Episode Title: Rio
Opening Sequence:
A lady who sounds an awful lot like the squinty chick who narrated Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring movie says, in a voice full of mysticism and portent:
NARRATOR LADY: "In the year 2250, the Earth was evacuated. The human race left for the stars, there to adapt themselves to new worlds and new lives. Except for a ring station maintained by the enigmatic Cradle Monks, the Earth has been declared a quarantine zone and lain fallow for centuries."
As the voice speaks, the camera pans back away from the Earth to reveal a thin-looking technological ring around the planet. It pans further back to reveal a spacecraft speeding past the moon. The tone of the narrator lady becomes more urgent and threatening.
NARRATOR LADY: "I repeat, the Earth has been quarantined. Your presence here is forbidden by the laws of the Unity. Turn back or you will be destroyed."
As she speaks, a huge gunship looms from the other side of the moon, closing in fast on the smaller, speeding craft. The camera fixes on the racing interloper vessel and we cut to an interior scene.
(From here, all you get is a plot synopsis.)
Inside the craft are CAPTAIN RAYLIN, a cat-eyed member of the Unity (who consider themselves the closest things to True Humans in the galaxy. True Humans are universally, but controversially, revered.)
CAPTAIN RAYLIN's abrasive, swaggering right-hand man is M'KAIN, a "dragon" mercenary. He kind of looks like a dragonborn from D&D 4th ed, without the cool tentacle-hair. It appears the dragons once fought a war against the Unity and lost, becoming its unofficial military forces.
The ship's engineer is the never-seen SEEBO. He's very laid back and very dishonest.
Also aboard the ship are DR. CULLEN and PROFESSOR VERMILLION. DR. CULLEN is some kind of furry lizard monkey. PROFESSOR VERMILLION has a huge pinkish head with big purple dots on it.
The audience quickly discovers that PROFESSOR VERMILLION has hired CAPTAIN RAYLIN's craft to secretly take him to Earth, but something has gone wrong. WARDEN ALABASTER, a cat-eyed (just like CAPT. RAY) Unity official hails the fleeing craft, the Chaucer, and tells CAPTAIN RAYLIN to prepare to be boarded.
CAPTAIN RAYLIN refuses and, after a warning shot, WARDEN ALABASTER seends a hull-piercer missle after the ship. It turns out to be a long, barbed pole which punctures the elongated head of PROFESSOR VERMILLION (but not before he reveals some terrible secret to DR. CULLEN in a dramatic whisper.)
SEEBO reveals that the hull-piercer is slowly destroying the ship with an infection of nano-probes (while floating by the window in an escape pod.) DR. CULLEN, CAPTAIN RAYLIN and M'KAIN begin arguing over how to squeeze into the last (two-man) escape pod just as the Chaucer explodes.
ROLL CREDITS
Okay, so the crew didn't die. CAPTAIN RAYLIN, M'KAIN and DR. CULLEN awaken in some sort of infirmary, where they speculate that the Cradle Monks must have rescued them. They all give their opinions of the engimatic Cradle Monks (who protect the Earth as the Cradle of Life) and few of these opinions are very positive.
Secretly listening outside the door are two Cradle Monks, BROTHER NARAT and NOVICE RUSH. Both wear hooded robes and ornate face masks. As they listen, another, much shorter (and probably CGI) monk, FATHER BEN, comes up and chides them. They discuss plans about what to do with the three people they rescued and it becomes clear the three Cradle Monks share a secret which they plan to keep from the rescued crew of the Chaucer.
While the monks scheme, DR. CULLEN reveals the "real" reason he and PROFESSOR RIGEL hired the now-destroyed Chaucer. They plan to find a lost space ship which will prove the origin of the dragons, who were some of the first genetically-engineered soldiers of the True Humans. CAPTAIN RAYLIN feels that her people, the Unity, are far closer to True Humans than dragons could ever be, but thinks the find would be an important one (and one that unscrupulous Unity officials might supress.) M'KAIN knows there's something fishy about DR. CULLEN's story, but the Cradle Monks enter and interrupt before DR. CULLEN can be pressed any farther.
The crew and the two Cradle Monks mutually distrust eachother at first, but FATHER BEN works out a deal. The crew can search for DR. CULLEN's "lost dragon ship" together while BROTHER NARAT and NOVICE RUSH keep an eye on them.
Some other stuff happens and it turns out you can't trust ANYONE. Only CAPTAIN RAYLIN has relatively honest motives and the realization that none of her companions are being honest begins to eat away at her. She also begins to realize that something is not right with the Unity, but her fanatic loyalty and her unshakable beleif in her nearness to True Human Form keep her on course.
In need of a craft with which to explore the Earth, CAPTAIN RAYLIN contacts an old war buddy of hers, ALBA. ALBA turns out to be a cross between a treeant and a rock monster who smugglers weird things to several illegal colonies on the quarantined world (and other planets in the system.) His base of operations is right atop Killamanjaro.
ALBA agrees to give CAPTAIN RAYLIN a ship if she'll do some smuggling for him. Her first delivery is a case of Rambunctium, one of the most dangerous elements known in the Galaxy. Even the hard-as-nails M'KAIN blanches at the idea of carrying the explosive in what amounts to be a very old and poorly maintained planetary shuttlecraft. None-the-less, CAPTAIN RAYLIN accepts the mission.
DR. CULLEN, however, receives orders from his underworld contact, MR. BLACK, to steal the Rambunctium and replace it with other useless materials. As he is doing so, M'KAIN catches him in the act and, instead of reporting him to CAPTAIN RAYLIN, demands to be cut in on the action. DR. CULLEN promises M'KAIN a percentage of the take, even though he is not actually working for money (as will be revealed in a later episode.)
The rambunctium has to be delivered to creatures in Rio who have giant mouths and shark teeth and act like they are in a soap opera all the time. One of them tries to blow herself, her lover, and the mutated remains of Rio sky high. M'KAIN was an ascerbic jerk, CAPTAIN RAY and NARAT played straight man, DR. CULLEN was brilliantly slimy and NOVICE RUSH had one of many tantrums to come.
Well, that's pretty much what happened, except for the bits I accidentally left out.
Back to the episode gude?
(Oh, I probably shouldn't leave this bit out: the show ends with a flashback to the days shortly before the Earth gets evacuated. It reveals that NOVICE RUSH is a True Human, the scout for one of the cryogenic evacuation ships and that he's concerned what the process will do to his pregnant wife, CONNIE. CONNIE reassures him with the old saw about cryostasis being just like going to sleep, but this NOVICE RUSH of the past worries that there are some nightmares from which you might never awaken.)