Categories
K-9 Season 1

Fear Itself

K-9Fear and panic grip London, as rioting and fires break out across the city. At the heart of it all is a battered old wardrobe hidden away in a warehouse, guarded by CCPCs and Inspector Drake. Darius is shoved into the wardrobe, and discovers that it’s bigger inside than out, with a seemingly bottomless pit where its floor should be. He escapes, and brings his friends back with K-9 – and they quickly find that Drake is as terrified of what’s in the wardrobe as they are. Drake is certain that there’s an alien inside the wardrobe, something causing irrational fear to ripple through the city. K-9 is determined to discover what’s hiding inside, but his investigation may only prove Drake right.

written by Everett DeRoche & Graeme Farmer
directed by Daniel Zwicky
music by Christopher Elves

Guest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake), Brian Vaughan (Tramp #1), Nick Neilo (Tramp #2)

Notes: The new K-9 has apparently added a tractor beam to his capabilities, and it sounds remarkably like a long phaser blast from the original Star Trek. Professor Gryffen mentions the Great Plague of 1665, an event which history says culminated in the Great Fire of London – but history seems to be unaware of the Doctor’s role in events. The wardrobe – bigger inside than out (though seemingly only in a vertical sense) – might be a TARDIS; Discuss it in our forumgiven the wardrobe’s resemblance to a certain sinister grandfather clock, could this be an experiment of the Master’s gone horribly wrong?

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
2000s Series Season 1 V

John May

V (2000s series)Erica, Ryan and Jack start making plans to rescue Georgie from the V mothership, where he is being interrogated following his capture. Hobbes is the lone holdout, feeling that Georgie’s best contribution to the resistance was to be a sacrifice and a diversion. Ryan tries to track down the original fifth column leader, John May, who he encountered ten years ago, and has to reveal to May’s son that his father’s suicide was a cover story. Ryan is making it his mission to find May to lead the resistance anew – but the only problem is that Anna is trying to find May at the same time so she can quash the resistance.

written by Gregg Hurwitz
directed by Jonathan Frakes
music by Marco Beltrami

Guest Cast: Michael Trucco (John May), Nicholas Lea (Joe Evans), David Richmond-Peck (Georgie), Charles Mesure (Kyle Hobbes), Christopher Shyer (Marcus), Mark Hildreth (Joshua), Jessica Parker Kennedy (Grace), Terry Chen (V Doctor), Brett Dier (James May), Oliver Gatske (young James), Erica Carroll (Lillie)

Notes: More SFTV alumni appear in front of and behind the cameras here, with Michael Trucco – late of Battlestar Galactica – appearing as John May, and Star Trek: The Next Generation actor/director Jonathan Frakes takes command of the action from behind the camera.

Categories
K-9 Season 1

Jaws Of Orthrus

K-9The Department’s plan to implant microchips into every citizen of London meets with a rowdy protest – one at which K-9 appears, fires on Drake (non-fatally), and causes even more very public commotion. Inspector Drake immediately applies for an arrest warrant for K-9, but Gryffen’s initial examination of K-9’s memory seems to show that K-9 didn’t attend the rally… and certainly didn’t do any shooting. But even K-9 himself finds the accusation disturbing, and prepares to turn himself in to the authorities, even though it’s almost surely an elaborate ploy on Drake’s part to dismantle the robot dog.

written by Lindsay James
directed by James Bogle
music by Christopher Elves

Discuss it in our forumGuest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake)

Note: Orthrus – K-9’s “evil twin” – is named after the treacherous twin brother of the mythical dog Cerberus in Greek mythology.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Clone Wars Season 2

Death Trap

The Clone WarsA group of green clone cadets is brought aboard the Endurance for training, but among them is young Boba Fett, still seeking revenge for his father’s death in the Battle of Geonosis. With help from someone at the other end of a communicator, he sneaks away from the cadets’ tour of the ship to plant a bomb in Mace Windu’s quarters. But the next person to set foot through that door is a trooper, not Windu himself. Boba’s next instructions from his contact are even more severe: blow the engine reactor core. He accomplishes this, crippling the Endurance, which slowly falls toward the planet Varquon. The cadets are ordered to head to the escape pods while the rest of the crew prepares to abandon ship, except for Admiral Kilian, who stubbornly stays at his post even when Windu and Anakin order him to leave with them. Boba intentionally damages the pod he’s in so it drifts off course, away from the rest of the cadets and evacuees, to be found by his contacts: Aurra Sing and Bossk, flying the ship that once belonged to his father. They recover Boba but set the three cadets with him adrift again.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Doug Petrie
directed by Steward Lee
music by Kevin Kiner / original Star Wars themes by John Williams

