Guardians: Outlook 1x08 'All The Answers'

teleplay by George Willson

While exploring an abandoned world, the Outlook's crew finds themselves affected by some unknown agent.

The first of my three catch up reviews for Guardians: Outlook then, and while I get a 'Story by' credit on this, I didn't actually write it, so there we go. After its first seven episodes, G:O has shown that it's got an interesting, slightly darker take on the SG-1 brand of sci-fi, and some nicely layared characters evn though there's a few too many of them to keep up with at the moment, and the over-emphasis on applying the show's trademark dry humour to every situation does take away from some of the potential drama. After the long gap in production between episodes one to seven and then this one onwards, it'll be interesting to see how the series develops from now on. And speaking as a former writer and producer, I can say that and mean it.

The Teaser has the team down in an abandoned alien city, with James and Anna bouncing sarcasm off each other as the resident nerds (Aya, Lakshanya, Engel and Ivan) get to work on uncovering the city's mysteries inside. There's several vodka jokes (again) before Lak finds a diary of sorts, but as the team try to puzzle out what's happened to leave the city deserted, they're unaware that they're being watched by a surveillance camera up in the ceiling...

James and Anna are walking down the city's main street, James remarking that if something did force the population off in a hurry, then it's noticeable that there's no evidence of any kind of mass exodus. The duo head into a similarly deserted museum, but are startled by a tour guide hologram zapping to life before them - and it speaks perfect English! Hmm. Back at the apartment with the Science Nerds, Lak's attempts to hack into the room's computer system end in failure, and James calls in to bring the others back to the museum. James asks the tour guide to give them a potted history of the planet, but by now we should all have picked up on Anna starting to have a little difficulty forming words. Something in the air, perhaps? With Anna getting frustrated by her mystery condition, the two continue thier tour - unaware that a bird-headed statue has stepped away from the wall and followed them! Actually, I was unaware of this at first. This moment doesn't stick out of the direction as much as it could - G:O's minimal stage direction does work against it sometimes. Aya and Ivan continue exploring until Ivan sniffs his way into a bar, and though Ivan takes the opportunity to flirt with Aya she manages to cut him down with some well-positioned technobabble. In the museum, James and Anna hit a dead end when the bird creature attacks, and as Anna fumbles with her weapon, seemingly dropping IQ points by the second, it's Engel who comes to the rescue, shooting it, scaring it away and saving James' bacon.

James is a little surprised that Engel, the ship's diplomat, knows how to shoot (and knowing Estes, there's a story to be told there), but elects to bring the team back to the Lander. James wants to scrub the mission and get back to the Outlook, but the Nerds all argue that there's stuff on the planet worth investigating, and they want to stay. James takes Anna back out with him to hunt the hostile birdman down, with the Nerds grumpy at being left behind. James tries to quiz Anna about why she's starting to act like a dropout from special school, and while Engel sneaks back to the museum, Aya observes that the planet has a potentially lethal level of pollutants in its atmosphere, but that the planet is somehow processing them safely. It isn't long before she's back off outside with Ivan and Lak, while James runs into more trouble trying to hunt down his birdman - this time from Anna! She can't even shoot straight any more, but no sooner has James confiscated her weapon than he's found Engel talking to the guide hologram again. James finds the rest of the crew have also abandoned ship and disobeyed his orders, and we end the Act as he angrily orders them back.

With nobody volunteering to help, James is forced to leave the others behind and go hunting alone, his Spider-Sense starting to tell him something screwy's going on. He speaks to the guide hologram and finds that it was listening in on the Outlook's transmissions so it could 'learn' how to speak the crew's language. James asks it next what's going on with the museum itself, finding that its purpose was for them to 'learn.' James gets the power turned off before venturing on inside, while back in the Lander the Nerds are growing increasingly agitated. Their brains are working overtime, and their attempts to find some way to capture their ideas start to lead to a revolt as they attempt to leave the ship. Anna tries to stop them and gets into actual fisticuffs with Ivan and Engel, before Aya shoots her full of sedative and knocks her out. Inside the museum, James finds an observation room that shows the footage from the surveillance cameras all around the city, seeing his crewmates escaping again before the birdman springs to the attack once more. James chases after it and manages to get a shot off just as the power comes back on, disabling the creature only to find it's some kind of machine instead. Investigating its carcass, he's met by the guide hologram once again. It reels off an educational film about something called 'Compound 917,' a chemical formula created by the planet's populace to allow them to mirror their own physical mutations into non-sentient lifeforms. The experiment was a success and the compound was released into the planet's atmosphere, raising the average inhabitant's brain power by fifty percent. James turns to leave - and is told of Compound 919. This was also released into the atmosphere but any potential side effects were never logged. And I wonder why? Seems 10% of the people exposed to Compound 919 went the other way, degenerating mentally and becoming excluded from the rest of the society. With the hologram hypothesising that the city would have removed of the 'waste' caused by people literally thinking themselves to death, James suddenly realises what's happening to his crew and rushes off to find them all again.

James finds Lak and Engel busily disassembling the hologram's systems, but they act hostile towards him when he tries to get them to leave. Finding the unconscious Anna on the Lander, James grabs a taser and goes to find Aya, who's busy in an alien plant shop. Aya's worked out that the planet's atmosphere is making them smarter, but is just as unlikely as the others to leave, leaving James no option but to zap her and carry her away. Ivan is next, busy drinking in a bar as he works on the design for a revolutionary new space engine, and James has to zap him twice to bring him down. James thoughtfully gathers up all of Ivan's plans before moving on, coming back to Lak and Engel. They're still not planning on moving, so James zaps Lak and gets into a fight with Engel. Engel pays no heed to James' attempt to talk him down - so it's the taser for you, young man! Back on the Outlook, Anna wakes up to find James looking in on her, and he hazards a guess that she was part of the ten percent that became stupider from the Compounds. Well, nine percent, as James seems to think he was part of the one percent 'control group' who were unaffected. With Aya anxiously asking James if Ivan has said anything about her, James checks in on the man himself, who is trying and failing to make sense of his notes. Engel is in a similar position, having a new translator system if he can just figure out how to make it! With James leaving Engel after some stinging remarks about his fighting ability, we end the show for another week.

Well now. I have to get one thing off my chest right now - the plot for this episode is more or less a straight lift of the Miranda section of Serenity. A deserted city, a compound in the air that's affected the whole populace with disasterous effects and a backstory of misguided scientific experiments, even down to the ten percent who have an adverse reaction? Sorry, guys, but it's far too close to the bone for my liking. The episode plods along at a fairly standard pace, all the revelations and developments coming in when expected, so in terms of structure the story's pretty good. The flat, minimal stage direction really lets things down - James' final fight with the robot bird (whose existence is never really explained) and scrap with Engel get a bit more meat, but the robot bird's early moments can almost be missed, given how underplayed they are. Virtual series don't have the visual medium to fall back on and so need to put a bit more colour in the script to make it entertaining to read. The dialogue throughout is snappy and well-written, with each character's voice coming through nicely as their differeing personalities respond to the altered atmosphere, so that part's not in question. G:O just needs to start hyping up its action moments a little more. WIth shows as visually striking as Afterlife and The DSR leading the way, there's no need for skimping on direction like this. So to sum up, a half decent episode let down by its obviously lifted plot and weak direction.