Day: November 23, 2005

Categories
Lost Season 2

Collision

  • By Dave
  • November 23, 2005

LostFlashback: Ana Lucia returns to the Los Angeles police force four months after being involved in a shooting. Her captain – also her mother – wants to ease her back into active duty with a desk job, but Ana Lucia demands to go back on patrol. When she reacts to a minor disturbance by drawing her weapon, her partner is concerned. At the precinct, her mother tells Ana Lucia that they have a suspect who has confessed to shooting her. Ana Lucia refuses to identify the suspect, so the police have to release him. Not long after, Ana Lucia follows him out from a bar and calls his name. When he turns around, she tells him, “I was pregnant” – right before firing several shots into him.

The Island: Eko knocks out an enraged Sayid before he can attack Ana Lucia. She ties him up and orders everyone to stay put. But the other survivors are getting restless and a little afraid of Ana. Eko brings Sawyer to the beach, where he finds Jack. Inside the bunker, Locke introduces himself to Eko while Jack and Kate try to help Sawyer. Ana Lucia tells Michael to go back to the camp and bring her supplies so she can head off into the jungle herself. Bernard and Libby decide to return to the beach with Jin. When Sayid wakes up, Ana Lucia tells him how the man who shot her claimed to be reaching for his ID. She believed him long enough for him to fire four rounds. She asks Sayid if she should kill him, and Sayid wonders what would be the point of either of them getting killed at this point. With Sawyer stabilized, Jack is ready to run off into the jungle armed to find the others . . . until Eko tells him the name of the woman who shot Shannon.

Order the DVDswritten by Javier Grillo-Marxuach & Leonard Dick
directed by Stephen Williams
music by Michael Giacchino

Guest Cast:Francois Chau (Dr. Marvin Candle), L. Scott Caldwell (Rose), Sam Anderson (Bernard), Michael Cudlitz (Big Mike), Mark Gilbert (Detective Raggs), Rick Overton (Matthew Reed), Aaron Gold (Jason Elder), Matt Moore (Travis), Jeanna Garcia (Shawna), Rand Wilson (Assistant D.A.)

Notes: Maggie Grace (Shannon)’s credit was changed to “Special Guest Star” in this episode.

LogBook entry by Dave Thomer

Categories
Invasion

The Dredge

InvasionObsessed with what she saw in the water – her own body, decomposing – Mariel demands that her husband and his deputies begin dredging the water to find what she saw. She’s just about to speak about her unnerving experience at one of the hurricane survivors’ support group meetings at the church when she spots Dave wandering in the door, and abruptly shuts up. Dave later visits Mariel at the hospital, apologizing for making her feel uncomfortable and promising that he’s not there to spy on her for Russell. Russell, in the meantime, abruptly ends a romantic picnic with Larkin when he sees one of the ponds in his jurisdiction has been poisoned. Russell barges into the nearby home of a known drug dealer and accuses him of dumping poison in the park; when the dealer’s wife draws a gun, Russell manages to get it away from her and holds both of them at gunpoint. A horrified Larkin calls the police, and after they arrest the dealer, Larkin looks into Russell’s past, and finds a criminal record with far darker secrets than she ever expected to find there, calling their trust and their relationship into question. And when Russell performs a necropsy on a poisoned alligator he recovers from the pond, he realizes that everything in the pond died as the result of something far more exotic than the manufacture of drugs.

Order this DVDwritten by Jill Blotevogel and Reed Steiner
directed by Michael Nankin
music by Jon Ehrlich & Jason Derlatka

Guest Cast: Ivar Brogger (Father Scanlon), Nathan Baesel (Sirk), Jeff Doucette (Bob Hemming), Meera Simhan (Connie / Pria), Ron Butler (Coroner), Leigh Kelly (Carla Hemming), Joyce Fessides (Woman in church), Rocky Carroll (Healy), James Carraway (Roger Weeks), Anthony Richardson (Scuba diver)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Phase II / New Voyages Star Trek Star Trek Fan Films

To Serve All My Days

Star Trek: Phase II

This is an episode of a fan-made series whose storyline may be invalidated by later official studio productions.

