American – Fusion Patrol: Recent Episodes
Lone Locust Productions
John and Eugene dicsuss the return of sad Buck, the daughter of America’s mom, the ridiculous plot contrivance of this episode, and how the name New New Orleans just trips over the tongue.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss David Vincent’s need to have someone else believe him, the double-bluff of having an obvious main Invader guest star who isn’t, and ask the all-important question: If the cylinder contains the masterplan for invading the Earth, does that mean the Invaders have been working without a plan so far?
John and Eugene look at the 2492 Olympic games on the planet Mykos.
They discuss the in-built advantages/disadvantages of having aliens with different physical capabilities competing against one another, ponder how small of an area you could hold the games in if there were no pesky audiences, ask if the writers were unable to come up with two imaginary drug names, look at the fascinating history of the branding of this episode vis-a-vis the disastrous 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and come up with a new tag line for this podcast: “We’re from the future, and we’ve got some script notes.”
Eugene and Kenneth delve into The Invaders Season 1, Episode 8, “Doomsday Minus One,” where Major Graves faces a nuclear test threat while Spence’s paranoia leads to tragic consequences from alien forces. They discuss Vincent’s quest for truth, the episode’s tension, and the moral nuances of its characters, as well as frustrations with its reset button mechanics.
Next Week: Real Humans, Season 2, Episode 5
Next Invaders Episode: Quantity Unknown
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Eugene and John dive into Season 1, Episode 18 of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, “Twiki is Missing.” They humorously critique a high-stakes mission involving a spaceberg, a miners’ revolt, and a kidnapping plot against Twiki. Amid absurd twists, they discuss scientific credibility, casting choices, and themes of loyalty and free will, teasing the next episode, “Olympiad,” for more adventures.
Next Week: The Invaders, Doomsday Minus One
Next on Buck Rogers: Olympiad
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In this episode of Fusion Patrol, Kenneth and Eugene be looking at Season 1, Episode 7 of The Invaders. With the episode entitled “Nightmare” where they discuss how the Invaders are like the Wild Wild West’s Dr. Loveless, ask, “why mutate butterflies when locusts are readily available?”, and why small towns immediately distrust outsider David Vincent but welcome a gaggle of invaders from another world with open arms.
Next Week: Real Humans, Season 2, Episode 4
Next on the Invaders: Doomsday Minus One
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In this episode of Fusion Patrol, John and Eugene analyze two contrasting episodes from Season 1 of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: “A Blast for Buck” and “Ardala Returns.” They explore the quirky narrative of “A Blast for Buck,” a clip show that offers a humorous spin on nostalgia while critiquing the logic behind its past villains. They examine the use of limericks and the challenges of tension-building in traditional clip shows. Transitioning to “Ardala Returns,” they delve into character dynamics with Princess Ardala and Killer Kane, discussing how their interactions deepen viewer engagement while highlighting the absurdity of the sci-fi genre. Through a lively dialogue about humor, character development, and narrative structure, and they reflect on the show’s evolution.
Next Week: The Invaders – Nightmare
Next on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Twiki us Missing
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In this episode of Fusion Patrol, Kenneth and Eugene analyze Season 1, Episode 6 of The Invaders, titled “Vicar.” The story follows an electrical lineman who dies after witnessing aliens regenerate, prompting David Vincent to investigate Vikor Enterprises’ dark ties to the invaders. We examine the moral complexities of George Vikor, who prioritizes personal gain over ethics, and the troubled relationship with his wife, Sherry. Their discussion touches on the psychological toll of war, social commentary on veteran treatment, and the Cold War context, offering insights into the episode’s deeper themes.
Next Week: Real Humans Season 2, Episode 3
Next on the Invaders: Nightmare
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In this episode of Fusion Patrol, John and Eugene analyze Season 1, Episode 15 of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, titled “Happy Birthday, Buck.” The narrative explores Buck’s existential crisis as he confronts his 534th birthday and feels a sense of nostalgia for 20th century Chicago.
Next episode: The Invaders – Vikor
Next on Buck Rogers: A Blast for Buck & Ardala Returns
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In this episode Kenneth and Eugene analyze Season 1, Episode 5 of The Invaders, titled “Genesis.” A police officers encounter with an Invader loosing his human form leads David Vincent to discover a desperate Invader plan to save the life of a scientist key to their invasion plans.
Next Week: Real Humans Season 2, Episode 2
Next time on the Invaders: Vikor
It’s the episode everyone has been waiting for! John and Eugene review Space Vampire!
They discuss the surprisingly effective direction of Buck Rogers’ take on the horror genre, the curious omission of the named “Dracula,” and they welcome the return of “Sexy Wilma.”
Next time on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Happy Birthday, Buck
Next Week on Fusion Patrol: The Invaders, Genesis
Dr. Markham escapes the Invaders, leading to a chaotic pursuit involving David Vincent and Warren Donaghan, who fears alien abductions linked to missing scientists.
Kenneth and Eugene explore themes of friendship, skepticism, and belief in the face of the mysterious alien threat, dissecting the episode’s character dynamics and storytelling elements.
Dr. Markham escapes the Invaders, leading to a chaotic pursuit involving David Vincent and Warren Donaghan, who fears alien abductions linked to missing scientists.
Kenneth and Eugene explore themes of friendship, skepticism, and belief in the face of the mysterious alien threat, dissecting the episode’s character dynamics and storytelling elements.
Next week: Real Humans, Season 2, Episode 1
This week, Eugene and John explore Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Season 1, Episode 13, “Cruise Ship to the Stars.” They call out the awkward attraction between the 500+ year old Buck and the 19 year old Ms. Cosmos, critique the episode’s convoluted plot, humorously discuss Twiki’s romance, and ponder 2491’s beauty standards.
Next time on Buck Rogers: Space Vampire
Next week on Fusion Patrol: The Invaders – The Leeches
In this episode of Fusion Patrol, Kenneth and Eugene analyze Season 1, Episode 3 of The Invaders, titled “The Mutation.” The story follows David Vincent as he investigates mysterious phenomena along the Texas-Mexico border, leading to a life-threatening encounter with locals and ultimately, alien forces. Despite being undermined by those he encounters, including the deceptive Evans and Vicky, Vincent’s quest for the truth about the invaders drives the narrative.
They discuss the missed opportunities for deeper explorations of alien culture and the complexities of Vincent’s interactions with Vicky, who reveals her own mutation. They raise critical questions about identity and emotional depth, while critiquing its execution, noting continuity issues and the lack of logical consistency. They dissect the themes of rationality versus emotionality reflected in the series.
Peso notes: There was lots of confusion in this episode about peso->dollar exchange rates, so let me clarify some of the confusion.
in 1967, when this episode aired, the Mexican Peso (MXP) existed at a fixed exchange rate of 12.5 MXP for 1 USD. That means Vincent gave the men $24 USD.
Since then (in 1993) the Peso (MXP) has been replaced by the New Peso (MXN). The New Peso’s exchange rate floats freely on the market.
For additional context, $24 USD in 1967 money is roughly the equivalent of $230-$235 USD today.
Calculating what the money was worth in Mexico in 1967 is more difficult, but in the 1960s there were different minimum wages, which could vary depending on type of job and region. In some places, a laborer’s minimum wage could have been as low as 8 pesos per day. So for the laborers that took Vincent’s 300 pesos, that could have been a significant portion of a year’s salary for them.
Suffice to say, he gave them a lot of their money, and not too terribly much of his own.
Next Week: The Bugs two-part finale, Money Spiders & The Enemy Within
Next time on the Invaders: The Leeches
In this episode of Fusion Patrol, we explore “Escape from Wedded Bliss,” the twelfth episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The plot unfolds as a menacing space probe prompts the Federation to act, while Princess Ardala plots to capture Buck as leverage against them. Amidst a chaotic reception, Buck navigates Ardala’s royal wedding challenges, ultimately facing off against Tiger Man. We critique the episode’s pacing and examine Ardala’s character, blending humor with serious themes.
Next week: The Invaders, The Mutation
Next on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Cruise Ship to The Stars
TranscriptEugene: Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I’m Eugene.
John: And I’m John.
Eugene: And tonight we’re looking at Season 1, Episode 12 of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Escape from Wedded Bliss. Episode Synopsis. An unmanned space probe enters Earth’s orbit and adopts a threatening posture. Heuer orders it destroyed. However, the Starfighter’s pulsars are ineffective against it. It fires off a massive beam weapon, strikes outside New Chicago. Clearly, it was a warning shot. Aboard a draconian flagship, Cain and Ardala discuss Emperor Drago’s orders to destroy the Earth with the weapon. Ardala, over Cain’s protestations, is making some alterations to her daddy’s plan. She contacts Hewer and demands a meeting with the heads of the Federation and Captain Buck Rogers. At the reception, Buck’s contamination of 25th century culture continues unabated as a roller disco performance tortures the guests. Addressing the delegates, Ardala makes her plans known. Soon, she will replace her father as Draconian Empress. To secure that throne, she must marry the most genetically perfect man in the galaxy. That man is Buck Rogers. If the Earth does not turn over Buck Rogers to her to be her husband, their weapon will destroy all the cities on Earth. Later, to Wilma’s surprise, Buck appears to be running away. She assures him that the Federation Council will not sacrifice him, and they’re working on a plan to get her aboard the Draconia, destroy the weapons. Buck explains that it is hopeless without knowing the interior layout of the Triconia and the location of the weapon’s controls. He continues his preparations. The deadline arrives and Dr. Hewer delivers Earth’s answer. We’re not going to give you Buck Rogers. Ardala leaves, vowing reprisals in an hour. Buck is ready to head out on his trip, but Tweaky also does not believe he’s running. Buck admits to him that it’s a plan and eventually gives in to Tweaky’s emotional blackmail and takes him along. As Buck and Tweaky travel across the atomic wastelands outside New Chicago, Ardala blasts a few empty buildings in New Chicago and then gives Dr. Hewer two more hours to hand over Buck. The Federation Council buckles and agrees to hand over Buck. On the Draconia, Cain is still upset that Ardala is defying the Emperor’s direct orders. Ardala explains that once she has Buck and they’re safely returned to Draconian’s base, she will send the weapon back to destroy the Earth. Buck has reached his destination, a cave where Garadon, a former Draconian engineer, hides. He was tired of the fighting, and Buck saved him and gave him a place to live. Now, Buck wants a favor from him. Technical layouts of the Draconia. Both Earth forces and Draconian forces have tracked Buck here, and a fight begins, which the Earth forces win. Buck and Garadon are taken back to New Chicago, where Garadon’s brain is scanned for details on the Draconia. It will take time to analyze. More time than they have. Buck leaves for the draconia and the waiting princess. Ardala, alone with Buck, explains the three phases of a draconian royal wedding. In phase one, they get to know each other and get frisky. In phase two, Buck must prove his worth in combat against Tiger Man. And in phase three, they are married, and Buck is given an irremovable neck collar that can kill him instantly if he ever displeases Ardala. Phase 1 begins, and as things get frisky, Buck pulls out a concealed device which puts Ardala to sleep. He escapes into the ship, where it is revealed that he has a secret transmitter on him. He contacts Huer and Wilma, and they give him the probable location of the weapon’s controls. Ardala is too light of a sleeper, though, and she awakens before Buck can get to the weapon. Alerting security, Cain soon has Buck subdued and returned to the princess. So much for Phase 1. Thinking Buck was just trying to escape, they proceed to phase two. Buck learns that he doesn’t just have to fight Tiger Man, he must either kill or be killed by Tiger Man. The fight goes precisely as expected with Buck defeating, but refusing to kill Tiger Man. When Buck puts down his weapon, Tiger Man pounces and tries to kill Buck. Again defeats Tigerman and holds a sword to his throat, still refusing to kill him until Ardala declares Buck the winner. As a show of good faith, Cain withdraws the weapon from Earth’s orbit and puts it in a defensive posture around the Draconia. Buck tries to rattle his cage, knowing that Cain, also an Earthman, harbors ambitions of marrying Ardala, taking over the Draconian Empire. Buck suggests he turn the weapon on Emperor Draco and seize power now. Cain simply replies that he only need to wait until Ardala inevitably kills Rogers. The wedding begins, and moments before Buck is fitted with the collar, he drops a concealed blacklight bomb, steals a weapon, and makes a break for the weapon control. Inside the control booth, which is impenetrable to Draconian’s gun blasts, Buck puts the weapon on overload, destroying it. The overload blast stuns Buck and throws him to the floor. Ardala orders Tigerman to grab Buck and bring him to her. Tigerman refuses and takes Ardala hostage instead until she agrees to let Buck go. Tigerman, his life debt repaid to Buck, stays behind to face punishment. Back on Earth, Buck shows that there are no hard feelings about Earth betraying him to the princess by preparing some soybean derivative split pea soup for his friends. The end. Okay. Escape from Wedded Bliss. What do you think?
John: I like the bit about the split pea soup.
Eugene: That was a long time coming in the episode. Like 45 minutes before we got to that.
John: It was well worth it. That was some fine looking soup.
Eugene: It was at least green.
John: Yeah, it was.
Eugene: It was green. I wish they had gone there with Twiki, you know, trying to see if, you know, he can’t digest food. He can taste. And then, you know, it’s like, how? I don’t want to know. Maybe I don’t want to know.
John: Yeah. Who knows?
Eugene: Maybe they pour it over the top of his helmet.
John: Maybe they just stick his finger in it or something like that.
Eugene: There’s a straw there yeah there.
John: You go it was it felt like a filler episode kind of ambitious for a filler episode but a filler episode nevertheless the uh yeah.
Eugene: I don’t disagree i i don’t disagree you know it’s the funny thing is i remember all episodes of buck rogers some more than others space vampire for for example but and i remember this one i remember buck having to fight tiger men and i remember but i remember the weapon and i remember princess ardala you know hot and heavy for buck as usual, but the rest of the episode i was watching this going i don’t remember any of this i don’t remember buck going out into the wastelands which are not very wastelandy and finding you know when i watched the opening credits and it said alfred rider was in it i’m like professor crater you know from star trek uh and a million other things nexus from the invaders and it’s just you know a guy you see all the time a very distinctive face i’m like i don’t remember him ever being in buck rogers yeah and barely in it he’s barely in it and yet he got no credit at the opening part and And then just a few, yeah, it’s really weird. Yes, it it it’s not just that it feels like a filler episode. It feels like they had to put in a lot of filler to make the episode into an episode. And I think that’s probably why it kind of rambles on. Do you know, there was a one minute and 44 seconds of roller disco.
John: I was kind of hoping that you would time that because I definitely want to.
Eugene: I didn’t want to either but i use the video beauty of video files and marking the time stamps at the beginning and end i didn’t watch it twice so i had to do that i you know scroll back there it is start from the end stop subtract this time you know it’s one minute and 45 seconds of roller disco and drooling looks between buck and ardala particularly yeah not.
John: Not anybody else who’s in the the room with the roller skaters every all the humans in there look like they are absolutely bored.
Eugene: Bored senseless yes the guy next to you are over there is just like yeah yeah you.
John: Woke me up for this.
Eugene: You had to you had to collect me to come to this meeting i exactly.
John: This could have been an email if we.
Eugene: Had email in the future yeah it’s like just give him buck oh he brought this roller disco stuff and and i might as well go right there to the roller disco stuff in the movie music was i mean it was still music but obviously it was very not funky right we have that whole sequence where everyone’s dancing in this sort of formal ballroom kind of performance and then we have suddenly buck going up and like come on guys you know get some funky You get some, you know, down and a thing. And then only Buck and R-Doll are the ones that can actually sort of move around. And then suddenly, roller disco? Oh. just pops it where it must be bucks doing either.
John: That or maybe it’s there a touring troupe of roller disco the dancers from another colony someplace i don’t know.
Eugene: I swear i thought one of them was owen wilson oh.
John: That’s entirely possible.
Eugene: It’s not it’s not it’s not yeah yeah i did finally find their names of the the roller yeah it’s not owen wilson but and he’s boy to be too old or too young yeah yeah because i was looking at the i was looking at the uh stuff and i’m like pamela hensley was 29 years old when this episode aired and she is 73 years old now, feel old now because i sure do.
John: Yeah okay that.
Eugene: That is i mean i didn’t i didn’t exactly hate the episode but at the same time there wasn’t much to it.
John: No you could.
Eugene: Put pamela hensley on screen and.
John: Um you.
Eugene: Know okay all right yeah it’s like i can watch this.
John: You know i in my notes i have hensley is cute but hardly worth it uh it’s you know oh she’s way too high maintenance clearly, nobody’s that cute oh i mean there’s a lot of makeup involved i’m sure but, it’s just that not a very it did not deliver a very captivating performance and none of them did really well i mean like buck and the the regulars the usuals of the the crew were doing what they normally do then you know it was a normal episode for them a lot less acting required by a wilma and huer because they weren’t in it that much not much no but yeah it just, the the pacing the episode was just uh faltering not that it was really trying too hard, it’s yeah it’s ambling along yeah and and i have in my notes here ardala might be able to become a little bit more two-dimensional if she tried a little harder yeah well yeah, Yeah, it’s just like, oh, yeah, she wants a shiny thing. Oh, great. Whatever. Emperor’s daughter. She has to get the shiny thing. So bring the shiny thing over.
Eugene: I want the shiny thing.
John: Okay, fine. Whatever. She’ll find another one tomorrow.
Eugene: I do. And I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it probably every time we see Pamela Hensley. How can she walk through narrow doorways? You know, she’s always coming through a double wide door because if she came through a regular sized door, she would bruise her hips. as a swing through on either side she has got one hell of a hip swing when she’s walking i mean it’s intentional obviously because she’s the princess but yeah it’s like that is but i remember her on um it’s not matlock it’s matt houston i think she walked the same way in matt houston, so i did not watch the show very often but my dad did and you know if you’re walking through the room and you see panel hensley banging your hips on a doorway like oh panel hensley there’s that distinctive sound yeah i’m just gonna swing go ahead i.
John: Was gonna say i didn’t realize she was in rollerball.
Eugene: Oh, yeah, she was one of the prozies, I think.
John: Yeah, one of the women procured for Karn. Yeah, and getting it mixed up with Slannick Green, unfortunately.
Eugene: Not as much rollerblading in this.
John: Exactly, yeah. Still dystopian.
Eugene: More eating, less rollerblading.
John: Yes. Yeah.
Eugene: All right, I’m just going to run through my notes in no logical order, and some of them are picky, and some of them we’ve already covered. So, opening sequence. The ship flies over Earth, it’s in orbit over New Chicago, and who is out there? It’s Wilma and Buck. And why are Wilma and Buck out there? Well, presumably Wilma’s out there because they don’t have anybody else in Earth Defense Force whose job it is to be on duty when something happens and fly up. You know, someone is on scramble, scramble. It’s like, oh, it’s Wilma today. No, I don’t think it is. I do not think it’s going to be Wilma. I think it’s going to be a grunt. But OK. And then this thing, this obviously advanced thing. It’s like, oh, we brought Buck along just in case it happened to be a 20th century space probe. Really?
John: Something ancient.
Eugene: Something ancient. It’s like, really? I think it was just an excuse to have the two of you in the opening sequence. Other than that. Yeah. One of those things. So this weapon is not really a weapon. It’s a mining device. And it’s kind of funny. It’s a it’s an interesting little line that our dollar says that is more interesting than the rest of the episode to me. And that is, we found it on one of our two-year expeditions to the Galactic Center.
John: Yes. I’d like to hear more about that, please.
Eugene: Yes, I would, too.
John: What other things did you find? And what is at the Galactic Center? Is it chewy or crunchy?
Eugene: Maybe at some point, Buck will manage to get himself on a starship, and they can go exploring space, the final frontier, and go on missions. It would be horrible. It would be horrible. it would definitely be a mistake yeah yeah so but if this thing is such an incredibly powerful weapon you can’t destroy it with your guns uh how did the draconians get it.
John: Oh i’m gonna guess what they did is they went to the people who are running it killed them and then took the control equipment there you go problem solved except.
Eugene: That they have this massive weapon.
John: Yes that they use as a mining device and they’re terribly short-sighted didn’t realize it could be used as a weapon it’s like every science fiction book and movie where you have a spacecraft with a fusion drive or something like that fusion drives are great for moving a spaceship really fast but you turn it around and it is an awesome weapon, You could probably flatten an entire planet, given a short amount of time.
Eugene: Yeah, I suppose. So I’m going to say, I think I’ve said this before, I like Buck Rogers in the 25th century. I like Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers in the 25th century. He comes off as a really amiable guy, likable person, who can be a bit of a jerk, obviously.
John: Oh, yeah.
Eugene: So he’s got a little bit of a thing. So I have no complaints about his portrayal or the casting of him. But you have really got to sell me a bill of goods to convince me that Buck Rogers is the most genetically perfect man in the galaxy.
John: Well, I would say that his genetic material is probably fresher. Yeah, fresher.
Eugene: Less worn down. yes.
John: I would say that it’s because he comes from a time before the atomic holocaust and he doesn’t have that higher background radiation degradation of his dna that everybody else on earth would have and all the colonies and stuff.
Eugene: Ignoring the.
John: Whole if you’re asleep in a spaceship for 500 years you’re still absorbing radiation so you would have well whatever uh science technical stuff i will dispel it with a modicum of hand wavium there done.
Eugene: Would you have thought that our dolla was the universe’s biggest optimist because you’ve got you’ve got a situation here of half glass full half glass empty uh half full most genetically perfect man in the galaxy half empty least degenically compromised man in the galaxy yeah and then that doesn’t take into account all the draconians who i are they men does it have to be a human from earth i mean that part’s a little i mean we know why ardala wants him ardala wants him because, yeah exactly wants him but exactly but you know somebody else has got to be convinced that he’s the most genetically perfect guy in the galaxy like the emperor and like the people of draconia.
John: So, yeah, I believe there is an episode that actually is about having genetic perfection.
Eugene: I believe you’re correct.
John: Don’t want to skip into the future, but I’m sure we can revisit this soon.
Eugene: We are going to violate the temporal prime directive a little bit later here in this episode. But apart from that, we’ll we’ll try to. Yeah, we’ll try to generally sort of. I didn’t mention that there’s going to be a rock and roll band later on. So that was, despite the roller disco.
John: I had forgotten that. Thanks.
Eugene: You’re welcome. Wait till you hear 20 minutes of that same song. The only tune they play. But we’ll come to that. Your seems to have been demoted. Did you get that feeling?
John: No. From what little I saw of him in the episode, he seemed to be.
Eugene: He wasn’t the guy that made the decision to send Buck back it was the Federation Council well.
John: Maybe there’s been a push for more oversight.
Eugene: Yeah that’s what I mean in previous episodes going back say you know like to the first few of the season he was pretty much the word, even though he was just in charge of quote unquote the defense director He seemed to be the boss man in absence of the computer council. But in this, he’s he’s maybe the head chairman of the council. I’m not sure. But he certainly didn’t feel like he was calling the shots at times. And I thought it was kind of odd But then if he had been calling the shots Then he definitely would have been the guy Who had to crumble And go, I’m sorry, Buck, I’m going to have to send you to Ardala I know that that’s against our principles And I said I wouldn’t do it, But, you know, they blew up a, you know, a thing and they could kill us all. And the, and the weird part is I know they’ve got the whole ploy about Buck going out into the atomic, the green lush atomic waste.
John: Yes.
Eugene: But anybody who knows Buck would go, Buck would just turn himself in. He would just go, you know, you have no choice. I’ll, I’ll go do it. I’m going to win it here, you know? but he didn’t he did that whole subterfuge thing yeah it’s kind of odd yeah also the federation council i love the fact that heuer is like all right well theo i’m gonna need your help rounding up the federation council what are they cattle it’s like there’s an odd turn of phrase it’s like and you think you can figure it out he’s like i’m thinking earth’s been attacked the federation council probably should have tuned in on the tv yeah i’ve been notified that there’s been yeah some developments but it sounds like they’re off doing you know whatever and see if you can find them i think some are at the spa yeah go go check the local.
