Majestic Missions
The Complete Season One Episode Review
1st edition
Below is the first incarnation of the Episode Review. Since its writing there has been an extensive revision of much of the content, resulting in the production of a second edition. For a more thorough analysis of season one, especially the later episodes, please read this second edition, which you can get to by clicking HERE.
Contents
Author’s Note
The only purpose of these pages is to communicate to others my deep appreciation for a television series which has changed the way I look at the world. The opinions expressed throughout are mine and mine alone, and whilst I have not set out to cause anyone offence, if I have inadvertently done so then I apologise unreservedly. Any comments, questions or points of information will be most gratefully received. Please feel welcome to write to me at 5 Farndale Road, Hartlepool TS25 1BH or e-mail touch.thelight@mailexcite.com
Thanks
To Bryce Zabel and Brent V Friedman for the vision, the story and much, much more.
To Eric Close and Megan Ward for bringing their characters to life so well.
To Angela Jones and David Massingham for making all this possible.
Acknowledgements are also due to Chris Byman for “The Official Guide to the First TV Series”, published by Hodder and Stoughton, and to Stan Nicholls for the novelisation “The Awakening”, published by Bantam Press. To the best of my knowledge no extracts from these works have been included in these pages, but both have provided valuable information about the story, and both authors have my grateful thanks.
Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of Kimberly Sayers, who will return to us though it be beyond the circles of this world, because dreams live on forever – and then the days of mourning will be ended.
“People we love are always with us.” (Juliet Stuart – Shades of Gray)
Foreward
Since the television series Dark Skies began its run on Channel 4 in January 1997 many words, most of them far from complimentary, have been written about it. Derided by the mainstream press, for whom SF on television often seems to mean Star Trek, The X-Files and not much else, the show often fared little better when reviewed in publications specialising in the genre, and there appeared to be a distinct lack of sympathy from them when NBC took the decision to cancel the series at the end of Season One.
I watched the titles begin to roll at the end of the closing episode with a mixture of anger and disbelief. I was furious that the axe had fallen on a programme which had demonstrated a readiness to disobey the unwritten rules of television drama and thereby take the medium into a place it had rarely, if ever dared to venture. My bemusement at the way the story had been concluded – if that is the right word to describe the final scenes – leaving so many questions unanswered, made me wonder whether I had understood any of the series at all.
During the weeks that followed I began to hunt down anything I could find on this unique programme, naïvely assuming that there would be a range of products on sale comparable with other shows in the genre. Two videos were released almost at once, raising my hopes still further, and then…….. nothing!
Apart from the aforementioned tapes, it was October before I was able to purchase a single item connected with the programme, and although Stan Nicholls’ novelisation of the first four episodes was certainly worth waiting for, my experience with the videos – no more of which were to be made available – suggested that I shouldn’t hold my breath expecting the rest of the season to appear in print. The delayed arrival of Chris Byman’s “Official Guide” should have brought me up to date with a complete set of episode descriptions, but for reasons best known to its author it stops just over halfway through the series.
Without wishing to belittle Mr Byman’s work, reading his book convinced me that if I was ever to see a guide to the series which treated the story for what I believe it to be, a human tragedy of epic proportions, then I would probably have to write it myself. I’ll leave it to the reader to judge whether my decision to do just that has been a wise one.
Richard Furness
Seaton Carew
March 1998
Introduction
I suspect I’m not the only person who tuned in to the first episode of Dark Skies because I had enjoyed watching The X-Files and welcomed the arrival of a programme which dealt with a broadly similar theme, or so the pre-publicity led us to believe. I’ve been an avid watcher of television SF since I was a small child in the early 1960s – had I lived in Frank Bach’s neighbourhood I would have attended Willow Elementary with his daughter Jennifer – and like so many of my contemporaries I would cower behind the sofa whenever a Dalek slid silently across the screen, yet at the same time be enthralled by what I saw. For me watching any show in this genre is an intensely personal experience, so although I was disappointed when the first, mainly negative reviews of Dark Skies appeared in the press, they had no influence upon my decision to stick with a series I found both entertaining and instructive.
My first impressions were that the hero was personable, the heroine pretty and vulnerable, the period detail faultless and the special effects realistic without ever replacing the most important ingredients, a well constructed story with dialogue which was often powerful and incisive, clearly enunciated by a cast full of splendid actors. The idea that there might already be aliens walking unseen in our midst had always appealed to me; when it’s impossible to tell friend from foe, when those we trust may turn into our bitterest enemies, a kind of primal fear inside us is awoken, making any story that uses it wisely quite unmissable.
This is the emotional well from which the very best dark fantasies have always drawn deeply, as anyone who has ever been genuinely shocked by the sight of the hero’s girlfriend revealing her fangs in the best vampire stories can testify. The film Fright Night used this to good effect, as did Salem’s Lot – at least in the original novel – but the former was marred by a miserable cop-out ending and in the latter Stephen King, losing his nerve, couldn’t wait to kill off Susan Norton, whilst the film version of Salem’s Lot simply forgets about her until the very last scene, by which time the impact has been lost.
King was to redeem himself when he wrote The Tommyknockers, although even here he felt the need to give Bobbi Anderson back her humanity right at the end. David Cronenberg had no such scruples in Shivers, but we’re into a different kind of viewing experience now, one where characterisation is sacrificed for cheap thrills and gratuitous shlock-horror. I had despaired of ever seeing a film or TV series brave enough to carry these ideas as far as they could go, and Dark Skies appeared to have wasted its best opportunity to do exactly that by having the heroine taken over and then returned to humanity even before the first episode had finished. So much for that, I thought. Just goes to show, doesn’t it.
If Dark Skies has taught me one thing it’s how self-centered my attitude really was. I found what I was looking for – Jesse Marcel told me I would, had I been listening at the time – but at a cost I could hardly have imagined. The old saying that we never fully appreciate the things we have until we lose them may be a bit of a clich‚ but it’s no less true for all that – what I didn’t realise until far too late was just how much Kim Sayers meant to me.
I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear right now – this is not a case of me simply fancying the actress and covering an adolescent infatuation with a heap of sophistry. Without intending any insult to Megan Ward, there’s not a single moment in Dark Skies when you’re encouraged to think of Kim in those terms. Her loveliness comes from within, not from wearing skimpy outfits. Besides which, her sister says she’s got big feet.
From where does this emotional link come then, a bond powerful enough to make watching some of the later episodes a traumatic and chastening experience? The writers must take a large share of the credit for being brave enough to conceive of a heroine without a single obvious flaw to her character, but it’s a tribute to Megan’s skill that Kim nevertheless comes across as a real person – at least she does to me – in a way I would never have believed a fictional character could. It would also be remiss of me not to mention Eric Close’s part in all this as well, since a significant proportion of the feelings I have for Kim stem from the empathy I have for John’s pain and grief during the second half of the season. That I can speak in such terms of what was, after all, just a weekly TV show, convinces me that what I saw was something very special indeed, and months after Kim was taken from us my sense of loss shows no sign of being diminished by time. The point is, I’ve fallen for TV heroines since I was a teenager – this is the first time it’s outlasted the series.
If all this sounds a trifle self-indulgent then I apologise, but I think it’s best that you understand the stance from which the episode descriptions have been written. Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman know the difference between sloppy sentimentality and something which is genuinely moving, and I hope I do as well, but straight from the heart is the only way I know how to tell it.
These pages make no claim to be anything other than a purely personal view of a programme which has changed the way I look at everything. This is not to say that I suddenly believe in the existence of alien beings or secret organisations working outside the law to protect us from them – I admit to being a confirmed sceptic where these matters are concerned, but in the Dark Skies universe they’re a given, end of argument.
There will probably be many things I say that you don’t agree with – in fact I’d be amazed if there weren’t – but converting others to my own point of view is the last thing on my mind. What’s really important to me is that if there’s anyone else out there who continues to shed more than just the odd tear over what happened to Kim Sayers then they know they’re not alone.
The Season One Episodes
The aim of this section is to examine the way in which the various strands of the overall plot are woven together to create the rich tapestry that is Season One of Dark Skies, paying particular attention to what I believe to be its centrepiece, the relationship of Kimberly Sayers to the alien Hive.
Like all good SF stories Dark Skies asks the question “what if?” What if creatures from another planet really had landed at Roswell in 1947? What if their intentions were hostile? What if they had once been a benign race but that they had been taken over by another life-form possessing a collective intelligence, and which was capable of using us in the same way? And what if an unremarkable young couple became enmeshed in the web of lies and deceit spun by the sinister, amoral secret organisation which had been set up to combat this menace? How would their lives be affected, caught between forces both human and alien which threatened not only their future together but also to destroy everything they held dear?
It is the last two questions which form the emotional core of Dark Skies and place it above every SF series before or since. More than any other, it requires the viewer to look beyond the action and consider the effect upon the lives of those unfortunate enough to become involved in the events portrayed, no matter how peripheral their rôles might be.
People are what matter in Dark Skies, and no-one matters more than the young woman whose life is changed the most by the things that happen to her; that Kimberly Sayers is a pivotal character around whom everything of significance turns is a point many commentators have missed. This guide intends to make no such error. Apart from being an immensely satisfying tale about a covert invasion of earth, Dark Skies is also a love story, and one of the finest that has ever been written.
The episode descriptions are intended to be read sequentially, as indeed they were written; each episode was viewed immediately prior to being dealt with, thus reducing errors to a minimum, or so the author hopes. Inevitably some will have crept in from time to time and for this I make no excuse, but as far as I can tell my finger ends haven’t yet turned black, so when I admit to being only human I’m telling the truth!
It’s now time to let John, Kim and the others lure us into their world. I wonder if, like me, you make meticulous preparations before embarking upon this, the most marvellous of journeys. The tape is in the VCR, the lights are dimmed, the phone is disconnected, the bottle of Valpolicella is at room temperature. It only remains to press <play> and…
“Majestic, this is Talon…”
Episode One: The Awakening
Flying saucers are real; history as we know it is not. These two statements form the basic premise upon which Dark Skies rests, and both are confirmed within seconds of the beginning of this, the opening episode. What caused Gary Powers to eject from his plane on May 1st 1960 is definitely no Soviet fighter, nor indeed is it of earthly origin – it’s a lot to take in before the titles have even begun.
Monitoring Powers’ flight are a group of men with the very latest technology at their disposal. They clearly have influence in high places, so that their leader considers NATO to be at his beck and call and can dismiss Allen Dulles, no less a personage than the chief of the CIA, with one patronising remark. This of course is Frank Bach, head of the secret organisation codenamed Majestic-12 – to him nothing Powers sees that day comes as all that much of a surprise.
Before we are given any clues as to the nature of the strange craft Powers encountered we need to get acquainted with John Loengard and Kimberly Sayers, and what a first meeting it is. Contrast Kim’s dazzling smile as she gazes on Capitol Hill for the first time, her face radiant with excitement at the prospect of playing a real part in Kennedy’s “New Frontier”, with the older John’s narration, a hint of weariness and cynicism creeping into his voice as he admits to us all how naïve he really was that beautiful early autumn day in 1961.
Within minutes this couple have won us over, their love for each other shining from every pore of their skin. When Kim unexpectedly refuses John’s impromptu proposal we realise that this is no ordinary young woman, but one determined to discover her own future rather than risk losing her identity along with her name in marriage. Referring to herself in the third person, something she will repeat in altogether different circumstances much later on, provides us with the most bitter of ironies.
It’s important that John and Kim have already been partners for some time, since this avoids the traditional “boy meets girl” sub-plot which would be a needless distraction from the kaleidoscopic sequence of events which have to be described in such a short time. The first third of this episode must concern itself solely with John’s indoctrination into Majestic and his discovery of incontrovertable proof that an alien threat to humanity exists.
Before the first thirty minutes of this episode has passed, we have the essential nature of the alien invasion laid before us. This is no guessing game, there are no false trails for us to follow, no misleading clues to frustrate us as we uncover the truth layer by layer. In Dark Skies it is the implications of the threat, not the threat itself, that we must wait to find out.
Tired of being used for little more than fetching coffee and donuts from a nearby diner, for which the miserable office staff give him little thanks, John asks Mark Simonson, his immediate superior, for something a little more demanding to do. Having already impressed Simonson with his initiative in getting him out of a tricky situation with Congressman Charles Pratt, John is asked to nominate one of three projects to be dropped from the following year’s budget. The one which piques his curiosity is simply called “Blue Book” and appears to be about, of all things, flying saucers.
The title of Congressional Investigator is one of which John is clearly very proud, but by December he is convinced that each of the witnesses who claim to have seen alien craft are either delusional or just attention seekers. Barney and Betty Hill are different, and once he has overcome the embarrassment of being lost for words on their doorstep clutching a fruit cake – not the kind of thing your usual SF hero normally has to cope with – they tell him in calm and measured terms exactly what it was they saw. This is a mixed-race couple who have absolutely no reason to risk further abuse by telling the world such a far-fetched story, but that is exactly what Barney Hill is determined to do. Convinced that there may be something to these sightings after all, John begins the long drive back to Washington with a much more open mind.
The reality of the situation is that he has stumbled upon something which is being investigated by the same organisation which monitored Gary Powers’ fateful flight eighteen months previously. Forced off the road by strange lights in the sky, John at first fears that he is about to suffer the same experience as the Hills, but the men who beat and then threaten him are most definitely human, even if in the case of the vicious and sadistic Steele, the term has to be stretched quite a way if he is to be included.
Terrified beyond imagining by the treatment he receives from these men, John returns to Washington to find they have made good their promise to write his report on Project Blue Book for him. After confiding in Simonson, who reveals the rumours he has heard about “black ops”, John begins using his spare time to dig up everything he can find on the sinister leader of the gang, who was referred to as “Captain” by one of his men. Admitting that his methods are often far from honest, he finally comes up with the goods, and dreams of the accolades he will be given when Frank Bach’s systematic embezzlement from the defence budget is exposed.
As luck would have it, just as John and Simonson are about to make their move Gary Powers is released from the Soviet Union in an exchange supervised by none other than Bach. Simonson knows exactly where any further investigation on their part will lead and tries to warn John to forget all about the matter. Not one to give up quite so easily, John heads straight for Congress.
The series’ party pieces are these head to head confrontations between John and Bach, and this is one of the best there is. The dichotomy of Dark Skies is perfectly captured by the way the two men constantly try to score points off each other, one idealistic and reckless, the other world-weary and with a practised line in put-downs. John hasn’t got a chance. He’s reeled in before he knows it, Bach having clearly made the decision to make him part of the team before he can do any real damage as a “burrower”.
The truth, which is lying in a freezer in a grubby little room at Majestic’s secret HQ a few miles outside the city, third door on the right, is undeniable evidence of the existence of beings from another world. Too late John sees the trap that has been set for him; small consolation that this is a unique way to serve his country. Having experienced at first hand how intimidatory these people can be, he can see no way to avoid doing their bidding, though it contravenes everything he believes in. That they wouldn’t hesitate to use Kim as a bargaining counter he takes as read.
We don’t have to wait long before the gravest of the implications for our species is revealed to us in the form of Elliot Grantham, the Idaho farmer John is sent to interview about the strange formation in one of his fields. When Grantham is killed after trying to run John down in his pick-up truck, his body is removed to Majestic HQ for autopsy. In the best tradition of Gothic horror the face of the corpse twitches, causing Dr Hertzog’s eyes to come out on stalks; the instrument he uses to probe inside the dead man’s ear is gripped from within, and Bach has to fight down his rising panic as he begins to understand the nature of what is happening. The creature that squirms free of Grantham’s mouth is hideous enough, but that is not why its appearance is such a portent of the evil days to come. That it has been able to live inside Grantham’s head, a man who at first glance was no more than a bad-tempered middle-aged farmer, and control his actions to the extent of making him attempt to murder a total stranger – that is why we should be worried.
All we need to know now is that the “grays” who landed at Roswell had been similarly infected and all the basic elements of this part of the story are complete. Of course there is much that we still have to learn, such as how the so-called ganglions get inside the heads of those they use as hosts, or why a nonentity like Grantham was chosen. The most important question, though, is posed by Bach… how many others are there like Grantham walking unseen in our midst?
John cannot know it yet, but the invasion is about to come home to him in the most painful way imaginable. So far we’ve hardly seen anything of Kim, just a few very short scenes which confirm how charming she is but do little to suggest that she will play more than a subordinate rôle in the unfolding drama. Yet Dark Skies is very much her story, and we would do well to listen to the alarm bells which start ringing even before we first meet Grantham. When she abruptly hangs up on John, who is phoning from Idaho with a story he hopes will explain his long absence, his rueful look at the earpiece tells us that he already knows he has made a dreadful mistake by lying to her about the reason for his trip. Just how dreadful won’t become apparent for some time, but it can be argued that Kim’s fate has been effectively sealed from this moment.
The turning point of the episode arrives when she encounters Congressman Pratt in John’s plush new office, and it’s ironic that the scene should have been cut to only a few lines. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this meeting, and everything which subsequently happens to her must be viewed in the context of the effect his lies have upon her that October evening. Already suspecting that John has been mixed up in unsavoury business connected with Pratt, and that he has not told her the whole truth about his long absences and late hours, she leaves the building having been forced to admit the possibility that the man she loves with all her heart has been unfaithful to her.
Arriving back at their apartment, one look at the bottle of Jack Daniels with which John has been attempting to put Popejoy’s death – an event he blames himself for – out of his mind, convinces Kim that this is no longer the man she fell in love with. His refusal to give her the slightest hint that her fears are unfounded is the final straw, and as she slowly closes the bedroom door behind her, still hoping that John might tell her what’s going on, you get the feeling that something pure has been tainted forever. In this magnificently acted scene Kim Sayers’ heart is broken, never to fully heal, a crucial and ultimately disastrous handicap in her coming struggle with the alien Hive.
