'Ominous Passage', part 4 of the 'Soldiers of Love' series is far and away the
funniest so far. Parts of this one had me laughing out loud.
'Ominous Passage', part 4 of the 'Soldiers of Love' series is far and away the
funniest so far. Parts of this one had me laughing out loud.
What's it got? Well, a host of new characters including the cast of Jake Avara's new SF show - A show that is a happy parody of B7 with a crew attempting to restore the right of the galaxy to wear fashion clothing. The ship's computer (which responds to its crew in a kind of Gregorian chant and is played by Gareth) tells them that the ship is called 'Vibrator'.
'Oh' says Jenny, 'It got it from something I was thinking.'
The usual characters are on fine form. I just love Turnidus and Yztabub. Hywel, the gushingly camp Welshman is a scream. I was creasing myself listening to him. Why has no one cast Gareth in a commedy part before?
Virtually the entire cast are doubling, tripling or even quadrupling on parts, but such is the variety of accents and filters used that I actually only noticed this at one point when one of the minor charactes sounded like Gamak (and it wasn't confusing in context).
Interestingly enough, there's one slightly dark strand. Teddy, the only character I don't really care for, is developing a rather nasty menacing streak. This episode is taking off virtually everything. There's a mickey take of 'the Phamtom Menace' (with Panakol Floorwalker's mother done in a wonderful mom-and-apple-pie American accent by Jan Chappell), a nod to Star Wars and a blatent rip-off of Dr Who. Think of sink-plungers...
There's also my favourite song in the series so far. 'I am a pilot of the space patrol'. That had me laughing. The tune seems awfully familiar. It may be based on Gilbert and Sullivan.
There are so many good bits - the spider in the swamp, the conversations between Gamak, Jake and Hywel, and so much more. I can easily forgive the 'Uranus' joke coming up twice in one scene and the rather boring bit of music tacked on after the closing credit music.
Heck, forget that Gareth Thomas, Michael Keating, Jan Chappell and Nicholas Courteny are in it. This one stands strong on its own merits. The B-movie atmosphere is gloriously there - you can virtually see the wobbly sets. It's camp, it's corney, I *love* it.
Judith