John: Bars and the jail.
Eugene: So here’s the other thing we briefly touched on it, but this is an odd episode because of how, what a wonderfully principled stand they take. You know, we will not turn somebody over for blackmail. Oh yeah. Yeah, we will. We will turn somebody over for blackmail because like I say, you know, presumably they’re supposed to stand for something. and you don’t the threat didn’t change right our dollar showed what the weapon could do, and they’re like she can blow a hole in the ground outside new chicago well we have principles no you can’t have buck rogers and we’ll stand up to him and say no you can’t have buck rogers and then she blows up a couple ample buildings a little closer to town and they’re all like okay oh oh, she could actually shoot us it’s like turn that guy over right now get over that guy right now yeah do we really.
John: Need this gentleman in our society no we don’t.
Eugene: And it really is goofy because in any other episode buck would have assessed that situation on the ground at the beginning and said you guys have no choice i have to go oh yeah and he could have said, Let’s get the plans to the Draconian. But he didn’t. He pretended like he’s running off. And I don’t know. It was.
John: My guess is that I would have been very interested to actually find out how he did this. But maybe he smuggled. What’s the guy’s name?
Eugene: Garridan.
John: Garridan.
Eugene: Sounds like a monster from Ultra Q.
John: Yeah, it does, actually.
Eugene: Yeah.
John: Smuggle the kaiju egg back From the draconian ship And incubate it Oh wait no, Yeah Maybe he smuggled them to Earth, because i mean.
Eugene: Why wouldn’t earth give him asylum but okay you.
John: Have a draconian who’s sitting out living in a cave uh.
Eugene: Yeah yeah why okay are there any.
John: Other draconian sitting out there.
Eugene: Other well we’ve come back to that in a few minutes won’t we but yeah so here’s my question so buck does go to the guy buck convinces him to help but the only way they’re going to get that information in sufficient detail is to take him back to new chicago and scan his brain how exactly was he going to do that i don’t know actually out there going hey could you just draw me a hand map of the draconian yeah exactly put an x on the spot where you think they might have installed a new secret secret weapon that you’ve never heard of before right.
John: You know what’s the most logical place to put it yeah.
Eugene: What was he gonna do he had to be taken back and have his brain scan. It’s the only way this would have worked.
John: Yeah. I’m guessing that his idea was, he was, he was going to talk to him and appeal to his sense of right and wrong and all that kind of fun stuff.
Eugene: Then you have to come back and get scanned.
John: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Eugene: Would have been so much easier if he just gone out there right away and you know, but why did he have to have a motorcycle? Why couldn’t he just take one of the ground cars?
John: Well, you know, cause motorcycles were in back then.
Eugene: With sidecars with yes with sidecars that was convenient for tweak yeah yeah well so i i do want to say this though you know turning buck over was a betrayal by the spineless council that is that was a you know we sacrifice your life for ours hi we’re craven but dot somebody putting a tracker on tweaky seems like you were all the way Ha ha. Right. I mean, that’s even more of a, that that’s a, Oh heck.
John: It was just a little air tag they found.
Eugene: That feels a little more, I don’t know, calculating. The council is just like, Ooh, quaking in their boots. Fine. We’ll turn him over. But here had to go ahead and do something to make sure I can catch Buck in the event that the council decides to turn him over.
John: Right.
Eugene: So that’s some… Yeah, that’s just odd.
John: Well, I think also that Hewer understands that Buck may have other plans and may not be very forthcoming with that information to the council. And yeah, let’s keep tabs on that.
Eugene: That truly is Dr. Hewer betraying Buck.
John: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Eugene: I mean, that definitely he he needs to eat that split pea soup.
John: Yes, he does. Yes, he does.
Eugene: You will eat this soup, and I don’t care how bad it is.
John: Yeah.
Eugene: You will deal with it.
John: I’m pretty sure that the food that Buck makes and offers and tries to get everybody to eat is his form of retribution and passive aggressiveness towards these people. Because he really can’t do anything else to them. I mean, they give him a place to live and something to do, and he’s helping out and stuff.
Eugene: But still, here’s something we do not know about Buck Rogers. And in a way, it makes a difference. Is Buck Rogers a good cook back in the 20th century? Or is Buck Rogers not a good cook? And so, see, it makes a difference if he was good and here he is in the future. He can’t make good because of the ingredients. or he is good and they can’t stand it because they don’t like his food. We don’t know which it is. We really don’t know.
John: I’m thinking because he goes out and he tries to recreate things from his past and stuff that he liked to eat that he might have, I wouldn’t say he’d be an excellent cook, but I think he was passable. You know, he, and he figures, yeah, this is a way for me to, you know, spend some time working on stuff and, you know, passing the time period and also to kind of recreate a little bit of home with what he’s got. And he’s good enough in the kitchen that he knows that that those, that’s the tool set that he can use to do this.
Eugene: So let’s face it if you if you were a bad cook and i can honestly say i’ve never had any food you’ve cooked i don’t know whether you’re a good cook or bad cook but it’s like if you were a bad cook and you were displaced 500 years right in the future and you were like oh i really really I really wish I had pizza. You might be inclined to try it. Good cook or not. Right. I mean, that’s, as you say, it’s that nostalgia factor. It’s like, you know, there is no other way. I’m just going to have to do this. I don’t know. I just feel like I wish I knew that about Buck because he does not come off like James Bond. James Bond, you know, is an excellent cook. He probably studied the Cordon Bleu, right? It doesn’t matter. He knows all the right wines. He knows exactly the food. He could cook anything he wants, but he doesn’t. He eats in fine restaurants, but he could. Buck? Don’t know. The guy might be able to burn a hamburger every time. we just don’t know and i don’t know i feel like i wish i did because i think they could make the jokes funnier about his food well.
John: Hieronymus fox seemed to like his cooking didn’t he.
Eugene: Yes now remember hieronymus fox though had given him a pointer the chili to make with the reptile so actually buck may have been doing better because hieronymus gave him a way to make it Because it sounds like Hieronymus Fox is a lot smarter than Buck, and Hieronymus Fox has spent more time trying to figure out how to get what he wants. And he has the resources of a whole planet that are willing to do anything for him. So, yeah. You know, we asked about, are there any other draconians living on the planet? I want to know is, A, sure, okay, Hura put a tracker on Tweaky, and they tracked Tweaky, which led them to Buck.
John: Right.
Eugene: Buck says, how did the DeCronians find me? They said, oh, they honed in on the same signal. One, how did they know that that signal was intended to be able to track Buck Rogers? And two, how did they get armed troops with vehicles on the surface of the earth?
John: Yeah, I guess that dome or sphere of protection that they had earlier is no longer working. Perhaps the warranty expired.
Eugene: They still know when ships are coming. You’d think they’d know if Draconia had launched a shuttle with, you know, armored ground troops on it.
John: Yeah, I know.
Eugene: That part was weird. And was that the Logan’s Run vehicle just repurposed?
John: No, I think those might have been from Battlestar Galactica. well.
Eugene: The the ones for earth defense but the one for the draconians was very similar.
John: I don’t i don’t think so i think if they would have i think they would have had a lot to do a lot of work cutting the top off from that the car didn’t have a top off the draconians one didn’t, sure i thought they were standing open you know with their guns ready to blaze the.
Eugene: Humans were but the Triconians were kind of hanging out the side. I think they may have put a turret on the top.
John: Oh, maybe that’s what it was. Now, I don’t think it was a solar car. I could be wrong. I think it was one of the, oh, not the snow rams. No.
Eugene: Well, they had the snow rams and the land rams on Galactica.
John: Maybe? I’d have to go find one of those episodes and look.
Eugene: Yeah. Why is it not a barren wasteland?
John: I don’t know. Oh, because Southern California isn’t like that, especially in the TMZ.
Eugene: Ah, okay. It seems to me like Earth is kind of a pleasant place you could go actually start living in again.
John: I know, it wasn’t that bad, except for the, you know, fleshy-headed mutants, which we don’t see much of.
Eugene: No, no, in fact, they probably got blown up in that first blast.
John: Yeah, exactly, they’re gone.
Eugene: Whoops, old Chicago, boom, there you go. So, Buck gets on board the Draconia, and he gets in a little frisky time, a little phase one frisky with the Princess. I think it’s very interesting the way this show is structured. clearly buck is banging everything he can get except for wilma and ardala, right i mean even wilma says i mean the maintenance bot this is i’m not the first person that you snuck in here you know yeah but buck will not do ardala, he won’t even take one for the team he always gets out of sleeping with her, I think his deception would be a lot more convincing if he actually did. Right. It would be a lot more convincing if he slept with her and then put her to sleep. With his little device.
John: Oh, that would be more, more James Bond-ish.
Eugene: Yes, I know. I know. And it’s, it is, Buck is clearly adhering to this sort of, I don’t like Ardala, therefore, I will not, I will not sleep with her. No matter how hard she tries.
John: Yeah, I think that’s pretty much just it. Yeah.
Eugene: I think that’s it. I think it’s just a television thing for the kids. We’re just not going to, we’re just not going to allow that, but it is kind of, and then who was the idiot who decided the thing would only keep her unconscious for 15 minutes?
John: Yeah, that’s unfortunate.
Eugene: That was really short or it felt really short. Maybe he was wandering around the ship for hours, but it doesn’t feel like that. No, it feels like he, you know, kind of went more or less to the right to the place and maybe within half an hour. and then so she wakes up so the device is not very useful, Another thing I am used by on this and several other episodes, it’s the time that this show was made. All the henchmen. What do most of the henchmen draconians have that really is out of place? Very 70s. That’s exactly it. Horrible mustaches. I know, you know, it’s not the United States military and they’ve got hair requirements. and things but the jaconians do look pretty weird just getting a bunch of disco bros with their. Their brush mustaches and sticking a helmet on them going you’re a soldier now boy yeah exactly, does not does not work kane has a great line i think it’s a great line i think it’s it’s one of the it’s one of the he has a couple of pretty decent lines in this episode one of which was that one i mentioned earlier in the recap about i only have to wait until the princess kills you because yeah you know that will happen he knows that buck rogers will do something that will cause her to and then kill him so you know he’s right there rogers is a temporary problem but when he shoots him which thank you rogers beats up a couple of mustached guards and then cane shoots him because yeah that’s what guns are for you’re a stubborn man rogers maybe that’s what the princess sees in you right that is that is pretty insightful because i think that’s part of it i mean i think she thinks rogers is pretty but i also think that it is because he is so stubbornly dead set against her right yeah she it’s like this is the kind of guy i need in my life right.
John: Pardon the analogy but she’s found a mountain that she must climb.
Eugene: Oh, you said pardon the analogy. I thought you said harden the analogy.
John: Whoa. That went so quick, didn’t it?
Eugene: Oh, yeah, it did. It did. It’s like, oh, yeah, got it.
John: Yeah.
Eugene: Speaking of breaking the temporal prime directive.
John: Yes.
Eugene: Here we go. this is the first appearance of michael ansara as cane placing henry silva in the the movie right the movie and you know he’s a different character he plays it differently but i i like this cane so i’m fine with that but there are some weird things about this episode not just including Cain, there is a later episode of the series called Ardala Returns. And looking at what it’s about and what I recall about it, more logically, that should have come before this one. Right. It it’s more about the old hat replacing the hatchet fighters and Tiger man is still in it as her guard. And, you know, you watch this episode and you would think at the end of it, who is not going to have a job head or life after this? Tiger man.
John: Exactly.
Eugene: He should be gone. And in fact, in our dollars, then subsequent return, he has been replaced by Panther man, different actor, same role, but different guy. As if, if you had swapped these two around, our dollar returns, she does this thing, Buck defeats her again. I think, I think that’s not spoilery enough that we can go there. And then she comes in She goes wow he beat me twice I really want that guy for my husband Comes back Tries to get him Can’t do it. So then kills Tiger man because obviously Kills tiger man and then she comes back again With panther man As far as I can tell though that it’s not It’s not borne out by the production Order, But it really feels to me Like they thought, you know because you could have just called this one our dollar returns because that’s what you need to know our dollar is back but yeah but by the time it’s the third appearance of our dollar i don’t think our dollar returns is the right name i think at the very least it’s our dollar returns yet again so i don’t know it it feels it feels like this is confused and they are being shown not in production order order but if the production numbers in Wikipedia are to be believed, this did come before unless the production numbers don’t mean the order they were made in either so I don’t know, but just kind of just kind of weird, I thought we weren’t going to you know looking at the list I thought we were going to see her again until our dollar returns but no here we go, Hats off to Buck trying to get Cain to double-cross the Emperor.
John: Yeah, that was a nice little, I want to say trick, but.
Eugene: Didn’t go anywhere.
John: No, well, it learned something about Cain, and that was important.
Eugene: Yeah, he’s smarter. He’s smarter than the rest of the Draconians.
John: Yes, the ones that we see anyways, yes.
Eugene: Yeah you know all our dolla needs is is buck the appearance of a wedding the crown on her head perhaps an offspring or two and then put that collar on buck and zap it into non-existence yep um it’s an interesting it’s an interesting idea it feels like i’ve seen it somewhere else but i can’t for the life of me think where the neck collar thing for oh that um keeping, matrimonial fidelity i.
John: Don’t know about matrimonial fidelity but wasn’t there something like that in the star trek animated series so one of the characters is was wearing something that he kept constricting around their neck yeah i don’t know i might be confusing that with a book i read i don’t know.
Eugene: Yeah and sign of the times if only opec could see me now oh.
John: Yes that was a nice little dig there.
Eugene: But it’s still gasoline oh yeah that’s the future we don’t he can just make gasoline and put i hope nothing else uses it ness just he had to get dr what’s his name to down at the archives to find him something to do as a gas substitute but, yeah i think they solved that better in babylon 5 when lanier put the uh mimbari clean energy device in garibaldi’s motorcycle for him there’s no way he could get gas for it so just put a different power source in there.
John: Oh yeah that makes sense.
Eugene: I don’t know that I have anything else on this episode.
John: I did notice that when they were watching the video screen initially in Hewer’s office and our doll is on it, if you look to the right of the screen, you can clearly see folded up gray duct tape covering some holes in the panel. It’s like, okay, why not?
Eugene: Well, wait a minute. That’s after the explosion knocked a bunch of stuff around, though.
John: No no no i.
Eugene: Think it was duct tape or gaffer’s tape.
John: It was shiny and gray it was definitely okay okay yeah okay or some sort of gaffer’s cape no well you know it might have been gray gaffer’s tape come to think of it but it wouldn’t well they might have hit it with gloss coat who knows didn’t have that fibrous look that duct tape has yeah but it was clearly tape.
Eugene: Hmm yeah i think if ardala was on screen i probably did not notice the tape.
John: Hey you know you watch the episode enough and it’s like okay i’m gonna look at other things now fair.
Eugene: Enough wilma for for starters and you know she only has two off-duty dresses in this or one off-duty dress in this episode.
John: Oh yeah interesting outfit i think that was probably reused in heart beeps.
Eugene: For bernadette peters.
John: Yes character.
Eugene: There’s there’s one for you heart.
John: Beeps please nobody nobody go out and look for that nobody needs to endure that, I own the DVD. I’m not very proud of that, but I do.
Eugene: Yeah, I’ve seen bits of it. Let’s see. That was enough.
John: Yeah, that’s about it.
Eugene: Well, I think that’s probably more than enough.
John: Mm-hmm.
Eugene: We have successfully escaped from wedded bliss. Yes. And the next episode of Fuck Rogers is Cruise Ship to the Stars or something like that.
John: That is correct. Cruise Ship to the Stars.
Eugene: Oh, it really is that. Wow. That is.
John: From December of 1979.
Eugene: That is more cliche than I thought. I knew it was about a cruise ship, but I did not realize it was literally Cruise Ship to the Stars.
John: I think this was when Love Boat was pretty popular, wasn’t it? Probably. Did that come later? I don’t know. Boy, I really don’t want to look that up.
Eugene: No, I don’t think I want to look that up either, but I will. Because now you’ve made me…
John: Yeah, 76 is when the first episode aired.
Eugene: Well, there you go. So yes, cruise ships. Well, cruise ships, I think, were popular back then.
John: Yeah.
Eugene: Anyway. So everybody loved a good cruise ship. They’re exciting and exotic.
John: And new.
Eugene: Before everybody found it, before they found out that it was nothing but a disease fest to sell you.
John: Yes.
Eugene: Tell you stuff and take your money at the casino. Yeah. No, but I’m not bitter. I’m not bitter. John, thank you for joining me.
John: You’re welcome.
Eugene: And listeners, I hope you’ll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
In this episode of Fusion Patrol, the Kenneth and Eugene review The Invaders episode “The Experiment,” which features guest star Roddy McDowall as the son of an astrophysicist targeted by alien brainwashing. The discussion highlights the story’s strong Cold War influences, noting how the plot mirrors spy thrillers like The Manchurian Candidate by effectively substituting aliens for Soviet agents.
Transcript
This week Fusion Patrol looks at Buck Rogers in the 25th Century – Season 1, Episode 11, Cosmic Whiz Kid as John and Eugene discuss—
- Buck sidelined while Wilma saves the day
- Cross-promotion stunt casting with Gary Coleman
- Ray Walston as an unconvincing villain
- The timeline and age math that do not work
- Aldebaran 2 as a lawless world with municipal androids and no police
Cosmic Whiz Kid Airdate: November 15, 1979 Runtime: 60 minutes Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor Guest Stars: Gary Coleman, Ray Walston Director: Leslie H. Martinson Writer: Alan Brennert (teleplay), Anne Collins (story) Synopsis: When child genius and President of the planet Genesia Hieronymous Fox is kidnapped by criminal Roderick Zale, his bodyguard seeks help from Earth’s Defense Directorate. Buck Rogers is pulled from a planned vacation and teams up with Lieutenant Dia Cyrton to rescue Fox from Aldebaran II before Zale can use him as leverage for political gain.
This week Fusion Patrol looks at The Andromeda Strain as Ben and Eugene discuss hard science fiction tension built from plausible medical and military technology; human errors, prejudice, and design flaws that nearly trigger nuclear catastrophe; Nostalgic enthusiasm for long‑forgotten light pen computer interfaces; and a strangely prominent topless corpse and its clash with the film’s G‑rated reputation.
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN
Release Date: March 12, 1971
Runtime: 131 minutes
Starring: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, Kate Reid
Director: Robert Wise
Writer: Nelson Gidding
Synopsis: After a government satellite crashes in a small New Mexico town, nearly all residents die instantly from a mysterious extraterrestrial organism. An elite team of scientists is assembled in a secret underground facility to isolate the virus and determine why an elderly man and an infant were the only survivors. They must race against time and a nuclear self-destruct mechanism to neutralize the threat before it causes a global pandemic.
This week Fusion Patrol looks at “The Invaders: Beachhead” as Kenneth and Eugene discuss—
- Every aspect of the David Vincent’s life being systematically destroyed,
- Uncertainty about who is alien and who is actually human,
- Unreliable pinky gestures and Creator Larry Cohen’s intended symbolism of the aliens’ extended pinky,
- and they posit whether anyone would notice the difference between Bud’s and Kelly’s Diner
Beachhead Airdate: January 10, 1967 Runtime: 51 minutes Starring: Roy Thinnes Guest Stars: Diane Baker, J.D. Cannon, James Daly Director: Joseph Sargent Writer: Anthony Wilson (teleplay), Larry Cohen (story & creator) Synopsis: Architect David Vincent, tired from a late-night drive, stumbles upon an alien landing in a remote town. Unable to convince anyone of what he’s seen, Vincent finds his life unraveling as he obsesses over the mysterious invaders hiding in plain sight.
This week Fusion Patrol looks at the 1973 movie Soylent Green as John and Eugene discuss if starving people even care if Soylent Green is people, Charlton Heston’s most human performance in a dystopian film, women treated as apartment “furniture” in a collapsing society, and Edward G. Robinson’s final acting role as his own death scene
Soylent Green Release Date: May 9, 1973 Runtime: 97 minutes Starring: Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Edward G. Robinson, Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten, Brock Peters, Paula Kelly, Stephen Young, Mike Henry, Whit Bissell Director: Richard Fleischer Writer: Stanley R. Greenberg (screenplay), Harry Harrison (novel) Synopsis: In a polluted and overpopulated New York City in the year 2022, detective Robert Thorn uncovers the corporate murder linked to a popular food product called Soylent Green. As Thorn investigates, he discovers the disturbing secret behind the food that sustains the masses, while society teeters on the brink of environmental catastrophe.
This week Fusion Patrol looks at Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, “Planet of the Amazon Women” as John and Eugene discuss
- Looking “like leftover dinner” as an insult.
- The proper technique for making a grilled cheese sandwich, which doesn’t involve holding bread over an open flame.
- Twiki’s use of the phrase “Holy Toledo.”
Planet of the Amazon Women Airdate: 1 November 1979
Runtime: 49 minutes
Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor
Guest Stars: Ann Dusenberry, Jay Robinson, Anne Jeffreys
Director: Philip Leacock
Writer: D.C. Fontana, Richard Fontana
Synopsis: Buck is tricked into landing on the planet Zantia, where he is made a prisoner before being sold as a slave to Ariela, the daughter of the planet’s Prime Minister. While living on the planet, Buck learns that all male members of Zantia’s population have become prisoners of war while battling the planet Ruathan.
John and Eugene talk about the time Buck Rogers met the Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis, and they discuss the Tennessee delicacy, sand squid, as they look at the episode Unchained Woman.
Unchained Woman Airdate: November 1, 1979 Runtime: 48 minutes Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor, Pamela Hensley, Felix Silla, Mel Blanc Guest Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael DeLano, Walter Hunter Director: Dick Lowry Writer: Michael Bryant Synopsis: Buck Rogers infiltrates a desert prison colony on Zeta Minor to free Jen Burton, a young woman jailed for her boyfriend’s crimes and needed to testify against him. Their perilous escape from the colony is complicated by the relentless pursuit of ‘Hugo,’ a damaged yet unstoppable android. The journey exposes loyalties, betrayal, and the harsh realities of justice in the 25th century.
Who’d have thunk it? Buck Rogers in the 25th Century decides to tackle issues of ageism, the mental anguish of disabilities, and questions of identity as related to the concept of “fixing” a disability. Or at least, it would have been if the production staff had given this episode much thought.
John and Eugene, on the other hand, give this episode way too much thought as they look at the Return of the Fighting 69th.
Return of the Fighting 69th Airdate: October 25, 1979 Runtime: 48 minutes Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor, Felix Silla, Mel Blanc Guest Stars: Peter Graves, Elizabeth Allen, Robert Quarry, Woody Strode, Eddie Firestone, K.T. Stevens, Katherine Wiberg, Robert Hardy, Duncan McKenzie, Clifford Turknett, Dan Sturkie Director: Jack Arnold Writer: David Carren (teleplay), Robert C. Dille (characters) Synopsis: Buck and Wilma are forced to team up with a legendary squadron of veteran pilots brought out of retirement to stop gunrunners Commander Corliss and Roxanne Trent, who plan to use stolen nerve gas weapons against Earth. When Buck and Wilma are captured, the older aces must overcome their self-doubt and rally for one last daring rescue amid the dangers of an asteroid belt and a heavily-fortified enemy base.
John and Eugene discuss the time Buck Rogers pits himself again the lamest group of assassins the galaxy can muster, and they ponder the riddle, “Why are they even a threat?”
It’s the two-part episode, The Plot to Kill a City.
The Plot to Kill a City Airdate: October 11–18, 1979 Runtime: 96 minutes (two-part episode) Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor, Felix Silla, Mel Blanc Guest Stars: Frank Gorshin, John Quade, Anthony James, Robert Tessier, Nancy DeCarl, Markie Post, James Sloyan, Michael Delano, William Sanderson, Paul Koslo Director: Dick Lowry Writer: Alan Brennert (teleplay), Robert C. Dille (characters) Synopsis: Buck assumes the identity of a notorious assassin to infiltrate the Legion of Death, a group of super-powered criminals plotting the destruction of New Chicago. As Wilma goes undercover, Buck must outwit the deadly team—including their telekinetic, empath, and mutant members—while racing against time to save the city and expose the conspirators.