Star Wars: The Clone WarsCast: Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Daniel Logan (Boba Fett / Clone Cadets), Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Troopers / Clone Cadet Jax), Terrence Carson (Mace Windu), Jaime King (Aurra Sing), Julian Holloway (Admiral Kilian), Tom Kane (Narrator)

Notes: Daniel Logan also played young Boba Fett in that character’s live action appearance in Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. He also played a role in an episode of the fan series Star Trek Continues.

Jedi Fortune Cookie: “Who my father was matters less than my memory of him.”

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 05

Victory Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is summoned to wartime London during the Blitz. None other than Winston Churchill himself has called the Doctor for help, but with the TARDIS’ unreliability, it’s taken the Doctor a month to answer that call – and in the meantime, Churchill has turned elsewhere for help in the war effort. Professor Bracewell has designed mobile war machines of immense power, capable of picking off German bombing formations before a single bomb can be dropped. Bracewell and Churchill call them “Ironsides,” but the Doctor knows them all too well as the last remaining Daleks – and he’s puzzled that Amy can’t remember ever having seen a Dalek, even after Earth was invaded by them. But these Daleks insist that they are soldiers, here to protect Britain from the Germans. In order to get them to reveal their true plan, the Doctor will have to do something very dangerous indeed: provoke the Daleks into showing their true, deadly colors.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Andrew Gunn
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Ian McNeice (Churchill), Bill Paterson (Bracewell), Nina de Cosimo (Blanche), Tim Wallers (Childers), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 1), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 2), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Susanah Fielding (Lilian), James Albrecht (Todd), Colin Prockter (Air Raid Warden)

Victory Of The DaleksNotes: This isn’t the first time that the Daleks have pretended to be servants of the human race; they launched a very similar scheme in the future on Vulcan, a human colony planet, in the first Patrick Troughton story, Power Of The Daleks; incidentally, their aim there was also to power up the production line on a new race of Daleks. Churchill says that the Doctor has changed his face “again,” which implies that he’s met at least two of the Doctor’s previous incarnations, though we don’t know which ones. This marks the first new series reference to the Doctor’s TARDIS being a Type 40 model (a statistic dating back to the original series, first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin during Tom Baker’s reign), as well as the first new series reference to the Daleks’ time corridor technology (Resurrection Of The Daleks).

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
K-9 Season 1

Dream-Eaters

K-9Starkey, Jorjie and Darius all experience vivid, disturbing dreams of being pursued by Jixen, of K-9 turning against them, being surrounded by sinister clowns, and of being captured and goaded by a strange creature. And they’re not alone: all of London is sleeping and having similar nightmares, but no one can wake up. Jorjie ventures out into the city and returns quickly when the creature about whom they’ve all dreamed appears. Gryffen confirms that this being is no hallucination: it’s very real. Is this a new alien attack that has overpowered the Department’s defenses, or is someone from the Department involved?

written by Jim Noble
Discuss it in our forumdirected by Daniel Nettheim
music by Christopher Elves

Guest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
2000s Series Season 1 V

We Can’t Win

V (2000s series)The resistance movement is in chaos: drawn out into the open by the “John May lives” message, members of the Fifth Column within the Visitors’ own ranks are slaughtered. The human resistance leaders’ lives are in disarray: Erica’s son Tyler, having learned that the man he grew up with is not his real father, loses his faith in both of his parents and flees to the Visitors’ mothership with Lisa. Ryan’s pregnant wife is on the run after learning that the baby she’s expecting isn’t entirely human, but if the Visitors find her, there will be no safe place for her. And on the Visitors’ ship, Lisa – Anna’s own daughter – fails the loyalty test Anna has devised to weed out defectors among her own people. But as Erica discovers, there are also humans willing to sell out their own kind.

written by Christine Roum & Cameron Litvack
directed by David Barrett
music by Marco Beltrami

Guest Cast: Charles Mesure (Kyle Hobbes), Ty Olsson (Jeffrey), Christopher Shyer (Marcus), Mark Hildreth (Joshua), Lexa Doig (Dr. Pearlman), Roark Critchlow (Paul Kendrick), Rekha Sharma (Agent Sarita Malik), Lucas Wolf (Samuel), Ernesto Griffith (Secretary-General), Ken Camroux-Taylor (Victor Caruso), Nicholas Carella (Alex Caruso)

