Last Chance
Biding their time until the next rescue attempt, the male members of the Britannia 7 crew use the station’s environment simulator to spend a day on the golf course, though they quickly discover that there are worse problems than trying to teach Mrs. Noah how to play, namely the computer-generated golf course which simulates things a little too perfectly, including sudden downpours. But Earth has worse news than that: a rescue plan has been devised which involves the crew bailing out of Britannia 7 and hang-gliding to Earth from the upper-atmosphere, a risky, never-before-tested escape method. Can Mrs. Noah really go home, or would it be better to remain in orbit?
written by Jeremy Lloyd & David Croft
directed by Bob Spiers
music by John Scott / theme song by David CroftCast: Mollie Sugden (Mrs. Noah), Ian Lavender (Clive Cunliffe), Donald Hewlett (Carstairs), Michael Knowles (Fanshaw), Tim Barrett (Garfield Hawk), Ann Michelle (Scarth Dare), Joe Black (Garstang), Jennifer Lonsdale (The Technician), Gorden Kaye (The Television Presenter), Jean Gilpin (2nd Technician)
Notes: This is the final episode of the series and, as painful as it is to admit, it beats Star Trek: The Next Generation to the holodeck concept by nearly a decade. Whatever points the show gains for anticipating that concept, a few can probably be deducted for the apparent confusion between a space station and a starship (since the station apparently has some form of interplanetary drive).
LogBook entry by Earl Green
In August 2010, Wikus Van De Merwe’s life changes forever. He is chosen to head up the effort by MNU to relocate a population of aliens to a new settlement. Since their ship appeared in 1982 in the sky over Johannesburg, South Africa, the aliens – generally known by the racial slur “prawn” – have been corraled into an inner city ghetto known as District 9. Johannesburg’s human residents have finally railed against the aliens enough that a very expensive and very risky resettlement has been undertaken. During the search of one alien residence in District 9, Wikus is exposed to some sort of seemingly makeshift biological weapon. Initially it only makes him nauseous, but within 36 hours of his exposure, he’s no longer entirely human. This is of particular interest to MNU, which is also one of the world’s largest arms dealers, and has long been frustrated by the inability of any human to use the aliens’ advanced weaponry. Wikus demonstrates – under duress – that he is the first human who can activate the aliens’ weapons. This makes him a hot property at MNU – though his employers now want to dissect him so they can corner the market on alien weapons, even if it means genetically re-engineering those who will wield them. Wikus is left with no choice but to escape, and now the only place where he has any hope of hiding is District 9 itself…but neither fully human nor fully alien, friends and allies will be hard to come by.