Stardate 6031.2: Bringing Ambassador Rayna Morgan to the Enterprise from Babel via shuttlepod, Chekov has to do some fancy flying to avoid a Klingon warship. The Enterprise arrives just in time, but Captain Kirk and Captain Kargh only exchange a volley of words in this battle. A later visit to engineering puts Chekov in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he receives what should be a nearly lethal dose of radiation, though Dr. McCoy is startled to see no ill effects – at least at first. A day later, Chekov has aged 25 years, and McCoy can find no way to stop his rapid aging. A ship which appears to be a Klingon battlecruiser attacks the Enterprise, doing serious damage, and Kirk finds himself on the brink of plunging the Federation into war – and his best weapons officer is marching inexorably toward death’s door.

Watch Itwritten by D.C. Fontana
director not credited (most likely Erik J. Goodrich)
music by Patrick Phillips

Cast: James Cawley (Captain Kirk), Jeffery Scott (Mr. Spock), John Kelley (Dr. McCoy), Walter Koenig (Chekov), Mary-Linda Rapelye (Ambassador Rayna Morgan), John Carrigan (Captain Kargh), Andy Bray (Lt. Chekov), Julienne Irons (Lt. Uhura), John Lim (Lt. Cmdr. Sulu), Charles Root (Cmdr. Scott), Ron Boyd (Lt. DeSalle), Shannon Giles (Nurse Chapel), Jeff Mailhotte (Sentell), Jay Storey (Lt. Kyle), Giovanna Contini (Ensign Carr), Mari Okumara (Yeoman Okuda), David Dufrane (Cadet), Tim Brazeal (Klingon 1), Kent Schmidt (Klingon 2), Larry Nemecek (Esterion), James Lowe, Debbie Mailhotte, John Whiting, Patrick Cleveland, Linda Cleveland, Amanda Root, Steve LeClerc, Chris Lunderman, Jessie Mailhotte, Anne Carrigan (Federation Ambassadors), Ed Abbate, Ron M. Gates, Michael Struck, Ian Peters, Nathan Gastineau, Riva Gijanto, Steve LeClerc, Danielle Porter, Ralph Miller, Max Kiserman, Michael Tavares, Jerry Storey, Paul Seiber (Starfleet Personnel)

Notes: The shuttle piloted by Chekov is the Archer, and it’s pursued by a Klingon vessel seen in Star Trek: Enterprise and identified there as a Klingon Warbird; though it resembles the Bird of Prey, there are significant differences, and it could conceivably still be in service by the fourth year of Kirk’s original mission (after all, the D7 cruiser is still around in the 24th century). Chekov came into contact with the rapid aging virus in The Deadly Years; when reminiscing about his younger days, he refers to events in The Apple and Spectre Of The Gun. Guest player Tim Brazeal headed the controversial TrekUnited.com movement, which tried to raise enough money to convince Paramount to produce a fifth season of Star Trek: Enterprise, while Larry Nemecek is the author of such books as the “Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion.”

Review: In the New Voyages gang’s third outing (or second, depending on how sacred you hold their insistence that Come What May has been jettisoned from their canon), there’s some all-star help on hand – Walter Koenig reprises the role of Chekov, and D.C. Fontana does the honors as the writer of his return engagement. It’s a marked departure from previous New Voyages installments in that character development and internal drama are very much to the fore, rather than the admittedly neat spectacle of “wow, we’re restarting and updating original Trek!” Sure, there are some extravagant special effects sequences (the opening chase with the Klingon ship, even with its slightly anachronistic proto-Bird of Prey from the Star Trek: Enterprise era, is a dazzling piece for a fan production), but at the story’s heart are a mystery and a character story which would’ve done a production of any budget level proud.

