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A very effective episode, although, yet again, the aliens' plan is blatantly silly. They need a new hierarchy, or a new tactical department, or something. Either that or they just need to stop thinking so big. If you want to invade a planet, start simple. That's your tip for the day.
This time out, the aliens are trying to design a drug that will make humans kill each other. Those who dare ask what's wrong with the super super deadly poison from a few episodes back will naturally be incinerated. It got lost in the wash, okay? These things happen.
A human subject is being forced to watch images of death and destruction, having just been given a dose of the new drug.
He's in a room full of cages, where countless subjects are in the midst of various trials.
Elsewhere, in a club, two aliens disguised as hookers prowl around picking up men, before abducting them for alien experiments.
Nobody seems to notice that they're acting in an obviously sinister fashion. Or maybe this is a turn on in a hooker. It might be.
They grab a new victim, in this instance a vice cop named Jack.
In the dark and scary warehouse, full of its dark and scary cages, Jack tries to buoy along his fellow prisoners. He says that he'll look after them. His colleagues will be on the way, and they'll soon be out of this.
Very effective beginning, this. It's probably ten minutes before we see any of the regular cast, and instead we get a nice bit of world-building.
Meanwhile, the gang are posing as members of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Lots of dead bodies are turning up, having been injected with a new drug, and they suspect alien involvement.
Why is it called the Drug Enforcement Agency? Shouldn't that be Drug Unenforcement? Or Anti Drug Enforcement?
Anyway, this work mostly involves looking at computer screens.
Another alien victim. The drug sends him mad with paranoid hallucinations, so he's executed with a flashy electric shock through his little metal hat.
His body is discovered, and the local head cop, in charge of the investigation, looks it over. The local head cop does not like the DEA, and does not like the Blackwood team, and does not trust anybody. Not that this stops her from flirting with Harrison every other sentence.
She gets a message from an old friend that Harrison and co are not DEA.
Right now they mostly look like mobsters, admittedly.
So she arrests them. This is a nice detour for the plot, but it only lasts ten seconds, as by the time we get back from the commercial break, she's phoned up Uncle General Wilson, who has assured her that they're a wholly trustworthy anti-terrorist taskforce. They couldn't have just said they were after terrorists to begin with?
Back at the alien lab, vice cop Jack is injected with a new version of the drug.
He then cheerfully snaps the neck of the girl he promised to look after a little earlier on.
There is much merriment and smug gloating from the aliens, and they set out to deploy their new weapon on a little test.
They stick him in the nearest strip joint, and he lays waste to the place, although I don't think he actually kills anybody. Then the police come, so the aliens scoop him up and run away.
He wants more of the drug though, and goes nuts in the car, causing it to crash and kill everybody.
Head cop is not impressed. Vice cop Jack was the best, damn it. She's going to hit these terrorists with everything she's got.
This brings on an attack of triple seriousness. Harrison tells her the truth about the aliens, which leads to an annoyingly pointless detour in the plot.
Head cop takes Harrison to visit a favourite contact of hers. Or she sort of does. She makes Harrison stay in the car and not look at anybody, so you have to wonder why she bothered taking him along in the first place.
The contact is a local mob boss, who is her father's best friend from years gone by, etc. Yawn. Anyway, he knows about the new drug, and tells her where the people making it might be. Couldn't Norton have done his usual trick with his computers? It's a bit less boring than pointless car journeys, and long conversations in dark cars between characters we don't know.
Back at the lab, Jack going nuts in the car has convinced the aliens that this plan is too unworkable, so they decide to dose up the remaining subjects and then leave them to wipe each other out, and destroy all the evidence in the process. Blimey, talk about defeatist. Come up with a needlessly complicated plan, wait until you encounter your first hurdle, and then give up. This is no way to conquer a planet.
Some humans manage to get at the drug, and inject themselves while the aliens are busy, probably doing something needlessly complicated.
They then break out of their cells, and thoughtfully break the others out too, despite supposedly being able to only think about the drug. Soon everybody is high on psychotic pink juice.
This leads to lots of people in backless surgical gowns wrestling each other and the furniture. I'm thinking that that maybe wasn't such a great wardrobe choice.
Everywhere they wrestle. They wipe out the aliens in their psycho pink frenzy, and soon make the world go entirely blue.
"Go back to your cages!" demands the world's most optimistic alien. The humans decide to kill her instead. Still, it means the drug was a success, so possibly she should be celebrating.
Outside, Ironhorse orders his troops into position.
And they subtlely explode the massive steel door.
When they get inside, though, all they find is mindless humans sucking drugs up off the floor.
Everybody stands in a nicely aesthetic formation in order to express their horror at the scene.
Still, it's all very pretty. Which is nice.
I like this episode. Pointless and annoying mobster detour aside, it's done well. Making the drug is a stupid plan, but the lab, with its cages of human victims, is very nicely realised. Jack's descent from heroic cop to insane murderer is good too. I do wish the aliens would get back to basics, though. They need to stop with the complex plans, and just go in for a little wholesale violence and terror instead. Start emulating the terrorists that Harrison and co keep pretending they are, for instance. At this rate they're never going to get anywhere. Don't they know they've only got two episodes left?!