Categories
K-9 Season 1

Curse Of Anubis

K-9An unknown object approaching Earth gets the Department’s attention, and Inspector Drake’s first instinct is to blow it out of the sky. When it disappears before he can unleash all of the Department’s firepower on it, it’s assumed to be a meteor. But K-9, Starkey and Jorjie, out for a walk, see an enormous, pyramid-like spacecraft appear in the sky, while soldiers dressed as ancient Egyptian gods appear out of nowhere, with enough firepower of their own to overpower CCPCs. When the alien soldiers move to take Starkey prisoner, K-9 intervenes… and is promptly worshipped as a god. The soldiers even follow K-9 back to Professor Gryffen’s home, where they begin redecorating the lab as a shrine, supposedly to help jog K-9’s memory. Gryffen begins to worship K-9 as well. Starkey and Jorjie discover more about the aliens’ true plan, but then they are captured and brainwashed into serving K-9’s every whim. Only Darius remains unchanged… and now saving the world is up to him.

written by
directed by Karl Zwicky
music by Christopher Elves

Guest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake), Michael Turaine (Nehebka), Matthew Reimer (Geb), Todd Levi (voice of Nehebka), Josh Norbido (CCPC), Jason McNamara (CCPC), Eugen Bekaford (CCPC), Dane Paltman (CCPC), Stephen Sourkis (Dept. Technician)

Notes: In Egyptian mythology, Anubis was edged out by the god Set (who, in some interpretations of the mythology, was Anubis’ father) as the Egyptian god of the underworld. Set was also known as Sutekh. Sutekh figures into Doctor Who mythology as the last of the alien Osirans, godlike beings who occupied the planet Mars until internecine conflict wiped out most of their race. Sutekh survived long enough to be defeated by the fourth Doctor in Pyramids Of Mars, though the Egyptian mythology elements in this episode appear to be a coincidence. In the scene where Jorjie and Starkey look at the book containing the Anubins’ history, two aliens from classic Doctor Who episodes can very clearly be seen: Alpha Centauri (The Curse Of Peladon / The Monster Of Peladon) and a Sea Devil (The Sea Devils / Warriors Of The Deep). If the notion of an alien playing the role of an Egyptian god, hovering over Earth in a pyramid ship, isn’t familiar to you, you probably haven’t watched enough Stargate SG-1 – a show in which K-9 star (and Canadian actor) Robert Moloney has also appeared.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Clone Wars Season 2 Star Wars

R2 Come Home

The Clone WarsAnakin and Windu land their fighters near the crash site of the Endurance and enter the wreckage on foot (with their respective astromech droids following close behind). When they encounter the bodies of clone troopers amid the debris, it’s clear that they’re not crash victims, but the targets of execution-style killings. No survivors are found on the ship’s bridge, but a calling card of sorts is – the helmet of Jango Fett, Boba’s father. Windu puts the clues together and realizes that this is a personal vendetta – and saves Anakin with split-second timing and the Force when the helmet turns out to be the trigger for another bomb. On the surface, the droids run afoul of wild Gundarks, and only Artoo survives. Artoo finds Anakin and Windu pinned in the debris from the bomb explosion, and Anakin orders the droid to return to his fighter and summon help from the Jedi Temple. But as Artoo sets out, he detects another problem: Aurra Sing, Boba Fett, and a hired gun are coming to gather proof of the Jedi’s death – unless the intrepid droid can stop them without bringing the rest of Endurance’s wreckage down on the survivors.

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Eoghan Mahony
directed by Giancarlo Volpe
music by Kevin Kiner / original Star Wars themes by John Williams

Star Wars: The Clone WarsCast: Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Terrence Carson (Mace Windu), Jaime King (Aurra Sing), Daniel Logan (Boba Fett), Robin Atkin Downes (Castas), Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Troopers / Bossk), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), James Arnold Taylor (Plo Koon), Tom Kane (Narrator)

Notes: This is the only instance in either film or television Star Wars that Fett’s ship is ever called Slave I on screen. Though the ship had been associated with that name in marketing and merchandising dating back to The Empire Strikes Back (1980), it had never been called by that name on-screen until this episode.

Jedi Fortune Cookie: “Adversity is a friendship’s truest test.”

