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2005-02-20 Entry: "The End Of Crusade, The Start Of Highlander"

The next episode "Appearances And Other Deceits" sees EarthGov's political affairs department come to the Excalibur to give the ship a makeover to make it play better to the public on Earth. Isn't the guy heading the team part of the Ministry Of Peace from B5?

Meanwhile, they find a huge ship with only one lifesign... the rest of the crew of it are dead. Of course, they have to send a team over to investigate. There was an explosion inside the ship, and the crew appear to have been at each other's throats trying to kill each other - they've all been exposed to space due to the explosion though. And Matheson finds the live alien in stasis.

Once in MedLab, the alien chooses to die, and one of the doctors rushes into isolation to try and save him, and something is transferred from the alien to her. Chambers is obviously annoyed with the doctor for breaking isolation protocols.

The infected doctor starts passing the same glowy thing to the rest of the crew and talking in a strange language. Meanwhile Eilerson is enjoying a salty thing while he struggles to translate the alien language. There's a contradiction as the spoken and written languages of the aliens appear to be different... and if the aliens gave the spoken record, who's is the writing?

Matheson realises something bad is going on when he finds alien writing scrawled on the walls of the bullet car.

The alien influence, realising Eilerson is a threat attempts to take him over, but he manages to slip away and they try to kill him... fortunately he escapes to warn the captain that they must seal off all the decks so that the influence can't be spread any further. But the soldier that saved his life getting him out of there is paralysed from the neck down...

The sealed in decks include Mr Wells, who becomes the alien's chief negotiator. After much discussion, and a hostage shooting on the aliens part, Matthew goes down there in an EVA suit, and gives a suitably cryptic hint to Eilerson on how to solve the matter.

So they depressurise the contaminated decks, forcing the alien presence to return to a single body, and they have sneaked the body of the paralysed soldier into an EVA suit in the contaminated decks, so when the alien presence returns to the single body, it can't move, and they can get it off the ship fairly safely.

And they get new uniforms... which obviously screws up the continuity more than it already has been.

On to disc 3, and we have Matthew sleeping, and a flashback to negotiations on Babylon 5 to give him command of the mission - the alien ambassadors aren't particularly happy with the choice considering he's a bit of a wild card, and he's managed to ruin at least one Drazi in a card game. In the meeting he makes a wager with the Drazi ambassador - they'll give him access to their space for four years, and then spend the fifth year in orbit of Earth, ensuring the blockade and preventing the virus getting off the planet while everyone dies. An interesting change, but it loses impact after the episode with Dureena's people because they're down to a one year timespan anyway...

Alright, they're on an alien planet, a dead world, with a city in perfect shape, even after hundreds of years. Gideon gets the feeling the city is watching them, which is obviously crazy, but then one of the team of investigators gets zapped by a laserbeam by something offscreen. They're "Racing The Night" and Eilerson has a problem - the walls are covered in equations - formulae for great energy, for improved transportation, for magic widgets that perform wondrous functions - but they're all incomplete. Only the first part is out on the walls... so where is the rest?

Dureena is off crawling through tunnels trying to get in to the other buildings they've been unable to open. She's apparently found quite a few skulls in these tunnels, and then, when one of them breaks open, she finds a big glowy thing. Unfortunately they discover the murder and call Dureena back before she can investigate further.

On inspection, all the crewman's internal organs have been removed! Then a whole bunch of flying things turn up - they look like really big floating cameras that've been used elsewhere in the show... and they get to engage in a completely pointess CGI chase scene with the Captain. Oh, and they've got lasers... Fortunately, Galen shows up to save him before he gets splattered against a wall!

Dureena seems to want to learn to be a Technomage - mainly for revenge on the Drakh - but Galen doesn't currently want to teach her. I wonder if that would have changed during the show? He seems to be willing to consider it once she has grown out of her rage, but not before...

Galen sends a homunculous of himself down to the planet to lure out the thing that killed the crewman - it's a silly looking CGI representation of him - which fortunately manages to get its head taken aboard one of the alien ships so they can see it travel underground... where there are hundreds of alien ships, wrecked, ruined, aging.

It turns out to be a laboratory - lure people in with the partial formulae - and then dissect them and experiment on them. All the inhabitants are in cryonic life support, buried miles underground. But the Excalibur's deep scans has triggered a response from the planet - holding the ship in some strange gravity field, while launching more of their ships to attack them.

