trap, escaping with a mighty hop and a leap onto a flying 16th-century Portuguese ship.

Madame Ching leaves.  She got what she was looking for, the location of the wreck of the Flor de la Mar. 

Dan wanders off following the son of the slain local as they try to board Ching’s ship.  The task seems unusually easy because the vessel operates on complete COVID restrictions, and there’s no crew whatsoever.

Unconcerned about Dan, the Doctor and Yaz also wander off, although they wander off in the TARDIS, heading back two centuries to 1511, trying to locate the wreck of the Flor de la Mar.  They witness the dread pirate Ji-Hun throwing his crew overboard and pledging his loyalty to the sea devil, only to be betrayed by it.

Knowing where the ship was scuttled, they head back to 1807, at the bottom of the sea, to find it before Madame Ching. It’s not there, but the TARDIS is swallowed by the HuaSheng, an improbable sea beastie controlled by the sea devils.

On Madame Ching’s ship, Dan and the boy are rapidly captured because they’re rubbish at hiding.  The boy wants to kill the pirate; the pirate wants to get the treasure of the Flor de la Mar to pay ransom to get her sons and crew back.  Dan and the boy agree to crew her ship rather than be killed.

Trapped in the sea devils’ underwater base, the Doctor tries to bluff that she has the keystone, which is a thingy that the sea devil needs to flip the poles, melt the ice caps and make the world all wet and wonderful again.

The sea devil has also, inexplicably, kept Ji-Hun alive for the last two centuries and converted the Flor de la Mar into his flying ship.  “Oh, of course!” says the Doctor, having just apparently come out of having a lobotomy.  They rescue Ji-Hun and escape to Madame Ching’s ship.

There’s some pirate fighting on the high seas; Dan slaughters multiple sea devils without a moment’s hesitation or introspection.  The Doctor rigs up a thingy to trap the sea devils in a bubble, but it requires a sacrifice to make it work; Ji-hun stays behind to hold the wires together, and they all escape.

Back in the 21st century, Dan calls Di, and she wants to get together, no doubt just before she reveals that she is a world-threatening menace intent on killing the Doctor or something.  The Doctor dumps Yaz hard with the old chestnut, “It’s not you, it’s me. But hey, we can keep on having fun, right?”

This week we look at two more episodes of Ultra Q.  Garamon makes a surprise return in Garamon Counterattacks.  Will he be less derpy?

In the 1/8 Project, Yuriko accidentally undergoes “voluntary” over-population reduction.

John and Eugene discuss.

Garamon Counterattacks Episode Synopsis

A strange man approaches the Astronomical Physics Lab at night.  He uses a small, hand-held radio device to remotely open the safe, freeing the Tilsonite meteorite that previously acted as the electronic brain controlling the invading robot Garamon.  The meteor flies out the window and leaves with the strange man.

Yuri awakes Jun and Ippei with the bad news.  With the meteor on the loose, the Garadamas meteor may be on their way for a second invasion – and, in fact, they are.  Not just one this time, but a whole swarm.  They head to the radio lab to consult with an expert.

The strange man, meanwhile, has the meteorite in a cello case and has hitched a ride out of Tokyo to Haruna via a commercial truck.  Along the way, he launches the attack.

The signals are detectable, though, and Jun, Yuri, Ippei, and the radio expert give chase, eventually catching up with the truck and the strange man, who runs off on foot.  Hordes of Garamon have now hatched and are wrecking Tokyo.

They chase the strange man until he is finally shot.  They recover the meteorite and seal it in a radio-suppressing bag, causing the invading Garamon to “die.”

The strange man isn’t dead yet and he reveals his true form.  He walks out into the lake as a spacecraft rises from the depths.  His mission is a failure, they kill him and fly off.

Oh, the day may be saved once more, but as long as the indestructible meteorite remains on Earth, the Garamon may return again someday.

The 1/8 Project Episode Synopsis

Tokyo is a crowded place.  Trains stations, doubly so.  Yuriko is crushed beneath the feet of the inexorable rush of people.  Remember this for later.

Sometime later, Jun, Ippei, and Yuriko are passing a building.  There’s quite the commotion as crowds of people are applying for something called the ⅛ Project.  People accepted into the project will be given homes in the all-new Model District 8.  Young and old are welcome.  They will be free from paying taxes.  Free from the Citizens’ Three Obligations.  Free to have as many children as they like, with costs paid by the government.  They will live in a beautiful, paradise-like model pre-planned community.  Yuriko can’t believe what she’s hearing until she learns the catch.

In an effort to reduce environmental and population stress, the new citizens of Model District 8 must be miniaturized to ⅛ of their current size.  She thinks that’s inhuman, but owing to an elevator mix-up, she ends up in the shrinking machine.

She’s welcomed into District 8 at the Immigrations office by the Mayor and a welcoming committee.  She’s informed she must forget her old life and even her old name.  We only go by numbers here.  You are number 6.  No, that’s not right.  You are number 103924.

