The first recording today starts with the end of Landmarks – Portraits of Europe with Jamie Theakston and Charlotte Avery.
There’s a trail for two food programmes, Neneh and Andi Dish It Up and Sweet Baby James.
Then another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation – Evolution. This is the first episode of Season Three. I have looked at this on one of my tapes, but I was a bit short, as it’s an early tape. Ken Jenkins plays eminent scientist Paul Stubbs, so I bet he’s going to be annoying.
Gates McFadden returns as Doctor Crusher, after the extremely strange decision to drop her for Season Two for the rather less likeable Doctor Pulaski. I’m glad she’s back.
The plot revolves around Ensign Wesley Crusher’s inability to screw a jar closed He’s “bred” two nanites together – microscopic machines, which as a result become more capable. Although mostly what they’re capable of is messing up the Enterprise computer. Professor Stubbs is angry that he might miss deploying his life’s work, an experiment called “The Egg”, to observe a spatial event that only happens once every 196 years. So angry that, when the crew are trying to remove the infestation of nanites humanely, he just zaps them with gamma radiation to kill them. As a result, the nanites have their revenge on him.
Media Centre Description: Sci-fi drama series. As the crew prepare to launch a research unit to study a predicted star burst, a mysterious breakdown of the Enterprise’s main computer threatens to destroy the ship.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Tuesday 27th March 2007 11:08
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Tuesday 27th March 2007 11:10
After this, a trail for The Underdog Show and for Football. Then, an episode of The Witness: The Wall Street Crash which we saw a few days ago.
There’s another trail for The Underdog Show and a repeat of the trail for Neneh and Andi Dish It Up and Sweet Baby James. There’s also the short version of the Doctor Who trailer.
Then, the recording stops after a few minutes of The Daily Politics.
The next recording starts with the trailer for Neneh and Andi Dish It Up and Sweet Baby James.
Then, another episode of Life on Mars. Sam is hearing the voice of his girlfriend from the present, Maya.
An Asian man is found shot, but not dead. Hunt thinks it’s related to a new drug on the streets – heroin. They visit the local dealer for some information.
Layla, a woman who was in the victim’s record store, turns out to be his lover, and was also doing the books for his company because, as an Asian man, he couldn’t get a bank account.
A young Asian man comes into the record shop, and Layla rather obviously, to me, tries to get him to leave quickly. Sam asks “do you know Dipak Gandhi?” “Dipak? The evil pusher man? That’s what you think, yeah?” “Well, we found heroin in his pockets.” “The Gandhi brothers as drug dealers? That’s crazy, man. They set up the record business to pull chicks.” He leaves quickly before Sam can ask him any more.
Sam visits a community centre where they’re watching a Bollywood film on a projector. Sam sees that the actress in the film is Maya, and she’s talking to him. “When someone you love dies, you can say goodbye and go through all the stages you go through and move on. You’re still there, Sam, and nothing’s getting better. I’m going to stop coming to see you, Sam. I’m sorry.”
The dialogue in the episode is very deliberately offensive. At one point, after Hunt has gone on an ableist, racist, homophobic rant, Sam says “I think you might have missed out the Jews.” Incidentally, this episode was written by Guy Jenkin, more well known for comedies like Drop The Dead Donkey, and he’s really going for the colourful metaphors with Hunt’s dialogue in this, just to make sure we don’t forget that there used to be racism in the past. I’m so glad that’s all over now.
Dead addicts keep turning up.
They revisit the dealer, and Hunt brings along a man called Toolbox, who threatens the dealer with some ferrets to his testicles.
the dealer, Rocket, agrees to talk to Hunt, and says the two Ghandi brothers “came round and said they had this new gear they wanted me to retail for them, yeah?” He says that the other brother, Ravi, “Says his brother had got too greedy. Yeah. Says he had to send him, er, on a long holiday.” And when they get a picture of the brother, Sam recognises him as the man in the record shop.
