by Brian L. Lamkin
Anton is forced to come to terms with potentially losing his wife to terminal cancer when the DSR attempt to hunt down a nest of mole-like creatures under the Nevada desert.
Time for more spycapades from Not Sawyer and his merry band of ghostbusting cohorts. While steadily improving with every episode since the premiere, 1x05 was a bit of a step back with some alarming continuity clangers sabotaging what had been a great story up the final Act. With a new writer on board in the form of Brian Lamkin, who I rate very highly, let's see what his take on the world of The DSR brings us!
Jai's working late when Mia and Sara show up, dolled up for the evening and giving Jai chance to double take at their flagrant display of hotness. Turns out it's Anton's wife's birthday, and he's throwing a big party - but doesn't look like Jai got invited. Aww. He's not the partying kind, though, so while he has work he can be frowning at, he's happy, although a last glance to the departing Mia suggets he'd actually like to see what's going down all the same! Anton and Maggie, his wife, are still clearly very much in love despite both hitting 60, and as Mia and Sara head into their home they find Ethan and Carson. Ethan comments that Jai's probably plotting his downfall (which works for me, because I thought their settling of the feud a few weeks back was way too early), but when Mia sneaks off to look around, she finds Maggie not looking too well - and she faints away! Mia calls for help as we switch back to PBH to see what Kendall's up to. Jai and Kendall are both working late, but as a sudden tremor rattles the building, they rush out to investigate. Quick point - if the whole complex just got hit by a tremor, wouldn't it have knocked all the terminals out of screen saver mode? Anyway. Seems a small town near Reno has just been wiped out!
With the team back from the party, Act I brings us a news report and tells us that Brook Lake, Nevada, has gone done a Sunnydale and just fallen into the ground. Ethan has a lead on some high tech equipment being moved around in Phoenix that may be a possible explanation for the weird seismic readings, so he and Jai head off to check it out. Kendall pops over to Reno to see Anton and Maggie, who's now in the hospital. With Anton clearly broken up about the tumour that Maggie's kept hidden from him, we get a nice switch over to an industrial estate in Phoenix, where 'Money For Nothing' somehow seems to fit perfectly with Ethan playing mercenary to meet with Ravell, a suspect for the Brook Lake incident. Ethan manages to worm his way into a test showing of what could be the weapon that took out Brook Lake, as we switch back to Anton and Maggie, with the kids now sitting with their mother. Anton doesn't look like he's handling this too well as we flip back to Arizona (and good use of these cutaways to Anton to help the passage of time for Ethan and the others, by the way), but Ethan's cover is about to be blown as Ravell marches him out into the desert at gunpoint, ready to show him the weapon first hand! And it's... a worm? A big worm! With teeth! Run away! Run away! Jai swoops in with a chopper (which has already been set up so doesn't feel contrived at all) and scoops Ethan up before the Tremors-inspired beastie can get him, and we black out. I'll just take a moment here to say how impressed I am with this episode so far - Lamkin's got a good handle on these characters (although Ethan is a little too casual), and even if the return of the Jai/Ethan feud feels a little out of character given previous episodes, it actually feels more in character now, if that makes sense. They've gone from loathing to mild annoyance, and for me it sits much better. The dialogue and direction is also up to Lamkin's usual standards, and it's really added a sparkle to this story. The fact that the worm creature's appearance was actually a cool moment is a big deal here, it could easily have come off a bit silly.
The team debrief back at PBH, with Sara discovering a huge network of tunnels stretching across the region. Whatever these things are, they've been busy. The team split up, one half investigating the beasts while Jai and Mia go back to infiltrate Ravell's network. Chucking around words like 'species' and 'genetic engineering' has already given this beastie a necessary grounding in reality, and that's always going to be the key to the fantasy elements of The DSR - one foot in the real world. It's what made early X-Files work so darn well! Anton's back at work despite Kendall's advice, and he seems set on burying himself in work as we follow Jai and Mia over to Phoenix. They identify Ravell's main contact as Tariq Kasam, an exiled Egyptian biologist with an interest in the 'horhaj,' which must be Egyptian for 'worm thingy.' Carson's handy reference to the horhaj feels a bit convenient, but her curt put down of Jai's 'shall I repeat that in English for the less techy members of the audience?' line works well. Anton favours direct action, but Kendall knows that this is just his frustration over Maggie speaking out. Kendall mentions a lost partner of his own, Julia, telling us he knows what Anton's going through. Anton remains convinced he has to do something, however, and we close on a slow-mo hero shot of the team heading out to take the horhaj on head-to-head. Which is a little cheesy, I'll admit, but the sentiment's there.