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 05

Time Of The Angels

Doctor WhoAn artifact in a museum catches the Doctor’s eye: a message is written in the Old High Gallifreyan language on its surface, a message in an extinct language meant just for him. The message leads him to a set of coordinates in time and space where he has seconds to rescue River Song after she ejects herself from an airlock aboard the starship Byzantium – a ship she still wants to follow. When the TARDIS next materializes, it’s on an alien planet where the Byzantium has crashed, killing all aboard… all except for a lone Weeping Angel. The Doctor only has moments to bring Amy up to speed on the Angel’s deadly abilities, but it’s already wreaking havoc. And as the Doctor and Amy join River’s expedition to board the Byzantium and destroy the Angel, it soon becomes apparent that it is the expedition that’s outnumbered.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Adam Smith
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Alex Kingston (River Song), Simon Dutton (Alistair), Mike Skinner (Security Guard), Iain Glen (Octavian), Mark Springer (Christian), Troy Glasgow (Angelo), David Atkins (Bob), Darren Morfitt (Marco)

Time Of The AngelsNotes: River Song returns in this episode; Silence In The Library and Forest Of The Dead are still in her future, but have already happened for the Doctor (in his tenth incarnation). She has, however, seen pictures of all of the Doctor’s faces. The Weeping Angels make their first appearance since season 3’s Hugo-winning Blink; along with Silence / Forest, Blink was written by Steven Moffat as a freelance writer during Russell T. Davies’ tenure as showrunner. The Old High Gallifreyan language was first mentioned in 1983’s The Five Doctors; all of the Doctor’s incarnations have been fluent in it, and presumably he passed that knowledge along to River Song; even upon its first mention in 1983, it’s implied that the language had fallen into infrequent use even among the Time Lords themselves.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
K-9 Season 1

Oroborus

K-9Professor Gryffen’s dimensional gateway activates by itself, something which should be impossible; before forcing it to shut down with brute-force firepower, K-9 is able to determine that an outside power source is the cause. Strange jumps in time begin occurring, but only Starkey notices them. An inflamed area on Starkey’s arm also begins to itch, and a blood test reveals alien matter causing Starkey’s immune system to go into overdrive. Gryffen recognizes the alien material, remembering an incident in which a couple of scientists implanted themselves – and their young son – with alien DNA. The dimensional gateway reactivates, and Starkey remembers how to close it again, but this isn’t a new incident: it’s the same incident repeating itself… but only K-9 believes him.

written by Deborah Parsons
directed by Daniel Nettheim
music by Christopher Elves

Guest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
2000s Series Season 1 V

Heretic’s Fork

V (2000s series)Ryan has killed one of his own to help his pregnant human wife escape the Visitors’ clutches, alerting Anna to the presence of a hybrid child. Fearful of a Visitor with the “weakness” of human emotions, she wants Ryan, his wife and their child killed. Erica, Hobbes and Jack find their new prisoner extremely unhelpful; once she discovers that he’s got the names and addresses of Fifth Column members living in secret on Earth, Erica authorizes Hobbes to use whatever means are necessary to get more information. Anna’s willing to take extreme measures to accomplish her goal as well, even if it means unleashing her elite troops on a planet that stands no chance of repelling them.

written by John Wirth & Angela Russo Otstot
directed by Frederick E.O. Toye
music by Marco Beltrami

Guest Cast: Charles Mesure (Kyle Hobbes), Ty Olsson (Jeffrey), Christopher Shyer (Marcus), Mark Hildreth (Joshua), Lexa Doig (Dr. Pearlman), Roark Critchlow (Paul Kendrick), Phil Granger (Henry Thompson), Sarah-Jane Redmond (Sarah Thompson)

LogBook entry written by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories The Audio Dramas

Point Of Entry

Doctor Who: Point Of EntryA strange, scream-like signal from a rogue asteroid leads the Doctor to send a response, which only has the effect of making the asteroid stop and change course toward the TARDIS. To avoid a colliskion, the Doctor dematerializes the TARDIS and arrives in 16th century London, where the strange screaming sound can still be heard. The Doctor and Peri find themselves at a nearby inn with none other than playwright Christopher Marlowe, who is sorting through strange – and possibly unearthly – ideas for a play about Dr. Faustus. Marlowe has been consorting with a Spaniard named Velez, rarely seen in public due to his skin’s habit of falling away from his skeleton, and claims that Velez has shown him the secrets of astral projection, giving him glimpses of unearthly events that now inspire his work. The Doctor suspects that Velez is putting Marlowe under some unearthly influence, and tries to cast doubt on Marlowe’s reliability as a spy for the British government. The accusation only lands the Doctor in the Tower of London, while Peri and one of Marlowe’s actors try to free the playwright from the influence of Velez. When they learn that Velez draws his power from blood sacrifices, they become fast candidates to be Velez’ next victim.

