From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== Bounty hunter Samus Aran explores the surface of the planet SR388 with a survey crew from Biologic Space Laboratories (BSL). She is attacked by parasitic organisms known as X. On the BSL station, Samus loses consciousness and her ship crashes. The Galactic Federation recovers her body and discovers that the X has infected Samus' central nervous system. They cure her with a vaccine made from cells taken from the infant Metroid that Samus adopted on SR388. The vaccine gives her the ability to absorb the X nuclei for nourishment, but burdens her with the Metroids' vulnerability to cold. Samus's infected Power Suit is sent to the BSL station for examination, although parts of the suit were too integrated with her body to remove during surgery. When Samus recovers consciousness, she discovers that an explosion has occurred on the BSL station. She is sent to investigate. The mission is overseen by her new gunship's computer, whom Samus nicknames "Adam" after her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich. Samus learns that the X parasites can replicate their hosts' physical appearances, and that the X have infected the station with the help of the "SA-X", an X parasite mimicking Samus at full power. Samus avoids the SA-X and explores the space station, defeating larger creatures infected by the X to recover her abilities. She discovers a restricted lab containing Metroids, and the SA-X sets off the labs' auto-destruct sequence. Samus escapes but the lab is destroyed. The computer berates Samus for ignoring orders, and admits that the Federation was secretly using the lab to breed Metroids. It also reveals that the SA-X has asexually reproduced, subsequently cloning itself. The computer advises Samus to leave the station. On her way to her ship, the computer orders Samus to leave the rest of the investigation to the Federation, which plans to capture SA-X for military purposes. Knowing that the X would only infect the arriving Federation troops and absorb their spacefaring knowledge to conquer the universe, Samus states her intention to destroy the station. Although the computer initially intends to stop Samus, she calls it "Adam", and reveals that Adam died saving her life. The computer suggests that she should alter the station's propulsion to intercept with SR388 and destroy the planet along with all X populations. Samus realizes that the computer is the consciousness of Adam, uploaded after death. En route to initiate the propulsion sequence, Samus confronts an SA-X, defeats it, and sets the BSL station on a collision course with SR388. As Samus prepares to leave, she is attacked by an Omega Metroid. The SA-X saves her; Samus absorbs its nucleus and uses her newly restored Ice Beam to destroy the Omega Metroid. Her ship arrives, piloted by creatures Samus rescued from the ship, and they escape before the station crashes into the planet, destroying it. ===== The story takes place from 1922 to 1925, in post-revolutionary Russia. Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois family. An independent spirit with a will to match, she rejects any attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet state to cast her into a mold. At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the Bolshevik revolutionaries. Kira's father had been the owner of a textile factory, which was seized and nationalized. Having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the victories of the Red Army, the family returns to the city in search of livelihood. They find that their home has also been seized and converted to living quarters for several families. Kira's family eventually manages to find living quarters, and Kira's father gets a license to open a textile shop, an establishment that is but a shadow of his old firm. Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times. Rand portrays long queues, weary citizens and low standards of living. With some effort, Kira manages to obtain her Labor Book, which permits her to study and work. Kira also manages to enroll in the Technological Institute, where she aspires to fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer. At the Institute, Kira meets Andrei Taganov, a co-student, an idealistic Communist and an officer in the Soviet secret police. The two share a mutual respect and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political beliefs, and become friends. In a chance encounter, Kira meets Leo Kovalensky, an attractive man with a free spirit. It is love at first sight for Kira, and she throws herself at Leo, who initially takes her to be a prostitute. He is also strongly attracted to her and promises to meet her again. Kira and Leo are shown to be united by their desperate lives and their beliefs that run counter to what is being thrust on them by the state. After a couple of meetings, when they share their deep contempt for the state of their lives, the two plan to escape the country together. From this point on, the novel slowly cascades into a series of catastrophes for Kira and Leo. They are caught while attempting to flee the country, but escape imprisonment with the help of an official who knew Leo's father before the revolution. Kira leaves her parents' apartment and moves into Leo's. Soon the state decides to expel any college students of a bourgeois background, and Kira is also fired from her job. The relationship between Kira and Leo, intense and passionate in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the weight of their hardships and their different reactions. Kira keeps her ideas and aspirations alive, but decides to go along with the system until she feels powerful enough to challenge it. Leo, in contrast, sinks slowly into indifference and depression. He contracts tuberculosis and is prescribed treatment in a sanatorium. Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her appeals to the authorities to get state help fall on deaf ears. As Kira's relationship with Leo evolves, so does her relationship with Andrei. Despite their political differences, she finds Andrei to be the one person with whom she could discuss her most intimate thoughts and views. Andrei's affection and respect for Kira slowly turns into love. When he confesses his love to Kira, she is dismayed but also desperate, so she feigns love for Andrei and agrees to become his mistress. She uses money from Andrei to fund Leo's treatment. Leo returns cured of tuberculosis and healthy, but a changed man. He opens a food store that is a facade for black market trade. Andrei, who is concerned that corruption is damaging the communist state, starts investigating Leo's store. He arrests Leo and in the process discovers that Kira has secretly been living with Leo. Disillusioned about both his personal relationship and his political ideals, Andrei secures Leo's release and shortly thereafter commits suicide. Kira, perhaps the only genuine mourner at his state funeral, wonders if she has killed him. Having lost any moral sense that he may have left, Leo leaves Kira to begin a new life as a gigolo. After Leo's departure, Kira makes a final attempt to cross the border. Almost in sight of freedom, she is shot by a border guard and dies. ===== Max and Ruby is about two bunnies: Max, a rambunctious and determined three-year-old, and his older sister Ruby, a patient, goal-oriented, and sometimes restrictive seven-year-old.. Nick Jr.. According to Wells, the series shows the relationship between Ruby, Max, and the universal nature of sibling relationships.. Nick Jr.. ===== From left to right: Swiper (in background), Dora, and Boots The series centers around Dora Marquez, a seven-year-old Latina girl, with a love of embarking on quests related to an activity that she wants to partake of or a place that she wants to go to, accompanied by her talking purple backpack and anthropomorphic monkey companion named Boots (named for his beloved pair of red boots). Each episode is based around a series of cyclical events that occur along the way during Dora's travels, along with obstacles that she and Boots are forced to overcome or puzzles that they have to solve (with "assistance" from the viewing audience) relating to riddles, the Spanish language, or counting. Common rituals may involve Dora's encounters with Swiper, a bipedal, anthropomorphic masked thieving fox whose theft of the possessions of others must be prevented through fourth wall-breaking interaction with the viewer. To stop Swiper, Dora must say "Swiper no swiping" three times. However, on occasions where Swiper steals the belongings of other people, the viewer is presented with the challenge of helping Boots and Dora locate the stolen items. Another obstacle involves encounters with another one of the program's antagonists; the "Grumpy Old Troll" dwelling beneath a bridge that Dora and Boots must cross, who challenges them with a riddle before permitting them the past that needs to be solved with the viewer's help. Known for the constant breaking of the fourth-wall depicted in every episode, the audience is usually presented to two primary landmarks that must be passed before Dora can reach her destination, normally being challenged with games or puzzles along the way. The episode always ends with Dora successfully reaching the locale, singing the "We Did It!" song with Boots in triumph. On numerous occasions, television specials have been aired for the series in which the usual events of regular episodes are altered, threatened, or replaced. Usually said specials will present Dora with a bigger, more whimsical adventure than usual or with a magical task that must be fulfilled, or perhaps even offer a series of different adventures for Boots and Dora to travel through. They might be presented with an unusual, difficult task (such as assisting Swiper in his attempts to be erased from Santa Claus's Naughty List) that normally is not featured in average episodes, or challenge Dora with a goal that must be achieved (such as the emancipation of a trapped mermaid). Sometimes, the specials have involved the debut of new characters, such as the birth of Dora's superpowered twin baby siblings and the introduction of the enchanted anthropomorphic stars that accompany Dora on many of her quests. ===== Title Card Mickey Mouse's concert band is performing a concert in a park. As the film opens, they are being applauded for having just played music from Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold's Zampa. They next begin Gioacchino Rossini's William Tell overture.The overture was significantly abridged to account for events in the film. It was also played out of order, starting with the "Finale" (the "Lone Ranger" segment), continuing with the Ranz des Vaches "Daybreak" movement, and ending with the "Prelude" and "Storm" movements. Mickey's performance is first disrupted by Peter Pig's vibrato trumpet and Paddy Pig's tuba playing Prelude: Dawn. Meanwhile, Donald Duck rolls a vendor cart through the audience selling lemonade, popcorn, and ice cream, which further distracts Mickey. While the band is playing the "Finale" segment, Donald plays Turkey in the Straw at the same tempo as the band. Overhearing Donald, the entire band absent-mindedly find themselves playing Donald's song. Realizing his mistake, Mickey loses his temper over his performance being disrupted in this manner. Mickey splits Donald's flute in two, only for Donald to get another one out. They play the song again and Mickey splits the flute once more. The band resumes the segment, but when Donald pulls out a third flute and plays "Turkey in the Straw" again, Donald breaks the flute himself before Mickey can. The trombonist grabs Donald by the neck, shakes out several of his flutes and forces him offstage, knocking him back into the vendor cart. While Donald tries to play the song again a bee harasses him. When the bee lands on Mickey's hat, Donald throws ice cream at the bee, which sends it into Peter Pig's trumpet; he shoots it out, accidentally hitting Mickey with it. The ice cream slides under Mickey's uniform, making him shake around, causing the band to briefly play The Streets of Cairo until it falls out and he kicks it away. Mickey has the band play Ranz des Vaches and swats his baton at the bee, temporarily causing the band to briefly play notes drastically different than the song. Percussionist Horace Horsecollar tries to kill the bee by squishing it with his cymbals and with a hammer, but accidentally hits Goofy's head instead, driving his head down into his jacket. He continues playing his clarinet from inside it. When the band comes to the "Storm" segment of the overture, it summons an actual tornado, prompting the audience and Donald to run away. The benches that the audience members were sitting on come to life (each wearing a hat that fell off an audience member) and also begin running for their lives as well. Donald tries to take shelter in some trees only for the tornado to tie them in knots with Donald in the middle. The tornado sucks up and destroys everything in its path (houses, farms, trees, walls, signs, windmills, fences, power lines, etc), even the pavilion on which the band is playing, but the band is so used to the distractions by this point that they continue to play from inside the tornado (in which Mickey floats through the remains of a wrecked house, Peter Pig gets spanked by a fence, and Clarabelle is hit by a pair of undergarments and an umbrella that turns her flute inside-out). The tornado suddenly freezes when Mickey takes a pause conducting (which seemingly stops time itself briefly) and goes in reverse as the band finishes the last part of the song. As the storm passes, the band (except Horace, Peter Pig and Mickey) is thrown into a tree and they finish the overture. By this time, the only remaining audience member is Donald Duck who applauds enthusiastically. Witnessing Donald playing "Turkey in the Straw" as an encore, the offscreen band members furiously throw their instruments at him. ===== ===== ===== During the Blitz, three orphaned children named Charlie, Carrie, and Paul Rawlins are evacuated from London to Pepperinge Eye, where they are placed in the reluctant care of Miss Eglantine Price, who agrees to the arrangement temporarily. The children attempt to run back to London, but after observing Miss Price attempting to fly on a broomstick, they change their minds. Miss Price reveals she is learning witchcraft through a correspondence school with hopes of using her spells in the British war effort, and offers the children a transportation spell in exchange for their silence. She casts the spell on a bedknob, and adds only Paul can work the spell, as he is the one who handed the bedknob to her. Later, Miss Price receives a letter from her school announcing its closure, thus preventing her from learning the final spell. She convinces Paul to use the enchanted bed to return the group to London, and locate Professor Emelius Browne. Browne turns out to be a charismatic showman who created the course from an old book, and is shocked to learn the spells actually work. He gives the book to Miss Price, who is distraught to discover the final spell, "Substitutiary Locomotion", is missing. The group travels to Portobello Road to locate the rest of the book. After an exchange with an old bookseller, Miss Price learns that the spell is engraved on the Star of Astaroth, a medallion that belonged to a sorcerer of that name. The bookseller explains that the medallion was taken by a pack of wild animals, given anthropomorphism by Astaroth, to a remote island called Naboombu. A 17th century lascar had claimed to have seen Naboombu, but the bookseller never found it. Paul confirms its existence by revealing a storybook he found in Mr. Browne's playroom. The group travels to Naboombu and land in a lagoon; there, the bed goes underwater, where Mr. Browne and Miss Price enter a dance contest and win first prize. Just then, the bed is fished out of the sea by a bear, who informs the group that no human is allowed on the island by royal decree. They are brought before the island's ruler King Leonidas, who is wearing the Star of Astaroth. Leonidas invites Mr. Browne to act as a referee in a football match. The chaotic match ends in Leonidas' self-proclaimed victory, but Mr. Browne swaps the medallion with his referee whistle as he leaves, and the group escapes. Back home, Miss Price exercises the spell, which imbues inanimate objects with life. When Miss Price is informed that the children can be moved to another home, she decides to let them stay, realizing she has come to love them and vice versa. The children declare they want Mr. Browne to be their father, but Mr. Browne, wary of commitment, bids goodbye to the group and attempts to take a train back to London. A platoon of Nazi German commandos land on the coast and invade Miss Price's house, imprisoning her and the children in the local museum. Meanwhile at the train station, Mr. Browne encounters Nazis cutting phone lines and when he tries to escape, he punches them on to the train tracks. Mr. Browne then tries to go back to Miss Price's house to warn her and the children that they're in danger, but found that they weren't home, so he uses the white rabbit spell that he taught Miss Price so he can disguise himself to get away from the Nazis and finds Miss Price and the children at the museum and inspiring Miss Price to use the spell to enchant the museum's exhibits into an army. The army of knights' armor and military uniforms chase the Nazis away, but as the Nazis retreat, they destroy Miss Price's workshop, ending her career as a witch. Though disappointed her career is over, she is happy she played a small part in the war effort. Shortly afterwards, Miss Price has officially adopted and committed herself to raising the children, Mr. Browne also made a commitment to becoming the father of children and moved in with them. Mr. Browne enlists in the army and departs with the local Home Guard escorting him, promising the children he will return soon. Paul reveals he still has the enchanted bedknob, hinting they can continue on with their adventures. ===== Garcia stars as Andy Kasper, a man who gives up his cushy marketing job to do something more fulfilling. He gets himself hired at LaHonda Research Institute where Francis Benoit (Enrico Colantoni) assigns him to design the PC99, a PC to sell for $99. He moves into a run-down apartment building where he meets his lovely artist next-door neighbor Alisa (Rosario Dawson), and puts together a team of unassigned employees: Salman Fard (Anjul Nigam), a short, foreign man with an accent who is hacking into CIA files when Andy meets him; Curtis "Tiny" Russell (Ethan Suplee), a massively obese, anthropophobic man; and Darrell (Jake Busey), a tall, blond, pierced, scary, germophobic, deep-voiced man with personal space issues who regularly refers to himself in the third person. The team finds many non-essential parts but cannot come close to the $99 mark. It is Salman's idea to put all the software on the internet, eliminating the need for a hard drive, RAM, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, and anything that holds information. The computer has been reduced to a microprocessor, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, and the internet, but it is still too expensive. Having seen the rest of his team watching a hologram of an attractive lady the day before, in a dream Andy is inspired to eliminate the monitor in favor of the cheaper holographic projector. The last few hundred dollars come off when Darrell suggests using virtual reality gloves in place of a mouse and keyboard. Tiny then writes a "hypnotizer" code to link the gloves, the projector, and the internet, and they're done. But immediately before he finishes, the whole team (except for Tiny, who is still writing the code) quits LaHonda after being