An attack on the gravity field generator however causes the force to increase, pulling the Excalibur down towards the atmosphere - so Matthew decides to fire the main guns at the planet, even though they'll be dead in space for a minute when they do.

It does get the attention of the alien keeper, who communicates with them - a thousand years ago, the Shadows came to their world to set up a base, but when they refused, the Shadows seeded their world with the same plague that's currently infecting Earth. So after three years of failing to find a cure, they all went into suspension and set it up to perform experiments on all the visiting aliens to continue their search.

Galen is leaving again, and the Rangers are suggesting other targets. But first, Galen has a question - the world they were investigating wasn't on the list of targets supplied by the Rangers, so how did Gideon know about it? Oh yes, that mysterious Apocalypse Box... who made it? What does it know? Does it really lie occasionally? Not that we'll get any of these answers during the remaining episodes...

On to the ISN report of rioting still going on in some parts of Earth... and there's a female Pope... that's not going to happen any time soon. Franklin gets a mention in the report, but it's interrupted when the Excalibur arrives at their next destination and Gideon turns off the TV. Galen turns up to warn the crew away from going down to the planet, because they'll probably all die if they do in "The Memory Of War."

Over-the-top melodramatic entrance of Galen... who's determined that they shouldn't go down to the planet as it's a bad world... the last Technomage to visit it 100 years ago died there... and he's sure things will be bad if they go down there.

Of course, Matthew goes anyway. Once they're down there, Dureena goes missing again. She was following a bunch of markers but they dead end on a ledge. When she's called back down she finds a mechanism that creates a glowing bridge over to the next buiding, which obviously she crosses. Unfortunately, when she finds the mechanism on the other side, she finds it's running out of power and she has to run to get back across, but she does retrieve a data crystal for Eilerson to decode.

A whole bunch of people are killed on the planet, and Galen starts doing some digging. It turns out to be a nano-virus, created by one of Galen's order that infects the central nervous system and causes people to act violently and not remember doing it. And when night falls, the solar energy will diminish, and the virus can be activated by external signal.

So Galen gets to go down and wander around underground to try and stop it. Matthew stupidly decides to follow him while telling everyone else to lock themselves in their rooms. Galen does discover a recording of the original Technomage... or rather an AI... Genius Loci...

Eilerson is locked in, and there's a lot of screaming and banging going on outside his room.

Galen finds a giant machine underground but both Dureena and Gideon are there trying to kill him. He manages to destroy the machine, but his staff is destroyed in the process - it was a gift from the one who taught him, a part of him, and all he took with him when he left the order - at least, that's the perceived opinion, until Dureena goes down for some digging! Wow... is she covered in mud or what?!

And what is Galen hiding under his cloak... Chambers almost gets a glimpse of it when she's treating Galen's knife wound.

Chambers manages to reengineer the Technomage nano-virus to provide a shield for the lungs once inhaled that will allow them to move amidst those who are contaminated for 48 hours... didn't they use this earlier? Here we've got a continuity error.

Oh, and the Apocalypse Box is determined that Matthew shouldn't trust Galen.

On to Matthew watching alien porn in his quarters, when Dr. Chambers arrives, and it was apparently on Max Eilerson's data crystal that he turned in his last report on. That should be an interesting bit of information to hold over Max's head later. A Minbari Ranger comes aboard, with information that would require the Excalibur to break a whole bunch of laws for the next lead on "The Needs Of Earth."

So they're going down to an alien planet, to break out a known fugitive from bounty hunter hands. Matthew and Dureena go down to the domed cities to rescue him, and once down Dureena lets Gideon in on the fact that she's done this before with four others, but that they were all killed en route.

They get to the dome, but Dureena can't enter the combination necessary to get the door open with her EVA suit on. She needs to remove her gloves, but the atmosphere is toxic, so she has to try and hold her breath while she does it.

Once inside Dureena needs a distraction so Gideon picks a fight with the biggest guy there. Dureena manages to leave a sign for the local thieves guild, and she makes a contact that may allow them to find their target.

Then they need to get past another bunch of thugs, so Eilerson's alien porn comes in handy...

They get the captives out, including the guy they were sent to find, and make it back to the Excalibur, but his people turn up and try to bargain for him to be turned over to them. Of course, they resort to threats to make their point.

The alien won't give up his datacrystals until he's sure they're the right people to give them to... and while in Medlab he finds a bunch of data crystals, including one with Mozart recordings on them. At this point the alien decides to return to his people, but turns a copy of his data crystals over to Matthew first. On the transfer, the other aliens kill him.