This time out, the aliens are trying to design a drug that will make humans kill each other. Those who dare ask what's wrong with the super super deadly poison from a few episodes back will naturally be incinerated. It got lost in the wash, okay? These things happen.
A human subject is being forced to watch images of death and destruction, having just been given a dose of the new drug.
He's in a room full of cages, where countless subjects are in the midst of various trials.
Elsewhere, in a club, two aliens disguised as hookers prowl around picking up men, before abducting them for alien experiments.
Nobody seems to notice that they're acting in an obviously sinister fashion. Or maybe this is a turn on in a hooker. It might be.
They grab a new victim, in this instance a vice cop named Jack.
In the dark and scary warehouse, full of its dark and scary cages, Jack tries to buoy along his fellow prisoners. He says that he'll look after them. His colleagues will be on the way, and they'll soon be out of this.
Very effective beginning, this. It's probably ten minutes before we see any of the regular cast, and instead we get a nice bit of world-building.
Meanwhile, the gang are posing as members of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Lots of dead bodies are turning up, having been injected with a new drug, and they suspect alien involvement.
Why is it called the Drug Enforcement Agency? Shouldn't that be Drug Unenforcement? Or Anti Drug Enforcement?
Anyway, this work mostly involves looking at computer screens.
Another alien victim. The drug sends him mad with paranoid hallucinations, so he's executed with a flashy electric shock through his little metal hat.
His body is discovered, and the local head cop, in charge of the investigation, looks it over. The local head cop does not like the DEA, and does not like the Blackwood team, and does not trust anybody. Not that this stops her from flirting with Harrison every other sentence.
She gets a message from an old friend that Harrison and co are not DEA.
Right now they mostly look like mobsters, admittedly.
So she arrests them. This is a nice detour for the plot, but it only lasts ten seconds, as by the time we get back from the commercial break, she's phoned up Uncle General Wilson, who has assured her that they're a wholly trustworthy anti-terrorist taskforce. They couldn't have just said they were after terrorists to begin with?
Back at the alien lab, vice cop Jack is injected with a new version of the drug.
He then cheerfully snaps the neck of the girl he promised to look after a little earlier on.
There is much merriment and smug gloating from the aliens, and they set out to deploy their new weapon on a little test.
They stick him in the nearest strip joint, and he lays waste to the place, although I don't think he actually kills anybody. Then the police come, so the aliens scoop him up and run away.
He wants more of the drug though, and goes nuts in the car, causing it to crash and kill everybody.
Head cop is not impressed. Vice cop Jack was the best, damn it. She's going to hit these terrorists with everything she's got.
This brings on an attack of triple seriousness. Harrison tells her the truth about the aliens, which leads to an annoyingly pointless detour in the plot.
Head cop takes Harrison to visit a favourite contact of hers. Or she sort of does. She makes Harrison stay in the car and not look at anybody, so you have to wonder why she bothered taking him along in the first place.
The contact is a local mob boss, who is her father's best friend from years gone by, etc. Yawn. Anyway, he knows about the new drug, and tells her where the people making it might be. Couldn't Norton have done his usual trick with his computers? It's a bit less boring than pointless car journeys, and long conversations in dark cars between characters we don't know.
Back at the lab, Jack going nuts in the car has convinced the aliens that this plan is too unworkable, so they decide to dose up the remaining subjects and then leave them to wipe each other out, and destroy all the evidence in the process. Blimey, talk about defeatist. Come up with a needlessly complicated plan, wait until you encounter your first hurdle, and then give up. This is no way to conquer a planet.
Some humans manage to get at the drug, and inject themselves while the aliens are busy, probably doing something needlessly complicated.
They then break out of their cells, and thoughtfully break the others out too, despite supposedly being able to only think about the drug. Soon everybody is high on psychotic pink juice.
This leads to lots of people in backless surgical gowns wrestling each other and the furniture. I'm thinking that that maybe wasn't such a great wardrobe choice.
Everywhere they wrestle. They wipe out the aliens in their psycho pink frenzy, and soon make the world go entirely blue.
"Go back to your cages!" demands the world's most optimistic alien. The humans decide to kill her instead. Still, it means the drug was a success, so possibly she should be celebrating.
Outside, Ironhorse orders his troops into position.
And they subtlely explode the massive steel door.
When they get inside, though, all they find is mindless humans sucking drugs up off the floor.
Everybody stands in a nicely aesthetic formation in order to express their horror at the scene.
Still, it's all very pretty. Which is nice.
I like this episode. Pointless and annoying mobster detour aside, it's done well. Making the drug is a stupid plan, but the lab, with its cages of human victims, is very nicely realised. Jack's descent from heroic cop to insane murderer is good too. I do wish the aliens would get back to basics, though. They need to stop with the complex plans, and just go in for a little wholesale violence and terror instead. Start emulating the terrorists that Harrison and co keep pretending they are, for instance. At this rate they're never going to get anywhere. Don't they know they've only got two episodes left?!
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