told that there are no more funds for their project, but sign a non-exclusive patent waiver, meaning that LaHonda will share the patent rights to any technology they had developed up to that point. After leaving LaHonda, they pitch their product to numerous companies, but do not get accepted, mainly because: *the prototype emagi (electronic magic), as it was now called, was ugly, and *something always seemed to go wrong during the demonstration of their product. They have almost given up hope, when in comes the lovely next-door neighbor Alisa again, whose relationship with Andy has been growing steadily. She improves its look, and when called back by an executive from one of the companies they had pitched to, to whom they had said that their design teams were working on a cosmetic model that would be ready in a couple of days when she commented, "You haven't given much thought to the look of it." After meeting with her, they agree to give her 51% of their company in exchange for getting their product manufactured and for getting Andy's Porsche bought back, which he had had to sell in order to raise money to build a new emagi after leaving LaHonda. Unfortunately, she then sells the patent rights to the emagi to Francis Benoit, who plans to sell the emagi at $999 a piece and reap a huge profit. The team interrupts the meeting in which Benoit is going to introduce the emagi to the world and introduces an even newer computer he and his team developed and manufactured at LaHonda, which was in a state of disaster when they arrived. It was a small silver tube that projected a hologram and lasers which would detect where the hands were, eliminating the need even for virtual reality gloves. Also, Andy reminds Benoit of the non-exclusive patent waiver, which had even been Benoit's idea in the first place. ===== When Jonathan Ogner first shows up to prep school, he is laughed at for wearing his school uniform. He then goes up to his dorm and meets his new roommate, who introduces himself as Squire Franklin Burroughs IV but tells Jonathan to call him "Skip." Skip then takes off his bath robe and is shown to be wearing a red bra and panties. He explains to the shocked Jonathan that it isn't what it looks like and that it's a tradition for the seniors to parade around campus wearing only girls' underwear. When Jonathan doesn't have any, Skip gives him a set that he had in his dresser. Skip and Jonathan travel out of the dorm together until they get to the final door where Skip stays behind and locks the door. The other students begin to laugh and mock Jonathan for wearing girls' underwear. Mortified, Jonathan attempts to flee the scene. After discovering that Skip has locked all the doors, Jonathan climbs a trellis that leads into his dorm where he finds Skip lying on the floor laughing hysterically. Skip tries to tell Jonathan that it was all just a practical joke and to just laugh it off, but Jonathan is too embarrassed. Later, during lunch time in the cafeteria, the other students again begin to taunt Jonathan as he tries to eat his meal. When Skip invites Jonathan over to his table to sit with him and his friends, Jonathan turns to reveal that he is crying from shame. Skip is now deeply remorseful for having played such a prank on Jonathan as he sees Jonathan flee the cafeteria. When Skip returns to their room to apologize to Jonathan he finds Jonathan hanging with a rope around his neck in an apparent suicide. Skip goes to get help, but when he returns to the room where Jonathan hanged himself, Skip and the gathering crowd find not Jonathan but a mannequin with a picture of the Dean's face attached to its head. The crowd begins to laugh hysterically at Skip as the Dean says he wants to see both Skip and Jonathan in his office. As the crowd disperses, Skip hears laughter coming from the closet. Upon opening the closet door Skip finds Jonathan very much alive and laughing at Skip telling Skip that it was just a joke. Skip grudgingly accepts the prank reversal and the two become fast friends. After becoming friends the two share secrets and Jonathan admits to Skip that he cheated on the SAT. After several failed attempts to find Jonathan a date, Skip decides that it is his sworn duty to help his friend have a successful sexual encounter. Skip decides to send Jonathan to Chicago to meet a girl and gain sexual experience before both of their reputations are ruined. Jonathan is picked up by Ellen, a beautiful older woman, and has an affair with her. Jonathan begins to fall in love with Ellen even though the older woman knows it to be just a fling between them. Jonathan lies and claims to be a Ph.D. student. When Jonathan proclaims his love to Ellen during one of their sessions, Ellen begins to have second thoughts about continuing the relationship. Her decision is finalized when she discovers that Jonathan is not only much younger than he had originally claimed to be, but he also attends the same school that her own son attends. Over Christmas break, Skip invites Jonathan to spend Christmas with him and his family at the Burroughs estate. It is here that Jonathan discovers that Ellen is Skip's mother and is married. Jonathan tries to end the affair, but Skip's mother contacts Jonathan several times. Eventually Jonathan agrees to meet Ellen to talk. He lies to Skip, claiming to need time alone. When Jonathan and Ellen meet, they end up in bed again. In an attempt to cheer up his friend, Skip and friends go to Jonathan's hotel room. There they discover Jonathan in bed with Skip's mother, upsetting Skip. Later, Skip and Jonathan have a fist fight, but finally make up. ===== Griffin Mill is a Hollywood studio executive dating story editor Bonnie Sherow. He hears story pitches from screenwriters and decides which have the potential to be made into films, green-lighting only 12 out of 50,000 submissions every year. His job is threatened when up-and-coming story executive Larry Levy begins working at the studio. Mill has also been receiving death threat postcards, assumed to be from a screenwriter whose pitch he rejected. Mill surmises that the disgruntled writer is David Kahane. Mill is told by Kahane's girlfriend, June Gudmundsdottir that Kahane is at a theater in Pasadena. Mill pretends to recognize Kahane in the lobby, and offers him a scriptwriting deal, hoping this will stop the threats. The two go to a nearby bar where Kahane gets intoxicated and rebuffs Mill's offer; he calls Mill a liar and continues goading him about his job security at the studio. In the bar's parking lot, the two men fight. Mill goes too far and drowns Kahane in a shallow pool of water while screaming, “Keep it to yourself!”. Mill then stages the crime to make it look like a botched robbery. The next day, after Mill is late for and distracted at a meeting, Studio chief of security Walter Stuckel confronts him about the murder and says that the police know that he was the last one to see Kahane alive. At the end of their conversation Mill receives a fax from his stalker. Thus, Mill has killed the wrong man, and the stalker apparently knows this. Mill attends Kahane's funeral and gets into conversation with June. Detectives Avery and DeLongpre suspect Mill is guilty of murder. Mill receives a postcard from the stalker suggesting that they meet at a hotel bar. While Mill is waiting, he is cornered by two screenwriters, Tom Oakley and Andy Sivella, who pitch Habeas Corpus, a legal drama featuring no major stars and with a depressing ending. Because Mill is not alone, his stalker does not appear. After leaving the club, Mill receives a fax in his car, advising him to look under his raincoat. He discovers a live rattlesnake in a box and, terrified, bludgeons it with his umbrella. Mill tells June that his near-death experience made him realize he has feelings for her. Apprehensive that Larry Levy continues encroaching on his job, Mill invites the two writers to pitch Habeas Corpus to him, convincing Levy that the movie will be an Oscar contender. Mill's plan is to let Levy shepherd the film through production and have it flop. Mill will step in at the last moment, suggesting some changes to salvage the film's box office, letting him reclaim his position at the studio. Having persuaded Bonnie to leave for New York on studio business, Mill takes June to a Hollywood awards banquet and their relationship blossoms. After Bonnie confronts Mill about his relationship with June, Mill coldly severs their relationship in front of two writers. Mill takes June to an isolated Desert Hot Springs resort and spa. In the middle of Mill and June making love, Mill confesses his role in Kahane's murder, and June responds by saying she loves him. Mill's attorney informs him that studio head Joel Levison has been fired, and that the Pasadena police want Mill to participate in a lineup. An eyewitness has come forward, but she fails to identify Mill. One year later, studio power players are watching the end of Habeas Corpus with a new, tacked- on, upbeat Hollywood ending and famous actors in the lead roles. Mill's plan to save the movie has worked and he is head of the studio. June is now Mill's wife and pregnant with his child. Bonnie objects to the film's new ending and is fired by Levy. Mill rebuffs her when she appeals her termination to him. Mill receives a pitch over the phone from Levy and a man who reveals himself as the postcard writer. The man pitches an idea about a studio executive who kills a writer and gets away with murder. Impressed, Mill gives the writer a deal, if he can guarantee a happy ending in which the executive lives happily with the writer's widow. The writer's title for the film is The Player. ===== The story begins in Autumn of 1916, and follows an Irish immigrant named John Lawless (Tommy Steele) as he applies for a butler position with eccentric Philadelphia millionaire Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (Fred MacMurray). Even though the family is a bit strange, Lawless soon learns that he fits right in. Mr. Biddle takes a liking to him immediately. For the rest of the film, Lawless serves as the narrator/commentator. Mr. Biddle busies himself with his Biddle Boxing and Bible School (located in his stable) and with his alligators in the conservatory. He is also anxious to get America into the War in Europe (World War I), despite the government's policy of neutrality. His wife, Cordelia (Greer Garson), stands quietly by, accepting his eccentricities with a sense of pride and class. Their two sons, Tony and Livingston (Paul Petersen and Eddie Hodges, respectively) are headed off to boarding school, never to be seen in the film again. Their daughter, Cordy (Lesley Ann Warren, in her film debut), is a tomboy with a mean right hook who was educated by private tutors and has had limited contact with conventional society. She is frustrated by her apparent inability to attract suitors and wants to see what is beyond the Biddle manor. Mr. Biddle reluctantly lets Cordy go to a boarding school as well (after some prodding from both Cordy and from his Aunt Mary (Gladys Cooper), where her roommate teaches her how to lure men with feminine wiles, known as "Bye-Yum Pum Pum". At a social dance hosted by her aunt and uncle, Cordy meets Angier Buchanan Duke (John Davidson, in his film debut) and they fall in love. He tells Cordy that he is fascinated with the new automobile and wants to head to Detroit, Michigan to make his fortune there, instead of taking over his family's tobacco business. That winter, Cordy comes back to her parents' home and tells them that she is engaged. At first, this is a difficult thing for Mr. Biddle to take. He does not want to give up his little girl. But, after meeting Angie and witnessing first-hand his Jiu Jitsu fighting skills, Mr. Biddle takes a liking to him and accepts the engagement. Then Cordy travels with Angie to New York City to meet his mother (Geraldine Page). Soon the Biddles and the Dukes are making arrangements for a very grand wedding. Constant condescending comments from Angie's mother angers Cordy. To make matters worse, their families' elaborate planning for the "social event of the season" (it is by now the spring of 1917), makes both Cordy and Angie feel pushed aside. The tension reaches a climax when Cordy learns that Angie has abandoned his plans for Detroit, and is instead taking his place in the family business, following his mother's wishes. Cordy angrily calls the wedding off, thinking of Angie as a mama's boy, and Angie storms out of the house. Both families are instantly in a tremendous state of upheaval. Mr. Biddle sends John Lawless to look after Angie. John finds Angie at the local tavern, contemplating what he will do next. During a rousing song-and-dance sequence, John tries to convince Angie to go back to Cordy. However, Angie is stubborn and thinks of other ways to deal with his problems, among other things saying that he wants to join the Foreign Legion. Angie unwittingly starts a bar fight (with a little help from John) and is hauled off to jail. The next morning, Mr. Biddle comes to bail Angie out. He tells Angie he has to forget about his own dreams and accept his place in the family business. His words have the desired effect, inspiring Angie to defy his mother and elope with Cordy and go to Detroit. Cordy, however, believes her father talked Angie into it, so to prove his sincerity, amid the cheering of the cell mates, Angie throws Cordy over his shoulder and carries her out of the jail house to start their new life together. (The short version of the film ends at this point.) After Mr. and Mrs. Biddle return home a delegation of Marines arrive to inform him he has been made a "provisional captain" in the Marine Corps; and is wanted immediately to go to Parris Island to help/continue training the recruits, now that America is finally entering the War. Mr. Biddle accepts with delight, and the hearty congratulations of his suddenly appearing Bible Boxing Class. Behind the final credits, a car with two people (apparently Cordie and Angie) is seen driving toward a city skyline (apparently Detroit) dominated by factories spewing smoke to blacken the sky over the city. ===== The main plot appears in linear prose in chapter VII, The Mayan Caper. This chapter portrays a secret agent who has the ability to change bodies or metamorphose his own body using "U.T." (undifferentiated tissue). As such an agent he makes a time travel machine and takes on a gang of Mayan priests who use the Mayan calendar to control the minds of slave laborers used for planting maize. The calendar images are written in books and placed on a magnetic tape and transmitted as sounds to control the slaves. The agent manages to infiltrate the slaves and replace the magnetic tape with a totally different message: "burn the books, kill the priests", which causes the downfall of their regime. ===== Goofy is setting up an animal trap while Donald is in an igloo preparing a meal. Donald explains how sick he is of eating beans all the time, and, while noticing a penguin outside, he hatches a plan while thinking of the penguin as roast chicken. The rest of the cartoon deals with him trying to lure a large group of penguins into his pot while Goofy is stuck trying desperately to catch a walrus. The name of Donald's and Goofy's trapping business is "Donald & Goofy Trapping Co". Their slogan is "We Bring 'Em Back Alive". This is Donald's first time encountering penguins, but it is not his last. The music played while Donald leads the penguins is the instrumental piece "March of the Toys", from the operetta "Babes in Toyland", also known as Parade Of The Tin Soldiers. When a baby penguin's tear turned into a snowball, after being kicked out of the march angrily by Donald after the small penguin kept on getting in front of him and the fact that Donald doesn't want to cook the small penguin due to its size, the other penguins notice the snowball coming and quickly dived into the snow for safety, but Donald runs for his life. When he gets into a collision with Goofy, they both run for their lives until they get caught in the snowball, and fall on their workplace, completely destroying it. Donald and Goofy are then seen in the cages they brought for the animals they plan to catch, and a can of beans falls into Donald's mouth, making him grumble in anger when the show ends. ===== One year has passed since the events of the first film. Aladdin and Abu have settled in the palace with Princess Jasmine and her father, the Sultan. Still yearning for adventures, Aladdin foils the robbery of a criminal group, stealing their loot and returning it to the people of Agrabah. Meanwhile, in the desert, Iago escapes from Jafar's lamp and, tired of being taken for granted by Jafar, refuses to heed Jafar's demands to free him. After throwing the lamp into a well, Iago returns to Agrabah, hoping to get close to Aladdin and return to the palace. During a confrontation with Aladdin and Abu, the three are attacked by the thieves from before, and Iago inadvertently saves Aladdin's life. In gratitude, Aladdin keeps Iago on the palace grounds, promising to speak with the Sultan on Iago's behalf. Meanwhile, the ruthless leader of the thieves, Abis Mal accidentally finds and takes possession of Jafar after finding his lamp in the well. Hindered by his incompetent master, Jafar manipulates Abis Mal into wasting his first two wishes and enlists his help in taking revenge on Aladdin, in exchange for granting him a special third wish. Abis Mal agrees, still desiring revenge on Aladdin. At the palace, the Genie returns after seeing the world for a whole year, having missed his friends greatly. At the evening banquet, the Sultan announces his intention to make Aladdin his new grand vizier. Iago is revealed, however, when Abu and Rajah chase him into the banquet. Aladdin desperately speaks up for Iago and tries to convince the Sultan to pardon him, but Jasmine is left heartbroken that Aladdin didn't confide in her. Genie and Iago help them reconcile, and Jasmine agrees to give Iago a chance. The Sultan, however, grows suspicious of Aladdin for defending Iago, but agrees to issue a temporary pardon for Iago, with the stipulation that Aladdin is to keep an eye on him. As Iago begins to grow fond of Aladdin, Jafar sneaks into the palace with Abis Mal's help and confronts Iago, forcing him to help Jafar take revenge on Aladdin. Iago reluctantly agrees and arranges a trip for Aladdin and the Sultan to a waterfall. Jafar captures Genie and Abu and then goes for the Sultan, locking them all in the dungeon. Jafar then frames Aladdin for the Sultan's alleged murder by posing as Jasmine and sentencing him to execution. Iago waits until the coast is clear and frees the Genie, enabling him to save Aladdin in time. Though Agrabah is now under Jafar's control, and realizing that Jafar is too dangerous to be left alive, Aladdin vows to stop him by destroying his lamp, which is the only way to kill Jafar, while Iago decides to leave. Aladdin and the group confront Jafar in the treasure room just before Abis Mal can wish him free. Abis Mal gets kicked in a tree by Jafar, realizes that his third wish will never be granted, and swears revenge on Aladdin and his friends. Meanwhile, Jafar transforms into his Genie form, incapacitates the Genie, shatters Carpet, splits open the Palace gardens and creates a pool of lava where he traps Aladdin on a sinking rock. Iago returns and grabs the lamp, and though he is severely injured by Jafar, he stays conscious long enough to kick the lamp into the lava where it melts, destroying Jafar once and for all. Aladdin rescues Iago and they all get to safety as Jafar's magic is undone, restoring the Palace gardens and Carpet. With Jafar gone, Iago is adopted by Aladdin and officially accepted into the palace, but Aladdin ultimately declines the Sultan's offer to become the vizier, instead opting to see the world with