At last, the end is nigh. Week after week we’ve been in a deadlock. The same pattern over and over. Actions with no consequence. No matter what, nothing has ever meant anything. But finally someone in accounts has noticed the billings on this one. It is time for the show to atone for what it has done. Or not done.
Either way, even though nothing really matters the writers are locked into the rules of the universe they have now created. What can they do now they have painted themselves into this narrative corner? Yes that’s right, it’s time to roll out old sparkle tits again.
This week we open with LA again looking like Sheffield either before or after the bomb dropped in Threads. (There’s not much in it truth be told.) The Resistance is backed into a hopeless corner and suddenly Mike ride-or-die Donovan says “Hey everyone let’s give up”.
James is about to deal the fatal blow when suddenly an important announcement is made to stop all fighting immediately. This announcement is very powerful as it physically restrains James from taking any action.
The pure power of this announcement has only been seen once before on television, but only by a small audience of British people during the 1980s. One that causes people over 50 to collapse in (all sorts of) shudders whenever they hear a woman with a Welsh accent on a public address system.
You can imagine how the subsequent staff meeting went with the Visitor’s Line officers. Admittedly most are incensed about the request for cessation of banging from Gladys Pugh, but there is also the small matter of the war. Between Badler’s nostril-flaring, Ashmore’s jaw-squaring and Chadwick’s lip-curling we don’t really need to use our deductive powers to figure where each character stands on this one.
Obviously Faye Grant’s idea for Julie’s unfortunate demise this week was for the Resistance Leader to contract a brain tumour from spending too much time on the world’s biggest cellphone. Bit of a slow burn that one, but at this point it doesn’t matter.
It looks like Elizabeth is hanging out the back with some mannequins auditioning for the Dana Barrett role in Ghostbusters. But no Willie explains that she is channeling a message from The Leader who seems to have taken over her mind. Between this and Julie’s gigantic cellphone I’m sure I don’t remember communication technology in the 80’s being this bad.
Philip soon turns up to explain that everything is fine and everyone can all come to his house to watch Masters of the Universe now the war is over. This news is received warmly by all except Kyle who wanted to watch Jem and the Holograms. Truly outrageous. Elizabeth is supposedly the key to this truce, due to her sparkle tits. The Leader may be an alien, but let’s face it: everyone loves boobies.
Speaking of which, Diana and Lydia continue to be less than impressed that Philip has managed to convince the Leader that humans are a “noble race”. How he managed to inform The Leader of Elizabeth’s boobies without having to explain Hooters and Penthouse Forum as a frame of reference is unimaginable. Perhaps he drew a picture, made some hand gestures. Diana tries to get Lydia to join her in another plot against Philip but this time Lydia doesn’t want to hear it. Could Lydia finally have learned something, or is it just in the script?
Poor Kyle. Just before leaving for the mothership Elizabeth tells him that “earth love” is nice but nothing compared to “cosmic love”. Only Carl Sagan would understand it. Did you know a close friend of Carl Sagan’s, John Lilly, wholeheartedly believed that dolphins and humans were meant to live together in harmony? Kinda like on Mr Ed but with dolphins. And did you know that John Lilly, managed to get NASA to fund a dolphin-human communication project? The project involved a woman by the name of Margaret Lovatt, who lived in a partially submerged house with a dolphin for several months. The dolphin was so horny all the time that Lovatt had to give him hand jobs to get him to concentrate. I’m pretty confident this is the “cosmic love” of which Elizabeth speaks. Poor Kyle.
And so, reluctantly The Resistance arrives on the mothership where James, Lydia and Diana have formed a somewhat frosty welcoming committee. To be fair, this scene is quite good. There is a very brief flash of the Diana of old; a cold seam of menace beneath the surface of charm. Grant is just as good, stoic and sassy in response. Honourable mention to Englund who hovers nervously as close as he can get to a spaced-out looking Jennifer Cooke. Why did the producers forget this? Or not have faith in their actors or audience to take on a more intelligent script?
