Alpha Retrospective: Bugs Season 1 Episode 4 "Down Among the Dead Men"
At the bank of some unspecified dockyard, a stern Naval type (Not “Marine Command” but “Naval Command” this time, if the official episode guide is to be believed!) is briefing some nervous looking cadets about a very import salvage mission. Apparently parts have been going missing and the navy type is very displeased. He demands to know if there are any further questions. The most nervous of the lot, Midshipman Windette, confirms to our Navy commander that there is none. More likely all the cadets are too afraid to speak up in case they get punished by being told to swab the decks or something similar. He probably gets the dubious honour of being the first to die in the episode. Windette crawls through the dark passages of the ship they are salvaging bits from and goes through a flooded compartment to recover his assigned piece, a red case of sorts. But disaster strikes! Windette is grabbed by a diver who surfaces from the water and dragged under to suffocate. Commander "Commander" gets concerned and waves a torch around, only to find Windette under the surface, in Davy Jones’ Locker and the part missing…At Bugs HQ (Which really I should call Gizmo HQ because that is the in-universe name of the company our heroic trio works in. Nowhere do they refer to themselves as the “Bugs Team”, but I digress), Graeme Hurry, the head of security for a large corporate bank, “Kamen and Ross”, is concerned that one of their ex-employees, Brian Brody and his other half Juliet, are planning something big to steal a lot of dosh. He isn’t sure what it is but Brian scarpered after he cottoned on that the heads at Kamen and Ross traced his misuse of another employee’s log in details to access work systems for dodgy purposes. Apparently they have hired the services of a former Naval Diver who has been stealing bits and bobs from Marine Command (Quoted from the official guide. They are not consistent, are they?) called McTiernan. Ros devises a plan where Ed will search the caravan McTiernan calls home for some intel while Beckett is volunteered into pretending to be a financial advisor to distract McTiernan in the meantime. Ed has a rummage around for clues while Beckett pretends that the bank he works for was founded by an ex-naval officer which specialises in helping ex-martimers get a good deal. However, a gaffe on Beckett's part makes McTiernan nervous (Frankly I felt it was just a simple innocent misphrasing and not many would’ve noticed it but I’m not a ex-naval diver embarking on a criminal enterprise, so what do I know?). McTiernan gets all paranoid and eventually decides the most proportionate response would be to kill Beckett by gunshot so he can’t tell anyone about his attempts to invest a large sum of money. Apparently, McTiernan’s pistol is so powerful, it sends Beckett flying literally head over heels, into his desk and onto the floor. Episode over.
Not really. Beckett was lucky that McTiernan happened to shoot him right where Ros placed the hidden radio transmitter. Also luckily for Beckett, apparently Ros’ gadgets are made of super high performance thin bullet proof steel! They have no time to warn Ed, who gets into McTiernan’s caravan using some fancy electric lockpick, finds nothing and is just leaving the caravan, securing the door again to avoid leaving any traces of him having been there (Good job Ed!), when our crazed and paranoid diver and murderer appears around the corner. Ed is forced to clamber into a water tower to hide as McTiernan hurriedly goes into his caravan to stuff his bags for a quick getaway. Unfortunately for our diver friend, his associates Mr. and Mrs. Broody arrive. Apparently, McTiernan has been a very naughty boy and has hiked up his fees for his services, contrary to what they previously agreed. McTiernan’s propensity for violence is no match for Juliet’s cold blooded killer tendencies as she does what he failed to do with Beckett earlier and kills McTiernan stone dead. Ed, while watching this, finds some of the stolen naval parts in the tower, but before he can celebrate, he has to hide again as Brain climbs up the water tower and also dumps McTiernan’s corpse into the tank. The Broody’s have no time to go searching themselves, as they spy a car screaming into the area. It’s Ros and Beckett. Fearing the worst, they decide to make tracks before they are caught (By the way, did you notice Ed’s mobile phone somehow still works despite being submerged in water for minutes at a time?).