But he's done what he needed to - handed over all the important knowledge of his people to someone who can appreciate it - the creative output of an entire planet - art, music, stories, every piece of art preserved because the government ordered that art was decadent and it should be destroyed. Books were burned, art was destroyed... all because it didn't support the government.

And then we're on to the next episode, Eridani Sector, and Gideon is smelling strange things between decks 14 and 18. There's a distress signal, and they pick up some "Visitors From Down The Street."

They pull in a life pod, and there are two aliens inside - a male and a female - who takes a hostage. This is set up as a very silly X-Files parody, and there's almost nothing memorable about it - alien world using hoax conspiracy to keep people in order. Communications with other worlds were picked up, and the government created evidence of human influence on the planet and then denied it, making people think it was true. Then the Government can't be to blame for any problems, as it's all the aliens fault - so the people don't descend into yet another civil war.

And the homage to the Cigarette Smoking Man at the end is at least worth a laugh...

And the commentary which Warner Brothers cut and so will be removed from future versions of the Crusade DVD package. So, Racing The Night was intended to be the pilot, but was pushed back to later in the series to allow a more conventional pilot to open the series. That explains my first comment about limiting it to four years not feeling like much of an impact after the Dureena episode.

Okay, and we get mention of Dureena's sword - where she disappears for two episodes, and comes back with no memories, but with a sword - the arc might have been interesting if they'd had a chance to film it...

And a hint of the ship that destroyed the Cerberus - it was intended to be part Shadow-tech, but part of the secret Earth project to integrate that into their ships... which would eventually have shown up in the final episode of the season (based on the script that might still be floating around the internet).

Hints on the Apocalypse Box - it has a curse attached... when Gideon died in the season finale, his consciousness was transferred to the Box (which is why the Box talks with his voice), so there'd be a way to bring him back.

So, one episode to go - "Each Night I Dream Of Home" - and the Excalibur is floating in space waiting for a rendezvous with an Earth ship - a Warlock class destroyer, which wants to transfer two passengers to the Excalibur. We could probably have done with a better shot of the destroyer considering it's the first one we've seen.

A senator comes aboard on a secret mission (as he's one of only a handful of Earth senators who were off planet when the plague hit) and orders the Excalibur to return to Earth and make a pickup there before proceeding to a test area. But once they set off, they mustn't stop for anyone or anything...

Meanwhile, Lochley is floating around in a Star Fury, obviously damaged and hanging in space, sending out a distress signal and needing pickup before she runs out of oxygen. Clearly this is going to lead Gideon into a conflict between his "never leave anyone behind" ethic and his orders.

Why is the senator travelling with a plumber? And why does he need to meet with Dr Chambers in private?

Oh, and due to orders, they've got to pick up the Star Fury without stopping, which means they're practically going to have to run her over! Hopefully the gravitic propulsion system will be able to slow and stop the Star Fury in the landing bay safely... okay, just captured.

That explains the plumber - he wants to be infected with the plague!

What can Gideon tell Lochley? Never eat anything bigger than your head! Never play pool at a place named Pop's! Never eat at a place named Mum's! But nothing about the mission...

So, back on Earth and they're making a pickup - a shuttle leaves the surface, ejects a lifepod, and then explodes. They have to pick up the lifepod, which is certified as uncontaminated, but the passenger may not be... but if the senator is willing to risk his life over it, Gideon thinks it must be safe enough to bring in to isolation on the Excalibur.

Helloooo Doctor Stephen Franklin. Still head of xenobiological research (but then he's still that when Sheridan dies in 14 more years). And the plumber is part of his research. They need to chart the spread of the virus once it enters a host body... so they need to infect an uninfected person to trace its spread.

Meanwhile, David the plumber makes a call home, which the Drakh pick up on, and notify the fleet to intercept them.

The Drakh plague infects all air breathing mammals, and there's evidence of its existence even though they can't actually isolate it - it keeps cropping up as mutations of other fatal diseases - ebola, hepatitis, etc. - and it can infect people who were on an island that had had no contact with the outside world for two weeks, so it definitely affected the whole planet.

So they infect the plumber - and start tracking the virus. It's spreading at an incredible rate, and not penetrating any of the non-critical areas of the body, it's also grown at an amazing rate once it entered, as if it's a zip file that is decompressing. It appears to be directed - it's a nano-tech virus that can think and direct its actions.