After that brief respite, the silliness returns as Philip shows Donovan around his gym (£59.99 a month with free use of steam and sauna, HIIT class £13.99 extra). Of course this wouldn’t be another opportunity to put our heroes Mike and Philip into a situation where they get to show their fighting prowess in some futile and not in the least bit riveting way would it? Oh no, but, yes. They have just “stumbled on” the sword-fighting section of the gym. Were V made today they’d probably challenge each other to some kind of extreme Cross-Fit circuit, or who can pooh themselves the most while running a triple marathon barefoot in the Andes. Instead we will have to endure a swordfight, which will admittedly only take 72 seconds as opposed to 72 hours.
But of course this being a sci-fi show, it’s not going to be any old swordfight. These swords are “space swords” tipped with nuclear devices which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If they were nuclear tipped wouldn’t that take out everyone in at least a square mile of the fight? I mean that would be one way to end the show. Perhaps that’s where Sledge Hammer! got the idea?
Philip. Oh dear. Yes. Philip goes on to brag that he is “pretty good” at nuclear sword fighting. How can he not know that even though all Donovan has done is sit on his can and watch a lot of Errol Flynn movies that he is about to have his ass handed to him again. Only this time it will be in front of all his colleagues and allies. I mean at least James got to suffer that humiliation without Diana and Lydia and everyone else watching. That pleasure awaits Philip after the next pointless interlude.
And now onto the next pointless interlude. Willie is wandering around the mothership looking for some cans to kick, when who should he run into but his long-lost love: “Who’s this bitch?”*
*Tracy Scoggins commenting on fan reaction to her character in season 5 of Babylon 5
“Not Harmony” is the correct answer. Apparently Willie and Not Harmony were betrothed to each other from birth. This nobody who turns up out of nowhere has “never forgotten you Willie” and “wants to pick up where we left off”. This sounds very much like what the bullies from my high school said when they discovered Facebook. Willie looks thrilled at the prospect of being pulled back into whatever nightmare this was. Thank god nuclear destruction is imminent.
I forgot to mention, did I mention? Oh I probably should. Donovan and Philip don’t actually plan to fight each other with nuclear charged weapons. The swords have a safety, like a gun or something, which means they won’t go off. Philip being the tedious bore that he is has a strict OSHA protocol in place. Luckily, Diana and James, take a more “Australian” approach to health and safety (meaning if you’re dumb enough to grab a shark by the tail while you’re out swimming in a tropical cyclone, that’s on you).
Donovan and Philp emerge from the men’s locker room dressed in a bondage fan’s fantasy of a Rugby League uniform. The sword fight starts with a little bit of Yoga with Adrienne move (cactus arms – pleased to see the boys are “finding what feels good”) before moving onto the fighting. It’s not bad, you can only see a few frames where it’s clearly a stunt man. For the rest of the fight the actors seem to have gamely stepped in. Singer as always moves like a gazelle, and Ashmore’s moves aren’t that shabby either.
Sadly the nuclear detonated swords don’t blow everyone up. They just fizz like a really large sparkler which makes everyone upset. Like that time everyone went to the British Museum and dad broke baby brother’s wooden sword by being too rough with it in a play fight and baby brother wailed so loud strangers started tutting and you had to go back to the Museum shop and buy him another one but you chickened out because you were only eight, dad was too drunk to drive (because he’d snuck off to the pub while everyone else was looking at Babylonian statues) and mum didn’t speak to anyone the whole way home. Well that was quite specific. Anyway, moving on.
The next four minutes of the show are a series of awkward breakups. First Willie tells Not Harmony that despite the fact she has been waiting like Penelope, unpicking her weaving and fending off suitors left and right, he will not return to Sirius to marry her. She does not take this news well. Next Diana tells James that they are potentially over if he doesn’t join her in a plot to kill The Leader. James takes this news fairly well…
It’s a business of sadists and masochists and you know which one you are.
Ida Blankenship
Lastly, Elizabeth blows Kyle off telling him that all the smooches in the world won’t make a difference there’s always been another side to her that he has to accept. Kyle looks utterly crestfallen (Yagher is really good in this episode) but isn’t ready to give up yet.
Elizabeth swiftly proceeds to Philip’s quarters to “explore her other side”. Now someone on the writing team with connections to Scotland is having a bit of a laugh, as Philip tells Elizabeth that she’s from a place very far away called Sullom Voe.
