you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion hello and welcome to another episode of fusion patrol i'm eugene and i'm kenneth and tonight we are looking at the final two episodes of children of the dog star episodes five and episode six kolob and alien contact episode i'm just going to do both these episodes but I'll tell you where the break is.

Episode 5, Synopsis.

Gretchen has been drawn to the bunker, carrying the brass daisy.

Meanwhile, the part in the barn takes off and flies to the bunker, where the three pieces assemble themselves.

In the swamp, the Mitchells are caught red-handed, tearing up the stakes by Mrs.

Elliott and the town constable.

They are hauled off.

In the bunker, the alien device begins showing images to Gretchen.

It is a form of communication.

It is still missing a part.

It shows her Ronnie and Beavis, and she goes to get them.

The Mitchells may have been caught red-handed, but provided that they cut a deal favorable to Mrs.

Elliott, she won't press charges.

The business concludes, and she prepares to leave town.

In the bunker, Gretchen explains that this is an alien probe from Sirius B named Kolob.

Kolob shows images to the children.

Images of three probes coming to Earth millions of years ago, of Kolob being damaged in a meteor storm and crashing in a swamp.

At the farm, at Ronnie's uncle's place, and in the town, the power is being drained off by Kolob.

Ronnie's uncle goes into town and talks with Mrs.

Elliot.

He tells her he knows why the swamp is taboo and thinks it has something to do with the power cuts.

In the bunker, the children are not all on the same page.

Gretchen is all in on restoring Kolob.

She wants to learn about the universe.

Bevis wants to know about the past, and Ronnie thinks they should discuss this away from Kolob where he cannot overhear them.

They reason that Kolob is draining the power, and when Ronnie makes to disrupt the bunker's power connections, Kolob locks the junction box to prevent tampering.

They appeal to Kolob to take less power over a longer period of time, and then he sends them outside.

They find a world where animals and people are frozen in time.

Episode 6.

While Ronnie and Gretchen wander around town gawking at the frozen people, Bevis has returned to the bunker and is asking Kolob to show him all sorts of birds.

Ronnie wants to shut down Kolob, but Gretchen is against the idea.

However, she realizes that the people cannot stay like this forever and reluctantly agrees.

They gather the materials they need.

Ronnie also takes the time to prank the Mitchells.

Bevis has agreed to help Kolob by getting the missing part.

When Ronnie and Gretchen return, Gretchen apologizes to Kolob, just as they disconnect him from the power grid.

Bevis is upset.

Outside, it looks like things haven't changed, but in a few months, things return to normal.

When they return, Bevis attempts to hook Kolob back up, but then the aliens from Sirius B take control of Kolob and explain that his time is past and they need the kids to help to destroy him.

To destroy him, Gretchen must remove the brass daisy from Kolob, which she reluctantly agrees to, but she begs to see the aliens.

After much pleading, they agree, and one appears before them.

I tell Gretchen they will never return to Earth, but that she must come to them.

She touches the alien, and her hand is branded.

She removes the brass daisy, and the bunker is destroyed as the kids escape in the nick of time.

Gretchen tosses the brass daisy into the swamp.

The end.

I'm just going to say, I kind of felt like Russell T.

Davies wrote the ending of this.

This has a doctor who's sort of, yeah, all right, fine, whatever.

Let's finish it.

We're done now.

Yeah, we have a little bit of time left in the episode.

We have to pull off the Deus Ex Machina.

I'm seriously disappointed by this final part.

I have enjoyed this up to this point.

And as we get to the end of this, and I have a bunch of notes.

But I mean, the bottom line is, what did we accomplish in this?

So many questions now that now that we've got to the end of it and you like, OK, well, we've got our answers.

No, we don't.

I've got so many more questions now than I did when this show started that it's I, I guess.

And maybe this is, you know, when we went into this, I said, this is really kind of the first time we've done a serial in parts.

And we need to work, we as a podcasting team and the audience need to work with the idea of how we're going to do this.

Because what occurs to me here is that we go through the episode and it keeps asking questions.

It keeps posing ideas.

It keeps giving us mysteries or things.

What's going to happen?

Or what does that mean?

Or what do they think?

And when we watch an episode of Doctor Who or we watch an episode of Star Cops or Space Above and Beyond or whatever it is, we've watched the whole episode.

We've seen the beginning.

We've seen the middle.

We've seen the end.

And so I've gotten to the end.

And if the end disappointed me, then I hate the thing.

And I'm going to complain about it.

