With this in mind, I bought the complete DVD boxset of the entirety of Bugs and intend on watching the entire run slowly. I am also going to sporadically do write ups of the episodes as I watch them. I will tentatively title these entries "Alpha Retrospectives" and the style will change as I figure out what I want to write about each episode. With that, I bring you Bugs, season 1 episode 1.
Alpha Retrospective: "Bugs", Season 1 Episode 1: "Out of the Hive"
The episode begins with one of those cash vans pulling to a stop on what appears to be an abandoned airfield to meet up with a landing helicopter. Two security guards and man in a leather jacket rush out of the van carrying a blue flight case to meet the helicopter, which is flown by some gentleman who looks like a cross between a tramp and a house burglar. Apparently the contents of the box are dangerous enough to need an escort, but only up to the point where it is loaded on the helicopter (Perhaps they should've hired a larger helicopter?). Also it is going to some secretive Government spy agency called "The Hive (tm)" but not secret enough for the nervous man in the leather jacket to not mention it to the pilot.The flight is interrupted by the appearance of another helicopter with the crew signaling that they want our intrepid couriers to land. Apparently this is out of the question due to how dangerous the contents of the blue flight case is. So a chase ensues. Cue lots of scenery porn and a lot of dramatic flying past boats and bridges, cutting to random shots of gun fire being exchanged along with badly dubbed stock bullet ricochet noises. Meanwhile on the ground, two vaguely ominous looking people in a white 4x4 car follow the helicopters in anticipation of them landing. After more flying and an improbably bit of shooting from a hand gun, the second helicopter sprays smoke, spins and crashes and apparently explodes in a way that would impress Michael Bay. Cue opening credits and that legendary theme song.
At The Hive (Actually called "BHQ" if the ID badges of all personnel are anything to go by), the contents of the case are revealed to be a laptop, a numeric keypad, a floppy drive, a speaker, a lot of random lights, buttons and switches and an assortment of VGA and banana sockets. Apparently, together these components are called the "Satellite And Communication Remote Override System" or SACROS for short. One of the old Government type men in the room, our other main character called Nick Beckett, apparently thinks SACROS sounds like some Greek island. Amusingly, the word "Sacros" had multiple definitions. In Spanish, it is the "masculine plural of adjective sacro", which means "sacred". As a noun, Sacros is plural for "sacrum", a "large triangular bone at the base of the spine, located between the two ilia (wings of the pelvis) and formed from vertebrae that fuse in adulthood." Thanks to wiktionary for that definition
After some messing around with an American TV news channel's satellite feed, nowadays itself a incitement to war at the time I write this (That was a sarcastic joke by the way), main character Beckett gets a call from the man in the leather jacket, apparently called Ballantyne, from something that doesn't really exist anymore i.e. the public payphone. Ballantyne warns that he thinks the attempt to steal SACROS was an inside job and wants to meet Beckett outside of The Hive. He somehow has located the car that was apparently following his helicopter ride and placed a tracking device on it. He doesn't get to elaborate further as he is shot and killed by one of the vaguely ominous people in the aforementioned white off-roader from earlier, a women in a distinctive blue coat. Also there is no one else in the passageway where Ballantyne is shot, conveniently for her. No one in the trains moving around in the background seem to care either. Beckett gets really concerned at the abrupt termination of the phone call and fortunately had the foresight to record the entire thing via a digital walkman in his desk drawer. He relays his concerns to his immediate superior, a man called Cottrell who looks like every spy movie villain ever. Despite the fact that there is the obvious sound of a gunshot on the tape recording, Cottrell is unconvinced but says he will take on board Beckett's concerns anyway, but insists on keeping the original tape for safe keeping in a way that totally doesn't scream "traitorous". Meanwhile, as Cottrell leaves The Hive, he spies the other vaguely ominous person in the 4x4 from the opener, another Hive agent called Moore. Moore meets up with the woman in blue and is increasingly agitated about being caught meeting her outside the place of work. The woman is unmoved and simply wants SACROS stolen out of the building and requests all the security codes to gain access to the Hive to do so.