Jasmine, much to Iago's chagrin. ===== Set in the 1860s, the novel is about a lively eleven-year-old tomboy named Caroline Augusta Woodlawn, nicknamed "Caddie", living in the area of Dunnville, Wisconsin. As a young girl she made the journey from Boston to Dunnville with her family, one which nearly cost her life. Sickly and weak, she is allowed to run wild with her brothers, Tom and Warren, to regain her health. They spend much of their time exploring the woods and rivers that surround their farm. The book opens with Caddie, late for dinner after an excursion to visit the local Indian tribe, embarrassing her mother with her antics. She, undaunted, spends the next year having a string of adventures and scares. From a midnight ride through the forest to warn her friend “Indian John” that the settlers are planning an attack, to a prairie fire that brings out the best in Obediah, a schoolhouse bully, to a life-threatening fall through a lake while ice skating, her life is far from boring. Things come to a head when “perfect” Cousin Annabelle from Boston arrives for a visit and Caddie is forced to confront her future. Tom and Warren, always a part of her adventures, come along for the journey. This story is full of practical jokes and touching moments like the long journey home of Nero, a beloved pet. It is the true story of a family's existence on the frontier during the Civil War, and offers insights into how life was lived in a small Wisconsin village where fear of local Indians was a reality and life and death situations arose with frightening regularity. The sequel, Magical Melons (1939), continues the story of Caddie and her family. ===== On location during filming of Remembrance The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive in Shoreditch in 1963. They meet a military unit led by Group Captain Gilmore and Sergeant Smith, tracking abnormal local magnetic fluctuations, originating mainly from Coal Hill School where a transmat device in its basement is tied to a Dalek ship in geostationary orbit. A second, weaker fluctuation is emitted by a grey Dalek in a nearby junkyard. Evidently, two Dalek factions are present: the Imperial Daleks on the orbiting mothership, controlling the school, and Renegade Daleks who reject the Emperor's authority. Both sides seek the Hand of Omega, a Time Lord device the Doctor left on Earth during his first visit to 1963. Smith is a secret associate of Ratcliffe, the leader of a group of fascists, reporting to a Renegade battle computer, which also uses a schoolgirl as its eyes and ears. The Doctor has the Hand buried in a local cemetery as a ruse, but it is soon unearthed by Ratcliffe, tipped off by Smith. Imperial Daleks arrive to seize it from the Renegades, but the Doctor and Ace defeat them and destroy their transmat. Anticipating a siege, the Doctor has Gilmore fortify the school while he tries to retrieve the Hand. He fails, but disables the Renegade "time controller", fleeing with Daleks in pursuit, returning just as the Imperial Daleks land. They rout the Renegades, wiping out all but a Supreme Dalek, allowing Ratcliffe and Smith to escape with the controller, pursued by the schoolgirl, who kills Ratcliffe. The Imperial Daleks take the Hand to the mothership, leaving for their home planet, Skaro. Ace follows Smith to recover the controller. The Doctor establishes communication with the Dalek Emperor, who is really their creator, Davros, who means to destroy the Time Lords with the Hand. The Doctor mocks him, but then feigns fear. Davros launches the Hand, Skaro's sun goes supernova, and Skaro is destroyed, the force of the explosion also wrecking the mothership. The Hand returns to Gallifrey. Smith captures and attempts to kill Ace, but the schoolgirl finds them and kills Smith first. The Doctor persuades the Supreme Dalek to relinquish control of the girl, as, with Skaro gone, so is its purpose. The Supreme self-destructs, and the girl screams and faints. At Smith's funeral, Ace asks the Doctor if what they have done was good, to which he responds: "Time will tell". ===== Dr. Who, his granddaughters Susan and Barbara, and Barbara's boyfriend Ian are accidentally transported to another planet by Dr. Who's latest invention, a time and space machine called Tardis. While exploring, the travellers see a city in the distance. They also find a small container of drugs which they take aboard Tardis. Wishing to investigate further, Dr. Who fakes a leak in a fluid link, a vital component of Tardis, to ensure that the group will go to the city to search for the mercury supposedly needed to refill the component. Once in the city they are captured by cyborg creatures which refer to themselves as "Daleks", who seize the fluid link for examination. Dr. Who then realises that the group have contracted radiation sickness, and that the drugs they discovered earlier may be their only hope of survival. While covertly observing the captives, the Daleks discuss their own plight. They are trapped inside their metal casings, and within the city, by the radiation. They wish to leave so that they can destroy all other life and claim the planet for themselves. Hearing the captives discussing the drugs, the Daleks make a proposal to them. If the humans bring the drugs they found to them, they will allow them enough to treat themselves. Susan goes, being the only one still strong enough to undertake the task. Reaching Tardis Susan collects the drugs and then encounters Alydon, leader of the Thals, a species that fought the Daleks in an atomic war centuries previously. Alydon gives Susan a second container of anti-radiation drugs to use if the Daleks fail to keep their promise. When Susan returns the Daleks discover the second drug supply, but allow the humans to treat themselves with it. Susan explains to her companions that, according to Alydon, the Thal crops have failed and they have come to the Dalek city, hoping to trade the anti-radiation drug formula for food. Again overhearing this conversation, the Daleks decide that they don't need the Thals now that they have a sample of the drug. They get Susan to write a letter which they will leave for the Thals, stating that they will provide food, to be collected from the city, as an act of friendship. When Susan finishes the letter, the Daleks reveal that they plan to kill all of the Thals when they arrive. When a Dalek enters their cell the travellers manage to disable it. Once free, they are able to warn the Thals who are entering the city, and escape with them into the jungle. The Daleks then test the Thal anti-radiation drug but find that it causes disastrous side effects. Thwarted, they decide to detonate a neutron bomb to increase the planet's radiation to a level which even the Thals cannot survive. Back at the Thal camp, Dr. Who realises that the travellers are trapped on the planet as the Daleks still have the fluid link, and he will need the Thals' help to recover it. He urges Alydon to fight the Daleks to save his species but he refuses, insisting that the Thals are now peaceful. In response, Dr. Who pretends to order Ian to take a Thal woman to the Daleks in exchange for the confiscated component. Horrified, Alydon attacks Ian, then realises that the Thals can fight for things they care about. Alydon, Dr. Who and Susan then lead the Thals in an attack on the city, but the Daleks repel the assault and Dr. Who and Susan are recaptured. Meanwhile, Ian, Barbara and a small group of Thals infiltrate the Dalek city from the rear. Once inside they join the rest of the Thals, who have mounted a frontal assault to rescue Dr. Who and Susan. The Thals and humans enter the control room, where the Daleks have started the bomb countdown. During the ensuing struggle the Daleks inadvertently destroy their main control console, which kills them by cutting their power and stops the bomb detonation. Back in the jungle, with the fluid link recovered, the travellers depart in Tardis to return home. ===== Policeman Tom Campbell comes upon several men burgling a jewellery shop. Running to what appears to be a police box to call for backup, he enters Tardis, a time and space machine operated by its inventor Dr. Who, together with his niece Louise and granddaughter Susan, as they are about to depart for the future. Arriving in London in the year 2150, they find a desolate landscape of ruined buildings. It transpires that the Daleks, who Dr. Who and Susan encountered in Dr. Who and the Daleks, have invaded Earth and ravaged the planet. Some of the survivors have formed a resistance movement, while those captured have either been turned into brainwashed slaves called Robomen, or taken to provide forced labour at a Dalek mining complex in Bedfordshire. Dr. Who and Tom become separated from Louise and Susan, are captured by a squad of Robomen and imprisoned on a Dalek spaceship. Dr. Who manages to release the cell's lock, unaware that the Daleks use escape attempts to test their captives’ suitability for robotisation. Meanwhile, a man called Wyler takes Louise and Susan to a resistance base in a London Underground station, where they meet other rebels including David and the wheelchair-bound Dortmun. Dortmun suggests disguising some rebels as Robomen to get onto the Dalek spaceship and using bombs to attack it from inside. On the spaceship, Dr. Who and Tom are recaptured and taken to be robotised when the rebels, including David, Wyler and Louise, attack it. During the battle, Dr. Who and Tom free themselves. Dr. Who escapes with David, while Tom and Louise become trapped on the spaceship. After the attack fails, Wyler returns to the base where Dortmun and Susan are waiting and tells them that he saw Dr. Who escape. They decide to go to the outskirts of London and hide there until the rebels can regroup. Susan leaves a written message about their intentions for Dr. Who, then they depart and commandeer a van. Dortmun is killed when they encounter a Dalek patrol, however, and Wyler and Susan are forced to abandon the vehicle just before it is destroyed. After escaping from the spaceship, Dr. Who and David evade the Daleks and return to the now deserted underground station. Failing to see the message left for them, they assume that Wyler, Dortmun and Susan have gone to Bedfordshire to investigate the mining operation and decide to follow them. Hiding on the Dalek spaceship, which has taken off bound for the Bedford mine, Tom and Louise are reunited. When the craft lands they exit it through a waste chute. Finding themselves in the mining complex, they are attacked by a Roboman but saved by one of the slave-workers, who hides the couple in a tool shed. Wyler and Susan shelter in a cottage, occupied by a woman and her mother. Susan convinces Wyler that Dr. Who would avoid the Daleks they have seen in the Watford area, head for the Bedfordshire mine instead, and that they must go there too. The daughter then leaves on an errand, but returns with Daleks who capture Wyler and Susan and take them to their mine control centre. Near the mine Dr. Who and David are confronted by Brockley, a black marketeer, who agrees to smuggle them into the complex. By chance, he leads them to the tool shed where Tom and Louise are hiding. Reunited, they are joined by a prisoner, Conway. He reveals that the Daleks are about to drop a bomb into their mineshaft to destroy the Earth's core. This will then be replaced with a device enabling the aliens to pilot the planet like a giant spacecraft. Plans of the mine show an old shaft leading to a convergence between the planet's magnetic poles. Realising that an explosion at this point would release enough energy to draw the metallic Daleks into the Earth's core, Dr. Who asks Tom and Conway to attempt to deflect the bomb. Brockley also leaves, declining to get involved, and Dr. Who sends Louise and David to help get the prisoners away from the mine. Brockley then betrays Dr. Who, leading a group of Daleks to him. As Dr. Who is led away the Daleks open fire on Brockley, killing him. As Tom and Conway work in the mineshaft to alter the bomb's trajectory, they are discovered by a Roboman. During the ensuing fight Conway and the Roboman fall to their deaths. Tom uses timbers boarding up the old shaft entrance to create a deflecting ramp, then rushes back the surface. Dr. Who is taken to the mine control room and meets Wyler and Susan. He seizes the radio link to the Robomen and orders them to turn against their masters. As the Robomen fight the Daleks, Dr. Who escapes with Wyler and Susan while the slave workers flee from the mine. The Daleks quickly defeat the rebellion and release their bomb into the shaft, but the device is deflected and detonates at the pole convergence. The Daleks are pulled into the Earth's core and destroyed while their spaceship, having just taken off, is brought crashing down onto the mine and explodes. Later, as the travellers prepare to return to the present in Tardis, Tom asks to be taken back to a few minutes before the burglary occurred. Upon arrival he knocks out the thieves and then drives them away in their getaway car, heading for the police station and an anticipated promotion. ===== David Gale is a professor on death row in Texas. With only a few days until his execution, his lawyer negotiates a half-million dollar fee to tell his story to Bitsey Bloom, a journalist from a major news magazine. She has a reputation of keeping secrets and protecting her sources. He tells her how he ended up on death row, revealed through a series of lengthy flashbacks. Gale is head of the philosophy department at the University of Austin and an active member of DeathWatch, an advocacy group campaigning against capital punishment. At a graduation party, he encounters Berlin, an attractive graduate student who had been expelled from the school. When Gale gets drunk at the party, she seduces him and they have sex. She then falsely accuses Gale of rape. The next day, he loses a televised debate with the Governor of Texas when he is unable to prove a demonstrably innocent man was executed during the governor's term. After losing the debate, Gale is arrested and charged with rape. While the rape charge against Gale is later dropped, the damage had already been done, and his family, marriage, university career and reputation are all destroyed. Constance Harraway, a fellow DeathWatch activist, is a close friend of Gale who consoles him after his life falls apart, and the pair have sex. However, the next day, Harraway is discovered raped and murdered, suffocated by a plastic bag taped over her head. An autopsy reveals that she had been forced to swallow the key to the handcuffs used to restrain her, a psychological torture technique used by the Securitate under the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, which Gale and Harraway had both protested against. The physical evidence at the crime scene points to Gale, who is convicted of rape and murder and is sentenced to death. In the present, Bloom investigates the case in between her visits with Gale. She comes to believe that the apparent evidence against Gale does not add up. She is tailed several times in her car by Dusty Wright, an alleged one-time lover and colleague of Harraway, who she suspects was the real killer. Wright slips evidence to Bloom that suggests Gale has been framed, implying that the actual murderer videotaped the crime. Bloom pursues this lead until she finds a tape revealing that Harraway, who was suffering from terminal leukemia, had committed an elaborate suicide made to look like murder. Wright is seen on the videotape, acting as her accomplice, implying that they framed Gale as part of a plan to discredit the death penalty by conspiring to execute an innocent person, and subsequently releasing evidence of the actual circumstances. Once Bloom and her aide find this evidence, only hours remain until Gale's scheduled execution. She tries to give the tape to the authorities in time to stop the execution. She arrives at the Huntsville Unit just as the warden announces that the execution has been carried out. The tape is subsequently released, causing a media and political uproar over the execution of an innocent man. Later, Wright receives the fee that Bloom's magazine agreed to pay for the interview, and delivers it to Gale's ex-wife in Spain, along with a postcard from Berlin in San Francisco apologizing, all but confessing that the rape accusation that derailed Gale's life and career was false. His ex-wife looks distraught, knowing Gale told the truth and that she effectively stole their child away from him. Much later still, a videotape labeled "Off the Record" is delivered to Bloom. This tape picks up at the point where Wright confirmed that Harraway was dead. It continues, showing him stepping aside to allow Gale, also present and party to the suicide, to caress the body of his lover, deliberately leaving his fingerprints on the plastic bag in the process. He then stands up and ends the recording, leaving Bloom stunned with the truth that the couple deliberately sacrificed themselves to discredit capital punishment. ===== The Ys series chronicles the adventures of Adol Christin, a young man with a zest for adventure and an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. Gameplay usually revolves around Adol, though his comrade, Dogi, is a frequent companion in his travels. The Darm Tower & The Tower of Rado A feature of the early Ys games is the Darm Tower (or Dahm Tower in some translations). In the story, it is an unfinished and deserted tower, built with the intention of touching the sky. The tower houses a small annex, titled "the Tower of Rado" (or simply "Rado's Annex") three quarters of the way up. According to in-game lore, the normally immortal ancient Ys aged because humans overused the magic power of an ancient artifact, known as the Black Pearl. The result of this misuse was evil magical energy bringing forth millions of cruel demons. The people of Ys fled to the Palace of Solomon and used the Black Pearl to lift the palace into the sky, creating a safe haven. The demons, focused on controlling the Black Pearl for their own intentions, began building the Darm Tower, day and night, attempting to connect to the Palace of Solomon with their construction. As in-game-events transpired, however, the demons' efforts were thwarted. Later games feature a variety of plots but frequently begin with a shipwreck, with a stranded Adol getting involved in the new area's events. ===== French edition The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), and originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890) before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise. The young migrant worker arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the bleak area of the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior, Étienne befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit. Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871). While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army that repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart. ===== Benson DuBois (Robert Guillaume) is hired to be the head of household affairs for widowed Governor Eugene X. Gatling (James Noble) and his daughter Katie (Missy Gold). Governor Gatling was a cousin of Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) from Soap. The series revolved around Benson's housekeeping dilemmas and his interactions with German cook Gretchen Wilomena Kraus (Inga Swenson) and John Taylor (David Hedison in the pilot episode, then Lewis J. Stadlen), who assisted Governor Gatling as chief of staff. After the first season, Taylor's job was filled by Clayton Endicott III (René Auberjonois). The governor's press secretary Pete Downey (Ethan Phillips) was introduced in Season 2, and Benson's secretary Denise Stevens (Didi Conn) was introduced in Season 3. They later married, having a child in the show's fifth season. However, both were written out, with the reason given that Denise secured a job with NASA. Benson worked his way up the ladder during the series, going from head of household affairs to state budget director, and eventually was elevated to the position of lieutenant governor. During the final episodes of the 1985–86 season, Benson ran for governor against Gatling. ===== The series describes the various trials of Miaka Yūki and Yui Hongo, two middle-school students. While at the library one day, Miaka and Yui encounter a strange book known as The Universe of the Four Gods. Reading this book transports them into the novel's universe in ancient China. Yui is transported back to the real world almost immediately, but Miaka finds herself the Priestess of Suzaku. Miaka is destined to gather the seven Celestial Warriors of the god Suzaku in order to summon Suzaku and obtain three wishes. She falls in love with the Celestial Warrior Tamahome, who eventually reciprocates and Miaka's desire to use a wish to enter the high school of her choice begins to shift towards finding a way to be with Tamahome. Yui is also drawn into the book when she tries to help Miaka to come back to the real world; becoming the Priestess of Seiryuu, working against Miaka out of jealousy over Tamahome and revenge for the humiliation and pain she had suffered when she first came into the book's world. ===== The Vicomte de Valmont is determined to seduce the virtuous, married, and therefore inaccessible Madame de Tourvel, who is staying with Valmont's aunt while her husband is away on a court case. At the same time, the Marquise de Merteuil is determined to corrupt the young Cécile de Volanges, whose mother has only recently brought her out of a convent to be married—to Merteuil's previous lover, who has rudely discarded her. Cécile falls in love with the Chevalier Danceny (her young music tutor), and Merteuil and Valmont pretend to help the secret lovers in order to gain their trust and manipulate them later to benefit their own schemes. Merteuil suggests that the Vicomte should seduce Cécile in order to enact her revenge on Cécile's future husband. Valmont refuses, finding the challenge too easy and preferring to devote himself to seducing Madame de Tourvel. Merteuil promises Valmont that if he seduces Madame de Tourvel and provides her with written proof of seduction, she will spend the night with him. He expects rapid success, but does not find it as easy as his many other conquests. During the course of his pursuit, Valmont discovers that Cécile's mother has written to Madame de Tourvel about his bad reputation. He avenges himself by seducing Cécile as Merteuil had suggested. Meanwhile, Merteuil takes Danceny as her lover. By the time Valmont has succeeded in seducing Madame de Tourvel, he seems to have fallen in love with her. Jealous, Merteuil tricks him into deserting Madame de Tourvel—and reneges on her promise of spending the night with him. In retaliation, Valmont reveals that he prompted Danceny to reunite with Cécile, leaving Merteuil abandoned yet again. Merteuil declares war on Valmont and reveals to Danceny that Valmont has seduced Cécile. Danceny and Valmont duel, and Valmont is fatally wounded. Before he dies, he gives Danceny the letters proving Merteuil's own involvement. These letters are sufficient to ruin her reputation so she flees to the countryside, where she contracts smallpox. Her face is left permanently scarred and she is rendered blind in one eye, so she loses her greatest asset: her beauty. But the innocent also suffer from the protagonist's schemes: desperate with guilt and grief, Madame de Tourvel succumbs to a fever and dies, while Cécile returns to the convent, dishonoured. Illustration by Fragonard for Letter XLIV, 1796 ===== Two young motocross racers, Rien (Hans van Tongeren) and Hans (Maarten Spanjer), and their mechanic, Eef (Toon Agterberg), dream of fame, fortune and casual sex. Their hero is legendary motocross champion Gerrit Witkamp (Rutger Hauer), who inspires their competitive drives. Their lives are changed when they meet a young seductress named Fientje (Renée Soutendijk). Eventually, she makes the three men face the reality of success, defeat and homosexuality. ===== ===== A body is discovered on a collective farm during harvesting in 1982. A subsequent search of adjacent woods, authorized by newly installed forensic specialist, Viktor Burakov, turns up seven more bodies in varying stages of decomposition. The film tells the story of the subsequent eight-year hunt by Burakov for the serial killer responsible for the mutilation and murder of 53 people, 52 of them below the age of 35. Burakov is promoted to detective and eventually aided, covertly at first, by Col. Mikhail Fetisov, his commanding officer and the shrewd head of the provincial committee for crime, and, much later, by Alexandr Bukhanovsky, a psychiatrist with a particular interest in what he calls "abnormal psychology". As well as taking on the form of a crime thriller, the movie depicts Soviet propaganda and bureaucracy that contributed to the failure of law enforcement agencies to capture the killer, Andrei Chikatilo, for almost a decade. Chikatilo's crimes were not reported publicly for years. Local politicians were fearful such revelations would have a negative impact on the USSR's image, since serial killers were associated with Western moral corruption. Chikatilo first came under scrutiny early in the search when he was spotted at a station and found holding a satchel bag containing a knife. He was promptly arrested. Unfortunately, he was shielded from investigation and released due to his membership in the Communist Party. Additionally, the Soviet crime labs erroneously reported that his blood type did not match that found at the murders. All this changed under the political reforms of glasnost and Perestroika, and the search for the killer began to make progress. With the passage of time and easing of political restrictions, Burakov devises a plan to blanket almost all the railroad stations, where the serial killer preys upon the young and unsuspecting, with conspicuous uniformed men to discourage the killer. Three small stations, however, are left unattended, except for undercover agents. Chikatilo is eventually discovered and identified through the diligence of a local, plainclothes soldier. Arrested, Andrei Chikatilo is interrogated for seven consecutive days by Gorbunov, a Soviet hardliner who insists that he be the one to extract a confession. Chikatilo will not yield and, under pressure from Fetisov and Burakov, Gorbunov agrees to another approach. Psychiatrist Bukhanovsky is introduced into the interview room. He recites from his lengthy analysis and speculation, made three years earlier, of the personality and tendencies of this sexually frustrated killer, whom he had entitled "Citizen X". Bukhanovsky eventually strikes a nerve, and a weeping Chikatilo finally admits his guilt and answers specific questions about the details of some murders. Afterwards, Chikatilo leads law enforcement officials to the crime scenes and three additional undetected graves. Held in a metal cage during his trial, a wild- eyed Chikatilo is convicted and sentenced to death. The film concludes with Chikatilo being led to a nameless prison chamber and shows him staring in shock at a central drain in the room's floor as a uniformed soldier delivers a pistol shot to the back of the killer's head. ===== Corinne Burns is a 17-year-old girl whose mother has recently died from lung cancer. Working in a fast food restaurant to help support herself and her younger sister, Corinne is interviewed by a local television station for a story about her town's dwindling economy amidst the Early 1980s recession. During the interview, Corinne becomes angry and belligerent towards the reporter, eventually lashing out at her overbearing and condescending boss and getting fired. The segment resonates with the station's teenage viewers, who see Corinne as a kindred spirit. The station does a follow-up interview, which primarily consists of Corinne acting flippant and making sarcastic remarks to the journalist. However, she does manage to slip in a plug for her garage band "The Stains", which consists of her, her sister Tracy, and their cousin Jessica. Emboldened by appearing on television, Corinne attends a concert put on by small-time promoter Lawnboy, featuring the washed-up metal band the Metal Corpses and their opening act, an up-and-coming punk band called the Looters. Eager to end hostilities between the jaded Metal Corpses and the hedonistic Looters, Lawnboy signs the Stains without having heard them perform. Corinne and the Stains join the tour, witnessing firsthand the bands' animosity towards one another, largely the result of the conflict between the aging Lou, the frontman for the Metal Corpses, and Billy, the Looters' volatile lead singer. At their first show, the Stains prove to be completely inept as a band: Neither Jessica nor Tracy can play instruments, and Corinne sings in an off-key monotone. The audience reacts angrily, prompting Corinne to lash out at them for a variety of real and perceived faults. After the show, the Metal Corpses' guitar player Jerry is found dead in the bathroom, and the band leaves the tour. Lawnboy makes the Looters the new headliners with the Stains as their opening act. A dissatisfied Billy asks Lawnboy to replace the Stains as soon as possible. At their next show, Corinne debuts a new, more extreme punk look, with hair dyed to resemble a skunk and a see- through blouse worn over a pair of bikini briefs. Announcing that she "never puts out," she goes on another tirade, grabbing more media attention. While male journalists focus on Corinne's antisocial attitude and the band's lack of talent, female journalists understand Corinne's rants as calls for female empowerment and hail the Stains as a new voice of feminism. Soon the Stains become a national sensation, with girls all over the country emulating Corinne in every way possible, from dyeing their hair to running away from home. During a tour stop at a motel, Billy attempts to seduce Corinne by sharing his feelings about the band and his alleged private shame of illiteracy. Over the course of their conversation, Billy recites the lyrics to a song, "Join the Professionals" which sums up his most personal feelings about the state of the world. At their next stop, the band is met by Lawnboy's agent, Dave Robell, with the intended replacement act for the Stains (Black Randy and the Metrosquad). Although Billy tells Corinne that he only wanted her replaced early on in the tour, Corinne lashes out at him, and at the Stains' next show, they play a cover version of Billy's song, which skyrockets the band to even further stardom. With Robell's encouragement, Corinne signs a new contract, cutting Lawnboy out of any royalties and making the Stains the new headliners of the tour. At the next show, Billy delivers a speech to the crowd about how the Stains have betrayed their "never put out" mantra by becoming corporate sell outs. When the Stains come onstage, the fans riot, and Corinne is attacked by a girl with a tube of hair dye. The tour becomes a financial disaster and Robell cancels the Stains' contract. Corinne responds by threatening him with a bottle opener and taking the money he's been withholding from her; Corinne then presents it to Lawnboy as an apology. The next morning, Corinne appears on television, where a journalist chastises her for having been a poor role model to her fans. Billy apologizes for ruining Corinne's career and asks her to come back as the Looters' opening act. Corinne refuses; as she wanders the streets, she overhears a radio broadcast identifying the Stains' first song as a hit record. Some time in the future, the Stains make their MTV debut, having become a successful act on Lawnboy's new record label. ===== All Over the Guy is about Eli (Dan Bucatinsky) and Tom (Richard Ruccolo). The film is told mostly in flashback, with Eli recounting his side to Esther (Doris Roberts), an HIV clinic worker as he waits for test results and Tom to a guy he meets at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Tom is the son of emotionally distant alcoholic WASP parents who never quite accepted his sexual orientation and as a result is a heavy drinker himself and has a penchant for random hookups with different men. Eli's parents are both Jewish psychiatrists who raised him to be emotionally open but ended up making him neurotic. Tom and Eli are set up on a blind date by their best friends, Jackie (Sasha Alexander) and Brett (Adam Goldberg), who think they would be a perfect match. They're both looking for 'The One', but don't recognize it when they find it. On the date, a boring evening is broken up only by an amusing diatribe by Tom against the movie In & Out. A few days later they run into each other at a flea market and hit it off, winding up back at Eli's place where Tom spends the night. The next morning Tom says that it was a mistake. Jackie and Brett decide to try again to set them up, and the two men start to develop a relationship. Tom's fear of becoming emotionally close coupled with Eli's own insecurities makes it difficult for them to maintain, but Jackie and Brett get engaged which forces Tom and Eli together. They disguise their unease behind petty arguments over meaningless details of grammar and pronunciation but are finally able to push past the pettiness and make love. Eli tells Tom he loves him and Tom, terrified, lashes out at him the next day and drives him away. The flashbacks end here on the day of Brett and Jackie's wedding. Esther tries to teach Eli to be more understanding of Tom's emotional needs. The AA member tries to sexually assault Tom, and when he tells Jackie she upbraids him for throwing Eli away for daring to fall for him. At the reception, Eli and Tom come to realize that they have to overcome their families' dysfunction and their own fears. ===== On the planet Krypton, Jor-El of the Kryptonian high council discovers that the planet will be destroyed when its red supergiant sun goes supernova. Despite this, the other council members dismiss his claims. To save Kal-El, his infant son, Jor-El sends him in a spaceship to Earth, where his dense molecular structure will give him superhuman strength and other powers. Krypton's sun explodes, destroying the planet. The ship lands near Smallville, Kansas. Kal-El, who is now three years old, is found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, who are astonished when he lifts their truck. Taking him back to their farm, they decide to raise him as their own, naming him Clark after Martha's maiden name. Jonathan tells the boy that he must have been given superhuman powers on Earth for "a reason". At age 18, after Jonathan's death from a heart attack, Clark hears a psychic "call" and discovers a glowing green crystal in the remains of his spacecraft. It compels him to travel to the Arctic where it builds the Fortress of Solitude, resembling the architecture of Krypton. Inside, a hologram of Jor-El explains Clark's true origins, and after 12 further years of educating him on his reason for being sent to Earth and his powers, he leaves the Fortress wearing a blue and red suit with a red cape and the House of El family crest emblazoned on his chest. Becoming a reporter at the Daily Planet in Metropolis, Clark meets and develops a romantic attraction to coworker Lois Lane. Lois becomes involved in a helicopter accident where conventional means of rescue are impossible. Clark uses his powers in public for the first time to save her, to the astonishment of the crowd gathered below. He then goes on to thwart a jewel thief attempting to scale the Solow Building, captures robbers fleeing police, rescues a girl's cat from a tree, and saves Air Force One after a lightning strike destroys an engine. The "caped wonder", an instant celebrity, visits Lois at her penthouse apartment the next night and takes her for a flight, allowing her to interview him for an article in which she names him "Superman". Meanwhile, Criminal genius Lex Luthor learns of a joint U.S. Army and U.S. Navy nuclear missile test. He buys hundreds of acres of worthless desert land and reprograms one of the two missiles to detonate in the San Andreas Fault. Knowing Superman could stop his plan, Lex deduces that a recently discovered meteorite is from Krypton and is radioactive to Superman. After he and his accomplices Otis and Eve Teschmacher retrieve a piece of it, Luthor lures Superman to his underground lair and reveals his plan to cause everything west of the San Andreas Fault to sink into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Luthor's desert land as the new West Coast of the United States. Luthor then exposes him to the meteor piece's mineral, Kryptonite, which weakens Superman greatly as Luthor taunts him about the second missile, headed east towards the random target of Hackensack, New Jersey. Teschmacher is horrified because her mother lives in Hackensack, but Luthor does not care and leaves Superman to die. Knowing his reputation for keeping his word, Teschmacher helps him on the condition he will stop the eastbound missile first. After being freed, Superman diverts the eastbound missile into outer space, consequently preventing him from reaching the westbound missile before it explodes in the San Andreas Fault. Massive earthquakes erupt across California, damaging the Golden Gate Bridge and breaching the Hoover Dam. Superman mitigates the effects of the explosion by sealing the fault line. While Superman is busy saving others, Lois's car falls into a crevice from one of the aftershocks, trapping her as it fills with dirt and debris. Superman is unable to reach her in time, and she suffocates. Angered with failing to save her, Superman defies Jor-El's earlier warning not to manipulate human history, preferring to heed Jonathan's advice that he must be here for "a reason". He accelerates around Earth, traveling several minutes backward in time to prevent Lois's death while also undoing the damage caused by the missile and earthquake. After saving the West Coast, Superman brings Luthor and Otis to prison, and flies into the sunrise for further adventures. ===== Innokentii Volodin, a diplomat, makes a telephone call to an old family doctor (Dobrumov) he feels obliged by conscience to make, even though he knows he could be arrested. His call is taped and the NKVD seek to identify who has made the call. The sharashka prisoners, or zeks, work on technical projects to assist state security agencies and generally pander to Stalin's increasing paranoia. While most are aware of how much better off they are than "regular" gulag prisoners (some of them having come from gulags themselves), some are also conscious of the overwhelming moral dilemma of working to aid a system that is the cause of so much suffering. As Lev Rubin is given the task of identifying the voice in the recorded phone call, he examines printed spectrographs of the voice and compares them with recordings of Volodin and five other suspects. He narrows it down to Volodin and one other suspect, both of whom are arrested. By the end of the book, several zeks, including Gleb Nerzhin, the autobiographical hero, choose to stop co-operating, even though their choice means being sent to much harsher camps. Volodin, initially crushed by the ordeal of his arrest, begins to find encouragement at the end of his first night in prison. The book also briefly depicts several Soviet leaders of the period, including Stalin himself, who is depicted as vain and vengeful, remembering with pleasure the torture of a rival, dreaming of one day becoming emperor of the world, or listening to his subordinate Viktor Abakumov and wondering: "...has the day come to shoot him yet?" ===== Muriel Heslop, a socially