Kenneth and Eugene finally arrive at the final episode of Space Rangers with, the Trial.
This week, John and Eugene look at the Buck Rogers in the 25th century episode, Vegas in Space, where we ask the questions, do you see mirrors or a piano keyboard, and can Buck be a bigger SOB to Wilma than he was in the movie, we also reflect on Gil Gerard’s moment of acting.
Vegas in Space Airdate: October 4, 1979 Runtime: 48 minutes Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor, Felix Silla, Mel Blanc Guest Stars: Juanin Clay, Ana Alicia, Richard Lynch, Pamela Susan Shoop, Cesar Romero, Joseph Wiseman, James Luisi, Alice Frost, Ted Chapman, William Conrad (voice), Eric Server (voice), Olan Soule (voice) Director: Sigmund Neufeld Jr. Writer: Anne Collins (teleplay), Robert C. Dille (characters) Synopsis: Buck and Major Marla Landers go undercover at the casino city of Sinaloa to rescue Felina Redding, a kidnapped employee carrying critical evidence. The mission puts them against the ruthless Morgan Velosi, forcing Buck to gamble with his life as they team up with unlikely allies to foil a deadly plot.
A washed-up comedian, Buddy Hackett, arrives for a show, and there’s a disaster…
No, that description might just be a little too meta.
A washed-up comedian, Lenny Hacker, is en route for a show, and there’s a disaster. The Space Rangers team has to rescue him from a notorious prison planet.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss The Entertainer.
Investigating a mystery on the planet of the slave girls. Tough job, and only one man in the 25th century is up to it: Capt. Buck Rogers!
John and Eugene discuss Planet of the Slave Girls.
Planet of the Slave Girls Airdate: September 27–28, 1979 Runtime: ~95 minutes (as two-part episode) Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor, Felix Silla, Mel Blanc Guest Stars: Jack Palance, David Groh, Roddy McDowall (as Roddy McDowell), Brianne Leary, Macdonald Carey, Karen Carlson, Michael Mullins, Buster Crabbe, Robert Dowdell, Sheila DeWindt (as Sheila Wills), Don Marshall, Diane Markoff, June Whitley Taylor Director: Michael Caffey Writer: Steve Greenberg, Aubrey Solomon, Anne Collins Synopsis: When Earth’s pilots are poisoned by contaminated food, Buck, Wilma, and Duke Danton travel to the farm planet Vistula to investigate. They uncover a web of slavery fueled by the sinister Kaleel, who plots to use the planet’s resources and people to launch an attack on Earth. With Governor Saroyan oblivious to the dark dealings on his planet, Buck must outwit both Kaleel and local factions to prevent disaster and liberate the oppressed.
This week, Kenneth and Eugene watch as Capt. Boon makes mistake after mistake after mistake as they muddle their way through the Space Rangers episode, Death Before Dishonor.
At long last, John and Eugene begin the much-requested coverage of the epitome of 1970s space opera: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!
This week they look at the theatrical release and they spare some thoughts for the television re-edit.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Release Date: March 30, 1979 Runtime: 89 minutes Starring: Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Pamela Hensley, Henry Silva, Tim O’Connor, Joseph Wiseman Director: Daniel Haller Writer: Glen A. Larson, Leslie Stevens (screenplay); Philip Francis Nowlan (original characters) Synopsis: 20th century astronaut Buck Rogers awakens 500 years in the future after a deep space accident. Trying to clear his name after being used as a pawn by the nefarious Draconians, Buck must adapt to a post-apocalyptic Earth and help defend it from imminent invasion. Along the way, he befriends Colonel Wilma Deering and uncovers a conspiracy that threatens humanity’s survival.
Eugene and Kenneth look at the next episode of Space Rangers, in which Boon and the gang go on an expedition to capture their most deadly enemy, a race of aliens they know virtually nothing about and they discover along the way that they have deadly sonic powers.
Oh, so that’s why they’re called “banshees!”
It’s the episode Banshees.
This Week, Kenneth and Eugene start a full-series look at Space Rangers with episode one, Fort Hope.
This week, Ben and Eugene look at the 1972 British-American pilot movie Baffled!, a supernatural thriller starring Leonard Nimoy.
Our coverage of Space: Above and Beyond concludes as Kenneth and Eugene discuss the final two-part season finale (and, as history records, also the series finale) episodes, “And If They Lay Us Down to Rest…” and “…Tell Ours Moms We Done Our Best.”
They discuss this week’s court-martial-able offenses, things that might have been if this series hadn’t been such an awkward mashup of space opera and Word War II melodrama, and not once, to their credit, do they complain about the horrible grammar in the episode title.
Join them as they bid farewell to Space: Above and Beyond.
This week, Kenneth and Eugene look at Season 1, Episode 21 of Space Above and Beyond, entitled Sugar Dirt. They look at bad historical analogies, check in on this week’s contestant on Wheel of Court Martial and ask the question, “What has the 58th been eating for three months?”
John (suspicious name) and Eugene discuss that most 80’s of 1980’s cult films: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.
This week, Kenneth and Eugene look at the Space: Above and Beyond episode “Stardust” in which they consider the deeply offensive use of Native Americans in television and this episode in particular, consider, once again, the absolutely illogical incompetence of the Earth Forces’ military strategies, and talk about the episode’s pretentious yet somehow still inadequate history lessons.
This week, Kenneth and Eugene look at Episode 19 of Space Above and Beyond, R&R, where they ask, “Will people know Clint Eastwood in the year 2064?” “Do they save sex-ed class for the end of invitro school?” and “What power does W.C. Fields have over Colonel McQueen?”
Also, this week, exclusively for our patrons on Patreon, there will be two bonus minutes of totally unrelated conversation!
This week, Fusion Patrol examines the 18th episode of Space Above and Beyond, entitled “Pearly,” where Kenneth and Eugene finally find out why Wang wasn’t court-martialed at the end of Episode 9, why the space jarheads are too stupid to realize that the Chigs talk, and when discretion is the better part of valor when discussing guest actors’ other roles.
This week, Fusion Patrol looks at the two-part Quark episode “All the Emperor’s Quasi-Norms.” John and Eugene ask if American television in the 1970s was ready for full-frontal pollination, why Jean didn’t get equal time with Gene, and if Ficus is the most alien character ever committed to the small screen.
This episode, we’re celebrating our 700th episode of Fusion Patrol with the film The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951 edition.
Simon and Eugene discuss whether the film is an appeal to authoritarianism or pacifism, whether the spaceship was guarded by UNIT soldiers, and, of course, Eugene talks about sex with robots.
This week, John and Eugene look at the 1972 film Silent Running.
They discuss the naming order of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, does Eugene find the film as boring now as he did as a child in the 1970s, and how much of a monster is Freeman Lowell for murdering a robot?
This week on Fusion Patrol, Kenneth and Eugene look at the Space: Above and Beyond episode, “Dear Earth,” where they discuss who gets first naming rights for babies in a family, just how good the Marines are at killing sons and daughters, what is the Emily Post-approved length of a “Dear Jane” letter, and whether or not Wang is actually a ground pounder.
This week John and Eugene look at episodes 5 and 8 of Quark.
In episode number 5, “Goodbye, Columbus,” they discuss heirloom peaches, and in episode 8, “Vanessa 38/24/36,” they compare a sentient ultimate computer to Bridget Bardot’s hourglass figure.
This week, Kenneth and Eugene examine the Space Above and Beyond episode “Toy Soldiers.”
They ask the questions: Which is more honorable: going into the military during peacetime or in wartime? Did the writers of this episode actually ever read the Red Badge of Courage or just quote mine from it? And is it ever justified for soldiers to shoot their commanding officers in the back of the head?
This week, John and Eugene examine two more vintage 1978 space opera parody TV series Quark episodes.
First, it’s “The Old and the Beautiful,” where Quark contracts a fatal aging disease.
Will an extended romantic interlude with a young, beautiful, and voracious princess be the death of him?
And then, in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ficus,” Quark’s ship plummets through a black hole, releasing evil doppelgangers.
Will Quark be able to reason with his evil self, and why is that gauge in Ficus’ ear?
This week, Kenneth and Eugene look at the Space Above and Beyond, the two-part Chiggy von Richthofen saga with episodes 14 and 15, Never No More, and The Angriest Angel, where Killer tries to grab some action on the rebound, Winslow goes after Zero-G-Sex with the Colonel, and McQueen crosses the line into being a war criminal.
This week, John and Eugene kick off our coverage of the 1977 TV series Quark, which aired on NBC and starred Richard Benjamin as space garbage collector Adam Quark.
First, we look at the pilot episode, which introduces us to the eccentric group of characters under Quark’s command. Then, we watch May the Source Be With You, a send-up of a little film you might have heard of called Star Wars.
This week’s episode under discussion: the 13th episode of Space Above and Beyond, Level of Necessity.
In this episode, Damphousse gets psychic powers, and Kenneth and Eugene ask, “what good are psychic powers when you’re in the military?”
Level of Necessity originally aired on January 14th, 1996.
This week’s episode under review: Space Above and Beyond, Who Monitors the Bird, which first aired January 7, 1996 and was written by Glen Morgan and James Wong.
Kenneth and Eugene try to make sense of Tank’s Big Adventure… once they get past his haircut.
This week’s episode under review is the eleventh episode of Space Above and Beyond, The River of Stars.
The River of Stars was written by Marilyn Osborn, was directed by Tucker Gates and first aired on December 17th, 1995.
Kenneth and Eugene act as pedants on both sides of the religious content, ponder whether West has faith or just an self-destructive obsession, and did God compensate for Wang’s incompetence with a spilled can of soda.
Kenneth and Eugene look at episode 10 of Space Above and Beyond, Stay With the Dead this week. The episode aired on December 3, 1995, and was written by Matt Kiene & Joe Reinkemeyer.
They ask the burning question: who will West play dominos with now?
This week, our episodes under discussion are Space Above and Beyond numbers 8 and 9, the two-episode story Hostile Visit & Choice or Chance. These episodes were written by Payton Webb and Doc Johnson, respectively. They first aired on November 19th and 26th, 1995.
Hosts Kenneth and Eugene discuss if a second nail-clipping scene might have been included, whether Kylen was always green goo, whether her and West’s lack of chemistry was in the script or just on the screen, and whether the writers really understood Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo.
Summary of Hostile Visit & Choice or Chance[Mild spoilers]The Saratoga faces a Chig attack, and the 58th salvage a Chig bomber. McQueen proposes a daring plan: use the Chig ship as a Trojan horse for a suicide mission to strike the enemy’s base. Despite opposition, McQueen persuades the Commodore. The 58th volunteers for the risky mission, leading to a failed attack and the destruction of the ship. However, they escape in an emergency pod, finding themselves on the Chig planet.
After a crash landing, McQueen and Tank escape the wreckage, but the rest of the gang is taken as prisoners to a Chig-run penal colony. Separated and facing various challenges, the team learns the AIs collaborate with the Chigs. McQueen signals the Saratoga, prompting a surprise rescue mission. Kylen offers West an escape plan, but suspicions arise. Tortured and manipulated, the team endures hardships. The Saratoga, aided by false information, launches a rescue while secrets unfold back on the ship.
While the Fightin’ 58th battle over a worthless rock in space, we wonder if the cockroaches were real, is it ironic or operatic that Tank is afraid of tanks, and if this episode is a senseless wreck or a key piece of groundwork for an epic 4th Season episode that never was.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss The Enemy.
*Note: In this episode, the Commodore has been inadvertently promoted to Admiral. The episode synopsis has been edited to reflect Commodore Ross’ correct rank.
Episode Synopsis
Colonel McQueen and Commodore Ross question members of the Fightin’ 58th to determine if Damp Mouse should be court-martialed for failure to follow orders in a combat situation.
Through flashbacks, the story of a fateful mission to the planet called TaTARus unfolds.
TaTArus is an inhospitable failed star of a planet with a lethal atmosphere and burning temperatures in excess of 60º. The team discusses rumors about the planet – that it is a worthless planet with no strategic value, that 1,000s of lives have been lost fighting over the planet, that there are massive numbers of desertions and deaths by friendly fire – yet for some reason, the brass continues to pursue securing the planet.
Landing on the planet, they soon come under nearby fire, and Marines from outside clamber desperately to get into the shuttle. The weapons fire isn’t coming from the Chigs; it’s a Marine. Tank wants to shoot him, but the others decide to try to capture him. As they exit the vehicle, they find many more Marine bodies killed by the gunman.
The crazed Marine runs out of bullets, and they try to talk him into putting his weapon down. He cannot be reasoned with, and he says they should be afraid of him as he is of himself. He steps on a Chig landmine and dies.
As the team returns to the shuttle, a series of flashing lights, penetrating all the way to their skeletons, hits them, giving them radiation burns and headaches. Damp Mouse is the first to manifest signs of madness, as she freaks out at the sight of her own blood. As the others try to comfort her, Wang freaks out when he sees a cockroach; he chases and kills it with a knife. Unfortunately, he also kills the transmitter at the same time. Now they cannot call the Colonel for help.
Damp Mouse has an idea. Out amongst the corpses is a portable communications pack. They could remove a part from it, and she could repair the radio. It should be her job to go get the part, but she refuses a direct order because she will not put on her blood-stained suit.
The others go out, but all are suffering from various forms of psychoses. Killer is afraid of the dark, Tank is claustrophobic, and West keeps hearing a woman calling for help. As the others get the part, West wanders off following the voice. He comes to a Marine bunker and meets a Sgt. that tells him, in incoherent terms, that the light is their worst nightmares. He disappears before the others arrive.
Inside the bunker, all the Marines have murdered each other.
West and Wang put the pieces together. The light is a Chig weapon that disrupts the amygdala – the part of the brain to regulates fear. The fear ultimately causes everyone to turn on one another.
They return to the ship, but along the way, Killer steps on a landmine. Wang attempts to save her by using a mirror to deflect the lethal beam from the mine when he discovers a cockroach in his helmet and freaks out. West steps in and saves Killer, but they are zapped again by the light, amplifying their fears.
Inside the shuttle, Damp Mouse accidentally spilled some blood all over the floor, and she cannot move from her current location because she would have to cross the blood on the floor. She will not let the others into the shuttle, and they have to hot-wire the airlock door. Now that they have the part, she will not go to the radio. The team’s fears have all gotten them into a Mexican standoff – they will kill the others rather than face their fears. Ultimately, Killer places the part and calls for help.
McQueen received the distress call and landed 75 meters away, on the other side of the minefield. Mustering their courage and a Marine Corps song, they make their way across the minefield to the waiting shuttle. West wanders off again when he hears the woman’s voice, but Killer brings him back.
After hearing the testimony, the Commodore and McQueen decide not to press charges.
The following transcript is machine-generated and not 100% accurate. It has not been manually corrected.
[00:00:01.17] Podcast:MUSIC PLAYING[00:00:12.07] Eugene:You're listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast. Each week we take a single episode of Science Fiction TV series movies, movie or audio and over-analyze it to within an inch of its life. Welcome to the discussion.[00:00:45.54] Eugene:Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.[00:00:48.33] Kenneth:And I am Kenneth.[00:00:49.58] Eugene:And tonight we're looking at "Space Above and Beyond" episode 7, "The Enemy." And before we start with this synopsis, I just want to say that when I saw the name "The Enemy" in the queue for the next episode, my brain instantly went to, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."[00:01:04.83] Kenneth:That's your right, and, uh...[00:01:06.17] Eugene:Maybe. We'll talk about that quote later, but I mean, that one, that would definitely just instantly popped into my head and I go, I, I don't see why I've made that connection. Maybe it's the fact that they use the word "the" and I don't know, but it just, it just popped. Anyway, episode synopsis. Colonel McQueen and Admiral Ross question members of the fighting 58th. to determine if Dampmouse should be court-martialed for failure to follow orders in a combat situation. Through flashbacks, the story of a fateful mission to the planet called Tataras unfolds. Tataras is an inhospitable failed star of a planet with a lethal atmosphere and burning temperatures in excess of 60 degrees Celsius. The team discusses rumors about the planet, that it is a worthless planet with no strategic value, that thousands of lives have been lost fighting over it, that there are massive numbers of desertions and deaths by friendly fire. Yet, for some reason, the Brass continue to pursue securing the planet. Landing on the planet, they soon come under nearby fire and marines from outside. clamber desperately to get into the shuttle. The weapon spire isn't coming from the Chigs. It's a Marine. Tank wants to shoot him, but the others decide to try to capture him. As they exit the vehicle, they find many more Marine bodies killed by the gunman. The crazed Marine runs out of bullets, and they try to talk him into putting his weapon down. He cannot be reasoned with. with, and he says that they should be afraid of him as he is of himself. He steps on a chigging landmine and dies. As the team return to the shuttle, a series of flashing lights penetrating all the way to their skeletons hits them, giving them radiation burns and headaches. Damp Mouse is the first to manifest signs of madness as she freaks out at the sight As the others try to comfort her, Wang freaks out when he sees a cockroach. He chases it, and he kills it with a knife. Fortunately, he also kills the transmitter at the same time. Now, they cannot call the colonel for help. Dantmouse has an idea. Out amongst the corpses is a portable communications pack. They could remove a part from it, and she could repair it. the radio. It should be her job to go out and get the part, but she refuses a direct order because she will not put on her bloodstained suit. The others go out, but all are suffering from various forms of psychoses. Killer is afraid of the dark, Tank is claustrophobic, and West keeps hearing a woman calling for help. As the others get the part, West wanders off following the voice. He comes to a marine bunker and he meets a sergeant that tells him, in incoherent terms, that the light is their worst nightmares. He disappears before the others arrive. Inside the bunker all the Marines have murdered each other. West and Wang put the pieces together. The light is a Chig weapon that disrupts the amygdala, part of the brain to regulate fear. ultimately causes everyone to turn on one another. They return to the ship, but along the way, Killer steps on a landmine. Wong attempts to save her by using a mirror to deflect the lethal beam from the mine, when he discovers a cockroach in his helmet, and he freaks out. Wes steps in and saves Killer, but they are zapped again by the light, amplifying their fears. Inside the shuttle, Dantmouth accidentally spilled blood all over the floor and she cannot move from her current location because she would have to cross the blood. She will not let the others into the shuttle and they have to hotwire the airlock door. Now that they have the part, she will not go to the radio. The team's fears have all gotten them into a Mexican standoff. They will kill each other rather than face their fears. Finally, Killer places the part and calls for help. McQueen receives a distress call and lands 75 meters away, on the other side of the minefield. Mustering their courage, and a Marine Corps song, they make their way across the minefield to the waiting shuttle. West wanders off again when he hears the woman's voice, but Killer brings him back. After hearing the testimony, the Admiral and McQueen decide not to press charges." Okay, well, you know, at least, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, at least this was sort of a science fiction story, whereas last week's was more of just a political intrigue thing. So here, at least, we're trying to explore the idea of alternate forms of... weaponry in science fiction.[00:05:36.68] Kenneth:Yes. Yeah, good point. But I still, um, remembered the pit of, um, to use a term I once heard, "pseudo-profound bulls**t" at the end. (sobbing) when it was Vanson, Killer as you call her, who said that the enemy was on the planet, but the enemy was not the Chigs.[00:06:01.44] Eugene:I thought that was, um, I thought that was tank. Was it set up? it wasn't that it wasn't the Chigs. I think Vanson started it, and I think[00:06:10.32] Kenneth:Yeah, okay.[00:06:20.39] Eugene:Like that, yes[00:06:21.60] Kenneth:I found that far[00:06:22.51] Eugene:Too profound for him.[00:06:24.08] Kenneth:Yes, I found it to be rather evidence of an effort to make something profound out of a not-so-profound episode.[00:06:33.23] Eugene:I'm not going to disagree. Like I said, that quote hit me before this episode starts, and that means this is a very unsubtle attempt.[00:06:42.54] Kenneth:It must have been[00:06:44.30] Eugene:Really unsubtle, because it just... there it was. Let me... let me... I had to look this up, because I wanted to... I wanted to get it right, because I've heard that quote forever. "We have met the enemy, and he is us."[00:06:56.02] Kenneth:Isn't it pogo?[00:06:56.81] Eugene:Pogo, yes, that's right. It's Walt Kelly's Pogo. It first appeared April 22, 1970 for the first Earth Day. It is an indictment of who it is that is destroying the Earth. It is us. are the problem. Okay, fair enough. It's a play on Admiral Perry's 1813 commentary after the defeat of the British at Lake Erie We have met the enemy and they are ours. Now. I always actually thought that quote was From Admiral Perry the the they are us or he is us[00:07:29.21] Kenneth:I didn't mean I've just never bothered to think about it. The quote is so[00:07:33.83] Eugene:Famous, but it is the Pogo version that is far more famous, I think, because that's what I've heard. I think it, I think it plays into the zeitgeist a little bit better, right? There, there is... That's sort of, yeah. Yeah, we suck. We're humans, we suck. We've met the enemy and it's us. Yeah, and people just have taken that to heart. Unfortunately, the writers took that to heart.[00:08:00.30] Kenneth:>> The writers -- That's the writer were writers were Glenn Morgan and James Wong.[00:08:07.23] Eugene:Really, bye. Filling. They cranked out one full of plot holes like nobody's business.[00:08:12.86] Kenneth:Yes, the only positive statement I have for regarding this episode regards the direction.[00:08:23.55] Eugene:Okay, we're done.[00:08:24.42] Kenneth:I thought the directing was capable, and it was well done, and that part held my attention, but the story did not.[00:08:37.47] Eugene:Well, I will have to say that I think that some of the direction with regards to how landmines are placed did not hold up very well. Because... Because they're not hidden. (laughing) But they're, they're in play. Clean site.[00:08:53.12] Kenneth:But in their head the dark[00:08:54.38] Eugene:But unfortunately, they can't show us the dark. Like they would on the other side of the world. The X-Files, it's... Yeah. us to see it so yeah it kind of and and and you know using x-files as an example you know they were very good and it's a contemporary show and obviously there's some lineage here between the two they were very good at using very dark sets and very strong lights you know they had those xenon lights i think it was that and Scully would use that were ridiculously bright but that allowed them to you know drop that very dark moody which is good for a show about scary things but they should have used that technique here as well and I had been more convinced about killer having fear of the dark if it were a lot more dark or even the scene where they're in the shuttle when the lights are red Then she's like, "Oh, you gotta turn on the lights!" You didn't. They're wrong, they're just red lights. Yeah, I'd really like that. It's not dark in there.[00:09:54.04] Kenneth:BLANK Some The director was Michael Ketelman. comment. Watch him, Rob. He's been quite busy over the years in various genres of television. I did look up some genre credits. He directed Shadows, season one, episode six of The X-Files.[00:10:22.34] Eugene:Shadows that unfortunately x-files names are not always The rest is up to you. Uh, my brain says that's the werewolf one, but I don't think it is.[00:10:29.91] Kenneth:I can check, and "shadows" is... okay, the description here is "Mulder and Scully investigate the deaths of two men believed to have been killed by a powerful psychokinetic force."[00:10:44.00] Eugene:Okay, since that narrows it down to a few.[00:10:47.88] Kenneth:And let me see, yeah, but okay, he directed that one. to that one, and here we go. He directed the last episode of Steven Spielberg's "Taken" in 2008.[00:11:02.19] Kenneth:- Okay.[00:11:03.03] Kenneth:Okay And that was actually a fairly, it was a much better episode than the one we are discussing.[00:11:09.08] Eugene:Laughter Yeah, while we're on the direction, I mean, I think he did a... Okay, there are some issues that are out of his hands, so I'm not gonna... We're huge in time. OUT[00:11:24.27] Kenneth:Where the wither away wearing the same clothes and they're all[00:11:27.82] Eugene:That their heads and helmets were in the right place. Let's get started.[00:11:30.56] Kenneth:Oh, the other helmet, see, yeah, yeah, yeah, and, uh... So you can't always tell who's doing what.[00:11:35.78] Eugene:So for example, and I only watched this once. There were, I believe... three guys trying to get into the shuttle. Yes?[00:11:43.78] Kenneth:Yes, yes they were.[00:11:45.45] Eugene:One of them was killed, and I thought the other two got on board the shuttle. Whatever happened to them?