Sullom Voe is indeed a real place. It’s an oil terminal in the Shetlands which admittedly is a bloody long way away from the WB lot in California.
This revelation that Elizabeth is actually Scottish (Philip sent a DNA test off to 23andme only last week) does make a lot of sense when you reflect on Elizabeth reporting having seen “troubling scenes” from a race memory she didn’t know she had. I’d be pretty worried too based on Irvine Welsh’s opinions on “Being Scottish”.
Finally, after Philip has finished his very thorough audit of all Elizabeth’s sides, we all meet in the docking bay to await the arrival of The Leader himself. I’m sure when we all watched it the first time around there would have been a great deal of anticipation as to what he was like. Were this a better show the opportunities for a special cameo would have been great. Think of some fine examples of cameos in science fiction they could have had: Leonard Nimoy as William Bell in Fringe, Walter Koenig as Alfred Bester in Babylon 5, Richard Hatch as Tom Zarek in BSG, Neil Patrick Harris as himself in Harold & Kumar go to White Castle. But no, this disappointment will keep until the end.
Because haha! Diana’s plot to kill The Leader and make it look like The Resistance were responsible has failed. Philip’s health and safety measures have scuttled her plans and revealed her to be a treacherous assassin. Chaos ensues in the docking bay and Diana makes a desperate escape to the bridge where she plans to blow up the whole planet (again) with a nuclear device.
Donovan and Kyle pursue James and Diana to the bridge while Willie and Julie hang back and chat about the ventilation system for no apparent reason. Willie explains to Julie as if it’s the first time anyone has thought of this overused device. But hey, then the conversation ends and it doesn’t come up again.
Then at some stage Willie appears with a sexy nightie, calm down Willie fans, it’s not for him, it’s for Elizabeth. Donning this nightie will somehow turn Elizabeth into a supercomputer that can override the mothership’s systems. (Yeah fuck it, why not.) Thus transformed, Philip can now use Elizabeth to force open the doors to the bridge, and to catch up on recording some near misses in the health and safety log.
And now, for the final time, James get’s his ass whipped by Mike Donovan. In front of Diana and everyone. (I don’t think she’ll be asking him to peel her another goldfish anytime soon.)
Although things look up now that handcuffs have been introduced to restrain the two miscreants together. If James can lay his hands on a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey to read to Diana on the shuttle home he might still have a chance.
While awaiting the real arrival of The Leader Diana tells James that despite – well EVERYTHING – she has managed to plant a bomb on his shuttle. When did she find time to do that? Or has this show gone AWOL and truly abandoned all sense of space and time?
Also Kyle has magically stowed away on board the shuttle even though we were watching it the whole time and there is no way that could have happened. But it’s okay because the rules of the universe are utterly rent and nothings matters anymore anyway.
The time has come for Elizabeth to depart. Everyone lines up alongside The Leader’s doomed shuttle as the door opens to reveal…
NOTHING
That’s right! Nothing! Sucked in! You sat through this whole episode to discover The Leader is a non-corporeal being that floats around and seems to be in desperate need of a throat lozenge. There is no one in that shuttle, that red light you see is just the VCR on standby because there is nothing that was worth recording. “The Industrial Revolution was a hoax and you fell for it!” Sucks to be you!
Like the donut in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, this show has finally collapsed under the weight of its own nihilism. You know what I’m saying. There’s so many flavours on that thing you can’t taste anything. Only with this series, there’s so many flavours it’s one flavour – your least favourite. For me it’s marmite all the way down. To translate into terms our American readers can comprehend: “Life is a box of chocolates, no matter which one you choose it’s always going to be coconut.”
This episode isn’t the end of the show. Another episode called The Attack was intended to be filmed as the grand finale where more (or less) would be revealed.
But like poor old Gorbachev, the show runners discovered that once you mess with the fundamental laws of the universe, collapse has a momentum of its own. Just as with the Soviet Union, the show couldn’t even survive its own conclusion.
On the bright side Faye Grant got her wish to have Julie killed off in The Attack, but like Peggy Ollerenshaw finally being made a yellow coat in Hi de Hi, it was a Pyrrhic victory.
As for the rest of the cast, they have reached their final destination. Please make sure you remove all personal items before leaving the train and mind the gap.
When Martin Died 