awkward young woman, is the target of ridicule by her shallow and egotistical "friends," Tania, Cheryl, Janine, and Nicole. She spends her time listening to ABBA songs and perpetually daydreams of a glamorous wedding to get her out of the dead-end town of Porpoise Spit and away from her domineering father, Bill, a corrupt politician who constantly belittles his wife, Betty, and five children. Muriel attends the wedding of Tania and Chook, during which she sees Chook and Nicole having sex in a laundry room. Wedding guest Dianne, a department store detective, calls the police on Muriel for stealing the dress she is wearing, and the police publicly escort Muriel out of the reception. Soon after, Bill's rumored mistress, Deidre Chambers, recruits Muriel into her multilevel marketing business, and Muriel's "friends" officially kick her out of their group after clarifying that she won't be accompanying them on an island holiday. Betty signs a blank cheque for Muriel to buy products for the cosmetics business, but Muriel instead uses the cheque to withdraw $12,000 and follow her former friends to the island anyway. There, Muriel runs into Rhonda Epinstall, an old high school acquaintance, and they quickly strike up a friendship, cemented when Rhonda gleefully tells Tania about Nicole and Chook. Muriel returns home and is confronted by Betty regarding the stolen money. Muriel immediately runs away to Sydney, sharing a flat with Rhonda and changing her name to Mariel. She gets a job at a video store and meets and briefly dates an awkward but kind man, Brice Nobes. One night, Rhonda suddenly falls down, apparently paralyzed. While at the hospital, Muriel calls home and learns her father is being investigated for taking bribes. Rhonda has a cancerous tumour in her spine and undergoes multiple operations, eventually leaving her permanently unable to walk. Muriel promises Rhonda to look after her and never let her go back to Porpoise Spit. She also uses Rhonda's health crisis to obtain pampered service at numerous bridal shops, trying on wedding dresses and taking photographs to indulge her wedding dreams. When Rhonda discovers what Muriel has done, Muriel finally confesses to her fixation on a storybook wedding, and they have an angry fight. Desperate, Muriel enters into a conspiracy to marry South African swimmer David Van Arkle so that he can join Team Australia in the upcoming Olympics; she is paid $10,000 by David's parents for her part in the scheme. At Muriel's elaborate wedding in Sydney, she shows off Tania, Cheryl, and Janine as her bridesmaids; Rhonda, disgusted by Muriel's behavior, refuses to be one. Bill openly treats Deidre as his date, and Betty arrives late to the wedding due to being unable to afford plane tickets; Muriel doesn't notice her at the wedding. Rhonda moves back to her mother's home, unable to live in Sydney without help. After the wedding, David makes his contempt for Muriel clear to her. In Porpoise Spit, an increasingly distraught Betty accidentally shoplifts a pair of sandals she tries on, and Dianne calls the police. Bill arranges for the charges to disappear. When Betty pleads with Bill that she needs help, he announces his intention to divorce her and marry Deidre. Betty is found dead by her daughter, Joanie. Deidre claims Betty had a heart attack; Joanie reveals to Muriel that Betty committed suicide. When Muriel breaks down at her mother's funeral, David comforts her, and they finally consummate their marriage. Her mother's death has forced Muriel to take a hard look at her life, and she asks David for a divorce as neither of them are in love. Bill asks Muriel to help raise her siblings, as Deidre no longer wants to marry him because she does not want to take care of his kids. He has also lost his job on city council. Muriel stands up to him, giving him $5,000 of her wedding money, saying that she will repay the rest of the amount she stole when she gets a job in Sydney. She impresses him with her more assertive personality, demanding that he immediately stop his verbally abusive treatment of her siblings. Muriel goes to Rhonda's house, where Muriel's former tormentors are condescendingly visiting, and offers to take her back to Sydney. Rhonda accepts and lets the other girls know what she thinks of them. Muriel and Rhonda head to the airport, happily leaving Porpoise Spit for a more promising future. ===== The story mode in Mario Party 5 is completely different from the story modes of Mario Party 3 and 4. Players face the Koopa Kid trio (red, green, and blue). The only way to defeat them and clear the board is to take all their coins away, mostly by beating them in minigames. Players must take all coins from a Koopa Kid to defeat him. If players lose all of the coins or don't defeat the Koopa Kids within fifteen turns, the game is over. After players win 5 boards, they face Bowser in a final stage mini- game called "Frightmare", which is a 1-on-1 mini-game with Bowser. There are 4 parts to the battle. First, players go against Mechakoopas (robotic versions of Koopa Troopas). Next, players have to move and jump around to avoid 3 rings of fire for a short time. Then players face Bowser directly; they must make him jump onto a tile 3 times to clear the third part. The final part of the minigame is the final battle, where Bowser grows. After throwing fireballs and hitting Bowser with them 5 times, the game is cleared and the final board is unlocked. Also, just like in Mario Party 3, the new playable characters are unplayable in this mode. ===== ===== NOTE: This is the plot of the 1994 Broadway revival of the show; there are differences from the original 1955 version. For the 1958 film version, see Damn Yankees (film). Middle-aged real estate agent Joe Boyd is a long-suffering fan of the pathetic Washington Senators baseball team. His wife, Meg, laments this ("Six Months Out Of Every Year"). After she has gone to bed, he sits up late, grumbling that if the Senators just had a "long ball hitter" they could beat "those damn Yankees". Suddenly, the smooth-talking Mr. Applegate appears. He offers Joe the chance to become "Joe Hardy", the young slugger the Senators need. He accepts, even though he must leave Meg ("Goodbye Old Girl"). However, his business sense makes him insist on an escape clause. The Senators' last game is on September 25, and if he plays in it, he is to stay as Joe Hardy forever. If not, he has until 9:00 the night before to walk away from the deal and return to his normal life. At the ballpark, the hapless Senators vow to play their best despite their failings ("Heart"). Then Joe Hardy is suddenly discovered and joins the team. Gloria, a reporter, praises him ("Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo"). His hitting prowess enables the team to move up in the standings. Though Joe is increasingly successful, he truly misses Meg and moves into her house as a boarder in his persona as Joe Hardy. They begin to bond, especially over her "lost" husband ("A Man Doesn't Know"). Fearful of losing his deal, Applegate calls Lola, "the best homewrecker on [his] staff", to seduce Joe and ensure his loss of the bet. She promises to deliver ("A Little Brains, A Little Talent"), and Applegate introduces her as a sultry South American dancer named "Señorita Lolita Banana." She sings a seductive song ("Whatever Lola Wants"), but Joe's devotion to Meg proves too strong, even for her. Applegate punishes her by firing her, where she performs with other past workers for Applegate ("Who's Got the Pain"). Applegate decides to switch tactics to ensure Joe's failure. He releases false information about Joe's true identity being "Shifty McCoy", an escaped criminal and con artist. When Gloria discovers this information, she presses charges, and he is forced into court. The Senators prepare for the final game against the Yankees for the pennant and worry about Joe, but they vow to think of nothing but winning ("The Game"). Meanwhile, angry fans are seeking him out, so he decides to leave home. As he does so, he tells Meg indirectly that he is her old husband ("Near to You"). Meanwhile, Applegate is exhausted by the work he has put into winning one bet and thinks about the "simpler" times in his long history ("Those Were the Good Old Days"). Joe's day in court is on September 24, the last day of his deal. As he technically does not exist, he can't produce any kind of identification. The owner of the Senators, their coach, and even Lola (disguised as "Señora McCoy") testify; unfortunately, their opinions are invalid. Gloria suggests that Applegate take the stand, but he is unable to take the oath due to its provision against lying. "Don't you have another version of that thing?" he asks. Joe realizes that Applegate is simply stalling to keep him from meeting his 9:00 deadline. Applegate claims that Joe "just needs time to think" and sends him to where Lola is, where history's most famous lovers wait. Lola meets him there and realizes that he truly loves Meg. She helps him by sending him into the final game and delays Applegate by coercing him into a duet ("Two Lost Souls"). When Applegate finally arrives at the game, it is 8:55, and Joe is at bat. As time runs out, Meg, her friends, and even Lola begin cheering for him. Applegate uses his powers to give Joe two strikes. The clock strikes nine, and Applegate claims victory, but at the last second, Joe cries, "Let me go!" The deal is broken, and he is transformed back into his old self. Amazingly, he is still able to hit a home run and win the Senators the pennant. Back at home, Joe rushes into Meg's arms. Applegate appears on the scene, claiming that Joe owes him his prize. He begs Meg to hold him and not let go, and she begins to sing ("Finale (A Man Doesn't Know)"). Applegate promises to make him young again and even ensure a World Series victory. But his powers are useless against their true love, which Lola points out. He shouts that such a thing can't exist, but he is wrong. He and Lola vanish back to where they came from, defeated, with Joe and Meg united. ===== "Count D" is the mysterious caretaker of a pet shop in Los Angeles Chinatown. Each of D's rare pets, which all have strangely humanoid appearances, comes with a contract with three major points. These points differ for each animal sold (although each animal's contract includes not showing it to anyone), and breaking this contract usually results in dire (and sometimes disturbing) consequences for the buyer, for which the pet shop claims no liability. Individual chapters of Pet Shop of Horrors are often based on these consequences, and are each written as a stand-alone story, usually introducing one or more new characters in each chapter. With the exception of the main characters and their families, it is rare for a character to carry over to a later chapter, providing the series with a very episodic nature. The detective Leon Orcot is used to tie the chapters together into an ongoing plot, usually in the form of a subplot within each chapter. Initially he suspects D of malicious criminal activity and using the pet shop as a front for drug trafficking. As the series progresses, he learns more about the pet shop and D himself, entering into a strange friendship of sorts with D as he works to uncover the truth. ===== ===== The author's first novel, it revolves around the protagonist Phaethon (full name Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodified (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconsciousness, Base Neuroformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043). The novel concerns Phaethon's discovery that parts of his past have been edited out of his mind—apparently by himself. ===== A man claiming to be Santa Claus arrives in Orlando, Florida, where Ernest P. Worrell is working as a taxicab driver. He picks up Santa, who tells Ernest that he is on his way to inform a local celebrity named Joe Carruthers that he has been chosen to be the new Santa Claus. Joe hosts a local children's program with emphasis on manners and integrity. While they are driving, a runaway teenage girl who says she is named Harmony Starr joins Ernest and Santa in the taxicab. When they get to their destination, Santa possesses no legal currency (only play money), so in his giving Christmas spirit, Ernest lets him ride for free. The decision gets Ernest fired from his job. Ernest later discovers that Santa left his magic sack in the taxicab, and Ernest begins a quest to find the old man and return it to him. At the Orlando Children's Museum, Santa tries talking to Joe, but is rudely interrupted and rebuffed by Joe's agent Marty Brock. Santa begins to worry when he discovers his sack is missing, and becomes more discouraged because of his increasing forgetfulness, a result of being 151 years old. Santa tries to explain his predicament, but Joe does not believe him and Marty has Santa arrested. Ernest poses as an employee of the governor with Harmony as the governor's niece, and the two help Santa escape from jail by convincing the police chief that Santa must be taken to an insane asylum. Santa explains to Ernest and Harmony that he was handed down the job of Santa Claus in 1889 and has enjoyed it ever since, but the magic grows weaker over time. The only way to restore its full strength is to pass it on to someone else which is why he must find Joe and make him the new Santa Claus by 7 pm. Ernest disguises himself as a snake rancher so he can sneak Santa into a movie studio. Marty presses Joe to quit his children's job and instead land a part in a horror film titled Christmas Slay, about an alien which terrorizes children on Christmas Eve, a concept that offends Santa so deeply he punches the director. Meanwhile, while all these events are taking place, two holding dock workers receive several large crates marked for release to "Helper Elves". The two dock workers argue over the shipping papers and the contents of the crates. The crates are revealed to contain flying reindeer. The dock workers seek help from the local animal control services only to be told that there is nothing animal control can do to help when they arrive and are shocked to see the reindeer walking on the ceiling of the warehouse. Santa later tracks down Joe at his home. He explains about passing the position of Santa Claus over to him because otherwise the magic will eventually die. Santa also explains that from Orlando, Joe must leave to deliver the presents by 7 pm; if he leaves any later, he will run into daylight before he finishes. Joe declines, but later is overcome by conscience when the film director wants him to use foul language, which he refuses to say in front of the children on the set. Ernest and Harmony (whose real name is later revealed by Santa to be Pamela Trenton) discover the magic power of Santa's sack, and Pamela starts to abuse it. She steals the sack, and attempts to run away again. However, on Christmas Eve, her conscience prevails, and she rushes back to find Ernest and Santa and return the sack. Ernest meets Santa's elves at the airport and they retrieve the reindeer from the dock workers and Santa's sleigh from the holding dock. Because they are short on time, Ernest decides to fly the sleigh to the children's museum, much to the helpers' objection. Having trouble controlling it at first, the reindeer and the sleigh fly all over the sky. At a meeting, Joe sees the reindeer and sleigh flying and it convinces him that everything Santa told him is real. Joe turns down the acting job and leaves to find Santa. Joe finds Santa at 6:57 pm at the children's museum and tells Santa that he wants the job. Very pleased, Santa transforms Joe into the new Santa Claus. The new Santa uses his new magic to make it snow in Orlando. Ernest and the helpers arrive at the museum at 6:58. Pamela has called her mother and has decided to come home. The new Santa decides to have Pamela be his special helper and then take her to her home, and allows Ernest to be the sleigh driver for the night. The old Santa resumes his former identity, Seth Applegate, and spends Christmas Eve with an elderly museum employee named Mary Morrissey. The new Santa takes off at 7 pm to deliver the gifts. An ending scene shows the two holding dock workers receiving a large crate with shipping papers marked "E. Bunny" and arguing over the name spelling when two large rabbit ears suddenly burst through the top of the crate just before the film credits begin to roll. ===== For two years, Tom and Amy Bates have been struggling to cope with their altered lives, after their daughter Pattie (or Patricia) was severely injured in a hit-and-run accident. Pattie is unable to walk, completely dependent upon others for the activities of daily living, and seemingly unable to communicate beyond making unintelligible sounds. Although poorly educated and gullible, Amy firmly believes that Pattie is able to understand what is being said in her presence, whereas Tom has given up all hope of her recovery. In fact, judging from the sounds she makes, Pattie seems to realise what is going on around her, but Tom is beyond noticing. One day on his way home from work he witnesses a handsome, well-dressed young man collapse in the street. Tom is among the passersby who offer to help him. The young man, who gives his name as Martin Taylor, quickly recovers. A few hours later he turns up at the Bates', handing Tom his wallet, which Martin pretends Tom lost in the general hubbub. Though the cash is gone, Tom's credit card is still there. Although Martin's true identity remains a mystery, Sting (who played Martin in the film production) has said that he believes him to be the Devil. From the moment he enters the house, he casts furtive and knowing glances at the audience (according to the stage directions) so they know at once that he is not what he pretends to be. He claims to have been Pattie's fiancé. He offers to be at Pattie's side despite the changed circumstances, and care for her for an unspecified period of time. Amy in particular jumps at the suggestion; she has not had an hour off since Pattie's accident and is stranded in the house without the chance to go even to the hairdressers or do some window-shopping. Tom is reluctant to accept Martin's help. He has always been very choosy about his daughter's friends, and as he cannot remember Pattie ever mentioning Martin's name, he does not want her to be left alone with what might well be a complete stranger. Eventually Martin wins him over by his excellent cooking and lip service to his bigotry; Tom has joined the National Front. At the first opportunity, Martin rapes the helpless Pattie (although in the film version, the rape comes late in the action, precipitating Pattie's return to consciousness shortly after he removes her nappy). When Amy comes back from the hairdressers she recognises a change in her daughter's facial expression, but attributes it to Martin's presence. However, when Martin tries to rape the disabled girl again after Tom and Amy have gone to bed, Pattie starts screaming so loudly that he runs out of the house. When they come to see what has happened to their daughter, they find that she has fully recovered from her disabilities, and though still confused, asks her father what has been happening to her. She also recovers her memories of the events preceding her accident, which result from her discovery of her father's infidelity. ===== Statue of Josef Švejk in Sanok, Poland The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I. Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. He is arrested by a member of the state police, Bretschneider, after making some politically insensitive remarks, and is sent to prison. After being certified insane he is transferred to a madhouse, before being ejected. Statue of Josef Švejk in Przemyśl, Poland. Švejk gets his charwoman to wheel him (he claims to be suffering from rheumatism) to the recruitment offices in Prague, where his apparent zeal causes a minor sensation. He is transferred to a hospital for malingerers because of his rheumatism. He finally joins the army as batman to army chaplain Otto Katz; Katz loses him at cards to Senior Lieutenant Lukáš, whose batman he then becomes. Lukáš is posted with his march battalion to barracks in České Budějovice, in Southern Bohemia, preparatory to being sent to the front. After missing all the trains to Budějovice, Švejk embarks on a long anabasis on foot around Southern Bohemia in a vain attempt to find Budějovice, before being arrested as a possible spy and deserter (a charge he strenuously denies) and escorted to his regiment. The regiment is soon transferred to Bruck an der Leitha, a town on the border between Austria and Hungary. Here, where relations between the two nationalities are somewhat sensitive, Švejk is again arrested, this time for causing an affray involving a respectable Hungarian citizen and engaging in a street fight. He is also promoted to company orderly. The unit embarks on a long train journey towards Galicia and the Eastern Front. Close to the front line, Švejk is taken prisoner by his own side as a suspected Russian deserter, after arriving at a lake and trying on an abandoned Russian uniform. Narrowly avoiding execution, he manages to rejoin his unit. The unfinished novel breaks off abruptly before Švejk has a chance to be involved in any combat or enter the trenches, though it appears Hašek may have conceived that the characters would have continued the war in a POW camp, much as he himself had done. The book includes numerous anecdotes told by Švejk (often either to deflect the attentions of an authority figure or to insult them in a concealed manner) which are not directly related to the plot. ===== Dharam Singh is an honest farmer in rural India, and lives with his sister, Bela, who is now of marriageable age. One day both brother and sister witness a murder, and haul the killer to the nearest police station, where the killer is charged, arrested, and held for court. The killer is none other than the powerful and influential Arjun Singh's brother. When Arjun comes to know about Dharam and Bela being the only witnesses to this murder, he attempts to bribe them, albeit in vain, and his brother is sentenced to be hanged. In order to escape Arjun's wrath, Dharam relocates to the city, to earn a living, and thereby help his sister get married. Arjun sets fire to Dharam's house in the village, abducts Bela, and attempts to rape her, but she escapes, and goes in search of Dharam. After several months, she spots Dharam in the city in the company of a rich woman, Barkha. When she goes up to Dharam, he refuses to recognize her, and has nothing to do with her. All the songs are still immensely popular even now. ===== A tired Miner Willy has to tidy up all the items left around his house after a huge party. With this done his housekeeper Maria will let him go to bed. Willy's mansion was bought with the wealth obtained from his adventures in Manic Miner but much of it remains unexplored and it appears to be full of strange creatures, possibly a result of the previous (missing) owner's experiments. Willy must explore the enormous mansion and its grounds (including a beach and a yacht) to fully tidy up the house so he can get some much-needed sleep. ===== Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), a once-great Hollywood film director, is now recovering from a drinking problem and down on his luck. He and his sidekicks Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) and Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) pitch to Big Pictures Studio's Chief (Sid Caesar) the idea to make the first silent movie in forty years. The Chief rejects the idea at first, but Mel convinces him that if he can get Hollywood's biggest stars to be in the film, it could save the studio from a take-over by New York conglomerate Engulf & Devour (Harold Gould and Ron Carey). Mell, Dom, and Marty proceed to recruit various stars for the film. They surprise Burt Reynolds in his shower and go in disguise to his mansion. They recruit James Caan filming on location, following slapstick fumbling in an unstable dressing room trailer. They find Liza Minnelli at the studio commissary, who eagerly agrees to be in the film. They recruit Anne Bancroft by disguising themselves as Flamenco dancers at a nightclub. While visiting the ailing Chief in the hospital, Mel phones Marcel Marceau, who responds with the only spoken word in the film, in French: "Non!" They see Paul Newman on the hospital grounds, and sign him to the film after a wild chase in electric wheelchairs. In the course of their search for stars, the trio have a number of brief misadventures, including a mix-up between a seeing-eye dog and an untrained look-alike, several (mostly unsuccessful) efforts by Marty to seduce various women, and a soft-drink dispensing machine that launches cans like grenades. Engulf and Devour learn of the project, and try to sabotage it by sending voluptuous nightclub sensation Vilma Kaplan (Bernadette Peters) to seduce Mel. He falls for her, but returns to drinking when he learns that she was part of a scheme. He buys a huge bottle of liquor and drinks himself into a stupor, surrounded by fellow "winos". But Vilma has genuinely fallen for Mel and refused Engulf & Devour's money, and helps Dom and Marty find him and restore him to sobriety. The film is completed, but the only copy is stolen by Engulf & Devour just before its theatrical premiere. Vilma stalls the audience with her nightclub act while Mel, Marty, and Dom successfully steal the film back. They are cornered by Engulf and Devour's thuggish executives, but use the exploding-soft-drink machine they encountered earlier to attack and subdue them. In the course of hurrying to the theater, Marty gets wrapped up in the film, and has to be rushed to the projection booth to show it. The film is a huge success with the audience, which erupts with over-the-top applause. The studio is saved, and Mel, Dom, Marty, Vilma, and Chief celebrate, as an on-screen caption identifies the film as a "true story". ===== In Bailey Downs, a rash of dog killings has been occurring. Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald are teenage sisters who harbor a fascination with death and, as children, formed a pact to move out of the suburb or die together by the age of 16. One night, while on the way to kidnap a dog owned by school bully Trina Sinclair, Ginger begins her first period. The scent of blood results in the girls being attacked by the creature responsible for the maulings. The creature bites and wounds Ginger, and Brigitte rescues her. As the girls flee, the creature is run over by a van belonging to Sam Miller, a local drug dealer. Following the attack, Ginger undergoes transformations that concern Brigitte. Ginger's wounds heal quickly, and she soon starts to behave aggressively (particularly in a sexual way), grow hair from her scars, sprout a tail, and menstruate heavily. Ignoring Brigitte's warnings, Ginger has unprotected sex with a classmate named Jason McCardy, furiously beats Trina in public, and kills a neighbor's dog. Brigitte finds Sam for information on what he hit, and they both agree that Ginger was attacked by a werewolf and is transforming into one. At Sam's suggestion, Brigitte tries a silver ring piercing treatment on Ginger, but it proves to be ineffective. Sam then suggests infusing a monkshood extract, which is impossible to create as the plant is only found in the spring. Trina shows up at the Fitzgerald house to accuse Ginger of kidnapping her dog. As she fights with Ginger, Trina is accidentally killed. The sisters narrowly avoid their parents while hiding the body in a freezer. Brigitte accidentally breaks off two of Trina's fingers while trying to remove the corpse, and the fingers are misplaced while burying Trina in the tool shed. Brigitte tells her sister she cannot go out anymore, but Ginger remains defiant. On Halloween, Brigitte takes monkshood purchased by her mother for a craft project and asks Sam to make the cure. Sam successfully creates a monkshood extract. While trying to track down Ginger, Brigitte is attacked by Jason (who was infected by Ginger due to unprotected sex), and she defends herself by using the monkshood syringe on him. She witnesses his immediate change in behavior, which proves it is a cure. At school, Brigitte discovers Ginger’s murder of a faculty member and witnesses her killing another. Ginger then informs her intent to go after Sam next at the Greenhouse Bash, a Halloween party hosted by him, leaving Brigitte alone. The girls' mother finds the fingers and Trina's corpse, and goes looking for her daughters. She finds a running Brigitte and picks her up. As she drives Brigitte to the Greenhouse Bash, she tells her that she will protect them at all costs. Brigitte arrives at the party to find Ginger hurting Sam for rejecting her advances. In despair, Brigitte wounds Ginger's and her own palm and clasps their hands together, infecting herself with Ginger's blood. She convinces Ginger of her loyalty and genuine willingness to help her sister, ending their long fight. As the sisters leave, Brigitte decides to abandon her mother. Brigitte and Sam take Ginger back to the Fitzgerald house in his van to prepare more of the cure for her. Ginger fully transforms into a werewolf on the way home and escapes the van. Aware that she has transformed, Sam and Brigitte hide in the pantry as Sam makes the cure. When he goes to find Ginger, a transformed Ginger attacks and drags him away. After finding Sam, injured and bloody, she tries to save him by drinking his blood to calm Ginger, but is unable to go through with it. Ginger senses Brigitte's revulsion and insincerity, and she kills Sam in front of Brigitte. As Ginger stalks Brigitte through the basement, Brigitte returns to the room where they grew up. Brigitte defends herself while holding the syringe in one hand and a knife in the other. Ginger lunges at Brigitte and into the knife, fatally wounding herself. Looking at pictures taken of both sisters throughout their adventures on the wall, Brigitte lays her head upon her dying sister's chest and sobs. ===== The first season's plot centres on the relationship, and subsequent breakup, of Jen and Mark. Mark begins to pursue Laurel, and they begin a relationship in the second season. The relationship is rocky due to the very different goals of the two. Mark and Laurel eventually break off the relationship but attempt to remain friends. There are also many subplots, such as Anika's manipulation of her classmates and friends, resulting in her ordering one of her classmates to give her cousin's bully a humiliating wedgie in front of everyone, saying "He had my cousin by the underwear" and "higher" (in reference to the wedgie). Craig's various well-intentioned but ill-fated social projects, Shannon's sexuality crisis, the divorce of Mark, Travis, and Kat's parents, and the rise and fall of Chris's popularity. Many social issues, such as prejudice, divorce, sexuality, and teen pregnancy, are dealt with during the run of the series. ===== The Festival, a civilisation of uploaded minds, arrives at Rochard's World, an outlying colony of the New Republic. It begins breaking down objects in the system to make technology for its stay. Then it begins making contact with the inhabitants of the planet by dropping cell phones, forbidden to most citizens of the planet, from low orbit. Those who pick them up hear the Festival, "Entertain us," it asks, "and we will give you what you want." Interlocutors who successfully entertain the Festival by telling it something it has not heard are rewarded with anything they wish for. At first they request food or other modest needs, but then Burya Rubenstein, exiled to the colony for his role in leading an uprising, asks for a cornucopia machine in return for a political tract on the disruptive effect a sudden singularity would have on repressive regimes. Within days the theory becomes reality, as a post-scarcity economy develops and the government is threatened by Rubenstein's uprising and its advanced weaponry. A naval detachment challenges the Festival but is destroyed. In the New Republic's capital city of New Prague, 40 light-years away, deep-cover UN agent Rachel Mansour keeps a close eye as the New Republic prepares a military response. Not only does the New Republic misunderstand the Festival, it seriously underestimates its military capabilities. Of greater concern to Rachel is that it may be planning to approach Rochard's World via a closed timelike loop, arriving there shortly after the Festival did, but earlier than the Navy left the capital. If the Eschaton responds to this apparent violation of causality as the UN fears it might, many settled worlds could have to be evacuated. She recruits Martin Springfield, an Earth-based engineer who has been hired by the New Republic's Admiralty to upgrade its drive systems, to keep an eye out for any signs of such a plan. Unbeknownst to her, Martin is an agent of the Eschaton and has been assigned to sabotage the Admiralty's plan just slightly enough to make it seem unworkable. Back on Rochard's World, Rubenstein is disappointed with the revolution. While it is successful militarily, the cadres he leads have become as rigid and inflexible as the hegemony they fight against. Late one night, while signing seemingly endless orders and communiqués, he is visited by Sister Stratagems the Seventh, a creature resembling a giant mole rat. She is one of the Critics who accompany the Festival. Normally they remain in orbit providing high-level commentary, but she has gone down to the surface to find out for herself why the inhabitants of Rochard's World seem uninterested in the Festival's wisdom. Rachel drops her cover and is assigned to the flagship Lord Vanek as a diplomatic observer. Martin, too, has his contract extended so he can join the fleet on the voyage and finish the job. As the only two Terrans and civilians on board a voyage only they realise will end disastrously, they spend a lot of time together, their relationship deepening into love. The fleet travels a circuitous route, jumping four thousand years into the future, before reaching Rochard's World. Martin's 16-microsecond error in the drive code has worked, slightly delaying the fleet. Sister Stratagems faults Rubenstein for the shortcomings of the revolution—it was foolish, she explains, for him to rely on revolutionary traditions in the midst of a singularity and its all-encompassing constant radical change. She takes him on a ride, in Baba Yaga's hut, to the northern city of Plotsk, where he might understand. Along the way he sees "miracles, wonders and abominations". The landscape in some places has been seriously altered. Many farms and their cybernetically-enhanced owners now float freely in geodesic spheres and self-replicating robots, some dangerous to humans, roam the countryside. As the Lord Vanek approaches battle, Vassily Muller, a young secret police agent assigned to the ship arranges to have Martin arrested as a spy. He and the ship's head of security arrange a fake court- martial on the capital charge to trap their real target, Rachel, into revealing herself. It backfires when Rachel incapacitates everyone in the courtroom and rescues Martin. Back in her quarters, the two escape on a lifeboat she had her own cornucopia machine fabricate. Vassily and other crewmembers are sucked out into space when they attempt to break in afterwards; he alone survives, wearing emergency protective gear, and is eventually picked up by Rachel and Martin as they descend to Rochard's World, where they arrange, through the Critics, to meet Rubenstein. The warships confront two Bouncers sent out by the Festival. The fleet's captain suspects a trap, but it seems at first that the New Republic's ships have the upper hand. However, eventually they realise they have been hit with grey goo and their own ships are being consumed. The senior staff escape. Monitoring the battle from their own lifeboat, Martin and Rachel are unsurprised by the outcome, and explain to an angry Vassily how, despite its lack of intentions, the Festival's visit indeed represented an existential threat to the Republic since information wants to be free. At Plotsk, where skyscrapers of stratospheric height have been erected, Rubenstein and Sister Stratagems meet some of his former comrades, many of them now cyborgs, and realises that the revolution he started has now grown beyond needing him or any other leader. Many of the citizens of Rochard's World have transcended their humanity, joined the Festival or otherwise permanently modified themselves. Rubenstein himself is implanted with a brain/computer interface. When an anthropomorphised rabbit begs the assembled cadres for help finding his master, the former governor, they join him and Stratagems in looking for him. They find the governor, who had been granted his wish to once again become a young boy with faithful animal companions, mummified on a hillside where the Festival saved him from zombification at the hand of the Mimes, another associated species, with an X-ray laser blast that left his body exposed to dangerous levels of ionizing radiation. He asks, via the implant connection, that he be allowed to join the Festival instead of remaining on the planet. As Rubenstein is considering this request, Martin and Rachel arrive. She gives Rubenstein a cornucopia machine, her original mission, which both realise is no longer necessary. Vassily appears and attempts to kill Rubenstein, identifying himself as his son, but Rachel stops him with a stun gun although he irreversibly damages the cornucopia machine in the process. The Festival and its associated species leave for their next destination, and on the planet the population—survivors of a thousand years of technological progress compressed into one month—regroup. Those desiring to return to life under the New Republic settle in Novy Petrograd, where the senior officers from the Lord Vanek have re-established imperial authority. Rubenstein and the others go to Plotsk, where Martin and Rachel run a small shop offering "access to tools and ideas" until they can return to Earth nine months later. ===== American architect Stourley Kracklite has been commissioned to construct an exhibition in Rome dedicated to the architecture of the 18th-century French architect, Étienne- Louis Boullée, who until the 20th century remained little known. Kracklite's Italian colleagues express doubts about whether Boullée really belongs in the architectural pantheon; they note that few of his buildings were ever constructed and observe that Boullée was an inspiration for Adolf Hitler's architect Albert Speer. As he works on the exhibition, Kracklite's marriage and health deteriorate. He becomes obsessed with Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, after hearing that Augustus's wife, Livia, supposedly poisoned him. Suffering from recurrent stomach pains, he suspects his much younger wife, Louisa, of trying to do the same. Louisa reveals that she is pregnant with Kracklite's child, conceived at the precise moment their train crossed the Italian border. Meanwhile she has become sexually involved with Caspasian Speckler, the younger co-organiser of the exhibition. We learn that Caspasian has also been siphoning off funds from the exhibition, even as he and his Italian associates undermine Kracklite's authority and confidence. Kracklite himself is seduced by Caspasian's sister Flavia, a photographer; the two are discovered in flagrante by Caspasian, who threatens to tell Louisa. Louisa leaves Kracklite, who is diagnosed with stomach cancer and given only months to live. The film ends at the exhibition's opening ceremony, nine months after their