Hub - Issue 25 Read online

  But Daniel Carrington is shocked. He stares at Devereaux, slowly shaking his head.

  "No..." he says. "No, I can't let you do that."

  Devereaux is flustered. "But come, isn't that why you wanted to see me? To arrange to broadcast the ultimate event?"

  From the inside of his roll-neck jacket, Carrington withdraws a pistol. It is a karque-hunter's dart gun. He holds it in both hands and levels it at Devereaux.

  "Do you think for a minute that I like what I do, M. Devereaux?"

  "Why, my dear man-"

  "Do you think I enjoy living with death? Christ, everyone on the planet despises me. I have this-" he gestures to his scarred face "-as a continual reminder."

  Devereaux tries to be placatory. He is non-plussed.

  "You didn't want to meet me to ask my permission-?" he begins.

  "I asked you here to kill you," Carrington smiles.

  Devereaux is sardonic. "With that?" he says. "My dear man, you'll need more than a dart gun to destroy my Spider." He pauses, peering at him. "But why?" he whispers.

  "I've hated you for so long, Devereaux," Carrington smiles. "Of course, I naturally assumed you were dead - but I still felt hatred."

  * * *

  "You...?" Devereaux says. He recalls the kid he picked up, all those years ago.

  "I didn't realise you'd survived, you see," Carrington says. "All I could think about was that you'd used me to kill yourself." He pauses. "Then I saw your picture on the vid, read about your forthcoming trip to Venus - and I knew I needed revenge. I had to kill you."

  He fires without warning. The bolt hits Devereaux in the chest and kills him instantly - kills, that is, the body, the meat, the biological entity that is Jean-Philipe Devereaux. As the body falls to the floor, Devereaux finds himself in the sensorium of his Spider.

  "Monsieur Carrington..." His transistorised voice issues from his unmoving lips. "There is a laser in the inside pocket of my jacket. If you set it at maximum, it will despatch my Augmentation."

  Carrington is standing over him, staring down.

  "But first-" Devereaux pleads. "First, please, let me confess."

  "No!"

  Carrington steps forward, slips a small laser from his jacket.

  "That-" the Spider says "-is hardly powerful enough."

  "For the past five years I've dreamed of this moment."

  "Please, my confession!"

  "I dreamed of putting you to death, Devereaux - but that would be too good for you."

  Devereaux screams a hideous: "No!"

  Carrington lifts the laser and, with an expression of revulsion, fires and separates Devereaux's head from his shoulders. He grasps the a hank of hair and lifts the head. Dimly, thorough failing eyes, Devereaux makes out on Carrington's features an expression of supreme satisfaction. "That would be far, far too good for you."

  * * *

  Time passes...

  Devereaux has known seven days as a prisoner in his Spider - in one case ten days - but always these periods were made tolerable by the knowledge that soon he would be returned to his body. Now there is no such knowledge. Upon killing him, Carrington bisected his head and fished out the Spider, bound his limbs and imprisoned him within a black velvet pouch, so that he did not have even the compensation of vision with which to distract his attention from the inevitable... He had only his memories, which returned him again and again to the darkside of Janus.

  At spiraldown, his co-pilot had pulled from the net, left Devereaux - or Minot, as he was then - to oversee the simple docking procedure. Devereaux had disengaged from his Spider a fraction of a second too soon, forgetting that he was on the darkside of Janus, where icy, hurricane-force winds scoured the port. He had not been paying attention, looking forward to his leave instead. The Spider would have been able to save the ship - calculated the realignment co-ordinates pulsed from the control tower - but Devereaux had no hope of processing so much information in so short a time. The Pride of Bellatrix overshot the dock and exploded into the terminal building, incinerating a hundred port workers, as well as the ship's three hundred passengers, beyond any chance of resurrection...

  Devereaux alone had survived.

  His dreams are forever filled with the faces of the dead, their screams, and the unremitting stars of darkside illuminating a scene of carnage.

  * * *

  Devereaux calculates that one week has passed when Daniel Carrington unties the pouch and daylight floods in. He expects Carrington to have devised for him some eternal torture: he will entomb him in concrete and pitch him into the deep Venusian sea, or bury him alive in the wilderness of the central desert.

  Carrington lifts him from the velvet pouch.

  Devereaux makes out the turgid Venusian overcast, and then the expanse of an ocean far below. They are on a chromium catwalk which follows the peak of a volcanic ridge. This is a northern tourist resort; silver domes dot the forbidding grey mountain-side.

