Danni Ashford is visiting an old lady in a nursing home,
she’s clearly confused and suffering from dementia, constantly talking without
any attention to what people are saying or doing around her. She says good bye
and goes out to a car where a man is waiting and has been waiting all night but
he assures her there’s no rush. He asks if she answered Danni’s question and
she says she thinks so. She frets about not being sure but he encourages
patience and assures her she can keep asking as long as she likes.
Don’t you just hate feeling like you’ve come in half way
through a conversation?
Mike and Vaughan are playing with guns and 90s computers
(ooooh sooo dated!). Jack is still having moral qualms about destroying and
entire species and wonders why they don’t try to bring in vampires (a word they
refuse to use still) alive – Vaughan says that they’re stronger, faster -
better. You can’t give a warning or take chances. He also makes the next target
to shoot look like Kirsty to drive home the point that any contact with the
outside world puts those people at risk. Mike asks if he has any friends and
Vaughan takes him to the shiny vampire locker – all his friends and former
soldiers. The vampires knew about the Gulf War Syndrome early and spent a lot
of energy investigating it, apparently being very concerned by any diseases in
their food supply (y’know, they’re really not doing a good job of selling the
“evil vampire” trope here).
A vampire car with tinted windows nearly knocks over a
motorcyclist, barging past him. He manages to steady himself and, despite the
protests of his passenger, the biker chases after the car. At the red light the
car stops, the biker gets off his bike and hits the car with a metal bar,
cracking one of the windows, burning the vampires inside and demanding he get
out. The vampire rams the car behind then drives through the red light –
knocking over the biker’s bike – and his passenger.
Mike goes to see Kirsty (is this his home now? Wow, you
didn’t waste any time there Mike!) and Kristy tells him she called his work and
learned he resigned. She’s worried how much he’s changing in his life and is
worried he blames her for Jack being corrupt – and hopes they have more in
common than just Jack. He doesn’t have to answer any questions because Vaughan
knocks on the door – and he has a job for him and Mike. Kirsty instantly seizes
on him demanding to know where Jack is. She is less than pleased with him
refusing to talk to her and Vaughan encourages Mike not to try and make her
feel better – it’ll just end up being worse (presumably makes it easier to
break from her).
Dr. Angela is examining the wrecked car which is severely
burned inside. She examines the dust and tells Father Harman that it’s only a
partial immolation. The vampire isn’t dead but not in great shape. The car is
owned by a Lester Hammond – the son of a Gideon Hammond – who has fallen off
the grid in the last few years for a rich kid.
Interviewing the biker and his girlfriend is difficult.
He’s combative and gives Vaughan a lot of grief, he doesn’t see why they’re
being questioned. His girlfriend co-operates with Mike from her hospital bed,
he keeps trying to get her to tell her boyfriend to calm down and stop making
such a lot of noise about the fight but she’s not happy about it either – why
shouldn’t he make a stink about it?
To the HQ (I need a snarky name for it) and Father Harman
fills in the plot (using his psychic powers of vampire motivations – why does
no-one ever question this man and his assumptions?) It’s all about money –
Lester Hammond is the son of the very public and very rich figure, Gideon
Hammond (who the vampires can’t recruit due to his public nature). They have the son under surveillance and Mike
makes a snarky comment about it not being all “seek and destroy.”
Angela interviews Gideon Hammond and finds that daddy
dearest doesn’t have any contact with his son or any time for him and doesn’t
even support him financially, he’s washed his hands of him. he does promise to
provide for the woman in hospital with the spinal injuries however.
Vaughan and Mike have more awkward conversations (Vaughan
had one child, left with his ex), before interviewing Danni Ashford (yes, that
Danni) Gideon’s banker – and Lester’s ex-banker who stopped working for him
after he stopped taking advice. She also assures them that Lester can’t get
Gideon’s money and tells them that Lester was interested in the Futures trade –
which takes place in the LIFE (London International Futures Exchange) building.
As they head off, Gideon calls Danni and tells her to liquidate everything,
he’s closing his account.
At the LIFE building they find a room where all trading
is done face to face, there are no windows to let the pesky sun in, Lester can
put the bite on anyone to get himself the best deals and the cameras that film
everything won’t even pick him up. Perfect – but he has to be doing it using
his dad’s account, which means Gideon must be lying to Angela. She doubts any
infection since she saw him in broad daylight and he sounded genuinely
disdainful of his son.
