***
The First Reel
They came to colonize the Red Planet. Little did they know that something else was there first...
TERRORFORMING MARS
The titles fade away, replaced by the planet Mars herself. Her two moons, Phobos and Deimos, orbit around the crimson world. Eerie music plays as the camera zooms past the planet, moving closer and closer to Phobos. As it draws near, we see the spaceship Hectariate approaching the moon...
The Not-Too-Distant Future: The Year 2085 AD
The ship has launched from Earth's first colony on Mars. The crew is on a scouting mission to the dark side of Phobos. They will not be prepared for what they are about to find...
Nelle Yelpir is dressed in a skin-tight leotard-legging combo with a loose crop top and a pair of leg warmers over her shins. For some reason, she’s also wearing stilettos. Every article on her is neon-bright magenta or cyan. Playing in the background is a song called Vixen by The Fall, because the music of 100 years ago will never die.
Having apparently just finished a jazzercising session (apparently to decidedly-non-jazzy British new wave), the token female struts her not-sweaty bod over to the fridge and grabs a couple BFF Lites. They come in packets that look like those Caprisun kid-drinks, but BFF Lites are clearly for ladies age 21-29 (judging by the packaging which is marketed to those who prefer to ogle ladies age 21-29).
A blue bubble door not at all ripped off from the NES game Metroid opens automatically (without having to be shot, making this a totally original future door idea). Nelle steps through and walks down a long hall lit by violet lights, heels clacking. The door closes.
Flex
The dumbbell went up.
Flex
Cut to another shot. Two dumbbells.
Flex
A third shot?! Three dumbbells?!
Close up shots of dripping water on a rock hard body. Was it sweat? A shower? It was difficult to tell but the flesh was solid and ripped and it really didn't matter. This is what they are here for. All of it melted together anyway once he left the gym and entered the hyper-shower.
Theodore "Thunder" Starcrusher stepped out of the hyper-shower gave one final flex in the mirror and prepared to head on over to the main deck. Wearing only his space age micro-tech shorts, he strode toward the blue doors of the ship. There wasn't a need to wear much else, nothing was going to happen in space today... Nothing exciting ever does.
Close-up on heels clacking down the hall.
klak, klak, klak, klak, klak, klak, klak, klak…
Close-up of a BBF Lite packet held in a manicured hand.
slurrrrp…
Close-up of a straw entering a pair luscious lips.
“Ahhh…”
Nelle spots Theo wearing nothing but micro shorts and beads of glistening wetness.
“Hey, Theo!” Her voice carries, as if she were right next to him. She speedwalks to her friend, voice rendering heels relatively silent. “I got you a post workout brewski! You must be thirsty! I’m getting thirsty just looking at you…”
As she offers the beer, Nelle gets uncomfortably close just to tease the audience, especially the guys who might at least have hoped for equal skin exposure.
“…not thirsty in an innuendo sorta way,” she clarifies as lips slowly back away from the bare, drippy chest. “You need to hydrate, and no alcoholic beverage does that better than a BFF Lite. Strong enough for a man; pH balanced for a woman.”
The straw again enters her lips, along with the packet art per the Product Placement contract.
Just as Nelle takes her drink, the intercoms on the ship crackle to life and the gruff voice of their captain, Barry "Tachyon" Starcrusher comes barking over the static. The camera pulls back from the sponsored label to show the full, messy common area of the still steamy hyper showers
"Theo, Nelle, report to the bridge. Phobos is in sight. And dammit, Theo, put on a shirt this time!"
It clicks off and the scene changes to the bridge. Sitting in the pilot's seat is Tachyon, the hero of the Lunar War's Battle of Calliope and captain of The Hectariat.
He strokes his thick, push-broom black mustache and his perfectly parted, brushed locks are swept to one side. His pressed blue Special Space Ops uniform bears a shining brass Terran Star medal and has hardly a wrinkle on it despite the more industrial and gritty interior of his ship. A steely green gaze keeps watch on the primary view display that reveals the dark sphere of the Phobos beneath them, only visible with the backdrop of the Red Planet from the dark side. He picks up his thin cigar and takes a long drag, letting the smoke obscure his face from the camera as he swivels his seat towards the door expectantly for his crew.
Theo and Nelle arrive on the bridge. A few other crew members are at their computer stations, and they snap salutes to the pair.
Through the viewport, Phobos looms large. Everything on the surface of the planet looks normal.
"Scans nominal," says the ship's science officer. "Standby to cross over to the dark side of the moon..."
The Hectariat passes to the shadowed portion of Phobos, the exterior lights illuminating a small portion of moon's surface. They travel over bare rock for a while, until--
--suddenly, a strange shape appears through the viewport. A pulsing green sac. It almost looks like an egg or something, moving in and out in time to an unseen heartbeat.