  Carrington turns and walks along a promontory overlooking the sea. Devereaux knows, with terrible foresight, what Carrington has planned.

  Carrington holds the Spider before his eyes. Devereaux tries to struggle, realises then with mounting panic that his legs have been removed. Even his only means of psychological release, a scream, is denied him.

  "I've had a long time to think about what I should do with you," Carrington whispers. "At first I wanted to kill you."

  Devereaux cries a silent: No! He knows now that Carrington will pitch him into the sea, and that he will remain there for ever, alone with his memories and his remorse. He tries to conceive of an eternity of such torture, but his mind baulks at the enormity of the prospect.

  "And then, when you told me that you intended to kill yourself anyway, I decided that there was another way of punishing you."

  No! Devereaux yells to himself.

  Carrington is shaking his head.

  "But to do that would be as great a crime as doing what I thought I had done to you twenty years ago." He stares off into the distance, reliving the past. "Perhaps the only way I can cure myself, Devereaux, is by saving you - and the only way I can save you is by destroying you."

  Carrington turns then and strides along the catwalk. Seconds later he is standing on a railed gallery overlooking a fumarole brimming with a river of slow-flowing lava. With little ceremony, Carrington hefts the remains of the Spider and pitches it from the gallery.

  Devereaux gives thanks to Daniel Carrington as he tumbles through the air. The seconds seem to expand to fill aeons. He experiences a surge of relief, and for the very last time the pain of guilt.

  Devereaux hits the lava, and the casing of the Spider melts in the molten stream, and then he feels nothing.

  Reviews

  Bernice Summerfield: The End of the World reviewed by Alasdair Stuart

  28 Weeks Later reviewed by Scott Harrison

  Bernice Summerfield 8.4 The End of the World

  Written by Dave Stone

  Starring: Stephen Fewell, Lisa Bowerman, Paul Chahidi, Caroline Lennon, Harry Myers and Miles Richardson

  The Bernice Summerfield discs are a consistently frustrating experience to review, and the reason why is simple:

  Babylon 5.

  Babylon 5 was a hugely ambitious and wilfully complicated five year story that demanded total attention, rewarded it and whilst it had the odd bump in the road was, and is, consistently one of the most interesting, ambitious, intelligent pieces of popular science fiction in the last twenty years. No doubt some people will cite the dodgy special effects, occasionally stilted dialogue and the mostly poor final season but regardless Babylon 5 had a beginning, a middle and an end. It was joined up storytelling,it was great and it was next to impossible to follow if you weren’t IN AT THE GROUND FLOOR.

  As Babylon 5, so Bernice Summerfield. So, in a desperate attempt to bring you up to speed…

  Bernice is an archaeologist who travelled with the Doctor (Yes that Doctor) for a while and is now employed by t
he Braxiatel Collection. The Braxiatel Collection is run by Irving Braxiatel, also a TimeLord and possibly a direct blood relative of the Doctor (Yes that Doctor) and is dedicated to preserving dead and lost civilisations. A small planetoid, it’s home to Benny, Brax, the various members of Benny’s family and friends, her cat Woolsey and her ex-husband Jason Kane (Fewell). They’ve not had a good time of it recently too, with two warring enemies fighting over the Collection and as a result of this and several other events, Jason Kane is becoming suspicious…

  This is an almost entirely Bernice-free Bernice story and Fewell revels in the chance to take centre stage. Kane’s always been one of the difficult characters for writers to deal with, his combination of feckless ineptitude, 20th century upbringing and bravery meaning he see-saws constantly between rogue-ish Captain Jack-esque sidekick and whinging, needy faux damsel in distress. Here though he’s in control, he has a plan and…it’s a really bad one. Fewell does a fantastic job here ofexploring how Jason has walked the thin line between total confidence and total, abject failure and the end result is a surprisingly brittle, desperate, oddly tragic figure. His interaction with his family is particularly well handled as is Kane’s growing frustration at the situation he’s in. Things SHOULD be different, he knows that and the frustration is all but killing him. Jason Kane should be a hero, instead he’s an afterthought and Fewell captures the quiet, desperate need of the man to step out of that shadow perfectly.

