Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Back to the Planet of the Apes: Episodes That Never Were


This week, Jason and I are taking a break from our reviews to present to you our pitches for further episodes of this series: our speculation as to what might have been if it had gone into multiple seasons...

"No Place Like Home": Burke wakes up in a futuristic house he shares with a woman claiming to be his girlfriend --with no memory of how he got there. Could he really be home? The truth is, while he and his friends were exploring an ancient city, he fell into a model "home of the future" run by a still-functioning computer. A computer desperate for company!

"Urko's Struggle": After an attempt at capturing the astronauts goes awry, Urko is taken hostage. Suffering from a head injury, he goes in and out of consciousness, and we are treated to a series of flashbacks to pivotal points in his early life: an abusive father, limited economic opportunity, and the he-ape toxicity in gorilla culture. Urko's mutterings on these topics provokes Virdon to confront the Security Chief in a fiery, climactic speech: "Don't you see, Urko? Your hate is fueled by trauma after trauma! Inside you're just a scared little gorilla, lashing out at human beings in place of your own failure!" Urko seems moved-- perhaps changed, but it is a ruse, and he escapes, vowing eternal vengeance.

"The Legend": In a Halloween episode, Burke, Virdon, and Galen introduce the Headless Horseman to a rural district to help a young chimpanzee sympathetic to humans prove his courage and win back the post of Prefect.

"Into The Forbidden Zone": Burke, Virdon, and Galen meet a chimpanzee trader returning from an expedition into the forbidden southern regions, his wagon loaded with technological items harvested from a city of the ancients. Grateful for their knowledge the trader invites them to join him. En route, the group are stalked by a giant, mutant gila monster. Trapped in the ruins of a military base, they have no choice but to detonate the surviving munitions in a desperate bid to kill the creature, destroying all they hoped to gain in the process. 

"The Romantic": Burke and Galen are forced to play Cyrano for a lovelorn, young chimpanzee to get his help in freeing Virdon from the gorilla soldiers before Urko arrives.

"We The People": Inspired by the discovery of an ancient book on the founding of the nation, Burke becomes an obsessed evangelist. He seeds a human village with revolutionary dogmas quickly radicalized local humans. Virdon and Galen, fearing for Burke's mental health and terrible consequences, attempt to intervene, but it is too late, the villagers have captured a gorilla wagon full of arms. They escape with Burke after Urko exacts a brutal crackdown on the village in a bloody battle, and can do nothing more than watch as the forces now unleashed play out.

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