Categories
Remake Series 1 Survivors

Episode 1

Survivors (1970s series)A routine day in Abby Grant’s cozy world starts to unravel slowly. Her son is away with friends as news of an unprecedented virulent flu outbreak grips the UK. As news – and evidence – of the spreading flu worsens, some people grow panicked while others sink into their own oblivion. Abby falls ill and her husband desperately tries to nurse her back to health while the medical and emergency services are overwhelmed. Convicted killer Tom Price sees the spreading sickness as an opportunity to shorten his 20+ year sentence, while millionaire playboy Al Sadiq ignores the news as best he can…until he wakes up in his penthouse, his latest conquest having died of the virus overnight. The virus isn’t limited to England, and soon modern conveniences are a thing of the past. Power stations and other critical services are disrupted because the people manning them have died. Overnight, the human race is reduced to foraging for its survival.

It’s into this world that Abby awakens three days after she falls ill. Her husband has died in that time, as has everyone in her neighborhood. With phone service gone, she has no way to check on her son, and so she sets out to find him. Along the way, she runs into Greg Preston, who seems to have very clear ideas on what he’ll have to do to survive, and has stocked up on fuel, food and other necessities. They soon encounter more survivors, including a disheartened doctor named Anya Raczynski, and the unlikely pair of Al Sadiq and an 11-year-old orphan, Najid. Tom Price, having murdered his last surviving jailer to escape, is also a survivor – though no one yet knows what he is capable of.

written by Adrian Hodges
based on the novel by Terry Nation
directed by John Alexander
music by Edmund Butt

Cast: Julie Graham (Abby Grant), Shaun Dingwall (David Grant), Joanne Rowden (Linda Pope), Matt Lanigan (Joe Pope), Freema Agyeman (Jenny Walsh), Amber Herod (Tina Styles), Guy Hargreaves (Mr. Styles), Christine Anderson (Marion Sturges), Max Beesley (Tom Price), Tim Dantay (Gary Wilson), Joe Jacobs (Tony Coyne), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Samantha Willis), Jamie Belman (Mark Carter), Flo Wilson (Helen Crawley), Trevor Dwyer-Lynch (Driver at petrol station), Phillip Rhys (Aalim “Al” Sadiq), Sophia Di Martino (Simone), Bryony Afferson (Patricia Kelly), Zoe Tapper (Anya Raczynski), Hazel Cadman (Hospital Receptionist), Ian Champion (Journalist 1), Sagar Arya (Journalist 2), Tom Lloyd-Roberts (Sir Brian Tilston), Geoffrey Kirkness (General Mike Stone), Rohit Gokani (Najid’s Father), Chahak Patel (Najid Harif), Francis Magee (Callum Brown), Robert Boulter (Neil), Sophie McShera (Cathy), Paterson Joseph (Greg Preston), Jimmy Allen (Man at petrol station), Nicholas Gleaves (Whitaker), Ronny Jhutti (Sami Masood)

Notes: Though it’s the equivalent of The Fourth Horseman, the first episode of the original Survivors series, this untitled pilot of the new series subtracts and adds numerous characters and changes many of the details in the name of modernizing the story. Oddly, the writers’ credit for the pilot only credits Survivors creator Terry Nation for his novel, which was in fact a novelization of the original series; as such, writer and executive producer Adrian Hodges is credited as the show’s creator. Both Shaun Dingwall and Freema Agyeman had recently appeared in Doctor Who, and much was made of their appearances in Survivors, though neither of their characters survive this episode; Paterson Joseph – who had appeared in the first season finale of the new Doctor Who – was also a hot topic as Survivors premiered, as many considered him a likely contender for the role of the Doctor, which David Tennant had recently announced he would be vacating. Another Doctor Who universe veteran prominent in the first season is Nikki Amuka-Bird, who also appeared in the second season of Torchwood.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
1st Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories The Audio Dramas

