From: "Joshua Whalen" <nicodemus>

First thing I'd like to say is this:

Let's can the discussion about Jews, Muslims and whatnot. I'm not
trying to belittle anyone's religion, or step on anyone's toes, but
this is something that could easily turn into a flame war on the
list.

So let's move on to something else.

'Shot Down' premise: I think we should drop the 'plague virus
idea'. It's 1) been done before ("Hunter's Moon"); and 2) could
easily be offensive if directed against the wrong group (which would
be just about any real-world ethnicity).

One possibility I see, if we even want to go the virus way, is to
have it be originally bred to eat oil spills. The Illuminati,
however, quickly turned it into a weapon by mutating it slightly, so
that it eats any hydrocarbon polymer. This would effectively turn
the thing into a version of the Andromeda Strain; it would eat oil,
plastics, people, etc. In this case, Matrix might be the only one
who can stop it once it's released...

Another idea I had (which I mentioned earlier), is for the RS to
find Garlon in the middle of a slave ring. He's looking for
Nightshade by having women who match her general description
kidnapped and examined. He hasn't found her yet, but the other
girls fetch a nice price on the market.

Perhaps the Director finds out about this and sends the RS after it
as their second or third mission. The slave ring is close by (since
Nightshade's still in Western Europe at the time, Garlon's base
should be relatively close to the RSHQ), it's undeniably evil (so it
should bolster the idea of the RS being 'the good guys', and the RS
should have no moral qualms going after it); so it should be a good
test of the RS's abilities.

Somewhere along the way, Hunter gets captured by the slavers and so,
while she tries to burn the ring down from inside, the rest of the
group has to find a way to function without their 'leader'. After
nearly falling apart (Yama and Fang consider the possibilities of
making a break for it), Dingo manages to rally the RS, rescue
Hunter, and help take down the ring.

BTW: in case starting a whole slave ring as a front to capture one
person sounds extreme, consider that Nightshade is one of the most
powerful halflings on Earth. I imagine the Illuminati would
consider it well worth the time and effort to just about anything to
acquire her.

This episode might also show an interesting dynamic in the team:
while everyone follows Hunter's orders, they follow Dingo. Robyn
never struck me as the independant leader type (even here, she's
taking all her orders from someone else). Plus, she got the team
together, and is holding it together, largely through blackmail.
This alone would cause hate and resentment for a _long_ while.

Dingo, on the other hand, is a likeable enough fellow. Matrix is
already Dingo's friend, and I see Fang and Yama coming to respect
him as well (the former because of Dingo's personal strength, the
latter because of Dingo's honor and morality). Hunter respects him
in her own way as well (he's her love interest, after all). Nobody
may _like_ him, but they'll probably respect him more than Robyn,
which may lead to interesting confrontations as the team tries to
figure out who's _really_ the team leader (rather than who's _named_
team leader by the Director).

"Fang's Homecoming": I have a big problem with this episode as it
stands. We've got a series with people who are: attacking
terrorists, tangling with Demona, trying to take on the Inner Circle
of the Illuminati, and other asundry stuff. The episode as it
stands is pretty boring by comparison - Fang goes home, takes down
homegrown drug kingpin.

May I be a jerk and throw out an idea I just had about this?

Why does Fang go back to LA? Because the RS happens to be there on
a stopover before heading back to Paris. He decides to just wander
around and makes his way back to the old neighborhood, when he runs
into his sister/parents/whatever. (I'm thinking, if we really need
to put in a family here, have him just have _1_ surviving family
member; it would be somewhat poignant for him to come back, ask
where the folks are, and be told bluntly that "they're dead", and
died while he was off galavanting around). The relative informs
Fang that Kimberly has gone missing and 'convinces' him to at least
make a search for her while he's there.

He's not thrilled with this (even more so because he doesn't have
much time to conduct the search), but does so anyway and finds out
that Kim's fallen in with a band of would-be eco-terrorists, led by
an absolute nutcase. At first Fang dismisses the whole thing as a
minor problem, but then he finds out that these people are planning
to blow up the water canals into LA (the ones that bring in the
city's drinking water from all over the Southwest), and finds out
they actually have the intent and ammunition to pull it off.

Eventually Fang finds out that the eco-terrorists are being supplied
by Thailog, who has his own intentions. He figures the stupid
humans will blow up the canals, LA will die, and then Nightstone can
come in a few months to a year later and buy up prime real-estate
for pennies on the dollar. He can fix up the infrastructure a
little, get the canals working again, and within a decade or two
have a major American city to call his own. At worst case, the
destruction of LA will destroy the environmental movement's
credibility and allow Nightstone to 'more easily exploit' the
mineral riches of the West.

Fang manages to get the RS involved, and they stop the terrorists.
(Actually, 'terrorists' would be too strong a word; think a bunch
of 'weekend eco-warriors' than the ELF, led by someone with a hatred
of humans and human development that would make Demona proud
(although said jerk is not above making a 'deal with the devil' to
further 'the cause'). Thailog is providing most of the actual
expertise here.)

Where Kim/Kymera gets involved is that Thailog offered the ability
(through genetic engineering) for the group to be 'more at one with
nature'. They sent Kim in because she was expendable (being the
newest member of the group). Thailog had Sevarius do the cancer
thing on her (as part of on-going immortality research), then had
the animal genes grafted onto her to turn her into a killing
machine. About the only mention of this in the episode might be
something about Kim 'having become one with the animals' or
something like that.

Note that Kim isn't a radical environmentalist. She just got in
with these people because she wanted to belong to a group that
_believed_ in something other than day-to-day living. Now she just
wish she could go home and forget about all this. This would still
fit in with her current background.

(And one last note on this subject: I happen to be very much in
favor of protecting the environment, but I also think humans have a
place in things too. If we want to change people's attitudes about
how we treat nature, I prefer it be with laws, education, and social
peer pressure, rather than by setting fire to the local SUV
dealership.

And, please, this idea I suggested is an idea for a story, nothing
more. Flame-broil it all you want. What I am _not_ trying to do is
provoke a flame war on the list about the environmental movement,
and I would be very embarrassed if that happened anyway. :))

The problem of the Matrix in the Season Finale: I think I have a way
to solve the Matrix presents at the end of the season. How about
have the enemy download a computer virus into Matrix, one intended
to permanently crash his system, but which instead causes him
to 'malfunction'. As in, when he tries to extrude a wall of himself
to protect a comrade, his body instead extends a blade that nearly
takes said comrade's head off.

The effect is only temporary, but while it's there Matrix is
somewhat unreliabel, rather unintentionally dangerous, and is
somewhat slow and distracted (as he uses computing power to fight
off the virus).

What about that?

Wow, that turned out to be much longer than I thought it would...

Nicodemus