"What the hell is that?!?" the science officer shouts.
As the lights continue to play over the moon's surface, they reveal more and more of the green sacs, clustered together and stretching as far as the eye can see. Suddenly, the nearest sac ruptures, releasing a beam of blinding green light that engulfs the Hectariat's bridge!
When the light fades away, there are suddenly a half-dozen ALIENS standing in your midst! The terrifying creatures are definitely not just people in rubber suits, despite how it may look! The aliens raise ray guns as they prepare to attack!!!
“Holy s!**! It’s an advanced civilization of green men, only they’re not actually men since they obviously don’t have penises! They’re plant people who’ve overtaken Phobos—and we gotta kill these PHOBES before they kill us!”
Nelle is STILL wearing her same skin tight magenta-and-cyan outfit with loose crop top and leg warmers and heels. But she is now also wearing her tool belt!
She draws her Swiss Army Hammer, and flicks open the Ball Peen. “S##@. No.” She then presses something so the Ball Peen flips back and a new hammer head flicks out: a Sledge. “G~~+~&mit.” She flicks again to a Jackhammer. “I can’t hear myself yell with—”
She flicks that away, and now there’s a much smaller ‘Jackhammer’ that is obviously a sex toy. A studio exec thought this would be a great time for a cheap gag before grotesque death ensues. “For massages,” she non-explains to some men under her command. The D%~!&ammer is flicked away never to be seen again.
And now our token female is brandishing her hammer of choice: The Stooge Anesthetic!
One actor playing a guy under her command thought she should have just stuck with the D~#$*ammer since Stooge Anesthetic is only funny if you tell the audience it’s called that. Else it’s just a mallet. To get him to shut up, he was given a chance to save the girl and/or die trying.
“They got guns, babe,” says Flint Ironstag. “Hammers are for close encounters.” He aims at an alien, and ad libs a line the lawyers agree is just different enough from Ghostbusters that it’s a keeper: “Yes. It’s true. This alien has no dick.” He doesn’t aim at the groin because this scene has already exceeded the Consecutive Dick Joke Quota.
"That's all I needed to hear, Noelle. We're being boarded, men! Get these Phobes off my ship!" Tachyon leaps from the captain's and draws his Atomos Heavy Duty Destructor Ray Pistol with a flourish! The potato gun prop has been spray painted bright blue and silver and tacked on with more laser pointers and neon colored sci-fi tubing than the prop department even thought possible. He dives in dramatic slow motion, rolling to one side of the captains chair as death rays destroy a console in a shower of sparks.
The captain leads by example and pulls the trigger on his hand cannon as he comes up in a crouch. A laser special effect streaks across the bridge!
The rubber suited Phobe screeches dramatically as his power pack is hit and detonates. The camera cuts back as the special effects department unleashes a blast of thick goop from the explosion! Plant matter, bits of twigs, and goopy green sludge splatters everywhere. Flint is left sputtering as he's covered in the alien offal. He stumbles off camera to wipe the sludge from his eyes.
"Looks like you should have brought a bigger boarding party." Growls Tachyon as a takes a draw from his cigar and stands up. The captain holsters his still smoking ray gun with a spin and turns to the science officer. "What was that, Lieutenant Silva? Why didn't we notice them until now and are there any more on board?"
Silva pushes several buttons on his console, eliciting a series of *BLEEPS* and *BLOOPS.* "Aha! Our sensors are calibrated to detect heat signatures. Unlike most carbon-based life forms, these Phobes do not radiate any body heat! They're basically invisible to our equipment!"
Suddenly, the comm system crackles to life. A panicked voice shouts, "Captain! We have green men in the engine room! They're--oh no--ARRRRGHHHHH!"
There's a burst of static and then the transmission cuts off! The bridge crew nervously looks to Captain Tachyon...
The engine room? Who knows how long they could strand the Hectariat by wreaking havoc there! Tachyon straightens himself to look as important as possible, his mustache bristling. He affixes Noelle with a steely gaze.
"Lieutenant, I want scans and analysis while we plot an evasive course. No more surprises! Nelle, you and Theo take a squad down to the engines and introduce our guests to hard vacuum. Don't let them take out our engines. I don't want to be stuck in orbit." He flashes a grim smile to the two of them as he seats himself back in the chair and pushes buttons on the controls.
"Time to earn your pay just like the old days. Think you can handle that, Commander?"
“AW, F$@+! SOMEBODY DIED!”
After receiving her orders, Nelle puts away her Swiss Army Hammer and draws what looks like a flashlight from her left hip. She raises the flashlight-like-tool overhead and yells to Theo (even though he’s right next to her), “LET’S AVENGE SOMEBODY!”