Yeah.

Right?

Right.

And here, as you're going through it, you don't know until they get to the final curtain, did they do justice to the parts that went before?

And I don't think they did in this particular case.

And it's a weird feeling because I enjoyed four out of six episodes and the fifth episode I was beginning to get worried because suddenly we were doing a lot of time wasting.

Yes, and the biggest disappointment was the reveal on the Syrians.

You mean their makeup?

Yes.

I looked at them, and I thought, not what I expected.

Well, low-budget New Zealand science fiction program.

I'm going to give it a pass.

I like the Silurian ears that they had.

On the other hand, know where someone got the idea.

because the novelization reveals the name of the other two probes from, by the way, it was thousands of years ago, not millions.

And well, the kids said millions, but the numbers didn't say, or it sure sounded like the kids said millions.

I know millions makes no sense at all.

Yes.

But when I was watching and we're taking notes, I heard thousands, But anyway, the other two, but the novelization reveals the names of the other two probes, which went back home after a while.

And Quetzal and Namos.

Okay, Quetzal as in Quetzalcoatlus.

That's the one, yes.

And Namos.

Not Quetzalcoatlus, that's a dinosaur.

Namos, let me think about that for a second.

Which I looked up.

I looked up because I like to look things up.

And it's a Dogon reference.

of course and it's a reference to amphibious fish-like aliens okay all right that's well now is it is it or is it the contaminated dogon legends about the aliens i assume it's contaminated ones yeah but it could be but either way that's well why they went amphibian The finder went for the aliens the way they did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was.

Let's let's let's wind it back to my semi sequential notes.

Okay.

Work our way through here.

As, as mentioned, they have seemed to have a lot of time to kill, especially in episode five.

And we saw way too much of part two of the probe flying.

You know, there was just a lot of, a lot of nothing that happened in the episode and a lot of walking, around and it's like, okay, yeah, all right.

You had to do six parts, some contractual obligation and you didn't have the story for it, but it shows.

And it, it did kind of detract in that episode.

And the editing is confusing.

Maybe it's the editing.

Maybe it's the script.

I don't know.

The two boys.

Okay.

So Gretchen is taken to the, takes the Daisy to the bunker.

Yes, she does.

She's apparently under mind control.

That definitely feels like what was happening there.

Not 100% sure, but I definitely feel like she was under mind control.

I've got that impression.

Yeah.

So she takes that, she puts the daisy in there, and then it shows her the boys, and she goes, oh, okay, I'll go get them.

Now, it kind of feels like she's having a mind telepathy with it, but there's really no evidence of that, except that when she brings the boys in, she's like, this is Colab, and he's from Sirius B in the Canaris Major and he's probe from another planet.

Okay.

And then she asks him where he's from or what he's from or whatever, who is he or whatever.

And that's when he runs through the stuff and shows them the name Kolob and she goes, Kolob, that must be his name.

It's like, you just said that.

Yes.

You said that a minute ago.

Now it feels like he's teaching it to you for the first time said oh and he must be from Sirius B that's Sirius B and that they're from Sirius B and like you just said that a minute ago too to the boys and you said he was a probe how did you know all of that stuff is like in the wrong order in in this the way the story goes and when she goes out to meet the boys she said they go she goes oh well I put it in here and it's like, what?

We agreed we were going to tear it apart or not.

We were going to give it a careful think or whatever it is like that.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I just had to.

It's like, I feel like maybe it mind controlled me.

Just to like, yeah, I just, I just had to do it.

It doesn't convey, it doesn't convey that she was compelled to do it.

It conveys it's just, just like, yeah, you guys, I don't care what you think.

I just wanted to do it.

And I don't think that's what it was supposed to be, right?

It didn't feel like that.

It's just like, maybe it's the acting, maybe it's the story, but it just didn't, you know, it just doesn't, it doesn't fit.

And of course, we talked about last time where suddenly Bevis, Beavis, I want to call him Beavis every time, Beavis is like suddenly their best bud.

I noticed that, well, his mother says Beavis, by the way but still the trying to sound class in push yes she does but the yes but i noticed all of a sudden and i at point is we have these three children who are from other places and they're we're only in this little town temporarily and somehow they in fact beavis is about to leave with his mother and Gretchen's about to go back to her boarding school at some point at some point and Ronnie's about to go to jail or something I don't know where he's going his brother is his uncle's trying to sort him out and so they guess they somehow fight each other because they're only kids who don't have friends in the town I don't know I mean that part's fine It's just like, it's how it suddenly came out of nothing.

