Alienated:
Written by:
Story by : Varina Bleil & Betsy Landis
Teleplay by : Harry Victor & Dan E. Fesman
Directed by: Marita Grabiak
Original airdate: August 8, 2006
Synopsis:
Spencer, having managed to hack into Global Dynamics’ satellite, uses it so that he, Taggart, Fargo, and Vincent can watch a movie that hasn’t been released yet.
Jack undergoes a weapons evaluation from Jo, and ends up failing. When they receive a call complaining about noise from Spencer’s trailer, Jack sends Jo to check it out but she ends up staying and watching the movie with them.
Congressman Faraday arrives in town to evaluate Nathan and his projects to determine if they will continue to receive funding. He asks Beverly to act as a welcome committee, to which she does by going through his suitcase. When Faraday discovers her, he grabs her, but things then turn playful as both were just acting, having had similar private liaisons before. After they finish, Faraday tells Beverly that The Consortium believes that The Artifact was excavated and moved to Eureka, leaving them to plan exactly how to get Stark to show him what’s in Section 5.
At the project, Fargo is distraught when he sees their experiment to beam thoughts of aggression and paranoia into test monkeys has failed and he runs off. Jack, Henry, and Jo investigate the sudden disappearance of Spencer and find him naked in the middle of a huge crop circle. Taggart and Vincent also have not been seen either. Later when Spencer sees the senator, he sees something moving under the senator’s skin.
At the demonstration, the test with the monkeys fails again and leaves Stark desperate, something that Faraday plays off of in order to be given the chance to go into Section 5 and see the artifact, something that actually impresses him, and promises him his funding.
Jo and Jack square off as she doesn’t appreciate his behavior towards her, treating her like an appendage, with their argument ending with her hitting him and knocking him out with the butt of a gun.
Meanwhile, Taggart, Jo, Vincent, and Fargo manage to pull over Faraday’s car and take him hostage, while sedating Stark. They take the senator back to Taggart's compound with plans to cut him open in order to get the alien that is inside him out.
Jack and Allison meet Stark and his commandos at Taggart’s compound with Jack defying Stark’s orders to let them handle it. He gets inside and pleads with the group to listen to reason, eventually getting through to them, and bringing them all outside with the senator to safety. Back at Global Dynamics, the group is rehabilitated back to their normal behavior and Jack finally manages to pass Jo’s weapons exam and the two come to a new understanding of each other and their partnership.
Advanced Research:
We’ve seen director Marita Grabiak before, she directed the Dawson’s Creek season 5 episode “Sex, Lies and Videotape”, and the Firefly episode “Jaynestown”
The production company for They Came to Conquer is “Preternatural Pictures.” Preternatural means beyond what is normal or natural.
A Faraday cage is a conductive enclosure, solid metal or mesh, that blocks external static and non-static electric fields, including radio waves and electromagnetic pulses (EMPs).
The licence plate on Taggart’s truck is NAGI-93. Like his dog catcher it has the chemical symbol for sodium/salt (Na).
Faraday was played by Garwin Sanford. Many of his credits include a number of Hallmark and Lifetime movies. One sci-fi based one is called Independence Daysaster (when Earth is attacked by a hostile alien force, a small town firefighter and a rogue SETI scientist team up to activate the only technology capable of defeating the invaders), it's a Canadian movie in a long line of knock offs, like Asteroid-A-Geddon, Super Cyclone, Tidal Wave, Arctic Blast, or Stonehenge Apocalypse. He was in a few scattered episodes of Stargate, 7 Days, and Nightman. He was also in the pilot for Sliders playing Doc, one of the leaders of the revolution under commander Wade Wells in the Soviet States. He was most recently in a movie called His & Hers with Lacy Chabert (married lawyers Dana and Mark represent reality stars entangled in a bitter divorce, leading to complications when their clients' inability to compromise strains the couple's own relationship).