At Kamen and Ross, Graeme is trying to convince his bosses that Brian is up to no good and they need to be cautious. But they decide to treat the whole thing as a Cassandra Truth and are not concerned. With top level management being what they are i.e. top level management, Beckett hatches a plan to pretend to be an old colleague of McTiernan’s called “Bailey” and contacts Brian claiming to have the parts he is looking for. As they prepare, we have a running gag between Beckett and Ed regarding naval terminology with respect to ships and boats. Apparently navies don’t have “boats”, but “ships”. This annoys Ed to no end. At the meeting, held in a Sushi restaurant, Ed is introduced as “Bailey’s” protective muscle, just in case. They show a faked photograph of them with McTiernan as chums. Brian is unconvinced at first, but Ed calls his bluff, saying if they were to fake a photograph, they would do a better job than what was shown. Ouch! Brian takes the bait and gets them involved in his plan to steal 250 million quid from his ex-employers. They would get a cut in return.
Ed and Beckett head out to a dockyard where a chartered boat with Juliet is waiting for them. Ros tails them carefully with the aid of a long range tracker on Ed and watches from a distance as the boys load the boat with the stolen naval parts. On the chartered boat, the joke about navies having no “boats” and only “ships” rears it’s ugly head again. Also rearing it’s ugly head is Beckett's seasickness despite his previous Navy experience. He tries to brush it off by saying Admiral Nelson was prone to seasickness as well. Ed is still amused. Their banter is interrupted by the boat arriving at it’s destination. A rendezvous point with an ex-Soviet submarine! Brian pops out the conning tower and instructs the pair to load the parts onto the sub and get onboard. The sub is readied and it dives under the waves, which has the unfortunate side effect of cutting off the tracker signal, leaving Ros in the dark over her friends whereabouts.
On the sub, Brian explains he managed to get his hands on it and the services of the crew due to anything being for sale these days, especially with the collapse of Communism. Ed and Beckett figure out the reason for the serious hardware. The sub has undersea cable laying and repair facilities and he needs the parts to make a pump that prevents the sub from flooding while he carries out his plan to defraud Kamen and Ross. Brian will literally lift an undersea cable that data traffic between his ex-employers and another client travels through and intercept said traffic to perform a “man in the middle” attack. With the details from both sides, he will pretend to be the other party in a routine money transfer and steal the money that way. By the time he is found out, it will be too late. With his scheme explained, Brian tells Ed and Beckett to stop being so nosey and get on with installing the parts while he sets up his computer equipment for the transfer. Beckett takes this as a chance to let “Mr. Muscle” Ed do all the pump installation work while he buggers off.
On the surface, Juilet returns to shore, only to bump into Ros who apologises for her clumsiness. It’s a ruse to plant a bug in Juliet’s coat pocket. Ros finds the boat Juliet chartered and tries to look for our seafaring duo onboard. Unfortunately, all she finds is a discharged harpoon gun and the harpoon embedded in the pilot, who by the looks of things is now very much joining Midshipman Windette in Davy Jones Locker. Finding no more clues on the ship of the dead, Ros returns to her tracking device to locate where Juliet has gone. It’s a fancy looking office building. However she is not allowed to stay for long. A scary looking man in a suit tells her in thinly veiled threatening terms that she is riff-raff and isn’t welcome anywhere near the building. A security grunt is instructed to escort her from the premises.
During a break in proceedings, We are treated to another navy terminology joke. This time, the submarine isn’t a “ship” but a “boat” because all subs are called boats in the navy. This infuriates Ed to the point where I expected him to start a mutiny. But somehow he doesn’t. Our two submariners turn their attention to figuring out a way to thwart Brian’s plans, noting they there is only two of them and the rest of the submarine crew seems to be made up of tough and angry looking Russians who are firmly on Brian’s side, due to him being their paymaster. They are stuck for ideas. As they try desperately to figure out a plan of action, Brian tells everyone to get ready as they are nearing their next destination before they reach their final target.
At Kamen and Ross, Graeme and Ros look over the evidence collated so far. Turns out that Juliet was visiting the offices of Jacobs Doyle, who are a diamonds dealer. Graeme’s boss, in typical top level management fashion, isn’t convinced there is any link to Brian Broody or indeed any obvious threat and denies Graeme permission to continue with the investigation, in spite of the fact that Ros’ friends are missing. Infuriated, Graeme and Ros are left on their own. As they are left in the lurch, the submarine has surfaced at some random dockyard on the Dutch coast. Ed is given the unenviable task of preparing the refuelling equipment. Brian goes back inside to go give instructions in a condescending and insulting “I don’t know how to speak your language so I will just shout English at you loudly and slowly until you understand” at the sub’s radio operator. Ed takes this opportunity to try to raise Ros on his long range radio. Unfortunately for Ed, the signal isn’t encrypted so while Brian is trying to explain, rather poorly, to the radio operator what he wants to do, the radio picks up Ed’s transmission. Realising Ed is not what he seems to be, Brian heads back out of the sub and tries to kill Ed via assault rifle fire, igniting the fuel and causing a large explosion. Or two. He instructs the sub to prepare for an immediate dive just as Beckett arrives with some tea. Realising his cover has been blown, Beckett scalds Brian with said tea and tries to hide in one of the submarine’s nooks and crannies. Back on shore, Ed has survived death by explosions, fire and drowning and swims to safety.
