Fusion Patrol

A special bonus Sidecar episode on the Doctor Who, Time Lord Victorious, online animation special series - Daleks!Simon and Eugene discuss if this makes a good Dalek story.Synopsis:Part 1The Daleks arrive on the planet Islos, planning to capture the Archive. The robotic defenders of the Archive resist in a futile effort against the might of the Daleks. The Dalek Strategist suggests that the robotic defenders might sacrifice all the life on the planet to serve their purpose of protecting the Archive at all costs.The Emperor offers them a deal. Let us have it or we’ll destroy it. The robots surrender, but it is a ruse. They have used knowledge in the archive to open a portal to another dimension, found an entity there that would offer safe haven there for the Archive and the inhabitants of the city. All it wants in exchange is the Daleks.Part 2The Daleks flee to Skaro, being dealt significant damage along the way. When they arrive at Skaro, the Entity, which can traverse time, is already there and the planet is wiped out.The few remaining Daleks travel to a planet that has a Dalek army in storage, guarded by a lone robot. They Strategist has it activated, but the robot has been got to by the Entity and reprograms the Daleks to think the Strategist is the Emperor. The Entity expects the Strategist to start a war with the Emperor, but he does not, and he has the Dalek army destroyed.Part 3The Daleks head to the planet of the Mechanoids. They demand an alliance, but the bluff is called, the Mechanic Queen has determined that the Daleks are all but wiped out. She enters talks with the Emperor while the Strategist talks with a Mechanoid scientist. Meanwhile the remaining minion Daleks get impatient and start a fight. They are destroyed by the Mechanoids.The Emperor has an ace up his plunger to force the Mechanoids to fight: He’s lead the Entity to the planet, and it begins attacking.Part 4Forced to work together, the Strategist and the Scientist defeat the entity and send it back to it’s universe. Now, only the Emperor and the Strategist remain. The Mechanic Queen knows they have been used by the Daleks and she’s going to wipe them out.She kills them both on the spot and the story ends.Except she doesn’t. She tells them to go back to Skaro and she’ll be along shortly to wipe them out.Part 5The Emperor and the Strategist arrive back on Skaro, the Mechanoids soon arrive. The Emperor had more Daleks in reserve somewhere and the fighting begins. Outnumbered, the Mechanoids need an advantage. They capture the Strategist and offer him what he wants. He takes their offer. With their help, they use the same technique to eliminate the Entity on Mechanus to get rid of the Emperor on Skaro. But it was a ruse, the Strategist uses the weapon to eliminate all the Mechanoids.Dalek victory. But then, Entity-controlled bits of dead Mechanoids tell them that they don’t know what’s coming.Part 6There is no episode 6.I guess this is the end?

In a universe where god-like powers are real, what is religion?  Is it any different?Kenneth and Eugene discuss Order.Synopsis:A large, ornate and very expensive looking pyramid shaped spacecraft filled with cavorting druids hurtles perilously close to the sun. The cavorting druids turn out to be followers of Vahootie, and specifically, their spiritual leader, Brother 13. They are plunging into the sun so that they can transcend to heaven and be by Vahootie’s side.Brother 13 is about to do some… ahem… meditation.. ahem… with his child bride, when brother Jacob, suffering from some last minute doubts that killing themselves in the sun is the right thing to do interrupts them. A quick laying on of hands and a blue glow is enough to renew and reinvigorate Jacob’s faith. Killing ourselves in the sun is definitely the right thing to do.Nearby, the Transutopian makes a half-hearted, but doomed attempt to rescue them. Dante and Percy, experts on stupid, marvel at the insanity, or stupidity, the Vahootians. Lucretia is less down on the loonies, stating without evidence that the need to believe in something is just as important and food or shelter to humans.We wouldn’t have much of a story if the ship just plunged into the sun, though, so at the last minute, leaving his followers to their fate, Brother 13, his child-bride and crazy brother Jacob escape in a shuttle, where they are rescued by Dante.Brother Jacob, who is armed with a knife is immediately locked up. When Dante realizes that Brother 13 is the leader of the cult, and therefore the mass murderer of the ship full of Vahootians, he treats him rudely, but surprisingly nicely. He asks Lucretia to tend Brother 13’s wounds and lock him up.Dante also asks Percy, the person voted most likely to be taken in by a cult, to take food to the mass murderer cult leader and his child bride. Brother 13 asks for his child bride to be taken out of the room with Percy, so that he can have a quiet word with Lucretia. First he demonstrates that he knows she’s looking for “the cluster” - could he mean the Divinity Cluster? - and that he knows she’s desperate to please her father. Thus caught slightly off guard, he