I mean, yeah, Bevis is just like not part of them until he's trapped in the swamp.

And then suddenly now they're all best buds.

And, you know, and, and they're all of their acting is terrible this time.

I thought they were tolerable up till this point.

But in these two episodes, they're really reading the lines off the page with no concept of the emotions that they're supposed to be conveying.

And it really was, it's killing me how this has let me down at the end because I was really enjoying this show.

The other thing that Mrs.

Elliot, let's just say she pulls up, walks right in front of Ronnie to Bevis or Bevis.

And she in full sight, earshot and less than two meters away from from Ronnie, she hands Ronnie sunglasses to Bevis.

And she says, when you see him, give those back to him and also tell him, I'm sorry.

It is bizarre.

He's standing right there.

Was that not on the page of the script and they just decided to put Ronnie in the scene?

Or is she just such a horrid human being that she refuses to talk to the boy, even though he's right there?

Even though she's just exonerated.

Yeah.

I'm going with she's a horrible, greedy human being.

Even a horrible, greedy human being can sort of sometimes acknowledge there's another person standing right there.

Yes.

She just, she didn't, I mean, yes, she's a greedy person.

She's not a very good, attentive mother, but that seemed even a step too far.

The Mitchells?

Yeah, I could totally see the elder Mitchell brother doing that.

But I had trouble with it.

I don't know.

Again, just played weird.

Just plain weird.

So the Mitchells got caught?

They did.

Help me make sense of this.

Okay.

So Mrs.

Elliott comes to town.

She's trying to buy up a bunch of the swamp from a block of people who don't want to sell the swamp.

The Mitchells are hoping to get rich off this deal somehow by being in with Mrs.

Elliott.

They are.

And of course, the elder Mitchell wants to be in with Mrs.

Elliot.

He does.

Oh, yeah.

Not many women in the town.

Or at least, maybe there are plenty of women in town, but they all know him.

Yes.

So, that's a no fishing zone.

And so, he gets caught tearing up the stakes.

And he could be put in prison or charged with a crime and whatnot.

whatnot.

But if he'll sell his property to her, then she won't press charges.

And that's all she needs to get the development done.

Because now I've succeeded in doing what I wanted to do, and now I can leave town.

She doesn't need to pressure the other people to sell anymore.

I got the impression there, yes, they were giving up the money they were going to get.

And that The language was option.

She was getting the option.

Right.

Well, so, I mean, in a land deal, the option is, so you go, you have a piece of land and somebody comes to you and says, I would like to sell your land or I'd like it.

That's one way to do it.

They take an option to buy the land.

Basically, they give you money.

You're the, you're the landowner.

They give you money.

You can't sell the land.

They have the right basically to sell it.

And if they manage to sell it, then they get to buy it from you at an agreed upon price.

And then they sell it on to the next person.

So presumably these guys had options on some of the land she needed.

But what it sounds like is they have options on enough of the land that she needed.

So surely all she had to do was to cut a deal with the Mitchells in the first place and she'd have gotten her swamp draining project going because it doesn't change anything.

The Mitchells were on her side.

They wanted this project to go through.

So I don't know.

It just didn't make much sense.

I had to think about it several times.

I'm still not sure.

Okay.

I thought maybe the book explained it a little bit better.

And then carrying that further on, really?

The older brother?

How did he make an option that he needed a cosigner on?

In his brother?

That doesn't make any sense.

Unless, well, maybe it was collateral for some.

The money they needed to execute the option was collateralized somehow by joint property.

I don't know.

Let me check something here.

It doesn't make any sense.

While you peek around, go ahead.

I do remember checking that, but go ahead while I check.

The Chinese on the screen.

Mm-hmm.

Did you...

I freeze-fromed it.

I freeze-fromed it.

I saw it.

I noticed that it was...

Chinese?

I figure it was Chinese or something related to it.

It was Chinese.

There was also a Hebrew script and some Greek and whatnot.

But obviously the Chinese one, I have a built-in translator.

So I can tell you that it's gibberish.

But it's not exactly gibberish.

If you put it through Google Translate or Apple Translate, what you find is that the translations are wrong.

The column of letters down the middle are basically saying that they have an upper house and a lower house.

It's a government configuration.

And so there's, on the left, I believe is the, I don't have it in front of me.

I believe the left is the lower house.

And then it gives the numbers of representatives in that house broken out by party.

