Manimal #7

Back to Manimal, then, and episode seven - "Breath Of The Dragon". And I'm never entirely sure what to think of this one. For starters we've all seen the story before. Chinatown is being terrorised by a gang of young men, martial arts experts of course, who are led by a gangster. He's running a protection racket, and anybody who stands up to him regrets it. There's a culture of silence - everybody is too intimidated to go to the police. Then of course, enter an outsider, to deal with the situation. The A-Team did it in "The Maltese Cow" (and in fact these two episodes share several cast members). Second season episode for the team, I think, and forever twinned in my mind with "Steel", since the two were novelised together into the book Ten Percent Of Trouble, but I'm meandering rather. It's a familiar story, anyway. And either Chinatown is a hotbed of protection rackets, or the local residents must be really pissed off with this particular plot by now.

( This way )