[00:11:49.47] Kenneth:I do remember that, and I remember that that is unresolved.[00:11:54.59] Eugene:OK, good, because we never see them again. They're not in the team where they I don't think they're in the team when they go to the McQueen's shuttle at the end. No, I don't think so. Like they had any contribution to this. story when they were Mexican standoffing in the shuttle. It's just like, um, well, what happened? And maybe they were killed and I just somehow thought that they were on the shuttle and it was actually our guys because they were all wearing spacesuits and so[00:12:23.67] Kenneth:And of course the helmet that has the name, the last name across the top.[00:12:29.82] Eugene:Pretty prominent.[00:12:31.02] Kenneth:Yes, and sometimes reading that name was difficult.[00:12:35.05] Eugene:Yeah. Or, you know, if they're just not facing the camera. Right. So, yeah, it's just, so that's not their problem. Of course, they're in a dark, murky space, and they're all walking through a very classic Star Trek-style, styrofoam rocks. Yeah... Yeah, he's like, okay. Well, that's a group of people. Is that do we do we know who that is? I don't know I mean like I can't tell so, you know that that would work against him There were you know, there were times where I'm just all right I I'm not sure what's going on here because I don't think they can first off I don't think they know what's going on here, but second off And then they tell it through flashback, which is a terrible way already is already a strike against the story I know there are people who like flashback stories, but you know I think you have to be able to you have to do something with it and They didn't do anything with it In this case... different perspectives.[00:13:35.09] Kenneth:Well, they did something with it, but they didn't do what you're talking about here. They filled out the airtime of the episode with it.[00:13:43.25] Eugene:Okay, yes, they filled out some runtime with it.[00:13:46.87] Kenneth:That was it.[00:13:47.99] Eugene:I don't disagree there.[00:13:50.22] Kenneth:INTERPOSING VOICES[00:13:52.26] Eugene:END PLAYBACK[00:13:52.76] Kenneth:Watched this episode and took my notes, I went to a website that has reviews of all these episodes to see if I could learn something the episode did not tell me.[00:14:04.44] Eugene:(laughing)[00:14:06.68] Kenneth:And the movie blog is the name of the website, and I have the episode review up on my other computer screen here, and this is the opening line of the review. On paper, the enemy seems like a good idea.[00:14:24.96] Eugene:Laughter Okay, well I think I might argue with him in the first place, but okay.[00:14:31.35] Kenneth:And then it goes on. They might be wrong. on to say that the problem with the enemy is that it is just a clumsy mess of a script and one that stumbles over what should be a fairly robust setup.[00:14:46.01] Eugene:It could have been. It could have been good. I'm not going to argue there. There is potential for this to be a good story. Like I said, they've got a solid science fiction idea. I don't think that the fact that you are terrified of cockroaches leads inevitably to you killing all of your teammates, right? That, that. that doesn't work very well at all, and there's some enormous contrivances in it. Like, for example, let's talk about their phobias here real quickly. Yes. has a phobia of blood. any manifestation of that previously in the series, and there is a scene where a packet of blood falls out of the pouch on the descent, out of the medical kit, and she kind of gingerly pushes it back in there and slams the chart, but you couldn't, you couldn't figure out from that that she's supposed to have, she's supposed to be terrified of blood, and you'd think... being a Marine, maybe being terrified of blood might be a crippling problem.[00:15:52.35] Kenneth:Especially during wartime.[00:15:54.24] Eugene:Yeah, especially during wartime, but then let's follow that up with the incredible contrivance of managing to break the blood and spill it all over the floor in such a place where she can't frost it, which of course she ultimately does. So we've had no backstory on that. We go, "Tank is apparently concerned with enclosed spaces." Okay, there's a certain irony about it. guy who was raised in a tank being afraid of being in a tank but okay We've not seen that happen. before and yet prior to them zapping him with a light twice twice we saw him looking at the helmet before he put it on I know I'm just like Why? What what's and this is I don't think the director did a good job. It's like why is he doing that? What what is about the helmet? Does he see something? Is it I don't get it I mean, I I just didn't get it until later in the thing and suddenly he's got claustrophobia. It's like well that we didn't work Killer, okay. She has a back story. She's afraid of the dark because the night the AIs came and killed her parents, it was dark. Counterpoint to that, we have seen that scene, and guess what it wasn't? It wasn't dark! So, oop.[00:17:18.90] Kenneth:Oops, a needle.[00:17:20.35] Eugene:Now, Walner Wang is afraid of cockroaches. Now, those are, I believe, Madagascar cockroaches,[00:17:25.67] Kenneth:'cause those are big and nasty looking.[00:17:27.74] Eugene:I can totally relate to him. I can totally relate to him. I'm sure I've probably told my "Land of the Bally[00:17:34.77] Kenneth:of the Dinosaurs" cockroach story.[00:17:36.58] Eugene:We had good-sized cockroaches in Tucson when I was a kid. One day, I was watching an episode of "Valley of the Dinosaurs." I don't know, six, seven, eight, something like that, and it was a story where the giant two-inch soldier ants were swarming the valley, you know, redoing that. Yeah. me at the moment and I'm sitting in the chair and I find that disturbing and I'm sitting in an armchair with my feet up holding my knees and I'm watching this thing and I'm thinking I get this creepy feeling that something is watching me from behind and I turn and look at the the headrest but you know the an armchair Armchair kind of comes around you Yes, up near There's a cockroach sitting there. staring at me, and I mean, I was like, through to the other side of the house screaming so fast, it's not funny, and on top of that, occasionally they'd be in my shoes. Yeah. I distinctly remember one day I was at school, probably in my third period in high school, and I kept thinking that my sock was bunched up under my foot and I I finally took the shoe off. to straighten, and a cockroach, still alive, leaps out and runs across the thing. I'm psyched. I still, to this day, tap my shoes before I put them on, and this is not because we have scorpions here either. This is because there are cockroaches in Arizona. There are cockroaches everywhere, and we have the big ones, big sewer roaches there, but they're not as big as those Madagascar ones, but they're close. So if I had a phobia like him, I would tap my helmet every single day. Take your time, boys. I ever put anything on like that and I can't buy that that was in his helmet because I know from personal experience that I would never put on a space helmet without especially when I'd already seen cockroaches earlier in the day and was freaking out about him there was no way that I wouldn't I used to sleep with my blanket over my head and I would tuck the blanket underneath my Right.[00:19:33.68] Kenneth:Because I was afraid the cockroaches would crawl.[00:19:35.74] Eugene:Or three in the night. I mean, I'm sure whoever wrote this has had that experience because his description was Exactly on the money.[00:19:47.40] Kenneth:OUT Oh, have we ever seen? Scenic cockroach on the space Yeah, yeah.[00:19:51.89] Eugene:Now, of course.[00:19:53.58] Kenneth:Actually, I wondered if he was imagining some of those.[00:19:59.35] Eugene:Well, we did see the other step on them.[00:20:00.93] Kenneth:Yeah, well, some of them. Maybe not all, but you know.[00:20:04.13] Eugene:I agree that that was the thought that crossed my mind. Is she imagining the cockroaches? I don't think he was. Well, when he pulled out the knife, there was a cockroach on it.[00:20:14.61] Kenneth:Yes.[00:20:15.49] Eugene:uh somebody else stepped on one and did it where he couldn't see i don't know about the one in his helmet but uh i i don't see how they could have stopped me from tearing that helmet off off in that deadly the atmosphere, you know, "Where the heck is he from? I'm not going back to that place. I'm not going... where is he from? Tucson?" I thought tank was the one[00:20:36.93] Kenneth:One from Detroit. Well, I don't know. I that didn't get anything about the geography, but I just thought maybe he grew up in some tenement. Maybe?[00:20:45.86] Eugene:I also I honestly don't know. I mean, it just was kind of, "I'm not going back to that place." I thought maybe he was in a prisoner of war camp, the way he was describing it, and then West, he has his fear of never finding his girlfriend. Is that really an amygdala-type fear? I thought we knew about it already. That's more of a, that's a more, that's not a fear. Really? I mean that's not, "Oh my god, I'm scared to death that I'll never find my girlfriend." You're not scared by that. You may be upset by it. You may be... Obsessed. Obsessed, but you do not... Yeah. Don't go your pants in terror like all the other people were doing, right? It's the wrong fear, and it just doesn't manifest well in this story. It's like, find something that would actually make him run away instead of making him run towards. It just didn't, and that's it. I've got more stories.[00:21:44.98] Kenneth:I noticed it too. I did notice a couple of other items here that made me[00:21:49.90] Eugene:Write arch an eyebrow and write a note[00:21:52.89] Kenneth:(laughing) Excellent. About 10 minutes in, Wang, or Wong, uses light year as a unit, a measure. Oh, yeah, tired[00:22:03.73] Eugene:Yeah Yeah, I saw, I got that. Okay, and... Our war is uh...[00:22:10.44] Kenneth:Yeah, the parsec thing. I didn't know if that was Okay in Star Wars. I could take it as being clever and maybe humor In this case, this is this dot one for humor.[00:22:23.75] Eugene:Nope, this is just a mistake.[00:22:25.42] Kenneth:Yes, and then, I'll just write, I'll read my note verbatim here. If disobeying a direct order were a serious offense in this series. (laughing) These theories would have concluded in the pilot episode.[00:22:40.61] Eugene:Yep, guess it would have. Yes, it would have. But we're at war. Yeah. Yeah. One of many. One of many.[00:22:50.40] Kenneth:I mean the McQueen is highly variable as to how much he cares about people disobeying orders.[00:23:08.15] Eugene:Very much so. Very much so. Depends on whether it works out for the best or not. I guess if it doesn't work out then you, uh, then you... Maybe that's what it is. This didn't work out well, right? Lots of dead marines, uh, the team, uh, I mean, it's trying to kill each other, and, uh, so now you disobeyed orders. We're going to take it seriously. But had they rescued, uh, you know, a thousand people, then they would have just ignored it. Which, you know, is probably not really the way it should go, but there you go. Got any more notes? There?[00:23:34.89] Kenneth:That is it on my notes and this one was, there was just, there wasn't a lot going on in this one.[00:23:41.57] Eugene:All right, well I'll hit my, uh... I'll get my mostly picky things. Dampmouse's suit was damaged. Did she not cut her suit? And that was part of Good job.[00:23:53.13] Kenneth:Would not go out onto the planet. yes[00:23:56.38] Eugene:But in the end, she had to put her suit on and go out onto the planet.[00:23:59.60] Kenneth:to get to the[00:24:00.79] Eugene:And it wasn't a damaged suit. So, okay. Killer had a light. She kept turning it on because she was like, "And tank is like..."[00:24:07.98] Kenneth:Brother, I don't need light![00:24:09.98] Eugene:And he finally smashed the light?[00:24:12.30] Kenneth:People will see us trying to do this. in the dark and then[00:24:14.39] Eugene:Yeah. They had another light a few minutes later.[00:24:18.42] Kenneth:Mm-hmm.[00:24:19.75] Eugene:Wong was carrying it, or Wang was carrying it. I think they call him Wang. That bugs me because it should be Wong, and don't tell me about the computer company because they just got it wrong. But yeah, so that was weird. But again, it comes back to this story doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, where did those two guys go? So, we're split. Well, why did they have to go out and get the chip from the communications pack? Why couldn't they just, I don't know, get the communications pack? Bring it in. bring it in and then do the work instead of doing it in your spacesuit out in the thing. That didn't make any sense. When they got to this court-martial thing or this preliminary hearing to see if they should have a court-martial and they kept asking these questions, I kept saying to myself, "Why aren't they hooked up to a truth verifier?"[00:25:07.51] Kenneth:Those two exist.[00:25:08.79] Eugene:Yes, oddly enough, I do believe they do, in this very use...[00:25:11.29] Kenneth:We saw one in the previous episode.[00:25:13.73] Eugene:Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think the same thing about Star Trek, right? You've got Wolf of the Fold. You've got that.[00:25:22.71] Kenneth:You've got the truth thing, subject relaying.[00:25:25.08] Eugene:Accurate response. no physiological changes, over and over and over again, and they never use it again. They never use it in any court martial episode. They never use it. Indigo! Not even in the future. It's like, we just don't use it, and the funny thing is, of course, in real life, we do have lie detectors, and I will say this unequivocally to anyone who has any doubt, it is complete and absolute pseudoscience. It does not work, and the fact that it is admissible in courts in parts of this country is an absolute disgrace.[00:25:55.57] Kenneth:Exactly, and there are intelligence agents who are... Yes. to deceive them.[00:26:01.87] Eugene:And they don't work to start with, so... Yeah, it's like... Yeah, it's just not, uh, yeah. But anyway, but apparently in this universe, the Truth Verifier, which you're doing an eye thing, does work, and they use it in the government, so they should have been using it for proceedings like this, you would think. It's a good question. Let's, let's, because this is not a good episode, let's answer that question. If you had a device which would guarantee force someone to tell the truth or identify when they are lying, would it be appropriate to use it in a judicial system? When you swear them in on the stand and put them down on the device and say, "Okay, now tell us the truth." If you could prove it was accurate, truly accurate, would that be a good or a bad thing?[00:26:48.58] Kenneth:Or at least can you get you the truth.[00:26:50.82] Eugene:Which I think is what we're always after, but I don't know.[00:26:53.09] Kenneth:- Yes, yeah.[00:26:54.04] Eugene:He's just into getting his people off, you know?[00:26:58.14] Kenneth:Well, um... Well, Kerry Mason. usually got the innocent people as well with a show.[00:27:03.93] Eugene:Yeah, he did. At least on Saturday nights. Yeah, it's, yeah, but it just, it does raise[00:27:10.19] Kenneth:an interesting question whether or not you would, whether or not you would want, would people want that? I mean, and what good argument could you make against it? I guess, I guess[00:27:20.56] Eugene:You don't want people going on fishing expeditions, which I will say that is something Perry Mason time. He would cast a net during his interrogation of people or his questioning of people to try to get additional facts thrown in, and if you were on a truth verifier, how would you decide whether the question was appropriate to be asked so as to not reveal something that was not germane specifically to the case that might prejudice? I don't know.[00:27:46.42] Kenneth:Good question.[00:27:48.42] Eugene:Probably better minds than mine, or at least-- better legal minds that are mine. I would need to look it up, but hopefully we're nowhere. Would you need a trial? Did you commit the murder? No? Lie, lie, lie.[00:28:01.60] Kenneth:- There you go. - There we go.[00:28:02.38] Eugene:- Why have a trial? Why, why have a trial? Yeah. Again, predicated on the idea that it's infallible.[00:28:09.38] Kenneth:Just go straight to sentencing. Yep, there is a stupid line. Yes, yes, there is. I'm par- There are a few.[00:28:18.42] Eugene:If they can use fear as a weapon, then they must understand fear themselves.[00:28:25.67] Kenneth:Ah, that one.[00:28:27.74] Eugene:Is that true? Oh yes, is it true?[00:28:31.65] Kenneth:Second off, we already knew they feared things. We already know that a few things are right, but to get to your question, at least it tells me that they understand something of human physiology. Yes, that's it. That's the Sabbath saying, "They understand fear."[00:28:47.48] Eugene:They capture somebody, they probe their brains, one part of the brain causes the person to do something weird. They say, "Let's make a weapon to make them do something weird." It's all they need to do. You We don't need to understand it for yourself, but we think they do because they're apparently afraid of dead bodies.[00:29:02.88] Kenneth:We have established that. Yes, or at least that was the supposition as to why they avoid the dead bodies, but And to say that a member of a species understands fear is not exactly going out on a limb.[00:29:17.23] Eugene:No, not as we understand evolution, no. No. I mean, it's it's a it's a part of your flight or fight response, really. Yes. So, but I guess, yeah, it's possible that if you... I've read science fiction books where species grew up on a planet that had no predators, and so they have a completely different kind of fear reaction. But even still, you know, I'm afraid of a tree falling on me in a lightning storm.[00:29:47.88] Kenneth:Still.[00:29:48.88] Eugene:Should have something do we think Space suits really look suitable to go up to 60 degree Celsius temperatures? Because to me they look like fatigues with a silly helmet on and not pressure or heat protective. Yeah. (audio cuts out)[00:30:06.97] Kenneth:- Yeah, and it's like, or as long as there are safety issues, like I'm afraid to touch a hot stove, you know. But yeah, that's...[00:30:14.07] Eugene:Yeah, I- Yeah, I've got a pair of gloves. They're like, you know, you got all sorts of hot hot gloves, right? But I have I have a pair of like fireman gloves for working my Smoker grill, right? So I mean it can handle I think 600 Fahrenheit, but it is it's a fascinating material It's all that multi layers of weaving that they make for firefighter outfits and you're not running around like they are in those, of course 60 degrees Celsius is not that nowhere near that hot, but still just they don't seem air-conditioned. When they start the story they're talking about how this planet was a failed star. You failed star or has a surface.[00:30:59.73] Kenneth:I said, "Good question." I thought that made no sense to me. I mean, my granted amateur knowledge of astronomy tells me that if Jupiter were larger to some extent, it could become a star. But... new surface on Jupiter.[00:31:25.14] Eugene:Right, right, the gas giant, you need to be a gas giant to start with, and then, it's, you've got to be a bit bigger. I think Jupiter is considered to be a failed star. You just did not gather enough material to... to become a... to become a star so you know that's there's a fine line there but this does not give that impression at all second off what was wrong with Wang when he called the planet Tartarus the the place beyond hell it's like do you mean Tartarus look Yeah, what's the time? Why are you emphasiz- have you never heard that word spoken in your life before? And you just keep- *gibberish* *sniff*[00:32:07.20] Kenneth:Don't do not know it[00:32:09.45] Eugene:See you soon.[00:32:11.45] Kenneth:Not a pronunciation I would use.[00:32:13.19] Eugene:Um, I'm gonna come around to this one because it's actually the most important thing in this episode and I'll save it for the last.[00:32:20.43] Kenneth:You can get them.[00:32:21.42] Eugene:The skeleton effect was hilarious.[00:32:24.27] Kenneth:Yeah.[00:32:25.26] Eugene:That was like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. That was so bad. If if they got enough radiation for us to see their skeletons like that.[00:32:34.41] Kenneth:They're dead.[00:32:36.41] Eugene:They're dead. We don't need to worry about their amygdala's falling off. They're dead, and the radiation burns. I mean, they got instantly got radiation burns. Those people are dead. That also leads into that final point, so I'll just, I'll switch off to the Marine Song! Born in the woods, trained by bear, dollars on a set of dog teeth, triple coat of hair. Uh, I can't read the rest of it, depending on which version, uh... He's quite rebel. Yep. Um, but, uh, I mean, it involves brass and, uh, and cast iron, but I can't go any further. Good. Good to know that these tighter, worn, bold marine songs are still still going there for the, in the future. Okay. Why? This, this is the part that just bugs the heck out of me about this episode. There are. episodes of M*A*S*H, and I'll use M*A*S*H as an example because M*A*S*H is the ultimate military story ever told on television, in my humble opinion, and there are a lot of times in M*A*S*H where we get discussions about Hill 403, for example. They want Hill 403, we want Hill 403. 403, then we take it, then they take it, and we take it, and there's a push, they get back, and da-da-da-da-da-da, thousands of people were killed or harmed, battered all over the place, which is why they come into the MASH unit, and sometimes we're told that these hills are strategically important, and in other times they're kind of less strategically important, right? belittled as to how pointless it is that we keep trying to take this hill and then take it back or...[00:34:20.33] Kenneth:That is a plot point that comes up in a number of military stories. Yes. particular of Paths of Glory directed by Stanley Kubrick does that.[00:34:32.72] Eugene:But it comes up in this episode, and we are told explicitly that this is a worthless rock that isn't strategically significant, and yet they have lost thousands of lives. Their word, not mine. Why did they have to do that? But why have they lost so much weight?[00:34:47.62] Kenneth:One.[00:34:48.38] Eugene:Have they lost one? Why have we got all these MIAs? Why are there rumors that people are killed by friendly fire? If all of that is well known enough to have made it into the scuttlebutt that gets back to the grunts on this marine team, why has the brass still got people on that rock? There has to be something that we're not being told here. Because those people have been there for a while. There are loads of dead marines. We alone in just one little spot see a bunch of dead marines, and we see evidence of MIA, we see evidence of friendly fire, it's clear that this planet, that this rock is deadly, and it's clear that they're not being killed by the enemy either. So why is it that they keep sending people there? Why is it that they send a resupply team there? Unless this is like, oh... Tech would like us to secure this planet for some reason, which that is not in this episode. But that's the only thing I can think of, is that this is meant to make us ask the question, why aren't they trying to keep this rock? Because if it had been about an episode like in M*A*S*H, where they're talking about the futileness of it, they would have made a point of it, a much bigger point. point of it, but they didn't. They just mentioned it and then forgot it.[00:36:09.79] Kenneth:Yes, I can believe that in this series that Aerotech may be pulling a number of strings in the military.[00:36:19.53] Eugene:But we would still have to have a reason. Bye. of this rock.[00:36:25.06] Kenneth:Yes, military industrial complex, maybe there's something there.[00:36:29.11] Eugene:So that is an open-end question for us to say, you know, because how could the brass already know about this weapon? I believe centipede[00:36:40.27] Kenneth:They're not know about this if they Oh, we're off. Yeah, so, and I don't care whether or not Aerotech wants it, and we don't know if it's[00:36:49.14] Eugene:Aerotech or anything else, you don't keep sending people in to a zone that is universally lethal.[00:36:58.06] Kenneth:Even the Marines aren't that stupid.[00:37:01.56] Eugene:No, and if there is no hope of them surviving, and there's no evidence whatsoever that anybody knows how to counteract this weapon, so.., and I don't think our guys are so brilliant that they land there on the planet, and within an hour they've figured out that there's a secret Chig weapon that works on their amygdala. I find it hard to believe that there isn't somebody smarter than those... Melons. Yeah. Somewhere in the Marine Corps. So yeah, I that[00:37:31.45] Kenneth:That is the one thing that.[00:37:33.45] Eugene:I'm out of this, like it feels like it's setting something up.[00:37:35.35] Kenneth:Yes, and there are a few unknowns here, at least from my perspective. One is that this is episode 7 of 23. Yes, sir. be something coming up between 8 and 23 that maybe helps to explain some of this. Number two, this, the series creators had in mind a five season arc, and so they were Probably a little bit. laying down hints in Season 1 to pay off in Seasons 2 through 5, and so when I come across an unknown, unexplained issue, I wonder, "Is this something that they're going to pay off later, but never got the chance to do?" Maybe. Or maybe it was bad writing.[00:38:31.69] Eugene:Yeah, I don't know which it is, but I admit that my brain kind of says, "It's hard to believe the writing was that bad, therefore they must be setting this up." But on the other hand, looking at the rest of the episode, it's not hard to believe it's that bad. But it is Morgan and Wong, and... They are the architects, so you would think that their fingers would be in on the mythos[00:39:03.41] Kenneth:If you will.[00:39:05.41] Eugene:to use the X-Files term. So, I don't know. I guess we will find out, or we won't, because if it was in Season 4, we got a problem. Now they have a problem. We're going to have a problem. We would have a problem if there was a season four. No, I take it back that we wouldn't have a problem because if there was a season 4 we would not be looking at this show - That's right, that's right. That's all we would be saying. Oh, it all depends. I think that's everything I've got on this.[00:39:43.29] Kenneth:Okay, then I guess one thing left to say is that next we have a two-parter. Episode 8 is "Hostile Visit" and episode number 9 is "Choice or Chance."[00:39:57.72] Eugene:Well, we have a chance that they might be good. We will be doing the both as one podcast, so we shall see. Kenneth, thank you for joining me.[00:40:09.46] Kenneth:My pleasure.[00:40:11.46] Eugene:Blisterers! I hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol. (upbeat music)[00:40:18.53] Eugene:You've been listening to Fusion Patrol. Thank you for listening.[00:40:22.74] Eugene:If you've enjoyed this episode we hope you'll consider supporting us at buymeacoffee.com/fusionpatrol or patreon.com/fusionpatrol. For our monthly Patreon Subscribers, we're currently running in a special series on Babylon 5.[00:40:45.29] Eugene:Come join the conversation in the comments section of this episode at fusionpatrol.com You'll also find there over a decade of past episodes.[00:40:55.70] Eugene:You can also find some of our other works at SoundCloud.com.[00:41:02.82] Eugene:Our music is Fight the Future, by Amberwolf.[00:41:07.03] Eugene:This has been a Lone Locust production.