Sadly, before she can start her new life, immigrations figures out she wasn’t approved to enter and she’s sent to jail, where she’s put in a cell with a hungry giant.  He wants to be shrunk, but he’s too big for the current machine.  He takes pity on Yuriko and helps her escape by lowering her captivity box out the window… and into a stream.

Things are looking bad when some children fish the box out of the stream and give it to a pair of nuns, who decide to return it to District 8.  Yuri awakens and talks with them, convincing them to drop her off at Jun’s airline.  They do, but Jun and Ippei aren’t there.

Yuri is startled by a photo of herself on the desk.  Jun and Ippei soon return and Yuri does what any sensible person who’s been shrunk and has come looking for help from her friends – she hides.

Jun and Ippei enter.  Ippei is holding balloons.  He sees the mysterious box from District 8 sitting on the desk and thinks it looks like a great place to secure the balloons.  Jun and Ippei discuss that the 7 days of mourning for Yuriko have passed and that Ippei should get rid of the picture now, but just at that moment an important job comes in and they leave.

Heartbroken, for some reason, Yuriko gets back into the box… somehow takes the box outside and somehow changes the laws of physics to that the box, and herself, can be carried aloft.

Soon, on a crowded, bustling urban street, two giants appear Jun and Ippei.  They are stopped by a tiny policeman and told they’re causing a disturbance and need to leave.

They will, but they’re looking for a friend and they’ll leave when they find her.  They wander the streets causing mass panic and wrecking a few bits of buildings in the process until finally, they come upon Yuriko in her apartment, with her giant camera.

Jun wants to take her away to Professor Ichinotani to see if they can reverse the process, but she wants Jun to leave and forget about her.  She flees the apartment into the crowded hallways that are filled with panicked people escaping the giants. Yuriko is crushed beneath the feet of the inexorable rush of people.

I did tell you to remember that for later.

Yuriko is in hospital, recovering from being crushed in the train station.  Jun and Ippei have come to see her and, when she awakens, she is overjoyed to learn they’ve been shrunk, too, and now she won’t be lonely.

Jun signals for Ippei to get her a doctor.

Is there room for miracles in Dr. Ian Hood, Scientist’s worldview?  No.  Simon and Eugene discuss Miracle.

Episode Synopsis

In Clayton, the police, acting on behalf of social services, take a child, Alfie, away from his father and proceed with emergency tumor removal surgery against the father’s wishes.  He’s been treating the boy with magic spring water and that should be good enough.  One minor setback, after cracking the boy open, no tumor can be found.  It’s a miracle.

At the Ministry, Hood is called into a meeting with MI6 by his superior (and perhaps friend) Alistair Drake.  They’ve got intel that a middle eastern country is building nuclear missile silos.  Hood takes one look and completely debunks their ludicrous “evidence” making no friends of the boys with licenses to kill; however, this is exactly why Drake called him into the meeting.

Debunking done, Hood got more debunking to be done.  He’s off to Clayton where dangerous rumors about a magical cancer-curing spring is in the news.

In an interview, much to management’s chagrin, Dr. Williams, the attending physician won’t categorically rule out that the water might have caused the remission.  Hood thinks she’s a quack, and he’s got to shut this nonsense down people will lose their lives pursuing nonsense instead of getting evidence-based medical treatment.  When they arrive at the spring, it is a madhouse, overrun with cancer patients hoping for a cure.  The father isn’t interested in what Hood has to say, and won’t let him investigate; however, Hood gets Rachel to surreptitiously obtain a bottle of the spring water for analysis – which she proceeds to drink, because they don’t hire cops for their brains, apparently.

Hood checks the pH level of the nearby stream and declares the water clean and pure, so… it’s all just bunk.  He doesn’t even bother to test the water sample from the spring itself.  They check the water near the local fertilizer plant, and the local reservoir.  pH checks out, so… pure and clean, obviously.  That night, Rachel has a bad night, puking and such.  Hood attributes it to a dodgy Shepard’s pie and not the same spring water Rachel continues to quaff down.  Still without testing it, apparently.

Hood visits Dr. Williams and determines that she’s not the quack he though she was.  She’s skeptical of the results, certain she didn’t misdiagnose, and simply won’t rule out the water because… it’s the only variable in the formula.  Further, the hospital’s cancer wards are being swamped by chemotherapy patients who’ve come to drink the spring water and have gotten sicker.  So that’s weird.

New tests of the water show that it’s got organophosphates in it, which is a by-product of fertilizer manufacturing.  Problem solved, but what caused Alfie’s tumor to disappear?

At a press conference, Dr. Williams draws attention to Dr. Hood, which makes all the papers.  Soon Drake arrives.  The public know where Hood is, and they’re received credible threats from teenage militants vegetarians are out to harm him.  He orders Rachel to take him home.

Dr. Williams is fired because she’s a liability to the credibility of the hospital.

— and the story is only halfway over —

Hood and Williams have a dinner date, and they decide that it would be possible to confirm that Alfie really did have a tumor because cancer markers will still be in his blood stream for another two weeks… and, apparently, they didn’t bother to run this test before or after they had Alfie removed from his father and operated upon.  Nor as part of their post-operation investigation – but just roll with it.

