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CLEOPATRA 2525 |
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Cleopatra - Jennifer Sky Hel - Gina Torres Sarge - Victoria Pratt 
OTHER CLEOPATRA 2525 SEASONS Season 2 OTHER GIRL POWER SHOWS Birds of Prey Dark Angel Ghost Whisperer Medium 
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QUEST FOR FIREPOWERMachines called Baileys have taken over the surface of the earth, forcing mankind to live underground. A resistance movement (which seems to be two women and a voice in an earpiece) is fighting back, but they are under attack by a betrayor robot. Whilst in the middle of trying to get away, they encounter a stripper from the year 2001 who unexpectedly becomes useful to them. 'From the makers of Xena-Warrior Princess'. Those words will be your first clue as to whether you want to watch this show or run screaming from the building. Following that there is a theme tune that will pretty much put you right off. If you venture any further don't say you weren't warned. If this first episode is setting the tone for the whole show, there will be lots of running, jumping and wearing deeply unpractical clothing for the three women starring. There will also be loads of special effects of variable quality, very dodgy creatures and lots of stuff blowing up. What there won't be is comprehensible plot, memourable dialogue, acting of any quality whatsoever or characters worth remembering. Definitely not an auspicious start then, but it does have the advantage of only being a half hour long. TopCREEGANThe girls' hideout is attacked by masked wierdies led by a clown man called Creegan who once killed Hel's family. Now, he wants their android, so that he can extract the information from its brain. When the girls pursue him, they walk into a trap that threatens Hel's life through the voice in her ear. There's just about the same amount of comprehensibility in this second episode as there was in the first and just as much mindless action and blowing up of stuff to try and hide the fact. There is a distinct feeling that this show wanted to be an hour long and they are cramming the same stories into half an hour. It doesn't work. Creegan's makeup is pretty impressive though and if you like stuff being blown up then you might find something to like here. TopFLYING LESSONSWhilst trying to learn how to do all the falling down seemingly endless holes that is a major part of the future, Cleopatra and the girls find themselves caught up in a mutant raid that takes a young girl to a life of slavery (or worse). They follow the perpetrator to a bar where Hel challenges him to a game that will either free everyone, or add three more to his tally. There isn't a lot of stripping in science fiction, which is a shame. The one here, however, isn't about to challenge the fame of BARBARELLA's zero g effort. It's not as embarrassing as it might have been, but it's close. The show has also developed something of a bondage fetish. The costumes have all been dodgy, but here they are seriously into gimp territory. The dialogue remains terrible and the plotting just as poor. Still, they blow stuff up at the end, so that's all right then. TopMIND GAMESThe war to take back the surface from the Baileys continues to wage, so naturally the three women warriors take time out to wear even skimpier outfits than usual and dance the night away, unaware that a woman with the power to control minds is about to set them against each other in a bid to learn the location of the Voice. What can I say? There is a strange attraction developing for this show. It's like looking at a car wreck - you know you shouldn't, but you can't help it. Suffice to say that there's a bad girl, some gyrating and then things start to get blown up. There's something of a pattern emerging I think. TopHOME AND RESCUEFollowing an attack by yet another betrayor robot, the girls hit the surface in order to track the Baileys to the factory that makes the pesky critters. They plan on using live bait from a surface village, but when that bait turns out to be Sarge's sister plans start to go astray and Cleo is taken as well. As Hel and Sarge mount a rescue mission that is doomed to failure, Cleo and Sarge's sister watch their deadly doubles begin to take life. A longer episode and something of a plot emerging. The extended running time requires more to fill it and that allows some substance to sneak in between the bouts of destruction. Admittedly, the substance is ripped straight out of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, but if you're going to steal, steal from the best. The attempts at comedy through Cleo's mindless babbling of current sci-fi cliches as a smokescreen for the real mission is deeply unfunny and the pantomime acting is more annoying than usual because you're exposed to it for longer. There's also the very slight question of how come the betrayor robots here are so easy to kill when all the others have been seriously hard. TopRUN CLEO RUNSarge poses as a sex slave at an auction in order to get hold of a pod containing the layout of all the underground tunnels. She escapes with it, but has a belt around her neck that is about to go boom. The Voice decides that this is a good time for Cleo to take on her first active mission. Maybe just a practice run first. After