Dr. Nobel:
Written by: Dan E. Fesman & Harry Victor
Directed by: Jeff Woolnough
Original airdate: August 22, 2006
Airing number: 6
Synopsis:
Fargo gets a “promotion” to a new office down on Level 4, which is seemingly tucked away far from everyone else in a dusty forgotten area of the underground complex. While he cleans the office up with Henry and Spencer, they inadvertently turn on an old weapons system which starts a countdown to firing and causes a large missile to suddenly raise up in the middle of the road in Eureka’s main street. After Jack and Allison go to Global Dynamics, Henry tells them that the console is set to shoot off not a missile, but irradiated uranium isotopes, or as in Jack’s words, a death ray. With no apparent way to turn it off, they head to Henry’s to look through the papers he took from Fargo’s office during the cleanup, hoping to find information about the machine. Eventually they discover that when NASA landed on the moon, they placed mirrors there to bounce signals off of it, mirrors that could also be used to weaponize the moon with the death ray.
Zoe starts her community service, a punishment for pulling the school’s fire alarm, as a helper at Eureka’s senior center, something she detests, citing her hate of old people. The director ignores her complaints and hooks her up with Eugenia, an elderly woman with a similar attitude to Zoe’s. Later, Jack shows up to find Irvin Thatcher, a scientist whose initials were found on the documents in Fargo’s office, and also the source of Eugenia’s infatuation, though it seems that Thatcher’s mind has become addled over the years as he mostly just talks to someone unseen. Jack brings Thatcher to Fargo’s office but his mumblings are not very helpful as he seems to stumble in and out of coherence.
Henry and Stark work on the console and end up cutting one of the wires, but it only speeds up the countdown.
Jack volunteers to be a guinea pig for the PX24 which is supposed to be able to probe another person’s mind. Unfortunately all he finds out is the name of a girl he once loved, Eugenia. As he takes Thatcher back to the room, the effects of the machine stay with Jack and he begins saying things as if he were Thatcher. They find Eugenia and he ends up kissing her, due to his mind being mixed up with Thatcher’s. She reveals that Thatcher had a mental breakdown back in the 60’s when Linus Pauling won a second Nobel Prize, when Thatcher had been hoping he would win. He was never the same after that.
Jack comes up with a plan to recreate the 1960’s Nobel Prize ceremony and award it to Thatcher, a plan that seemingly doesn’t work as he starts singing The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round. However he quickly pivots and reveals that it was that song that was the inspiration for his concept of mutually assured destruction. As he gives his speech, Jack interrupts him to tell him they have an urgent situation and Thatcher says he needs his crew to do the device, a crew that consists of Eugenia, and two other elderly men who were trying to help Zoe learn about science earlier. Together they manage to turn the weapon off with seconds to spare. However a second ignition begins, all due to Henry having cut the blue wire earlier, according to Thatcher. Jack takes a gamble and rams the missile with his car, which does indeed cause the beam to miss the mirror on the moon, instead hitting the Zephyr Rover hovering around Jupiter.
Alison and Jack watch as Thatcher and Eugenia rekindle their romance and Jack again starts to talk as if he was Thatcher. He asks Alison when it will wear off but she simply smiles and walks away.
Advanced Research:
Director Jeff Woolnough directed 3 episodes of Sliders, season 3 episodes “Murder Most Foul” and “The Other Slide of Darkness” and season 5 episode “The Java Jive.” He also directed 2 episodes of Heroes Reborn.
The Nobel Peace Prize was established in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will to reward those who confer the greatest benefit to humankind by promoting international fraternity, reducing standing armies, and fostering peace congresses. Influenced by his friend Bertha von Suttner, Nobel aimed to support peace efforts, potentially compensating for his invention of dynamite, which was used destructively.
Linus Pauling (1901–1994) is the only person to have won two undivided (sole recipient) Nobel Prizes. He was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research into the chemical bond and its application to molecular structures, and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing.
Thatcher was played by Antony Holland. He’s a character actor with over 50 credits. He has done voices in animation such as the Bill and Ted animated series, and Captain N: The Gamemaster where he played Dr. Wright over the entire 34 episode series. He was also Master Sebrian in The New Adventures of He-Man and appeared in shows like MacGyver and 21 Jump Street.
Matt McInnis played young Thatcher and he is actually a producer on such series as Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage.
Eve of Destruction was written by PF Sloan but the best known version is by Barry McGuire. The version in the show is by an unknown artist. Key of E in the episode versus the key of D for the original.
Carter's Car Totals:
Dr. Nobel
Jack crashes his car into a giant laser
Total 4
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