Back at Bugs HQ, Graeme is visiting Ros to consult on their next move, given the lack of leads. He arrives just in time for Ros to see Ed’s tracking device signal shows up on her computer. Over a phone call (Must be a great roaming package!), Ed and Ros discuss what Brian might do. It turns out Brian has an inflatable on board the sub and Ed suspects he plans to scuttle the submarine after carrying out the man in the middle attack and use the inflatable boat afterwards to head back to shore, possibly to meet back up with his wife for unknown purposes. Ed somehow has the connections to get assistance from a Dutch naval patrol vessel. Ros faxes the last known location and estimated heading of Brian’s sub.
We return to the sub where Beckett briefly plays cat and mouse with the crew, with Brian taunting him over the PA system. After some successes, Beckett's luck runs out when one of the crew has the foresight to pretend to come down one of the hatches, causing Beckett to back off right into the hands of another crew member with night vision goggles and a very large knife..
Beckett is dragged back to Brian who has him handcuffed to a pipe on the ceiling. He has arrived just in time to witness Brian’s setting up the fraudulent transfers in his man in the middle attack. Some taunting from Brian and a threat from a wrench later, Brian explains his grand scheme to Beckett (Obviously Brian has never read the Evil Overlord’s list of things not to do!). The plan is to carry out the fraudulent transfer, using his fancy cable hacking, data interception tricks, before wiring said stolen money to his wife who will use it to buy diamonds from Jacobs Doyle. By the time their subterfuge has been discovered, Brian and Juliet will already be gone and the diamonds will be in their possession, ready to sell to unlock their monetary value. After getting his grubby mitts on the dosh, Brian announces to the crew they are all rich and then locks them in the crew compartment before making his getaway, but not before Beckett tries and fails to stop the transfer by tugging on a power cable. Turns out the power cable he disconnected was for the pump, so now all he has done is condemn himself and the crew to Davy Jones Locker, saving Brian the trouble. More snide commentary and Brian make his escape while Beckett struggles to get out of his restraints. His attempts with loosening bolts with a conveniently leftover wrench only get him as far as the end of the pipe he is cuffed to. There is a large solid support that prevents him going any further.
Meanwhile, on the surface, Ed and the Dutch patrol boat’s sonar have picked up a large return. The commanding officer explains that the location is known to be the final resting place of a sunken tanker so it may not be the location of Brian’s submarine. At the Bugs HQ, Ros has cottoned onto the Broody’s scheme, thanks to access to Graeme’s access to Kamen and Ross’ IT systems. She tries to stop the transfer but it is too late. They also figure that the money is destined to be used for purchasing diamonds from Jacobs Doyle, so Ros rushes out to their offices to warn them. Back at sea, the Dutch navy patrol vessel picks up Brian’s inflatable boat racing back to shore so they turn back to the location of the large signal and Ed decides to engage in more heroics and dons a diving suit to have a look on the seabed. He struggles to see in the murky waters, finding a large metallic object only to discover it is indeed the sunken tanker that the Dutch navy officer explained that it would be, much to Ed’s disappointment.
