War of the Worlds/The Last Supper

The Last Supper
Season 1, Episode 19
Airdate	March 6, 1989
Written by	Tom Lazarus
Directed by	George McCowan
← 1x18 Unto Us a Child Is Born	1x20 → Vengeance Is Mine
War of the Worlds — Season One

The Last Supper is the nineteenth episode of the first season of War of the Worlds.

Jared Martin (Harrison Blackwood), Lynda Mason Green (Suzanne McCullough), Philip Akin (Norton Drake)

and Richard Chaves (Colonel Ironhorse)

Special Guest Stars: Colm Feore (Leonid Argochev), Efrain Figueroa (Gabriel Morales), James Hong (Soo Tak)

Also Starring: Barry Kennedy (Jerry Raymond), Suzanne Coy (Sunethra Menathong), Abbott Jones Anderson (Morris Burnobi), Ilse Von Glatz (Advocate #1), Ric Sarabia (Advocate #2), Michael Copeman (Advocate #3)

Featuring: Brenda Kamino (Nurse), Ron Payne (Businessman), Norah Grant (Sgt. Coleman)

Uncredited: Mung Ling Tsui (Waitress) (archive footage), Mark Holmes (Red) (archive footage), Kevin Rushton (Dog) (archive footage), Sam Malkin (Pollito) (archive footage), Garfield Andrews (Simons) (archive footage), Neil Vipond (Reverend) (archive footage), Von Flores (Alex) (archive footage), Neil Dainard (Detective Harley) (archive footage), Alar Aedma (Alien Hunter) (archive footage), Guylaine St-Onge (Beth) (archive footage), Paul Boretski (Leo) (archive footage), Alex Karzis (Samuel) (archive footage), Kevin Frank (Gabriel) (archive footage)

Plot Overview

The Blackwood Project holds a top-secret meeting with extraterrestrial authorities from other parts of the world in an effort to better understand the reach of the alien threat. While internal tensions threaten to derail their objective, the aliens not only learn of this meeting, but may already have an operative inside.

Notes

Teaser Quote

"We should surrender to the aliens! We have no other choice!"

Base Three

• The strange alien artefact Morales presents is a pyramid, appearing to have three sides.

Locations

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Timeline

• Archaeological evidence dates the alien visitation to Earth for the past 2,000 years.

• Harrison tells the others that the colonists are to arrive in "four short years."

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Knowledge of the existence of the aliens is shown to be known around the world and there is now hope that they can be combated in other nations.

Referbacks

• As a clip show, this episode features footage from the 1953 film The War of the Worlds, as well as the episodes "The Resurrection", "Thy Kingdom Come", "A Multitude of Idols", "Eye for an Eye", "The Second Seal", "Goliath Is My Name", "To Heal the Leper", "The Good Samaritan", "Dust to Dust", "He Feedeth Among the Lilies", "The Prodigal Son", and "The Meek Shall Inherit".

• Harrison's comment about losing a member of their team is a reference to the killing of Kensington in "Among the Philistines".

Trivia

The Show

• It's revealed that the aliens are estimated to be 5 1/2 and 7 feet in height.

• It's also revealed that the alien are not known to have possessed children or animals, speculated to be because of a minimal mass necessary to occupy.

• Physiologically, the aliens are more closely similar to jellyfish than mammals and have a web-like structure instead of a skeletal frame. This explains how easier it is for them to fit inside a host body. Additionally, they have a liquid core that carries neurological information and arterial matter.

Goofs

• When Harrison shows the footage from Fort Jericho, the video is clearly just playing a clip from the episode as the monitor is visible onscreen.

Memorable Moments

• The alien spy takes Ironhrose's discarded gun, calling his claim that it's empty an insult to her intelligence... only to find when she pulls the trigger that he was telling the truth.

Quotes

• Harrison: Now, tomorrow - tomorrow we're going to begin the actual discussions about the alien problem and this could be the single most important event in determining what lifeforms are going to exist on this planet in the future.

• Norton: According to archaeological dating, we know the aliens have visited this planet for the last 2,000 years. They have periodically visited many places on Earth using several different kinds of spaceships. Now the oldest ship that we've encountered was at the Westeskiwin Indian Reservation. This was a walking spaceship, over 600 years old. In this century, we know the aliens arrived on the East Coast of the United States in late October 1938 on a reconnaissance mission. The main invasion force arrived in 1953, as it apparently did around the world. The aliens would have conquered the planet if they had not succumbed to our bacteria. Now the United States and Canadian governments placed what they thought were the remains of dead aliens into steel drums, and these drums were placed in different dump sites throughout the continental United States and Canada. One of the dump sites, a secret facility called Fort Jericho in Northern Nevada, was the first confirmed location of an alien resurrection. There was a large number of steel drums in storage. About half a year ago, a few of these drums accidentally came into contact with radiation. The radiation neutralized the bacteria we thought had killed the aliens, and they came back to life. The aliens searched out their war machines from the invasion of 1953 stored in Hangar 15 at Kellogue Air Force Base and mounted a lethal attack. Fortunately, we were able to sabotage the ships with explosives, and they were destroyed.

Suzanne: At this point we can only estimate how many aliens are in the United States and Canada, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000.

