Solomon and the Veritas Foundation get involved with more than they hoped for when they bring back a mummy from Peru.
Kelladyne corporation had hired them to find the mummy and the question is are they on the same side as Solomon or not?

This episode involves one of my ‘favourite’ enemies of mankind…. The virus! So it already has me well and truly on its side before we even get to the first ad break.

There are a number of story ideas in this episode that show how this series could actually be opened up, allowing it to get away from the ‘ search for the ancient relic of the week’ it has been so far.

There is a lot to like in this story, from the beginning we get to see the team in a more relaxed mode and uncover more about them while doing so.
Maggie not only gets to actually get involved for more than a few scenes for a change, she also gets to have an interesting conversation with Solomon about her feelings for him.

Vincent again hints at his dodgy and dubious background when explaining what Kelladyne are up to while laying siege outside the Veritas base.
“I don’t want to know how you know this stuff” Solomon says to him.
“No man you really don’t!” comes the reply from Vincent

We even get a number of scenes with Calvin and Nikko at a ski resort. As fun as the banter between them is though all the growing animosity between the two of them does is bring Calvin down to Nikkos level.
As I’ve said before, and no doubt will do again, Nikko is just an annoying brat who really gets on my nerves. This continual verbal fencing only ends up detracting from Calvins character, makes him seem as annoying as Nikko!

The search for the Holy Grail and a secretive, at least in our time, Order of Templars called The Knights of Sangraal looking for it are the basis of this episode.

The Templars and the search for the Holy Grail has been the stuff of legends and myth for centuries. As we know even Monty Python covered the subject! Exactly what the Grail is is as much a mystery as where it is.

With this in mind the Grail needs to be incredibly, incredibly difficult to find, and while this is kind of the case in this episode, the trail they follow being quite complicated and needing a lot of investigative research, you also feel that when they reach the location anyone having searched that area independently would have known something of what was there and would have discovered anything there by now
It isn’t as if the search for the Grail isn’t something that hasn’t been the source of many investigations over the years after all. All the other items found in the series so far I have never heard of, they possibly do exist but everyone has heard of the Grail and I felt the discovery was just a bit to easy.

That said this episode does have a lot going on in it. It introduces the name of the organisation that is against Veritas, Dorna. Their aim is described as being the opposite of Veritas. They search for the items like Veritas but with the intention of keeping them hidden form the world. A regular antagonist is needed for the series, something to add a little intrigue and danger to it. Outsmarting other collectors and archaeologists is one thing, another equally powerful organisation is another completely.

The idea of the Grail being on a small secular island with a very closed community is good, it makes the search seem a bit more believable. The entry into the islanders pub is very reminiscent of that other classic ‘insiders’ pub scene from the film ‘American Werewolf in London’

The underground cave system is cleverly shown, though why do the writers insist on having Nikko manage to do everything?
It is really bugging me how he always knows better and seems to be proven right most the time.

Never the less it is a solid episode building on what has gone before.

An amusing opening teaser involving a kickboxing training session between Solomon and Nikko starts this episode. Nikko once again being the arrogant little pipsqueak that he always is, though showing that he may just possibly be changing once the fight is over.

Unfortunately before the second part of this pre credit sequence is over he has put everyone on the team on the backfoot. His short fuse and arrogance gets him arrested for attacking Chinese soldiers in Tibet. It really does make no sense why he keeps going off with the team, he is a real liability to them. Attacking Chinese guards in their own ‘country’ has to be one of the most stupid things anyone can ever think of doing. After all the Chinese have such good human rights records in their country. Worst of all he doesn’t even seem to realise how stupid he has been.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ he tells Solomon when he visits him.

What is good about this episode though is the background we get on Vincent, by far the most interesting character in the series. He has shown a sort of Eastern philosophy to teaching Nikko and we learn that he was in Tibet as a boy, learnt and studied in a Buddhist monastery and even lost his teacher while there. All of which now doubt influenced how he looks at life (though it has to be said that seeing as his teacher was taken by the Chinese due to a traitor it seems almost unbelievable that he would change sides as easily as it SEEMS he did to join Solomon and the Veritas team)

This is an enjoyable episode, even though it is becoming very like Tia Carrere’s ‘Relic Hunter’, without the humour but with a darker underlying tone and a bit of subplot to the overall storyline.

Once more it has a good basic story and the search for the wheel is well written and well designed. The clues leading to it are cleverly thought out and complicated enough to make it believable that no one would have found it before now.

This episode is what good action based TV is all about, a good story full of drama, mystery, danger and action. It may be lightweight in an overall sense of things, especially compared to today’s top programmes full of continuity and series long plots (which I love by the way!) but sometimes that can be just what you need to wind down after a hard day at work.

The last episode was much, much better than the first two and it was now time to see if the writers had hit their only home run of the series or were they going to manage to become regulars at hitting the ball out of the stadium?

My first thought is that neither of these are right for this episode. It is not as good as skulls but also nowhere near as bad as the original two.

If the last episode was reminiscent of the Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones movies then this one resembles Ocean’s Eleven/entrapment. This is all about a heist, pure and simple. It may be wrapped up in a bit of Archaeology and criminal art collectors but the heist is what everything is building up to.

This episode also injects a bit of wit into it. There is a great line from the bad guy when Juliet Goes in as an undercover reporter with an assumed name…
“Juliette Moore, hmmmm! That’s sounds promising”

There is also for the first time, a bit of intrigue involving Vincent. What is he actually up to is something you ponder throughout the episode, and that is good writing. It keeps you interested in what is going on behind the main story.

The heist though is what this is all about and the build up and planning of it is just as interesting as the actual heist itself.
It is cleverly planned and executed (though the escape is a bit too easy!) and much more importantly it is believable. How they do it is completely plausible, nothing that makes you have to suspend disbelief during any part of it.

After the first two diabolical episodes I can now say that I am really looking forward to the next one. Shame that the first two were so awful that it never got any further on American TV, at least over here we are getting the whole series.

A new story, not connected to the first two, or to Solomon’s wife/Nikko’s mother. Maybe this will open things up a bit more allowing a more open, one-off story. That’s what I was hoping for as Iapproached the viewing of the episode anyway.

While this still isn’t an episode from the top drawer it is a vast improvement over the first two. Those two felt like they were part of a long complicated back-story, rather like you would have felt if you started watching X-Files in the fourth or fifth series. You could possibly enjoy the episode but are more likely to be lost by the sub plots. Starting a series like that is a bad idea, puts viewers off straight away.

This episode is much more like you would have expected this series to be like; shades of Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones are at last apt comparisons.
We have the search for a lost item, Nazi Fourth Reich, cross and double cross and a beautiful female treasure hunter (The wonderful Liz Vassey, Captain Liberty from the live action Tick)

Bella Nicholson is the best character to appear in the series so far. She is smart, sexy and the perfect counterpoint to the aims and ideals of Solomon. By the end of this episode I was already hoping that a quick reappearance for her was already scheduled. Her scenes with Solomon actually bring something out of him, the chemistry between them is readily apparent.

There are even some clever plot touches in this that are not completely off the wall stupid, like Calvin’s revitalisation!
The trick the Veritas team play on Cordoba and the Germans with the map/blueprint brought a wry smile to my face and that doesn’t happen very often.

If we get to see more episodes along the lines of this one, get some more depth to the characters and get Bella back then for the first time I think I can say that I would be looking forward to seeing more of the Veritas crew.

This episode was such an improvement that I don’t even have anything to say about the annoying Nikko, and that probably says more than any words I can put to paper!