Drake puts more pressure on Rachel to get Hood out of there immediately by threatening her career.

Hood and Williams also decide that the problem might be radiation, and Williams even has a radiation detector, but, no joy.  It’s not radiation, so there’s no point checking the blood.

That night, Dr. Williams kills herself.  Hood changes his mind about the blood tests and asks Drake to have one run.  He hopes that the findings will help forestall conspiracy theories that Williams might have been killed to keep the miracle of the spring water quiet.

At a press conference, Daniel, Alfie’s dad, tells the world that it was all a fake.  He was paid by Dr. Williams to perpetrate the hoax.  When Hood confronts him, Daniel says people kidnapped Alfie and plan to keep him two weeks – or kill him, if Daniel didn’t claim it was all a fake.

Suspicion falls on the hydroelectric dam, but when they investigate, they’re intercepted by Drake’s men.

Hood gets an idea (and continues to resist going home) He finally does something with the spring water Rachel collected – he freezes it, and when the ice cubes sink in tap water, he knows the truth – it’s heavy water.  The answer must be at the disused fertilizer factory, so he (with Rachel) returns their to investigate, but there’s nothing.  He suspects someone is manufacturing heavy water, but the factory just doesn’t have the water capacity to produce it efficiently.

And he’s intercepted by Drake’s men again.  They’ve had this place under surveillance from months, suspecting an illegal heavy water operation and Hood is jeopardizing the investigation.  Go home already, Hood!

At their monitoring command center, Hood catches Drake in a lie.  Dr. Williams left him her Geiger counter in her suicide note, but she was very adverse to calling it a Geiger counter because Geiger was a rotten, filthy Nazi and she refused to dignify his memory by using that name.  She was murdered to keep her quiet.

Pretending to go home, Hood and Rachel head to the hydroelectric dam, where they discover a secret government heavy water plant.  Just the kind of place you could manufacture evidence to be used against rogue states that may not actually be pursuing nuclear weapons, but politically they really want people to believe they are.

So, Hood, trapped yet again by Drake’s armed men, deep inside a secret government installation, where no one knows he is, blackmails Drake into letting the boy go in exchange for his silence about this black government operation.

Drake and his men kill him and Rachel on the spot, then drop their bodies in the sea, 5,000 miles out.  No, sorry, strike that, Drake let’s them go.

Father and son are reunited.  Hood explains to the father that it’s all science, not eastern mystic bull crap.  Heavy water was killing Alfie, but, just like chemotherapy, it managed to kill the cancer cells first, hence his “miraculous” recovery.  The chemo patients that came to sample the spring water, were already in a dangerously weakened state and the heavy water was just killing them even faster.  Rachel will be fine because she didn’t drink enough heavy water to do permanent damage.

And so, Dr. Hood and Rachel ride off into the sunset.

Callie has been shot. Kenneth and Eugene discuss.

Episode Synopsis

Travis and Callie are setting up to take in a smuggler named Strasser, but things go south when he recognizes Callie and shoots her.  She’s in a bad way and Travis doesn’t take her to the nearest ER, he takes her back to the ancient Trans-Utopian’s medical bay, where they put her in an obsolete and malfunctioning cryro pod.

It’s bad… she’s done for.  Massive organ damage of a kind that neither artificial nor donor replacements will do.  

It’s worse, Strasser is really desperate to kill them all, attacking the Trans-Utopian while still docked to Clarke Station.  They escape, but they do significant damage to Clarke Station.

Between the age and the attack, Callie’s crypto pod will last maybe a day.  Luckily, she’s from a rich family, and she’ll probably have a “blank” – a brainless body clone rich people have in case they need an organ.  Off to mars they go!

Travis meets Janus Larkadia, Callie’s father.  “Thanks, but, there’s nothing I can do.  Callie never had a blank made.”

Janus isn’t being truthful though, there is a Callie blank, he’s just no longer in possession of it.  He used it as collateral for a loan when times were tough, now they’re foreclosing.  There might be an alternative arrangement, saws the man holding the loan.

Travis discovers the deception and returns to see Janus.  Meanwhile Strasser is also on Mars and is taking an interest in Callie’s blank.  He threatens Callie’s mom.  He shoots at Travis, but only Travis gets arrested by the Martian police.

Janus may no longer have any money, but no one knows that, so he still has pull with the police.  They let Travis loose and let him look through the police files to identify Strasser.

He’s former Citadel Squad, the group Callie brought down – along with her career.  He’s playing dead under this assumed name and he doesn’t want to be found out.

Janus, meanwhile, is selling his live organs to pay for Callie’s.  Rudolfo has followed him and interrupts him before he goes under the saw, much to his consternation.  Strasser arrives, Travis arrives, fights happen, Travis wins.

Travis then goes to the man holding the loan on Callie’s blank and threatens him with almost death if he doesn’t forgive the loan, perform the operation for free and, presumably, not turn Travis over to the authorities.

Callie is just fine and her dad is pleased she’s finding her way in the world.  But, not point in telling her that, and they leave things at chilly animosity.  The end.