then mind rapes her with his glowing blue hands, although Brother 13 calls it a “Rejuvenation of faith.” Soon she is beginning to understand that Vahootie is the answer.Dante returns and finds Brother 13 and Lucretia having an amicable chat. To his credit, and my amazement, Dante seems to catch on very quickly that Brother 13 is “getting at” Lucretia. He sends her to confinement in her quarters until the prisoners are off the ship. Dante’s disgust of Brother 13 and what he represents is apparent, and when Brother 13 attempts to read Dante’s mind about his son and mind rape him, too, Dante hurts him and throws him in a cage.In the cages, Jacob is beginning to have doubts again, he needs Brother 13 to perform a rejuvenation on his faith, but Brother 13 is tired of Jacob’s lack of faith and refuses. It’s very clear that when Brother 13 is unhappy, he’s a very nasty piece of work.Meanwhile, Percy has handcuffed the child bride and is showing her around the ship. Percy tries to indoctrinate her into the cult of Billy Toonami, or at least come to a meeting of minds. It becomes clear that her faith in Brother 13 is slipping. Could it be that his mind-whammy is only temporary? Realizing now that there’s something more than just verbal persuasion, Dante orders Percy and the child bride to stay on the bridge and not let anyone in, including Lucretia.Dante goes to talk to Lucretia, but she’s gone. She has gone to the cages and let Brother 13 and Jacob out.On the bridge, the child bride grabs a gun and threatens Percy, but it is unloaded and the joke is on her.Dante confronts Lucretia, Brother 13 and Jacob in the lockup area. Brother 13 orders Lucretia to kill him. When she tries, Dante shoots the gun out of her hand, but Jacob takes Lucretia hostage and knife point. Jacob drops dead to the sound of a gunshot as Percy shoots him from behind. For once, ignoring orders paid off.Dante sends Lucretia back to her quarters, but instead, she locks herself in a cage.Soon, they are handing the prisoners to the Authority officials on Mercury, and Rudolfo is very pleased by the large bounty they’ve collected for putting away a mass murdering cult leader.Later Dante releases Lucretia, she seems to be back to her old self, and she immediately goes to open a secret channel to her father and warn him that Brother 13 is very dangerous, may have had contact with Novak, and have some knowledge of the Divinity Cluster.On the transport shuttle, Brother 13 is mind raping the guards. Perhaps Dante will get another chance to put a bullet in his head someday.

Note: This is a re-post as some listeners were having difficulties with the original post.This time Simon and Eugene take a look at the second of the Dalekmania-inspired movies, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.Movie Synopsis:Tom Campbell, constable, bumbles into a smash and grab jewelry store robbery and is koshed on the head. Running into nearby police box to summon backup, Tom passes out as he sees the inside of TARDIS, a time and space machine created by eccentric English inventor, Dr. Who.When he awakens, the robbery is long over - very long over - for Dr. Who was just taking off on another trip in time and space and it is now the year 2150 CE and London is a ruin. Tom is cursorily introduced to Dr. Who, his granddaughter Susan and his niece Louisa. Without so much as a question, Tom quickly falls in as one of the team.When TARDIS is trapped under collapsing debris, Tom and Dr. Who search for a crowbar in a nearby building. While investigating, Louisa and Susan are captured/rescued by Wyler and taken to a hidden resistance base. When Dr. Who and Tom return to TARDIS, they are surrounded by Robomen - zombie-like humans - and captured by the Daleks, who have invaded the Earth.Dortmun, leader of the rebels, launches an infiltration attack on the Dalek flying saucer. Inside, Dr. Who and Tom are about to be robotized, luckily the attack disrupts the Daleks’ plans and Dr. Who and Tom escape, but are separated. Tom is trapped on the ship, while Dr. Who escapes with David, another of the rebels.Louisa, who was part of the attack is also stuck on the ship and meets up with Tom as the ships takes off and heads for Befordshire, where the Daleks have a mineworks.Susan and Dortmun, because he is in a wheelchair, had remained behind at the rebel base. Only Wyler returns from the disastrous raid and they decide to head to Watford. Susan leaves a note hoping Dr. Who will see it and follow her. Dortmun is soon killed by The Daleks as they escape London.David and Dr. Who do return to the base, but fail to see the gigantic chalk note scrawled on the wall. Dr. Who decides to go to Bedfordshire to see the Dalek mineworks, knowing that it must be the key to the invasion.Watford, which is on the way to Bedfordshire, is swarming with Daleks, causing Dr. Who and David to circumnavigate the town - possibly passing through Luton on their way to the mine.Luckily, Wyler and Susan also find Watford too hot to handle, and Susan deduces that her grandfather will want to see the mineworks, so they press on to Bedfordshire. But first, they find some