THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-1994-THE CULEX EXPERIMENT (story 2)

 

1994 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-The Culex Experiment part 1

 

Okay, so off from the start: there’s again nothing terribly wrong about this except that…by middle of the episode, it put me right to sleep.

 

First, Kevin (it must be a full year or more since THE ORIGIN STORY because both he and Megabyte looks taller and older) and Megabyte are going on some kind of two week (?) trip maybe? We’re not really fully told. Second, they’re using bikes? And meeting a railway station? In the countryside? Just where do the live now? Instead of jau…teleporting, they’re traveling…this way. If I were Kevin I’d teleport all over the place. Instead, he’s biking and running, even when late to meet Megabyte. He’s been playing video games…which proves some things never change.

 

Kevin gets bitten by a strange insect, a larger mosquito of some kind. He’s in a coma and hospital soon enough, being visited by his older aunt Ruth Tanner, a nice enough character. She later sees Ami, Adam and Megabyte vanish from thin air…and barely reacts. In fact, that happens a lot in this episode.

 

Another thing that happens a lot as Andy Davidson comments on in JAUNT is that …we’re given constant clips and re-clips of what happened to Kevin. Ami (and to a lesser extent Adam and Megabyte) share his pain and see it in their head. Ami is introduced and the whole thing of it is that it’s very rushed and poorly executed. The thing is that Naomi Harris as Ami Jackson is so likeable and such a good actress, you tend to want to overlook all of that. Despite not wanting to rush her, Adam tells her stuff and Mega reveals the ship. Later, at the ship, she seems to know she’s the next step of evolution and that they are called The Tomorrow People. It’s all done matter of fact and while the lighting playing across Adam’s face is a nice touch, the sense of awe and special, while being talked about, isn’t really felt. Ami seems to accept things too fast and seems already broken out. Some of the first things she says include telling no one in the hospital hallway that Kevin will be all right in the end. Spoilers, Ami.

 

Some of my negative feelings about the book JAUNT include choppy synopsis of episodes and mistakes as well as the way they are broken up to a synopsis of the whole story AND very short episode ones and often they are wrong. For example this one states Kevin was waiting for Adam…Now, with all the similar names the actors have to each other AND to the characters (Adam Pearce plays Kevin while Kristian Schmid plays Adam), this is wrong and as the use of a synopsis is to find out what happened…the errors are…glaring and faulty. It was Megabyte who was waiting for Kevin at the railway station. There are also big jumps in events as if someone wrote a much longer synopsis and then someone else thought it had to be cut down to a much shorter entry AND entries and chopped it up willie nillie.

 

In any event, this episode could have been better if the execution were better. Kevin is kidnapped from the hospital by two large twin women who take the blood sample Dr. Paul took from him and pour it down a sink. Their car almost hits Ami. Ami had no choice but to believe Adam and Megabyte (admittedly his fixation on his fruit cake while Adam is trying to explain to Ami about the TP is funny). Adam and Megabyte hardly said two words to each other in the ORIGIN story but here, they seem best friends. I wonder what other things happened in between these stories.

 

The policeman is inept but not too over the top.

 

There’s a strange fake slow mo run down a hallway by Ami, Adam, and Mega but again, the location, effects, and this time, even the plot and acting are quite okay. The dialog, execution, and the whole matter of factness is not. The whole Ami is a TP thing is rushed to the extreme and the continued filler clip over and over of Kevin getting attacked is annoying. It’s even in the cliffhanger. Which is : Ami feeling his attack again.

 

Not bad but not terribly great either. It could have been something far better but the rushed feeling and the lack of a sense of awe prevails. Still, it’s hard to still hope for the link to the old series and hope that it might surface slowly over time dwindles.   

1994 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-THE CULEX EXPERIMENT part 2

 

“You might say I’m in love with the mosquito.”

“You’re weird.”

 

Once again, there’s nothing terrible here. In fact, the episode has a faster pace than the first episode and probably the entire ORIGIN story’s episodes. Jean Marsh chews the scenery and doesn’t go over the top in this episode and the silly twins aren’t featured that much, only when Ami, Adam, and Megabyte finally convince the dumb, dopey Inspector Platt to give a visit to Culex’s large, sprawling mansion (another nice location).

 

Inspector Platt interrogates Megabyte, Adam (who, since the Origin Story has had a haircut), and Ami. The actress that plays Ami’s mom looks familiar. I’m thinking she was in DOCTOR WHO. Later, the trio try a memory mind link to get the plates off the motorcycle belonging to whoever kidnapped Kevin out of the hospital. These Tp so need a link table.

 

 

As an introduction, Jade has a small part in this as she plays with her dog where she’s not supposed to be (why is not supposed to be there?) and unfortunately the dog is stung and goes the same way Kevin does. Now, this upsets me. In horror movie fashion, a perpetrator enters Ruth’s (she’s a vet) establishment (is she a country vet?) ---we don’t see their face but we do see their body…and apparently he or she attempts to kidnap or kill the dog.