Mia and Carson are in Dubai, with Mia ready to take a nose round Kasam's suite as Carson distracts him in the bar of the swanky hotel they're in. Carson demonstrates a previously unseen ability to do the undercover agent thing as she chats up Kasam, as Mia has to swap her slinky dress for a maid's outfit to get into Kasam's room, not missing the chance for a one-liner on the way. Out in the desert, the team stop at the crater that used to be Brook Lake and prepare to head down into the tunnels. Ethan's lines here, while funny, do feel very out of character for him. It's a hard thing to flag up, though, because his attempt to look cool in front of the others gets shot down by Jai and it works really well, but it just doesn't sound like the buttoned up Ethan we know so well. The team venture into the tunnels (skilfully avoiding the worm poop) as we cut back to Mia the Maid. She can't get into Kasam's room directly, so she gets into thenext one along and climbs across the perilously thin balcony (and again, a nicely directed moment). She snatches a laptop from the room just as Carson's cover is blown downstairs (and the ghost of Alias returns - how often do guards suddenly appear and wreck an infiltration mission, or covers get blown for no real reason?), and Mia's sneaky exit is spoilt by some random girl exiting the shower (wouldn't she have heard it running?), but two swift moves later we've got two guards KO'd and Mia ready to zip on. I love this girl. She's a black Sydney Bristow without the tendency to burst into tears every five minutes. Mia rescues Carson, and the two girls split with the goods as we rejoin our bug hunters down in the horhaj tunnels. Anton looks like he's walking into a bad encounter in his effort to get some action, while back with Mia and Carson, it's Interrogation Time! Kasam's tied to a chair and it's time for the girls to get their Good Cop/Bad Cop on. Carson smacks Kasam, channeling her inner Dr. Walsh to good effect, as it seems Kasam's a religious nutjob who's got an army of worms in waiting, ready to attack all over the world. It's always the religious ones you have to watch out for, innit? And down in the tunnels, Ravell arrives with some soldiers, ready to spoil Jai's day...
Mia and Carson are headed to Cairo to shut down the command centre for the worms, and with Jai following Anton's lone wolf mission in the tunnels, we're glad to hear Kendall say backup is on the way. Mainly because if they show up just in time, it's won't feel cliched! Seems Kasam's considered a traitor to his country, but with a clever bluff Carson downloads a virus into the lab's systems, so Kasam can pretend to remove it and Carson can hack in and get the schematics of the worm control device. With me so far? Good. Kasam pulls a switch, grabbing a gun and getting shot down for his trouble, and Mia has to grab the plans and scoot, gunfire chasing her out as she bundles herself into Carson's van to get away. Whew! Jai catches up to Anton and does his best to talk him down (which happens a little too easily), but the duo run into more trouble as they find the main hive of the creatures - and Sara and Ethan are captives of Ravell! D'oh. With Mia racing to get the EMP schematics to Jai in time so they can avoid becoming worm food, Jai and the team find they're about to be offered up as sacrifices for the Queen horhaj and its many, many kids who are rushing back to the dinner table. Luckily, a spare EMP has been found at Ravell's base, and Kendall helicopters that over to the hole, and oh, God, it's doing that thing again. The infuriatingly convenient plot device to solve a sticky situation quickly. Grr. Down in the hive, Kendall's EMP drives the worms away so Jai can launch a counterattack, breaking loose as th ebackup squad arrive to secure the hive. There's a b-movie moment as Anton lobs a huge explosive charge into the Queen horhaj's gob, before the team run like fun and escape the tunnels, moments before they're blasted into fragments. Back at PBH, we keep our Jai/Mia shippers happy as she checks up on him, hard at work once again. Lamkin's trademark soap moment comes in as we get the musical montage style happy ending - Jai looks at a picture of Cassie, Kendall one of Julia and Anton looks adoringly in on his kids. The End.
So! What did we make of all that, then? Lamkin nailed the show's style and characters down from the start - except Ethan, who seems very off for the whole script. That said, I liked how he came across here, I'm just conscious of him sounding unlike his usual self for the most part. The dialogue was snappy, the action sequences well choreographed, and the initial worm encounter went well, so the only thing letting this down is what I'm christening DSR Act IV Syndrome. Several hideously convenient things happen one after the other to push us to a quick conclusion, and I can't help but feel that several chunks of this script should have been cut here to give more room for Act IV to breathe. As it is, it squashes a lot in and the rushed pace really shows. Mia and Carson's field trip was gold, but probably went on too long and meant that the dramatic scenes in the hive had to be squeezed in, making them feel a little overblown and, dare I say it... daft. DSR would do well to keep an anchor in reality, as it makes the extraordinary easier to swallow, and this was doing a good job until the scenes in the hive, when it stumbled a little. That said, this was cracking stuff for the most part, with Lamkin showing off the good eye for fast-paced action that serves him so well over on Slayer Academy. It's just a shame that things fell apart a little towards the end - less is always more with big monsters, and after keeping them a largely unknown quality for most of the script, we ended up getting too much of them in the finale. I appreciate, however, that the line between Alias and X-Files that DSR is straddling at the moment is a fine one, and while the show has yet to really nail that delicate balancing act it's getting better all the time, so good things lie ahead.
Lines Of The Week:
ETHAN
Can I just say one thing?
(beat)
Big worm!
and how can I forget:
ETHAN
I’ll protect you.
SARA
(weakly)
Not exactly making me feel better.
ZPM RATING:
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