Meanwhile, our next main character, a woman called "Ros", is demoing a lot of surveilence kit to some customers. She gets a call from Beckett who is looking for "Terry" that did some work for him previously. Apparently Terry left and Ros is dealing with clients now. After some thinly disguised gender prejudice and arm twisting, Beckett asks Ros for a further meeting to see what she can do to enhance the audio recording of his previous phone call with Ballantyne to find out what happened to him, although he doesn't mention this at the time. Surely the fact that Ballantyne hasn't shown up for work with more deliveries of dangerous goods in boxes should be enough of an indicator that something is wrong, but never mind. Apparently Beckett needs to steal the original tape to provide the materials required to enhance the audio to prove that Ballantyne was shot dead. For all the high tech gadgetry in Bugs, tape duplicators are not one of them. Unfortunately for Beckett, stealing Government property is not as easy as it seems. Sticking a mirror over a CCTV camera gave him some time, but the dead giveaway was leaving the drawer he searched open. Moore finds evidence of Beckett's rifling around and becomes immediately suspicious. Not hard to deduce when Beckett is literally the only other person coming from the direction of the records storage area.
Beckett meanwhile returns to his office and starts looking up information on Ros using a super secret Government database on literally everyone in the United Kingdom. The scene cuts away just as it shows Ros' date of birth. Not sure what it is implying there but oh well. Meanwhile, Ros is doing her own research, hacking into The Hive's systems to find out about Beckett and why he might want her services. Apparently Hive systems are extremely easy to crack. We return to Beckett who apparently gets a call from one of the top brass at The Hive, asking him to go find a dossier on Ballantyne on his desk. Beckett goes to retrieve said dossier to find nothing and perhaps unwisely goes through the boss's filing cabinet, only to becaught by Moore, who takes him to Cottrell. Beckett claims innocence, referring back to the earlier phone call but apparently it isn't possible as said member of top brass has been out of the office the entire day. Despite Cottrell seemingly willing to let off Beckett with a slap on the wrist, Moore being the stickler to the letter of the law insists on frisking Beckett in case he has anything he shouldn't have on him. Unfortunately for Beckett, they find the tape that he stole from the records room. One trip to Beckett's flat later and Hive agents are searching through for anything else incriminating. After some failed attempts at inappropriate humour to defuse the situation, one bag full of other stolen tapes are found. If they were planted and Beckett had nothing to do with them, he doesn't help his case by doing the first thing all guilty parties do, which is to punch one of his colleagues and vault out the window. Luckily for him, Ros arrives just as Hive agents emerge on the streets. At this point it becomes obvious that Ros is an adrenaline junkie as well as a technical genius. A game of car chicken and one taxi induced car crash later, which surprisingly for Bugs didn't result in an immediate explosion, Ros and Beckett get away.
At Ros' place, Beckett is in hiding and trying to explain to Ros the full story behind why he needs the audio on the tape enhanced. As Ros goes to get more coffee, Beckett notices a suspicious person trying to climb up the building via balconies. Beckett quickly goes into action mode, grappling with the mystery freeclimber until Ros returns and is surprised to see the two men fighting in her home. It turns out to be a misunderstanding as it is Ros' neighbour, Ed, who the viewers recognise as the helicopter pilot from the very beginning. Turns out Ed finds life boring and feels the need to climb buildings to get into his own flat. The power trio assembled, contrived coincidences mean that Ed volunteers to help Beckett and Ros get the tape they need to do their analysis and find out what happened to Ballantyne, which is still back at The Hive. Despite the fact that it would be particularly noisy or odd to see at night in a major urban area, Ed uses a powered paraglider to reach the roof of The Hive and break in using some gadgetry from Ros. However, the tape isn't in the filing area and Ed doesn't have time to search the entire building. He hides in Cottrell's office having no time to cover his tracks while security (Just one guard apparently) discovers the break in attempt and sets off an alarm that causes blue lights and a strange siren to go off. By luck Ed discovers the tape they need in the office he is in. However his shouting about this eureka moment gives away his location and he narrowly avoids the gunfire that is knocking some very clean holes through the door lock. Ed escapes through several doors into another stairwell while more guards give chase. He manages to get to the roof but his paramotor doesn't start. After several tense minutes, long enough for Hive security to reach Ed, he gives up on the motor and jumps off the building using only the parachute to glide away. Apparently the guards have taken their firearms handling lessons from Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers, as their aim is as crap as their ability to respond to intruders. Somehow, no one in central London also cares about the large amount of rapid gunfire and seemingly no one gets hit by the stray bullets flying around.