kindly ladies who are Dalek collaborators, who turn them over to the Daleks.Dr. Who, David, Tom and Louisa all meet up and glean information on the mine. The Daleks have used forced human labor to manually dig a mine 2,890 kms deep. Having done this without releasing pockets of Stahlman’s gas or even Primord goo, the Daleks are now prepared to drop a bomb into the Earth’s core, blast the inner core (which is located another 2,260 kms deeper than the mine) out the backside of the planet like an olive pit, replace the pit with a pimento and fly the olive back to Skaro where they can occupy the planet. Although it’s not entirely clear if they’re trying to occupy Skaro from the Earth, or occupying the Earth as if it were an intergalactic bus as it passes the Skaro stop.Luckily some well-placed wood planks are able to divert the bomb, cause it to detonate in the wrong place, releasing a huge surge of magnetic energy which draws all the metallic Daleks (but nothing else metallic) into the Earth’s core.The Earth is saved and the Daleks will never invade again because magnetism will always be there for humans to use as a weapon against them.Dr. Who returns TARDIS to the exact location it was before, but a few minutes earlier, allowing Tom the opportunity to capture the criminals is one easy swoop, masterfully accomplishing this without TARDIS exploding because it is occupying the same space and time it was before, nor Tom encountering his earlier self and running afoul of the Blinovitch Limitation effect.The End. Stay tuned next time for the third movie in the series, The Daleks Chase Dr. Who, featuring Dr. Who, his granddaughter Susan, his second cousin, twice removed, Jennifer and a madcap London Bus Driver, Fred Scuttle.

We look at a deeply-troubling story about obsession, pretensions, unnatural lust and perhaps even possession as Simon and Eugene discuss Buddyboy.Episode Synopsis:Dave, porn theatre impresario, and Jimmy, his right-hand man, meet up with Mr. Hubbard outside the abandoned Finnyland, a former indoor dolphinarium and now abandoned wreck of a building. Dave is looking for a place to open his newest porn theatre, and Finnyland might just be the renovatable dump he’s looking for.The place is in a right mess as they hear Hubbard’s tale of running a dolphinarium. They had a dolphin die - their star and smartest one of the bunch, Buddyboy, and he just had to get rid of the others before they died, too, because that’s how dolphins do. Hubbard seems very upset by the whole thing - scared even.While there, they find Lucy, a squatter, and former “employee” at the park. She’s a mousy, messed-up sort of young woman obsessed with the dolphins and Buddyboy in particular. Lucy clears off.Hubbard wants a deal now, but Dave wants an inspector to come in. Looks like the deal is off, but as Dave is leaving, Hubbard hears the sounds of a dolphin and runs out and telling Dave he can bring in an inspector. He’s really scared now.Back at Dave’s Peak-a-Boo club, after some gratuitous nudity, Dave is explaining to Jimmy that Hubbard is scared and desperate to sellout but he’s worried he might be mixed up with and afraid of the mob, and that could be bad for him. He’s having second thoughts about the deal.Back at the theatre, Dave has got his inspector looking for things wrong with the building so that he can negotiate a better price. Lucy is there and she tells him about Buddyboy and how when he got sick the other dolphins tried to keep him alive. Although she doesn’t know what happened exactly before he got ill, Buddyboy had a mind of his own and wouldn’t do the routine as planned. Hubbard and the trainer had to show him who was boss. As she fantasizes about when the park was open, Dave hears the sound of a dolphin. Lucy passes out from exertion and lack of food.Dave takes her and feeds her for more info. After getting more information, Dave surmises that Hubbard’s attempts to dominate Buddyboy left him fatally injured, but without marks -  allowing him to collect on the insurance money. He thinks that the presence of Lucy is causing his guilt to manifest.Meanwhile, Hubbard has been hearing noises in his apartment and his health is failing. He needs to sell that property and leave on holidays. He fixes a meeting with Dave at Hubbard’s luxury apartment.Hubbard’s lawyer strongly opposes the terrible terms of the deal on offer from Hubbard, but Hubbard will have none of it. He’s unwell, and he just needs to get rid of that property before he leaves on holidays. Dave shows up with a check for a fraction of what Hubbard is asking. He also brings in Lucy, which rattles Hubbard so much that he agrees to the absurdly small figure and even lets Dave take over his apartment. Deal done, Hubbard is gone.That night, a triumphant Dave, in his new digs takes Lucy into his bed. He’s into it, but Lucy is indifferent about the whole mechanical process until she starts thinking about Buddyboy and then she goes wild in the sack. Dave is impressed. It’s always the mousy ones that really surprise you, innit?Post-coital, Lucy heads to the bathtub and drowns herself....and what the hell did I just watch?