A more immediate consequence of this apparent end to the couple’s relationship is that John is not there to protect Kim when she is abducted that very night. It’s debatable what use he would have been in his drunken state anyway, but by now the damage has been done. When he wakes up with the king of all hangovers the following morning, he sees Kim sleeping peacefully in her bed, the first clue that all is far from well coming when upon awakening she seems to think it’s still the previous evening.
What is less obvious is why the grays have come for her. To point the finger at Pratt, calling on his buddies in a simple act of revenge for what John and Majestic have done to his career, is to attribute an all too human weakness to the alien forces. Moving ahead to the Congressman’s visit when Kim is alone in the apartment, he tells her that John Loengard “can no longer be trusted” – trusted to do what? When, on arriving back at the apartment, he asks Pratt why Kim was taken and not himself, John is told to “be patient”, suggesting that he too is a target but not an immediate one. We have no reason to suspect that Kim is anything other than an ordinary girl, but this statement gives us pause for thought.
In the next scene, a lovely cameo by Amanda Plummer as a recently implanted housewife, we get some idea of what may be in store for Kim. It is not a pleasant prospect, and neither is the thought of the cerebral eviction which will probably mean her death once Majestic finds out what has happened to her.
It isn’t immediately clear what’s going on here, despite Hertzog’s concise explanation of the function of the amygdala portion of the brain; there seems to be a “take-over” phase, the length of which varies from host to host, during which the ganglion attaches itself to the implantee’s emotional control centre. This leads to what John refers to as “a pattern of intellectual and emotional scrambling”, so that under questioning – later called EBE Profiling – the subject responds to the emotional tone of the question rather than the content, giving serious replies to nonsensical statements or, as this housewife does, reacting angrily to a perfectly reasonable question because it is asked in a terse way.
What follows is without doubt one of the most gripping sequences the televisual medium has ever produced, a sustained and heady mixture of tension, tenderness and sheer pathos which leaves the viewer reeling. Both leads give everything they’ve got and although both Eric and Megan were to provide many memorable moments later in the series, this was their finest hour. It begins with the distressing sight of Kim wandering around in a daze and struggling to make sense of the news broadcast about the Cuban crisis; you want to grab John by the lapels of his coat and ask him to just look at her – how come he hasn’t noticed the way she’s let herself go in such a short time?
In fact this is a rather neatly drawn parallel between Kim’s mental collapse and that of society, as the people of Washington DC – the most obvious target for a Soviet missile should hostilities commence – begin to lose their civilised values in an orgy of looting and destruction. It is against this backdrop that the sparkling verbal “God and government” sparring match between John and Bach has to be seen, and it is noticeable that the former is nowhere near as easily outwitted this time, despite the shattering news that he has been working for an organisation of which the President remains in total ignorance.
This is glorious stuff, but we’re just getting started. Pratt, who has been under alien control all along, now pays Kim a visit and invites her to touch the glowing blue globe he summons from thin air, which will answer all her questions and allow her to experience the Hive collective mind, of which she is already a part but has not yet come to accept. Her reaction, a display of childish petulance, shows exactly how close she has come to giving up the struggle – this is her last line of defence and it doesn’t look as if it will hold for very long. Hold it does though, and John returns just in time to rescue her and dispose of Pratt. The disturbing thing is that the Congressman hardly seems worried by the apparent thwarting of his and the Hive’s plans, in fact he is consumed by demonic laughter even as his broken body gives up the ghost. Is this because he is sure that John won’t know how to remove the ganglion or that even if it is removed Kim will never be free of its legacy? It’s impossible to be completely certain, but all the evidence points to the conclusion that Kim was probably lost to us even then.
The looting and burning are still going on, just as they will be in Watts almost three years later, when John pulls up outside Hertzog’s house and discovers to his horror that Majestic values the ganglion’s survival over that of Kim. The look of sheer despair on John’s face is one of the highlights of the entire series, but even as he disappears into the house to gather the ingredients to perform the ART, Hertzog having relented – and incidentally ended his own career into the bargain – we have the pathetic sight of Kim waiting in the car and arranging the mirror so she can peer down her throat in case there is any sign of an alien there. It is one of the most moving scenes you could ever wish to see, and the make-up team deserve special praise because she really does look ghastly. Her reaction when she eventually manages to force down a mouthful of the mixture John has prepared is so realistic that I often wonder just what the producers made Megan swallow during shooting.
There is no respite from the tension for an instant, and once inside the empty house where John hopes he can complete the procedure, battling with Kim as she gradually loses control and then waiting for her to recover, or what seems equally likely, for her to die, the harrowing scenes continue. An evil grin crosses Kim’s face as she tries to persuade John that the treatment has worked. She screams her hatred of him, then lets the ganglion use her as a mouthpiece, the creature’s survival instincts crushing the last of her resistance. Her pitiful pleading to be taken home reduces John to a weeping wreck, and if we can never be sure whether it’s Kim or the thing inside her manipulating John’s natural desire to end her suffering one thing is certain – this is almost unendurable.
With agonising slowness the creature is eventually forced out of her mouth, and if it wasn’t for what Kim has just been through we’d almost feel sorry for it, a half grown baby ganglion lost in a strange world, which John proceeds to crush with every bit of his pent up fury. When we see him carry Kim out of the house and place her in the car as carefully as if she were made of porcelain it’s difficult to accept that the entire thing may have been a complete waste of time.
Under the watchful eyes of Bach and Hertzog Kim recovers from her ordeal, though neither seems particularly confident that there will be no after effects. Almost a year passes without incident, or at least that’s the conclusion we must draw since the next developments concern the weeks leading up to the assassination of John F Kennedy. Believing that the world has a right to know the truth about Majestic and the alien abductions, John and Kim carefully plan to steal from Bach the artefact he wears inside a little box round his neck. The discovery that Frank Bach has a wife and children is as shocking as anything we’ve seen so far, and when said wife tells Kim she’s sweet, believing her to be a substitute teacher who’s lost her way, it reminds us of the occasion, not that many months in the future, when she’ll be held at gunpoint by the same young woman.
Watching the President open the package containing the alien artefact she and John have stolen from Bach, you feel that at last something has gone Kim’s way and that she can begin to put her ordeal behind her. Nothing will ever be the same again for this couple though, and Bach’s amazing loss of temper when he discovers the theft bodes ill for them. It’s a mark of how things have changed when, climbing the stairs to their apartment, this time it’s Kim who proposes to John – come on, what else could it have been?
Kim’s refusal to show her distress when they find that Majestic have trashed the apartment shows us how much her inner strength has grown since her return to health. She’s going to need every ounce of courage from this moment on as she and John begin their lonely life on the run. The first test of her resolve will not be long in coming.
Bach, meanwhile, tells Albano he has “other plans” for John, who would otherwise not have got far before he was silenced in the usual Majestic way. These plans have nothing to do with John, however – even now Bach knows who the key player in this drama will be, and as the first ART survivor Kim Sayers is the guinea-pig in his experiment to discover whether the Hive still retain any kind of link with their implantees once the ganglion is removed. By the time he knows the answer it will be too late to make any difference.
The scene where John and Kim discover Kennedy’s death on television is the most sublime of all, and believe me it has plenty of competition in this incredible ninety minutes – Kim sits down as soon as the news hits her, covering her mouth with her hand in as genuine a display of grief as I have ever seen from an actress. If I had to identify the moment when Kim Sayers became a real person to me then I would have to say it was this one. Michael Hoenig’s music complements it perfectly, as it does every scene throughout the series. On only two occasions will this moment be surpassed, but of those evil times we will not speak quite yet.
Ending with the sight of John and Kim beginning another long drive towards a bleak and uncertain future, this is certainly a downbeat ending to a rollercoaster ride of thrilling action and raw emotion, all delivered with a great sense of style and from very high moral ground. Quite simply I would crawl across broken glass if I thought there was the slightest chance of seeing anything as good again – the fact that this happened not once but twice before the series ended is little short of a miracle.
Episode Two: Moving Targets
The daunting task of following the magnificent opening episode is achieved by the simple expedient of continuing the story from where it left off, punctuating the narrative with three extended flashbacks of the Roswell incident in order to explain the origin of Majestic and Bach’s rôle in its formation. This is not that important in its own right, but neither does it deserve to be seen as mere padding. It’s worth watching for an amusing portrait of the then President Harry S Truman, whose command of the English language appears to have been somewhat limited, no matter what his other qualities may have been. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised when he calls the alien translation device a “floating wangy thing” – after all, he couldn’t even decide what the “S” in his own name stood for.
This is the first of the regular forty-five minute episodes and the first to feature the award-winning title sequence. It’s not often that the “Emmy” people get it right but after seeing this disturbing collage of images, like a disordered mind trying to piece together the letters which make up the programme’s name, never quite succeeding until the very end, they must have made up their minds in seconds as to the winner of this particular section. The soundtrack features music which was also nominated for an award – dramatic, sombre and full of tension, it rises to a crescendo before dissipating like the light from a dead star.
John Loengard’s famous words are immediately followed by the voice of a woman, presumably Kim, who warns him that someone is coming towards them, and then by the sound of several shots being fired. Why this was removed in subsequent episodes is a mystery.
The most poignant part of the sequence comes right at the beginning when we see John and Kim on their first day in Washington. Even now, so early in the series, it is a touching echo of lost innocence, but there will come a time towards the end when it is almost impossible to look directly at the screen until this image has disappeared.
Another hallmark of Dark Skies is introduced during the course of this episode, and that is the skilful blending of archive footage with the action. This is used to particular effect in the scenes shot at Arlington Cemetery, but also contributes a great deal to the story – we see real people openly weeping in the street and are reminded that all the events we are about to see take place in a nation that has gone into mourning.
As the truth about Roswell is gradually revealed, the narrative hurtles onwards at break-neck speed. John learns that the artefact is in the hands of Jesse Marcel, who he visits in Dallas using the password from which the series takes its name. Tortured by his conscience for sixteen years, Marcel sacrifices his freedom to allow John to escape Majestic’s clutches and sets us up for a scene containing dialogue which sizzles across the screen. One of the more memorable characters who make occasional appearances in the programme, Marcel, outstandingly portrayed by Richard Gilliland, is determined to stand up to Bach this time, but his resolve falters as he comes to realise that he is facing a man who has lost every scruple he ever had. It’s a cracking scene and one which you wish could have been extended somehow.
The reason it hasn’t been is that we have a plot development of immense significance about to begin. John and Kim follow Steele to what they assume is a Majestic front, Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club. Kim manages to get into the building and witnesses the gruesome transfer of part of a ganglion from the Majestic agent, now revealed to be under alien control, to the hapless Ruby, who is then instructed to silence Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin the Hive paid to kill Kennedy. This is shocking enough, but what really makes you sit up and take notice is the way Steele seems to be no more than a mouthpiece for a single intelligence, a unit with no individual personality or motivation other than that transmitted by a central collective consciousness.
How does Kim react when she sees all this? After all, she came perilously close to becoming exactly as Steele now is, and unless Majestic decided to show her a ganglion as part of her recovery programme – most unlikely – this is the first time she’s ever come across one which is fully grown. The answer is with surprising self-control, considering the price she’ll pay if she’s discovered. Megan’s acting is a treat here, the amazing range of facial expressions she has at her disposal letting us know exactly what Kim’s thinking without saying a word – mind you, she’s got better hearing than I have if she can make out the phrase “Andrews Air Force Base” among all that Hivespeak.
When John helps Majestic uncover the enemy in its midst – he owes Bach nothing but forces himself to consider the wider picture, with Oswald’s survival a vital part of it – we see that the notion of an alien in human flesh is perhaps a little too simplistic. Steele’s reaction when he sees the ART team ready to strap him into a chair is very human, suggesting that access to the Hive mind is at its discretion; at other times the individual personality of the unit remains intact, though changed in its attitudes and values according to the wishes of its controller. Singularity, it seems, is a joy the Hive grants when it wishes, not a permanent condition, and this conclusion is borne out by watching Kim later in the series.
Another thing we discover is that the ART procedure doesn’t always work. It has been more than twenty months since Steele swallowed part of the ganglion that attached itself like a limpet to his face after leaving Grantham’s body, and clearly this has been long enough for the creature to establish an effective defence against the chemicals which are used to attack it. The result is that Steele lapses into a coma, from which he wakes with a visible legacy of the procedure in the form of what appears to be a cataract over his left eye. As we will shortly find out, the other quality membership of the Hive has given him is a seeming indestructability which neither Pratt nor Grantham appeared to possess, presumably because they were both relatively new to the alien club.
The story now develops into a race between John, who has walked straight back into Majestic’s parlour, and Steele to reach Arlington where the Hive plan to blow up over two hundred world leaders who have gathered to pay their respects to the fallen President. This allows Eric Close to indulge in some “James Bond” style heroics, though I have the sneaking feeling that the services of a stunt man may have been required when the helicopter he grabs hold of reached a certain height.
Kim, having found time to have her hair done, returns to the First Lady’s office and after a hug from the recently married Alicia Bainbridge – the writers really do think of everything – finds that far from being allowed access to Bobby Kennedy right away she has telephone calls – lots of them – to make. The look on her face as she takes off her coat and resigns herself to the arduous task ahead is a joy to behold. Here I am, she must be thinking, homeless, on the run from a ruthless organisation operating in secret and accountable to no-one, trying to foil an alien plot to take over the world, and all I can do is sit at a desk like any other secretary. It’s amusing now but it foreshadows something far more serious when you consider how much it would have helped her if she’d only been able to take Alicia to one side and have a damn good cry.
Another insight into the nature of Majestic and its employees is given when Albano takes the lighter containing the artefact from Kim at Arlington. Completely impervious to her charms, contemptuous of her because of her sex, he must appear to her as far from her idea of humanity as the grays who abducted her. It’s not completely outrageous to suspect that he has designs upon her, and that his condescending attitude towards her is either a mask to conceal his true feelings or his defence mechanism, so devoted is he to his work that he dare not admit even to himself that he actually cares about another human being. Certainly in Both Sides Now he seems to take her loss harder than you’d expect, but maybe I’m reading more into this than I should. I’ll quite understand if you shoot this suggestion down in flames.
The final surprise in this excellent episode is provided when Bach, attempting to console Steele’s grieving widow, admits that this is the hardest part of his job, thereby implying that he has to do it quite often. The thing I always ask myself is whether she was a Majestic agent herself to be allowed into their headquarters, but as it seems to be strictly men-only I hardly think that’s likely; in that case, were wives let into the secret? Again, that’s debatable, given the security risk they’d inevitably become.
That Steele has a wife at all is almost beyond comprehension. It’s much more of a shock than the news that he has survived the fall from the helicopter, this knowledge leading us correctly to assume that we have not seen the last of him. I’ll always wonder what Bach finally said to Mrs Steele that day. Whatever he told her, I hope she didn’t suffer too much in the months and years to come.
Episode Three: Mercury Rising
The final act in the trilogy which forms the first part of Dark Skies deals almost exclusively with the question of what happened to Kim during her abduction; from start to finish it is a tour de force from Megan Ward, who cements the emotional bond between viewer and character which was begun in The Awakening until it is strong enough to survive each one of the dreadful things we do not even suspect are yet to come.
If we had a nagging feeling that Kim might not be able to forget her abduction quite as easily as the previous episode suggested, then the opening scene where we see her vision of an astronaut beside her bed asking her to take his hand confirms our fears beyond doubt. This is a very troubled young woman indeed, and when the reality of her link with the Hive is slammed into our faces with her sketch of the same alien configuration John saw in Idaho the background music, Terry Stafford’s Suspicion, is a more than appropriate choice.
It bothered me a little when this episode was first shown that we so rarely got to see Kim do anything on her own; John was always there, almost smothering her with his overprotective concern. Little did I know just how much my attitude would come to change after subsequent viewings – if I’d been there I wouldn’t have let her out of my sight for a second.
Before the story can be said to have started properly, there’s a wonderful little flashback to New Year’s Eve 1963, showing John and Kim cuddling in yet another motel room as the TV announcer counts down the seconds to midnight; we see a brief on-screen glimpse of revellers in the street and Kim can hardly conceal her misery as the camera passes over their pathetic little Christmas tree on top of the television, a few tiny parcels arranged around its base. You want to leap into the picture and arrange a party for them, for isn’t that the least they deserve? Why should they have to live this way, deprived of everything except each other? If I ever lose the affection I feel for these two people – though that’s hardly likely – then this short scene will be guaranteed to make my heart bleed for them all over again.
There’s a moment near the start of this episode which can only be described as numinous. Ty Yount, the astronaut from Kim’s vision, is playing pool in a bar when the music from the juke-box fades and as he turns he sees, silhouetted against the blazing light from the street outside, the figure who has literally become the girl of his dreams entering the room. With a look on her face that makes the Mona Lisa’s smile appear transparent, Kim places her hand in Ty’s and for an instant their minds meet, the warmth of their union flooding from the screen.
When the connection is broken after what seems like hours we pause to consider poor John, standing unnoticed in the doorway and wondering what on earth is going to happen next. A series of lesser stature might have been tempted to add a touch of soap opera at this point, but if we had any fears on that score they are swiftly dispelled. The subject matter is far too grave to be demeaned by anything as trivial as an affair, and the monogamous relationship between the two leads is one of the series’ greatest strengths. There is something else going on between Ty and Kim, something which will have massive implications for the story.
The reason Kim has insisted upon travelling to Florida is because she feels Ty needs her in a way she can’t explain to John. Something other than implantation happened to her when she was abducted, and it will cast a long shadow across the rest of the series. This is jumping the gun however, and runs the risk of forgetting all about Ty Yount, a character who evokes not only our sympathy but also pity as he admits to a pair of complete strangers that he is scared out of his mind at the prospect of returning to space the following day. For an astronaut who has flown “black op” missions and is, by his own admission, one of “an élite group of space jocks”, this must have taken some guts – but when someone like Kim Sayers asks you to trust her, most of us would find it difficult not to spill out our innermost feelings.