At Jacobs Doyle, Ros is initially rebuffed for a second time by the mean looking security concierge type guy. Ros this time is prepared and adamant that if they do nothing, the diamond dealers will have a lot of egg on their faces. She shows a picture of Juliet and warns she is very bad news and at the least they should double check what she is doing. As the security man makes some calls to his bosses, Ros runs further into the building. In some room inside the Jacobs Doyle offices, Juliet can sense victory in her grasp. The money transfer has gone through without a hitch and they are preparing the diamonds to be put in her possession. Their offers for a more secure container or secure delivery service are declined. Just as the transaction is about to be concluded, the phone rings. One of the staff answers it, presumably a warning from the front of house security that something is seriously wrong with their customer. Juliet doesn’t even given them an option to speak to her about her ill-gotten money. She decides to grab a security guards pistol (off-screen!) and kills everyone in the room before leaving with the diamonds. Alarms blare as she threatens everyone to get out of her way. Unfortunately for Ros, she happens to be on the same level. Demanding answers to the underground car park to make her getaway, Ros is unable to help. Another employee appears and is menaced with Juliet’s weapon. Telling Juliet where to go (And not in a way that would get her killed), Juliet takes Ros hostage and heads down stairs. Unfortunately, her husband is stuck on the other side of a security barrier outside. Running out of time and ideas, Brian asks for Juliet to hand over the diamonds and shows that love is no match for greed. Enraged at this completely unexpected betrayal from her husband, Juliet turns Brian into a leaky piece of meat. This gives Ros and the remaining security a chance to wrestle Juliet to the ground and lead her away (Presumably to the police). At this point, Ros notices the GPS coordinate system in the now departed Brian’s car.
Ros calls the Dutch patrol boat and asks them to patch her through to Ed. This leads to one of the more amusing moments in the episode, where the commander of the patrol vessel has to hold two handsets together, looking very, very annoyed while doing so. I can imagine her arms probably about to fall off due to the length of time she has to hold the two phones together. Ros gives Ed some further directions, pointing out he is close to the submarine and he just has to move a bit further on from the wreck of the tanker to find it, but since Ed doesn’t reply she is not sure if he can hear him. On the submarine, Beckett (And by extension the submarine crew) is just about out of time as the water is reaching the top of the compartment. As he is about to drown, Ed makes his heroic appearance and gives Beckett an air supply to breath while he uses some bolt cutters to extricate Beckett from his restraints. Apparently the rest of the sub crew are fine and will be rescued in due course as they are safe in the sealed compartment.
Back at Bugs HQ, Ros and Ed decide to troll Beckett by introducing him to a new fishy friend. Beckett screams like a girl and is probably now traumatised beyond help.
Verdict/Retrospective Comments
This episode was initially a bit slow and boring, but then the tempo ramps up, especially when poor Beckett gets blasted in the chest at the beginning. Really though, he should’ve been dead. Ros’ gadgets must be really tough indeed if they can stop a bullet at point blank range! As for the technical aspects of the episode, “Man in the Middle” attacks are a real threat when it comes to IT security and historically have been used in real life. Some are still happening now on parts of the Internet where unencrypted (And even encrypted) traffic flow through. I’m not sure about physically accessing the infrastructure to perform such an attack but a quick search does show it has happened at least once and historically, wiretapping of phone lines has been a thing done by malicious individuals and authoritarian groups so it isn’t beyond reason to have a determined individual actually tap wires to intercept data traffic. Except, they don’t have to. In the age of the Internet, there are worryingly easy methods to monitor data traffic using nothing more than an ordinary computer, an internet connection and a data packet sniffing utility obstinately for network diagnostic purposes. Which is why it’s important to not pass on information intended for a limited audience via an insecure method such as emails. And speaking of encryption, for all of Ros’ genius, why did she not use an encrypted radio system for Ed’s long range transmitter (We know why, for dramatic plot reasons)? But in reality, no one worth their salt would use easily intercepted radio communications if it was mission critical and would apply at least some basic form of scrambling to not allow casual eavesdropping. Related to this, it is infuriating that Kamen and Ross did not use some form of encryption for their transaction traffic. It’s almost as if they wanted to be robbed. It’s madness. Granted, Brian Broody could’ve figured out a way to decrypt the traffic in his man in the middle attack, but trying to scramble the data would’ve been better than letting him just read it. On yet another further note, it does make you wonder why Brian even needed to go out to sea to physically access the very cable carrying said traffic when he could’ve just intercepted it using the techniques mentioned above. And how does he even know the transactions will go through that very cable. I was under the impression that with the packet switching based structure of most intercontinental networks, it could be routed anywhere.As for the diamond purchase, even if Juliet managed to leave the building without attracting any further attention, unlike her actual exit that involves blasting her way out of the diamond vault, wouldn’t the diamonds be traced as being bought with stolen money? I’m sure most major diamond sources have some form of hallmark that would mark them as being stolen or from a dubious source? Guess the Broodys will end up selling them on the black market where no one cares? On the submarine, how did Brian swim up to the surface relatively quickly without getting “the bends”?
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