Harrison: This number keeps growing. Now we first discovered aliens at the site of what appeared to be a terrorist operation. We were investigating the scene, and we think it started here at Fort Jericho. Six empty barrels dated 1953 were found, and 320 barrels were missing: all those dated 1953 as well as barrels of raw radioactive waste, presumably as a radiation source to revive more aliens. Aliens walked the Earth again, and we let them get away. Now we've had contact with a renegade mutant alien named Quinn. He has confirmed our worst suspicions: the aliens' goal is world domination. In four short years, a force of millions of aliens are scheduled to arrive here. So let's see what we're dealing with.

Suzanne: Structurally, they're more like jellyfish than mammals. By examining DNA molecules, it appears that the aliens possess humans using a cell-phase matching technique. The alien cells literally overtake the human cells through osmosis. As a result, they have access to the host body's intelligence, and can control them physically and yet there is no outward way for anyone to know. Physiologically, the aliens have a liquid core which carries neurological information as well as arterial matter. Their stable, upright carriage is supported by a web-like musculature structure.

Harrison: The alien stands between 5½ and 7 feet tall. It has a cyclops eye in the center of its forehead and it is a biped. It's got three fingers, three toes, and three arms. Apparently, it has no skeletal structure per se.

Suzanne: One of the aliens' most remarkable characteristics is their ability to osmose into the human body – actually meld their body into ours. We have footage that was taken by a local news photographer.

Harrison: Aliens have never possessed animals or children. Because of this, we theorize they need a certain minimal mass to occupy. They can be anywhere and they can be anyone: soldiers, waitresses, bikers, the homeless, paramedics – they can take over just about anyone. Once they took over Beeton, California, an abandoned irradiated town, and they stocked it with aliens. They took over an abandoned warehouse where they brought humans for the aliens to possess. The most frightening thing of all: they have absolutely no regard for human life. Not since Nazi Germany has the world witnessed such callous and brutal treatment of human beings. They mutilate and maim. To them, we're an inferior species and they treat us like one. Now we know the alien threat is real... and the future of our planet is depended upon what we accomplish here. Unless we transcend partisanship and we begin to cooperate, we may just as well hand the Earth over to them right now.

• Harrison: Now, these aliens that we were talking about this morning, are they the same ones you've been sighting in your country?

Soo Tak: Yes. Yes. Exactly the same. Most curious, um, we have tried to communicate with them, but, uh, as of yet, unable to set up dialogue.

Harrison: They're very intractable. What about their numbers? I mean, how many do you estimate?

Soo Tak: Well, I can only guess. No more than 10,000.

Harrison: That many?

Soo Tak: We have a big country, sir.

• (watching television)

Advocate #3: Why do I like looking at this?

Advocate #2: I do not know, but I like it, too.

• Norton: Okay. Here are some examples based on eyewitness reports of the aliens utilizing everyday items to make high-tech tools and devices. There's a report from Canada where kitchen appliances were jury-rigged to make radio receivers and locators. And a story from New Jersey where the aliens were seen using a vacuum cleaner-like device to locate an alien warship buried underground. They've even used their technology to create artwork unlike anything we've ever seen before. We also believe that they can communicate over light-years in a matter of seconds using their makeshift devices. So, as we've seen, the alien technology runs from the lethal to the sublime.

Harrison: The closest that we've ever come to actually examining an alien artifact was in an automated power plant North of San Francisco. The aliens had taken over the facility, brutally killed every single member of the crew, and then had gone on to set up this bizarre device. When I finally found the aliens we'd been looking for, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a device using a logic system far unto ours in every way. It was fascinating. After they'd gone, Dr. McCullough and I went up to examine this strange alien handiwork. It worked like a distillery, reducing human brains to their very essence, and then one very potent drop of that extract would drip into the sick alien's mouth, curing it. But apparently they'd anticipated us, and the device was booby-trapped, and disintegrated immediately upon touch. Clearly, they do not want anyone to get ahold of their technology.

• Harrison: The important thing is not who made the accusation, but that it's been made at all. We're here to deal with the alien threat on this planet, but we're being stopped at every turn by a carefully orchestrated campaign to undermine this conference, and I, for one, think an explanation is in order.

Leonid Argochev: Why is it, the automatic United States reaction is always to point the finger and accuse us?

• Harrison: We've been painting a pretty negative picture about our battle with the aliens, but there is a bright side: they can be killed and we're getting pretty efficient at it. One particular incident comes to mind. The aliens had broken into a secure army facility in search of war machines and weapons left over from their earlier invasion. Our intelligence discovered this plan and we wiped them out. What they turn into after they die is the only real indication we have that these were once human beings who are now possessed by aliens. But we can be fooled. As a result of an exothermic reaction, their cells become a horrible broiling mass of decomposing alien and human tissue. They are vulnerable, and so are we. We have already lost a member of our team. We have lost many soldiers in combat, and, of course, all the innocent people. The aliens are deadly and they promise – as their numbers increase and they become more sophisticated – they promise to become even deadlier.

• Ironhorse: I highly recommend that we call this whole thing off. It's just gotten too risky.

Harrison: We have a global alien problem. Remember? That's what's too risky.

• Jerry Raymond: We've won.

Harrison: This time, yes, but tomorrow... Tomorrow is another day.