Chapter 25
The Jedi fight an all out battle to protect Palpatine – but Grievous and his droid bodyguards are too powerful and too numerous. Anakin frees the captured Nelvaanian warriors and exacts vengeance against the Techno-Guild scientists. After their mission is completed, Mace summons them back to Coruscant, as the battle continues . . .
story by Bryan Andrew, Darrick Bachman, Paul Rudish and Genndy Tartakovsky
directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
original music by John Williams
new music by James L. Venable and Paul DinletirNotes: The events of Clone Wars: Volume II are meant to lead directly into Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Anakin’s knighting, the beginning of the Battle of Coruscant and Palpatine’s kidnapping are also recounted in the prose novel “Labyrinth Of Evil.” Those attempting to reconcile these two accounts are advised to stock up on the headache medication of their choice.
LogBook entry by Dave Thomer
Lt. Hoffman is caught in the middle of a terrorist bombing of a pub in London, but lives long enough to call Colonel Dalton and identify the attackers who sweep through the rubble, murdering survivors, as Scottish. Other attacks follow, and the media quickly dubs the night “Britain’s 9/11.” As Colonel Chaudhry races to meet reporter Francis Currie, who calls her claiming to know who’s behind the rapidly escalating series of attacks, Dalton listens as reports emerge in the news media about Muslim attackers – not Scottish. More suicide bombings take place, and Major Kirby of ICIS puts pressure on the Prime Minister to put Britain under martial law – and to put ICIS in charge. When Chaudhry meets Francis Currie, she’s amazed when the reporter tries to strangle her. She incapacitates him and finds that he’s under some form of mind control – and increasingly, it appears that all of the incidents involve similar mind control, all seemingly triggered by random phone calls from “help lines.” But Chaudhry and Dalton soon find that the trail leads to ICIS itself – and that even UNIT’s finest aren’t immune to the mind control.
The TARDIS arrives on what appears to be an asteroid with a city on it, a city where the cars, the people and even the buildings have turned to stone. Some of the human colonists on the asteroid have escaped that fate – some of them steeped in Australian Aboriginal lore, and others much more determined to return the colony to normality, by brute force if necessary. The strange situation is not helped by the arrival of a Galyari ship, its crew determined to salvage something from the asteroid before they leave. When the Doctor vanishes into something called the Dreaming, and Ace is knocked out cold, Hex finds himself on his own in a situation he can barely even begin to fathom.
Unless it was of Hex’s scenes, that is. Philip Olivier continues to make his new TARDIS traveler likeable, and when he’s thrust into danger that’s beyond what he can grasp, his part of the story quickly becomes the most compelling thing to follow. Ace has to deal with an uncooperative brute determined to gain control of the situation by any means necessary – hardly a situation she hasn’t been in before – while the Doctor finds himself in bizarrely unfamiliar circumstances to which he reacts with what almost seems like calm familiarity. Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy turn in fine performances, and the first episode is gripping stuff, but it gets a bit muddled after that, leaving the cast to do the best they can with what the script gives them. There are even tantalizing hints that we’ll follow up on the Galyari’s relationship with the Doctor – something explored much more deeply in The Sandman – but even that doesn’t materialize.
The Doctor and Melanie arrive at the National Foundation for Scientific Research just prior to a public ceremony marking the Foundation’s 100th anniversary. Mel’s eccentric uncle, John Hallam, is not just a member of the Foundation but actually lives on the grounds. During the ceremony, involving the burial of a time capsule, it is discovered that something else has already been buried there. When the Doctor and Hallam examine the object, it causes an explosion in another one of the Foundation’s laboratories – one where a rather bored Melanie is reading through Hallam’s records of their family history. Melanie is missing when the Doctor and Hallam try to come to her aid, and the Doctor strongly suspects that the mysterious object has catapulted her back in time. He also thinks that her time journey may have been directed by her thoughts at the time, so the TARDIS homes in on the sprawling Hallam estate in 1782. That leaves only a few rather significant problems: in Melanie’s timeline, six months have passed since her arrival, and in that time, she has been heavily drugged by a family doctor who feels that her ramblings about being from the future are a sign of dementia. Worse yet, with no sign of rescue from that future, Mel has started to believe that she is who her ancestor, Henry Hallam, tells her she is: his future wife, and therefore her own ancestor.
A seemingly typical Thursday throws Englishman Arthur Dent for a loop as he witnesses the destruction, in rapid succession, of his house and then the entire world. That he witnesses the latter event instead of being caught up in it is solely thanks to the intervention of his quirky friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to be an alien in disguise, researching Earth for a publication known as the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. After escaping Earth’s demise, Ford and a dazed Arthur wind up aboard the stolen starship Heart Of Gold, whose captain, Zaphod Beeblebrox, is out of both of his minds. But Arthur is also reunited with Tricia McMillan, the only other surviving human being, and reminds her that she once turned down his advances in favor of an incognito Zaphod at a party on Earth. Soon, the Heart Of Gold is being pursued not only by a Vogon fleet trying to recover both the ship and Zaphod, but also by Humma Kavula, the candidate who Zaphod beat out for the presidency of the galaxy. Tricia is captured by the Vogons on a planet to which Kavula diverts the Heart Of Gold, and Arthur sets out to rescue her, even if he can’t necessarily win her heart in the attempt.
Notes: The original Marvin suit from the 1981 BBC TV series makes a quite visible appearance in the office queue on Vogsphere. Similarly, Simon Jones, the TV series’ Arthur Dent, appears as the cheerfully threatening (and honest-to-Zarquon anaglyphic) “answering machine” spokesbeing who threatens to destroy anyone approaching Magrathea.
The face of Douglas Adams can be seen prominently in two scenes; his face is one of the custom worlds under construction in the Magrathean planet-building yards, and his face is also the last thing into which the Infinite Improbability Drive morphs the Heart of Gold before the end credits. Adams’ family, including his wife, are among the panicked London crowds glimpsed briefly before the world ends.