episode 1.01 "Habeas Corpus"
Ultraviolet 1.01: "Habeas Corpus"
I still dislike the opening credits. At this point I'm wondering how I made it past them the first time, to be honest. Why did I even watch this the first time? I seriously have no idea. Maybe it was on PBS and they used different opening credits.
Starting point: the sun is going down and emitting OMINOUS MUSIC. Sweaty nervous man looks, well, nervous. We later learn that he's a confidential informant for Jack (Stephen Moyer), Mike's long-time pal and fellow police officer. (Right? Hey, if I get anything wrong, either in facts or terminology, tell me so. The DVDs don't have subtitles so I'm hindered by occasional problems understanding the accents and slang, plus the culture isn't mine.)
Jack and Mike and a woman do the exposition chat: early clues that Mike (Jack Davenport) has a thing for Jack's fiancée Kirsty. The stag night ends with Mike dropping Jack off at his home--and Jack not entering. Mike goes to find sweaty informant dude, who is being stalked by menacing chiseled face dude.
CFdude kills sweaty informant and now we get hints that CFdude isn't exactly a normal human--not visible on cameras or in the mirror.
Mike goes to Kirsty's house to pine for a bit. Her wedding to Jack is the next day, so Mike is almost out of time to do the premarital pining... except wait! Jack is wandering around and there's CFdude waiting for him! CFdude says, "Time's up." Dun dun DUN!
Wedding day and no groom. Mike's co-workers are investigating, of course, and so is "CIB" in the form of Angie Rice and Vaughan Rice. Rice questions Mike in a not-cordial way about sweaty guy's information and death--his name was Pollard, by the way.
Mike calls old flame Frances. She works for... MI-5? Mike has suspicions of Vaughan and Rice's credentials. He's also noticing the interesting lack of a shooter on the video footage of the arcade where Pollard died.
Mike and Kirsty discuss Jack's surprisingly robust finances. On his way home Mike notices he's being tailed--with good reason. Jack is hiding in his apartment; he demands Mike's help in getting rid of his pursuers. Mike does it, and then meets Jack at a playground. Jack tells him that people are out to kill him; he's convincingly distraught.
Mike has an alpha-male standoff with not-CIB Vaughan Rice. Mike spots the scar on Rice's neck in the wee scuffle.
Frances and Mike chat in a bar about Rice and Vaughan. After Mike leaves, he spots Rice talking to Kirsty. His conversation with Kirsty includes trying to convince her to leave--an attempt to keep her safe. (Oh Mike. Honestly...)
Mike stares at CFdude's pic some more; apparently he digs up enough to go breaking into a building where, indeed, there's a money counterfeiting operation going on, just as Pollard said. Mike wanders around and ends up witnessing a not-CIB operation to take down CFdude. Said operation includes stinky ("worse than garlic") not-tear gas and weird not-guns. Mike grabs a not-gun (and apparently a grenade?) from the scene and flees via self-defenestration.
Frances finds the not-gun fascinating, with its carbon bullets. She's found out a bit of background information about Vaughan and Rice.
Mike trails Rice into a church building and has the AMAZING intuitive leap that these not-CIB people think they're dealing with vampires. *laughs* Anyway, he gets caught, meets pulchritudinous priest Pearse Harmon, gets poked and prodded by March and engages in a second alpha-male standoff with Rice. Not-CIB lets him go, since Mike is far too incredulous of the scenario to be of any help.
OMINOUS SUNSET. Mike has stuff ready in spite of his proclaimed lack of belief. Good thing too. Jack saunters onto the playground and spouts a bunch of lines that aren't particularly persuasive about how vamps are not the bad guys. "Do you like living in the Middle Ages?" Oh, and yeah... about that money. He was on the take. Vamps counterfeiting money! AWESOME!
Vamps also wear bullet-proof vests. Hee! "One way or another you're going to work for us," says Jack, and then Mike uses the grenade, which helpfully gives him some wooden shrapnel to push into Jack's heart. WHOOOSH. Buh-bye, Jack.
Mike goes to an emergency room to get his neck bite taken care of, but there's no broken skin, no visible bite. He stumbles back to the church/not-CIB headquarters and vomits.
LESS OMINOUS SUNRISE. Mike makes his way to work, looking like a wreck. Vaughan and Rice are there. Presumably they go somewhere else and Rice pokes and prods some more; she gives us the helpful information that if left untreated, vampire bites render a person susceptible to suggestion. As for vampires and crosses, religious icons are 'homeopathic' (March's word) which means that their effectiveness isn't guaranteed.
Harmon and Mike chat about potential career changes. Mike refuses, but he does want to know what happens to the "body" (red powder) left after death. We learn that the vampires are only mostly dead when they're red powder. They can regenerate--Rice doesn't know how yet.
Harmon states that the vampires want to "save" us from ourselves by taking away our free-range way of life.
Mike tells Kirsty that Jack was indeed taking bribe money; he can't admit the entire truth, however. Kirsty wants to know what happened to Jack's ring, which leads to the final shot of the episode: Mike putting the ring into the storage container holding Jack's remains. Which, presumably, he can access because he has indeed decided to work for not-CIB.
And let me start some categories and scores. Add some more in the comments if you wish!
pining: 5/5 for Mike making sad googly eyes at Kirsty and trying to convince her to leave the country for her own protection
dude-ly standoffs: 5/5 for Mike and Vaughan trying really hard to annoy each other enough to incite violence--twice
the enigma prize: Angie March wins this week (I totally play favorites, by the way)
I still dislike the opening credits. At this point I'm wondering how I made it past them the first time, to be honest. Why did I even watch this the first time? I seriously have no idea. Maybe it was on PBS and they used different opening credits.
