Category: Original UK Series

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Eleventh Hour Original UK Series

Resurrection

Eleventh HourA police chase leads police to a field of buried fetuses, each of them wrapped in a cloth tied shut with a crucifix necklace. A government science troubleshooter, Dr. Ian Hood, arrives on the scene and discovers that all of the fetuses have exactly the same DNA fingerprint – they’re failed attempts at human cloning. The driver arrested after the chase confesses that he was actually paid to burn the fetuses, but couldn’t bring himself to do it, trying to give them a Christian burial instead. The police eventually dead-end on the case, but Hood, with his often frustrated bodyguard Rachel Young, continues to follow the clues that the police are unlikely to find, clues that lead to a makeshift cloning laboratory/delivery room in a warehouse and a disgraced gynecologist who’s been relieved of his license to practice. But Hood still can’t find the crumbs on the trail to the person who’s paying them to clone someone. But who is being cloned, and how far will the people behind the illegal experiments go to cover their tracks?

written by Stephen Gallagher
additional material by Simon Stephenson
directed by Terry McDonough
music by The Insects

Cast: Patrick Stewart (Dr. Ian Hood), Ashley Jensen (Rachel Young), Jane Lapotaire (Gepetto), Clive Wood (Gifford), Nicholas Jones (Dr. Sidney Hayward), Michelle Newell (Lana), Joanna Horton (Kelly Fox), Scott Baker (Bruno), Jack Pierce (Doug Cook), Steve Evets (Caretaker), Bronson Webb (Roly), Claire Benedict (Westall Manager), Zachary Butterworth (Davy), Michelle Bonnard (Junior Doctor), Sally Sheridan (Nurse), Ross Adams (Barman), Joseph Simpson (Salesman), Pauline Jefferson (Elderly shopper), Nicola Maxfield (Supermarket manager), Rhea Bailey (Housing estate mother)

Notes: Series creator Stephen Gallagher has won acclaim as an SF novelist, and also wrote a couple of the more elaborately-plotted Doctor Who stories of the 1980s, Warriors’ Gate and Terminus. Though Eleventh Hour was sold largely on the renown of its creator and its star, Gallagher was relieved of creative control over his own show at an early stage by ITV, and had disassociated itself from it by the time it hit the air. Gallagher also spent much of the months leading up to the premiere railing against the media’s labeling of Eleventh Hour as a show commissioned by ITV to compete with the BBC’s recent successful revival of Doctor Who – a notion which the network itself did little to dissuade anyone from believing.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Eleventh Hour Original UK Series

Containment

Eleventh HourA man’s body is found in a disused church, having decayed unusually rapidly; when a volunteer disease containment team is called in to remove the body, they find to their horror that he’s only just now dying. Professor Hood is called to the scene not long afterward. With mere hours to determine the contagious potential of the disease, which could be a new strain of smallpox, the carrier must also be found. A number of leads turns up, including a group of migrant workers who are enduring barely-livable conditions to lie low and avoid deportation, but even with Hood’s best efforts to track the source of the disease down, something isn’t adding up – and worse yet, Rachel may have been contaminated while trying to keep one of the migrant workers from fleeing. Is someone on the team that’s trying to contain the potentially catastrophic outbreak actually working to make sure the disease spreads?

written by Stephen Gallagher
additional material by Simon Stephenson
directed by Terry McDonough
music by The Insects

Cast: Patrick Stewart (Professor Ian Hood), Ashley Jensen (Rachel), Nicholas Woodeson (Martin Callan), Jack Deam (Ellis Gibson), Michael Begley (Ned), Benedict Wong (Danny), Neil Bell (Luke), Will Tacey (Undertaker), Claire Oberman (Eunice), Rina Mahoney (Disease Nurse), Lindsey Dawson (Ned’s Wife), Karen Asemper (Ned’s friend), Lorraine Bruce (Ellis Gibson’s partner), Vincent Wang (Chase victim), Steven Chapman (Bus station guard), Colin Meredith (Tram person), Ian Blower (Grave digger), Danny Burns (Grave digger), Jennifer Chan (Cantonese translator), Michael Woodford (Megaphone copper)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Eleventh Hour Original UK Series

Kryptos

Eleventh HourHood is summoned to meet with an old classmate from university, climatologist Richard Adams, under conditions of strict secrecy, but en route to Adams’ home, Hood and Rachel run into Adams, literally – he dashes out into the road and their car almost hits him, and he disappears again. Hood and Rachel continue to Adams’ home, finding his wife Gillian there, as well as Adams himself, who insists that someone has just tried to kill him because he’s made a major finding about the Earth’s climate that “they” want silenced. Hood offers his help, but Adams thinks Hood is here to discredit him to settle an old grudge – the two were once rivals for Gillian’s affections. Before kicking Hood out of his home, Adams says the Environment Institute, at the behest of petroleum companies, is trying to prevent his findings from ever seeing the light of day. Adams goes back into hiding, quietly trying to find someone who will publish a scientific formula of which he only has half – the other half being held by the Environment Institute. When Hood hears from Gillian again, it’s bad news: Adams has gone missing, and his empty car turns up later on a remote bridge. Hood tries to recover Adams’ research from his home computer, but everything is encoded and encrypted – and password-protected with personal references that only Hood would know. The deeper Hood digs into ADams’ research, the more the Environment Institute seems to take an unhealthy interest in him. Is Hood on the verge of cracking a secret that could change the world, or was his old friend losing his mind? Is Adams actually dead – or will Hood be before he finds the secret?

written by Mike Cullen & Simon Stephenson
directed by Roger Gartland
music by The Insects

Cast: Patrick Stewart (Professor Ian Hood), Ashley Jensen (Rachel), Donald Sumpter (Richard Adams), Susan Wooldridge (Gillian), Tom Mannion (Destrano), Ken Drury (Martin Godley), Stephen Tomlin (Baxter), Jessica Hall (Publisher’s receptionist), Belinda Everett (Institute receptionist), Kate Deakin (Godley’s Secretary)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Eleventh Hour Original UK Series

Miracle

Eleventh HourHood visits a “healing spring” that has drawn attention for supposedly curing a young boy’s tumor, but runs into resistance when he tries to take a small sample of the water for study; the boy’s father, who has practically turned the spring into a tourist attraction, insists that a sample will taint the spring’s “aura.” But when those who come to drink the water instead find themselves falling dangerously ill, Hood’s investigation switches from trying to debunk a myth that could stop people from seeking proper treatment to finding out what’s slowly killing the village. When government agents move in to take command of the situation, however, Hood realizes that – against all of his scientific training – the miracle cure may be real, but it may also be a symptom of something far more sinister.

written by Simon Stephenson
directed by Roger Gartland
music by The Insects

Cast: Patrick Stewart (Professor Ian Hood), Ashley Jensen (Rachel), Clare Holman (Dr. Williams), Roy Marsden (Drake), Sandra Voe (Mrs. Evans), Darrel D’Silva (Daniel), Matthew Williams (Alfie), Donna Alexander (Hospital Manager), Russell Dixon (Landlord), Nicholas Blane (Surgeon), Martin Reeve (Hydro Manager), James Vaughan (MI6 Officer), Vashti MacLachlan (Journalist), Smug Roberts (Policeman), Elianne Byrne (Nurse), Clyve Bonelle (Paramedic)

LogBook entry by Earl Green