There's two parties and one's got a major majority and one's a minority party.

And then the other one is either the upper or the lower house.

Now, the other one is the upper house, definitely, because it has fewer.

and then it has the numbers of the parties.

And then across the cross side, it says something to the effect of something like a trade sign or mark, something like that.

It just, it is basically some characters they stole from somewhere and stuck on the screen.

Okay.

Not telling us anything brilliant.

It is simplified Chinese though, according to the translations.

Okay.

Okay, here it is.

This may or may not answer a question, but the dialogue here is that Helen Elliott had one of the Mitchell brothers sign this document.

She said, sign there and there.

He looked up at her.

Ah, do I still get an option fee?

The shake of her head said clearly, don't push your luck.

So he got the options to buy some of the land, and he was going to make a profit.

He's brokering it to her.

Okay.

Yes.

Doesn't.

Vic has to endorse this, he said, but he'll do as he's told.

I'm sure he will.

She couldn't imagine Vic standing up to his brother.

Don't worry.

You will be all right, she said.

just keep out of Matali's way for a couple of years.

Okay.

In other words, he stayed out of legal trouble by giving up the potential for a lot of profit.

Still doesn't explain how he was, why they needed him to, why he had enough land.

That's the point.

They had enough land between them already.

They did not need to go badger the other people in the town.

And as I do recall, I forget now whether this was in dialogue or was it the novelization, that they were pulling up the stakes to discredit the opposition.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was in the show.

Okay.

Yeah.

It was to look like the opposition was trying to stop them from doing the surveys that they were doing.

And then they were discrediting basically Ronnie in the end.

But yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So we get to visual display thing on Colob.

And the first thing we get to see is the ninth planet, Pluto.

Yes.

That didn't date well.

No.

And by the way, there it is.

On my other screen from the University of Arizona, no less, an image of Pluto.

nothing like that rocky like i noticed that yeah yeah yeah there we go so just brief questions so kolob is robbing power from the surrounding area yes he is he's he's like sucking the air sucking the power down and he's causing you know the the power grid to to not function and he's causing telephones not to work.

He's causing car batteries, radios, car batteries to cars, gas powered vehicles to stop working.

People to hibernate.

Well, we'll come to that in a minute.

That's a different problem altogether.

How is it if he's taking the power out?

How is it that when Ronnie's uncle goes and he tightens the battery terminals, the car works?

How does that work?

And once it started, you know, like it shouldn't stop.

I don't care how much power he's sucking over.

And let's just keep going.

If the only way he can suck the power out is through the bunker's power grid connection, how, again, does that take cars, batteries, and radio batteries out?

And make people hibernate?

I don't know.

That's a different thing.

that's totally a different thing.

Power is one thing that I don't think they're hibernating and it, that doesn't make any sense either.

Hibernation is the explanation of the novelization.

Uh, it's.

Well, that's what I think either Ronnie or Gretchen said, he's like, how I've been adding something.

And it's like, no, it's, it's not like they're hibernating or something down.

They're frozen.

It's slowing down the metabolism really slowly.

And then people are standing around and we see lots of, seeds of people standing around.

And I swear I saw some of the move because it's hard for actors to stand still that long.

Oh, I'm sure you did see some of the move.

The one that got me though, and I will give them the credit for this.

Well, I'll give them credit for it.

And at the same time, no, that was the shot of the two horses.

The trees behind them were waving in the wind.

were and those were yeah they were and yet obviously that was a still frame of the horses unless it was a statue still frame statue of one horse giving oral sex to another horse i mean well i can imagine somebody's got that yeah probably somewhere uh yeah it'll do never mind yeah it's just it's like okay see now that doesn't make sense either okay so he can make them hibernate if he can make them hibernate kolob has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men which include not worrying about the fact that you've cut the power grid off but because he can pull out of the air and he can generate that doesn't make the argument that says take less power over a longer time.

No.

If he had done some sort of time dilation so that time was running slower, right?

Now, that would make sense.

It's like, well, yes, I can alter this equation.

I can get the power as fast as I want it and make it take longer.

Yes.

Then that would make sense.

But clearly, that's not what he's doing.

But then why does it sound like the wind is running slow or whatever that noise was that they were all hearing.

There's still a breeze, and the time is still passing.

Time still passed, that's right.

The scene, and the children are riding around on their bicycles.

They're immune somehow.

Yeah.

And we're...

And how far did that effect go?

I don't know.

I assumed that...

Was the whole planet that way?