Kim’s brave decision to undergo hypnotic regression in an attempt to discover what really happened during her abduction allows Megan Ward free rein to display the considerable talents she possesses, a chance she doesn’t waste. All the terror Kim must have felt when she was taken from the apartment comes across in a mesmerising scene which alternates between flashes of Kim aboard the Hive ship and on the psychiatrist’s couch. John’s soothing voice allows her to gain control of her fear, albeit briefly, and she confirms that the figure in the space suit beside her was indeed Ty.
“They know everything,” she moans as we see the light from above bathe her in its eerie luminescence; what does she mean by that? Her mind has been laid bare, that much is clear, but what did the Hive find there? Is Kim merely expressing her outrage at this mental rape, or is there something buried deep within her subconscious that they can now use to their advantage?
Ty is then seen to float away from her and somehow Kim knows that “he’s not right for them.” She’s certain of this because she can feel the grays telling her, and the only reasonable conclusion it is possible to arrive at is that she is capable of receiving their thoughts telepathically – moreover, it has to be remembered that this happens before the implantation takes place, so it’s an ability she must already have possessed before she was abducted.
The sheer brutality of the act of implantation causes Kim to come out of her trance, and in a moment so pure that it banishes the memory of the sickening thing we have just witnessed she is embraced by John and we remember to breathe again. The tension subsides and we can just enjoy the tenderness their love radiates. In a perfect world that embrace would never end.
It’s a measure of how powerful this scene is that the thrilling denouement almost seems like light relief in comparison. John and Kim, convinced that Ty’s fellow astronaut is Hive after she remembers the rest of the abduction experience, find themselves less than a minute away from incineration by the Saturn rocket they are standing beneath. Poker-faced and quite unmoved by their plight, Bach refuses to hold the launch until proof arrives that they are telling the truth. Then, simply because they have saved NASA a great deal of money, he lets them go with a grim warning that they will do well to co-operate in future. Would Bach really have let them die there? It’s impossible to say, but he has nothing much to gain from their deaths, and in Kim’s case a fair bit to lose.
Dark Skies is not, however, a programme which will be remembered for its happy endings, and before we can feel too good about the way both Kim and Ty overcame their fears, we see the aftermath of Steele’s visit to the Top Motel. Unaware that John and Kim have moved to another room at the back where they will be less exposed, Steele enters “lucky” room 7 and shoots the man lying face-down in the bed without bothering to check if it really is John. When the woman who appears from the bathroom clearly isn’t Kim he realises his mistake, but kills her anyway simply because he can see no reason not to. He must have realised that she posed no threat either to himself or the Hive, more proof that the host’s personality is not obliterated by the take-over, just altered – though in Steele’s case very little change must have been necessary.
Would he have shot her if she had been Kim? Your guess is as good as mine, but later in the season they go to an awful lot of trouble to try and re-establish their control over her. Unless the Hive regards her as a liability at this stage, then for some reason changes its mind by the time the events described in Dreamland come around, we have to assume that Steele wants her alive.
As our hero and heroine drive away, still friendless beneath the full moon, which unbeknown to them harbours a chilling secret in the form of the Hive mother ship, the first movement in this televisual symphony comes to an end. We have experienced three hours of the finest drama anyone could hope to see, and if one or two of the episodes which are to follow don’t quite match the grandeur of what has gone before, then that can hardly be counted as a disgrace. Meanwhile, for John and Kim at least, the road goes ever on.
I sometimes wonder if Ty Yount continued to dream about Kim – you know, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find that he did.
Episode Four: Dark Days Night
No episode of Dark Skies can ever be said to stand truly alone, but from now until the events surrounding the Warren hearing each story forms a neat, self-contained package during which tantalising glimpses of the Hive’s plan are gradually revealed. As John’s narration tells us at the beginning of this episode, he and Kim cease to be merely victims of the two conspiracies and begin to take control of their own destinies – at least that’s what they believe they’re doing. Six months from now they will realise exactly how futile their efforts have been, and the really dark days will not be far away – this period will then seem like a golden memory.
Like most other stories in this second movement, Dark Days Night does not at first appear to add that much to the overall grand design, but this is not to say that the episode is devoid of importance; the discovery of a biological incompatibility which renders some abductees unsuitable for implantation – the so-called throwbacks – is a welcome piece of good news which may prove crucial in the coming conflict, if only Dr Halligan can come up with a cast-iron theory instead of having to admit that he’s groping around in the dark.
I always feel sorry for the put-upon Halligan – given an impossible task by Bach, who treats him like a keen but dim schoolboy when things go wrong, as they inevitably do, the good doctor never betrays his scientific principles once in the name of getting a result. The tragic consequence of this is that Bach finally considers him expendable enough to send him to his death in the Aura-Z investigation, but at least he dies in battle, unlike his unfortunate predecessor.
This is the only episode to feature British characters, and the writers are to be applauded for their bold move to give John Lennon a speaking rôle. None of the songs featured were written by Lennon and McCartney, presumably for copyright reasons, but then in 1964 The Beatles’ live act contained several numbers not written by themselves, so the authenticity of this part of the story isn’t in any danger – nor are the outside street scenes anything less than totally convincing.
What bothers me about this story is why the Hive had to go to all this trouble to kill the throwbacks. Why didn’t they simply jettison them into outer space when they discovered their incompatibility? To return them to the exact location of their abduction, false memories neatly in place, cannot have been an act motivated by altruism, and unless their objective was to see the reaction caused by a wave of suicide attempts it remains unfathomable.
The importance of this episode isn’t contained in the plot, however, but is personified by Marnie Lane, the teenage ingenue Kim takes under her wing after they are both so shaken by their experience with Ron Burnside’s subliminal programming – using the unappetisingly named “Chesty” potato chips as a vehicle for the Hive’s experiment. I wonder why they never caught on?
Marnie is the reason this struggle must be won; bright, vivacious, amiable and innocent without being at all precious, this young girl has an immense vista of possible futures laid out before her. Kim, seeing herself as she was at that age, recognises how vital it is that she retains all these qualities – to know the truth about her “dream” would mean she “loses everything.” Kim doesn’t add the words “like I did” – she doesn’t have to, they leap out of the screen and knock you backwards.
Majestic may consider themselves the best hope humanity has got, but here they stand accused of betraying the very things which raise us above the level of animals, particularly the way we treat our enemies. The raid on Burnside’s operation gives his partner no chance of escaping the hail of bullets which cut her down – yes, she’s Hive and therefore dangerous, but this execution without trial leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Was it too much to ask that an alternative way of dealing with the situation be found? Was the possibility of attempting an ART even considered? Who stopped for one moment to think that someone, somewhere, might value this woman’s survival, might have loved her?
Contrast this with the magnanimous treatment John gives to Steele, who is lying trussed up in the bath. Cackling with laughter as John’s gun is pointed at his head, the former Majestic agent utters in typical Hive fashion that “Jim Steele’s life is of no consequence.” John’s reply, that “Jim Steele is wrong,” can be taken solely to imply that John sees a use for him as a bargaining tool, and of course this is true; but on another level it shows that he cares deeply about all of humanity, even when they cease, in all the ways that matter, to belong to our species. I doubt whether, at this stage, John Loengard was capable of killing anyone in cold blood, not even someone who had already threatened his future with Kim as much as Steele had done. I believe John felt – maybe subconsciously, but he felt it all the same – that even Steele was not beyond redemption. Ah John, if you only knew what this decision will cost you in the end.
One extra battle that Kim has to fight is for the right to be taken seriously by less enlightened men than John. It’s easy to forget just how little the opinions of women were valued in the early 1960s, before radical feminism began to change public attitudes later in that decade. Kim Sayers can hardly be counted as a feminist, but she is certainly unafraid to voice her ideas, a characteristic which brings from Bach a patronising “very good!” when she works out how the Hive plan to use The Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show to kill the throwbacks. It’s their first face to face meeting, and a very strange affair it is – Bach almost thrusts his nose into hers, while she merely turns away as if she hasn’t noticed him.
John’s saving Marnie from throwing herself to her death as The Beatles belt out Money (if she was affected, why wasn’t Kim?) sets us up for perhaps the only genuinely happy ending the series was to provide. The look of sheer adoration on the teenager’s face as she stands just feet away from her heroes is all the proof we need that the conflict must be won, and if the price we pay is to be a terrible one, we can console ourselves with the certain knowledge that as long as people like Marnie are free to live their lives in peace then our sacrifice will not have been in vain.
Kim is smiling too, the music taking her to a place where hope and joy are not just dreams, as it can so easily do to all of us. Later in the series the Hive will tell us that it is our every solution, but a song as beautiful as Till There Was You is surely enough to remind us that we already have everything we will ever need.
Episode Five: Dreamland
One of the really wonderful things about Dark Skies is the writers’ ability to bring people into the story for a single episode and, by means of a combination of excellent scripts and superb acting, make it impossible for the viewer ever to forget them, without running the risk of upstaging the two leads. Dreamland features not one but two memorable characters, both of whom have become trapped in the unreal city of Las Vegas and whose brush with the Hive will set them free – but while one will gain the opportunity for redemption, for the other it will mean the beginning of a descent into his own personal hell.
Susan Swenson, the waitress at the casino run by eccentric millionaire and recluse Howard Hughes, could so easily have been a cliché – the cynical floozy with a heart of gold – but writer Steve Aspis draws her so well that never for a moment do we come close to not believing in her. Abused by her father from the age of thirteen, we cannot help but warm to her when she tells us that the birthday treat she’d been looking forward to for so long turned out to be a night in a “sleazy motel” – she has become so hard-bitten that she assumes all motives to be base in a town where nothing is ever free and everyone is playing some kind of angle. Completely misunderstanding the reason for John and Kim’s visit to Hughes’ private suite, her disappointment at finding out that they’re no better than all the other people she’s come across is much less of a blow to her than it would be to you or I – Susan expects nothing from anyone and is therefore never let down.
American mythology has given us many characters who will be remembered for centuries, but none has ever been so completely off-the-wall as Howard Hughes, by this time an ageing voyeur who has developed a morbid fear of contamination by contact with others; thus John and Kim are both subjected to a humiliating ordeal by Hughes’ henchmen, being stripped of their clothes and hosed down with disinfectant before being asked to shower under the watchful gaze of “suits” as impassive and menacing as anyone employed by Majestic. We only see John suffering this treatment, but the thought of Kim having to undergo it as well is not a pleasant one, which speaks volumes for the way the series has educated this male viewer at least.
Hughes is under the misapprehension that the ring of gamblers who are winning so regularly at his tables are part of a Communist plot intent on world domination. This conclusion sounds so ludicrous that it is almost comical, yet this is a man who has spent his life imagining reds under every bed, shutting himself away from the world and failing to realise that it has moved on. His delusion that he can out-manoeuvre the Pentagon over the tunnel he suspects leads to Area 51, the secret Air Force base which is codenamed “Dreamland” and which we now know to be a Hive target, is a measure of the extent of the fantasy he is living out, a deceptively brittle world he has created for himself based on a set of values which will crumble away to dust at its first contact with the reality of the alien invasion.
Sitting in his black limousine attired in white gloves, his mouth covered by a silk handkerchief – for all the good that does him – Hughes is almost a caricature of himself, an amoral bigot who is quite prepared to sacrifice Kim as long as she leads him to the “Communist” HQ. For that we despise him. And yet when he finally discovers the truth all we can feel for him is pity as the last shreds of his sanity disappear after the ganglion has attacked him. A shivering wreck, he is helped back into his car, moaning about being unclean, his mind unable to accept the reality of what has just happened to him. This will not be the last time that our sympathies will be forced to change abruptly in this series.
No point in this episode is more important than the moment when Kim, having temporarily become a waitress in Hughes’ casino, unknowingly serves drinks to several Hive members and experiences a peculiar buzzing sensation in her head. This is a reaction she will not always feel; it only seems to be present when there are several Hivers communicating telepathically, as these card players are doing in order to win money, but it is proof positive that she remains linked to the Hive in a very real way.
Demonstrating the courage we know she possesses in abundance, Kim confronts this worrying development head on – what if part of the ganglion is still inside her? What if this means that it is starting to grow back? The story John tells her about latent tendrils sounds convincing enough, but how on earth could anyone know at that stage that they were incapable of regrowth? There can’t have been that many ART procedures performed between October 1962 and November 1963, which is when John was being held by Majestic, and even if there had been enough empirical evidence upon which to postulate a viable hypothesis and draw reliable conclusions, does Halligan really know enough about alien biology to predict with any accuracy what the residual material will do if left inside a live subject for long enough?
The way John phrases his answer is instructive: “Bach told me that Halligan had…” Someone is telling lies here, and the prime suspect has to be Majestic’s leader. Bach is using Kim to find out if the residue will grow back, and what, if any, is the nature of the link to the Hive mind this material generates – therefore both she and John must believe it to be benign.
Kim’s determination not to feel sorry for herself after what must have been a soul-destroying discovery is exactly why she deserves a special place in our hearts. Determined to view this new-found ability to sense the proximity of Hive members as an asset, her commitment to the cause is reaffirmed, the bond she has formed with us unbreakable. Knowing what we now do, is it any wonder that we see her loss as a betrayal, and that Frank Bach must stand at the head of the line of the accused?
The Hive having taken Kim, with John powerless to help her thanks to Hughes’ arrogance, clearly cannot wait for the tendrils to grow back naturally, so their solution is to use the fierce little worms which are their natural predators to eat them out of her head. This will allow them to implant a fresh ganglion and then…
Who knows what plans they had in mind? John, who has made it to the quarry with the able assistance of Susan, isn’t hanging around to find out, he’s driving a lorry straight into a rock face he’s convinced himself is an illusion on the flimsiest of evidence – very soon he’s running down the indestructable Steele and rescuing Kim just as the first “buzzworm” slides past her lips, leaving her to pour an entire jar of the creatures over the nearest Hiver’s face. Unlike the ones Steele selected for Kim, these don’t seem to take very long at all to do their work, as the agonising screams of a dying ganglion testify. Left-overs just can’t have the same appeal for them, I suppose!
It was recently pointed out to me how supremely ironic this last-minute rescue really is. A second or so more and the worm would have been inside her mouth – a few minutes of discomfort and all trace of the ganglion would have been gone. Just as the lies he told her to protect her from Majestic may well have led directly to her abduction, here all of John’s heroics have had entirely the opposite effect from that which he intended. By rescing Kim, he has in fact thrown away the only chance he will ever have of saving her.
On the face of it, the final scene showing John and Kim outside Area 51′s perimeter fence drinking champagne seems to be another happy conclusion to what has probably been the best episode since The Awakening, certainly in terms of characterisation and pace, but the confirmation of Kim’s link to the Hive hangs over their celebrations like a storm cloud. This is the second narrow escape she’s had from losing her humanity, and although her luck seems to have changed at last we can’t believe it will last for ever.
When John finally made it back to earth from the Hive mother ship I hope he had the sense to pay Des Moines a visit and look up Susan – they’d make a great team.
Episode Six: Inhuman Nature
The first point to make about this episode is that chronologically speaking it should be watched after Ancient Future. I don’t know enough about the production of the series to be able to guess why the two episodes were switched – after all, this is a viewer’s personal opinion and not a “companion” – but it’s a shame that so little effort seems to have been put into getting the dates correct when in all other respects this is perfect television.
Melissa Rosenberg’s first contribution to the Dark Skies canon may not have appeared that significant at the time, but it introduces something which will prove to be Kim Sayers’ nemesis, namely her desire to set down some roots, in other words to start a family. Bobby Kennedy may be on their side, but as Kim rightly observes he can go home to a wife and eight children – some of us may fear for John Loengard’s sanity at this point – and the sense of injustice we feel when we see Frank Bach reading a fairy tale to his little daughter goes very deep indeed.
The news that John and Kim will have to wait until at least 1968 before things go public – and then only if Kennedy manages to become President, not a certainty by any means – sends Kim’s biological clock racing. We’re never told exactly how old she is, but it seems safe to assume that she’s a couple of years younger than John, in which case she’d be almost thirty by the time the election came round, an age which was much more of a landmark for a woman in the ’60s than it is today. The thought of four more years without a place to call home, the constant fear that she might lose John and then be truly alone, her youth passing her by as she wastes the best years of her life on a futile chase for the truth in a hostile world – these are the things which frighten Kim Sayers and do much to explain the gradual erosion of her inner strength as the months go by.
This story is Kester Boehm’s tragedy as much as it is anyone’s. A man devoted to his herd of dairy cattle almost as much as he loves his wife and children, the poor man is driven to the brink of insanity by the things he witnesses in the laboratory at the University of Wisconsin – another ordinary person who just wanted to live a simple life as a farmer, he swiftly becomes one of the countless victims of a conflict his mind cannot hope to grasp. The macabre surgery the Hive perform in order to incubate human foetuses inside the cows is so sickening to his sense of right and wrong that he feels compelled to kill every last one of his beloved herd; having shot the last cow, he stands forlornly clutching his shotgun, a man who has quite simply been destroyed.
Boehm does not wait around to see exactly what kind of monster will emerge from the sac that is removed from the rumen of Lily the cow. The sight of what appears to be a perfectly normal and healthy little boy – apart from the fact that he has no navel – is enough to trigger Kim’s maternal feelings and, trusting her instincts, she washes the child secure in the knowledge that he has not yet been tainted by the Hive. John, naturally, is furious with her for taking such a risk but soon comes round to her way of thinking – as he later tells Bach, she has an uncanny knack of guessing correctly where the Hive are concerned, something which can only have fuelled the Majestic leader’s suspicion of her continuing connection with the alien mind.
