From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.tv

In article <r75hld$nn3$1@dont-email.me>, christopherlbennett@wordpress.com wrote:

In article <UBI20200412@dont-email.me>, weberm@polaris.net wrote:

WAR OF THE WORLDS:
"The Good Samaritan". Oh, crap! This ep of War of the Worlds was ripped from >>today's headlines! The aliens who are looking for a way to effectively poison
people with a biological agent they created and tested on some college kid >>who was coughing all over everyone at a diner when they learn about someone >>inventing tr-grain that is highly resilient to everything, including >>radiaction. Meanwhile, the team learns about the discovery and think it might
help them make a plague that affects the aliens.

"The Good Samaritan": Another obvious pseudonym for the writing credit, >"Sylvia Clayton." Which is odd, since this is the first remotely decent >episode in a few weeks. However, it takes nearly a fifth of the episode >before the good guys show up. Instead, we learn that the aliens are >developing a deadly toxin, which they test by taking over a restaurant and >serving it in the chicken soup (proving that they have a sense of irony). >They're still looking for a wider delivery system, though. There's a >completely pointless bit with a young coed in bondage, with the alien >scientist explaining that his researchers have been waiting for a live human >subject for dissection. Whatever happened to that cage full of live human >captives they had last week? I guess they took my suggestion to pretend that >episode never happened. Anyway, the coed is dragged off and never mentioned >again.

We spend most of the first act getting to know Marcus Madison Mason (Alex >Cord), a corporate magnate who's developed a "Feed the World" supergrain, >claiming it's for humanitarian purposes but telling his board of directors >that he intends to make the world pay through the nose for it. His board >includes the Chairman of OCP (RoboCop: The Series`s David Gardner) and >perennial Canadian character actor Barry Flatman, who was the voice of Henry >Gyrich in the '90s X-Men animated series, the US President in Earth: Final >Conflict, and the corrupt senator father of Tamara Craig Thomas's character in
Odyssey 5. We also briefly meet Mason's wife, but spend more time getting to >know the two blondes he's having separate affairs with - his secretary Teri >and some other blonde whose identity is never established as far as I recall.

Eventually, finally, we visit our heroes at the Cottage and learn that Suzanne
is struggling to develop a radiation-resistant bacterium to kill the aliens. >Biological warfare, how heroic! But guess what, Mason's grain is all over >the news, and among all its other remarkable properties, it's radiation- >resistant (which the cynical Mason later explains is to ensure it's still >viable after the inevitable nuclear war). So Suzanne arranges to meet with >Mason, though he's clearly more interested in getting into her pants than >sharing his secret process. Ironhorse is oddly, almost sophomorically >interested in whether this makes Harrison jealous, but there are some nice >moments of banter and chemistry among the three.

Naturally, the aliens also latch onto the news of Mason's grain, seeing it as >a much better method for widespread toxin delivery than restaurant soup. So >they possess his paramour (the non-secretary one) and then get to him through >her. The now-alien Mason comes in with new "advisors" and begins issuing >strange orders, saying he'll give away the grain for free and having his >"team" spray it with the toxin over the scientists' protests. Amusingly, one >of the signs that he's not himself is that he _doesn't_ cancel dinner with his
wife. He also shows no interest when Suzanne (at Ironhorse's prompting) tries
to seduce him into giving her a sample of grain, making her think she's lost >her touch (which I can attest she definitely hasn't); but she does manage to >steal a sample somehow. While she's testing it, her daughter Debi lets her >lab mouse (which is only there "for appearances," whatever that means) out of >its cage and he becomes the designated tribble, dying from the poisoned grain >and alerting the heroes to the risk. Suzanne tries calling Mason, and the >jealous secre-Teri gives her the brushoff until Suze tells her the grain is >tainted. Teri rushes to one of the freighters about to ship out the grain and
warns Mason, but she just ends up getting, err, alienated. So much for that >character arc. (The problem with horror is that "and then she dies" isn't >really much of a resolution. A lot of the time it just feels like a waste of >effort to develop a character who's just going to be randomly killed/zombified
anyway.)

Ironhorse is all "Yes, it's terrible, but it's not aliens so we can't warn >anyone and risk exposing ourselves," to which Harrison naturally objects; but >then Norton conveniently triangulates an alien transmission to Mason's >freighter, rendering the argument moot. Harrison and Ironhorse go out to the >ship as government inspectors and try to stall until reinforcements arrive, >and they get stalked by aliens in the engine room and manage to outfight them.
They chase the Mason alien to the deck, with Harrison saying they need him
alive for some unspecified reason, and he hurls himself into the water far >below, presumably fatally, to escape them. We hear that all the ships have >been stopped in time. So for once the heroes have managed to score a victory,
though secre-Teri and the other aliens tell the Advocates that it's only a >matter of time before they find another way to distribute the toxin. I wonder
if we'll ever hear about that plot point again. (Spoiler: No, we won't.)

Is it possible the high number of pseudonymous writers is due to the writersA strike going on at the time? People may have been violating WGA rules with their
work on the series, depending on when the scripts were written.

--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2