 

I don’t really like it when animals are in danger in movies and TV shows to this extent: getting sick and/or the target of murder by others. It’s disturbing. In any case, the dog is kidnapped. Ruth took a blood sample and gave it to Dr. Poole, who was knocked out and has the blood sample of Kevin’s stolen last time. Here, he’s kidnapped after he examines the dog’s blood. I’m sure we see him and Kevin again but we do not see Jade’s dog in this episode again and that bothered me. If the show’s makers don’t care enough…

 

In any case, Poole’s abduction is disturbing as it looks like there might be blood on the wall behind Megabyte. He and Adam try to sneak into Culex’s home (why not jau…teleport in?) but are stopped by a sound device. I wonder a long time before they do, why they didn’t involve General Damon. While they do, Ami has been kidnapped, too. Culex is creepy. She locks Ami, with the help of her twin lackeys, in a huge glass tube and lets a mosquito into it!

 

Once more, there’s some drama and this time it’s not undercut by so called humor. The only real humor comes from Megabyte telling off Platt in the interrogation room. It’s also interesting that he says Damon’s ten minutes is really more like two and a half hours.

 

So, this episode was not as boring as the first and in fact, not boring at all. That’s actually two good episodes in this story…the first was boring and a bit rushed but not embarrassing. For the ORIGIN story, only episode four was a mess.

 

 1994 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-THE CULEX EXPERIMENT ep 4

At the risk of sounding very repetitive, there’s nothing inherently wrong here. Perhaps…it was the disappointment of it not being the TP but being the Tp. On the other hand, Megabyte is asked point blank by General Damon if he knows where Culex is…and he says he can find out BUT Adam already gave him the name of the street in the last episode. There is far too long a recap on all of the episodes and the theme song comes in the middle of them.

 

If Megabyte and Adam had contacted Damon earlier, none of this would have happened but at the same time if Damon listened to them earlier…Damon also does not recognize Culex in her flimsy disguise!? Uhm, then the twins break into the Laser Tag game (reminds me of PHOTON, one of the few really bad Sat Morn TV shows---imagine cheap aliens on CGIed background or CSO backgrounds firing laser tag at each other while, say, Michael Jackson songs play in the background?!) using…the same type of fingerprint gloves that Culex wore to impersonate Commander Scott.

 

BTW I thought a General outranked a commander? Perhaps there are some instances where a General does not?

 

That the Tp get tired when Adam is unconscious is…rather special. But just how special that is I don’t know. There’s so much else that they DON’T do that involves powers. This leads them to rescue him. There’s an awful lot of kidnapping and rescuing going on.

 

Megabyte shows some backbone telling his father he has some nerve and walking out, breaking into a conference TWICE or more, and hiding in the trunk of Culex’s stolen (?) limo. So do we get to see Commander Scott alive again? Not sure. She IS found in the limo by …someone else (?), though, along with Megabyte.

 

I do like that Damon just tells Lucy Connor that their security will not anyone allowed near her and then Megabyte a second later, teleports in, calling for his father! Damon’s acting like a jerk in this.

 

Okay, so security wise, it makes NO SENSE that the African American aide is going to take the son of the top scientist on this delicate project…to a laser tag game where there would be plenty of times the son, 12 year old Richie, could be out of sight.

 

In the older TP series, Richie would either become a valuable ally/companion to the Tp or one of the Tp themselves!

 

Ami proves her worth and Adam says, “Atta girl,” when she teleports unaided and with one of the mosquitos in a vial for Ruth.  Ruth is doing her part too testing Kevin’s blood and trying to come up with an antidote to the mosquito sleep. This will help her further.

 

Not sure how the Cornucopia figures into this but those scenes are strange anyway. The production might be channeling Irwin Allen with the black walls and set in the Scientist Conference. The making rice scene is puzzling, too.

 

Adam recovers and saves everyone from what he thought was a bomb but was just a note from Culex that she has Richie and if Connor wants him back, she will have to give up the machine!

 

Note: one of the twins seems to have a green nail? Not only are they annoying but Damon is annoying in this, too. Much less annoying but more crazy is Culex herself. She doesn’t seem to go over the top here (next ep maybe/) but her plan is insane. She and the twins must be insane.

 

Adam, Ami, Megabyte, Damon, and Ruth ALL have a nice, easy going rapport. The Ship seems long forgotten.

 

A fairly uneven episode but not terrible and certainly follow-able and entertaining. It even has a few bright humorous spots mostly thanks to Megabyte.

 

The cliffhanger is Richie has been kidnapped.