Kim’s sense of responsibility for this innocent young life is what she believes to be the essence of her humanity, and having come so close to losing it she values the condition more than most. For Majestic to use the little boy as a specimen to be dissected, as she half-jokingly suggests, realising a moment later that her tongue-in-cheek statement is an accurate forecast of what is in store for the child, fills her with outrage and indignation. For her, the struggle only means anything if we retain a moral superiority over our enemies, and if we allow ourselves to descend to their level we might as well give up now. It is a warning that we will not heed and the punishment for our refusal to listen will be severe.
Fleeing from Majestic on the one hand and Hive receptionist Mrs Elwood on the other, John and Kim eventually manage to escape from both and drive away with the little boy, preparing to spend the night in their car. This time, though, there is a glimmer of hope in Kim’s eyes as she forces John to consider the practical steps they will have to take to find their charge a good home with loving parents. It’s hardly likely that they will be able to convince anyone that a baby boy without a navel is in any way “normal”, and placing him in the care of the authorities would be tantamount to giving him straight to Majestic, so although nothing is actually said it’s pretty obvious who those parents will turn out to be.
Nothing in Kim Sayers’ life will ever be that straightforward however, and that very night as she lies snuggled against John in the car, sleeping peacefully for the first time in many months now that she has at last found a sense of purpose in her ruined life, she is dealt a blow so shattering that it can easily be argued that she never fully recovers from it. In a scene reminiscent of the very finest horror films, the car is bathed in a pale glow and the child crawls out of the suddenly open door; by the time John and Kim are awake some strange force has jammed the locks so they are helpless to act as the little boy, innocent of his fate, is transported up to the alien ship waiting for him. Even though it’s clear they can do nothing, they both race across to the spot where the child stood, because for a short time they became his parents and that is what parents do when their children are taken from them – logic has to bow when love is present. This is not in the least bit melodramatic, it is tragedy in its purest, classical form, and from that moment this young couple aren’t just like us, they are us.
The sight of Kim carefully closing her handbag as she prepares to take another birth control pill, her face impassive but her eyes betraying the grief and emptiness she feels, is one which is impossible to forget. And still she doesn’t weep, though the very stars in their courses are shedding bitter tears for her. Jocasta, Juliet, Ophelia, Anna Karenina, Tess d’Urberville, these are some of the great tragic heroines of western literature; I believe it isn’t too much of a grandiose claim to say that the name of Kimberly Sayers belongs right up there with them.
Episode Seven: Ancient Future
The caption at the bottom of the screen clearly gives the date of John and Kim’s arrival in Chiliwack as March 27th whereas they don’t meet Robert Kennedy in Wisconsin until April 11th. However, there is a second, more compelling argument for watching this episode before Inhuman Nature apart from chronology – a great tragedy occurs at the close of the latter story, and although the general mood of Ancient Future can never be described as light-hearted, the sense of impending doom is present to a much lesser degree, especially where Kim is concerned. In fact, if this was the first episode you watched, you’d never know anything unpleasant had happened to her, and for forty-five minutes it’s almost possible to treat the two leads as no more than a pair of intrepid sleuths chasing clues to a fascinating mystery.
Despite the fact that the Hive appear to have taken a holiday – though Majestic certainly haven’t – this is no lightweight romp in the Alaska snow. Faith versus reason is the central theme of the story, whether it’s Reverend Gary Barrow’s beliefs being tested by the undeniable truth that there really are aliens out there, or Bach’s stubborn refusal to accept that John’s vision of the future is anything other than a hallucination brought about by the buried craft’s magnetic core.
It’s a curious fact about Dark Skies that so completely do the characters draw us into their world that quite often we forget that these events are set over thirty years in the past. If there are no obvious period details to remind us then we just assume that what we’re watching is the present day, and it’s a bit of a surprise to find Kim telling us she’s a practising Catholic – we didn’t have her down as the religious type at all. Then we remember that going to church, at least as far as people of her background were concerned, was something you opted out of only if you felt really strongly that you didn’t believe in organised religion.
Kim’s faith is an ecumenical one, so that she believes there to be truth in all religions, whereas John is much more of an agnostic. That there is a higher purpose to the war against the Hive other than control of the planet is hinted at only vaguely during the series, but the message here seems to be that it is better to believe in something, if only because faith can be a source of strength in adversity, and it is significant that Kim’s belief in the inherent goodness of our species gives John the strength to carry on when he is convinced that the struggle is already hopeless.
The alien craft which crashed near the town of Chiliwack a century before the birth of Christ has inspired the Tlingit tribe to revere the “Father”, the injured gray who survived long enough to communicate telepathically with them and warn them how dangerous it may one day become if it ever “sings”. This leads to two inescapable conclusions: first, that the grays have been capable of interplanetary travel for at least two thousand years, so that their technology must be immeasurably superior to our own; second, that they were at one time a friendly species, who recognised the importance of leaving humanity to develop at its own pace without interference from outside.
The implications of all this are frightening to John and Kim as they approach the place where the rocks have been seen to float. If the grays with all their technology succumbed to the Hive, then what chance have we of avoiding the same fate? The answer will become apparent during this episode, though none of the characters go so far as to articulate their feelings; the grays lacked one vital weapon in their arsenal, without which they were bound to lose – they didn’t have faith.
One scene which will stay longer in the memory than most is John and Kim’s reaction when they see the rocks rise into the air just before the earthquake strikes. The expressions of childlike delight upon both Megan and Eric’s faces are so realistic that the cynic in me wonders if the producers secretly arranged something the two of them would never have expected, but we all know they’re both hugely talented actors with wonderfully expressive faces – which probably explains why they’ve both gone relatively unrecognised thus far!
If Mercury Rising suggested that there may be more to Kim than meets the eye, then the sequence of events which culminate in John’s vision suggests that he too is far from ordinary. For some reason the magnetic pulses the alien craft emits don’t affect him anything like as much as the others, but this inexplicable immunity is soon forgotten when he touches the symbol on the side of the ship, the same design he saw from the air in Idaho and which both Kim and Ty Yount were able to draw after their abductions.
First John is taken just hours forward, seeing himself arguing with Bach over whether or not to lift the craft out of the fissure in which it had been buried until the earthquake uncovered it. Next he sees the craft being lifted by a helicopter, only to explode in mid-air. Then the scene changes dramatically to a desert wasteland at a time when John is an old man, almost too frail to walk, and surrounded by a heap of bones which his companion tells him belong to throwbacks, the only free humans left on the planet. Above the two men looms the Hive mother ship, proof that the struggle is over and that our species has lost. Kim is not present, so she’s either dead or…
John’s reaction when he wakes and remembers the vision is uncharacteristically fatalistic, and only Kim’s encouragement saves him from accepting total defeat. Hers are words of true inspiration, which will echo down the months ahead and help to guide us through the evil times to come. Listening to her affirm her belief in humanity when you know what will eventually become of her is just about the saddest experience I can imagine.
It’s difficult to make out exactly why John is shown this possible future. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that the ship had been programmed to read the mind of anyone who came into contact with it and make their worst fears seem to come true, but this leaves us with the awkward question of how it was able to forecast the conversation John and Bach had about lifting the craft from the fissure. Doubtless you have your own views on this, but it may be as well to consider that it would be a poor series that explained everything during its first season. Translation: I have absolutely no idea what any of it means.
Like almost every episode of Dark Skies, Ancient Future contains several eye-opening scenes which may not have a direct bearing on the plot but are nevertheless well worth mentioning. Thus we have Albano watching a news broadcast of the earthquake and suggesting to Bach that it’s fit to be shown to the public – that Majestic has control of the media is a very scary thought – and then there’s Bach staring General Thompson straight in the eye at Elmendorf and telling him that his humanitarian concern for the earthquake victims is of no consequence, expecting and receiving total capitulation to his every demand. Finally, how many SF heroines ever trick guards into surrendering their weapons and then apologise for doing so? Don’t try and tell me that Kim Sayers isn’t one of a kind.
One of the most touching moments is when Reverend Gary is kneeling, praying in Chiliwack’s tiny church; he continues to cling to his beliefs, despite all he has seen, but when Tug, his uncle and shaman to the Tlingit people, joins him he feels compelled to acknowledge the things their faiths have in common. As John tells us in his closing narration, faith is what matters, not the specifics of any particular belief system. Even Bach, singing away dutifully at the back of the church on Easter Sunday, finds strength in this act, no matter how much at odds his values may be with Christian teachings. Whatever gets you through the night, Frank. I hope you slept well after Chiliwack, because I don’t see how you could after Watts and Oakland.
Episode Eight: Hostile Convergence
Any relationship, no matter how strong it has become, is bound to suffer if the partners in it are rarely out of each other’s sight. For five months John and Kim have travelled the length and breadth of the United States – and ventured north through Canada to Alaska – cooped up in an old beater. Goodness only knows what they found to say to each other on those endless journeys. How each must have craved a few hours of privacy, or failing that at least to have someone different to talk to?
John has far less difficulty with this situation than Kim, simply because he has let his crusade to expose the truth about Majestic and the Hive become an obsession. “Patrolman sees UFO” may well be a newspaper headline worth investigating if there’s nothing on TV and your team’s playing away this weekend but it hardly justifies making your girlfriend miss her sister’s wedding. Yet John is like a little boy who is called into the house to hear the news that the family business has been declared bankrupt, then rushes outside to resume playing with his chums. After everything Kim has been through, and remember that it’s only a couple of weeks since the tragic events in Wisconsin, it’s an unbelievably selfish act on his part to insist they travel to Socorro. Does he know so little about women that he fails to realise that arriving just in time for the ceremony isn’t going to be enough for her? That she just might want a couple of days when she could chat to Andrea during the build up to the big day?
In the prelude to this convoluted but fascinating tale of deceit and disinformation there are two moments which are unintentionally funny, the first coming from Joan Sayers when, during a telephone conversation with her daughter, her first reference to John is to chide Kim for not having dumped him. She’s clearly always been of the opinion that a farmer’s boy isn’t exactly her idea of the ideal son-in-law, and what with this business with Congressman Pratt…oh boy, Mrs Sayers, you should see the next one she takes up with!
Then there’s the scene in the diner where Kim picks up a piece of paper with which Jesse Marcel has sent across to John to announce his arrival. “Dark Skies? What’s that?” she asks, and it’s a miserable soul indeed who doesn’t feel like saying something along the lines of “Channel 4, Monday nights at 10. Good show, you should try and catch it some time.”
For Jack Ruby, meanwhile, life is anything but amusing as he rots in a prison cell, neither Hive nor wholly human. Rejected by Steele, who has managed to impersonate one of the guards in order that Ruby may be fed hot dog à la buzzworm, Oswald’s assassin tries to end this latest torment by repeatedly smashing his forehead into the wall of his cell. Later, after the worm has enjoyed its feast and been analysed by Halligan, Ruby wakes to be confronted by Bach, who tells him he is anywhere he wants to be. It’s a safe bet that he won’t be returning to the Carousel Club for a while.
Jesse Marcel’s fate at the end of this episode is to suffer a different kind of confinement, no less a prison for its lack of bars. The wild goose chase on which he and John are sent in an effort to discredit them and, by extension, all other UFO witnesses and those who believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial beings, raises his hopes that at last he can live down the shame he has felt since Roswell. This elaborate charade involves Majestic ensuring that John and Marcel find documentary “proof” that flying saucers are being re-engineered from an original design. Then, just as they are ready to tell the world that aliens really did land at Roswell, the document, a faked Nazi blueprint for a funny little round-shaped flying machine with thin, spindly legs that looks like it was designed by a child, will make laughing stocks of them both.
A curious thing then happens. The waitress in the diner, seeing John go off with Marcel, has little difficulty persuading Kim to leave John and head off on her own to Denver. She’s Hive, this waitress, but how does she know who Kim is? And the news that a bus is arriving in twenty minutes which has “Denver” on its destination board seems far too convenient for my liking. Nevertheless this is an important decision that Kim makes – she really can see no solution to her predicament at this point and I have the oddest feeling that if Steele had been on that bus she might well have shrugged her shoulders and said something to the effect of “Come on, let’s get this over with.” Well, maybe not, but this isn’t the Kim Sayers who was such a tower of strength in Las Vegas and Chiliwack.
Majestic’s plan doesn’t work because it has finally over-reached itself by sending one of its agents, Rob Winter, to Denver with a brief to worm his way into the affections of Kim’s elder sister Andrea. She’s smitten straight away, but no-one at Majestic has stopped to consider that falling in love isn’t something you can train someone to avoid, and he falls for her just as completely. Forgetting everything he has been taught, he makes his first mistake by letting slip to Kim that he knows she and John have driven through Kansas a few days before. Then he leaves his jacket lying around for her to find containing a business card with the address of a Majestic field office. When John finds this out it’s enough to make him smell a rat about the Socorro evidence and sure enough it’s all been a set up.
Back in Denver there are some lovely exchanges between Kim and her mother, the latter showing a fierce but unselfish concern for her daughter’s happiness. She offers Kim a permanent refuge against whatever she’s running from, her voice almost breaking as the suggestion turns into a heartfelt plea for her little girl to stay home. Kim desperately wants to unburden herself of the load she is carrying, but steadfastly refuses to transfer the weight to her mother’s shoulders. It’s an indication of the terrifying nature of the secret she carries that she fears it would ruin her mother’s life if she ever discovered the truth.
Enter Steele and the Hive in the guise of a firm of wedding caterers and soon it’s too late to worry about much apart from who’s going to get out of the house alive. With Winter taken out by a Hive gunman it’s up to Kim to take charge and she does so with admirable calmness even though this is uncharted territory for her. In one of the most gripping scenes shown so far in the series she shoots Steele – who appears to be constructed out of reinforced concrete – and is then distracted by the sight of her terrified sister appearing at the top of the stairs. One or the other is bound to be cut down by the Hive gunman who raises his weapon, and with a shock we see that Kim is going to be the target. Her face appears to register first surprise and then resignation and we wait for her body to convulse with the impact of the bullet. Please make it the heart so at least it’s quick. Rob Winter saves the day, of course – but there was no “of course” about it at the time.
As John and Kim are enjoying an emotional reunion Jesse Marcel sits dejected in the Socorro diner knowing he has been taken for a fool by Majestic yet again. His reputation in tatters, he knows that he has lost his best chance to make amends for changing his mind about Roswell, the supreme irony being that the waitress who offers him a little consolation is herself part of the very enemy he has been trying to expose. I hope in a future season Jesse may be allowed to return and find a way to redeem himself in his own eyes – he deserves that much at least.
We never find out whether Rob and Andrea get round to tying the knot, but that has never bothered me as much as the question of what Joan Sayers was told about later developments concerning her daughter. I can hardly believe that Kim kept her pregnancy a secret from her own mother, so how did Majestic explain her sudden disappearance just after the child was born? Whatever she was told or discovered for herself I find it difficult to imagine she took the news well; in fact I fear the very worst for her.
Episode Nine: We Shall Overcome
In these enlightened times it’s becoming less of a rarity for a TV series to cast black actors in leading rôles, but where Dark Skies is concerned the reasons for not doing so are pretty obvious, as this episode will amply demonstrate. It’s difficult enough for Kim to be taken seriously, never mind anyone who’s non-white, and the news that the FBI didn’t employ female agents reminds us just how far we’ve had to come in the last thirty-four years.
The theme of racial prejudice is introduced into the series before fifteen minutes of the opening episode have passed, when Barney Hill, a black man married to a white woman in prosperous New Hampshire, convinces John that he is telling the truth about his abduction because he is prepared to face the risk of adding ridicule to the abuse he already receives. It will recur in devastating fashion in Burn, Baby, Burn, providing the backdrop to John’s attempt to find Kim in Watts, but here it is treated purely for what it is, the assumption by one group of people that they are inherently superior to another simply on account of the colour of their skin. Without appearing sanctimonious, the writers address this delicate subject with gravity and compassion, unafraid to force us into asking ourselves the most difficult questions about how we treat our fellow humans.
The most important character in this episode is Clayton Lewis, a recent implantee who retains control over the ganglion inside his head simply because he refuses to allow a black man to introduce him to the joys of Singularity. No better but certainly no worse than the other whites who live in the segregated town of Meridian, Mississippi, Lewis is not an evil man, just misguided in his absolute resistance to change. He feels threatened by those he refers to as “coloureds”, fearing that one day they will rise up and take over, discriminating against his kind in the same way that they have been discriminated against for so long. The concept of equality does not occur to him – he sees this as a struggle out of which will emerge only winners and losers.
Attitudes like Clayton’s are what the Hive loves to encourage, and the black Reverend Langston Poole delivers a dire warning to us all when he informs us that the conflicts within our species will be our undoing. While we are fighting among ourselves the Hive will gradually assimilate us until it is too late for us to join forces and defeat it. “Though you deny it, we are your every solution,” he croons to Bach as Majestic lead him away for interrogation. Can it be that Albano, who goes on to express reservations about setting fire to the church which Bach now considers “a liability”, sees a grain of truth in the Reverend’s words? Is this the moment when the seeds of doubt are sown in his mind about humanity’s ability to win the war against the Hive?
Another important issue surrounds the glowing blue light Poole asks Clayton to touch and thereby become one with the Singularity that is the Hive collective mind. Crucially, this will only happen if the implantee truly wishes to experience the change; it cannot be forced upon anyone, the light scattering at the slightest disturbance to the initiate’s concentration.
It’s not only people like Clayton who come under scrutiny here. John and Kim have a great deal to learn as well, particularly from Etta Mae Tillman, the young black woman who shelters Mark Simonson after his co-workers are murdered on the Hive’s orders. John’s former boss, played here by a different, much younger actor than in The Awakening, is the last person you’d expect to join a civil rights campaign, and his change of personality is complete when he sees proof that John’s flying saucers really do exist.