Kenneth and Eugene ask the question, can writers wrap a conspiracy within a conspiracy within a conspiracy so deep that the whole thing vanishes up its own butt?
Spoiler: Yes, they can.
Episode Synopsis
The Saratoga is putting in to Earth for some much needed R&R, but it is not to be. The Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Earth is assassinated by an in-vitro, and everything goes into security lockdown.
The 58th gets some much-needed replacements for their depleted squadron, in the form of Lts. Pisarek, Stone, and Swirko. Swirko is just exactly the kind of egotistical, biggoted asshat you’d expect in the Space Jarheads and he wastes no time getting into a fight with Tank, which is broken up by the Colonel.
On Earth, with the death of the Secretary General, Under-Secretary Chaput of France is currently in charge. Chaput, like France, is ultra-right wing. He has a controversial position on the escalation of the Chig War, and has vocally opposed in-vitro affirmative action programs. There will be an election for the new Secretary General soon and Chaput is a top contender.
His primary opponent is Diane Hayden, of the United States. She also holds controversial positions on the Chi War, in that she wants to open a dialog with the enemy, and she has been a long-standing supporter of in-vitro rights. She also was formerly on the board of governors for Aerotech, which raises questions in West’s tiny little mind.
Swirko, true to expected form, likes the cut of Chaput’s gib.
The election of the new Secretary General will take place aboard the Saratoga, and the Ambassadors gather for the conference and election. There’s one complication, due to the paranoia on the planet below, all in-vitros must undergo loyalty tests, including the two on the Saratoga, Colonel McQueen and Cooper Hawkes. Commodore Ross warns McQueen and tries to send him and the 58th on a mission to get them out of sight for a while. The tactic fails and McQueen and Tank are taken for questioning under a truth verifier.
The 58th proceed with the mission, heading to the moon to pick up some cargo. On the way, Swirko tries to spread more doubt about the in-vitros which seems to find fertile ground in West’s tiny little mind. Their cargo turns out to be Diane Hayden, being shuttled to the Saratoga in secret.
Not so big of a secret, though, as there is a bomb aboard the shuttle, but some quick thinking on Swirko’s part saves the shuttle and their VIP.
Back on the Saratoga, McQueen refuses to proceed with the loyalty test when they ask him if he has ever betrayed his country. They place him in detention and begin interrogating Tank. Tank’s answers seem a little dodgy, but things get weirder when the machine surreptitiously administers and injection to Tank.
Hayden and the 58th arrive on the Saratoga, but Hayden refuses bodyguards, and then proceeds to visit McQueen in detention. She explains that she thinks this loyalty test is barbaric, but that she has to go along with it until she’s elected. You have to stand up to to your opposition at the right time, and then you can’t let them know you’re doing it. Pragmatic. I believe that’s the charitable term for that form of politician.
Chaput haș called for West to see him. He likes the cut of West’s gib and so he decides to let him know a little secret. Aerotech knew the aliens were out there and proceeded with the colonization program, anyway. I’ll fight them, says Chaput, what about you?
Chaput leaves and his aide asks for a favor for his boss. Tonight, after the meeting, while you’re on watch, leave the doors unlocked so that Chaput and Hayden can have a private, off-the-books meeting.
Tank visits the Colonel and begins babbling in the same way Fox Mulder used to, just without the intelligence behind his words. McQueen, knowing something is wrong, demands to take the loyalty test.
That night, West does leave the doors open, but he at least has the sense to sneak around to see what happens. There is no meeting between Chaput and Hayden, but an armed Swirko shows up and tries to kill Chaput. West thwarts the assassination attempt and Swirko is killed in his escape attempt.
Having failed, Hayden’s agent activate their backup assassin, Tank.
Chaput’s aide is getting Chaput off the carrier, and puts him on a shuttle, then leaves to go get some papers. Inside the shuttle, Tank confronts Chaput, but a newly-released McQueen intercedes. Recognizing that Tank is programmed to kill when he see’s Chaput’s tastefully French-styled Nazi badge, McQueen uses one to distract Tank long enough to disarm him and save Chaput’s life.
Chaput’s aide is arrested, but before he is taken out, he chastises West, comparing Chaput to Hitler. He should have stopped him before he seizes power.
It seems that all of Hayden’s machinations have failed, as Chaput still lives, and will no doubt have more sympathy for having been an assassin’s target.
Or Not. It turns out all Hayden machinations were for nothing, because she wins the election and now governs Earth.
During an award ceremony for West, he breaks protocol and refuses the medal, asking instead for the truth — did Aerotech know about the aliens beforehand? Hayden walks away.
John and Eugene look back in time to 1976 for a peek at Irwin Allen’s prospective pilot for the Time Travelers. The story of scientists trying to solve a pandemic of the day using a pandemic of yesteryear.
Find out what happens when a production team looks at their series and says, “Hey, this just isn’t working,” when John and Eugene look at the Return of Starbuck.
Episode Synopsis
Dr. Z has a dream, and he comes to discuss it with Adama. When Adama hears it is about a warrior named Starbuck, he’s all ears
Yahrens ago, Starbuck and Boomer were in a battle with the Cylons. Through fancy flying, as always, Starbuck defeats the Cylons, but his ship is critically damaged. Boomer must abandon him, knowing there is no hope.
Starbuck crashes on a barren, but vaguely habitable planet, which he names Starbuck. He discovered the wrecked Cylon fighter, and in a fit of lonely madness, he rebuilds one of them, and convinces him not to kill him. While Starbuck hopes he has a friend, the Cylon makes it clear they are not friends.
They work together and begin to form a life together, but the Cylon, now called Cy, realizes Starbuck has gotten bored with him, and wishes to have a woman instead. He goes out to get one and Starcuk realizes he cares what happens to Cy.
Miraculously, literally, Cy finds a woman – and not just any woman, she’s beautiful and pregnant, but she does not talk.
In the intervening days, Starbuck pours out his life story to the silent woman.
Then she talks, asking if Starbuck would sacrifice his life for her and “their” baby.
“Hold on, what?”
It’s your spiritual baby, Starbuck.
Cy is, frankly jealous,, and this leads to constant sitcom bickering between Starbuck and him.
Angela, as the woman is know, tells Starbuck that the Cylons are coming and he needs to build a spacecraft from the wrecked parts of the ships, which he does, with Cy’s help. Angela is certain that Starbuck’s final judgment is coming.
When the Cylons arrive, Starbuck places Angela and the newly-arrived baby into the ship and launches towards the fleet. He goes to stand down the Cylons. Cy, who had left earlier, returns and kills two of the approaching Cylons, before he is, in turn killed. Starbuck finishes off the last one, and as Cy dies in his arms, he finally admits that he and Starbuck are friends.
The ship arrived at the fleet, but on the baby was onboard, and that baby was Dr. Z.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss and ask how many people it is acceptable to kill to bury the already dead.
Episode Synopsis
An unidentified Marine ship approaches the Saratoga, ignores all attempts to communicate, and when docking permission is denied, it just overrides the Saratoga’s computers and docks anyway. In the landing bay, the occupant, Lt. Colonel Raymond T. “Killer” Butts, is dead. No, he’s not, and he beats up the entire hanger team single-handedly.
Grilled about what’s going on by Colonel McQueen, Butts will only give name, rank, and serial number and refuses to cooperate, but he’s not under arrest — although, since he hacked the Saratoga’s computers, he should be. Oh, and he’s a prejudiced asshat about tanks, too.
The gang is trying to review Butts’ ship’s navigational logs, but Butts shows up and is really hurtful to them until he learns they’re the Fightin’ 58th. He’s not impressed by them.
In the Rec Area, Tank override’s the TV’s censor chip, and Butts comes in and gives them a dressing down. Wang tries to stand up to him, but he ends up in a fight with all of them. No ifs, ands, or buts: Butts is an unpleasant fellow.
Colonel McQueen is not having any of this and will get Butts kicked on the Saratoga, so Butts pulls some top-secret orders out of his butt. No only is he not leaving, he’s here on a mission, he’s taking command of the Fightin’ 58th for a special mission, and there’s nothing McQueen can do about it.
The next day, he’s training the 58s by playing paintball with them without safety glasses, and he wipes them all over the floor and is a jerk while doing it.
They bitch about him in front of McQueen, and so McQueen tells them to “suck it up, buttercups” and do the job – and look after each other in the process.
Killer tries having a conversation with Butts but accomplishes nothing in the end. Save for a disquieting feeling that Butts is leading them on a suicide mission.
The next day, they ship out to planet 20-63M, and Butts tells them the mission. Recover some Hammerheads concealed on the planet’s surface. It’s a Chig-occupied planet, so they’ll have to HALO jump in. “But Colonel Butts,” they say, “we don’t know how to HALO jump.”
“It’s just like falling out a plane,” and then sends them out the door.
On the surface, Butts changes his mind and says they’ve got a new mission, but the gang has had enough; they stand firm against Butts and demand he tell them what’s going on. He capitulates and tells them to secure their stuff, and he’ll tell them afterward. Instead, he runs off on his own.
They find him burying the bodies of his previous squad. They disobeyed his orders on their last mission and died because of it. He has brought a squad of living, breathing soldiers on a dangerous, covert, behind-the-lines operation just to bury a bunch of stiffs. Butts’ sense of perspective is way out of whack.
After giving a touching burial ceremony, Butts explains the escape plan, flying past a dangerous black hole, where there will be special Red Chig fighters that can take a shorter route around the black hole. Some of you are going to die on this mission. Say your goodbyes, and let’s hit space.
On the flight back, they encounter the Chigs, and Butts plunges into the danger zone of the black hole to destroy the two Red Chig fighters, saving the 58th, but dying in the process. Well, at least he doesn’t have to face a court martial.
John and Eugene look at the 1960 George Pal film, The Time Machine. John and Eugene discuss if eating Eloi is really such a bad thing, and what three books we’d take to start a new civilization.
Synopsis
It is January 5th, 1900, and four men arrive at the home of their friend, George, for dinner, but George is not there. Being busy industrialists on a Friday evening, they have more important things to do, like building weapons and putting down labor unrest. Time is money, dammit, and he’s looking like he might almost be a minute late, and he left food for them – the bounder!
Just as they sit down to each his food and bitch about his outrageous manners, George stumbles in the door, filthy and disheveled. It’s just the sort of thing you’d expect from someone who had the gall to invite you to dinner and then be a minute late.
He tells them a tale. A tale that started with this very same group of men a week before, December 31, 1899.
George, an inventor, demonstrated to them what he claimed was a prototype time machine, which he launched into the future, never to be seen again. His friends, of course, completely dismissed the idea for two good reasons: (1) It’s absurd, and (2) What’s the point? You can’t fight wars with it, and nobody will buy something like that.
Angered that their friend would confide in them such an obvious BS story, they all leave for their New Year’s plans… all but David Filby. He’s worried about his friend. What is this obsession about time?
George explains: I don’t feel I belong in this time. There has to be a world where man isn’t spending all his effort on making new ways to kill. George tells Filby he has a full-sized version of the machine and plans to use it.
Filby is even more worried now, but George tells him it’ll be alright, and arranges for dinner with the gang next Friday.
After Filby leaves, so does George, but George leaves via the fourth dimension, traveling forward into the future with his machine.
He arrives in 1917, where, outside, he encounters a new world and meets Filby, or at least he thinks he does, but it is Filby’s adult son, James. He learns that Britain is at war with Germany and that Filby Sr. was killed in the war last year.
He leaves and travels further forward, but explosions impede his progress, stopping him in 1940, and they are at war again. His house is destroyed as he travels further forward to 1966, where a strange sound causes him to stop.
It is air raids sirens, and citizens are being evacuated to underground shelters. Once again, he encounters Filby Jr., now an old man, who warns him to escape before the mushrooms bloom.
He doesn’t heed that advice and the city is destroyed by atomic bombs him, then a volcano erupts, and he gets back in the machine just in time to be buried in the lava.
Pushing forward in time, he must wait until the lava erodes.
When it does, he arrives in a beautiful, Eden-like garden in the year 802,701, just next to a giant sphynx and a sealed metal door. No one seems to be at home, so he takes the car keys and explores.
The world is lush, verdant, and bountiful but seemingly devoid of people. He finds a large building in disrepair, perhaps for centuries. Inside, it is empty, although the tables are set, and there is fruit aplenty in the serving bowls.
Exploring further, he finally finds signs of life — a herd of beautiful young people, known as the Eloi, frolicking near the water’s edge. One has fallen in and is drowning, but the others pay no attention.
The Traveler rescues her. Her name is Weena, and she’s about as grateful as a wet sheep and walks away from him with the others.
He follows them back to the building, where they all chow down. He tries asking many questions, but they’re sheep. They have no curiosity, ambition, or concept of the past or future.
The Traveler cannot believe he can learn nothing from them, but they admit to having books and take him to them. They crumble to dust when he touches them.
Angry at what the human race has become, he chastizes them and leaves, returning to his time machine, but it is gone. Dragged into the Sphynx and now sealed behind the metal doors.
Weena arrives, having followed him, and warns him of the Morlocks. The Morlocks give them their food and clothes, and they follow their commands. The Morlocks come out at night and attack, but the Traveler fends them with matches.
The following day, the Traveler is still unable to get into the sphynx, so he explores, discovering a series of silos leading underground and the sound of machinery coming from them. As he sets out to explore one, sirens emanate from the sphynx, and Weena and all the other Eloi walk, trancelike, into the sphynx. The Traveler cannot stop her, and when he tries to get other Eloi to help, they say that no one ever returns.
He climbs into the silo, and deep unground, he discovers the world of the Morlocks and their terrifying secret: They eat the Eloi.
Using a torch, he tries to rescue Weena and the Eloi. He is outnumbered and about to be killed when one Eloi, having witnessed the Traveler fighting with the Morlocks, makes a fist and clobbers one of the Morlocks.
The Traveler starts a petroleum fire as the Eloi escape. The Morlocks’ underground world is destroyed.
Sometime later, the sphynx burns, and he can reach his time machine, but this is a trap by the Morlocks. He starts the machine and returns to January 5, 1900, where he stumbles in the door, filthy and disheveled, to greet his waiting guests.
They aren’t buying his story and leave, but Filby returns, and finds that he has left in his time machine, taking only three books with him.
This week Kenneth and Eugene begin looking at a new series, Jarheads in Space! Sometimes called Space Above and Beyond, the failed 1995 Fox space war series from two of the creatives behind the X-Files. First up is the pilot episode, known as Pilot. It’s the episode where a rag-tag group of new recruits learns ... Read more
For four years, our coverage has endured the wilderness of space. And now we near the end of one of our journey. The Galactica has, at last, found Earth. This week we begin our look at Battlestar Galactica Season 2, aka Galactica 1980, John and Eugene discuss the three-part pilot movie, Galactica Discover Earth. Episode ... Read more
John and Eugene look at the TV movie starring Andy Griffith that inspired countless school children to shoot for the moon: It’s 1979’s Salvage (sometimes referred to as Salvage-1), where the owner of a junkyard builds and launches a rocket ship. Its destination: The Moon.
Synopsis
Harry Broderick is a highly-successful scrap and salvage man with a dream. He wants to build his own rocket, pilot it to the moon, and salvage the Apollo hardware left behind by the manned US moon landings.
He’s been secretly planning this for some time, staffing his salvage yard with ex-NASA engineers with advanced degrees who could not find jobs after NASA layoffs at the end of the Apollo program, and He’s been aggressively pursuing salvage deals and building up his stockpile of cash.
When he broaches the subject with his staff, at first, they think he’s kidding, but soon the ex-NASA staff come around to his way of thinking. They get him in touch with Skip Carmichael, a used car salesman and former backup NASA astronaut, author of the Trans-Linear Vector Principle, and wild card maverick kind of guy with daredevil ideas about space travel. Exactly the kind of guy that NASA keeps on the bench.
Skip explains his Trans-Linear Vector Principle to Harry. Trimming safety margins down from 100% to 85-90%, and using extremely powerful rocket fuel, they can make a single-stage Earth-to-Moon rocket that uses slow and steady constant acceleration to make the trip to the moon in 2 days, without orbiting and without problems with re-entry.
It sounds like a great idea to Harry, but there is one catch: The fuel doesn’t exist, but they can get around that by employing another Ex-NASA engineer now working as a pyrotechnician in Hollywood, Mel Slozar. Mel can create the fuel, and after a mishap on the set, she’s in need of a new job.
What Skip has not mentioned is that Mel and Skip used to be an item back at NASA.
Construction of the rocket begins, as does the development of the fuel. Using a highly explosive substance, mono-hydrazine, Mel can create a fuel many times more efficient than rocket fuel; however, there are some problems she’ll need to work out. It’s extremely unstable at room temperature, and it gives off highly-toxic fumes.
At the local FBI field office, Agent Jack Klinger is alerted to an unusual number of explosives purchases by Mel Slozar, and he goes to Jettison Salvage yard to ask her some questions. She’s a fully licensed explosive handler, and she has the plausible explanation that the explosives were purchased for making movies, not being a terrorist, so Klinger leaves, but not before he gets suspicious about the thing being built behind a tent.
Back at headquarters, Klinger sets up 24-hour surveillance on the salvage yard.
The team also suspects that Klinger is suspicious, and they accelerate their launch plans.
It becomes clear that they cannot launch the spacecraft without a flight computer, which they do not have, so they “steal” computer access, via modem, from Fleming Aeronautics in San Diego.
With a flight computer ready, they test the engines at full power, still behind the tent. The rocket performs well until it doesn’t. The fuel begins to overheat and must be shut down. The test, however, is enough that the top of the rocket has peeped out over the tent, and the FBI have the proof they need to get a search warrant.
Given advance warning about the warrant, they must launch tomorrow, something that will be impossible unless Mel takes Harry’s place on the flight. She is the only one who can handle the fuel if it begins to heat again.
The next morning, they start the launch as the FBI raid. The computer link fails, and Harry calls to abort the mission, but Skip and Mel decide to proceed manually. The launch isn’t going well, but they get into the air, and the flight computer comes back online.
Broadcasting their peaceful, commercial, and downright plucky mission info to the entire world, the crew of the Vulture, as the rocket has been dubbed, captures the imagination of the world. Although the FBI put them under house arrest, they cannot stop them.
Confidentially, the FBI informs Klinger that congressmen and generals are praying for the mission to fail, but if it succeeds, there’s nothing they can do except grin and bear it and buy the salvage back from Harry.
When the rocket arrives at the moon, an inconveniently timed system maintenance at Fleming Aeronautic – still unaware that their computer is being used for the mission – causes the connection to be lost and the flight computer software to be deleted. Skip must land manually, which he does, but the rough landing damages one of the venturi – they will not be able to take off without the flight computer. Nonetheless, they proceed to fill the hold with salvage.
Harry has no choice and goes to Klinger, asking for access to NASA’s flight computers. He bargains with a lowball price on the salvage but has a backup hardball game with an offer from the Russians to buy the salvage and provide the flight computer. Klinger agrees.
With NASA on the job, they’re soon able to take off, but a coolant leak soon causes the temperature of the mono-hydrazine fuel to rise dangerously. Mel diverts their oxygen supply as a backup coolant, but they have very little left to breathe and soon pass out.
On Earth, Klinger has learned that the ship is full of mono-hydrazine and heading straight for Los Angeles. He calls in Air Defense to destroy the rocket if they cannot get in touch with the crew. Using an uplink, Harry’s team blows open a vent cover when the ship reaches the atmosphere. This wakes them but starts filling the cabin with toxic fumes. The vent cover is resealed.
Awake now, Skip manages to break open the window of the airlock, letting fresh air in. Relieved, Klinger calls off the air attack with only seconds left.
Slightly off course and below the horizon from NASA’s telemetry, Skip must once again land the ship manually, this time in a busy downtown park. With the world watching the Vulture and her crew triumphantly come home.
Later that night, they are sad that it is over and contemplate going on with their lives apart from one another when a man from the government arrives with a proposal right up their alley.
This week it’s the moment we’ve all been looking forward to – the culmination of all the story-arc goodness when all the loose ends are tied up neatly with a bow in the two-part series finale of Starhunter Redux in Hyperspace parts I & II.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss.
Hyperspace I Episode Synopsis
Marcus contemplates his recent almost-success at achieving hyperspace using negative energy in an anti-matter drive. He finds an obscure scientific paper describing just that possible scenario published by Dr. Lanzig, a bit of an obscure crank.
He wakes Travis from a sexy-time dream with Callie. Well, technically, he wakes the entire crew from their sleep – although probably not all from sexy-time dreams about Callie – to impart this currently unactionable bit of information.
Travis returns to sleep but this time dreams himself into hyperspace where he meets a woman who declares that he is the “The One” and that, now that he’s found her, he needs to go find her. She doesn’t know where and provides no help. Travis returns to the ship.
Marcus’ further reading of Lanzig’s paper indicates that if you could calculate the pulse gap, you could achieve hyperspace, and to calculate the pulse gap, you need a Horizon Generator. Thinking that they have a brand new pair of roller skates and Lanzig has the key, they decide to track him down.
Meanwhile, the New Orchard is up to their old tricks. Starchild Tristian Catchpole and his confederates inside the Orchard have plans for the human race, and they need more people who have activated the Second Divinity Cluster Gene. He detects a disturbance in the Force when Montana meets the woman in hyperspace. It’s not Montana, it’s the woman that’s activated the second gene, and they need to secure her. They decide to let Montana track her down for them.
Lanzig has gone off the grid, erasing all evidence of his existence, but not so his assistant, Dr. Xeylon. They track her down, and she is the woman from hyperspace. She recognizes Travis as “The One,” and they are attacked by Orchard’s Goon Squad. Xeylon is taken, Travis is knocked unconscious, and Callie has a minor wound in her shoulder.
Back on the Trans-Utopian, they track the clandestine Orchard ship back to Mars. Also, Callie dies. Apparently, the round she was hit with was poisoned, because…. reasons. As she dies, she says the word “again,” and Travis phases into hyperspace, revisiting the moment she was shot.
Thinking that if they could get into hyperspace, they might be able to go back and rescue Callie, they embark on a mission to retrieve Dr. Xeylon. While they lost Dr. Xeylon, they did manage to secure her Horizon Generator. Oh, by the way, Lanzig was a fictional character created as a front for Dr. Xeylon.
A dangerous but short mission to Mars, and they recover her. As the Orchard’s ship is about to capture the Trans-Utopian, they plug the Horizon Generator in, and the ship moves to hyperspace.
Hyperspace II Episode Synopsis
Percy, Marcus, and Rudolfo are each stuck on 3 different color-shifted alternate versions of the Trans-Utopian, which is still in Hyperspace. Caravaggio is missing, but the ship’s computer informs each of them they are both alone and not alone on board the ship. Each detects the presence of another.