arrival in Italy. Kracklite, now replaced as director by Caspasian, watches from a high vantage point as Louisa cuts the tape. As she suddenly goes into labor, Kracklite jumps to his death. ===== The events are set shortly after the events in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and after Dorothy Gale's departure back to Kansas. The protagonist of the novel is an orphan boy called Tip. For as long as he can remember, Tip has been under the guardianship of a cruel Wicked Witch named Mombi and lives in the northern quadrant of Oz called Gillikin Country. Mombi has always been extremely mean and abusive to Tip. As Mombi is returning home one day, Tip plans to get revenge and frighten her with a wooden man he has made, with a large Jack-o'-lantern he carves for a head, thus naming him Jack Pumpkinhead. To Tip's dismay, Mombi is not fooled by this trick, and she takes this opportunity to demonstrate the new magical "Powder of Life" that she had just obtained from another sorcerer. Mombi tells Tip that she intends to transform him into a marble statue to punish him for his mischievous ways. In order to avoid being turned into a marble statue, Tip runs away with Jack that very same night and steals the Powder of Life. He uses it to animate the wooden Sawhorse for Jack to ride. The Sawhorse runs so quickly that Tip is left behind. Walking alone, he meets General Jinjur's all-girl Army of Revolt, which is planning to overthrow the Scarecrow (who has ruled the Emerald City since the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). Meanwhile, Jack and the Sawhorse arrive at the Emerald City and make the acquaintance of His Majesty the Scarecrow. Jinjur and her crew invade the Emerald City, terrorize the citizens, and loot the city, causing great havoc and chaos. Tip joins Jack and the Scarecrow in the palace, and they escape on the Sawhorse's back. Jack Pumpkinhead, Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Tip meet the Woggle-Bug The companions arrive at the tin castle of the Tin Woodman (who now rules the Winkie Kingdom following the Wicked Witch of the West's demise in the first book) and plan to retake the Emerald City with his help. On their way back, they are diverted by the magic of Mombi (whom Jinjur recruited to help her apprehend them). They are joined by the "Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated" Woggle-Bug, and aided by the loyal field mice and their Mouse Queen. The Queen of the field mice allows the Scarecrow to take twelve mice concealed in his straw. When the party reaches the Emerald City, Jinjur and her soldiers imprison the group and lock them away. However, the female soldiers are scared by the field mice and leave the city's palace. However, they still occupy the grounds of the city, and the palace is surrounded. The travelers are imprisoned in the palace. The Scarecrow proposes manufacturing a clever flying machine with a Gump's stuffed head to direct it. Tip uses the powder of life to animate this machine, which is assembled from the palace furniture, and they fly off, with no control over their direction, out of Oz. They land in a nest of jackdaws which is full of all of the birds' stolen goods. The flying Gump's wings are damaged in the landing. The jackdaws return to their nest and attack the travelers, carrying off the Scarecrow's straw. The nest contains a large amount of paper money, with which the Scarecrow can be re-stuffed. Using Wishing Pills they discover in the container holding the Powder of Life, Tip and his friends escape and journey to the palace of Glinda the Good Witch in Oz's southern quadrant, the Quadling Country. They learn from Glinda that after the fall of Oz's mortal king Pastoria decades ago, a long lost princess named Ozma was hidden away in secrecy when the Wizard of Oz took the throne. She also informs them that Ozma is the rightful ruler of the Emerald City and all of Oz in general, not the Scarecrow (who did not really want the job anyway). Glinda therefore accompanies Tip, Jack, the Sawhorse, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Wogglebug, and the Gump back to the Emerald City to see Mombi. The crooked woman tries to deceive them by disguising a chambermaid named Jellia Jamb as herself (which fails), but manages to elude them as they search for her in the Emerald City. Just as their time runs out, the Tin Woodman plucks a rose to wear in his lapel, unaware that this is the transformed Mombi. Glinda discovers the deception right away and leads the pursuit of Mombi, who is finally caught as she tries to cross the Deadly Desert in the form of a fast and long-running griffin. Under pressure from Glinda, Mombi confesses that the Wizard brought her the infant Ozma, whom she transformed into ... the boy Tip. At first, Tip is utterly shocked and appalled to learn this, but Glinda and his friends help him to accept his duty, and Mombi performs her last spell to undo the curse, turning him back into the fairy princess Ozma. The restored Ozma is established on the throne after defeating Jinjur and her army. The Tin Woodman invites the Scarecrow to return with him to the Winkie Country along with Jack Pumpkinhead. The Gump is disassembled at his request (though his head was a hunting trophy that can still speak), Glinda returns to her palace in Quadling Country, the Wogglebug remains as Ozma's advisor, and the Sawhorse becomes Ozma's personal steed. The forgotten prophecy is finally fulfilled and Oz is politically whole once more, with Ozma in her rightful position as the child Queen of Oz. ===== Having been recruited by an elite international peacekeeping group called the World Organization of Mega Powers (WOMP), Lieutenant Gadget (promoted from his previous position of Inspector), now fights crime with a pair of mechanical assistants called the Gadgetinis, small robot versions of Gadget who were created by Penny (due to Brain retiring from active duty) and who are the unintended victims of Gadget's bumbling. ===== Peter, a Young Soviet Pioneer,"Snaring a fresh audience using a cautionary tale" by Elissa Blake, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 2013 lives at his grandfather's home in a forest clearing. One day, Peter goes out into the clearing, leaving the garden gate open, and the duck that lives in the yard takes the opportunity to go swimming in a pond nearby. The duck starts arguing with a little bird ("What kind of bird are you if you can't fly?" – "What kind of bird are if you can't swim?"). Peter's pet cat stalks them quietly, and the bird—warned by Peter—flies to safety in a tall tree next to the garden wall while the duck swims to safety in the middle of the pond. Peter's grandfather scolds him for being outside in the meadow alone ("Suppose a wolf came out of the forest?"), and, when he defies him, saying: "Boys like me are not afraid of wolves", his grandfather takes him back into the house and locks the gate. Soon afterwards "a big, grey wolf" does indeed come out of the forest. The cat quickly climbs into the tree with the bird, but the duck, who has jumped out of the pond, is chased, overtaken, and swallowed by the wolf. Seeing all of this from inside, Peter fetches a rope and climbs over the garden wall into the tree. He asks the bird to fly around the wolf's head to distract him, while he lowers a noose and catches the wolf by his tail. The wolf struggles to get free, but Peter ties the rope to the tree and the noose only gets tighter. Some hunters, who have been tracking the wolf, come out of the forest ready to shoot, but Peter gets them to help him take the wolf to a zoo in a victory parade (the piece was first performed for an audience of Young Pioneers during May Day celebrations) that includes himself, the bird, the hunters leading the wolf, the cat, and grumpy grumbling Grandfather ("What if Peter caught the wolf? What then?") In the story's ending, the listener is told: "If you listen very carefully, you'll hear the duck quacking inside the wolf's belly, because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive." ===== Ollie Dee and Stannie Dum Stannie Dum (Stan Laurel) and Ollie Dee (Oliver Hardy) live in a shoe (as in the nursery rhyme There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe), along with Mother Peep (the Old Woman), Bo Peep (Charlotte Henry), a mouse resembling Mickey Mouse (and actually played by a live monkey in a costume), and many other children. The mortgage on the shoe is owned by the villainous Silas Barnaby (Henry Brandon as a character based on the English nursery rhyme "There Was A Crooked Man"), who is looking to marry Bo-Peep. Knowing the Widow Peep is having a difficult time paying the mortgage, Barnaby offers the old woman an ultimatum – unless Bo Peep agrees to marry him he will foreclose on the shoe. Widow Peep refuses, but is worried about where she'll get the money to pay the mortgage. Ollie offers her all the money he has stored away in his savings can, only to learn that Stannie has taken it to buy peewees (a favored toy consisting of a wooden peg with tapered ends that rises in the air when struck with a stick near one end and is then caused to fly through the air by being struck again with the stick). He and Stannie set out to get the money for the mortgage from their boss, the Toymaker (William Burress). But Stannie has mixed up an order from Santa Claus (building 100 wooden soldiers at six feet tall, instead of 600 soldiers at one foot tall) and one of the soldiers, when activated, wrecks the toy shop. Stannie and Ollie are fired without getting the money. The two then hatch a plan to sneak into Barnaby's house and steal the mortgage but are again foiled by their incompetence. Barnaby has them arrested on a burglary charge, and the two are sentenced to be dunked in the ducking stool and then banished to Bogeyland. But Barnaby agrees to drop the charges if Bo Peep will marry him. She reluctantly agrees, but not before Ollie suffers the dunking. Stannie and Ollie come up with a new scheme. At the wedding, Ollie is present to give the bride away. After the nuptials, but before the ceremonial kiss, Ollie asks for the "wedding present" (the mortgage) from Barnaby. After inspecting it, Ollie tears it up, and then lifts the bride's veil — to reveal Stannie, who had worn Bo Peep's wedding dress to the ceremony. Bo Peep is still free of Barnaby, and the mortgage is destroyed. Ollie teases Stan about having to live with Barnaby as Stan cries saying "I don't LOVE him". Enraged, Barnaby plots his revenge, eventually hitting on the idea of framing Bo Peep's true love, Tom-Tom (Felix Knight), on a trumped-up charge of "pignapping", and getting him banished to Bogeyland. Barnaby proceeds to abduct Little Elmer (Angelo Rossitto), one of the Three Little Pigs, and then has a henchman plant false evidence (including sausage links) in Tom-Tom's house. Tom-Tom is put on trial, convicted, and banished to the abode of the "bogeymen," Bogeyland, which he is taken to on a raft by two dunkers across an alligator-infested river. Those banished to Bogeyland never return; they are inevitably eaten alive by the bogeymen.Barr, Charles. 1968. Laurel & Hardy. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 90. A distraught but brave Bo Peep follows Tom-Tom through the dark, cavernous place where twisted cypress trees grow, and many stalactites and stalagmites protrude from its rocky landscape. Meanwhile, Ollie and Stannie find evidence implicating Barnaby in the pignapping, including the fact that the alleged sausage links presented as evidence at Tom-Tom's trial are made of beef. They later find the kidnapped pig alive in Barnaby's cellar. A manhunt commences for Barnaby, who flees to Bogeyland through a secret passageway at the bottom of an empty well. Stannie and Ollie eventually follow Barnaby down the well. Meanwhile, Bo Peep crosses the river to Bogeyland, finds Tom-Tom and explains Barnaby's trickery to him. Publicity still Tom-Tom sings Victor Herbert's Go to Sleep, Slumber Deep to Bo-Peep in an enormous cave set with giant spider webs. Barnaby catches up to Tom-Tom and Bo-Peep, and attempts to abduct Bo-Peep but gets into a fight with Tom-Tom, who gives Barnaby a well-deserved thrashing. An enraged Barnaby grabs a large stick and beats a stalactite to summon an army of Bogeymen, who chase Bo-Peep and Tom-Tom through the caverns of Bogeyland. The lovers run into Stannie and Ollie, who help them escape back through the well and are welcomed by the townspeople, who now realize Barnaby's treachery. Barnaby leads an invasion of Toyland on a fleet of rafts in a scene reminiscent of the painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. Ollie and Stan tell their story to Old King Cole (Kewpie Morgan), the King of Toyland, and the townspeople as two Bogeymen scale the wall and open the gate. The crowd flees in panic as the army of torch-wielding Bogeymen attacks Toyland. Ollie and Stannie run and hide in the toy shop warehouse. There they discover boxes of darts and use them to fight off the Bogeymen, thanks to Stan's skill with the game of "peewees" (and help from the three little pigs and the mouse). Stan and Ollie then empty an entire box of darts into a cannon, but as the two search for the last remaining darts, they realize instead that they should activate the wooden soldiers. The "march" alluded to in the film's title begins as the soldiers march out of the toy shop (filmed in a stop- motion animation sequence by Roy Seawright). The scene changes to live-action as the soldiers attack the Bogeymen with the bayonets of their rifles. Barnaby is defeated and trapped and covered by blocks that spell "rat", while the Bogeymen are routed and driven back into Bogeyland, where alligators appear to feast on them, although this is never made clear. With the kingdom of Toyland saved,Everson, William K. 1967. The Complete Films of Laurel and Hardy. Citadel Press. p. 160. Stan and Ollie decide to give the Bogeymen a parting shot with the dart-filled cannon. But as Stan aims the cannon and lights the fuse, and Ollie turns away to avoid the loud blast, the barrel of the cannon flips backward and unleashes the barrage of darts on Ollie, covering his back with darts. The film ends with Stan pulling them out one by one as Ollie winces. ===== A superluminal signal is sent to Earth, carrying with it an energy blob that seems intent on capturing the Doctor. The homeworld of the Time Lords is also under siege, their power being drained through a black hole. Trapped themselves, and desperate to send help, the Time Lords do the unthinkable, breaking the First Law of Time by recruiting a previous incarnation of the Doctor from his own past. As the Second Doctor cannot get along with the present Third Doctor, they attempt to retrieve the First Doctor to "keep them in order", but he is trapped in a "time eddy", unable to fully materialise, communicating through a viewscreen. The Doctors investigate, while UNIT headquarters faces an attack by shapeless blob-like creatures. The First Doctor realises that the black hole is a bridge between universes, so they allow the TARDIS to be swallowed up by the energy creature, finding themselves in an antimatter universe created by the legendary Time Lord Omega, a solar engineer who created the supernova that powers Time Lord civilisation, but which also supposedly killed him. In fact, he remains trapped in his antimatter universe, whose reality is maintained by his will alone. Omega seeks revenge on those who he imagines left him stranded, and intends for the Doctors to take his place maintaining the reality of his antimatter universe. But exposure to the effects of the black hole's singularity have destroyed Omega's physical body: he cannot leave. Omega now demands that the Doctors share his exile. The Doctors propose a way to free Omega, offering him a force field generator. In a rage, Omega knocks it over and the Second Doctor's recorder falls out of it (having fallen into it earlier, thus remaining unconverted positive matter) annihilating everything it meets in the antimatter universe in a flash, returning the Doctors in the TARDIS to their universe. The Third Doctor explains that death was the only freedom anyone could offer Omega. With the Time Lords' power restored, they return the First and Second Doctors to their respective time periods. As a reward, the Time Lords give the Third Doctor a new dematerialisation circuit for the TARDIS and restore his knowledge of how to travel through space and time. ===== The Rani has opened a hole in time, allowing her access to the Doctor's timeline. She uses this to cycle through the Doctor's lives, causing him and his companions to jump back and forth between past and present incarnations. Her intention is to capture all of the Doctor's selves in a time loop, trapping him in London's East End; she has already captured the First and Second Doctor in the time hole. This causes the Fourth Doctor to send a message to his remaining selves, warning them of the Rani's plan: The Seventh Doctor and Ace are confused when the TARDIS lands in Greenwich, near the Cutty Sark, thanks to the Rani's attack on the TARDIS. The Doctor finds a newspaper showing the year to be 1973, but before he can make any more conclusions, the Rani causes time to jump. Ace finds herself in Albert Square in 1993 with the Sixth Doctor. Local resident Sanjay tries to sell Ace some new clothes from his stall, and when his wife Gita tells the Sixth Doctor that it is going to be all the rage in 1994, the Rani jumps time again. The Third Doctor and Mel Bush appear from the time jump, and question an old Pauline Fowler and Kathy Beale on when they are. When Pauline and Kathy reply that it is 2013, another time jump occurs. In 1973, Pauline and Kathy remember the assassination of President Kennedy, while Kathy tells off a young Ian Beale. The Sixth Doctor and Susan Foreman appear, but she wonders what has happened to 'her' Doctor, the First. After another time jump to 2013, Susan changes into Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor changes from the Sixth to the Third Doctor. They start to piece together what is happening to them, but the Rani lets loose her menagerie of specimens, including a Cyberman, Fifi (from The Happiness Patrol), a Sea Devil, an Ogron and a Time Lord from Gallifrey in the next time jump. In 1993, the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Peri are attacked by the Rani's menagerie, and after they tried to warn Pat Butcher of the danger, the Rani stops them outside the Queen Vic. In 1993, after the Fifth Doctor changed to the Third Doctor in the next time jump, with Liz Shaw, the Rani took control of Liz's mind. As Mandy Salter tries to stop the Rani, Captain Mike Yates of UNIT comes in Bessie to save the Third Doctor and get him to The Brigadier who is waiting for them. After another time jump, the Doctor changed to the Sixth Doctor and after he says goodbye to the Brigadier time jumps again. In 1993, at the Arches, Phil and Grant Mitchell find Romana looking for the Doctor, but they point her to Dr. Harold Legg. As Romana walks past the Queen Vic, the Rani captures her, in front of Frank Butcher. Back in 1973, the Third Doctor explains to Victoria Waterfield who the Rani was and thinks that her control is breaking down, as they return to the TARDIS. After the Seventh Doctor lands the TARDIS in 1993, Leela escapes from the Rani, after being cloned in the form of Romana. This results in an additional Time Lord brain imprint being left on the computer inside the Rani's TARDIS instead of the human one she needed, which gives the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and K9 the edge needed to rig up a device to overload it, sending the Rani into the time tunnel where she had trapped the First and Second Doctors and freeing the Doctors' other selves from the loop. As the Seventh Doctor and Ace leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor observes "Certainly, I — I mean, we — are difficult to get rid of." ===== The novel is narrated by the protagonist Jack Forman, an unemployed software programmer who used to work for a company called Media Tronics but was fired and blackballed for discovering an internal scandal. As a result, he is forced to take the role of a house husband while his wife Julia serves as a high ranking executive at a nanorobotics company called Xymos. Julia claims that she is working on a new piece of revolutionary imaging technology with her company, which takes up most of her time and makes her grow distant to Jack and her family. He starts believing that during her long hours away from home she is having an affair and becomes watchful of her changes. One night Julia comes home late and shows Jack a video of her demonstrating the Xymos nanobots. In the video, the nanobots are put into a human test subject, and video from inside the body is broadcast in real time. Jack is impressed but becomes more suspicious of her straying when he notices the video was not made on the same day as she said it was. Later in the night, their baby girl Amanda awakens in agony as her body turns red from an unknown cause. Jack takes her to the hospital, but the doctors cannot identify the cause of her pain. She is given an MRI for more examination, then suddenly her pain stops and the skin changes disappear. Bewildered and exhausted, Jack returns home to a strangely indifferent Julia who leaves in a hurry, claiming to go on an urgent business trip. Strange events happen that lead Jack to suspect something bigger is going on with Julia as their son Eric claims he saw "silver men" cleaning the house in the middle of the night, and Jack finds a strange device found underneath Amanda's bed that wasn't there before, memory chips on their son's MP3 player have turned to dust, Julia has not only become distant but has also become abusive to her family, and Julia was seen driving one night with an unidentifiable passenger in her car. On that same night, Julia is injured in a car crash, and Jack is recruited to consult at Xymos, because the project manager, Ricky - a good friend of Jack's and former colleague - is having software issues with the nanobots. Jack is taken to the Xymos research facility in Nevada's Basin Desert, where he is given a tour of the lab, meets the programming team, and is shown a complicated machine used to make the nanobot assemblers from bacteria. Ricky refuses to show Jack the source code for the nanobots, and later Ricky claims that building contractors failed to properly install filters in a certain vent in the building. As a result, hazardous elements such as the assemblers, the bacteria, and the nanobots were blown into the desert, evolving and eventually forming autonomous swarms. These swarms appear to be clouds of solar-powered and self-sufficient nanobots, reproducing and evolving (necroevolution) rapidly. The swarms exhibit predatory behavior, attacking and killing animals in the wild, using code that Jack himself worked on. Most alarmingly, the swarms seem to possess rudimentary intelligence, the ability to quickly learn and to innovate. Jack also learns that Julia helped teach the swarms to improve their intelligence and become more benign, but they regressed when she left. The swarms tend to wander around the plant during the day but quickly leave when strong winds blow or night falls. The nanoswarm kills a rabbit outside the complex, and Jack goes outside with Mae to inspect. They find that the rabbit died of suffocation resulting from the nanobots blocking its bronchial tubes. While Mae goes inside for equipment, Jack is attacked by the swarms. He barely manages to get through the airlock into the lab before falling unconscious from anaphylactic shock. Persuaded by Jack despite Ricky's protests, the team decides to destroy the swarm or else risk its reproducing exponentially and becoming a grey goo plague that could endanger humanity. They believe the swarm must have nested in the desert to reproduce. They attempt to find this nest by tagging the swarm with radioactive isotopes and following them back to their nest at night. Under the cover of a strong wind that forces the swarms to remain dormant, the team goes outside to a storage shack to find the isotopes and build a spray device. However, the wind dies down, and four swarms attack the shack and eventually kill David and Rosie. The rest of the team are forced to take shelter in the cars parked outside. The swarms find a way to enter the cars, but not long before the wind picks up in speed again. Jack and Mae manage to escape to the lab, but Charley falls unconscious outside his car after spraying his swarm with the isotope. Bobby, Vince, and Ricky refuse to go outside and help Charley. Jack, dizzy and nauseous, goes back out again to save Charley as the swarms attack again. Using a motorbike found in David's car, Jack manages to get himself and the semi-conscious Charley to the safety of the airlock before Jack falls unconscious again. As night falls, Jack, Mae, and Bobby set out to find the swarms. While searching for them, they discover that the swarms are moving the now deceased Rosie through the desert. The team is also shocked to discover that the swarms can replicate the physical features, perceptions, and motions of humans when they see the swarms form replicas of Ricky, David, and Rosie. The group follows the body to find the swarms nesting in a cave. As some of the Ricky-swarms come out of the cave after them, a Xymos helicopter arrives and wards off the swarms using its powerful draft. Mae and Jack then venture into the cave and proceed to exterminate the swarms, their nest, and their organic assembly plant (which looks very similar to the original Xymos assembly plant) using explosive thermite caps. They return to the Xymos plant, exhausted. At the plant, Jack, Mae, and Bobby are enthusiastically greeted by Julia, who had discharged herself from the hospital and was brought in by the chopper. Julia's behavior seems to be extremely aberrant; she seems to pay heed to nothing except trying to entice Jack and kissing him, even when Charley is found dead in the locked communications room with a swarm flying around him and the communication links cut. Jack cannot understand how the swarm got inside the rigorously protected airtight building, why Charley would have disabled the facility's communications, or why Julia and Ricky seem to be coming up with various out-of-character ways of how he died. Mae discovers security footage of when they were in the desert. To Jack's horror, the video not only reveals that Julia and Ricky had an affair but also shows how Charley engaged in a vicious fight with Ricky and Vince. All of them end up in the communications room where Julia kisses a subdued Charley, injecting a stream of swarm into his mouth while Ricky sabotages the communication systems, and they leave Charley to die from the swarm. Eventually, Jack and Mae realize that everyone in the facility except themselves have been infected by a symbiotic version of the nanobot swarms. These nanobots, although evolved alongside the other swarms, do not show aggressive predatory behavior. Instead, while they seem to invigorate their hosts' physical attributes and their emotional perceptions, the nanobots slowly devour and take over their hosts to produce more nanobots, and in the process affect their decision making and then the bots control them, while allowing them to travel and contaminate others. Jack comes up with a plan to destroy this new strain. Mae and Jack drink vials containing a form of phage that kills the nanobot- producing E. coli bacteria and thus would protect them from infection by the nanobots. Jack then proceeds to take a sample of the phage and pour it into the sprinkler system and drench everyone with it. He has Mae alert Julia and the infected team. They set out to stop Jack. In the vicious struggle that ensues, Jack is captured and thrown into a magnetic chamber, with Ricky threatening him to either reveal his plan or be killed by the magnets. Jack feigns surrender when Julia walks in to interrogate him, but Jack then reactivates the magnetic chamber with Julia inside, remembering the incident with Amanda in the MRI. Julia's body disintegrates as a swarm is pulled away by the magnetic field to temporarily reveal the real Julia, who has slowly been consumed by the parasitic swarm. Before the swarm can repossess her body, Julia begs Jack to forgive her for putting him in danger, says she loves him, and tells him to stop the swarms and save their children from the same fate, as they have been infected too. Motivated, Jack runs to the roof, fights off the infected team, and finally manages to place the sample into the sprinkler system. In order to prevent the sprinkler system from triggering, infected- Ricky disables the plant's safety network. However, this is exactly what Jack wants, as Mae has already allowed the phage into the assembly line, causing the phage to reproduce rapidly. The assembly line is rapidly overheating because of the de-activated safety system. If infected-Ricky and infected- Julia don't turn on the safety system the assembly line will burst, filling the lab with the phage. The infected-team, who are now doomed either way, choose to re-activate the safety network and get drenched with the phage. Jack and Mae escape the facility in a helicopter shortly before the facility explodes due to a methane gas leak combined with thermite Mae has placed in the building. After returning home, Jack doses his children and sister with the phage to eradicate the potential nanobot infestation. Mae calls the U.S. Army and sends a sample of the phage to her lab. Jack puts together all the missing links. The corrosion of the memory chips in his home's electronics and Amanda's skin rash were caused by nanobot assemblers spread by infected-Julia. The MRI's strong magnetic field detached the assemblers from Amanda. Knowing this, Julia called in the Xymos special team to scan Amanda's room. The person whom Jack spotted in Julia's car was in fact the Ricky-swarm. Xymos had intentionally released the swarm into the desert so that it would evolve to stay in a cohesive group in the wind, but then they called him in to destroy the wild strain once it became uncontrollable. ===== The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow are regaling each other with tales at the Woodman's palace in the Winkie Country when a Gillikin boy named Woot wanders in. After he is fed and rested, Woot asks the Woodman how he came made of tin. He relates how the Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe and caused him to chop his body parts off limb by limb, because he was in love with her ward, Nimmie Amee. Each chopped limb was replaced by the tinsmith Ku-Klip with a counterpart made of tin. (Since Oz is a fairyland, no one can die, even when the parts of their body are separated from each other, unless those people are witches and someone drops a house onto them.) Without a heart, the Tin Woodman felt he could no longer love Nimmie Amee and he left her. Dorothy and the Scarecrow found him after he had rusted in the forest (an event related in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) and went with him to the Emerald City where the Wizard gave him a heart. Woot suggests that the heart may have made him kind, but it did not make him loving, or he would have returned to Nimmie Amee. This shames the Tin Woodman and inspires him to journey to the Munchkin Country and find her. The Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Woot journey into the Gillikin Country and encounter the inflatable Loons of Loonville, whom they escape by popping several of them. They descend into Yoop Valley, where the giantess Mrs. Yoop dwells, who transforms the travelers into animals for her amusement, just as she has already done to Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter. Woot steals a magic apron that opens doors and barriers at the wearer's request, enabling the four to escape. Woot, as a green monkey, narrowly avoids becoming a jaguar's meal by descending further into a den of subterranean dragons. After escaping that ordeal, Woot, the Tin Woodman as a tin owl, the Scarecrow as a straw-stuffed bear, and Polychrome as a canary turn south into the Munchkin Country. They arrive at the farm of Jinjur, who renews her acquaintance with them and sends to the Emerald City for help. Dorothy and Ozma arrive and Ozma easily restores the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman to their rightful forms. Polychrome takes several steps to restore to her true form. However, Ozma discovers that the Green Monkey into which Woot is transformed has to be someone's form; it cannot be destroyed. Polychrome suggests as a punishment for wickedness that Mrs. Yoop the giantess be made into the Green Monkey, and Ozma thus succeeds in restoring Woot to his proper form. The Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, Woot, and Polychrome resume their quest and come upon the spot where the Tin Woodman had rusted and find another tin man there. After they oil his joints, he identifies himself as Captain Fyter, a soldier who courted Nimmie Amee after the Woodman had left her. The Wicked Witch of the East had made Fyter's sword do what the Woodman's axe had done--cut off his limbs, which Ku-Klip replaced with tin limbs. He does not have a heart either, but this does not bother him. However, he can rust, which he does one day during a rainstorm. Both woodmen now seek the heart of Nimmie Amee, agreeing to let her choose between them. The five come to the dwelling of the tinsmith Ku-Klip where the Tin Woodman talks to himself--that is, to the head of the man (Nick Chopper) he once was. The Tin Woodman and the Tin Soldier also find a barrel of assorted body parts that once belonged to each of them, but some, like Captain Fyter's head, are conspicuously missing. Ku-Klip reveals that he used Fyter's head and many body parts from each of them (which never decayed) to create his assistant Chopfyt. Chopfyt complained about missing an arm until Ku-Klip made him a tin one, and he departed for the east. The companions leave Ku-Klip and continue east themselves to find Nimmie Amee and find themselves crossing the Invisible Country, where a massive Hip-po-gy-raf helps them across in return for the Scarecrow's straw. Reluctantly, he gives it and consents to being stuffed with available hay, which makes his movements awkward. They rest for the night at the house of Professor and Mrs. Swynne, pigs whose nine children live in the Emerald City under the care of the Wizard. They leave the Swynnes and arrive at the foot of Mount Munch on the eastern border of the Munchkin Country. At its summit is a cottage where a rabbit tells them Nimmie Amee now lives happily. The Tin Woodman and Tin Soldier knock and are admitted by Nimmie Amee, who is now married to Chopfyt. She refuses to leave her domestic life, even to become Empress of the Winkies (which she would become as the Tin Woodman's wife), saying "All I ask is to be left alone and not be disturbed by visitors." The four return to the Emerald City and relate their adventures. Woot is allowed free rein to roam where he pleases, Captain Fyter is dispatched by Ozma to guard duty in the Gillikin Country, and the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow return to his palace in the Winkie Country where the story began. ===== The story begins in late 1960s Japan. A group of tanuki are threatened by a gigantic suburban development project called New Tama, in the Tama Hills on the outskirts of Tokyo. The development is cutting into their forest habitat and dividing their land. The story resumes in early 1990s Japan, during the early years of the Heisei era. With limited living space and food decreasing every year, the tanuki begin fighting among themselves for the diminishing resources, but at the urging of the matriarch Oroku, they decide to unify to stop the development. Several tanuki lead the resistance, including the aggressive chief Gonta, the old guru Seizaemon, the wise-woman Oroku, and the young and resourceful Shoukichi. Using their illusion skills (which they must re-learn after having forgotten them), they stage a number of diversions including industrial sabotage. These attacks injure and even kill people, frightening construction workers into quitting, but more workers immediately replace them. In desperation, the tanuki send out messengers to seek help from various legendary elders from other regions. After several years, one of the messengers returns bringing a trio of elders from the distant island of Shikoku, where development is not a problem and the tanuki are still worshipped. In an effort at re-establishing respect for the supernatural, the group stages a massive "ghost parade" to make the humans think the town is haunted. The strain of the massive illusion kills one of the elders and his spirit is lifted up in a raigō, and the effort seems wasted when the owner of a nearby theme park takes credit for the parade, claiming it was a publicity stunt. With this setback, the unity of the tanuki finally fails and they break up into smaller groups, each following a different strategy. One group led by Gonta takes the route of eco-terrorism, holding off workers until they are wiped out in a pitched battle with the police. Another group desperately attempts to gain media attention through television appearances to plead their case against the habitat's destruction. One of the elders becomes senile and starts a Buddhist dancing cult among the tanuki who are unable to transform, eventually sailing away with them in a ship that takes them to their deaths, while the other elder investigates joining the human world as the last of the transforming kitsune (foxes) have already done. When all else fails, in a last act of defiance, the remaining tanuki stage a grand illusion, temporarily transforming the urbanized land back into its pristine state to remind everyone of what has been lost. Finally, with their strength exhausted, the tanuki most trained in illusion follow the example of the kitsune: they blend into human society one by one, abandoning those who cannot transform. While the media appeal comes too late to stop the construction, the public responds sympathetically to the tanuki, pushing the developers to set aside some areas as parks. However, the parks are too small to accommodate all the non- transforming tanuki. Some try to survive there, dodging traffic to rummage through human scraps for food, while others disperse farther out to the countryside to compete with the tanuki who are already there. One day, Shoukichi, who also joined the human world, is coming home from work when he sees a non-transformed tanuki leaping into a gap in a wall. Shoukichi crawls into the gap and follows the path, which leads to a grassy clearing where some of his former companions are gathering. He joyfully transforms back into a tanuki to join them. Shoukichi's friend, Ponkichi addresses the viewer, asking humans to be more considerate of tanuki and other animals less endowed with transformation skills, and not to destroy their living space; as the view pulls out and away, their surroundings are revealed as a golf course within a suburban sprawl. ===== The series begins twenty-one years after the Rebel Alliance destroyed the second Death Star. The New Republic is facing internal conflict while trying to maintain peace. A new, powerful enemy, known as the Yuuzhan Vong, emerges from the outer galaxy, beginning what will be known as the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. The Jedi, along with the New Republic, struggle to resist this new alien race while it steadily pushes forward, annihilating or occupying different parts of the galaxy. =====