The Fragile Yellow Arc Of Fragrance

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara prepare to leave the planet Fragrance, where they’ve enjoyed a pleasant, uneventful stay. One of the locals, however, has fallen in love with Barbara, and he tries to work up the nerve to ask her to remain on Fragrance instead of leaving with the TARDIS. Susan learns of the two phases or love on Fragrance – the thin purple line, and the fragile yellow arc – and also learns that the people of Fragrance ritually end their lives if they are turned down by the objects of their affection. Susan is sure that this is merely a metaphor, but when Barbara turns down the advances of her suitor and the time travelers leave aboard the TARDIS, it’s discovered to be tragically literal.

written by Moris Farhi
adapted for audio by Nigel Robinson
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Toby Hrycek-Robinson

Cast: William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman), John Dorney (Rhythm)

Notes: The Fragile Yellow Arc Of Fragrance is an “audition” script written Moris Farhi for Doctor Who script editor David Whitaker as proof that he was capable of delivering a filmable script, though it really seems to be either a stand-alone that begins in mid story, or the last episode of a multi-episode story. Along with Farewell, Great Macedon, Arc is a lost script unearthed by Moris Farhi at the request of the editors of the semi-pro-zine Nothing At The End Of The Lane in the 21st century, as they were following up on reports that Farhi had written scripts for both Doctor Who and The Prisoner (all of which were ultimately turned down). Big Finish adapted the stories for audio and produced them with surviving cast members Carole Ann Ford and William Russell – the first time the actors had reprised the roles of Susan and Ian in the same audio production.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Day Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoIn the waning days of the Time War, the Doctor tires of the constant fighting and bloodshed. He breaks into the Time Lords’ Omega Archives, containing forbidden Gallifreyan superweapons (most of which have already been unsuccessfully deployed against the Daleks). He takes the Moment, a galaxy-devouring weapon of mass destruction which has never been used because its sentient operating system has developed its own conscience, and will stand in judgement over whoever might try to use it. The Doctor abandons his TARDIS and sets off on foot to a bombed-out structure in the wastelands of outer Gallifrey, fully intending to activate the Moment and end the war. He’s puzzled when a young woman appears suddenly and refuses to leave: this is the Moment’s conscience, ready to try to dissuade its operator. It has chosen the appearance and voice of one of the Doctor’s companions, but has gotten past and future mixed up. The Moment offers to show the Doctor what will happen to him after he destroys Gallifrey…

Clara, having taken a job at Coal Hill School, gets a message from the Doctor and sets out to find the TARDIS. Moments after the time travelers are reunited, the TARDIS lurches unexpectedly, thanks to the UNIT helicopter that has grappled it and is hauling it toward the center of London. With the TARDIS now relocated to the National Gallery, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart shows the Doctor why UNIT need his expertise: a number of paintings, exhibiting an unusual three-dimensional effect, have had their glass frames broken from within; all of the paintings also once had humanoid figures in them, but those figures are now missing. Before the Doctor can investigate, a time fissure appears in mid-air in the Gallery, and he leaps through it, finding himself face-to-face with his tenth incarnation, who is dealing with a shapeshifting Zygon attempting to impersonate Queen Elizabeth I. And moments later, both Doctors are stunned – and alarmed – when another of their incarnations emerges from the fissure: an older man who does not regard himself as the Doctor. This is the incarnation of the Doctor who fought in the Time War, ending it in a pyrrhic stalemate that wiped out both the Time Lords and the Daleks, the incarnation that the later Doctors refuse to acknowledge; the Doctor’s true ninth life. The Queen orders all three of them taken away to the Tower of London.

In the modern day, the Tower is now UNIT’s headquarters, and the home of the Black Archive, a top secret repository of captured alien technology that would rival Torchwood’s collection. Kate and Clara return to the Tower, but it’s not until she is trapped in the Archive that Clara realizes that Kate has already been kidnapped and replaced by a Zygon. Grabbing a portable time manipulator that UNIT once took off of the briefly-dead body of a man named Captain Jack Harkness, Clara makes her escape, travels back to the past and rescues the three Doctors as well. The Doctors manage to thwart the Zygon invasion, but then the Doctor from the Time War vanishes. The tenth and eleventh Doctors follow him back to Gallifrey’s past – a place and time that the TARDIS shouldn’t be able to visit – and offer to help him activate the Moment so he doesn’t have to bear the consequences alone.