Tristian Catchpole is there, too, trying to get the Horizon Generator, which he cannot until the three crew members manage to re-integrate the color-shifted versions of the Trans-Utopian into one ship. Even if they do that, it’s still going to fall apart.
Meanwhile, Travis and Dr. Xeylon are in a Hyperspace cloud. She must train him to control – not check – his emotions by trying to… do something with his emotions. This is the only way he can activate the second Divinity Cluster gene and the only way he can go back in time and rescue Callie.
A desperate gamble aboard the Trans-Utopians and a last-ditch effort by Travis results in the timeline being altered and Callie surviving, and the Trans-Utopian re-integrated.
Catchpole steals the Horizon Generator and, with it, stages a coup at the Orchard. He’s bringing those ancient aliens home to roost in the wasp’s egg’s food source which is humanity.
Travis and Xeylon return to the ship, tech the tech, and attempt to leave hyperspace, although things aren’t looking good when the episode ends.
Also, some idiot tacked on some really awful footage of Old Percy and Dante Montana doing really dumb stuff.
The end and good riddance.
John and Eugene look at the final episode of Logan’s Run entitled Stargate. When aliens from another world invade Earth, Logan and Jessica are put on ice, figuratively, and Rem is just spare parts, literally.
Episode Synopsis
Driving through the countryside, Rem and his pets come across a seemingly-injured man who appears to be freezing, despite the weather being temperate enough for Jessica to get away with shat she’s wearing. They take him back to his city, where his comrades invite the travelers back to enjoy their hospitality. They’re all dressed in thermal-looking clothes.
Inside, Logan and Jessica are drugged and interrogated. Rem is discovered to be a highly-sophisticated android and taken away for parts. Rem, being programmed not to resist humans, goes along more-or-less willingly.
Logan and Jessica are left inside a very hot room without water, and Logan realizes that these people aren’t from Earth.
Rem also comes to the conclusion that they’re not human beings, but apparently, that’s not enough to overcome his pre-programmed directive about resisting human beings, and they take him to be disassembled. Parts is parts, and Rem’s part work just fine in the alien technology. Rem surmises that the device is a beacon designed to call the aliens’ homeward.
Logan and Jessica are rescued by Timon, the last human survivor of the city, who lives in the basement. The aliens arrived a few years back when their spaceship crash-landed nearby. They are strange, horrible creatures, but they soon began to adopt human form – by stealing the forms of the humans who lived in the city. Everyone else was killed.
Timon explains that the aliens are probably already creating duplicates of Logan and Jessica. They go to find and destroy them.
Rem’s parts have been used, but they’re not enough to make the alien doohickey go, so they need more parts to make it go. They take more of Rem’s parts because parts is parts. (The technobabble runs strong in this episode.)
Logan and Jessica destroy their forming alien bodies, then track down Rem. He’s in bits, but in the meantime, he’s been building an anti-alien-doohickey thingamajig. Their conversation is interrupted because the alien return for more parts from Rem. Parts is parts, and Rem has parts.
With a gun that Timon was saving to kill himself, Logan takes command of the doohickey room, but, as always, he fails to take the weapons from the fallen aliens and give them to Jessica and Timon. More aliens come, and they are taken prisoner and left in a swamp to die.
I’ve lost track, but I’m pretty sure they needed more parts, so Rem is further disassembled. We learn that the doohickey is not just a transmitter, it’s also a matter transporter, and if they get it going, an invasion army will arrive.
In the swamp, which is full of horrible mutants that kill everything, Logan leads Jessica and Timon out of the swamp, which gives them the upper hand because the aliens most certainly think they are dead, but they are not.
In a final assault, Jessica and Timon pump the doohickey room full of liquid oxygen, freezing the aliens to the point of hibernation. Rem and Logan use Rem’s anti-alien-doohickey thingamajig to destroy the doohickey.
With the aliens incapacitated and stranded from their homeward forever, Timon plans to lock up the creatures that killed everyone in this city, including his son and daughter. Logan, however, has another suggestion. “Why don’t you offer them the chance to live in peace with you?” Yeah. That’s going to happen.
Rem’s got his parts back, and it’s off they go on their way for more adventures!
John and Eugene look at George Pal’s 1951 end-of-the-world film When Worlds Collide and ask, “They really wouldn’t blow up the Earth, would they?”
Synopsis
Dr. Bronson, an astronomer at the Mount Kenna, South Africa Observatory, has made an unsettling discovery. He calls in reliable freelance pilot and courier, Dave Randall, to delivery photographic observations and calculations to his colleague, Dr. Hendron, in the USA. It’s all very top secret, and newspapers are trying very hard to get Randall to reveal what is in the courier case he carries halfway around the world.
Randall doesn’t know what’s in the case, but when he arrives in New York, Dr. Hendron’s attractive daughter, Joyce, lets a bit slip. She’s frightened about the world coming to an end. At her father’s office, Randall meets Dr. Tony Drake, Joyce’s fiancé, and Dr. Hendron. When Joyce tells her father that Randall knows all about the contents of the case, he lets Randall stay for the briefing. Dr. Bronson has discovered a star, Bellus, and Zyra, a planet orbiting it, that is approaching the Earth at a rapid speed. In July of the next year, some eight months away, Zyra will pass close enough to the Earth to cause massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Countless people will die, but a few may survive.
But only for 19 more days because that’s when Bellus will collide with the Earth, destroying it completely.
Dr, Bronson’s figures are checked and double-checked. There is no mistake. The Earth is doomed.
Hendron takes the findings to the UN and proposes building spaceships. The hope is that Zyra might support life, and if so, a few humans could start a new world. When other prominent astronomers poo-poo Bronson and Hendron’s findings, the UN laughs them out of the building. The US government doesn’t laugh him out the door, but they also won’t fund his work.
A couple of humanitarian millionaires step up to fund Hendron’s plan to save some of humanity.
Tony has asked Joyce to marry him right away, but she is hesitant. She’s developed a thing for Randall and never was really on board with the idea of marrying Tony anyway. She asks her father for advice, and, when it becomes clear she loves Randall, he father contrives a way for Randall to be on the project to build the spacecraft – the keep him close at hand.
Millionaire Stanton arrives. He’s an unpleasant man in a wheelchair. He’ll fund the project, but the condition is that he gets to pick who goes to the new world. Hendron will accept his money for a ticket for Stanton, but he will not allow Stanton to pick the other people who go. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it offer, and there’s no other game in town, so Stanton takes it. There is word that other countries are also trying to build spacecraft.
A camp is built, staffed, and construction begins on the rocket. Provisions, animals, microfilm of books, and any number of other things are prepared for the rocket. There are over 600 people working on the project, but only 40 will be able to go.
Less than four months out from the destruction of the Earth, the other astronomers come around to Hendron’s observations, and Stanton now predicts that the world will soon turn ugly as people will try to fight and kill their way onto the rocket. Hendron disagrees and refuses to issue the rifles Stanton has bought. The next day, the UN announces the end of the world, although it seems they may only be preparing for the flyby of Zyra.
Martial law is declared, and coastal cities are evacuated when Zyra arrives, causing massive damage and flooding and nearly destroying the ship.
In the aftermath, Randall and Tony, who aren’t getting along very well because of the simmering tension between them, go out to aid some survivors in need of medical equipment. They drop some supplies off for some doomed survivors stranded on a small islet, then rescue a small boy floating on the roof of a house. It looks for a moment that Tony thinks about leaving Randall behind to die, but he doesn’t. After that, they’re the best of pals.
Hendron has devised a secret lottery system to select the passengers, minus the six people he’s selected – Himself, Joyce, Tony, the rescued boy, Dr. Frye, the designer and pilot of the rocket, and Randall.
Randall is outraged. He doesn’t deserve a place on the ship, but Hendron says he’s doing it because he loves Joyce, and she wants it, and why not? Randall refuses to go but tells Hendron not to tell Joyce.
Time is running out, and they are behind schedule. Then, Tony drops a bombshell on Randall: Dr. Frye has a medical condition, he may not survive the launch, and if he doesn’t, or is incapacitated, there is no one else, apart from Randall, who can fly the rocket. Randall is overjoyed. At last, he has a legitimate reason to be on the rocket.
The results of the lottery are announced, and two young lovers hoping for a place in the new world find out that only one of them can go. Eddie, the one who got selected, gives up his place.
This is just what Stanton wanted to hear. He’s been lobbying to leave a few more people behind to decrease the weight and increase his chances of survival. Stanton’s wheelchair-pusher, Ferris, uses this opportunity to pull a gun and demand that he go on the rocket. Stanton kills him with a concealed pistol. Hendron makes up his mind and decides that the two lovers can both go on the ship.
Hendron continues to insist that people will not panic and that Stanton is wrong about his assessment of people – but Stanton is not wrong. The 560 people who weren’t selected take Stanton’s rifles and storm the ship. Hendron and Stanton are the last to board, but Hendron has one last trick up his sleeve. They’re not going. The new world is for the young, and he disengages the rocket’s moorings and starts the launch. Hendron and Stanton will be the weight savings that will help the rocket make it to Zyra.
The launch goes according to plan, and when Randall awakens from the blackout, Frye is already on the job. Randall realizes he’s been conned. There was nothing wrong with Frye. Tony lied to him so he’d make the flight.
The approach Zyra and things are OK, but they’re using too much fuel. They run out on landing approach, and Randall brings the ship in for a rough but survivable landing. Outside, a strange new world awaits them and their goats.
John and Eugene look at George Pal’s 1951 end-of-the-world film When Worlds Collide and ask, “They really wouldn’t blow up the Earth, would they?”
Synopsis
Dr. Bronson, an astronomer at the Mount Kenna, South Africa Observatory, has made an unsettling discovery. He calls in reliable freelance pilot and courier, Dave Randall, to delivery photographic observations and calculations to his colleague, Dr. Hendron, in the USA. It’s all very top secret, and newspapers are trying very hard to get Randall to reveal what is in the courier case he carries halfway around the world.
Randall doesn’t know what’s in the case, but when he arrives in New York, Dr. Hendron’s attractive daughter, Joyce, lets a bit slip. She’s frightened about the world coming to an end. At her father’s office, Randall meets Dr. Tony Drake, Joyce’s fiancé, and Dr. Hendron. When Joyce tells her father that Randall knows all about the contents of the case, he lets Randall stay for the briefing. Dr. Bronson has discovered a star, Bellus, and Zyra, a planet orbiting it, that is approaching the Earth at a rapid speed. In July of the next year, some eight months away, Zyra will pass close enough to the Earth to cause massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Countless people will die, but a few may survive.
But only for 19 more days because that’s when Bellus will collide with the Earth, destroying it completely.
Dr, Bronson’s figures are checked and double-checked. There is no mistake. The Earth is doomed.
Hendron takes the findings to the UN and proposes building spaceships. The hope is that Zyra might support life, and if so, a few humans could start a new world. When other prominent astronomers poo-poo Bronson and Hendron’s findings, the UN laughs them out of the building. The US government doesn’t laugh him out the door, but they also won’t fund his work.
A couple of humanitarian millionaires step up to fund Hendron’s plan to save some of humanity.
Tony has asked Joyce to marry him right away, but she is hesitant. She’s developed a thing for Randall and never was really on board with the idea of marrying Tony anyway. She asks her father for advice, and, when it becomes clear she loves Randall, he father contrives a way for Randall to be on the project to build the spacecraft – the keep him close at hand.
Millionaire Stanton arrives. He’s an unpleasant man in a wheelchair. He’ll fund the project, but the condition is that he gets to pick who goes to the new world. Hendron will accept his money for a ticket for Stanton, but he will not allow Stanton to pick the other people who go. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it offer, and there’s no other game in town, so Stanton takes it. There is word that other countries are also trying to build spacecraft.
A camp is built, staffed, and construction begins on the rocket. Provisions, animals, microfilm of books, and any number of other things are prepared for the rocket. There are over 600 people working on the project, but only 40 will be able to go.
Less than four months out from the destruction of the Earth, the other astronomers come around to Hendron’s observations, and Stanton now predicts that the world will soon turn ugly as people will try to fight and kill their way onto the rocket. Hendron disagrees and refuses to issue the rifles Stanton has bought. The next day, the UN announces the end of the world, although it seems they may only be preparing for the flyby of Zyra.
Martial law is declared, and coastal cities are evacuated when Zyra arrives, causing massive damage and flooding and nearly destroying the ship.
In the aftermath, Randall and Tony, who aren’t getting along very well because of the simmering tension between them, go out to aid some survivors in need of medical equipment. They drop some supplies off for some doomed survivors stranded on a small islet, then rescue a small boy floating on the roof of a house. It looks for a moment that Tony thinks about leaving Randall behind to die, but he doesn’t. After that, they’re the best of pals.
Hendron has devised a secret lottery system to select the passengers, minus the six people he’s selected – Himself, Joyce, Tony, the rescued boy, Dr. Frye, the designer and pilot of the rocket, and Randall.
Randall is outraged. He doesn’t deserve a place on the ship, but Hendron says he’s doing it because he loves Joyce, and she wants it, and why not? Randall refuses to go but tells Hendron not to tell Joyce.
Time is running out, and they are behind schedule. Then, Tony drops a bombshell on Randall: Dr. Frye has a medical condition, he may not survive the launch, and if he doesn’t, or is incapacitated, there is no one else, apart from Randall, who can fly the rocket. Randall is overjoyed. At last, he has a legitimate reason to be on the rocket.
The results of the lottery are announced, and two young lovers hoping for a place in the new world find out that only one of them can go. Eddie, the one who got selected, gives up his place.
This is just what Stanton wanted to hear. He’s been lobbying to leave a few more people behind to decrease the weight and increase his chances of survival. Stanton’s wheelchair-pusher, Ferris, uses this opportunity to pull a gun and demand that he go on the rocket. Stanton kills him with a concealed pistol. Hendron makes up his mind and decides that the two lovers can both go on the ship.
Hendron continues to insist that people will not panic and that Stanton is wrong about his assessment of people – but Stanton is not wrong. The 560 people who weren’t selected take Stanton’s rifles and storm the ship. Hendron and Stanton are the last to board, but Hendron has one last trick up his sleeve. They’re not going. The new world is for the young, and he disengages the rocket’s moorings and starts the launch. Hendron and Stanton will be the weight savings that will help the rocket make it to Zyra.
The launch goes according to plan, and when Randall awakens from the blackout, Frye is already on the job. Randall realizes he’s been conned. There was nothing wrong with Frye. Tony lied to him so he’d make the flight.
The approach Zyra and things are OK, but they’re using too much fuel. They run out on landing approach, and Randall brings the ship in for a rough but survivable landing. Outside, a strange new world awaits them and their goats.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss two more episodes of Starhunter Reduc. In Negative Energy, they’ll follow the convoluted quest to get the Trans-Utopian’s engines up to speed, and in License to Fill, they’ll try to figure out how you review a clip show.
Negative Energy Synopsis
The Trans-Utopian fails to catch a bounty because they are not fast enough. Also, their bounty is one of the 5 or 6 ships in the system with an anti-matter drive. The Trans-Utopian also happens to be one of the 5 or 6 ships with an anti-matter drive, but theirs doesn’t exactly work.
Marcus pitches the plan of getting some Duranium-237 to use Negative Energy as a fuel source for the anti-matter drive. If they can get the element, he’ll do the math, and if it’s certain that it will work, and only if he’s certain, they’ll give it a try.
“Why has nobody done this before?” They ask.
“I dunno” is the most coherent answer Marcus can muster.
Rudolfo has a contact of a contact that might be able to help, and they pursue that avenue, meeting up with Karina, who is an old “friend” of Rudolfo’s. She gets her in touch with Jay Becker, a dealer in questionable materials.
Rudolfo sells out Marcus, who Jay has taken a shine to, in exchange for his life and the element. Then he rescues Marcus.
Meanwhile, in a lawless solar system full of violent crime, graft, and corruption, there is one thing you must do, and that is fill out paperwork to convert your anti-matter engine into… an alternate fuel source. It’s not one you can skip, so Caravaggio fills out the paperwork.
This draws the attention of a corrupt permit inspector who tells them if the ship isn’t 100% up to standard, will be impounded and scrapped. Guess what? It’s not up to standard, and the inspector is actually a crook who uses his position to obtain anti-matter drives for his friends at the Orchard.
That fails when Travis learns that the permit request never reached the database. With a battle raging aboard the ship and and Orchard vessel in hot pursuit, shooting holes in the Trans-Utopian, Marcus plugs the Negative Energy in, and away they go. Really fast. But not as fast as Marcus expected.
All’s well that ends well.
License to Fill Synopsis
Mars loves its red tape. The good crew of the Trans-Utopian are 2 days late for renewing their bounty hunting license, and even though they’re not actually doing any work at the moment, they have people they call “clients,” and because of that, they’re practicing bounty hunting without a license, and that’s a serious crime.
At least it is in the eyes of Senator Calder, recently appointed head of the people that stamp the documents and collect the fees. He impounds the ship, and in collision with Senator Skaylon – a judge – they set the Trans-Utopian crew for a hard fall that will cost them their ship.
They can’t afford council, but help arrives in the form of Senator Rendall, an old family friend of Callie. He suspects Calder is up to something. Rendall will defend them in court. But remember, “Martian law is weird.”
The “trial” consists mostly of asking Caravaggio questions. He “testifies” to many things – including things he did not witness – but remember, Martian law is weird.
The “evidence” against the crew of the Trans-Utopian is that Travis was once a Raider.
The defense is that “he got better.”
More “evidence” is that Rudolfo is a duplicitous jerk.
The defense is that “he eventually comes through in the end”
More “evidence” is that Marcus is a bit headstrong, inexperienced, and tries to do more than he’s qualified to do.
The defense is that “he comes through in the end”
Finally, the prosecution brings forth a surprise witness, Percy Montana, who testifies… um… that she owns the ship and that she makes bad decisions.
The defense to that is, “What’s your point.”
This final piece does seem to be the most damning – which I’ve said about Percy all along.
Luckily the crew has discovered that Calder is actually buddies with the guy that shot Callie back in episode 4. The case is dismissed, and Rendall promises to go after Senator Skaylon, too.
It’s not all’s well that ends well with this episode, though, because Percy is back.
John and Eugene look at two more episodes of Logan’s Run. In Night Visitors, they contemplate the role of Satan in science fiction, and in Turnabout, they ask if the writer had an axe to grind about Saudi Arabia.
Night Visitors Synopsis
In an homage to Bulwer-Lytton, it was a dark and stormy night. The solar car is running low, and Rem and his pets may have to spend the night in the car. In the flashes of lightning, they think they see two people standing in the rain, but they disappear.
Creeped out, they continue on until they find a beautiful old house. They’re sure they see a light inside, but no one appears to be home. Until the two people from the road show up. They are Barton and Marianna.
They’re creepy but accommodating. Marianna is expecting Gavin to return this very night, but Barton thinks he will never be seen again.
But he appears, not at the persistently knocking front door, but in the living room. He, too, is Mr. Creepsville.
Gavin asks them all if they believe in what is or what might be. Logan and Rem come down solidly on the side of pragmatism. Jessica, not so much. Gavin likes her answer.
They retire for the night and creepy things happen. Rem postulates to Logan that these people are actually ghosts trapped in this haunted house.
Jessica is spirited away by Gavin. Logan is given a vision in a mirror and finds a key. They use this information to track down Jessica.
Gavin, Barton, and Marianna, plus a second woman, made a deal with the Prince of Darkness for power hundreds of years ago, but he holds the second woman – Gavin’s woman in a death-like state in a coffin, waiting for someone to willingly take her place.
Gavin plans to convince Jessica to take her place – perhaps not entirely willing, either. As the dead woman begins to arise, Logan and Rem arrive, Logan shoots the coffin, and the ghosts are all gone.
Next morning, it’s a bright and beautiful day, and they leave. Unbeknownst to them, the curtains in the upper window draw back as if someone is looking out at them.
Turnabout Synopsis
Crossing the same desert we’ve seen so many times before, Rem and his pets come across a woman lying on the ground. She was collecting herbs and was overcome by the sun. They save her, and she warns them to leave immediately
Too late, Gera and his patrol show up and arrest them. It is forbidden by law to cross the completely unmarked borders of Zidor. Although it looks as if they might get away with leaving, when they reveal they are Runners they are taken for judgment.
Francis, hot in pursuit, tries to intervene and take them, but to no avail. They are condemned to death.
Mia, the woman they rescued, contrives to recuse them, as does Francis. The escape plans happen and cross wires a bit. Rem and Mia escape, but Francis captures Logan and Jessica. They make a run for the border sans Taco Bell.
Gera pursues them and recaptures Francis. Francis is condemned to death.
Logan and Jessica return for Rem, but when Logan discovers Francis will be killed, he rescues him.
Meanwhile, a quiet revolution has happened, and they’re all free to go – with a suitable head start for Rem and his pets.
Many people say Marcus is just a spare part, and this week that’s proven, and then it’s political hijinks on the High Seas – or the outer space equivalent thereof.
Kenneth and Eugene discuss The Heir and the Spare & Just Politics.
As we wind down our coverage of Starhunter Redux this week and for subsequent episodes, we’re covering two episodes at once. Of the remaining four episodes, one is a clip show, which we’ll cover with a companion episode, and the series finale is a two-parter.
The Heir and the Spare Episode Synopsis
Marcus is talking to Percy about getting the hyperspace drive working. She doesn’t want to because… reasons. Then she screws up a repair job to get out of the conversation, then fixes it somewhat. She retreats to privacy mode in her cabin.
They’re after a fugitive named Alex Aroyan, a con man who fleeces rich women. Eva Halperin, a Martian police official, has commixed the crew of the Trans-Utopian to track him down and bring him to justice… and she’s really keen to see this happen sooner rather than later.
Callie, in a dress, brings Aroyan to the yard and subsequently to capture. Aboard the ship, Aroyan seems to recognize Marcus.
Privately, Caravaggio informs Marcus that he is an identical genetic match for Aroyan. They don’t look alike because Aroyan has had extensive plastic surgery. Aroyan doesn’t really explain, but he says Marcus is in trouble and he should let him go.
Two armed ships show up controlled by Jaten Sarat, the baddie, arrive and demand Aroyan. Aroyan says that’s even worse news for you, Marcus, and he convinces him to take him to escape on a shuttle.
Meanwhile, Percy is doing Percy things.
Travis backs his friend and keeps the baddies off their backs, at least for a while, as they escape to Sin City. There, the story is told to Marcus. He’s the “son” of the former leader of Europa. Twin sons were fashioned, one to be the heir and the other to be spare parts for the heir. Marcus is, of course, the spare parts model. When a violent man, the same one chasing them now, overthrew the government, the twins were spirited off in the hopes that one might survive.
Sarat captures them, and when they fail to agree to be his figurehead, he gets ready to kill Aroyan, clone him, and grow a new heir while cutting Marcus’ brain out and keeping his body around for reasons that don’t hold up to much scrutiny.
Travis arrives and threatens to kill them all if they don’t turn over Marcus and Aroyan, and they give them up. Travis and the gang don’t bother to turn over Aroyan to the Martian authorities because “he’s family.”
…and in the meantime, Percy has taken a shuttle and left the Trans-Utopian to do some thinking.
Should they go after here? Nah.
Just Politics Episode Synopsis
The Trans-Utopian has got troubling cargo, and Travis doesn’t like it. They’re transporting Martian Trade Minister Kolzig on a secret mission. It’s all very hush-hush and very high-paying. Upon seeing him, Rudolfo is immediately disturbed.
Gaynor Schon immediately establishes herself as a baddie by uploading a program to Caravaggio that causes him to see and identify her as the absent Percy Montana. Schon now, effectively, has full control of the ship without anyone knowing it.
Rudolfo struggles with identifying where he’s seen the Trade minister before, unaware that he’s being hampered by the tampering down to Caravaggio. At the same time, Marcus takes a shine to Jophie Henrik, the Minister’s aide. Her dad was an engineer, and she flirts her way into Marcus’ heart and engines. He keeps detecting problems with Caravaggio, but diagnostic after diagnostic shows him everything is operating normally.