Kim’s lesson begins when she finds Clayton in a cellar beneath Poole’s church, where he has come determined to die rather than join the Hive. She’s gradually being made more of an independent character since her decision to leave John in Socorro, carrying her own gun and having learned how to pick a lock in the two months since then. Her confrontation with Clayton forces her to face up to her experience as an implantee herself, and although she despises his racism she cannot condemn him to the fate she avoided so narrowly.
It is not their place, she later tells John as they are preparing to give Clayton his ART, to decide which people are worth saving and which are not. That would imply a moral superiority on their part little different from Clayton’s, and while we should always try to do what we believe to be right, once we begin to pass judgements on those who see things from another point of view we are treading upon dangerous ground.
Etta Mae’s kindness towards Clayton as he suffers the effects of the ART procedure perfectly puts across the message that it is the treatment we give to our enemies which says the most about who we are. Chided by Kim for wiping his brow, she replies that acts of generosity should not be motivated by whether or not a reciprocal gesture may be forthcoming – Clayton Lewis will answer to “the man upstairs” soon enough, as will we all, and Etta Mae knows what she’s going to say.
Putting the racial prejudice argument aside for a moment, this episode is important for another reason, showing as it does the lengths Majestic are prepared to go to further their cause. At the beginning we see the directors arguing about where the extra funds they need are going to come from, a debate which will have damaging repercussions later in the series. The plot to remove Bobby Kennedy from his position of support for John and Kim with the Warren hearing imminent is also set in motion, at the same time neutralising the potential thorn in Bach’s side which is the FBI. This is very much a case of a new order replacing the old, for as Bach tells J Edgar Hoover his time is over, his domain no longer there for him to rule.
This is an episode well worth visiting again and again, but even if it weren’t it would stay in my memory for one reason alone, and that is the closing footage of Martin Luther King’s “freedom” speech, which surely deserves to be counted as one of the great moments of the twentieth century when, as will inevitably happen, the past hundred years are analysed in the advent of the Millennium. It’s almost as if the writers have rewarded us for sticking with the series by giving us these few moments as a present we can unwrap time and again, its contents never failing to delight and move us at the same time.
For once John goes on to tell us what happened to one of the characters in the story, Etta Mae’s daughter enjoying a successful career in the legal profession, but of Clayton Lewis, handed over to Bach in exchange for Simonson, there is no word other than that Kim thinks he may be the anonymous donor who finances the rebuilding of the church. Having both been implanted, and remembering her link with Ty Yount, who among us will dare to argue with her?
Episode Ten: The Last Wave
It has often been said that Dark Skies is a parable of lost innocence, and more than any other episode The Last Wave demonstrates the truth of this statement. The Hive may have cost John and Kim their dreams of a future together, but time has also played a part in changing them. It’s now three years since they left UCLA and things have moved on in Los Angeles during that time – witness the slightly disapproving look they give the guests at Dewey’s “wake” and the way that Kim deals with the call from the funeral parlour herself rather than entrust the task to those she regards as a bunch of kids. There’s a lot of ageing going on in this episode.
Letting go of the college lifestyle is a thing not easily done, as the author knows from personal experience, and Nat Heller is having a more difficult time than most making the transition to “real” adulthood. His reaction to his friend’s death is to throw a party, and despite his girlfriend Gina’s misgivings he has tossed away the chance of a brilliant career so he can spend more time on his beloved beach as a lifeguard. Nat will do anything to avoid growing up until the prospect of losing the girl he loves teaches him a salutary lesson – sometimes we need to be badly scared before we can make ourselves move forward.
The portrait of Howard Hughes in Dreamland was memorable enough, but no historical character the series featured was better drawn than Jim Morrison, the film student whose conversation is drenched in surrealist imagery and quotes from Nietzsche. Kim, who is continuing to show that she can operate independently, at first assumes he’s a Majestic agent but soon becomes fascinated by the bleak monochrome world he shows her, the rampant consumerism and thoughtless pollution signifying to him that we are becoming creatures without souls. It’s a startling and prophetic vision not only of a world where the Hive has won – Morrison acknowledges John’s crusade as being similar to his own – but also of our own times. The Last Wave isn’t so much a warning as a statement of our current position.
It’s fun listening for references to the songs that Morrison would later make famous, but what’s even more amusing is a rare piece of slapstick comedy as he and the two leads are carried along on a wave of raw sewage discharged from the treatment plant the Hive has infiltrated. There are more light-hearted moments in this episode than any other, the best coming when Morrison arrives at Nat’s home and shyly asks if Kim’s there – John knows that he is absolutely no threat to his relationship, but all the same he’s embarrassed by the looks Nat and Gina give him. Been there, done that, Loengard.
The accidental spillage of effluent which causes the terrifying hallucinations experienced by Dewey, and later by Gina, is the result of a Hive plot to introduce into the food chain an artificially created cell which feeds on bacteria and thrives in salt water. At the end of the episode Albano tells us that the aim is to alter our body chemistry, but whether mass suicides similar to Dewey’s is the full extent of their purpose isn’t really clear.
What is brought into sharp focus is that where toxic waste is concerned we are, as it were, playing with fire. Even the fish are affected, throwing themselves out of the water to land on the beach at John and Kim’s feet as they are enjoying a moonlit stroll. Once the Hive workers at the sewage plant have been eliminated and Majestic, in the form of Albano, have arrived to clean things up – for that read cover them up – it’s time once again to disregard the action and look beyond it for the episode’s real significance. This is not easily done on first viewing, and for a long time I was predisposed to dismiss the story as irrelevant to the larger picture. The closing scene shows that this is far from the case.
John and Nat sit balanced upon their surf boards scattering Dewey’s ashes across the ocean’s gentle swell. Kim and Gina wait patiently by the shore, knowing they all share a dreadful secret but that one day people will find out the truth, just as they will come to feel passionately about the damage being done to the environment. Nat admits to John that he has never looked beneath the surface before, and we know that it isn’t just the water he’s referring to. It’s a sad but reflective ending to an episode which takes a while to get under your skin, but like most of the others once it’s there it stays put. We feel, like Nat, that we have grown a little during the course of the story, and that the things we have seen will help us to learn from the experiences of the characters within it.
At the time we couldn’t know that this was the last time this would happen. Here, just beyond the mid-point of the season, we are about to enter a new phase during which Majestic and the Hive unwittingly combine to turn everything we thought we knew upside down. Let’s look again at John throwing the remains of his friend to the wind, and try not to think too much about what the future holds for him and Kimberly.
Episode Eleven: The Enemy Within
Three episodes after being introduced to the Sayers family it’s the turn of the Loengards to be put under the spotlight in this powerful and emotional drama from the pen of Brad Markovitch, his first solo contribution to the series. Like so many other episodes of Dark Skies, one viewing is simply not enough to take in everything that is going on.
Desperately short of funds, John and Kim arrive in Fresno hoping to cash in some savings bonds which have been put away since John was ten years old. It’ll be enough to keep them going for a short while, but no more than that, since one look at the Loengard farm is enough to tell us that this is not a particularly wealthy family. Immediately we can sense the tension accompanying this reunion, and when John confesses that he has come back home for, among other things, money then his elder brother Ray can hold his peace no longer.
Kim can feel that something is very wrong here, the warm smile with which she greets John’s mother vanishing as she turns to close the door behind her. Nor is she mistaken, for Ray has been implanted as part of the Hive’s plan to kill John. Quite why John’s brother is needed to carry out this act is a mystery that is never made clear – surely a bullet in the brain has much the same effect no matter who it is that pulls the trigger.
What’s equally puzzling is why they want to kill him at all. Later in the series Steele will refer to John’s son with the phrase “destiny is in his blood” and in the very last episode the captured gray will tell John that his bloodline “decides the outcome” of the struggle for the planet. Why didn’t the Hive simply abduct John and implant him? They certainly have plenty of opportunity to do so – in Shades Of Gray he’s actually standing in the beam which is ready to transport a little girl up to one of their ships!
Naturally Steele is involved in all this and his successful escape from Majestic HQ, where he has discovered the Loengard family’s home address, provides some of the most gruesome moments shown thus far – at one point he actually dislocates his own shoulder so he can squeeze past a set of rotary fan blades and climb to freedom through an air duct, and we are treated to the stomach churning sight of him stitching his own wounds before smearing the washroom mirror with a blood-soaked hand.
John discovers Ray’s condition in a brilliantly understated scene set at the spot where he saved his brother from drowning when they were both children. Ray has never ceased to harbour a deep resentment for this, feeling himself replaced in his father’s affections by John, almost as if from that day on he stopped being the elder son. Yet I can’t help feeling that Ray deliberately gives himself away, and when he tells John that “Ray Loengard doesn’t want you to go” it’s not so much a slip on his part but a thinly disguised cry for help. The way John reacts to this shattering news is to calmly perform an EBE, even though he is plainly close to tears – as, I suspect, many of those watching him are.
It’s when John voices his suspicions to Kim that we find the fatal flaw in his assessment of the entire situation regarding the Hive’s motives. He tells her that the enemy are using Ray to get to him, just as they once used Kim. It’s not only arrogant of him to assume an importance that the evidence simply doesn’t support, but it also belittles Kim and the suffering she has already borne – this is a failing Juliet will chide him for much later when he has already paid the price for his folly.
Confirmation that Ray is indeed in touch with the Hive comes when John and Kim find him listening to the raspy alien tongue on his radio set. Disturbed by Kim clumsily knocking over a tool rack, Ray tries to bluff his way out of the situation but then attacks his brother, the noise bringing their father to the scene. Asked to account for why he is threatening Ray with a pitchfork, John decides to tell his father the truth about the Hive and Majestic, using the story of an old lady riddled with cancer as an analogy – if she had the right to know the full extent of her illness, then how much more do the people of this planet deserve to know the threat they face?
Dick Loengard, his heart visibly breaking as he is forced to concede the truth that his son is not only just as dangerous as he has been led to believe but clearly insane into the bargain, arranges for him to be placed under psychiatric evaluation. Kim, pretending to be John’s sister, helps him escape but not before she’s had to apologise to the guard she overcomes in a manner which suggests she’s getting used to this sort of thing!
The scene is set for the best climax to any episode since Inhuman Nature, beginning with Dick Loengard’s discovery that his son has been telling the truth all along when he finds part of his Majestic file lying discarded in Steele’s car. Next we see Steele asking Ray to touch the glowing ball of blue light and become one with the Hive, but John’s brother is made of sterner stuff and tells him that he cannot kill his own flesh and blood – yet even this is not enough to prevent his hand slowly reaching out…
This raises some big questions: what if it isn’t the ganglion inside the head of an implantee which forces him or her to accept loss of control but a deep-seated desire to escape the human condition? Could the ganglion be nothing more than a transmitter through which the Hive mind communicates the benefits it offers to those it chooses to embrace within itself? Given the pitifully small understanding we possess about the nature of conscious thought, how can we hope to resist an intelligence which can manipulate it so easily?
None of this speculation is the slightest use to John Loengard as he crashes into Ray at the very moment his brother is about to make contact with the light – next time he won’t be quite so fortunate – and with the strange luminescence having dispersed, Steele’s demand that Ray shoot John becomes more urgent. In a dramatic few moments Ray is fatally wounded by Steele, who is then shot by John’s father, falling backwards into the river, though not, we are certain, to his death. Then, as if a battle with the Hive isn’t enough for one afternoon, along come Majestic. Dick Loengard, having already lost one son, will not countenance the other being taken from him, and though John blames himself for having dragged his family into this mess, it’s a tribute to Dick’s faith in his son that he then praises him for having done what he believed to be the right thing.
In a remarkable finale we see John and Kim’s car speeding away from the farm just as Bach arrives to ask Dick whether he noticed exactly where Steele fell into the river. Of coures he didn’t, having had his mind on the fact that his eldest son was dying on the ground at the time, but as Bach turns to leave Dick asks him if he has children of his own, taking his inscrutable expression to mean a reply in the negative; we know, however, that he has and that he loves them more than life itself. Does he actually feel shamed by Dick Loengard’s grief, or is it the fear that he may one day be in the same position himself that prevents him from answering? Perhaps it’s just that the question is irrelevant in the context of a field operation. Whatever the reason, it’s a strange and disturbing moment.
This has been forty-five minutes of the very best that television drama has to offer, with atmosphere, characterisation and pace all honed to perfection by a team well in control of what they are doing. It says much for the remainder of the series that these high standards would be excelled several times before the season was to conclude its run.
Ray Loengard, having retained control over the Hive creature inside him until the bitter end, dies redeemed in the eyes of his family and can now be laid peacefully to rest. Despite the grief that he must feel for his brother, John’s trials are only just beginning.
Episode Twelve: The Warren Omission
In many ways this episode marks a turning point for the series, concluding as it does John Loengard’s crusade to reveal the truth about Majestic-12 and the alien Hive through the proper channels. His failure to appreciate that human nature will always place self-interest above the greater good means that he is doomed from the start, and we can only watch with pity as his efforts to tell his story are thwarted at every turn.
The writers use a series of short flashbacks to accompany John’s testimony which allow us to take stock of where we are – it’s a device that has been used many times in programmes of this kind, but whereas its usual function is to create an episode “on the cheap”, in this case it’s an absolutely vital part of the plot. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but it’s just about possible to watch this episode first and still make sense of the following seven.
The episode begins with John and Kim unwrapping TV dinners in the “safe” house the Justice Department has provided for them in the advent of John’s testimony before the Warren Commission’s investigation into the assassination of John F Kennedy, and their childlike mixture of fascination and dismay as they examine the food they have been given to eat is a delight to watch. Next morning this cosy mood is shattered when onto the scene bursts the figure of Juliet Stuart, throwing Kim down the staircase and immobilising John in a way guaranteed to make sure he listens to her. “We need to talk,” says Majestic’s one and only female operative. John’s groans suggest that talking will not be an option for several painful minutes to come.
Nevertheless John does talk, and in a full and frank way to the Commission, after Kim has reminded him that this is what the last ten months have been all about. The entire proceedings, which are not open to public scrutiny, are nevertheless transmitted word by word to Majestic HQ, where Albano informs Bach that John has gone so far as to name him and detail the circumstances of their meeting. Allen Dulles, by his over-reaction, does Majestic’s case no favours, but it soon becomes clear when John mentions the Hive that he has lost the sympathy of many of the Commission’s members, who regard his testimony as an insult to the memory of the deceased President.
When Robert Kennedy exerts pressure on the Commission to investigate Bach further, Majestic’s leader decides to take matters into his own hands and testify personally, figuring that this will be a far more effective way of silencing John for good than to have him killed – and anyway, there’s the question of Kim’s link with the Hive to consider, which later causes Bach to discourage Juliet from using her as a way of getting to John.
Bach’s blatant lies about the way John approached him and demanded entry into Majestic at gunpoint begin to bear fruit at once as John loses his temper, thus losing what little sympathy he still had with the judicial team – both men are held in custody during the weekend recess and we are treated to another delectable confrontation between the two men which are one of the series’ great delights. John protests that although Bach’s allegations may well ensure that he goes to jail he will come out one day and show him exactly what “playing without a full deck” really means. Taking the moral high ground, he insists that what he did was right. To our astonishment Bach agrees, but being “right” will not win this war against an opponent which has no conception of the nature of justice. For Bach the ends justify the means, every time.
It begins to look like Bach’s testimony will implicate John to a greater or lesser extent in the Presidential assassination, or at the very least make him look like a Communist spy, so Kim suggests to Robert Kennedy that he pay Majestic HQ an unannounced visit. The raid is carried out with military precision, Albano and Juliet shredding documents by the score as they are threatened with explosive devices being detonated outside the room – it’s a feature of Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman’s script, which they clearly felt was the most important in the series so far, that during all the chaos we know precisely what is going on because we are forced to hang on to every word that every character speaks.
Juliet, an enigmatic figure who we suspect will have a lasting impact on this programme, though just how much it was impossible to foretell at the time, pays J Edgar Hoover a visit and obtains the evidence she needs to persuade Robert Kennedy that supporting John and Kim may not be such a good idea. The revelation that everything has been planned in advance, including the purchase of a property in the state where he will become Senator – “I don’t live in New York” he naïvely protests, to which the answer comes, “You do now” – is further evidence that the power they possess to intimidate even the most influential of politicians appears limitless. John, listen to me, if they can do this to the Attorney General, the brother of the most popular President this century, what chance have you got?
Bach is still not home free thanks to the dissent of Gerald Ford, who smells a rat even though he cannot discern exactly what it is that doesn’t ring true here. Taking the art of manipulation to a level unknown since the days of Robespièrre, he agrees to divulge the “truth”, but only to Earl Warren in camera. Of course it’s nothing remotely resembling the truth, and as for being a private conversation, the reaction Bach receives when he returns to Majestic HQ confirms that his loyal following have appreciated every word they heard over the hidden microphones.
Where does that leave John and Kim? For almost a year they have been employed on a fruitless search for proof that a real threat to humanity exists, but all they have been able to put before the Commission have been fine words and unsupported testimony. Their only friend has been forced to desert them, and the money he sends by way of consolation is angrily refused by John, though Kim, being more practically minded, snatches it from him before he can make the situation any worse than it already is.
“We’re right back where we started,” says John as the rain teems down upon agent Barrett, banging on the car window in a futile attempt to wish them luck in the future. If only he knew how much this tragic young couple will really need it in the months that are to follow.
Episode Thirteen: White Rabbit
Although it may not have been apparent at the time, White Rabbit signals a major change of direction for Dark Skies, forming the crucial bridge between John’s unsuccessful campaign to force Majestic to reveal the truth and the tetralogy which resolves Kim’s relationship with the alien Hive. It can be seen as a prequel to those four episodes, which deserve special treatment as a “season within a season”, and poses the all-important question of whether Kim’s behaviour in this episode is just the result of stress and worry or if something altogether more sinister is happening to her.