  Here’s the other frustrating thing about reviewing Bernice Summerfield discs. Increasingly, to say anything about the plot is to give away almost every surprise and this disc takes that practice to the nth degree. What I can tell you is that Dave Stone’s story is filled with his trademark humour and two scenes of such sheer, unrelenting horror that they leave a real emotional mark on the listener. What I can tell you is that the voice cast all turn in fantastic work, with Fewell and Richardson theparticular standouts. What I can tell you is thatthis is the disc that the entire eighth season, possibly the entire series itself revolves around. Nothing is going to be the same after this and the mark Jason Kane leaves on Benny’s world will never, ever be forgotten. You won’t see it coming, however you look and the end result is a disc which is beautifully plotted, well acted and sets up a fascinating and truly, genuinely horrific dilemma for future episodes.

  Finally, I can tell you this. The Bernice Summerfield discs are amongst the best material Big Finish puts out and this is one of the best discs they’ve ever done. Pick up the rest of the eighth season to get up to speed and beat a path to this story’s door. It’s utterly, completely worth it.

  28 Weeks Later

  Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

  Starring Robert Carlyle, Imogen Poots, Mackintosh Muggleton

  20th Century Fox

  £19.99

  When director Danny Boyle released his ultra-violent, low budget Brit Sci-Fi/Horror flick 28 Days Later in 2002 it pretty much split the audience straight down the middle into those that loved it and those that hated it – there was little, or no, middle ground. For some it was a gritty, urban tour-de-force, a defiant two-fingers to the Hollywood bigwigs who believe that all British filmmaking must contain charming Hugh Grant-esque characters, comically bumbling their way to true love while attempting to juggle precocious kids, zany relatives and a full-time job. For others it was a cold, emotionally detached and bleakly depressing little slice of gut-wrenching nonsense. Love it or loathe it though you certainly can’t deny that it was a massive hit at the box-office both here and abroad, making an international star out of Cillian Murphy and, yes, showing them stuffy Hollywood execs that this tiny little island can mix it with the big boys when the mood takes us.

  Making a sequel to a hugely successful film is always a tricky business, there’s always the danger of re-reading old ground or, worse still, divorcing itself from everything that made the original so unique and successful that it may as well not have bothered being a sequel in the first place. Add to this a completely new cast, writer and director and the whole thing starts to look like it’s got ‘turkey’ stamped all over it before its even left the starter’s gate! Odd then that it is, in fact, a cracking little film. Not as good as the first film, mind, but it comes damn close!

  After a wonderfully nail biting prologue which sees Robert Carlyle’s character, Don, abandoning his wife in order to escape a group of Rage victims and leaving her to be brutally killed, the story begins 6 months after the action of 28 Days Later. The infected have died of starvation and Britain has been declared free of the virus. An American led NATO force has set up operation in the decimated city of London. An area of security and reconstruction called District One has been set up with Canary Wharf converted into a vast housing complex. 28 weeks later British citizens are slowly being allowed back into the country, relocated to District One where they are supervised by American troops. Among the group are Don’s son and daughter who were out of the country on a school trip during the time of the original outbreak. Bored with being couped up in the security complex they decide to slip out and visit their family home where they make a shocking discovery, their mother is still alive and, due to her unique physical make-up, is now a carrier of the Rage Virus. It’s not long before the deadly infection is unleashed upon the streets of London once more and things start to get decidedly unpleasant.

  Although produced on a low budget the film still manages to look impressively sleek and glossy and despite dealing with the same subject matter as its predecessor manages to inject a little more warmth and emotion into the characters and situations. In fact, were it not for the films final 3 minutes, it would make a cracking feature length pilot for a television series.

  As with the original film’s initial DVD release the special features on 28 Weeks Later are ironically anything but. Aside from director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and producer Enrique Lopez Lavigne’s intelligent and informative audio commentary the extras are all rather unremarkable and, quite frankly, unforgettable. Five featurettes cover the usual aspects of behind-the-scenes filming – actors, make-up, visual effects, stunt work – but as the average runtime for each is approximately 7 minutes they are all pretty much by-the-numbers and barely scratch the surface of all the details and backstage gossip that any honest to goodness movie buff insists on nowadays. There are 2 deleted scenes that can be played with an optional director and producer’s commentary (all DVDs with deleted scenes should have this option!) which were, quite deservedly, removed from the film at an early stage and consequently hold very little interest and, of course, the obligatory Theatrical Trailer.

  It’s the old, old story of a great film let down by a substandard and downright lazy extras package, which is a pity because a film like this deserves a 2-disc release with a meaty indepth Making Of… documentary. As such it’s not worth its full £19.99 price tag but well worth dipping into the old piggy bank if you can find it online or in a sale for around the Tenner mark!

  If you have enjoyed this week’s issue, please consider making a small donation at www.hub-mag.co.uk. We pay our writers, and your support is appreciated.