Dircott, the second member of the Minister’s security squad, breaks into someone’s quarters, and Caravaggio apologetically murders him. His body is later found in his own quarters, dead of an apparent heart attack. Caravaggio, of course, can find no other cause of death.
Marcus and Jophie, who is sticking to him like suspicious glue, have discovered an anomaly in Caravaggio. When they go to the core of Caravaggio to investigate, they are zapped by Caravaggio’s defense systems, killing Jophie. Travis is unhappy about all the deaths on his ship.
They arrive at the destination, the Mannheim Asteroid Belt, where Kolzig conducts some not-at-all suspicious 30-second-long trade negotiations with Reasoner, a miner on one of the asteroids. According to Kolzig, the negotiations failed. So sad, but that’s the way it is in politics. That was a long trip for nothing.
Gaynor, however, bugged that conversation and has confirmed that Kolzig is actually conspiring against the Martian President in an effort to take over. Reasoner is his confederate, and this was just the opportunity to transfer funds to Reasoner.
Rudolfo remembers who Kolzig is…. He’s a bad guy, and he will take him to justice. When Gaynor, with the tactic approval of the Martian president, destroys the asteroid and puts the Trans-Utopian on self-destruct. Locking the others out of the computer systems.
As the clock winds down, Callie disables the shuttle that Gaynor is leaving on in the hopes she’ll stop the auto-destruct countdown. She can’t, so she kills her in a fistfight.
Marcus cannot override the damage done to Caravaggio so, finally, Travis talks Caravaggio out of destroying them.
It’s alls-well-that-ends-well as the crew contemplates blackmailing the Martian president for their fee.
John and Eugene look at the 1955 George Pal classic movie Conquest of Space and its attempt at a realistic look at space exploration. We ask the questions, “is space for mankind or the exclusive domain of God?” and “will religion screw up space, too?”
John and Eugene look at two more episodes of Logan’s. First, it’s Futurepast, a story about androids in love, and then Carousel, the episode where Logan returns to the City of Domes to die.
Futurepast Synopsis
Two of Francis’ minions are hot on the tail of Rem and his pets, but through a bit of subterfuge, Logan stuns his pursuers, and Rem disables their vehicle.
They proceed on until they find a fabulous Art Deco building and a beautiful caretaker, Ariana. Rem sparks every time he’s near her.
She leads Logan and Jessica to comfy beds, where they soon fall asleep and are connected to a dream analysis machine.
Rem demands to know why and learns that, like himself, Arianna is an android, and her job is to put people into the dream analysis lab. They cannot be awoken, or they will die. They must let the dreams continue.
Meanwhile, Francis camps impatiently for the night.
Through a series of clips from previous episodes and newly shot footage played through prisms and repeats over and over, we are privy to Logan and Jessica’s dreams, but honestly, I don’t care. They might die, blah blah blah.
Rem and Arianna are falling in love, which is, of course, impossible
Then they get into a lover’s tiff. He shoots her, she threatens to shoot him back, he sweet talks his way out of it, and together they come up with a plan to save the sleepers
Francis arrives and kills Arianna, and captures the newly-awakened Logan and Jessica. Logan tries to convince Francis that the sleep analysis machine is actually the way to Sanctuary, and he falls for it!
Rem and his pets escape once more, but not before repairing Arianna and making a tearful farewell.
Carousel Synopsis
Francis is hot on Rem and his pet’s tails when the solar vehicle stops operating. Getting out to defend themselves, Logan is shot by locals with a dart, and Rem and Jessica are teleported into a very cost-effective holding area.
They are told that the people who live in this area protect themselves by forcing erasing the memory of the last year from visitors’ minds and then sending them on their way. Logan was carrying a weapon; therefore, they erased his memory immediately. Rem and Jessica have been brought in to be told that their memory will be erased, and then they will be released. Jessica pleads that erasing their memories will result in serious harm to them. They deliberate.
Meanwhile, Logan has recovered and cannot figure out where he is. Francis comes along, and Logan is completely compliant and disbelieving that he could possibly be a Runner. He agrees to return to the City of Domes for a truth scan.
Rem and Jessica’s captures agree to release them unmolested, and they follow Logan back to the City of Domes.
Breaking back in, Jessica meets up with the Underground Runner Railroad and explains what’s happening. They agree to help because Logan, testifying at Carousel that Sanctuary doesn’t exist, would be a significant blow against their movement.
Francis is happy that his old pal is back in the Sandman game, and they can continue to kill Runners together. When they hunt their first Runner, Logan hesitates, and Francis must make the kill. Logan reminds Francis that it was his turn to take the kill. Francis buys this, but what does Logan actually think?
The Runners must know what Logan knows, so Rem suggests Jessica seduce Logan, which she tries, but ultimately cannot because Logan is her friend. Instead, she spills the beans that she is the Runner Jessica 6 and that they’ve been together outside. Did I mention that Logan is in full-on Sandman mode right now?
It wasn’t Jessica’s best idea because Logan raises his gun to kill the Runner… but he cannot quite bring himself to do it and tells our hero to get out. Heartbroken, Jessica returns to the Runners’ base and tells them the news.
Here’s where it gets tricky. Francis is happy to have his best friend back, but when the elders tell him that Logan must testify at assembly before Carousel, Francis worries that Logan will die in Carousel. “Relax,” say the elders, we just need Logan to denounce Sanctuary, and then he can return to his former life. Relieved, Francis believes them, but when he leaves the room, suddenly, it’s all, “oh, yeah, he’s going to die at Carousel.”
The Runners know that Logan must be stopped, so they hatch a plan to capture him and hold him until the memory wipe fades.
As Logan heads to Carousel, he leaves a message behind for Jessica. His memory has returned, and he plans to announce that Carousel and Renewal are lies before the Assembly – knowing that this will get him killed.
Jessica and her friends rescue Logan. Francis cries, “curses, foiled again,” and Rem and his pets escape the City of Domes once more.
Travis just isn’t scratching Callie’s itch, so she’s off with another band of plucky corporate bounty hunters. Will Travis find his scratcher in time? Kenneth and Eugene discuss Rivals.
Episode Synopsis
Callie is having a bad day. Not only are the rolling blackouts and malfunctions of the Trans-utopian getting her down, but she’s got a troublesome prisoner that’s managed to steal her key – unbeknownst to her, of course.
There are no solutions to their overall problems anytime soon. They’re not making enough money to keep the ship fully powered on, nor to perform needed repairs. As Callie tries to spill her soul to an unlistening Travis, word that the prisoner has escaped has reached them. They need to take him alive to collect their bounty, and rather than logically applying a stun gun at the first opportunity, instead, Callie roundhouse kicks him into electrical equipment, nearly killing the prisoner and completely disabling the Trans-Utopian just as a giant asteroid bears down on them.
They are rescued when Capt. Christoper Judson of the ship Seattle blasts the asteroid into millions of even tinier, more dangerous pieces. But let’s ignore that.
The Seattle is a slick ship owned by the Fugitive Containment Systems Corporation, it’s a Martian military design and well-equipped and crewed. They’re the future of bounty hunting, and Capt. Judson likes the cut of Callie’s jib, and since Travis isn’t doing anything for her jib, she’s sorely tempted by what she sees. When she tries to bring up her jib with Travis, he seems oblivious that we’re talking about jibs [wink wink nudge nudge say no more!].
Travis fumes as only Travis can.
A pre-emptive bounty comes in. That’s a high-priced bounty to arrest someone before they commit a crime. There are a couple of minor complications – the target is a highly-trained, ex-military assassin. He’s committed multiple successful assassinations. He’s escaped multiple high-security prisons. Nobody knows what he looks like, and they have no clue whom he plans to kill.
The Seattle makes way, covering their tracks so the Trans-Utopian won’t follow them.
Via encrypted transmission, Capt. Judson offers Callie a job, and when she finds out Travis and Rudolfo tracked the transmission in hopes of getting intel on the Seattle’s destination, she decides enough is enough and accepts their offer of a commission.
After some setbacks, the Trans-Utopian tracked the Seattle to Clark Station, and they also go in search of the assassin. The Seattle get to the fugitive first, or so they think. Callie warns that something is wrong, but they ignore the junior recruit. They should have listened, their entire team is terminated in a trap, save for Callie, who was guarding the hallway.
She warns Travis that the target is extremely dangerous, plus, you know, she just likes the sound of his voice, and she’s mad at Capt. Judson for filling out the paperwork on his dead crew before getting into the action himself.
As things unfold, it is Capt. Judson that is the actual intended victim, and Callie and Travis save him and kill the assassin, bringing in a hefty bounty for Team Trans-Utopian, and returning Callie to the fold; however, jibs have not been resolved.
This week John and Eugene look at two more episodes of Logan’s Run. First up, Fear Factor, the episode where Rem and his pets visit an upscale sanitarium thriving in a post-apocalyptic world, and we ask, “who thought that the first order of reestablishing a post-apocalyptic world was to set up an insane asylum?” Then we look at the Judas Goat, the episode featuring the Amazing Spider-Man’s Nicholas Hammond, and we ask, “just how many people know about the City of Domes’ Council of Old White Guys?”
Fear Factor Synopsis
Rem and his pets come across a 20th-century mansion “far away from everything.” As they approach, they find a terrified woman trying to escape. Her handler soon arrives and takes the gang to meet Dr. Rowan, the facility director, and his right-hand man, Dr. Paulson.
This convalescent sanitarium survived the nuclear holocaust untouched because they were “far away from everything.” They’ll all hospitable, but Jessica doesn’t really like the answers Rowan is (or isn’t) giving about the woman. She stays to talk with him as Logan and Rem are taken to their rooms.
Rem discovers they are being monitored, so he uses the in-room computer console to monitor the rest of the facility. They watch as Rowan explains to Jessica how they like to strip the brains of emotion and higher thinking functions and replace them with their own thoughts and emotions. She does not like what she hears.
Neither do Logan or Rem, and they discover they are locked in. But Paulson lets them out when they knock politely. They force past him and head to find Jessica. Unbeknownst to them, Paulson pulls a gun on them but decides not to shoot them.
They find Rowan in his office, just Jessica is not with him. At gunpoint, he leads them to Jessica, but it is a trap. Logan and Rem are tested by being subjected to strong winds and 1950s B-movie flaming meteoroids. Then they’re gassed.
When Logan awakens, he is taken to the Inner Circle, the ruling council that oversees this society. The Inner Circle appears to consist of Dr. Rowan, and he explains the situation:
They burn out the brains of the menials and make them afraid and obedient. They similarly control, to a lesser degree, the guards. This process makes them cowards, averse to any form of anxiety. They’ve got army-building technology, but none of their people can fight.
Logan is just the man to help them breed a whole new race of fearless soldiers. He refuses without even bothering to look at the harem of women he’d be servicing.
Rowan has a counteroffer: Agree, or we’ll burn out Jessica’s brain, and we’re already deprogramming Rem. At this moment, Rem, who is too sophisticated to be deprogrammed by 1970’s cheesy SciFi blinky lights computer prop, leaps into action and starts to strangle Rowan.
Paulson has had misgivings, and he assists them in getting to Jessica. She’s already hooked up, and while Logan can subdue two of the technicians, the third hides behind a Sandman Gun-proof piece of plastic and takes control of Jessica’s mind.
Rem grabs a control unit, and they fight it out through Jessica’s brain. Logan tires of this and blows up the machinery.
The guards and menials put up a very lackadaisical pursuit, and his own guards kill Rowan. Now Paulson is in charge, and he lets the gang leave. He stays to help rehabilitate his society.
The Judas Goat Synopsis
In the City of Domes, Hal 14 makes his run. Hot on his trail is Sandman Joseph 8. Hal makes it to the secret doorway, opens the door, and then pauses momentarily to allow Joseph to catch up and terminate him. The Runner’s secret exit is wide open, exposed for the Sandman to destroy!
But the Council that rules the City of Domes has a different idea. Joseph 8 is taken and, without consent, surgically modified to look like Hal 14 and given a copy of Hal’s memories. For all intents and purposes, Joseph 8 is now Hal 14, except that he is actually a Sandman dedicated to terminating Runners.
Taken before the Counsel of Old White Dudes, like Francis 7 before him, they offer him a place on the Counsel if he can bring Logan and Jessica back alive.
Hal-Not-Hal easily locates Logan and pretends to be a terrified Runner, scared of the mean old Sandman. In an effort to reassure him, Logan chases him down just like in the good old days, although he doesn’t terminate him.
Hal was known to Jessica – “you remember, I was that guy you bumped into once at Carousel spouting off about not believing.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember, Hal, right?”
Hal-Not-Hal, having escaped the City of Domes and meeting the famous Sandman-turned-Runner Logan, immediately wants to go back to the City and start a revolution with Logan as the figurehead.
Rem thinks it’s a bad idea. Logan kinda digs the idea of saving all the people in the City of Domes.
Before they can return, they are captured by a bunch of simpletons with guns and a lethal force field. Hal-Not-Hal wants Logan to kill them all so they can get on their way back to the City of Domes.
Instead, they are taken to the Provider, the man who takes care of the simpletons and uses them effectively for slave labor.
The Provider is actually Matthew 12, the very first Runner. He is also known to Jessica and was the man who encouraged her to get involved in the Underground Runner Road.
The gang hatched the ludicrous idea that Matthew could go back, too. He’s a legend. Matthew, however, isn’t as stupid as our heroes and realizes what a bad idea it is. Also, he realizes that if they get caught, they’ll be brain scanned, and he’ll be hunted down. That’s a big no-go. Also, I can’t let you leave now.
Hal-Not-Hal tries to steal guns in his endearing, single-minded way and escape, so they can return to the City of Domes and start a revolution. That doesn’t work, and Matthew locks them up when they try an escape plan.
Hal-Not-Hal has a better idea…. If Rem stays behind to fix the Provider’s computers, maybe Matthew can let the others go. For some dumb reason, Matthew goes along with this, and for even dumber reasons, Logan, Jessica, and Hal-Not-Hal think he’s going to let them go.
They leave, and Matthew tries to kill them. Rem, fearful for his friends’ lives, reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, which kills Matthew. Rem has done an AI boo-boo. He’s violated the first law.
Don’t worry, say Logan and Jessica, you did it for a good cause – saving our butts.
“Well, that’s great and all, but hadn’t we better be getting back to the City of Domes?”
Gosh, if you want to get back there so badly, why’d you ever leave? Says no one, not even Rem.
As they approach the City of Domes, Logan gets suspicious when Hal-Not-Hal leads them to the same exit they used. Logan notes that there’s no way Francis would have left that escape route open. Hal-Not-Hal jumps for Logan’s gun, but Logan gets the better of him. Hal-Not-Hal runs away, again with Logan in hot pursuit.
Two Sandmen on routine patrol…. Wait? Two Sandmen on routine patrol outside the city walls spy a fellow Sandman chasing a Runner and terminate Hal-Not-Hal. Logan stuns them both, and the gang skedaddles back into the trackless wastelands.
Caravaggio is damaged, and Percy replaces him with Kate, the crew’s new holographic pal that’s fun to play with, designed by Percy. Would could possibly go wrong? Find out as Kenneth and Eugene look at the Starhunter Redux episode: Kate.
Episode Synopsis
Percy is having a conniption fit. She wanted to use some hot water during the routine water maintenance period and somehow blames Caravaggio for not anticipating her desire and postponing the maintenance period because she was doing some dirty maintenance elsewhere.
At least, I think that’s what happened.
Marcus, always the enlightened gentleman, explains to Caravaggio that his problem is that he’s male, and women expect men to read their minds. Percy, alternatively, explains that Caravaggio should be more empathetic, something he apparently cannot do because he doesn’t have breasts – or at the very least because he wasn’t designed by someone with breasts.
About this time, a space mine locks onto and blows a hole in the Trans-Utopian, damaging various bits of the ship. Engines, attitude adjustment, weapons, and, perhaps most critically, Caravaggio, who is operating well below normal utility.
Percy seizes this opportunity, rather than fix Caravaggio, a critical piece of equipment, in an emergency situation, to replace him with a new AI of her own design, Katherine.
Travis immediately decides to diminish her status by calling her Kate instead, and she’s a bit of a hottie. Some much so, it looks like Marcus isn’t going to be able to keep his mind off her and on the job.
Callie even points out that’s a flaw with Kate, ‘cause, you know, it’s ALWAYS the woman’s fault if men do something bad because the woman is sexy.
Travis, our hero, knows that sexist argument is BS and dismisses this as a case of Callie being jealous of the hottie.
Meow! Is everyone on this ship trying to up their game to be as big a sexist pig as Rudolfo this week? Apparently so.
Still heavily damaged and days away from the nearest station, they collect bits of the mine and discover the bad news. It’s a classic Martian design, and it no doubt sent data back to the mine’s owner. They can expect possibly hostile visitors soon.
And then life support goes out, and Kate can’t figure out why. The crew can’t figure it out, either. Everything seems to be in working order; it just isn’t working. Callie is the first to get suspicious that Kate might be behind this, but shockingly, Percy isn’t too far behind on that realization. She figures it out when Kate is more interested in how long Travis and Callie have been a couple than she is in repairing the life-threatening systems’ failures.
Kate pops up on the bridge to tell Travis that Callie isn’t “right” for him. Travis is more interested in saving their lives than in talking about Callie. He finds her priorities to be a bit wonky, but Kate assures him, “I’d do anything I can to save you.”
Travis goes to visit Percy to ask about this new AI, and it’s at this point, she reveals that she tried to restore Caravaggio but couldn’t because he’d been sabotaged. Percy being Percy, Travis doesn’t even bother asking, “You didn’t think we needed to know about that sooner?!”
Travis returns to the bridge as armed pirate ships are approaching. Kate is, unfortunately, unable to provide much information about the attackers because not only did Percy choose the worst possible time to be doing a major computer system upgrade, but she also didn’t have the new system finished yet. Kate cannot interface with technology that is not part of the Trans-Utopian.
As they go into battle, Kate takes control of the ship, in direct defiance of Travis’ orders, and destroys one of the attacking pirates. This blows the ship’s weapons out and the other pirate begins the process of boarding the Trans-Utopian.
Percy gets mad at Kate, and Kate shoots her – because, apparently, that’s a thing AIs can do now.
Kate confesses her love for Travis and convinces him to give them a moment alone. When the others leave the bridge, she locks him in and begins pumping the air out of the rest of the ship. The others must get breathers, fight off the pirates and get Percy to the sick bay.
Travis explains to Kate that “if you love something, you have to let it go,” and so she does, but doesn’t turn the air on for him. He fights more pirates, finds a breather, then takes the pirates’ ship. Stealing their ship’s little black oxygen box.
Confronting Kate on the bridge, Travis tries to insert the little black oxygen box into the Trans-Utopian’s little black oxygen box slot, but Kate is really upset at Travis’ rejection of her, and she shoots him a bunch.
Callie comes in, distracting Kate and giving Travis time to insert the little black oxygen box into the little black oxygen box slot. Kate can’t turn it off, either, because it’s technology from another ship, making this Chekov’s Technological Little Black Oxygen Box inserted into Chekov’s Technological Little Black Oxygen Box Slot.
Having done that, Travis calmly walks over to Kate’s off switch and deactivates her. If only anyone had thought of that earlier.
Caravaggio is back and thinks he’s had a dream of love.
No, Caravaggio, you’ve had a misogynistic nightmare.
John and Eugene tackle two more episodes of Logan’s Run. This week we contemplate the nature of good and evil and look at another of the masterpieces from the pen of legendary writer Harlan Ellison.
Half Life Synopsis
Logan and the gang encounter electronic interference in their car and then get captured by a bunch of savages with nets. It’s just another day on Logan’s Run.
The savages, called the Cast-outs, are just about to kill them if they weren’t such bad shots, but a group of people known as Positives rescue them and take them back to their city.
When asked if they were processed, our heroes try to bluff their way through by saying, “yes, of course,” but it doesn’t take the city dwellers long to discover that is a lie.
In their civilization, all people are put into a machine that splits them into good and evil copies. The evil ones are “cast out,” and the good ones are the Positives who live in the city.
But they’re not perfectly good and evil, for the good feel the need to impose their will on others and kidnap Jessica and cleft her in twain, chucking evil Jessica out with the Cast-outs.
Rem and Logan escape, find their way to the Cast-outs, and find that, while rough around the edges, they aren’t all bad either – ‘cause that’s just “being human.”
They convince them to return to the city and become rejoined, if possible. Still, the Patron of the city sets a trap, which would be fatal if it weren’t for the Patron’s wife, Rama II, who is secretly a Negative who assumed the place of the dead Positive version of herself.
The two halves of Jessica are reunited successfully – although, honestly, you can barely tell.
When Rama II commits suicide, the Patron decides to rejoin everybody, without, of course, bothering to ask if that’s what everybody wants.
Logan and the gang leave, and Jessica is happy knowing she can be unhappy.
Crypt Synopsis
Rem and his pets arrive in a ruined city, still standing two centuries after the thermonuclear war. The presence of the car causes an automated beacon to signal to them.
Investigating, they discover a pre-recorded message from the year 2120.
The message tells them of a government facility deep below their current location. A plague was killing everyone, and while their scientists searched for a cure, they selected the six best and brightest among them to be placed in cryogenic suspension, awaiting a cure.
The cure was found, and exactly enough was made for the six individuals below, but then the power went out, and they couldn’t get to them with the cure. The message from the past exhorts whoever finds this message to take the cure to the sleepers below.
With a quick zippity-zip, Rem fixes the elevator, and away they go. When they arrive at the intact facility below, they are suddenly shaken by what is apparently the first earthquake there in 200 years. The ceiling begins to collapse, Logan and Jessica are injured, and one of the two vials of cure is destroyed.
Also, simultaneously, the earthquake triggers the reawakening sequence for the sleepers, who awake just in time for Logan to find them.
The six best and brightest left behind to save mankind are a doctor, an engineer, a robotics expert, a psychic, an attractive woman, and a professional administrator.
When told that there’s a cure but only enough for half of them, they decide that Logan and Jessica must decide which of them lives and dies, and, for no apparent reason, they reluctantly agree to this. They hide the serum until they decide. (Even though the psychic should easily ascertain where they hid it.)
This brave new world is to be denied the wonders of bureaucratic administration, though, as Lyman, the Administrator, is found dead.
That makes things a bit easier for making the decision, but the five remaining contestants make it clear that they do not want Rem to be part of the decision-making process – him being a machine and all.
While Logan and Jessica try to get to know the sleepers, Rem continues investigating.
It should be no surprise that each sleeper tries to make the case that they should be among those that are cured. Most try making logical arguments, but Sylvia Reyna tries a different approach. She’s young and hot, and she’d do anything for Logan. Logan turns her down flat – he likes his women simple, like Jessica.
Later, Rem discovers the logs of the long-dead leader of the project. Just before his death, he discovered that one of the sleepers is an imposter, although he didn’t bother to reveal which one it was.
That night, Rem reveals the truth. Lyman was murdered and his death was staged to look like an accident. Also, there is an imposter among you.
Apparently, none of the six met each other before being sent into suspension, and an imposter simply took the place of one of the chosen ones.
But which one is it?
There’s a power failure, and in the darkness, the world loses out on a future of advanced robotics because Victoria Mackie, the expert in robotics, is shot.
And then there were four.
Rem proceeds to uncover the imposter.
Could it be Dr. Rachel Greenhill?
“No,” says Jessica, “she put an ace bandage on my injured knee. She’s a real doctor!”
Could it be engineer David Parra?
“No,” says David Parra, “I built this place. Just ask me, and I can tell you where any nut or bolt is.”
OK, you must not be the imposter.
Could it be psychic Dexter Kim?
“No,” says Logan, “We saw him levitate an object earlier. He’s a real psychic.”
Then it must be Sylvia Reyna! And it is!
