Bugs: Assassins, Inc.

[swordznsorcery]

In episode two, some fiendish electronics experts have come up with inventive ways to kill people, and the gang find themselves caught up in the middle of it; mostly due to Beckett being daft. He puts things right in seriously awesome fashion, though.

I like Beckett. Beckett rocks.

So, Ros is at a party, where the guest of honour rather rudely gets himself murdered right in the middle of the festivities. The murder appears to have been committed via a tiny, flying robot, so Ros and her old friend Roly, who's some Foreign Office bigwig, head off to the most obvious culprits; a very dodgy electronics and computer firm, where high-tech naughtiness goes on on a regular basis. Whilst Ros is at her party, however, Beckett is being hired by a woman to break into an electronics and computer firm and erase a game that she's written, which she says is in danger of being misappropriated. Beckett sees no reason to distrust the woman, and happily takes Ed along to break into the building, and the computer system, carefully deleting all of her files. In all fairness, since this is the same sort of blind trust that first got Beckett into Ros and Ed's little gang, I suppose he can't be blamed for doing the exact same thing here. Sadly the woman is rather less trustworthy than he is, and when he and Ed are summoned by Ros to the dodgy electronics and computer firm behind the earlier assassination, they realise that they've been there before, and have conveniently just completely destroyed all of the evidence. Whoops.


A shiny bit of London. Eagle-eyed viewers with good taste in television will recognise HMS Belfast, also featured in both Neverwhere and Between The Lines.


A soon to be dead dignitary.


Evil assassins, with shiny tech.


A lovely little robot mosquito thingy.


Meanwhile, Beckett and Ed are playing at cops and robbers.


One of the nicely high-tech things about Bugs was that the gang spent most of their time wired to each other by means of these handy little hands-free chatty kits. This is their screen debut.

They switched to some smaller ones almost immediately, though, as these ones didn't exactly look high-tech even in 1995.


Ed breaks into the computer vault.


Pointless flashy lights! I do love a bit of tech with pointless flashy lights.


Scary computer lady.


Blue alert again! Blue alert again!


Having realised that they've inadvertently allowed a gang of assassins to go on assassining, the gang stand around looking moody for a bit.

This case being somewhat personal now, the team throw themselves into investigating. Rather obviously this puts them at the top of the assassinatory list, although nearly being assassinatoried does prove to be a very handy way of getting evidence against the bad guys. After nearly blowing up Ros and Beckett with some flashy little voice-activated bombs, evil computer lady and her evil henchman set about going after Ed with one of the robot mosquitoes, infected with an individually-tailored virus. Desperate to save Ed, Ros and Beckett go on the offensive as only they can. This means that Ros turns to her computer know-how, utilising skill, cunning and amazing techy abilities, whilst Beckett... doesn't. Ros goes to Evil HQ with her Foreign Office buddy Roly in tow (and some back-up, presumably, although that would cost extra money, so we don't see them). Using bits of tech from all over the place, Ros is able to begin reconstructing deleted files that should incriminate this week's Lady Evil. Since all of the computer files are voice-operated, she brings along one of the bombs that had been intended for her and Beckett earlier, re-programmed for computer lady's voice. Computer lady therefore has to sit quietly and wait for Ros to prove her guilty of all sorts of stuff. The evil henchman gives Ros the information she needs to save Ed, presumably in the hope of getting a lighter sentence. He and Lady Evil then conveniently explode. As you do.

Beckett, meanwhile, charges around London and blows stuff up. Because he's Beckett, and Beckett rocks. He does have his reasons, though. Some evil foreign types have acquired a genetically-engineered plague from the evil computer lady, and are planning to go and wipe out a country with it. Not sure which one - probably the one that the ill-fated visiting dignitary was from earlier. Beckett sets out to stop them, because that's much more fun than calling the police.


Beckett and Ed invoke imminent assassinationing by spying on the bad guys. Beckett has some awesomely big binoculars.


The evil henchman. The evil henchman is another refugee from The Bill, although he left long before Jaye Griffiths joined. Come to think of it, he was evil in that too, even though he was a policeman.


Ros and Beckett try to figure out how to save Ed. Beckett has an awesomely big microscope. Somebody ought to tell him that this show is supposed to be about miniaturised stuff.


Beckett also has a really big digger. I sense a theme.


Whilst Ros is off being highly cerebral, Beckett is being shot at again. Ros is, of course, highly applaudable in her cleverness. On the other hand, Beckett is being shot at again. Sorry, but it's obvious which one of these two plot developments I'm going to find the most interesting.


Beckett has an awesomely big gun. See, this is why Beckett is cool. That and the being shot at. Obviously.


Did I mention that Beckett has a really big gun?


Boom! Beckett's awesome gun is awesome. Exit one genetically-engineered plague. Meanwhile, across town the evil computer lady proves that she's not as smart as she thinks she is by loudly announcing that Ros's voice-activated bomb is just a fake. Happily she waits until Ros and her friend Roly have left the room before blowing up, but on the downside it does mean that there's no pretty screencaps to go with that bang.

What is it with this show and bad guys exploding?!