John and Eugene start looking at a new series: 1975’s Invisible Man starring David McCallum.Our series beings here with a look at the pilot TV Movie from May, 1975.Synopsis:We start mid-story with an invisible man, Daniel Weston, sneaking into a hospital, finding the information on a plastic surgeon currently in the operating theatre, and sitting down in the gallery, watching him work.With nothing better to do while waiting, he takes the opportunity to narrate his story so far…Dan Weston and his wife Kate are both research PhDs working on a top secret project at the KLAE Corporation.  They have spent a million and a half dollars and eight months attempting to develop a device to instantaneously teleport matter from one place to another; however, his work is a complete failure.He does have something to show for it, though, and, although reluctant to give a demo before the process is stable, he concedes to giving a demo to the man who gets him money.  What he has developed is temporary invisibility of matter, both living and non-living.  While the process doesn’t currently last but a few hours, the potential overjoys his boss, Walter Carlson, who sees the enormous weapons potential in the process.  The military will be barfing money at them for this process.“Hold on there a minute, Walter!  I am a principled scientist and you promised me that all my research would only be used for good, non-weapons purposes.”“Name one.”“Well, I can’t but… but… there MUST be something.  No military!”Carlson backs down and promises, no military, but when he leaves the room he immediately calls the military.Weston’s next development is a serum that can return an invisible animal to visibiliy on demand.  That night he can’t sleep, his mind racing with ideas.  He heads back into the lab and makes himself invisible.Kate is furious with his irresponsible action but, it seems it works and Carlson is overjoyed.  With this incredible success, it’s time Dan finds out where the money has been coming from all along: the military.  Shocked, Dan refuses to do anymore work, and Carlson has the couple barred from the facility and escorted off the premises.That night, Carlson’s assistant, Steiner, tries to make Dan see sense.  He points out that Carlson has him watched by agents and his phone tapped.  He has to play ball, but he won’tThat night, he breaks into his lab, makes himself invisible, grabs a supply of the serum and destroys the equipment, escaping into the night.  He returns to visibility, but his house has been overrun by Carlson’s people.  He takes a hotel room and calls to let Kate know he’s fine.  But he isn’t fine, for suddenly he starts to disappear again, and this time, the serum doesn’t work.Naked and invisible, he heads out in search of his old friend Dr. Maggio, plastic surgeon.  Along the way, he tries to force a blind man to feed him and let him wait out the night indoors.  What he gets is a bullet from the feisty old blind man.Now wounded, he finally reaches the hospital where Maggio works.  Flashback ends.After surgery, and outside, he accosts Maggio, who had an inkling of Dan’s work.  He takes him home, tends his wounds and then devises a plan to make Dan the most amazing mask and gloves ever devised.  Wearing them it will be almost impossible to tell he is the invisible man.First, he returns to Kate, and the disguise works until she touches his hands and face and she knows what’s he’s done.  He admits he has no choice but to go back to Carlson and ask to continue his research.  He does, but does not let Carlson know he’s invisible.  Carlson is skeptical, but will to give him a chance.Back at the Weston home, Kate and then Dan are taken prisoner by Steiner and some fine folks he’s sold out to.  For 10 million dollars, he’s going to turn Dan over to another interested party.On the way, Dan shucks his clothes, captures the van and he and his wife escape.  Letting his wife off to go get help, Dan appears to be killed in the car accident which also kills all the bad guys.  As the show ends, Dan reveals to Carlson and his wife that he’s alive and he’ll start work again soon – after his wife and he go back home for a little invisible on visible sexual action.