 

 

1994 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-THE CULEX EXPERIMENT ep 3

 

The action sequences are handled…rather badly but other than that, nothing here is again, gawd awful as in a Moffat Era Doctor Who. Ami’s “rescue” could have been handled better and the twin who was bugging Damon’s conference running through a wide open area in a…hotel, was it? Badly executed. She also hides in plain sight and no one sees her…twice. Mega and Adam’s search through the castle reminded me of a very similar 1977 scene in the first story of THE RED HAND GANG where JR and Frankie look through a haunted house…for a kidnapped boy. Amazingly, someone here must have seen that scene. Similarly, Ami and her mom, who are both more serious and better (I’m so sorry) than Lisa and her mom, remind me of Rose and Jackie from 2006’s DOCTOR WHO. The talk Ami had with her mom about standing up for your decision seems as if RTD copied it almost word for word. In hindsight, it’s rather good, too.

 

I’m not sure what Ami was talking about flower pots attacking Adam and Megabyte but maybe I wasn’t paying attention to last week. The location work outdoes itself this week.

 

Damon’s nice but he’s a real bore and slows down all the proceedings. I know he’s a fan favorite but honestly…he’s not needed in this at all. His part of the story about Connor, a scientist, her son, and her invention comes out of nowhere but that’s not odd for TV. Ruth continues to be a more serious and stable adult than anyone we’ve seen so far in the series and even Inspector Platt is funny this week (“Okay, Miss Marple!”). And more.

 

I’d so watch a series with Kristian and Christian as buddies…TP or not. They’re both infinitely watchable as is Naomi Harris…in anything she’s in. NINJA ASSASSIN had the great RAIN but the movie was even better with her in.

 

Kevin’s been rescued but Adam, off on his own…hold on, WHAT was he doing when everyone was talking and he was holding his medallion necklace with his eyes closed for…a long time? He also seems to go off into his own world sometimes…it’s a good nuance.

 

BTW last episode Platt made note that when he looked into the eyes of each of the TP, not knowing what they are, he felt something…something odd and deeply disturbing. It’s an interesting bit of the script there.

 

In any case, Adam is off on his own, having stowed away in the truck (which had…a view slate?) and now in Culex’s new lair…a factory…has one of the twins drop a huge barrel at him from high up…in the cliffhanger.

 

So far, taken on its own, individually, the series is NOT that bad yet. Makes me wonder if it will seem bad at all …btw one Mel Gibson is part of the crew of this series!?

 

One thing: Ami seems to have the hang of being a Tp off screen…only then, she hasn’t!? Makes me wonder how Megabyte and Kevin became so adept at their TP ness as they were brand new TP last story. Again, how much time has gone by between stories? We’re never…like most things…told.

1994 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-THE CULEX EXPERIMENT part 5

 

The rousing conclusion. Sort of. There’s the feeling this could have been so much better. First, the bad: Megabyte tells Damon they know where Culex…Dr. Jeffries, hangs out but Damon is reluctant to raid the place, knowing that Culex does not have the cornucopia. Once she has the weapon, he’s not reluctant to raid the place. But worse: the TP KNOW where she is but there’s a big deal out of Damon trying to trace her phone call. Whaa? Megabyte even gives Damon a congrads on putting a tracker on the device. Why didn’t he just do that in the first place and hand it over to Culex? If these things were ironed out, as a few things in the other episodes of this story, this story might be better.

 

The major thing wrong is that…the Tp kill, that’s right, kill the mosquitos. Not that I mind the mosquitos dying—because they’re vile gross insect mutants but the fact that the Tp can now kill. AND there’s no continuity with the last story as Adam might have just healed Kevin in the first place. But the Tp can kill?

 

Ruth figured out that the mosquitos are not just mosquitos but a combination of other thing, including wasps and scorpions!

 

The twins are caught but Dr. Connor left her room anyway. Mind telling me how? Did she climb out the window? She goes to the park to sit down. Good plan?

 

The good include: wonderful location shoots again. Adam catches the vial after Culex drops it on purpose in a wonderful moment. Adam teleports from the girder to underneath it. Amazing teleport effects, too. Dr. Poole looks a lot like Peter Davison.

 

Uhm, Adam just teleported in front of Connor and all of Damon’s men.

 

Again, nothing terrible but by the end of the episode, any idea that this TP might somehow link up to the 1970s TP is just about almost gone. There’s little telepathy going on, teleporting only when it is absolutely necessary, and no more sight or talk of the Ship. All of that written, there’s ZERO links to the older show now. Still, one might hope by the next story…

 

Adam and Megabyte’s rapport is fun. Ami is a great addition and she had a sort of women’s intuition that Carol and Liz had. The parents are a bit smarter.

 

The man that found Scott and Megabyte might be the recovered limo driver.

 

All in all, four out of five episodes that are not terrible, just like the first story. Could they both have been better? Yes. A tighter script was all that was needed for these. And it wouldn’t have gone amiss to link this show to the old show but in hindsight if they had stun guns and TIM they might have solved this situation earlier than five episodes?