She also tells them of a mobile phone in the car, meaning Lester wasn’t alone. Vaughan explains that vampires don’t use phones – because machines can’t see or hear vampires, so his voice won’t go down a line.
Meanwhile Danni is on the phone to Lester to double check
if he really wants to sell everything since it won’t get anyone off his trail.
Lester uses a computer programme to talk over the phone and assures her he does
want to – and he types with extremely burned hands.
The team realises Gideon is selling everything and Danni
is handling the transaction – and will hand over the money in cash (or deposit
drafts) personally to Gideon, which should give them chance grab Lester at the
hand over. Mike wonders how much Danni knows but Vaughan points out so long as
he has money, Danni won’t care – she’s a banker he’s a vampire, they’re
probably related (ooooh, in 1998 no less. What a prescient comment).
In the lab, Angela is doing some experiments (how they’ll
beat the vampires in the end, she assures them) when Father Hammond arrives to
subtly rebuke her for not being outside tracking down leads. She angrily points
out she has tracked down all of the financials and discovered that Gideon is
building underground safe houses. He still doesn’t support research since it
can take years and they may not have that long (this time scale is based on….?
Care to share some of his random insight?)
Mike goes to see Frances, his friend with the contacts in
high places who got him the background on Vaughan and Angela and asks her how
she manages to keep her sensitive job from spilling over her life. He talks
about being warned off Kirsty and she says he doesn’t have to be a hermit, he
just has to be careful. She tells him to quit – they can find others but if he
has any doubts and stays he’ll lose the choice. She says he’s too straight (as
in honest and forthright) for this kind of work
We cut to Danni and she has a bad burn on her arm, under
a bandage, caused by Lester grabbing her arm in the car when he started to
burn. She goes out into the night to meet the burned Lester to tell him that
the certificates will be ready by close of play the next day but she repeatedly
warns him about the investigators though he dismisses them (throughout this
scene she spends the whole time staring dramatically into the camera with
windswept hair – it’s the most gloriously ridiculous melodramatic moment –
complete with synthesiser angelic choir – I have ever seen). When she glances
aside, he disappears.
Mike has another awkward moment with Kirsty and she asks
hard questions: “you’re working for the people who investigated Jack?” “yes.”
“Did you turn him in?” “No.” “Ok.” And with that Kirsty moves on, trusting him
(this may seem odd but remember, Kirsty was engaged to marry someone with
Jack’s hair so she may have a judgement impairing drug habit). She knows
there’s more he’s not telling her though and demands he stop protecting her.
Investigation time and Mike sees, through CCTV, that
Danni has a burn on her hand – adding in the mother she want to see in the
nursing home being on the same road and he assumes she was in the car (what,
Father Hammond is the only one allowed to make grand leaps of logic?) and
believes that the money hand over must be a distraction.
For more investigating, Mike and Angela go to the nursing
home where Danni’s mother lives and ask the nurse about her – it seems it’s the
first time Danni has ever visited. She also mentions a boyfriend who waited in
the car, all night. Danni’s mother was a banker as well and, though they can’t
talk to her because she’s still incoherent, they ask to see her personal
things, convincing the nurse when they tell her Danni is in a lot of trouble.
Looking through the photos they find an old photograph of someone called
Waldemar - who looks exactly like Lester – Gideon’s father. The mother handled his
finances and then Danni took over. For some reason Mike asks if Alzheimers is
hereditary (possibly giving Danni a reason to join the vampire club), Angela
tells him there are 2 genes that mean you’re likely to get Alzheimers,
especially if you have both – but 1 in 20 people have both so it doesn’t mean
much. You don’t need a hereditary disease to tempt you to become a vampire, if
you look far enough into the future you will see something ugly – if nothing
else, everyone dies.
Angela and Mike go to check on Waldemar/Lester’s account
opened by Margaret and then Danni Ashford.
And all his money goes to charity – medical charities, especially blood
disorders through the Beacon Institute.
Meanwhile Vaughan and some squaddies spend an inordinate amount of time sneaking up on Danni and Gideon who are doing the cash exchange – but Waldemar/Lester never shows up and their cover is blown by the Biker rampaging around. Vaughan demands Danni tell him where he is.