Order this CDwritten by Barbara Clegg & Marc Platt
directed by John Ainsworth
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Matt Addis (Kit Marlowe), Luis Soto (Velez), Sean Connolly (Iguano / Captain Garland), Tam Williams (Tom), Gemma Wardle (Alys), Ian Brooker (Sir Francis Walsingham)

Notes: Marlowe was a contemporary of Shakespeare, though Shakespeare did his most famous works after Marlowe’s peak of popularity, so there are probably no other Doctors around to hear the ominous screaming sound (The Shakespeare Code, City Of Death). In real life, Marlowe’s second career as a British spy has never been confirmed (or, for that matter, officially denied), but is strongly inferred from Marlowe’s extensive travels, which could not have been paid for on a writer’s wage, even with the patronage of the Queen herself. The latter part of the Latin phrase “ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus,” translated in the closing scenes as “where the philosopher leaves off, the doctor begins,” is more accurately translated “the physician begins,” a reference to Marlowe’s character of Dr. Faustus rather than to a certain Time Lord. Point Of Entry was written by Barbara Clegg (Enlightenment) for season 23, and even after the fiasco precipitated by Michael Grade’s attempt to cancel the series, she was asked to rework it back into the more familiar four-25-minute-episode format. When the Trial Of A Time Lord structure was devised, Point Of Entry and other scripts under development were scrapped.

Timeline: after Paradise Five and before Song Of The Megaptera

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

City Of Spires

Doctor Who: City Of SpiresThe Doctor returns to Scotland, finding history changed. The Jacobite uprising has lasted far longer than history records, and the oil well has been developed far ahead of schedule. Someone has begun stripping Scotland of its natural resources, and the fight for freedom is as bloody as ever, decades after it should have ended. Even more surprisingly, after encountering both British occupiers and Scottish freedom fighters, the Doctor is brought before the leader of the Scottish rebellion, Black Donald – a man the Doctor knows as Jamie McCrimmon. Naturally, thanks to the Time Lords wiping Jamie’s memories, Jamie has no idea who this incarnation of the Doctor is. All he knows is the ongoing fight to free his homeland from the domination of the Redcaps and their Overlord. Once Rob Roy turns up in the same time zone – decades before he should even be alive – the Doctor is determined to find out who’s playing fast and loose with human history. But with no idea of who this oddly-dressed English interloper is, Jamie McCrimmon isn’t sure who to trust.

Order this CDwritten by Simon Bovey
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Georgia Moffett (Alice), Richard Earl (Victor), James Albrecht (Major Heyward), Russell Floyd (Sergeant Rilke), Sam Graham (Guthrie), Charlie Ross (Rob), John Banks (Red Cap)

Notes: Jamie has met the sixth Doctor before – in 1985’s television adventure The Two Doctors
but something seems to be preventing him from remembering that collision of the Doctor’s second and sixth incarnations… or, indeed, of ever meeting the second Doctor.

Timeline: after Blue Forgotten Planet and before Wreck Of The Titan

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
K-9 Season 1

Alien Avatar

K-9Starkey tries to take K-9 fishing, only to find that the fish are apparently frying of their own accord, covered with an unknown substance. Starkey brings a sample back to Gryffen’s lab, where it’s identified as an alien substance. Inspector Turner makes a similar finding: Inspector Drake is holding an alien spacecraft, and has authorized extreme measures to get its crew to reveal the technology aboard. When she deduces that Drake is working on turning the alien technology into a surveillance device of unlimited range, Inspector Turner decides that even the Department shouldn’t have that kind of power, and turns to Gryffen and K-9 for help.

written by Graeme Farmer
directed by Karl Zwicky
music by Christopher Elves

Guest Cast: Robyn Moore (Inspector June Turner), Connor Van Vuuren (Drake)

Notes: Starkey reveals that K-9 has 5,000 movies “on his hard drive,” which accounts for the casual, colloquial speech of this K-9 model. (It’s possible that Starkey’s just guessing about the hard drive and doesn’t have a better technical term to explain K-9’s memory.

LogBook entry by Earl Green