I assumed it was that village in the Advirens.

I...

Yeah.

It's like, okay, well, he's got amazing powers.

That is bad.

That's bad.

We'll come to how bad that could be, but bad.

So in a small town in New Zealand, when your power goes out and your freezer, your food's going to go bad if the power stays out, who are you going to call?

The police constable.

Of course.

I imagine, okay, this town does not seem like a high crime area.

Sure, but don't you call the power company?

Yes, you'd post a call, the power utility, yes.

And the phone was working because the police officer was, in fact, on the phone to the power utility.

And he was clearly doing that on behalf of the woman who was complaining about her freezer.

Just keep the lid shut, Mrs.

Freezer Lady, which is exactly what you do do in case of a power cut.

Exactly.

Or a tree branch falls over a power line.

Yeah.

You just don't open the fridge or the freezer as much as humanly possible.

Yeah.

That's right.

And I would imagine, A, everybody knows that, and B, everybody in rural parts of the world definitely knows that.

Yes.

Because you get lots of power failures out there.

Exactly.

Oh, I remember, speaking of that, you know, it's like I grew up in parts of rural South Georgia.

two years here and three years there and a year somewhere else.

And usually the one piece of folk wisdom was anytime you see rain clouds coming, get out your candles and your flashlights.

I was in a small town for a few years when I was growing up, and that's exactly more or less what you do.

You're just like, okay, keep that in mind.

Remember, we got batteries in the flashlights?

Yeah, because as soon as a storm comes, you know you're going to lose some power.

Yeah.

You just know you are.

So it doesn't take much to take the whole, you know, like when the town I was in was a good, I don't know, probably 30 miles from the nearest power transmission along A line.

You know, like that goes, we're gone.

Station down.

Yeah.

Here's another one.

We've got that scene where they're in the bunker and Gretchen's like, I want to learn about the universe.

And the Bevis is, I want to learn about the past.

So does he the past?

And Ronnie's like, yeah, this is bad.

And I don't want to talk about it in front of him.

It's like, you know, he's right there, right?

You can hear him say, you don't want to talk about writing him.

And he's already demonstrated to you that he can see what you're doing.

Wherever you are.

Yeah.

Okay.

There we come to another one of those tropes of which science fiction series tend to be especially guilty.

And that is, where are the cameras?

Oh, the monitoring cameras.

Yeah.

I don't think, I don't think that in this case, we're talking about alien technology that can get plus of eight light years or whatever it is instantaneously across space.

I don't think they need to have a camera.

He's just, he's just absorbing it from the field the same way he put people in hibernation.

I mean, I don't, I'm willing to, I'm willing to cut, if I'm willing to take the hibernation and probe stealing power from cars, I'm willing to say, you know, he's got some sort of long range spy device that we can't understand.

But yes, yeah, I know.

No, the one that I hate, the trope that I hate is when they show you that they were monitoring you in a show.

So you've got a scene, something happens, blah, blah, blah.

They have a big fight or you break in somewhere and you steal some stuff and you and your partner are like, okay, I'm going to disconnect that.

You do the wiring and that thing.

And then they do whatever.

And then they steal it and they go out the window and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And then they end up in the villain's lair and he says, I know it was yours at store.

Let's watch.

And he shows them the videotape of it.

But the videotape looks exactly like the highly polished, edited to camera work that was done by the DP and not, oh, we should stick a camera on the wall and just with a wide angle lens and show them that.

That's the one that I hate.

That's where they're.

Now you have to have the camera.

Now you have to have the camera.

Yes, you do.

Yes.

Well, let's see.

Speaking of the police and crime, can I say one word?

Shoplifting?

Yes.

Yes.

They have a lot of explaining to do.

But I suppose maybe he's going to return it.

But it is.

No.

Like the Mitchells are going to credibly be able to press charges.

No.

Against Ronnie.

The hammer and gloves are inside the collapsed bunker.

Well, maybe he was planning on returning them.

Okay.

But like I say, I don't think the Mitchells, A, the Mitchells can't press the charges.

No.

Because they just look like they're trying to frame Ronnie again.

And B, what proof have they got?

They don't because I guess time was, I don't know.

Frozen to their brains anyway.

Did they have cameras in the store?

I don't know.

No way.

No way.

Nah.

I wouldn't buy that one for a second.

Not in that place.

But yes, I agree.

Frankly, I was a little concerned when he started taking the money.

Now that one was like, ooh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's kind of bad.

And he just stuck the pockets in the mouth.