Angela and Mike head to the Beacon Institute, sneaking
into the backdoor while men load a truck out front. As it drives off they find
a room full of very pale, sick looking people with tubes draining blood in
their arms – including on collapsed on the floor. Mike wants to call for help
but Angela stops him, checking what they’re dealing with first. Mike leaves,
disturbed. The sick people inside thought it was a hospice, that they were on
new, special drugs trials that could help them – but the radiation used to find
a cure has ruined their immune system
Father Harman and Vaughan search Gideon’s house while
Harman talks to Gideon about how his father used him, how he never meant to
turn the far too useful human and how he just took over Gideon’s dead son’s
place. Angela and Mike tackle Danni in an interview room – about how Waldemar
had an affair with her mother and then moved on to her. Danni protests that
they don’t take people who don’t want to be vampires – Waldemar begged her
mother to change and she refused. Angela denies that – saying they killed her 5
year old child, Danni counters with the fact that it’s their group that are
running the extermination programme, accusing them of being Nazis and the
vampires having the right to fight back.
Time for the team to meet where Harman makes it clear
that vampires are not researching cures for blood diseases due to philanthropy,
it’s all about food supply, though Mike points out if they find cures does it
matter what their motivation is? (Methods are questionable, certainly, but
motivation?) Harman says the vampires won’t cure diseases, they’ll just cull
the infected like they did before – and he mentions the Great Fire of London as
proof. That would be the fire that killed 6 people – someone should have
studied some history before making this up because burning a city to kill 6
people is the most inefficient cull imaginable.
Vaughan is willing to celebrate the case as a win, but
Mike doesn’t understand. The girl is in a wheelchair, the vampire got away. But
Vaughan points out they cost him a lot of money, the vampire is scarred and
because anaesthetic don’t work on vampires, he’s going to be in permanent agony
(that’s a result? This is something they’re praising?)
The Biker returns home to his flat where he meets
Waldemar who would like to show him what it feels like to be so badly burned.
We hear the biker scream and then cut to his extremely bloody dead body on the
floor with Mike and Vaughan investigating and Mike pretty sure that this counts
as a grudge. He talks about going public
with the vampire threat and Vaughan replies with the idea of the panic it’d
cause leading to people turning to religion and next thing we know the
Archbishop of Canterbury would be elected prime minister. I find it interesting
that he worries about fear driving people to theocracy – and could certainly be
an interesting commentary – if they weren’t unquestioningly following the
orders of a Catholic Priest. Mike wants to tell the biker’s girlfriend and they
have an argument with Vaughan accusing Mike of pushing his issues with Kirsty
onto the case. Mike leaves, accusing Vaughan of not caring at all.
Vaughan goes to see the woman in the hospital, he even
brings flowers. But the hotel room is empty and trashed. Mike wakes up on his
sofa (does he not have a bed?) to find her in his living room wearing a
hospital gown. She says “he put me right”. She says she won’t hurt him but this
was her choice, everyone has a choice and she didn’t want to be in a
wheelchair. She starts to tell him things about “his friends” why they’re far
more evil than the vampires – and Vaughan attacks her from behind and kills her
in an explosion that takes out the windows and leaves fire smouldering.
He now has to move – and the next day tells Kirsty.
Adding that he and Kirsty need to take a break from each other so she has a
chance to get over Jack by him keeping away. She doesn’t understand why he
needs to leave and he abruptly tells her to move on and he doesn’t have the
time to be responsible for her. Yes, the old “hurt them for their own good”
trope.
This seems to be far less about hunting and killing the
vampires and far more about trying to cut back their moral influence and find
out which pies they have their fingers in. I do wish we’d see more history and
reasoning behind Father Harman’s assurance of evil, especially with him being a
priest, but we’re finally seeing some nefarious activity on the vampire’s part
that justifies fighting them.
I’m finding Father Harman extremely irritating just presenting “this is so” without any explanation or reasoning or even the slightest nuance of thought. While the vampires are hardly shiningly virtuous, nor is the team. I do think there are elements here that could do with more development – like the idea of panic and theocracy maybe even with a reflection of their own church ties and unquestioning assumptions. They raise deep issues but don’t examine them.
I also like the thread of mortal ties being such a risk
and the damage that can do to people.
Random aside, is “Kirsty” a really English name or
something. Because my spellchecker is determined to change it to “Kristy” – a
name I’ve never heard of. But I went to school with 4 Kirstys.