Back at Ros' place, the audio analysis proves what we already know. That poor Ballantyne is a dead man. More audio enhancement and they not only somehow pull out the audio of the voice of the killer, the woman in blue but also the sounds of trains and the station announcement. They visit the area and a scan of the airwaves reveals the tracking signal from Ballantyne's bug. How fortuitous that the killer didn't remove it. They find the car and it is registered to one "Elena Johnston", the mystery woman in blue. Our trio notices Elena leaving and Ed pursues, turning down Ros' offer of carrying a tracker in case he "gets lost". Ros pockets it to put away later. Note that well, there will be a test coming at the end! Ed tails Elena to a restaurant where she meets her accomplice Moore from earlier. Turns out he is seriously hurting for cash and needs it sooner than later. Elena reassures him he will be paid for his work after taking a list of access codes to where SACROS (Remember that?) is being stored. She cajoles Moore by offering some extra payment in a package to not be opened until he gets home. That should've set off alarm bells ringing but never mind. Elena then asks Moore to order them a meal while she leaves for a moment to deal with something else. Ed eavesdrops on them and noticing Elena making a hasty exit follows behind, only to lose her when she detonates a bomb in the restaurant. Turns out Moore's extra reward was a packet of plastic explosives. Also notable is that no one in the restaurant seems to react when the explosives go off. At least, there seems to be no screaming from any of the other patrons.
Ros' office again and after she and Beckett did some of their own snooping around Elena's home, they do some enhancing of a photograph in Elena's living room, specifically on the picture of her and some other gentleman. Beckett suddenly receives call from the top brass at The Hive again, only it's Ros pranking him using voice samples and what amounts to a very sophisticated voice changer. Aside from having another laugh at his expense, Ros does this to make the serious point that this was how Beckett got a phone call to go to the big boss's office and be lured into a trap setting off the chain of events. Some beeping later and the magic computerised aging program has predicted what the man with Elena would look like now. He looked familiar! Some graffiti on the PC monitor and Beckett comes to a shocking revelation. It's his immediate Hive superior, Cottrell! I They decide they have to confront him to prove Beckett's innocence. Unfortunately, in true horror movie fashion, Cottrell is already there and pops up from the back of Ros' car and holds them hostage. Ed returns to the trio's HQ to share what he has found out about Elena, only to find no one there. He does find the receiver unit for Ros' tracker. Chekhov's gun indeed! He rides on his motorbike to where the tracker is pointing and ends up in a car scrapyard where he sees Ros' car being fed into crusher. Oh no! He is too late and the car disappears and scary metal munching noises are heard. Thankfully, Ros is fine. She managed to escape at the last second before Ed got there. However she laments the loss of her car. Get used to it. Ros' cars meeting an untimely end become a bit of a running gag, if you can call it that.
Ed and Ros have no idea what has become of Beckett and decide to hatch a plan to find him. Using one of the oldest tricks in the book, a camera hidden in a Remembrance Poppy, Ed poses as a Poppy seller and accosts Cottrell, guilt tripping him into wearing one, lest he be seen as some sort of spoilsport objector. In hindsight it should be obvious as the centre of the poppy looks odd but whatever. Cottrell seems highly strung up over something so probably didn't notice. Ed and Ros view the live video feed and see Cottrell break into the high security storage area to steal the SACROS system, killing a technician who challenges him over it. Our intrepid duo spy Cottrell sticking a cargo shipping label on the box SACROS is stored in as well as his plane tickets for himself and Elena. Ed heads back to Elena's to seek out where Beckett could be and find out more about her and Cottrell's plans. Turns out they more than criminal partners and are going to leave the country and hold the world to ransom using SACROS to jam any nation's satellite communication links! However, our duo is forced to act quickly when Cottrell notices the poppy he is wearing isn't all it seems. Elena decides to kill Beckett, who is tied up in her home, immediately to avoid their plans spilling out further. Ed manages to break in and save Beckett, but fails to stop Elena going on the run. All seems lost but Ros has an idea to throw a spanner in the works...
Elena and Cottrell get phone calls from each other suggesting that they should abandon heading to the airport and instead make use of a helicopter to take them directly to Paris, France, to escape. However on arrival, they quickly realise they have been duped. Turns out it was Ros and Beckett using that voice changer to make them switch their rendezvous point. Our criminal lovebirds make a break for it, but things aren't made easy due to Ros' extreme driving skills in Beckett's car. Beckett seems overly concerned about his jeep getting trashed, to which Ros tells him to shut up as she knows what she is doing. A quick chase, including Ed attempting to buzz Elena and Cottrell in his helicopter, comes to a fiery end when Elena drives along an incomplete road that ends abruptly in the air. Apparently in the Bugs world, cars will just spontaneously explode if they become airborne. Regardless, that is the end of Elena, Cottrell and SACROS. Beckett decides that the loss of SACROS probably means a permanent end to his career at The Hive. But Ros has an idea. She offers to hire both Ed and Beckett in her company.
The episode ends with another car joke. It's the remains of Ros' car from the scrapyard. Oh joy.
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