Yeah.

Drew on his face, which is good.

Oh, yeah.

There's a great thing on that scene.

I don't know if you noticed it.

So Ronnie draws dollar sign on Elder Mitchell's forehead.

forehead yeah okay and gretchen's like oh you can't do that and then instead she puts the marker in his brother's hand and moves his brother's hand up so it's like close to his head so it looks like he's just done the he's just done the thing okay all fine and dandy then when they come to right the brother is still holding the pen and he's waving around and he's laughing his brother and he's pointing at his forehead his brother's forehead and his brother reaches up rubs his hand across his forehead and goes, Oh, you're like, how can you tell there's something on your forehead?

Well, with that, you can't get it needs to find a mirror.

You need a mirror.

See it.

Yes.

I think it's been on there long enough that it's dry that he didn't just get it all over his, his hand.

Unless it was a grease pencil, but it didn't look like a grease pencil.

It looked like an indelible old school, Mr.

Mark's a lot.

So, or Sir Mark's a lot.

think it was when ronnie tries to undo the power did that lock materialize i'm not sure i won't i watched it twice and i couldn't figure out what happened i mean obviously a lock a lock glowing was there and then locked on it that much i get at the end of it but clearly that lock must have been there because otherwise the key wouldn't be in the police constable's office good point Yes.

And didn't they steal the keys to the bunker anyway?

Yes.

Well, steal is the wrong word, but they were on a key chain that he left in the door.

You would think that that would have all the keys for the bunker.

You wouldn't think.

You would think that, but apparently not.

So I was like, eh, eh.

Not sure.

Yes, it's a lot of padding and redundancy.

And let's look at this extinct bird and the boa.

Yes.

Or the other extinct bird and, and the New Zealand Eagle.

And it's okay.

We know that Beavis likes birds, but this is, this is padding.

I, you know, of, of the padding, it's, it's the one thing that's believable to me.

That boy is obsessed with birds.

And if, if Kolob can do that for him, I'd be doing that too.

Yes.

You know, so that in a way is believable.

And the fact that he goes straight for the Moa to start with is like, okay, cool.

Cool.

I have, you say thousands of years ago, I swear they said, well, they mumbled millions, but you know, there was nothing on the screen to give you that.

They just, They just pulled that number out of a bunch of stuff splattering on the screen.

However, however, thousands makes more sense.

Absolutely no doubt about it.

Because somehow the Aboriginal people need to know about it.

Somehow it has to be close enough in time that there was still a swamp there.

All of these things are not guaranteed over long timescales.

No, they're not.

And.

And it has to be back far enough that it's, that people remember this.

It's always been this way as far as we know.

Yes.

So if the probe has been broken up into parts in the swamp for thousands of years and effectively inoperative, where to get the pictures of the Moa and the other stuff?

Has it been collecting data this whole time?

So it was not inoperative because it didn't have time to do any work.

It got hit by a meteor and crashed on its way in.

Yeah.

So where did it get that data to?

Good question.

How do the aboriginals know that they need to keep that thing in the swamp?

Right.

Where did their dogma come from about we're protecting it by leaving it in the swamp?

Apparently back when it crashed, there were a Maori who saw it come down and they passed down the knowledge.

Okay, we saw a thing come down and so we've decided to declare the whole swamp taboo.

Nothing about it sucking the electricity out of there.

Oh, wait, they didn't have any or anything like that.

There's no, there's no legend about why it's just because we saw this thing and we don't understand things.

Therefore it's taboo.

It's not a good origin story for this.

It's not for us.

Also, you know, just making it up.

And, and in the end, because here's the thing, it's because it's a narrative structure, right?

We we're supposed to go, oh, look, the the the wisdom of the ancient people is so much smarter than than Gretchen, basically, because they know they're they've been handing this down for centuries.

They know not to touch this.

Why do they know not to touch it?

They don't know not to touch it.

They've just made this up because there is no way that that probe did anything when it landed to them.

It came down in pieces.

Came down in pieces and it needs electricity to function, which they didn't have.

Exactly.

So, and then we come out of this story.

It's been destroyed.

The daisy's been thrown back in the swamp.

Do you think they're going to remove the taboo now?

No, they're not.

They're going to keep doing this for the next 10,000 years.

For no reason at all.

There was no reason for Gretchen to throw that thing back in the swamp either.

Uh, no.

Except that she had orders.

Did they say to throw it back in the swamp?

I didn't hear that.