As a piece of television entertainment White Rabbit is simply magnificent, containing action, suspense and tragedy in a rich stew, delicately spiced with the revelation of the darker side of Kim’s nature. By this stage we have already seen many moments which will live on in our memories for the rest of our days, but this was the episode when the programme stood up and began to proclaim its right to be considered unique.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident has given Bach the war in Vietnam he wants, and now Majestic can look forward to creaming off their percentage from a much increased defence budget. The problem is a crashed alien vessel near the Laos-Vietnam border which, if sequestered by a foreign power, could make the Vietnam conflict seem like a tea party. So important is the mission to recover the craft that Bach decides to go to the crash site himself, but who can he take with him? The ideal candidate will not only need to be expendable, but also someone who Bach would prefer out of the picture altogether. John Loengard is still under Earl Warren’s nominal protection, but if he enlists for the army and is killed in action what can anyone possibly do?
John and Kim, disillusioned and exhausted after the Warren hearing, have decided to take time out to consider a fresh approach to their struggle, and on the morning of Kim’s birthday all the couple wish to do is enjoy a lazy bath together eating strawberries and drinking champagne. After all the disappointments and trials of the past year John wants this to be a perfect occasion the two of them will remember forever, so when he realises he’s forgotten the bubbles for the bath he offers to run back to the corner store and return in five minutes. Kim gives him three – I’d have taken thirty seconds!
Majestic have other ideas, and as John leaves the store he is bundled into a black Sedan by Albano, who shows a rare turn of wit by suggesting that the bubbles are a new kind of ART formula. Bach will not even allow him the luxury of a phone call to Kim before the two of them leave for Andrews Air Force Base en route for Vietnam, just a chance to write a short note which will naturally be censored before she reads it. Meanwhile, Kim isn’t hanging around to wait for any note or call – the Sedan the storekeeper tells her about can only have been Majestic and that means trouble. Her greatest fear, that she might one day lose John and have to carry on the crusade alone, now deprived of even Robert Kennedy’s support, seems about to happen. It’s a critical moment in her life and as she replaces the receiver with a polite “thank you” we know that she is about to cross her own personal Rubicon.
John’s closing narration tells us that the war in Vietnam was a distraction from the struggle against the Hive, and in a sense that is true of White Rabbit as well; the jungle scenes are indeed nowhere near as important to the series as those involving Kim, Carolyn Bach and Juliet, but that doesn’t mean they can be dismissed as irrelevant. Bach sends John to search for the alien wreckage once the two of them arrive in Vietnam, openly admitting he has no intention of treading on a land mine when John is there to run that particular risk. We meet Tay Ma, the guide who knows every tree by name and refuses to carry a firearm, longing for the day when he can “not be fighter, be farmer.” There’s the tragi-comic sight of the soldier who, already suffering from the stress of battle, has seen a gray go to ground. This has finally unhinged his mind, and now he believes that he comes from a place “where bats eat cats and cats eat bats”.
When John and Tay Ma reach the magnetic core which is all that remains of the alien ship, we wonder who got to the wreckage before they did and what they did with it. John proves that he is well out of his depth here by letting his rifle slip out of his hand and attach itself to the core, which looks like a half-buried giant grenade. Finally it seems as if the mission has been accomplished without too much trouble, but then things start to go badly wrong. Bach insists that they search for the remaining grays – apparently four of them are needed to pilot one of their ships – and when Tay Ma encounters one of these in a narrow tunnel it has dug out of the ground Bach’s solution is quick and simple: a grenade will kill the gray, never mind about their guide.
Soon John and Bach have other things on their minds, as the Vietcong capture them and take them to a holding area where Lev, a member of Majestic’s Russian equivalent Aura-Z, and coincidentally Juliet’s husband, is dying of gangrene poisoning. Bach, as the Senior Officer, will not allow John to be interrogated, his military pride making him suffer torture rather than see a man who has had no formal training be taken instead. There’s also the fact that he doesn’t trust John’s ability to withhold information to take into consideration.
A kind of relationship develops between the two men as Bach tells the story of the little boy he saw come through a storm of bullets in occupied France three days before D-Day. It doesn’t outlast the episode, but through adversity they find a mutual respect for each other, Bach explaining that he has called in a napalm air strike against the area and so can afford to wax philosophical about the nature of war and its purpose.
Kim has taken her own steps to resolve the situation, and what devastating ones they are. Wearing a short red sleeveless dress and shades, she cuts an altogether different figure from anything we’ve seen before, and when she places her gun in Carolyn Bach’s ribs we know something is very wrong with this young woman. Later, having tied her to a chair, Kim calls Majestic and gives Albano her ultimatum: he has twenty-four hours to get John back or “she dies”.
Let’s just pause for a moment and remind ourselves that Kim has met this woman before and knows she has young children to look after. The Kim Sayers we know and love wouldn’t have to be reminded that at some point during the day those children are going to arrive home from school to find the house empty; if nothing else, she must realise the trauma she’s putting Bach’s wife through, despite her later admission that she has no intention of actually harming her. What is more significant, when she pours out her story and gets nothing but sympathy in return, Kim offers to fetch her a glass of water but makes no move to untie her. This is a shocking revelation we are being given here, that Kim Sayers is capable of being just as ruthless as any Majestic agent when push comes to shove. If it isn’t the ganglion beginning to grow back then the implications for our species are grave indeed, for if someone as wholesome and unselfish as Kim can carry out such a cruel and heartless act as this, then the question of whether we are worth saving at all has to be asked.
Juliet’s arrival puts an end to this nonsense as she easily overcomes the untrained Kim, but she has heard enough to know that all three of them have been used by Bach and that they will only get their partners back by working together. She takes Kim and Carolyn Bach to Majestic HQ and confronts Albano, who ironically has no power whatsoever to help them. Juliet decides to call Aura-Z since Albano cannot call off the air strike himself and gives her gun to Kim, telling her to keep it trained upon the Majestic agent. The look which appears on Kim’s face as she points the weapon in Albano’s direction can only be described as wicked, and confirms beyond doubt that a boundary of some kind has been crossed this day. When she admits that she cannot ask Juliet to order Aura-Z to shoot down American pilots just to save John it’s a relief to have the “old” Kim back with us, but the fact that she ever went away is deeply disturbing.
The searing climax to the story begins with Bach mumbling through swollen lips as he urges John to make good his escape after he has overpowered the Vietcong guards and Lev has been killed helping him to do so. Remembering the Aura-Z agent’s advice to “hold on to the vision” he evades a hail of bullets in exactly the same way as the child in Bach’s story did, and if that’s a coincidence then they never kept cattle in Texas!
When the rescue is complete, and John and Bach are returned safely to their loved ones, we see John embrace a Kim who for some reason looks older than she did at the beginning of the episode. Bach greets his wife in similar fashion and our hearts go out to Juliet, already having established a bond with us despite her brash, confrontational style, as the reality of her husband’s death becomes clear to her. In the final scene her mask falls away completely as she reads the diary Lev has given John to take back to her – the bitterest tears are always those we least wish to shed. The alien device hidden in the cover looks a bit like a Compact Disc, but as for what it means, well that’s another story.
Episode Fourteen: Shades of Gray
For the next four episodes Dark Skies proceeds to take us beyond the accepted limits of television drama to a place we have rarely been privileged to visit. It will not be a pleasant journey for the most part, smiles fighting tears in a losing duel, but it will be one where every single step becomes an unforgettable experience. I can only speak for myself when I say that by the end of these four episodes I found myself changed in a way I still feel unable to explain, as if I had been given a lesson in how to live my life. Perhaps somewhere within the following four extended descriptions I might find what that lesson is.
It’s been my intention throughout to use the benefit of hindsight when describing these episodes without, I hope, disturbing the sequence of events too much. Quite apart from allowing the viewer to enjoy spotting clues he or she may have missed the first time around, this valuable tool adds a poignancy to the earlier episodes which may not have been apparent during the original broadcasts, particularly as far as The Awakening is concerned. In Shades Of Gray, a chilling blend of SF and horror which stands proudly enough in its own right, the sadness which comes from knowing that John and Kim have so little time left with each other – subjectively for the viewer at any rate – is capable of inducing emotions which are capable of melting the coldest of hearts.
From the very opening shots, alternating between Juliet’s abduction from Gorky Park in Moscow in the 1930s and the sight of her fastidiously making up her face and then concealing a hypodermic needle and revolver as she finishes dressing, it’s clear something has changed. There are now four major players in this drama, and while the author is aware of the developments behind the scenes which brought Jeri Ryan into the series at a comparatively late stage they need not concern us here.
Having been introduced to Majestic HQ by Juliet in the previous episode, Kim is allowed to remain there with John, the pair not exactly welcome but tolerated on the assumption that at least here they can be kept out of trouble. This “come and go as you please” attitude riles Albano to the point where he threatens to shut Kim’s mouth for her if she can’t keep quiet, resulting in a swift punch in the face from an outraged John. Hauling them in front of Bach, Albano accuses them of being enemies of the country and of Majestic, but when John is put on the spot and asked why he shouldn’t be taken out and disposed of he tells Bach that he has the means of bringing an alien vessel to earth.
This doesn’t please Juliet, who has given the alien artefact she found concealed in Lev’s diary to John and Kim for safe keeping in the certain knowledge that Bach would find and read it. However, John tells her he had little choice in the matter and so a plan is set in motion to re-create a smaller version of the crop pattern first seen in Idaho on Grantham’s farm. Halligan, who believes he understands the meanings of several of the glyphs on the surface of the device, is as shocked as anyone when Kim identifies one symbol as meaning “come”.
Not so Bach, who at long last voices the opinion we suspect he must have held for some time now. When he tells Albano “I could care less about Loengard, Sayers is our asset,” the perspective of the entire series is changed. If we ever thought that John, as narrator and protagonist, was the character around which everything turned, and Kim not much more than a supporting player, then the notion is dispelled with that one sentence.
When the action shifts to Bent Creek, Virginia, the location chosen for the construction of the crop pattern, Bach says something equally as startling. He knows about Kim’s link to the Hive, telling Albano that they just have to wait and see what will happen. Asked why he has not simply interrogated her Bach reveals that he will discover more by ensuring her co-operation – an enemy in their midst, when known to be such, can often be of more use than an ally. Bach never says so, but this is the real reason John and Kim have stayed free for so long.
It’s not so much Kim’s link with the Hive which is puzzling – after all, we’ve known since Dreamland that she can sometimes sense the proximity of Hive members due to the material inside her head left over from her ART – but her ability to guess correctly where the Hive is concerned seems to have increased dramatically. She knows exactly where the triangular gold plate found in Idaho needs to be positioned within the crop pattern in order to attract one of the alien ships; she “hears” the approaching craft before Majestic’s sensors pick it up; she is confident that she can find the gray John wounded as it escaped from the field. It’s all too much too soon for comfort.
Even before the gray’s arrival John has noticed how drawn Kim is looking, and her reaction to his new strategy, aimed at taking over Majestic from the inside and then running it properly with the full consent of the President and the people is muted, to say the least. Our concern for her health grows when she and John approach the farm where Monica, the little girl who they found near the site and subsequently took home, lives with her father. Kim staggers under the psychic assault from the wounded gray Monica is sheltering in a tool shed, able to feel the pain it is broadcasting on a frequency only she can receive.
Monica has befriended the gray because it has promised her that it will take her to a place where she can be reunited with her mother, who has recently died. In a scene any horror film would be proud of she sees piles of clothes pegs arranged to form a series of messages, the last spelling out the word “ANGEL” when she asks the mysterious creature she finds hiding behind the fence what it is. In return for seeing her mother once again, Monica has to retrieve the gold plate from the crop pattern and then, convinced that John and Kim have come to harm her “friend” she locks them in the shed and prepares to set it on fire. Only Juliet’s timely intervention saves the couple from being burned alive.
There is one more thing that Kim feels she has to do before the gray is given over to Halligan and that is to face it directly, never having encountered one of the creatures since her abduction. Doing so causes her to momentarily collapse, and when John misinterprets her distress for fear, holding her and saying he will never allow them to hurt her again, it’s difficult to imagine anything quite as painful to watch.
Halligan duly performs a cerebral eviction on the gray, admitting he hasn’t got a clue as to how to stabilise its condition due to its unfamiliar biological structure – and yet he knows latent tendrils are incapable of regrowth? Pull the other one, Bach! Once again Kim delivers the goods, the creature telling her it needs “pressure” – a higher atmospheric pressure, to be precise, and as it slowly recovers Kim cannot bring herself to leave it any more than Halligan can take his eyes from the golden glow emanating from the gray’s head as it begins to heal itself at an amazing rate.
No longer Hive, the gray puts an image in Kim’s mind that is all too familiar to Juliet, and we are told by Kim that Monica is part of a sinister Hive plan to persuade children to accept Singularity when it comes, though we have no idea what she’s talking about. Juliet doesn’t either, but as she tells John in the car as they race over to the farm, she was once in the very place Kim described, and her hatred of the grays is undiminished by time. This is a story she has told no-one, not even Lev, and it shows just how much she has come to trust John since their first painful – for him – meeting.
Monica is saved from being taken aboard the Hive ship just in time and reunited with her father. We can forgive this slightly mushy scene on the grounds that the words “I forgot how lucky I was to still have you” will return to haunt us before much longer has passed.
The final scene in this enigmatic and disquieting episode sees John return to Kim’s side as she watches the sleeping gray, refusing to leave its side as she waits for it to tell her something she knows is of vital importance to her future. As she has tried to tell Albano, the gray communicates with her on a deeper level than conscious thought, so it’s not just a question of asking it to volunteer information. John urges her to rest, or at least eat something, but she is far too unsettled to do either.
What follows is one of the most puzzling things Kim is heard to say in the entire series. In answer to John’s statement that she never asked for any of this to happen, she replies that “Maybe in some strange way I did.” I can offer no ready explanation for this statement other than to suggest that it may be the first sign that the residual traces of the ganglion inside her head are beginning to stir after their long dormancy. When she goes on to ask John why he thinks she has been chosen to communicate with the gray we can be fairly sure that the answer he gives, that they have both been through the same ordeal, is not the correct one. What is far more likely is that Kim Sayers is in some way special, that she has a part to play in deciding the destiny of the human race – but what that rôle might be, and why she and no-one else has been chosen to fulfil it, remains dark to us.
We leave Kim, having just been told she is pregnant, kneeling in front of the partition separating her from the gray, her palms pressing flat against the glass; we have the oddest feeling that the creature is reluctant to give her this news, as if it signifies something more than that. The truth, when we eventually discover it, will… no, that’s not for me to say. You know what it does.
Episode Fifteen: Burn, Baby, Burn
One of the curious things about Chris Byman’s “Official Guide” is that it only covers the first twelve episodes, making hardly any reference to events which occurred after the Warren hearing and none at all which directly concern any of the characters in the series. No doubt there are sound commercial reasons for this, but I would like to think that Mr Byman’s response when asked to prepare the book was similar to the one I would have given: don’t expect anything remotely like objectivity when you read the last five descriptions. Maybe no-one could be found who had watched the series to its conclusion and was still able to write dispassionately about what they saw!
I once read a graphic novel during the course of which one of the female characters reveals to the others that she has been working for the enemy all along. The interesting thing was that the novel’s author received a large amount of criticism, much of which was abusive, for doing this, despite the fact that he had given clear signals from the very beginning of the story that this character was a bad sort and that her deception would eventually be discovered. He had broken one of the great unwritten rules of fiction by allowing the reader to bond with one of his characters and then attempt to remove that emotional tie – it simply cannot be done.
Ever since the era of silent films the idea of the “heroine” has been central to creating successful adventure stories in the visual medium. Playing upon the natural male urge to protect the female – I know it sounds sexist but it’s the only way I can explain it – we see images of the heroine in danger or of the villain of the piece attempting to seduce her, and although she may appear to waver, the hero will always come along just in time to rescue her from the dastardly clutches she has fallen into. What will never happen is that she switches sides completely and skips away hand in hand with the bad guy. Film noir gives us many instances of female characters doing just that, but they are not heroines in that sense, and without exception it is some inherent flaw in their make-up which causes them to choose the side of evil rather than good.
In the case of a television series where a continuous story is told over several episodes this is even less likely to happen. From time to time it may appear to do so, for example when Talia Winters has an abrupt and permanent change of allegiance on Babylon 5, but as her character was immediately written out of that series any impact this was capable of having disappeared with her. Imagine the outcry there would be if Dana Scully, for example, was persuaded to work not with Fox Mulder but against him, and not just for a couple of episodes but for the rest of the series! Think how fascinating their confrontations would become, every episode an unmissable treat! It’ll never happen, though – it would take writers of real genius to be able to pull off something like that without having indicated at the very beginning of the story exactly what their intentions were. As long as programme makers continue to treat us like children we will never have our sensibilities challenged in this way, the erroneous assumption that we are unable to cope with plot developments along these lines typical of the patronising and insulting way in which they think of us.
What makes Dark Skies unique as far as I am aware is that the writers chose to ignore this unwritten rule and not only took the televisual medium into previously uncharted waters but also ensured that their heroine will never, ever be forgotten. I cannot believe that anyone who watched the series in its entirety can fail to have been moved in some way by the events shown in this and the following two episodes. What I am attempting to describe is painful, upsetting, deeply disturbing and gives a new meaning to the word “tragic”. It also provides some of the best television moments ever seen on a fictional show, the two characters most affected ceasing to be regarded as such and instead becoming real people in a way that no series before or since has been able to achieve. If anyone knows different, then please get in touch right away, because I want to see that programme now.