But the Doctor’s later incarnations, having struggled with the remorse of this act for hundreds of years, take the unprecedented decision to change history: save Gallifrey while allowing the Daleks to be destroyed, without interrupting their own timeline. But to save the Time Lords, more Doctors will be required – perhaps even Doctors who have yet to exist – and Gallifrey will have to be forcibly relocated, possibly into a parallel universe, leading to the impression that it has been destroyed. And even the Doctors’ attempt to save their home planet may still lead to its destruction.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), David Tennant (The Doctor), Christopher Eccleston (The Doctor), John Hurt (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Peter Davison (The Doctor), Tom Baker (The Doctor), Jon Pertwee (The Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), William Hartnell (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Billie Piper (Rose), Tristan Beint (Tom), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Ingrid Oliver (Osgood), Chris Finch (Time Lord Soldier), Peter de Jersey (Androgar), Ken Bones (The General), Philip Buck (Arcadia Father), Sophie Morgan-Price (Time Lord), Joanna Page (Elizabeth I), Orlando James (Lord Bentham), Jonjo O’Neill (McGillop), Tom Keller (Atkins), Aidan Cook (Zygon), Paul Kasey (Zygon), Nicholas Briggs (voices of the Daleks and Zygons), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), John Guilor (Voice Over Artist)

Doctor WhoNotes: The War Council shouldn’t be surprised at all that the Doctor can access the Omega Archives; his seventh incarnation was shown to be in possession of Time Lord superweapons that had presumably been with him for quite some time (Remembrance Of The Daleks‘ Hand of Omega and the living metal validium from Silver Nemesis, both aired in 1988). The Moment, first mentioned in The End Of Time Part 2 (2010), most closely resembles validium, but the Nemesis statue carved from validium had no obvious sign of a conscience, but did show signs of sentience.

The Zygons, though a popular monster in Doctor Who fandom, have only been seen in one prior television adventure, the Tom Baker era four-parter Terror Of The Zygons Doctor Who(1975), though they have reappeared in novels and numerous times in the eighth Doctor’s audio adventures, and even have their own action figure – not bad for a one-off villain.

This story seems to necessitate a reshuffling of the Doctor’s playlist: the incarnation commonly believed to be the ninth Doctor is actually the tenth, the tenth Doctor is actually the eleventh, and the current incarnation played by Matt Smith is actually the twelfth. This means that the incarnation to be portrayed by Peter Capaldi – glimpsed very briefly in the scene in which all of the Doctors rush to Gallifrey’s rescue – is the Doctor’s thirteenth and final life… unless, of course, the Doctor has somehow used up another regeneration somehow.

Asthmatic UNIT scientist Osgood may or may not be related to Sergeant Osgood, who served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in The Daemons (1971). UNIT’s Black Archive was Doctor Whoestablished in the Brigadier’s final televised appearance, in the Sarah Jane Adventures two-parter Enemy Of The Bane, though it was not in the Tower of London at that time, meaning that the Black Archive has either been moved, or has a decentralized series of locations. Voice artist John Guilor, who had already provided the voice of the first Doctor in bonus features for the DVD release of 1964’s Planet Of Giants, reprised that voice for the every-incarnation-of-the-Doctor climax.

Whether you consider his final appearance to have occurred in 1981’s Logopolis or the 1993 charity special Dimensions In Time, this episode marks Tom Baker’s first appearance in new footage in Doctor Whotelevised Doctor Who in a very long time; the exact nature of his character is left extremely vague.

One day after its premiere unfolded simultaneously in 94 countries, The Day Of The Doctor and its production team were awarded the Guinness World Record for the most widely watched non-news, non-sports drama presentation in the history of the medium of television.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green