Thursday, March 13, 2014

The First King of Mars: Series 2, Episode 4 – “Take Me to Your Leader” (2008)

 
Mindful of spoilers as always, I won’t get too much into the major development introduced in yesterday’s episode.  I will say that the event itself seems benign; it’s the implications of it that are truly worrisome.  That seems fitting for this series.  After all, the captain has never shied away from the awesome or mundane aspects of space exploration.
 
Regardless, today’s adventure deals with this new development, and it’s troubling enough for the captain to revisit the idea of declaring himself king.  Naturally, this doesn’t bode terribly well for his sanity.  Pity – depending on how things shake out in the final episode (coming tomorrow!), he may not be in a position to spare any of his mental faculties.
 
But no, he’s definitely at least considering re-boarding the crazy train.  Already, he’s getting paranoid again, though it’s not about his crew this time.  More disconcertingly, it’s about a chimpanzee from the training facility back on Earth, the son of a chimp he inadvertently ran over.  While mission control investigates the problem at hand, the captain’s thoughts are off and racing about his history with the orphaned chimp and fretting over the possibility of reprisals.
 
Needless to say, this whole sequence is delightfully silly, and PC – bless him – commits entirely to it.  The captain’s hushed, slowly-mounting panic is terrific, and I love that he presents his blatantly-insane fears as a carefully-reasoned argument.
 
So, yeah – pretty much par for the course where our fearless leader is concerned.  Gotta feel sorry for the crew that has to take orders from him.

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