They pick up Layla again, and she’s adamant Ravi wouldn’t have shot his brother. Hunt lets Sam talk to her, as he’s established some trust. They visit the victim, Dipak, in hospital.
Layla says she’ll show Sam all her records for the store, but when they get to her house it’s been firebombed.
Sam takes Layla to his flat for safety. In the morning, Annie arrives telling him that Hunt has found out where Ravi is hiding, but he’s sent the psycho Toolbox to sort it out. Cut to said psycho Toolbox playing a cinema organ as it rises from the floor, in the style of Dr Phibes.
Sam arrives and tells him to hand Ravi over to him. But Hunt also arrives asking what Sam’s doing there. Sam asks him if he’s really going to just let Toolbox kill Ravi. “OK, if you’re that man… ..you kill him. Go on. If you’re that man, you don’t need anyone else, do you? You do it.”
Sam arrests Ravi. He says that he arrived just after his brother was shot, and saw a white man leaving the scene. He can’t give a description because “They all look the same.” Then Chris arrives to break the news that Dipak has died in hospital.
Sam wonders why he died, since he’d been improving. Then he notices that he’s been stabbed in the chest, in the same place as the bullet wound. He’s still thinking the National Front killed him, like they firebombed Layla’s flat.
But Ray, who was watching Dipak in hospital, says that the only people who entered the room were doctors, nurses, porters, and Layla. Who was also present when Dipak was shot. So they go to arrest her. I thought it was weird when Sam produces a warrant for the arrest, but it’s so that Layla can tell them that’s not her real name – it’s Leslie Roy. The mother of Sam’s girlfriend Maya. She denies it was her.
Sam goes to the community centre to ask around, when a couple of skinheads lob a brick through the window. Sam chases, and catches one of them. He tells Sam the Asian community are al involved in smuggling. “Once a fortnight, regular. We’ve been following them. No. They must be smuggling. They’ll be there tonight. The old sugar warehouse. They all get together, and a lorry turns up with those Pakis from the record shop. Go and see.”
In the warehouse, they do indeed find a smuggling ring. All the local Asians were thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin, and now they’re smuggling in all their possessions they had to leave behind.
But also, Sam finds drugs among the rest of the things.
Sam goes to talk to Layla again. She tells him she’s going to have an abortion. She tells him where Ravi is. Sam and Annie go to talk to him, but as they’re leaving someone bashes Sam on the head, and he wakes up, ties up, with an iron tied to his chest that’s just been turned on. And his life is saved by a power cut.
Toolbox has found Ravi, and is about to torture him (with the blessing of Hunt) when Sam notices his carpet. “Hang on a minute. That rug. It’s a bit ethnic for your taste, innit, Toolbox? But I suppose, whilst you were removing your heroin from the warehouse, you could afford to take whatever took your fancy. Am I right?”
But it’s not Toolbox who’s the brains behind it, it’s the woman who does his torturing. She shoots Ravi, and is about to shoot Sam when someone shoots her.
It’s Chris, who’s just arrived with Ray.
With the crime solved, Sam rushes to the hospital where Layla was going to have her abortion, only to find her having an ultrasound. He suggests Maya as a name for the baby, and he hears Maya’s voice. “Thanks for letting me go. Goodbye, Sam.”
Annie arrives to check on him, and Sam tells her that his “unfinished business” is all finished.
Hunt is with Ravi, as the officer assigned to watch him hasn’t turned up. Sam tells him he knows how to cheer Ravi up, and they both end up listening to some Thin Lizzy, to the annoyance of the nursing staff.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about Sam Tyler, a Manchester detective who suffers a near-fatal car crash and wakes up in what seems to be 1973.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Tuesday 27th March 2007 21:00
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Tuesday 27th March 2007 21:00
After this, there’s the long Doctor Who trailer again. And the advert for Stephen Merchant’s radio show.
There’s also a trail for Waterloo Road.
Then there’s the start of the news, leading with British hostages in Iran.
VHiStory 