At this point the Drakh turn up, and they've got several minutes until the jump engines come back on line. The attack triggers the failsafe system in the medbay, threatening to kill David if they can't override it. They are attempting to get him out manually when he's knocked out.

So, they defeat the Drakh, rescue David, and return him and Franklin to Earth, but they get some evidence of the plague, so maybe they'll be able to make some headway.

Ah - a hint of a cure - the Technomage nano-tech virus had a central control system that ordered it, but there's no sign of a similar control system with the Drakh virus... so is it being controlled externally, or has it got some sort of hive-mind, communicating with itself, experimenting on humanity until it finds the right combination?

Watching the making of documentary, it's possible that it was this that Warner Brothers cut up rather than the commentary, as there wasn't really much empty space in that which could have been filled with stories of how WB or TNT or whichever party it was screwed JMS over. But the interviews in the documentary keep hinting at that...

So that's the end of Babylon 5, at least until Legend Of The Rangers is released... and possibly The Memory Of Shadows, although I have absolutely no interest in going to see that if the rumours are true and they're recasting the existing parts with big name actors. That would probably go down in history as one of the dumbest moves in recent TV/Movie history!

But anyway, before I descend into a rant, lets move on... to Highlander Season 6 - the season I haven't seen... at least, I don't think I have, although I've probably seen the season opener just because it was part 2 of a 2 part story.

So off with "Avatar." A year has passed since the events of the last episode, and Duncan MacLeod is in a Malaysian monastery, which is pretty much where he's been since killing Richie. Out of the game, on holy ground.

Then, at Richie's grave, Dawson is giving his respects after the year, when Duncan wanders back into his life. He wants the Watchers help to defeat Ahriman. Dawson isn't initially sure he wants to help. MacLeod is having nightmares about killing Dawson.

Ahriman is still around, currently as a flower seller, and affecting some woman who I don't recognise. He's also appearing in visions as James Horton to Duncan. Dawson's got a new place - Le Blues Bar. Duncan does some redecorating - putting pretty much everything from his barge in storage for 50 years. And Dawson decides he might actually help after all.

Oh, and that woman from earlier, who's still in a bit of a trance, decides to jump off a bridge into the Seine, right near MacLeod's barge. Before rescuing her, Duncan has to refuse to take his sword back from Dawson... this could be interesting if another immortal shows up...

Okay and Sophie Baines is relevant to this why? Oh, she actually died in the river and MacLeod rescued the demon instead... well, possibly - this episode is a little confusing.

Okay, Duncan sees her again, also sees Horton, then gets chased by a car with no-one driving it. Roses around Sophie keep turning from white to red. Duncan finds out Sophie is dead from Dawson, and Ahriman shows up to Sophie trying to persuade her that she died in the river. So is she dead? Or is the dead body the illusion?

Sophie goes to the morgue, Duncan is already there checking on the body, Ahriman persuades her she died and he's given her a second chance at life. If she weren't there, her brother might end up a criminal or drug addict or something, so she agrees to follow his plan to kill Duncan. When she meets him, she can't go through with it, but her brother tries. Sophie, realising Duncan is the champion and that her brother will do anything for her, jumps in the river again, knowing it would stop Ahriman's plan.

Then on to "Armageddon" which is hopefully the last part of the silly demon storyline. Ahriman is still around, haunting a priest friend of Duncan's, whose brother committed suicide, haunting MacLeod again, and now haunting Dawson with images of Horton.

It threatens the priest with his brother - suggesting that he's in hell and needs help to escape - it wants him to commit suicide himself. Dawson gets offered his legs back, in return for not helping Duncan - but he finally manages to turn it down. Duncan gets trapped in a dream, and the more he hates it, the stronger it gets and the more trapped he becomes until Dawson breaks the trance.

Duncan saves the priest, and then realises that peace is the answer. After some meditation in the church, he falls back into the vision, and has to keep throwing away his weapons. And so, giving up anger, and pride, and hate, destroys the vision - the freaky dwarf goes away, so we move onto Kronos, who Duncan does a pretty good job of calmly defeating, turning his attacks away or ducking them so they make no contact. And then, Horton, who gives some feeble verbal assault, then goes through flashes of the whole Ahriman arc, before disappearing.