The big question Burn, Baby Burn asks is why the Hive put the idea for the design of the Watts Towers into Simon Rodia’s head in 1921, and what were the grays doing in the B and B workshop at the time? It has something to do with DNA, that much is obvious, and we know that Kim is compelled to sketch the design several times as her pregnancy develops, but none of this explains why the project was begun seventeen or eighteen years before she was actually born. The impression I get is that the birth of her child is a pre-ordained event, and though no suggestion is ever made that the grays are capable of time travel the idea cannot be dismissed out of hand.
To my mind it is a racing certainty that Kim Sayers has been chosen to bear the child that will decide the outcome of the struggle between human and Hive, and that the identity of the child’s father is unimportant – although in later episodes it is stated that John’s is the bloodline which matters, more than one attempt has already been made by the Hive to kill him, so it follows that it is Kim’s genes and not John’s which are the key to the child’s abnormal growth. What is far from clear is why she is considered so special, but if we recall the hypnotic regression scene from Mercury Rising there is one phrase which she utters so quietly that it was easy to miss first time around. “First they didn’t want me,” she breathes. Why not, since she was clearly suitable to act as a host? More to the point, what made the Hive change its mind?
What we do know is that Kim’s pregnancy is far from routine, and ten months after conceiving she feels none of the discomfort and worry which would normally accompany such a late delivery. In fact she appears truly happy for the first time since her meeting with Pratt, recording that she feels as if her whole life has been leading to this moment. It would be comforting to believe that the months since Shades Of Gray had been similarly peaceful and tranquil for her and John, and that Majestic allowed the couple to do the things that they had been denied for so long – romantic weekends away from it all, a bit of shopping – Kim certainly wouldn’t be altogether human if she didn’t miss that – maybe taking in a ball game, but somehow I doubt if they got the opportunity.
The first sign we get that something is amiss is when Kim lets slip that she intends to give birth in California, but doesn’t know where the thought came from. Of course it’s the ganglion growing back, as we were told it couldn’t, so either that was deliberate disinformation on Bach’s part or Kim really isn’t quite as other humans to begin with. It has to be one or the other.
When she begins to scribble what appears to Halligan to be “pure Watson and Crick”, in other words a DNA double helix, Bach knows that his long-running experiment is about to enter a crucial phase and allows the couple to travel to California. The really big clue which gives everything away is displayed on Kim’s medical chart, indicating that her pH level has fallen during her pregnancy – admit it, you missed it first time around as well.
In Los Angeles we learn that a certain Dr Merrick will supervise the final stages of Kim’s pregnancy, having already delivered the babies of dozens of implantees over the last five years. This has to be an error, since it is just over three years since the discovery of Patient Zero, or then again maybe Bach is lying to John and Kim to put their minds at rest. If so, it’s a wonder that John didn’t spot it.
As Kim is being wheeled along to her room she passes Ruby Thomas, who has become pregnant despite being told that she can never have children, but who conceived after being abducted and implanted. Both women stare at each other in a very strange way and our first reaction is to assume that Kim can sense a member of the Hive like she’s done so often before. The shocking truth is that it’s not Kim’s latent tendrils reacting to the presence of a nearby ganglion but Ruby’s. Just how significant this moment would turn out to be could not have been guessed at the time of course. But from now on, even during those heartbreaking scenes where John and Kim meet for the last time as partners and name their son, and where Juliet is won over and tenderly places her hand on Kim’s stomach, we have to face the fact that Kim Sayers, though she hasn’t yet realised it, has become the enemy.
The scene where Kim is transported out of her room is clear proof that everything has changed. Bathed by the eerie white glow from the beam which is being trained upon her, she screams out her defiance of the unseen force which has come for her child. “You can’t have him. He’s mine!” Not “ours”… “mine”! It’s a telling choice of word to come from a woman who has hardly been out of her partner’s sight for almost two years and, even during this episode, remains as devoted to him as ever.
Taken to the Hive workshop beside the famous Towers, the lack of panic and hysteria Kim shows is indicative of her acceptance of the outcome, and when Steele strokes her hair with something approaching affection, telling her she has returned home, her reaction contains none of the disgust that may have been expected from this gesture. Of course it may be that she has simply been traumatised, but it’s more likely that the ganglion is already asserting its control over her, at least on a level below conscious thought.
Meanwhile the gray has woken from its coma in Majestic HQ and gone beserk. This leads to Albano’s attempt to communicate with it using the translation device from Roswell; it’s a task he undertakes with extreme reluctance, but at least it gives John some hope. This is a side of Albano we have never seen before, and by the time he announces to everyone that the creature has asked for, of all things, strawberry ice cream, he seems to have become less of a killing machine and more like a child staring in wonder at the things he is seeing.
John’s attempt to find Kim, aided by George Thomas and Juliet, brings another element into the story as we see the Watts neighbourhood go up in flames. Just as the Cuba crisis was used to mirror Kim’s loss of control in The Awakening, so the riots, which were waiting to happen, are a reflection of the way in which John’s hopes of a future with Kim and his son are torn apart. It’s a measure of how powerful and compelling this part of the episode becomes that it’s possible to distance yourself from Kim’s situation and involve yourself in the very real problems these people face and empathise with the anger they feel at their deprivation. Some of the series’ finest moments are contained here, such as when one of the rioters yells at John that he cannot begin to understand how much rage he feels. Even Thomas, a gentle, peaceful man, is not immune, admitting to John and Juliet that part of himself is reacting to the disturbances with glee. The whole thing is almost too wonderful for words.
Now comes the payback, the price which must be asked for entry into this story. Every time I watch the final few minutes of this episode – every time – I plead with John not to go into the Hive laboratory, so that he can somehow be spared the terrible experience he will have to go through in that evil place. He never listens to me, though – how could he? All he can do is call out Kim’s name in a voice which is bringing me to the point of tears even as I write these words. Curse the English language for what it forces me to say next.
Kim is standing with her back to John as he finally locates her. She’s staring at something, we’re not sure what, but whatever it is she’s not doing what we expect her to, that is run into his arms and tearfully embrace him. Maybe it’s because the Hive have taken her baby from her, leaving her in shock at the outrage of separating her from the child at birth. If only.
John takes her in his arms and she responds, but not like a lover would, more like a close friend or relative would, and that’s wrong. He asks her where the child is, realising at last that she’s no longer pregnant, and the words she utters are enough to freeze the soul to solid ice. The child is safe, she tells him, “with us”, and no words of mine can adequately express what that phrase still does to me whenever I can summon up the courage to watch these moments. That “us” means The Hive is something which is never in the slightest doubt, and the one development which we were convinced could never take place has occurred. Just in case we thought we might have misheard, our worst fears are confirmed when she tells us that this was meant to happen from the beginning. “Maybe in some strange way I did…” – only one shred of hope remains that she is not lost to us completely, when we hear her call out John’s name as she and Steele are beamed out of the building, as if she has just realised what she has done and has decided she needs rescuing after all.
What follows her disappearance is a scene which every person alive on this planet should be forced to sit and watch. Juliet knows what’s coming, she’s become very close to John and understands him as much as anyone – but not quite as close as we have, and when he loses control, smashing every object unlucky enough to be within his reach, we are there with him sharing every last particle of his rage and grief at what has been taken from him. So exactly have we identified with his quest that his feelings are imprinted onto our own, and it’s almost impossible to listen to the older, wiser John’s narration telling us how little sense any of this makes. No matter how much effort I put into remaining calm I never succeed, and the fact that I have had to wait until the following day before describing this episode may tell you just how difficult it has been for me to put my feelings into words. In fact there are no words.
There is one more strange twist to this story, and it comes when Bach asks John what the gray has told him during the time he has spent sharing his loss with it and trying to understand how this has come about. John tells him that the gray sensed the ganglion growing back, but refuses to say more. Nor are we privilege to this information, and perhaps that’s just as well.
Episode Sixteen: Both Sides Now
I’d be very surprised if no-one ever said to Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman about the end of Burn, Baby, Burn that they should have saved that scene until the very last episode and used it as a “cliffhanger” ending. The fact that four episodes of the season remained should have warned us that the writers had no intention whatsoever of adhering to any kind of formula.
What is placed before us here is quite simply forty-five minutes of the best fictional drama ever shown. In Melissa Rosenberg’s script not a line is wasted, no scene is less than riveting; the photography and set design are inspired, the denouement shattering and heartbreaking.
The first scene, where we see Steele asking Kim to “touch the light” in order that she may experience the joys of Singularity throws us right back to The Awakening, and with a start we realise that everything she’s been through since then has been a complete and utter waste of time. All that she’s done, all her battling against the Hive and the changes going on inside her, every mile of that long road has only been leading her back to this point. “By now you know where this must end,” prophesied Pratt almost three years before. The Hive does not let go of its own that easily, and this time there’ll be no dramatic last minute heroics – the only person who can save Kim Sayers is Kim herself.
She’s actually doing very well, having held out for a month, but the thing inside her is stronger now, and her hand reaches out to make contact with the glowing blue ball of light despite her efforts to hold it back. A glass tumbles to the ground and the scene abruptly shifts to a surreal desert landscape; Kim, dwarfed by the immensity of the sky above her, looks fragile and vulnerable as she stares at the barren rocky outcrops and turns around, utterly lost.
A portal appears in the midst of the wispy cirrus clouds, through which a child, Kim’s child, can be heard crying. Steele appears, telling her to go to it, but she knows exactly what awaits her on the other side of that gateway and she refuses, just as she refused Pratt – but her denial carries less conviction this time. The Hive has found her Achilles heel and only the sound of the glass smashing on the ground brings her back in time. The overall effect is nothing less than mesmerising.
As soon as I saw the episode title displayed on the screen I had the feeling that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending to this story. Joni Mitchell’s poignant, reflective masterpiece is a study in false hopes and illusions, about how we only recall the latter to soothe the pain the former have caused us. The “ice cream castles in the air” are in reality only things that “block the sun” depending upon your point of view – or what you’ve been through recently.
John Loengard is in a bit of a state, and a month after Kim has disappeared he’s beginning to panic. Implantees don’t usually hold out this long before crossing over, so unless he finds her soon… Losing his temper as soon as he discovers the man he is EBE profiling is Hive, he forgets his training and only a bullet from Albano saves him from being shot with his own gun. The latter’s voice is unusually solemn, as if he knows exactly what John is going through – because he is going through it himself. Not only that, but his faith in humanity’s ability to win this struggle is being shaken to the core; if someone as inherently good as Kim can cross over, what chance do any of us have? “She’s pretty important to us too,” he tells John. You’re not kidding, Phil.
Bach, who you’d think would feel guilty enough about all of this, is still playing games with John, forbidding him to go to Berkeley – where Kim has recently turned up, helping the Hive give out anti-war leaflets – knowing full well that this will only make him perform the better. Albano asks Bach whether he is playing some sort of angle here, a question so naïve that you wonder what he can be thinking of. Juliet is instructed to bring Kim back alive, unless she’s crossed over, in which case she must be killed. The only way to tell if she’s become a permanent member of the Hive is to look at her fingers, which are slightly burned when an implantee touches the blue light, implying some form of energy transfer between it and the host, and signifying full acceptance. The thought is enough to make you shiver.
Next we see Kim and Steele outside the draft centre being confronted by a large young man who resents the fact that people in “his” country can have the gall to disagree with the government’s decision to send more troops to Vietnam. This is the kind of thing the Hive will put an end to, Steele croons, his seductive reasoning light years away from Pratt’s promises and much more effective. The Hive has learned its lesson since then. Don’t believe for a second that it means a single word it says, though, as Steele’s vicious elbow in the young man’s throat as soon as Kim has been led away belies his vision of a world without violence.
Where’s John now that Bach has told him to stay home? Climbing into Juliet’s car, that’s where, acting out the rôle of bloodhound that Bach has confidently predicted he would play. They find Kim, but Juliet’s not about to let John blow it quite so soon. Steele suggests to Kim that as a reward for all her hard work she can go and see her baby, and for once she smiles, and isn’t it a relief to see her do that, proving she’s still very human?
John and Juliet have no choice but to watch her be driven away and try to infiltrate the organisation run by the charismatic Jerry Reuben, who takes all of thirty seconds to see through their cover. Not that John cares too much about anything these days, but he really has been to Vietnam, and the way he reveals this gives even Reuben pause for thought.
Contrast Reuben’s effervescent idealism with the next scene, featuring two tired, middle-aged men discussing how they can use the conflict to their best advantage. They’re human, these two, but all their humanity has been drained from them by the nature of the tasks they’ve been asked to perform. Look yourself in the eye, Frank. Tell yourself that John didn’t have a point when he said you were no different from the Hive. Better still, tell the mother of one of the boys you are so happy to see fighting in some God-forsaken corner of the world that your larger concerns matter to her. You can’t, can you?
Juliet’s not bothered about sides – to her there’s only one side and one war that matters. She’s the total opposite of Ben Kendall, a male version of Marnie Lane – remember her, that seems such a long time ago – personifying all the qualities that make humanity worth saving. He even brings a smile to John’s face and therefore everyone else’s, then explains that it’s not war he is protesting about, but a war which no sane person can see any justification whatsoever for waging.
Hey, here’s a surprise! A Hiver coming out of a bar clearly the worse for drink! You’re tempted to say they’re almost human after all, and this feeling is reinforced when one of them drops a canister of the stuff they’re aiming to replace tear gas with during the forthcoming demonstration in Oakland. We find out the Hive phrase for “clumsy so-and-so, watch what you’re doing!” So they don’t become robots after all.
It’s up to Juliet to steal a canister and return it to Swofford Towing, aka Majestic, while John goes into the Hive warehouse looking for Kim – no, he certainly hasn’t learned any lessons after Watts. The effect this gas will have on the demonstrators is pretty horrific, judging by the agonising death suffered by the poor man who’s given the job of opening the canister. Show her that, Steele!
Back to Kim, who’s able to hold her baby at last; Madonna and child, no question. Steele arrives with a matron straight out of a Victorian workhouse, transmitting a burst of pain right into Kim’s head that every viewer watching can’t help but feel and then the child is forcibly taken from her. Steele gives her a stark choice: John or her son, one or the other. Now she knows what must be done, and she grits her teeth as she moves her hand forward – let’s get this over with and hope that there’s still some way back. There will be, won’t there?
This is the most crucial moment in the entire series. Kim, not the ganglion inside her, makes the decision to touch the light, and the following scene must be viewed from that perspective. She’s about to do something she now realises she should have done long ago, and it’s not Steele who has to persuade her to take the final steps but John who must somehow convince her not to.
John arrives just in time – you knew he would, didn’t you – and launches himself at Kim as her hand makes contact with the blue globe. Immediately we’re back in the dream landscape, but this time John’s hands close around Kim’s waist and he urges her to fight this thing while she still can. She’s with us, but only just, as Steele takes them to a Majestic office he remembers from his time there, the camera angle’s tilted at forty-five degrees to the horizontal and a kind of time-lapse photographic technique is used with bleak monochrome to reveal what Kim can expect if she chooses to return with John to Majestic. What her son can expect. It’s the last straw, and even if they let him live he won’t have a mother because it’s far too late for an ART. That damning file, blood seeping from its pages and covering Kim’s hands in gore, only adds to her disillusionment with John, Majestic and everything she once trusted to keep the world safe for her and her child.
All of a sudden John’s face appears distorted, and his protests that everything Steele is telling her is a lie seem ridiculous. Kim begins to climb towards the portal in the sky and John cannot believe she’s really leaving him. He comes to with Juliet and Albano standing over him, almost unable to breathe and clinging to a forlorn hope that even at this stage Kim might have resisted the Hive’s siren call.
At this point the Sci-Fi Channel chose to put in a much shorter commercial break than usual, as if they had acknowledged the emotional effect the following part of the story was going to have on those viewers who had no idea how things were going to turn out. Returning to the demonstration, the music is sonorous and grave, nothing less than a presentiment of doom. Maybe it’s not the tear gas switch we should be worried about. No, she’s the heroine, she’ll come through in the end, won’t she?
John has found Steele and he’s soon in trouble, but along comes an unlikely saviour in Ben, and when he knocks Steele cold with the butt of a rifle, worried about whether he’ll go to jail for hitting a policeman, this moment of light relief almost brings a smile to the lips, if not the eyes. It dies as we see John turn and look at the camera. We know exactly what he can see even before the next shot comes into view.
That smile! Don’t know how, but she’s made it despite everything. Oh God, no. Doesn’t matter what those fingers are clutching, just look at them. Blackened. This isn’t supposed to happen. We really have lost her. Now what’s she doing? She’ll kill him! John’s shouting at Ben to keep away from her. This is Kim Sayers we’re watching, why on earth should anyone have cause to fear her? “There’s still humanity left in you,” John cries out and he has to be right, doesn’t he? Even now it can’t be too late, surely?
Spare us the remainder of this terrible assault, you have to. No, we’re getting it in full, but still there’s hope as long as despair can be postponed just a moment or two longer. It goes on though, and when she finally stops beating him only because Steele urges her to flee at the approach of Albano and Juliet, we see the finest shot I have ever seen in any fictional television programme. Broken and bleeding on the ground, a single tear falls from John’s eye and he whispers “I love you” to a stunned and silent audience. It’s more than heartbreaking, it’s a new dimension, a situation I’ve never known a character have to endure before. The death of a loved one is hard enough to bear, but seeing Kim run off like this is purely and simply torture. No other word will do.
Juliet prevents Albano from shooting Kim, saying that he will only make things worse. How can they be worse? At least it would all be over. How can you prolong this agony, Juliet? We loved her, we still do, seeing her like this is unbearable. And what of that pathetic figure lying on the ground? What of John Loengard?
John never gets to see the document Steele showed Kim. He says he didn’t need as Albano quietly closes the filing cabinet, and John is left to pick up the remains of his life. The last image of Kim as John resigns himself to her loss and reveals to us that all that matters to him is his son takes us beyond grief to a place where all we care about is that the pain is diminished. No matter what we say or do in that place, as long as the hurt is numbed then we shall be content. “Where there’s life there’s hope,” goes the saying. Doesn’t mean much now, does it?