the mildy embarrassing stripping in Flying Lessons, we are treated to a cringe-inducingly awful re-run with Sarge in the hot pants. This is not a pretty sight and the editing completely fails to mask the fact that Victoria Pratt wouldn't get past the auditions for a Spearmint Rhino club/. As for the rest of the plot, well there's some running and some shooting and, well you ought to be used to it all by now. At least it's back to its normal length. TopCHOICESAnother team gets gunned down on an underground level with an artificial reality setting. Hel, Sarge and Cleo go in to find the leader of the team, but also identify the betrayor that killed the others. To destroy the betrayor, they would also have to destroy the world of a little girl whose father has been replaced. Hel can't do that, but the leader of the destroyed team has no such qualms. So now the underground levels can be equipped with their own holodeck environments, effectively allowing the team to travel to anywhere, anytime. It's a conceit that, whilst being lifted straight out of the STAR TREK shows, allows the format a bit more flexibility. That said, it doesn't make for a better plot or clearer focus. The morality of the characters remains muddied (which is usually a good thing, but here is just plain annoying) whilst the rest of the plot is so predictable and see-through as to hardly be worth the effort. Then they get around to blowing stuff up, which is what they're there for really anyway. TopPERCEPTIONSAn underground lab is sabotaged and the trio move in to try and save a few lives. Then Hel sees her father and goes off on her own to find him, even though he's dead. It turns out that he's a hologram created by Creegan to lure Hel into a trap so that he can tap into her link with the Voice and find out where she is. It doesn't work when the real shade of Hel's father turns up to help out with the usual lashings of mindless destruction. Creegan's back with his great makeup and evil ways. The pantomime playing of the villains works in a way that the pantomime playing of the heroes never can and makes it all a bit more fun. The rest of the show, the plot, acting etc is all pretty perfunctory. Even the is he/isn't he of the ghost issue fails to raise real interest. TopTRIAL AND ERRORThe mind control psycho bitch from Mind Games is back and her powers are growing all the time. When she takes out two betrayor robots, the Voice wonders if she could do the same to the Baileys themselves. Hel and Sarge take her up onto the surface to find out whilst Cleo is in control of the remote control safety device that will kill her if she starts trying to control anyone. By the time Cleo realises it, everyone is under her control, including a Bailey. This story actually builds upon the previous one in an almost interesting fashion, taking the character in a new direction. Sadly, the almost impossibly over-the-top acting ruins the whole thing and makes you wonder exactly what age group was supposed to swallow this stuff. TopDOUBLEWhen Cleo turns up at a nightclub having managed to escape from a betrayor robot, she is shocked to find herself already there. Hel and Sarge immediately imprison both Cleos whilst they try to figure out which is the real one and why the betrayor Cleo hasn't killed them all yet. Then the mean betrayor robot shows up. As if one Cleo wasn't enough, we get two of them. Stereo simpering and plural pouting prove to be just about enough, so when one of the Cleo's get wasted you feel like cheering, even if Jennifer Sky has her best moment at this point. TopLAST STANDA hero of Sarge's puts out a distress call and the girls come running. He has found a stack of plutonium and is protecting it from an all out siege so that a forcefield can be erected and it can remain safe again. During the siege, he and Sarge bond, but then the equipment gets broken and someone has to stay behind the barrier. It's the Alamo, Cleo-style. There's wall to wall destruction and some laughable dialogue and the whole thing is so predictable that when Mr Hero turns out to be a little less than perfect, surprise is on a holiday in the Maldives. TopHEL AND HIGH WATER-PART ONEA faint distress call from beneath the sea makes the girls don some new (and equally impractical) outfits and jump in a submarine. They discover a colony of humans living on the sea bed in peace and harmony. It all seems perfect, so it clearly can't be. But what secrets are these people keeping and will they cost the wounded Sarge her life? There's discord in the ranks between Hel and Sarge, but it all feels forced for the sake of the plot. In the meantime, Cleo is seeing her mother and acting like a seven year old, which only makes her marginally more annoying than usual. TopHEL AND HIGH WATER-PART TWOThe undersea dwellers have captured a Bailey and are stripping it of its technology and its life. When it saves Sarge, they agree to set it free and then set off to prevent a bomb from being exploded that will flood the whole of the underground network. There are some interesting wrinkles here in the stuff dealing with the tortured Bailey, but to be quite frank by this point we really couldn't have cared less. It's over and we have one fervent request - please don't make us review series 2. Top |
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