So it was the battle within one person's soul - Duncan realised that Ahriman existed inside everyone, so it was his own peace he was seeking. After a drink with Dawson, he gets persuaded to take his sword back. And we've pretty much finished with the Duncan arc if my understanding is correct - now we've got the search for a female immortal lead for the spin-off series...

So, "Sins Of The Father" sees us back in World War 2 Poland with our first candidate Alex Raven. She's trying to project David his son Max, who have an important list that she must protect. The soldiers discover them and Alex does a pretty good job of defending them, but she and David are shot. Max comes out of hiding surrounded by the dead.

Paris, and Duncan is playing boules with George, who's retired to let his grandson run his bank. But George's car explodes just after Duncan senses the presence of another immortal.

Alex is following her promise, with Max, who is now an old man... but he still has the list, and George's grandson Grant is the next to be talked to about it... Alex confronts Grant in his car, gives him a number to contact her, and tells him to go over the bank records for the name David Leiner - something to do with a whole bunch of money.

Once Grant drives off, Duncan runs in to Alex and we get a flashback... she's lying on a blanket making out with Cameron, a guy who wants her to marry him. She has to tell him the truth about her life - that she was a Celtic warrior when the Romans invaded Britain. Then Gerard turns up and kills Cameron when he tries to defend Alex. She gives chase to Gerard, and Duncan who has heard her yells over the body manages to turn up just as she takes Gerard's head, and has the quickening in the middle of a stream, which is quite a cool effect, although the wet, transparent shirt is probably a little gratuitous. Then Duncan leaves.

Oh, she's got a motorcycle... trying to give her some style are we?

Duncan, however, has sword issues and we're getting a lot of flashbacks to his actions with it - when he first attained it, who he's fought with it, a whole bunch of fight scenes. Will he be able to pick it up again? Of course, the flashes end with Richie, and Duncan sticks the sword back in a chest...

Duncan goes to confront Grant, who appears to be trying to leave town. Duncan thinks Alex is there, but Grant claims no knowledge. Then Alex really does turn up, and she's wiring a bomb... or rather trying to defuse it. Okay, and Duncan's going to fight her with a stick!

After the fight, Duncan confronts Grant - the bank got into trouble a few years ago, and the Russian mafia got involved, although George tried initially to refuse them. Duncan asks to arrange a meeting with Alex, but Grant intervenes and shoots and kills Alex and Duncan has to get him out of there before she revives. He puts Grant up in a hotel.

Returning to his barge, there's an immortal there... Alex is making herself at home. Alex introduces him to Max. And then we flash back to the German attack - Max comes out of hiding, and Alex revives. Back in the present, Max still has his list - people who had their money in foreign bank accounts when they were rounded up... and they believe that Grant's bank was one of them.

So MacLeod and Alex go to ask Grant why he lied - but someone shoots Duncan through the door, and jumps out of the window. Alex gives chase, gets the killer, but an accomplice turns up and we have to suffer though her hanging from a footbridge over a busy road while they get away. Grant meanwhile is nowhere to be seen.

Duncan picks Grant's safe... Alex apparently doesn't know how to do that, but Duncan learned from a friend... presumably Amanda. Grant turns up when they find the safe empty. And everything comes out - Grant killed his grandfather who was going to give the money back. Alex and Duncan get taken out by a couple of thugs to be killed. Grant has Max at gunpoint, what with him being the only one who can link him to the money.

Duncan and Alex turn up, but Grant dies in an accident. Fortunately, George left Duncan enough clues for them to find the letters that prove the money was in the bank. Duncan and Alex have a heart to heart (and a game of boules) at the end.

Wow, that was a complicated episode. The woman playing Alex was good, and the character would have had better reason for good acts than Amanda does... of course, as the fanfiction says, Amanda is the biggest boyscout of them all - she just doesn't let anyone see it. But a spin-off with Alex Raven might also have brought Max along with it, and having Ian Richardson in the show each week could have been an interesting foil.

And now, do I go out? If I don't I need food... and I can't be bothered to face the weather... so I might just stay in.

Okay, I did go out... I didn't have any money to order in a pizza, so had to go out to visit a cashpoint at least... at that point it was easier to get food and go for drinks while I was fulfilling the initial requirement. Although I didn't stay out too late, so I'm back in time to at least watch a single episode of Highlander.