She said you had to remove it.

Remove it.

And she, so she just put it where it would just sink down into the mud.

Yeah.

You know where a better place to remove it to would have been?

NASA.

Yeah.

And that could have gotten attention for her.

what she wanted to do.

Yeah.

Hey, this is not brass.

This is some sort of alien space probe material.

Why, young girl, little girl, you can come join NASA someday.

I'm not a little girl.

Yeah.

Thank you, aliens.

Thank you ever so much for that line, if nothing else.

Now listen, little girl.

I'm not a little girl.

Yes, you are.

And I'm not at all certain how she's supposed to get to Sirius B.

Well, you know, I guess maybe they stuck something in her brain with the branding there.

You know, maybe that's their calling card.

Another thing about the taboo.

So Ronnie's uncle goes to Mrs.

Elliott and says, I know why the swamp is taboo, which we kind of got before, that they know that there's something in the swamp.

And I think it's related to the power losses.

Why?

do you think it's related to the power losses?

What possible connection could that be?

Again, how did the Maori come to understand that, oh, power losses and this stuff?

You didn't have power!

But they needed him to do something.

He didn't need to say that.

He never needed to say that.

He didn't need to go to Mrs.

Elliot and say any of that.

It didn't go anywhere because, of course, the story just ends with them going, yeah, we're done.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, there are dangling plot threads.

I loved the fact that Ronnie pranking the Mitchells was their undoing.

That was hilarious, wasn't it?

You know, I mean, they deserved it, and I'm glad they deserved it.

And it was annoying that they were going to get away with it.

You know, even though they were not going to make a profit, they were going to get away with the pulling up the stakes and getting caught.

And so the fact that Ronnie just did a vicious little thing and that managed to undo the whole, I assume it undid it.

I mean, the Mitchell brother may have reconciled in another week and it all went through.

But it appears like it has failed.

So, yeah.

Let's see.

I got past my aliens call Gretchen.

That's in my notes.

And speaking and speaking of the Mitchell brothers, you notice that one said he wasn't going to sign.

That's what I mean.

And so there's undoing.

Yes.

And so, yes.

And that go, there goes Mrs.

Mrs.

Elliot's plot.

Right.

That's, that's what I mean.

That was the undoing of all of it.

Yes.

His pranking them was actually what solved the entire problem in the swamp.

Yes.

Unless, you know, a week later, the Mitchell brothers get back together and go, okay, I'll sign.

But as we leave things, it looks like the good guys have won for the wrong reasons.

Now, why?

Maybe this is in the book.

Why does Kolob need to be destroyed?

Was anyone ever really in danger?

What was the probe doing on Earth?

There seems to be no threat.

Yes, he slowed those people down.

But when he got power, presumably they could have talked him out of putting them in hibernation.

This is one time I'm really glad that I have this novelization because this going on the video, one has to listen very closely to understand the Syrians.

Oh, yeah.

Or not understand them as the case may be.

But they said that they had no right to intervene, that people were not ready, and so it was time to be done with Kolob.

And so he was a threat because he was drawing so much power that he would keep drawing power, and he would blackout New Zealand, apparently, and who knows where he would stop.

Again, when he came to Earth, where would he have gotten power?

It's a good question, yeah.

But of course, he's also been deactivated for thousands of years, and I guess because he had battery power or whatever when he showed up.

The idea in the backstory, as the novelization fleshes it out, was that the Syrians sent these three probes to Earth thousands of years ago and was there to collect data, to learn about people, interact with people, that they became deified.

Presumably.

Eventually, they went back when the Syrians recalled them.

Presumably that means that what those probes were actually there for, yes, okay, fine, collect data, but they were there as a means for the Syrians to appear on Earth.

Yes.

They are holographic transmitters or whatever, whether that was some sort of teleportation or whether that was some sort of a astral plane projection or whatever it was.

It was because obviously if, for example, the Dogon think they are amphibious people, they must have seen them, not the probe.

So the probe must have been a way for them to communicate with humans back in the day.

Right.

So that must have been part of their function to to do that.

Now, I could argue I would agree, perhaps that they did that and they screwed up all of human history, as we can tell, because there are people now who believe in the Dogon nonsense.

So maybe they go, maybe we should have a, I don't know, prime directive.

And not do this anymore.

Yes, but again, if the probes could leave, let the probe leave.

You destroy the probe unless they truly, truly destroy the probe.

I mean, like, vaporized it, atomized it.

Somebody's going to find it.

