Monday, May 07, 2012

Eleventh hour: Miracle


Professor Hood (Patrick Stewart) and his Protection Services officer Rachel (Ashley Jensen) are called to a meeting where Drake (Roy Marsden) uses Hood to disprove to MI-6 that a potential nuclear weapon manufacturing site is that. While waiting to go in, Hood is reading tabloids and they all feature a story about a boy who was miraculously cured of his cancer by drinking well water. Hood takes this story very personally and decided that he will go up to Clayton where the boy lives and disprove that it was the water that cured the boy.
Hood meets Dr. Williams (Clare Holman), the boy's physician who assures him that the boy did indeed have a cancerous tumor on his kidney and that he received no treatment for it. From this, Hood concludes that there must have been something in the water so goes about systematically checking the water from the reservoir, the highest water source in the water tables, down to the spring from which the boy drank.
After many false starts, Drake keeps popping up warning Rachel that Hood is in danger and it is her duty to make Hood leave. The problem is that Rachel doesn't take orders from Drake, and thus Hood is given enough time to finally find the cause of the contaminant in the water and in the process uncovers black ops being run by Drake.
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I swear that in the last post when I was going on about the X-Files, that I had not seen this episode yet. This episode was pretty much X-Files, UK, with Hood as both Muldar and Scully, well the passion of Muldar if not the belief in something that could not be explained by science. The whole feel of this episode was very much in the vein of a Chris Carter show - the camera work, the lighting, the suspecious government officials trying to dissuade our protagonists without outright threatening them. Actually it strikes me that Hood is the X-Files all in one - the passion of Muldar, the scientific discipline of Scully and the hairstyle of Skinner.
Marsden and Holman are both well known actors, and neither one disappoints. This was probably the most consistent and the best acted episode of the series. But, based upon what the Oracle told me about the creator not liking the comparison to the one show that I keep comparing it to, I can see why it didn't come back, though I am not sure why someone else didn't just act as executive producer and continue the show. Perhaps the creator maintained control over the intellectual property.
Whatever the reason, I am sad that there were only four episodes. I feel like we were just starting to get to know Hood, and the Rachel character hadn't been explored much at all, other than her devotion to Hood. We never learned why this particular science advisor to the government needed a Protective Services agent keeping care of him. Oh well.
Just like in episode three, the outcome was pretty obvious from the beginning. The first time you see Drake, you think first that he's more of a spook than Hood and Rachel realize, and second that he's a bad dude. Not only that, but the first scene he is in with Hood gives away the endind. It was still a good episode but maybe this is some sign into why the show didn't go into a second season - without the creator on board, it was just another mystery show. Still, I would watch further episodes if they existed. Meh.

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