Starting point: the sun is going down and emitting OMINOUS MUSIC. Sweaty nervous man looks, well, nervous. We later learn that he's a confidential informant for Jack (Stephen Moyer), Mike's long-time pal and fellow police officer. (Right? Hey, if I get anything wrong, either in facts or terminology, tell me so. The DVDs don't have subtitles so I'm hindered by occasional problems understanding the accents and slang, plus the culture isn't mine.)
Jack and Mike and a woman do the exposition chat: early clues that Mike (Jack Davenport) has a thing for Jack's fiancée Kirsty. The stag night ends with Mike dropping Jack off at his home--and Jack not entering. Mike goes to find sweaty informant dude, who is being stalked by menacing chiseled face dude.
CFdude kills sweaty informant and now we get hints that CFdude isn't exactly a normal human--not visible on cameras or in the mirror.
Mike goes to Kirsty's house to pine for a bit. Her wedding to Jack is the next day, so Mike is almost out of time to do the premarital pining... except wait! Jack is wandering around and there's CFdude waiting for him! CFdude says, "Time's up." Dun dun DUN!
Wedding day and no groom. Mike's co-workers are investigating, of course, and so is "CIB" in the form of Angie Rice and Vaughan Rice. Rice questions Mike in a not-cordial way about sweaty guy's information and death--his name was Pollard, by the way.
Mike calls old flame Frances. She works for... MI-5? Mike has suspicions of Vaughan and Rice's credentials. He's also noticing the interesting lack of a shooter on the video footage of the arcade where Pollard died.
Mike and Kirsty discuss Jack's surprisingly robust finances. On his way home Mike notices he's being tailed--with good reason. Jack is hiding in his apartment; he demands Mike's help in getting rid of his pursuers. Mike does it, and then meets Jack at a playground. Jack tells him that people are out to kill him; he's convincingly distraught.
Mike has an alpha-male standoff with not-CIB Vaughan Rice. Mike spots the scar on Rice's neck in the wee scuffle.
Frances and Mike chat in a bar about Rice and Vaughan. After Mike leaves, he spots Rice talking to Kirsty. His conversation with Kirsty includes trying to convince her to leave--an attempt to keep her safe. (Oh Mike. Honestly...)
Mike stares at CFdude's pic some more; apparently he digs up enough to go breaking into a building where, indeed, there's a money counterfeiting operation going on, just as Pollard said. Mike wanders around and ends up witnessing a not-CIB operation to take down CFdude. Said operation includes stinky ("worse than garlic") not-tear gas and weird not-guns. Mike grabs a not-gun (and apparently a grenade?) from the scene and flees via self-defenestration.
Frances finds the not-gun fascinating, with its carbon bullets. She's found out a bit of background information about Vaughan and Rice.
Mike trails Rice into a church building and has the AMAZING intuitive leap that these not-CIB people think they're dealing with vampires. *laughs* Anyway, he gets caught, meets pulchritudinous priest Pearse Harmon, gets poked and prodded by March and engages in a second alpha-male standoff with Rice. Not-CIB lets him go, since Mike is far too incredulous of the scenario to be of any help.
OMINOUS SUNSET. Mike has stuff ready in spite of his proclaimed lack of belief. Good thing too. Jack saunters onto the playground and spouts a bunch of lines that aren't particularly persuasive about how vamps are not the bad guys. "Do you like living in the Middle Ages?" Oh, and yeah... about that money. He was on the take. Vamps counterfeiting money! AWESOME!
Vamps also wear bullet-proof vests. Hee! "One way or another you're going to work for us," says Jack, and then Mike uses the grenade, which helpfully gives him some wooden shrapnel to push into Jack's heart. WHOOOSH. Buh-bye, Jack.
Mike goes to an emergency room to get his neck bite taken care of, but there's no broken skin, no visible bite. He stumbles back to the church/not-CIB headquarters and vomits.
LESS OMINOUS SUNRISE. Mike makes his way to work, looking like a wreck. Vaughan and Rice are there. Presumably they go somewhere else and Rice pokes and prods some more; she gives us the helpful information that if left untreated, vampire bites render a person susceptible to suggestion. As for vampires and crosses, religious icons are 'homeopathic' (March's word) which means that their effectiveness isn't guaranteed.
Harmon and Mike chat about potential career changes. Mike refuses, but he does want to know what happens to the "body" (red powder) left after death. We learn that the vampires are only mostly dead when they're red powder. They can regenerate--Rice doesn't know how yet.
Harmon states that the vampires want to "save" us from ourselves by taking away our free-range way of life.
Mike tells Kirsty that Jack was indeed taking bribe money; he can't admit the entire truth, however. Kirsty wants to know what happened to Jack's ring, which leads to the final shot of the episode: Mike putting the ring into the storage container holding Jack's remains. Which, presumably, he can access because he has indeed decided to work for not-CIB.
And let me start some categories and scores. Add some more in the comments if you wish!
pining: 5/5 for Mike making sad googly eyes at Kirsty and trying to convince her to leave the country for her own protection
dude-ly standoffs: 5/5 for Mike and Vaughan trying really hard to annoy each other enough to incite violence--twice
the enigma prize: Angie March wins this week (I totally play favorites, by the way)