Yes, someone's going to excavate the remains of that bunker.

Yeah, they're going to want to know what happened.

Well, maybe not, actually.

That's not strictly true.

And here's something that I do not understand, and this is a problem with a story, which is, okay, these aliens from Sirius B, or rather some planet orbiting it, are powerful enough that they can activate, that they can destroy a bunker on Earth.

Yes.

Yes.

How could they not destroy a probe they sent?

Yes.

Yeah.

There are problems.

There are some problems with the way this gets resolved and why it gets resolved and why they couldn't just turn the probe off.

Yes.

The message, they should have told the kids, get out of there now.

Get far away.

We're going to destroy the probe and take the bunker with it.

Why did they need to take the daisy?

The given reason was this was the probe's, this was Kolob's means of perception.

But if Kolob's destroyed.

Oh, daisy's not.

And the daisy was by itself and it was perceiving things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

And of course, let's face it.

In the end, she takes it and she tosses it.

Let's be generous and say she manages to fling that thing five meters out into the swamp, where it is probably less than a meter deep in the water.

How long till that's found?

Someone puts it all in another barn?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and if it were ever found, would it matter?

Because the probe is gone.

There's no probe, so.

No.

Well, there is one part of the probe left.

It's still in the swamp somewhere.

Yes, there is.

The outer casing.

Part four.

Actually, there's a diagram in the novelization.

There's one on the screen in the video, too.

Yeah, here.

It's the protective space outer shell is what's in the swamp.

Please tell me they actually call it the protective space outer shell.

Yes.

Okay.

But the other parts are now debris in a collapsed bunker.

Yeah.

Well, in two or three weeks, the Mitchell brothers get back together.

Mrs.

Ellis gets her options.

The project goes ahead.

The swamps drain.

Bingo, bangle, bongo.

We got those parts back.

Gretchen gets nothing because she didn't turn over the daisy to NASA.

Mrs.

Elliott gets it.

And she turns it over to somebody for money.

And then it ends up at NASA and she becomes famous and takes over the entire town.

And they've all been destroyed by the probe after all.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I come into this podcast kind of down on this.

I did enjoy the story, particularly for its time and for what it was trying to do.

And I'm guessing for its target audience, which was probably a YA and kids audience.

was it's much better than stuff you know that we did for a YA audience in in the United States most of the time most of the time you know season one of land of the loss pretty darn good for a kid science fiction season three land of the loss standard American awful kid stuff this you know is in the is in the former category this this was yeah well had some problems there at the end but yeah well it's better than arc 2 no yes it is it's better than arc 2 it's better than space academy it's better than jason of star command oh yes i've seen all these things i don't know all the things that were done wow for american kids yeah they really think our kids are stupid and maybe that's why a lot of them grew up to be stupid stupid and fragile yeah that's the other one and of course you know they're picking on american kids television it always had a moral didn't it and i mean it really hammer you over the head you know if you do it just worked together in the first place gosh that's right jason if only we had lesson learned it's like yeah you You don't have to do the kids are once again, it's down to we really think these kids are stupid.

So we do, in fact, actually have to spell it out in the final scene in case they didn't realize from watching the story that it was working together that saved them.

That is one reason.

There's another reason to keep the PTA off there.

Don't forget that one.

Well, yeah.

Okay.

Anyhow, I think that's, we have come to the end of Children of the Dog Star.

Yes.

It was a fun diversion for two and a half hours.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, if you can get your hands on it, it's on YouTube.

It was available at some point in time on DVD and whatnot, but it is long out of print.

I tried.

I tried.

Just, it wasn't, it wasn't a possibility.

So anyway.

it.

Kenneth, thank you for joining me.

My pleasure.

And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.

You've been listening to Fusion Patrol.

Thanks for listening.

If you've enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll consider supporting us at buymeacoffee.com slash Fusion Patrol or patreon.com slash Fusion Patrol.

For our monthly Patreon subscribers, we're currently running a special series on Babylon 5.

Come join the conversation and find other content at FusionPatrol.com.

And we're back on social media where you can also follow us on Mastodon and the Fediverse.

Our address is at podcast at FusionPatrol.com.

Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf.

This has been a Lone Locust production.

on the next episode of fusion patrol we'll be looking at season four episode six of bugs the episode pandora's box where we discuss why you can't fix a sixth century plague with modern technology beckett's new annoying sexy upstairs neighbor and why blowing things up is a much better solution to a contagion than containment come join the conversation on fusion patrol