Five Hundred episodes and we’ve landed on Altair IV, the Forbidden Planet.For our Big 500, Simon and Eugene discuss the impact this ground-breaking film had on things to come and talk about some of the things that have not aged so well.Surely, you’re not going to bring up the overt sexism?Yes, we are, and don’t call us Shirley.Movie SynopsisIn the 22nd century, the United Planet’s Cruiser C-57D under the command of JJ Adams comes out of hyperspace drive near the star Altair after one year in flight.  The are checking on the planet Altair IV and the scientific colony ship Bellerophon which travelled to Altair IV 20 years earlier.Their arrival is greeted coldly by Professor Morbius, one of the Bellerophon crew.  He warns them of danger, but when they persist he invites them to lunch.  He reveals that he is the sole survivor of the Bellerophon.  The others either died when some mysterious planetary force ripped them apart, when their spaceship vaporized when they attempted to leave or, in the case of his wife, died of natural causes.  Morbius claims to be immune, but he warns that it will come back for them is they stay.They are interrupted by by Morbius’ little white lie:  While he is the only survivor of the crew, he’s not alone on the planet.  He has a beautiful, teenage daughter, Altaira, (also know as Alta) who was born on the planet.  She’s never seen young men before and she likes what she sees.  The men of the C-57D like what they see, too.  They are 18, hyper-competitive, 24 year old perfect physical specimens of manhood, and they’ve been cooped up on a spaceship for a year.Morbius also has an amazing robot, Robby, which he built as a hyper-capable servant. Only the ship’s cook seems hard up enough to take a shine to Robby.In light of the news about the Bellerophon, Adams needs to contact Earth, that will require setting up communications equipment and partially dismantling the ship.  They’re going to be on the planet a few days, at least.Executive Officer Lt. Jerry Farman sees this as an opportunity to teach Alta all about the important physical benefits of hugging and kissing.  Adams breaks this up and is furious… with Alta for dressing so provocatively and being a willing participant… or being unwittingly taken advantage of.  They fight over this and Alta is just all hot and bothered and doesn’t understand why.That night, something invisible enters the ship and sabotages some of the equipment.The next day, Adams returns to the Morbius residence to ask questions.  Alta is there and she and Adams begin to realize that they’ve fallen madly in lust.  It must be lust, right, since they’ve only actually known been in each other’s presence for about an hour.The thought Morbius was in his study, but he wasn’t.  When Morbius emerges from a secret passage he catches Adams and Doc snooping through his papers.  He takes them on a tour.  Beneath them is a 20 square mile underground city, left behind 200,000 years ago.  This was the planet of the Krell, a civilization advanced a million years beyond mankind.  Overnight, their civilization died.  Their cities crumbled to dust.  All that remains is the underground machine.  Quietly working at its unknown purpose, and maintaining and repairing itself for 200,000 years.  Morbius has spent his life on Altair IV studying what he can of the Krell.All he really knows is that the Krell were working on the ultimate advancement of their civilization.  Complete mastery of creation without instrumentation.  He has been able to get as far as he has because, while experimenting with one of the Krell machines, his brain capacity was permanently expanded.Adams argues that this discovery must be reported back to the United Planets.  Morbius doesn’t want that.  He doesn’t believe mankind can deal with the technology and wants to oversee it himself.Back at the ship, the crew have erected a force barrier around the ship.  Despite that, an invisible creature gets through the barrier, past the guards and kills Quinn, the communications officer.  Adams and Doc were with Morbius and Alta, and cook was getting drunk with Robby when Quinn was killed, so they all have an alibi.The next night, the ship have the big guns setup, and something approaches.  Their weapons slow it down a bit, but are effectively worthless against the invisible creature.  It begins killing the crew, including Lt. Farman and then, suddenly, it disappears.Back at the residence, Morbius awake from a fitful sleep at this desk.  Alta is screaming, having experienced a dream that seems to reflect the events at the ship.Adams decides to evacuate the planet and heads to collect Alta and Morbius, even if it is against his will.  He and Doc also want to get a crack at the Krell brain enhancement machine.While Adams tries to convince Alta to leave, Doc sneaks off and has a go at the machine.  It kills him, but not before expanding his brain and giving him clarity of what happened to the Krell.  The Krell machine translates pure thought into anything, anywhere.  The machine works, but what the Krell didn’t realize is that they still had a primitive Id in their subconscious.  The subconscious monsters wiped out their entire race overnight.Morbius didn’t understand that, nor did he realize that, while his brain isn’t strong enough to use the machine directly, his subscious is strong enough to manifest the monster.  He is the unwitting murderer of the crew of the Bellerophon and the C-57D.  Confronted with the accusation by Adams and the fact that Alta has decided to leave with Adams, the monster is coming to kill them both.Realizing the truth of the situation, Morbius throws himself between the monster and Alta and is killed ending the monster, too.  As his last act, he instructs Adams to put the Krell machine, and the planet itself, on self-destruct.24 hours later, and a 100 million miles away, Adams, Alta, Robby and the remaining crew watch from the C-57D as the planet explodes like a supernova.