She grabs the precious vial of serum that Logan stupidly left on the table and threatens to destroy it if she doesn’t get to live. Logan overpowers her and takes back the serum. He hands it to the others.
“Clean up your own mess!” and they leave.
Later, we see Sylvia – or whatever her real name is – being placed back into suspended animation.
The Divinity Cluster rears its ugly head once more, and like night follows day, so does The Orchard. This time their subject is the human guinea pig, Travis Montana. Kenneth and Eugene discuss The Prisoner.
Episode Synopsis
Travis is being a grumpy puss, and the events that make him a grumpy puss haven’t even happened yet. The Trans-Utopian has arrived at Clarke Station to pick up Jane Doe, an amnesiac psychiatric patient, for transport to Ganymede. Callie is not happy with this, although it’s unclear why. Cattle is cattle in the meat-moving business.
In the hallway, Travis is bumped into by Tristian Catchpole, an arrogant, smug-looking guy dressed to play the Star Child on Galactica 1980. Catchpole senses a disturbance in the Force.
Travis and Callie get a bonus passenger in the form of Dr. Alora Kir, who must accompany the harmless patient. The harmless patient almost immediately suffers some form of flashback and witnesses Travis shoot someone in a life-or-death fight back when he was a Raider. She grabs his gun and tries to kill him.
Callie should be happy, at least they’re transporting a dangerous criminal now.
At the Orchard – correction, the New and Improved Orchard, now with 50% fewer people with a conscience – they’re pushing ahead with the Divinity Cluster because… “hyperspace.” Tristian is the first person to activate 3 of the 4 Divinity Cluster Genes successfully naturally. His job, find the others who are naturally activating and convert them to the Dark Side of the Force. The New Orchard’s goal is… “hyperspace.” It’s always good to have a laser-focused Vision Statement.
On the Trans-Utopian, everyone agrees that Travis is being a grumpy puss, and everyone tries to talk with him about it – even Percy. Travis doesn’t want to talk about it. Whatever it is.
But he’s fascinated with the prisoner because, somehow, she seems to know him, but he knows not from where. Again she tries to kill him, but this time, she puts a little Divinity in his Cluster when she tries to strangle him.
The psychiatrist says maybe you should try to talk to her but when he does, they jaunt off on a Divinity Cluster trip down memory lane, where they witness/relive Travis’ fight with David, who was Jane’s husband, but now she’s known as Maria because she’s got her memory back.
Alora who witnessed the whole thing calls to tell her boss about the breakthrough in the patient and mention the mind-bending-dimensional hijinks she just witnessed. Pity her boss in the New and Improved Orchard.
Travis demands from Percy to know what she knows about the Divinity Cluster. She tells him. She tells him that he’s the unintended lab rat of his mother’s Divinity Cluster experiments on herself, and that’s about all she knows.
The New and Improved Orchard arrives and try to take the ship. Tristian comes aboard, whisks Travis off to a planet 400 light years away, and tries to seduce him to the Dark Side. He refuses, and, well, that’s pretty much it. The New and Improved Orchard ship leaves, and they deliver Maria, formerly Jane Doe, to Ganymede, but not before she and Travis have a little heart-to-heart, which maybe makes Travis jump out of grumpy puss mode.
Back at the New and Improved Orchard, Tristian explains about Travis: “The Force is strong in this one. He will make a powerful ally.”
This week John and Eugene look at two more episodes of Logan’s Run. In the Innocent: Take one awkward, socially-isolated teenage girl, place her in close proximity to a TV series’ hunky lead, and watch the television inevitable happen. Oh, did I mention she has superpowers? Then, in Man out of Time: A time-traveling researcher from before the holocaust arrives searching for the cause of the war. Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty.
The Innocent Synopsis
Despite a vehicle with superior off-road capabilities and an almost limitless 9.6 million square miles in which to run, Francis and his Idiot Squad have got Logan, Jessica, and Rem cornered and almost captured.
Detecting a nearby energy source, Rem leads the Runners into an energy minefield. With REM’s help, Logan clears a path through the mines, approaching the entrance to a bunker surrounded by an energy barrier.
Once more, it’s Rem to the rescue as he gets them through the barrier and into the bunker. The energy mines reform, and the barrier is reestablished, trapping Francis and the Idiot Squad outside.
Inside the bunker, they meet a robot named Friend. Rem and Friend give each other a lot of robotic sass talk, as robots do. Then a young woman, Lisa, intervenes. She is the sole living occupant of the bunker, and Logan and Jessica are the first living people she’s seen in years.
There is one other robot occupant of the bunker, that is Nanny, a robotic cleaner/minder with obvious robotic breasts, with plenty of buttons for pushing.
Rem, attempting to study the power system, cannot understand where the power for the security system is coming from. Friend sees nothing anomalous – things are as they’ve always been. This discrepancy bothers Rem and Logan.
Outside, Francis calls in another of the Idiot Squad’s cars, this one with the new L7 Laser weapon. It will take them 8 hours to get there. Francis waits.
When you take one isolated, awkward teenage girl and introduce her to the star of the show, the television inevitable happens: She falls in love with Logan and wants him to stay with her. Logan makes it clear that he cannot, and this makes Lisa sad.
So sad, in fact, that the barrier around the bunker drops. Jeremy, a man, trying desperately to distinguish himself as the Lead Idiot in the Idiot Squad, approaches the bunker and is sent to the cornfield.
Lisa’s attentions toward Logan become increasingly obvious, as does the fact that Lisa has amazing psychic powers. When Francis’ L7 Laser weapon arrives, Lisa blasts it out of existence with her mind.
Eventually, Lisa sends Jessica and Rem to the cornfield, reasoning that Logan would want to stay with her if they were gone. It turns out not so much, so feelings scorned, Lisa lashes out with her mind, imprisoning Logan. She invites Francis in to turn over Logan.
Before the final handoff, she allows Logan to speak, and he makes her see the ugly truth, so she sends the rest of the Sandmen to the cornfield and brings back Jessica and Rem.
She will hold the Sandmen in the cornfield for a while, then release them, giving Logan and the gang a head start. She vows one day to leave the bunker and start her own life.
Man Out of Time Synopsis
A strange energy reading leads Logan and the gang to a pre-nuclear holocaust ruin, where a probe appears carrying a rabbit. The probe returns to its origin: December 13, 2118, where scientists operating the Sanctuary project eagerly study the data gathered. With proof that intelligent life exists two centuries in the future, project leader David Eakins travels forward in time, hoping to learn what started the nuclear war and hoping to prevent it.
He has 22 hours to accomplish this task, which I’m assuming is the length of a day in the 22nd century.
He meets Logan, Jessica, and Rem and, knowing that his success will cause them to cease to exist, does not tell them the truth about his origins. They take him in their car when they learn he is looking for Sanctuary and even knows where it should be.
They find an idyllic but primitive village in a pleasant valley. The villagers are welcoming, but they are well below even the average intelligence of the people of this time. They have names that imply they know something about the computers that should exist at the Sanctuary Project, but they know nothing about such things. Indeed, they cannot even read. They worship “the Truth,” which they think is a deity.
Eakins saves the life of a young boy stung by a scorpion. When he does, he realizes that their temple is the Sanctuary project computer room, now turned into a primitive temple. He becomes despondent. All that work collecting all that data was a waste.
When he tries to expose the computers, the villagers treat him as if he has defiled their temple, and they make to kick him out.
Jessica pleads with Logan to help him, even though she doesn’t know what he wants to do. They demand the truth, and he tells them.
He hopes to collect data from the computer that will reveal the cause of the war, return to his own time and prevent that from happening. He knows that saving the 7 billion lives from his world means the end of Logan and Jessica’s world.
Logan is not so keen on this idea, but Rem explains that if they prevent him from returning, they themselves may be changing the past as it happened. Rem is skeptical that the past can be changed, and Logan, realizing that he also might be changing the past if he prevents Eakins’ return, reluctantly goes along.
Rem collects that data, which includes evidence that Eakins did return from the future and the die is cast. They must get him back.
Before he leaves, he instructs the villagers how to tap the information from the computers. Perhaps they can learn and build a better world with the fruits of his work. It’s a consolation prize if he fails to change his future.
He returns with 5 minutes to spare, and nothing changes. He failed.
Moments later, a recorded message from Eakins arrives. He started the war. When word was announced of his successful time travel, the world’s governments quickly realized the military implications, and the evil empires of the east launched a preemptive nuclear strike.
Eakins knows he could have returned to live out his life helping the villagers, but he chose to die with his world.
Just in time to spread some holiday cheer, John and Eugene are taking a look at 1968’s The Green Slime.
Synopsis
A member of the crew aboard the UNSC Gamma 3 space station utters those inevitably fateful words, “nothing exciting ever happens around here,” and fast than you can say, “sir, I’ve got something on the screen,” the asteroid Flora, six million tons of rock, is hurtling towards a certain collision with the Earth.
With only 10 hours to go before it collides with Earth, former Space Commander Jack Rankin is called in for one last suicide mission. Go to Flora, blow it up, and save the day. His first stop on the way is Space Station Gamma 3, where he is put in full operational command for the duration of this mission. They’ve outfitted a ship, bombs, and a crew to accompany Rankin on the mission.
There is, of course, a moment’s drama. The current commander of Gamma 3, Vince Elliot, is an estranged friend of Rankin’s. Formerly an unbeatable space team, they’ve fallen out over a woman, Dr. Lisa Benson. She was formerly Rankin’s main squeeze, and now she’s engaged to Elliot and the head doctor aboard Gamma 3. There’s more to their animosity than just that, though.
Gamma 3 Space Consultant Hans Halversen also worms his way onto the mission, which leaves immediately for Flora.
On Flora, the bombs are planted successfully, but strange pools of liquid contain a seething glean slime that fouls the surface vehicles, causing the teams to run back to the spacecraft on foot. Halversen realizes that the slime is alive and collects a specimen for return, but Rankin throws it away, shattering the specimen’s container. Unbeknownst to anyone, a small bit of green slime has attached itself to one of the spacesuits.
It looks like a job well done, but then Earth radios them, alerting Rankin that Flora is accelerating. They will have to detonate the bombs early, and everyone knows that doesn’t leave enough time for Rankin’s team to escape. Nonetheless, Rankin accelerates the spacecraft to Ludicrous Speed, and they escape by the hair of their teeth.
Back on Gamma 3, Rankin and Elliot begin butting heads. The mission is over, so Elliot should be back in charge, but Rankin is hanging on for a while and giving orders like he’s still in command.
When the spacesuits are placed in decontamination, the energy causes the slime to grow.
The crux of the problem between Rankin and Elliot is revealed at the obligatory celebratory party for successfully saving the Earth. Elliot made a poor command decision. He decided to save a member of his team, resulting in the deaths of ten others. Rankin is the one who wrote up the report, which nearly destroyed Elliot.
In decontamination, a creature breaks out, killing the technician via electrocution. Halversen finds a sample of green slime for study. Later, in a service corridor, another man is killed, and eventually, they track the creature to the power room. Rankin orders it killed, but at Halversen and Lisa’s insistence, Elliot takes command and orders it captured. That goes about as well as you’d expect, and more men are killed. Rankin moves to kill it with a laser, but it doesn’t work, either. Nonetheless, he declares himself in command while they try to hunt down and kill the creature.
Halversen makes a terrifying discovery. Give the creature’s blood any form of energy, and it grows new creatures at an alarming rate. Rankin hasn’t hurt it by shooting it with a laser; he’s given it more energy to spawn.
The creature attacks the medical section, and after a pitched battle that involves some lasers, they trap the creature in an isolation ward. Still, with alien blood all over the infirmary, they secure the whole area. Watching from the monitors, they see more of the creature’s form.
So far, the creatures are contained in Section C, so Rankin hatches a plan. Shut down the power in the section, then use flashlights to draw the creatures into a storage area where they can be captured. That works, more or less, but they forgot the ones trapped in the infirmary, which have now broken out. They eventually manage to trap them behind a pressure door, and I think the plan is to space them, but Halversen insists on going back in to get his notes and manages to get trapped on the wrong side of the door. Elliot and Lisa fight back against Rankin’s unreasonable refusal to rescue him, and in an act of open defiance, they open the door. Halversen is, of course, dead, the stupid idiots, and now the creatures are out.
New plan: Evacuate, and destroy the station. The creatures have moved outside and are absorbing solar radiation and multiplying. The evacuation hits a snag as the space doors are jammed. Elliot defies orders again and goes out with a team to clear them off. He succeeds with minimal casualties, and the station personnel is evacuated.
Rankin turns control over to Earth to destroy the station, but there’s too little power; it’ll have to be done manually. Rankin, of course, is the man for that job. Elliot learns what his old friend is doing and goes to help, saving Rankin but dying in the process. Rankin escapes with Elliot’s corpse, and the station is plunged into Earth’s atmosphere, spreading the green slime across the entire planet.
WARNING: Subjectively, I feel like this may be the harshest episode of Fusion Patrol ever. It may not be suitable for listeners of a nervous disposition.
Dimension hopping? Time displacement? Body/Soul swapping? We don’t know what’s going on here, and we daresay no one else does, either. Kenneth and Eugene ponder A Stitch in TIme.
Episode Synopsis
Travis has a weird topsy-survey dream. He’s alone on the Trans-Utopian, he keeps hearing someone call his name, and he finds Percy dead in the command chair. Instead of rejoicing, he screams, “nooooooooo,” and awakes with a fright.
Dreams never make sense.
In the real world, the Trans-Utopian has arrived on Mars to collect a dangerous ex-military prisoner for transport to Clarke Station. Soon, Percy has spotted something strange on the screen. Flashing, where no flashing should be.
Travis hears a distress signal that no one else does, and they head towards the uninteresting and uninhabited asteroid Ida to investigate, until they reach the point that the ship is being hit by mysterious gavimetric waves and every can finally hear the distress call from the Galantus, and orbital station about Ida.
During this time Percy is hit by some form of wave thingy and starts acting more like a normal person that usual.
Capt. Parker of the station requests help for the crew of the station and the miners working the asteroid. After some bouncy bounce shuttle flying, Travis and Callie arrive at Galantus, but there is no one except Capt. Parker aboard, and there is no sign of the mines below.
Rescuing only Capt. Parker, they return to the Trans-Utopian, where Percy starts up a conversation with the prisoner about taking over the ship.
When Parker contacts his superiors on Mars they’ve never heard of him, nor his station. The answer is obvious, Parker has jumped from another parallel universe.
The Percy/Not-Percy overhears this and realizes they’re on to her. She is an escaped mass murdered that sabotage the dimensional whatsadoodle on the mine to jump universes and inhabit someone else’s body.
Back up against the wall, she releases the prisoner and they try to take the ship, and kill Parker, unsuccessfully.
Parker says if they just go back to Galantus, tech the tech, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, and put some uncertainty back into the Heisenberg compensators, things will happens. And they do. And everything is back to normal.
Two episodes. First, John and Eugene ponder which of Logan and Jessica’s biological functions inconveniences him the most in The Collectors. Second, in Capture, they discuss how many times they’ve both seen TV remakes of The Most Dangerous Game.
The Collectors Synopsis
The legendary quality of 1970s American cars shines as the solar car has broken down in the desert. Rem is repairing it, but it will take some time to repair. He sends Logan and Jessica away, so they stop annoying him.
As they crest the sandy dune, they wax poetic about the possibility that Sanctuary could be “just over that ridge.” Little do they know that a pair is watching them on a monitor and preparing to grant their wish.
Over the rise, they find an oasis and Sanctuary. The actual, honest-to-goodness Sanctuary, with all the Runners that escaped the City of Domes, even Jessica’s childhood friend Martin. It’s just like everything they think about comes to be reality.
Sanctuary is looked over by the Protector, a man called John, and his partner Joanna. They were the ones watching Logan and Jessica.
Logan and Jessica are given nice quarters and shown all the hospitality, but Logan, the old dour puss, is a bit suspicious; however, Jessica drinks it all in.
Rem finishes fixing the car and goes looking for the wayward humans. When he crests the rise, all he sees is desert, and he knows something is wrong.
Logan investigates the city and comes across a cave. Inside, he is harassed by three Sandmen who have come to take him back. Actually, they claim he actually is already back. He escapes them and discovers aliens being held in cells. He meets one pair who live in an alternate atmosphere, which causes Logan to pass out.
John decides to consider collecting Rem as a specimen, too. He sends a fake Logan and Jessica to collect him, but Rem sees through this and the illusion completely. He plays along.
When Logan wakes, he’s back in their room. He finally convinces Jessica that everything they’ve encountered has been created by their minds, so they wish Rem was here, and, like magic, he walks through the door. Is it him or an illusion?
Rem explains that what they see as Sanctuary is most likely an alien spacecraft.
John and Joanna interview Rem, and Rem proves his superiority to them by surviving in the alien atmosphere cell, where he makes friends with the captives.
When the aliens discover Rem is an android, they decide to add him to their collection.
Back in their room, Logan and Jessica use the power to create things from their minds to escape.
All three are captured and are being escorted back to their cells when the revolution begins, and the captive aliens rescue our heroes and kill the bad guy aliens.
Rem, Logan, and Jessica release all the captive aliens and head on their way.
Capture Synopsis
At an idyllic mountain lake, Francis and fellow Sandman Benjamin catch up to Logan, Jessica, and Rem unawares. They take them prisoner.
Francis explains that Logan and Jessica must return to the City of Domes. Rem, on the other hand, is to be destroyed, and he leaves Benjamin behind to do the deed while he takes Logan and Jessica in their solar car.
Separated, Rem tricks Benjamin into a trap and makes him his prisoner, while Logan gets the jump on Francis in a bid to escape. Francis hands Logan his butt on a plate. They camp, waiting for Benjamin to join them.
During the night, Jessica is abducted. In the morning, Logan convinces Francis they must find Jessica, and he gives his word that if Francis gives him back his gun, he’ll give it back when they find Jessica. Francis agrees.
Then meet James Borden, a local landowner and hunt enthusiast. He explains Jessica was probably taken by the swamp mutants, along with all his staff. In the morning, the three armed men can rescue them. They return to Borden’s compound and meet his wife Irene – an intense woman with a passion for 20th-century firearms. Borden himself prefers energy weapons and shows off his penis surrogate to the appreciative Francis.
We learn that Jessica is actually being held by the Bordens. Borden is an avid hunter who has become bored with it all. Like the rest of us, he probably had to read Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game in school, and he’s taken it to heart.
Tomorrow, he will hunt two Sandmen, the most dangerous opponents he’s yet faced. When it’s over, and they are dead, Irene will hunt Jessica – old school style.
The next day, the hunt is on. Logan and Francis fall into all the traps but manage to get themselves out while Borden toys with them. In the hunt, Logan’s gun is destroyed.
Back at the compound, Jessica manages to escape and bumps into Rem, who has been looking for her. They search for Logan and Francis while Irene hunts Jessica.
In the kind of tragic accident that makes hunting the fun sport that it is, Borden accidentally shoots and kills his wife. Distraught, he goes after the Sandmen with a vengeance – even though he is 100% at fault in his wife’s death.
Logan and Francis set up a diversion, and a trap, and Francis kills Borden.
Rem sneaks up and takes Francis’ gun, giving it to Logan. Logan honors his promise and gives it back to Francis.
Francis will now take them in, except that he cannot. Rem has sabotaged the vehicles. In exchange for repairing them, Francis gives Logan until sundown to escape in their solar-powered car. As they leave, Rem presents Logan with another present: Benjamin’s DS Gun.
When someone starts blowing up planets in another solar system, it’s Travis and the Gang to the rescue! Kenneth and Eugene discuss.
Episode Synopsis
Evil Scientists aboard Keres Station are doing evil things, in this case, blowing up a planet – in secret.
Elsewhere, the Trans-Utopian experiences a space earthquake which decreases the efficiency of their anti-matter by 50%. This is quite impressive, really, since only recently their supply of anti-matter was zero point zero. Anyhoo, it was caused by some electromagnetic surge that originated beyond the solar system.
Percy and Marcus will have to solve the engine problem en route however because they’re on their way to Keres Station for a commission. The station administrator informs them that they are working with a lethal virus. A former employee, Quinnell, stole a vial of the virus enclosed in a security box. Their mission, should they decide to accept it, is to find Quinnell, recover the box, and return it to Keres Station – all without the authorities getting wind of the situation.
Travis recognizes Quinnell as a member of the Feder Clan of Raiders. They track him to Clarke Station and capture him easily while crapping, but not before he slips the box to a random stranger in the next stall – as you do in these circumstances.
The folks at Keres Station want Quinnell, but the box is more important. Largely because they’re afraid of their backers. They are funded by the Orchard, and they’re a bunch of humorless hard-noses that will kill them if they find out they blundered.
Quinnell has a secret scanner-proof transmitter and notifies his confederates on Clarke Station about the identity of the man who has the box – which they can presumably identify by Quinnell’s description of his ankles and perhaps a name tag stitched in his dropped trousers.
The fugitive steals a ship, and a chase is given by the Raiders, who conveniently encounter the Trans-Utopian because space isn’t really that big. (See also: how did an electromagnetic surge from another solar system arrive and affect this solar system so quickly.)
Travis and the gang make quick work of disabling the Raider ship and rescuing the guy with the box. They’re on to him, he’s just a punk kid, so they lock him up, too – after relieving him of the box.
Travis questions the Raider, who explains that he doesn’t know what the box contains but that it’s something big. Some of his clan discovered something was up, and they were killed for it. He infiltrated Keres to steal the box for the defense of his clan. This has the ring of truth to Travis, and he instructs Carrivagio to open the box.
Meanwhile, Marcus discovers the signature of negative energy, a theoretical thing that might be an enormous energy source and hold the secret of faster-than-light travel. He found the signature while studying the ongoing problem associated with the ship’s engines.
They also find the signature coming from the box.
Inside the box is a (sort of) flight data recorder showing information on the planet’s destruction in the other solar system, which, coincidentally, will destroy that entire solar system.
Travis takes them back to Keres station but makes some alternate plans. The folks at Keres don’t plan on letting the Trans-Utopian crew leave alive.
They get their money for delivering the box and Quinnell, then while the Keres people are trying to double-cross them, they use the secret transmitter to execute an escape plan, escaping with Quinnell. The box they returned was empty.
Keres Station is destroyed by the Orchard, and Travis and the gang contemplate whether or not the backers will pursue them.
Join John and Eugene as they journey to fantastical sights and dangers of the 24th century as we follow Logan’s Run. Episode Synopsis In the year 2319, 200 years after a devastating nuclear war, the people in the City of Domes live a perfect life. Perfect, that is until their 30th birthday. That day they ... Read more
John and Eugene take a look at what may be the last of Hollywood’s Pre-Star Wars Sci-Fi spectacles. It all changes after this one, folks. Synopsis The Domed City is a closed- oasis in a world destroyed by war. Logan 5 is one of the elite Sandmen who enforce the ultimate law of the Domed ... Read more
For some of us, Star Trek is where it started, and where Star Trek started was The Cage. To celebrate our 600th episode of Fusion Patrol, Simon and Eugene go where no podcast has ever gone before (I’m pretty sure about that claim, I couldn’t find any other podcasts that have ever taken a look ... Read more
It’s the sequel to the episode you couldn’t get enough of! Kenneth and Eugene discuss, Supermax Redux. Episode Synopsis Travis and Callie return to the Trans-Utopian with a prisoner. They’re carrying a crazy person who hears voices from the Quantum Federation in his ears, which he claims are technologically enhanced. He’s nuts, so they don’t ... Read more
Beauty is only skin deep, or so they say, so what’s a little plastic here and there? Grounds for murder, that’s what! Kenneth and Eugene discuss Skin Deep. Episode Synopsis An episode in two stories Leena’s tale. Back before Callie was in the military, she went to university, and there she knew a woman she ... Read more
“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 ... Read more
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, ... Read more
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. ... Read more
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 ... Read more
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 ... Read more