Episode Seventeen: To Prey in Darkness
All really good SF stories, no matter which medium they use to put across their message, ask of us the question whether our presence here is the result of pure chance or if some higher purpose, at which we can only guess, is planned for the nebulous entities we call our inner selves. When this episode was originally shown, at the end I felt saddened and upset by what I had just seen and realised that the only way to cheer myself up was to play some music. My choice was a CD I had only just bought, Mansun’s Attack Of The Grey Lantern, the opening track of which borrows heavily from the theme to the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and as the cascading strings began to soothe away the painful memories of yet another tragic chapter in John and Kim’s story something in my head changed the title to “The Kim Who Loved Me.”
Where did she go, I asked myself. Was she dead, like Juliet would suggest in the following episode? Was she buried deep beneath this new persona, so that however unlikely it may seem, a small chance still exists that her original self may one day return? Or was she changed forever by the creature her body had accepted, still very much Kim Sayers but without everything which made her human? I knew then that by posing the question in that form I had become one with John Loengard in the sense that Kim meant as much to me as she did to him. Knowing that she was a fictional character made little difference, the boundaries between fiction and reality having been eroded during each episode by the consummate skill of both the writing team and the two lead actors.
This is how real these people became to me: those of us who read a lot of SF, and who devour stories about time travel, often fantasise about which period and location we would visit were such a thing to become possible. My answer, if I don’t stop to think, would be Washington DC in 1961, so I could go and look up John and Kim, warning John not to get too carried away by Blue Book… hang on, I have to tell myself, they won’t actually be there. But I’d go all the same.
There is a plot to this episode, but it’s almost irrelevant to the questions we are forced to ask ourselves about Kim. If you’re not familiar with the events which take place during the course of the story I doubt whether my description on them would be that useful to you anyway, so I won’t bother with too much detail. Suffice it to say that Dr Hertzog has stolen some film that, were it ever to be shown to the public, would be conclusive proof of an alien invasion and a cover-up by the authorities. Majestic doesn’t want this and neither does the Hive, so it becomes a race to see who can get to the offending footage first.
Steele and Kim show up pretty early in the action, her baby lying safely enough in its crib but totally neglected by a mother who appears unaware of its existence. “I have no feelings for it,” she complains, but Steele urges her to hold the child. “It’s what Kim Sayers must do.” This is clearly dissent on her part, her reluctance to pick up the baby not something you’d expect from a mere unit of a collective intelligence. It most certainly is not Singularity. Even when she breaks the hearts of every watching viewer who still has one left after Both Sides Now by speaking in the Hive tongue she seems hesitant and uncertain about doing so, though it’s now two months since she relinquished control to the ganglion inside her.
John has spent most of those two months recovering from his injuries and allowing his apartment to become a tip, a failing he admits to having had at college. Nice try, John – as if Kim would have tolerated such a thing. At this point John tells us that at least he had stopped dreaming about her – if only he’d let me into the secret! It’s all “John and Juliet” now, and if it’s difficult not to resent her moving in so swiftly to become the new leading lady in all but name then we can hardly be blamed for that. It’s nothing personal, just that no-one will ever take Kim’s place. Not on this show, not on any other.
All someone has to do is mention her name and the scene becomes utterly transformed. John is visiting Hertzog to find out if he really is guilty of stealing the film from Majestic. Ignorant of what has happened in Watts and Oakland, the doctor innocently asks John how Kim is doing. John is shaken, but only for a moment, answering that she is fine. This is a supreme test for him, since it was at his insistence that Hertzog risked Bach’s wrath in allowing him to perform Kim’s ART. Still proud that his formula was such a success, the doctor has little enough with which to salve his conscience. John cannot bring himself to confess that the procedure was only a temporary solution and that Kim’s ganglion eventually grew back. Of course, it might just be that he doesn’t want to talk about her.
Hertzog’s luck finally runs out and the next we see of him he is dangling from a rope in his own home. Best not to ask why. No need at all to wonder who.
The film ends up in the possession of a TV game show host called Dorothy Kilgallan, who is paid a visit by Steele and goes out the way I’d like to! The Hive can only think of one way to get it back, so enter Kim quite late in the proceedings as a “femme fatale” – that glimpse of her waiting in the darkened interior of the car is pure 1940s film noir – using her references from the First Lady’s Office to get a temporary job with the TV company hoping to show the film.
Looking and sounding disturbingly like the girl who used to work for Alicia Bainbridge, Kim is all sweetness and light until her new boss turns his back and then she’s searching for the film, not much of a spy really since she gets caught red-handed in the attempt. John and Juliet turn up a little later and there’s a brilliant scene where the two of them just miss Kim leaving the TV office as they enter. “She’s behind you!”
I can laugh about this now, but at the time it was first shown I was making mental preparations for her death, which was how I was convinced was the only way this part of the story could be resolved. All hope that she would be found a way to revert to her former self had gone by this stage, and I counted down the minutes remaining, knowing that her final loss would cost me dear. Just like in Hostile Convergence, which seemed like years ago, I prayed that it would be quick.
Just before the famous blackout, Kim is stalking the corridors of the TV building, still searching for the film. She sees John and Juliet together in the room where the technicians are about to broadcast the news, and her eyes widen with surprise as she gives an involuntary gasp. It’s a very human reaction, but it’s soon suppressed – remember she’s different from other people in a way we haven’t discovered yet – and she calls someone, presumably Steele, to offer to sacrifice herself in order that the Majestic agents may be killed.
She hasn’t been listening, though, and the Hive clearly have other plans for her. Understanding now, she rasps her acknowledgement in a much more confident rendition of the Hive language – not that this has any power over us any more, after all she’ll soon be dead – and we’re set up for the finale, the tension so great that it almost burns up the inside of your set.
It’s violent, shocking and so disturbing that the writers allow us some relief in the form of a stand-off between Albano and Steele, who come to an uneasy truce which has major implications for Majestic – and Bach – during the final episode. We have to get to John’s confrontation with Kim at some stage, though, and when it comes to a head, and you’re expecting a bullet to smash into her at any second from Juliet or Albano what actually transpires is almost funny. John simply punches her in the face and she goes down like a sack of potatoes. I was so relieved when she vanished from under his nose, her evil laughter echoing around the car lot, that it didn’t bother me one little bit that I was cheering the villainess as she made off, no doubt to continue her wickedness the following episode. “I’ll kill you,” screams John, having confirmed our worst fears by failing to recognise any trace of humanity left within her. That terrible day in Watts now seems like a glorious memory, for then at least we had hope. Now there is nothing left at all but the endless void between the stars, which are winking out one by one.
Despite, or rather because of the vicious, sadistic creature which she has become, I find it impossible to think of Kim in anything but the most affectionate terms. The emotional bond that ties me to her is unbreakable, no matter what evil deeds she may perform in future episodes. Apart from a brief cameo, this is the last time Kim Sayers is to play any part in Season One, though her memory will continue to suffuse each moment of the final two episodes. Her legacy, in the form of her son, will ensure that in one way or another, the story will never be able to forget her entirely.
The final scenes, where Juliet covers John’s last minute attack of conscience in the TV offices by pretending it was part of an elaborate charade, followed by the sight of the two of them attempting to exorcise the ghosts of their former partners in a passionate clinch, bring to a close a sequence of episodes so ground-breaking that the use of the term “visionary” is not an exaggeration. The season could, and maybe should have ended at this point, but when the Channel 4 announcer informed us that Dark Skies would not return for two weeks I almost put my foot through the screen there and then!
Episode Eighteen: Strangers in the Night
Two long weeks were to pass between the original screenings of To Prey In Darkness and this story, giving the imagination more than enough time to speculate upon the endless possibilities which had opened out as a result of the incredible events described during the previous four episodes. What would become of John? Was there a faint chance that something might still save Kim? Would she survive the episode? Exactly how evil had she become? The minutes leading up to 10pm on June 2nd 1997 have got to be the longest I have ever known.
What did we get after all that agonising waiting? A garbled and confusing story set in Russia for the most part, with characters it was difficult to tell apart and, unforgivably, no scene featuring Megan, apart from a few flashbacks of earlier episodes. Sorry guys, as your countryfolk are so fond of saying, this dog definitely won’t hunt.
Since the show was broadcast I’ve been made aware of certain behind the scenes goings-on which resulted in a diminished rôle for Megan and the much fuller development of Jeri Ryan’s Juliet. Fair enough, these things happen, and it may well be that an episode without a “live” appearance by Kim was what the writers had in mind right from the start, in which case this episode is little more than an exercise in cruelty. Don’t get me wrong, John losing Kim was absolutely necessary for the story to work, but surely it then becomes even more essential that we find out what she’s getting up to, and I’m afraid that a couple of vague references to her by the other characters just isn’t good enough.
Whatever the reason for Kim’s non-appearance in Strangers In The Night, the sense of loss so keenly felt during the previous episode becomes too much to bear without a scene or two to keep an eye on her as it were. Maybe, as I’ve suggested, this was a deliberate move, so that the viewer misses her all the more, but if so then it’s a serious miscalculation. Jeri Ryan is a splendid actress but there hasn’t been anything like enough time for us to bond with her character to the same extent that we have with Kim, given the emotional rollercoaster we’ve been put through. The fact that her arrival more or less coincided with Kim’s descent back to the Hive will always associate Juliet with those events, and while they’re clearly not connected in any logical fashion I think it’s already been shown that this is not a series you approach in a detached way.
From what I can make out of the plot, Aura-Z, Majestic’s Soviet equivalent, is attacked and most of its operatives killed by the Hive. John, Juliet, Halligan and a few others fly out to Chernobyl – all of them having become expendable to Bach now that Kim is gone – and attempt to sort out who is Hive and who is still human from the mess they find. It’s all very claustrophobic, set mostly underground, just about everyone is telling lies because they’re nearly all Hive so it’s impossible to believe a word anyone says, and poor Halligan says “hello” to the great waiting room in the sky.
Arriving back at Majestic, Juliet has to face the fact that her mentor is now a member of the Hive and decide if she can shoot him before he kills a nurse he has taken hostage. None of the characters introduced are worth caring about – oh for a Susan Swenson or a Jesse Marcel – and instead we have the unlikely figure of Dr Carl Sagan, in effect Halligan’s replacement, who is drafted into Majestic in an appalling violation of his civil liberties. Dr Sagan is a well known author as well as a scientist who has made several television appearances and a long running documentary series, and I do not remember the jerky voice and random word emphasis this actor includes in his interpretation of the man.
I still cannot bring myself to say very much about this episode that is positive. Maybe that’s because I spent so much time looking forward to it after the sheer magnificence of those which had preceded it; or perhaps I just missed Kim so badly that no matter how good the story was I couldn’t have enjoyed it without at least one new scene featuring her. At one point Juliet tells John that to all intents and purposes Kim is dead and that he has to let go of her before he can move on. I have absolutely no doubt that she’s speaking personally to me when she says that, but I am also totally convinced that she is wrong. Kim Sayers will always remain Hive but that needn’t necessarily mean she’s lost to us forever. Who knows, one day the Hive might see the error of its ways, and who better to start that process than the young woman who embodied humanity’s finest qualities? If there is a straw, I will cling to it and until I see physical proof of Kim’s death then logic can take a running jump.
That’s it then, one episode left and a plethora of loose ends to be tied up. It was around this time that I learned of the series’ cancellation and the news was leaked from the USA that at least one regular character would be killed off in Bloodlines. It seemed obvious who that would be, and during the days before the final episode was shown I began to prepare myself for Kim’s death, realising that by doing so I was admitting to myself that I loved her just as much as John Loengard ever did.
Episode Nineteen: Bloodlines
The first thing I have to tell you is that if there are things about this episode you don’t understand then I doubt you’ll be any the wiser after reading what I have to say about it. The forty-five minutes itself is extremely watchable, very funny in places and unexpectedly moving in others. Most important as far as I was concerned, the way Kim made a more or less dignified exit was very pleasing. As the final instalment in an epic story, though, it’s rather less than satisfying.
A “tenth” planet which may be the size of Mars is approaching the earth and is due to intersect with our orbit by approximately the year 2000. Very convenient. From it a television signal is being broadcast to us, causing Bach to quip that at least we know there’s no intelligent life there. One to the writers! Sagan is asked to decode the signal to see if it can be understood. The eventual answer is that yes, he does and no, it can’t. Not by me anyway.
Meanwhile John Loengard is acting out the Frank Zappa song Who Needs The Peace Corps? with Juliet in San Francisco, complete with wig and beads. It’s 1967, the summer of love, man, and John needs to find out who’s making and distributing the “brown cubes” which are giving all the hippies such bad trips. Anyone here didn’t guess it was Kim and Steele? Shame on you.
Steele is a lot more image conscious now that he has teamed up with John’s former partner. He has a glass eye to disguise his ART legacy, and pops it in before his latest customers, pointed in his direction by none other than Timothy Leary, arrive to test the merchandise. Cue fight scene when John and Steele recognise each other, and an appearance by Kim which lasts under three seconds as she throws some of the brown cubes drug in John’s eyes and says something about dreams which is impossible to hear. I’ve heard of actresses being wasted but this is taking the mickey. Then she’s off into the woods again, and wouldn’t you know it Juliet can’t quite draw a bead on her. I think the phrase “keeping your options open” is the correct one to use here.
The psychedelic strains of Vanilla Fudge are the backdrop for a series of flashbacks from past episodes as the drug connects John directly to the Hive mind. That’s what it does, you see, so they can learn all about us – as long as we’re junkies, that is. Maybe I’m missing something here.
What John discovers when he finally learns to control his trip is the location of his son on the Hive mother ship and in a plot device so outrageous that the writers must have intended it as a raspberry to the Network which cancelled the series, a way is found to get him up into space and back down again. The “bloodlines” concept is taken from Bryce Zabel’s film Official Denial which in many ways was the prototype for Dark Skies, but the scientific basis for it is ludicrous and totally unbelievable. Not that much of an attempt is made to explain it here – we just have to accept that Governor Ronald Reagan is next on the Hive hit list and that they won’t notice the difference when John turns up instead.
And who would have believed it? Kim and Steele exit the stage with a laugh as he chops down a jogger and takes out the poor man’s wallet. His name will be Charles Manson from now on but Kim can call him “Charlie” – then she skips away hand-in-hand with him, but not before a momentary expression of distaste crosses her features as she gazes down at the real Manson’s prone figure. Well done, Megan! That part of the story isn’t over yet by a long way.
John’s training for his extra-terrestrial jaunt is completed when he is given instructions on how to get back to earth by a clueless Sagan, who makes Halligan look charismatic by comparison. This is how you operate it, John. Just twiddle this knob and aim for earth. Burning up during re-entry? No problem. I tell you, John, we haven’t just built this thing in a couple of hours since you said you’d film the inside of the ship for us – it really does work, honest! Yeah, and latent tendrils can’t grow back, can they?
When John finally arrives on board the Hive ship, Juliet having tagged along, the impact of this momentous feat is entirely lost because the really interesting developments are taking place in Majestic HQ. There’s already proof that a Hive member has infiltrated the organisation – let’s be fair, it doesn’t seem that difficult – so everyone has to take a giant dose of milk and Alka Seltzer so the guilty party can be identified. The more astute of you – not me, I’m ashamed to admit – will have noticed Albano’s odd behaviour and the way the gray reacts when it sees him, but he takes a huge swig of the mixture and doesn’t turn a hair.
Bach then organises a meeting of the twelve board members to watch John’s progress aboard the Hive ship. There doesn’t, in truth, appear to be a great deal going on up there but it isn’t long before the transmitter is broken and the signal interrupted. The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that John has been killed and Project Intruder has been yet another disaster. A vote is taken which removes Bach from his position as leader of Majestic, the casting vote being given by Bobby Kennedy in revenge for Bach having thwarted his attempt to support John and Kim in their struggle – or it would be nice to think so, anyway.
What happens next is another example of how our emotions have been manipulated without our knowledge. Bach, who can be under no illusions about the fate he may suffer this day, has begun to chain-smoke once again as he waits for the board to make up their minds what to do about him. Without his power he cuts a pathetic figure, a man who has played for the highest stakes and lost. He expects no mercy from the man who enters the room, his successor, Phil Albano. That his trusted right-hand man could one day become his executioner is a possibility that must have occurred to Bach, but that he has become Hive into the bargain makes us feel only pity for him.
Bach dies tormented by Albano’s vision of a Hive which has control not only over people’s physical form but has also infiltrated computer microcircuitry, the very existence of which will be directly attributable to the Hive intelligence. When Albano reveals that he approached the Hive willingly and moreover that Majestic’s ART procedure is out of date it is more punishment than anyone, no matter how misguided and amoral, should have to bear. Bach may have contributed more than anyone else to Kim’s loss but he did not desire it – we realise too late that all he ever wanted to do was to protect humanity and that he did his duty in the only way he knew how. Rest in peace, Frank.
Now we must return to the Hive ship for the final grand scene in this fantastic journey. Well, actually no, in fact it’s a total washout except for one last moment which tears my heart into tiny pieces every time I see it. John has abandoned a catatonic Juliet but finds his son, now grown to approximately three times the age he should be. The boy is every single bit as sinister as the child anti-Christ in The Omen, possessing an adult’s command of language and sending shivers down every one of my bones, never mind my spine. John’s words to him are the only ones I want to hear. “You have your mother’s eyes,” he says in wonder and at that moment I would give anything – anything – to see Kim walk out from the shadows and smile at John. It can never be, though, at least not during this season, though the fact that John still loves her is a comforting one. The only one that really matters.
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Copyright © 1997 Richard Furness. All rights reserved.
Revised: 19th April 1998