Lucretia’s ex-husband shows up as an on-the-run fugitive from the Orchard and its sexy times galore (in her dreams only.)Kenneth and Eugene discuss Past LivesSynopsis:On Saturn, a man, Eric, is apprehended for outstanding gambling debts.  His debt has been sold to the BioMycron corporation.  They use their debtors as human guinnea pigs, and he is injected, without warning with a substance that will most likely kill him in 48 hours.  In the turn of hair, this bumbling gambling fool becomes lethal killer, killing two of his captors, escaping and stealing a shuttle, the Carpathia.Very soon, Rudolfo is assigning Dante and the crew of the Trans-Utopia with his retrieval.  He’s wanted alive and he needs to be delivered within 48 hours.  Dante just happens to be in the area.  Lucretia is shocked to learn that the fugitive is her ex-husband.  This leads to a bit of very awkward and not-entirely-good-natured ribbing.On the shuttle, Eric is trying to reach the nearest medical facility to find an antidote, he can get there in time, but only if he flies through a meteor storm.  The Trans-Utopia follows, sustaining considerable damage before they are able to retrieve the fugitive’s ship.Once captured, Eric disputes the story that Dante has been given.  He is not a janitor in the employ of BioMycron, and he did not murder two people, he killed them in self-defense after they injected him with poison.  Dante is seemingly unmoved, but back on the bridge, he does a bit of checking and BioMycron’s story doesn’t entirely hold water.  He asks Carravagio to perform a medical scan, which confirms that Eric has been poisoned and he will die.Dante tries to get him to the medical facility, but with the engines damaged from the earlier hi jinx they cannot reach the facility in time.  With no qualified, responsible engineer on the crew, he must rely on Percy, as always, to do the job in time.Dante decides to soliloquize to the audience about his dead wife being a data ghost in the machine, and then goes to ask her to help, since she is a doctor.  I’m not that kind of doctor, I’m a dead kind of doctor who doesn’t really exist.  Tell Carravaggio to do a better job scanning.Carravagio does a better job scanning and then develops an antidote, which is given to Eric.While all this is going on, Lucretia and Eric talk a bunch about their failed marriage, plus Lucretia has sexy time flashbacks.Also, it turns out the antidote didn’t work, Eric will die soon.Percy gets the engines working, but its too late.  Lucretia discovers a familiar name, Paquette, on the board of directors of BioMycron and sends a nasty voicemail to her dad.  He’d better not be part of this.Eric convinces, first Dante, then finally Lucretia, to let him go in the shuttle so he can die in space.  They do, and, as the amazingly precise 48 hours elapses, Eric begins to glow… and his shuttle explodes.Dante tries to talk to Percy, I hope you’re not upset you couldn’t get the engines fixed in time and a man died because of your incompetence.  No.  I’m an emotionally-stunted cripple and that doesn’t bother me.“Does anything bother you?”“My parents were killed, that bothers me.”