In this case, "Diplomatic Immunity" which amazingly isn't a screen test for the Raven series... but we have a rich englishman and his wife leaving somewhere in a Rolls-Royce, and then, just down the road, running a guy down. The wife comes out of the bushes, acting distraught, threatening to call the police, and basically getting the guy to write her a fat cheque to cover her future expenses without her husband. Once she gets it and they leave, her husband revives. It's a good con while it lasts...

And then, in modern times, they're trying the same stunt when Duncan walks into the middle of it and breaks up their con. Cue flashback: Willie has been challenged to a duel, and Duncan tries to intervene, thinking Willie has an advantage, what with being an immortal and all... but Willie wants to lose. So pistols at 20 paces (or 10 paces, or whatever). So, Willie turns, and shoots the hat of one of the spectators. The guy he's duelling then takes his time to aim, before shooting Willie in the chest and killing him.

Of course, Willie has embezzled 100 thousand pounds from his and his opponents company, so being killed gets him out of having to pay it back. What is it with the gentlemen thieves in the immortal world? Amanda, Kit Walker, Cory Raines, and now Willie Kingsley. They've all been around for a fair few years, and they're all petty criminals. How come none of them have lost their heads yet? They must have pissed off a few immortals in their time.

Cue the other kind of watcher, in this case Wesley the Wuss, borrowing the Ambassador's car (or whoever MacLeod's friend was at the event earlier) and then encountering Willie and his con job. But once Willie is dead, Wesley decides it's safer to kill the wife than pay her, so he clubs her over the head with half a brick and drives off.

So of course, Willie will blame the Ambassador rather than Wesley the Wuss. Well, the car is owned by the American Embassy, so there's no immediate link to any person... but MacLeod wants to try another lead. I'm guessing Duncan is going to have to take Willie's head at the end of this episode... even with his current refusal to pick up the sword...

Confronting the Ambassador leads to Willie losing it and wanting to attack him when they find out it's his personal car. So why does someone else have access to it? And why has the damage recently been hammered out? Oh, okay, he's not the Ambassador currently, but he's the deputy and he's got a chance of getting the position. But he was with a mistress when the accident occurred, and he doesn't want that getting out... he also didn't want something else getting out.

Wesley is the deputy ambassador's son. This isn't going to end well (how many times is that phrase going to come up here?!)...

Willie lets MacLeod confront his friend, but takes matters in to his own hands and shoots him. This puts Willie and Duncan into a fight - Duncan refuses to kill him as long as Wesley lives, but when did Duncan pick his sword back up?

"Patient Number 7" returns us to our trial of new female immortals. We have a woman with amnesia in the psychiatric ward of some hospital and the guy administering their medication decides to take advantage of the girl. But then two guys come in with guns and start killing everyone. They try to kill her, but she dodges at the last second and then beats them to a pulp before running out of there. But how far is a girl in a hospital gown going to get?

And then we cut to a taxidermist... talking to the two hit-men from the previous night. And their belief is that she didn't know them - she has amnesia, doesn't know who or what she is. She's forced to rely on instinct, but she'll probably end up meeting MacLeod...

Okay, her name is Kyra, and she doesn't recognize Duncan, even though he knows her... and they make a run from the police. Once they're under the bridge on the Seine, Duncan's trying to get her to remember, but beyond the hospital and the gun, she doesn't remember anything.

Cue flashback: Duncan was in an inn, in France, 1640, and Kyra enters... and certainly gets noticed. She does however manage to put both the random men and Duncan in their place... but then, for a member of the Queen's guards, she should be reasonable with a sword.

So they're sharing the only room in the inn, and sharing the only bed in the room, only strictly honerable circumstances... but with such a small bed, getting both of them in it honerably could be an entertaining event...

Duncan persuades her of the truth via her birthmark (inside thigh, shaped like a butterfly) and attacking her with a lead pipe, which she proves she can defend. So her instinctive swordfighting ability is still there.

Okay, so far Kyra is more interesting than Alex Raven, but we've not got a real feel for the character because she's got amnesia. But her husband was killed after they put away a criminal and he got out (he was immortal, and he's the taxidermist from earlier). He turned up at their door and tried to kill them - got the husband, but she went over the balcony.

And then she finds her gun collection...

And now, on the taxidermist's terms, they fight - at the observatory - and Kyra goes into it with her eyes open. She manages to defeat the taxidermist (and his henchmen) and we get a brief comment about her being a soldier for a thousand years, but beyond the France reference, who knows where else she served...

But she's a professional bodyguard, and will go where the work is...

And now, sleep... Black Tower can wait until tomorrow...