In our second of two episodes on Space Rangers, David and Eugene study The Replacements.Episode Synopsis The Rangers are attempting to rescue a hijacked transport, but they're hampered by budget cuts. Their stabilizers don't work, their boosters aren't there, and their shrowder, which is their version of cloaking device, stops working right when they need it. So they get to the transport and they're ambushed.Doc is severely wounded, his arm blown off - just to remind you, his arm is mechanical - and they capture the guys, but one of them escapes by turning into globules of goo and like going through a wall or something. Back at the base, everyone's pissed off about the budget cuts and they want to get information from the guy who they captured, but he doesn't want to give information ‘cause he says he'll be killed if he gives information. And then he is killed. Boone gets in sort of a fight with Weiss, who is the guy that was in the credits that we mentioned earlier, that wasn't in the show last time, he's sort of a Colonel in intelligence and he's at the base and he's the Frank Burns character, except he's an authority.He gives Boone, as a way of a peace offering, a synthetic artificial intelligence droid, which they dub Ringer, which they don't want. But as Doc is since serious wounded and has his spare arm being attached. And so they reluctantly accept him as the gift that he is. They try to capture the alien that murdered the guy in his cell but made it look like a suicide, but they fail cause their ship breaks down, even though Ringer has been ingratiating himself to the crew by fixing things and being just generally helpful - recalibrating guns, fixing stabilizes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They know that this is some sort of drug smuggling thing, but they can't prove it. And they know who is the bad guy. It's somebody named, it's a guy named Isogol but they can't touch him, but they go up and talk to him and they end up doing like a dual fight with him, with swordy things. And then they go out to the ship again, cause they're crafty.They find out that Ringer is actually the first of a wave to replace all of the Rangers and they get very, very collective bargainingly angry about this whole thing. I think they're going to form a union and, and go on strike if this is going to happen because of automation.But then they go out on this final thing to the thing they discover where the drugs are being smuggled. But then the alien tries to attack them again. It looks like things are bad, but it's Ringer to the rescue. And then, oops, it's not Ringer to the rescue because of some little minor glitches. And then they save the day, but they can't capture Isogol because they didn't have any right to do it. And the story ends happily with Ringer being put in a box and sent back to central.

Let’s face it, party crashers are rats, but what happens when your party crashers really are ratus ratus, and what can Barty do about it?Simon and Eugene discuss the episode, During Barty’s Party.Synopsis:We open on a romantic scene.  An open-top two-seat sports car, parked on a country road, music playing on the radio and the screams of the amorous couple.Angie, who lives nearby, is asleep, but their screams invade her dreams and deeply upset her.  When he husband, Roger, comes home from the city he finds her at home, blasting rock and roll music and, apparently, drinking bit heavily.   She’s nervous and feeling alone.  She’d tried calling him, but he’d already left the office.  She’d tried to visit their neighbors, the Gibsons, but they’re not home today.There’s a rat under the floorboards making noises and it’s really bothering her.  She set the dog, Buster, on him earlier but he ran off out the door and hasn’t come back.  Roger brings a typically manly perspective to the situation, basically, “buck up, woman, you’re getting hysterical over nothing.  It’s just a rat.”  He stomps the floor and the rat is gone.Angie points out the sports car to Roger.  It’s been there since I woke up from my nightmare sleep, door wide open.  Don’t you think that’s odd?“Not really, no.”While Roger attends to some unfinished business on the phone, Angie turns on the radio, listening to the program, Barty’s Party, a light mixture of inane banter and popular music.  On it, Barty notes a few people have been calling in from the country with reports of flocks of rats swarming.  Isn’t that funny.And then the rat is back.  Or perhaps I should say, rats, for there are now more than one.Roger refuses to leave and go out for dinner, as Angie asks, because he will not be ratted out of his home.  He calls the police to see if there’s anything to the whole rats story on the radio, but they’ve heard nothing and suggest ringing the council in the morning.There are more rats.  And they are following them through the house.Roger decides to whip up some chlorine gas to kills the rats, but when he tries to get water the line is clogged.  “It was the rats,” posits Angie.“Nonsense,” counters Roger.Angie calls Barty’s Party and tells them what’s going on, and it actually concerns Barty enough to try to send help, but before Angie can give their address, the phone line goes dead.  Then the electricity.  Roger loses it.  First trying to rip up the floorboards to pour in his chlorine mixture, and then finally succumbing to hysterical panic.Angie formulates an escape plan using their fencing gear to help them get to the car.Just when they are about to start, the Gibson’s return and they are overjoyed.  Shouting from the window across the way, “  We’re coming over, OK?”And the rats are gone.  But soon they know why, as the Gibson’s are ripped to shreds by the rats in front of Roger and Angie’s eyes.And the rats are back, and the doors are giving way to their relentless chewing.  As Angie helps the panic paralyzed Roger upstairs, on the radio, Barty is trying to reach Angie, thinking it might be a hoax, but he certainly hopes she really is a real person.”We fade to black.