At being told that he needs to put a shirt on, the macular man jokes muscularly "Look Captain Barry, just because we are bro---" But the ship rocks and Thunder forgets to rock with it, creating a very awkward looking scene.
With the Phobes landing in the ship, there was only one thing to do. Act.
A slightly off frame shot (no doubt due to him missing his ship rock cue) only shows half of the man's body off but before he has a chance to roll into action, too many ray guns go off and one of his crewmates dies!
"Right with you Nelle! Let's show these aliens what a good old fashioned human can do when they are powered by freedom!" He was pretty sure this line had some kind of political subtext, but he read it out, he didn't want to be blacklisted.
He stands like a giant in front of his fallen comrade and rips a Styrofoam tube from the wall swings it to create some room on the ship deck just as the music swells and the pipe hits the boom-mic making a muffled *fmph* sound!
The swing goes very wide as it is a massively huge piece of totally heavy lead pipe and the Phobes are not ready for this sweaty Adonis of a a Thunderlord
"PIPE DOWN!"
Nelle and Theo burst into the engine room, where several Phobes stand over the bodies of the dead engineering crew! Immediately, Theo swings his pipe in a broad arc, knocking most of them down. They writhe on the floor in pain, groaning and making strange ALIEN NOISES!
Most of the enemies are out of the fight, but one stands apart from the others in front of the ship's humming engine! It meets Theo's manly gaze...
The steely gaze was what he was known for. That was the titular thunder.
This one, the one that stood in front. That Phobe was a true warrior. "You have a warrior spirit alien. The heart of a human." The camera lingers just a little too long on the man's eyes, almost as if he was trying to emote to a crowd. Theo hopes that he can make friends with the invader and that he will not harm his friends... Because his pipe only has so much stability when wielded by such a huge space-man.
Somewhere on set behind the scenes there was a groan, and some chatter about the budget and having to modify the suit to make the alien look different than the others.
"Hu... man?" the Phobe says haltingly. It blinks and shakes its head vigorously.
"Adapting to human language... Adaptation complete." It spreads its long, green, rubbery fingers. "You are strong. My people respect strength. I will not harm you. But this vessel belongs to us now."
Nelle does an off-wall flip-kick, her magnetic heels latch onto the ceiling, and she pushes off—triple-flipping to Theo’s side!
“THE HECTARIAT IS NOT FOR SALE!!!” she yells as she lands the jump!
⭐️
The Phobe takes a step back, clearly impressed by the acrobatic display. "All well and good. We did not intend to buy it, but to take it," the alien says!
Nelle yells a great line to get the talky alien to leave.
⭐️⭐️
The alien's bug eyes bug even wider as the force of Nelle's shrieks causes it to fall down! It raises its rubbery arms in front of its face, then it is enveloped in a bright green light and dissolves away!
Nelle holds a flashlight like thing in her hand. It whines out a blade, and the Chainsaw Saber immediately fires up. She hacks away at the remaining aliens to forever silence their alien noises.
“Revenge! SWEET REVENGE! Like holy guacamole with extra holes!”
⭐️⭐️⭐️
"What about the rest of the ship?!" He looked at the flashing red lights attached to the side. The siren made a very unhelpful woo-woo sound, as the mics were not good enough to pick up the dialogue over some real ones.
"We cannot let these Phobes take us!" The dialogue was loud, forceful, and made for a trailer.
Nelle agrees. “The question is, how do we protect our ship? Flight or fight? Fortunately, neither of us have to answer that. It’s your brother’s job.”
Without bothering to use the comm, Nelle calls out to the captain (who is several rooms down a hall with walls of solid b%$~&#+&ium*),
*The fictional metal is called b~!*~%*!ium in the script, but actors have been warned not to use this term in dialogue. One of the guys playing an engineer couldn’t shut up about it, which is why his character was the first to get killed off.
Nelle's question is answered by a lurch from the ship (provided helpfully by stage hands operating a lever to shake the set) that threatens to throw them all to the ground. The red lights flicker and the blaring of sirens becomes distorted momentarily, but nothing stops Nelle's bellow from echoing up through the ship. The camera jumps back to bridge where Tachyon is desperately pulling at the controls. The view screen shows a web of crossing green beams and inexplicable explosions ahead of the ship.
"They're already on us! The damned aliens were ready. Brace yourselves!" The captain replies through the intercom, then barks to Silva who is poking at a console with two fingers. "We'll be atoms if we stay in the sky. Find us a place to land on the moon, Lieutenant!"
"I've got a trajectory, but at this rate the hull will be torn apart in the impact! We-" Silva is cut off by another rock of the ship that throws her from her feet and she slumps against a wall unconscious. Tachyon is still struggling with the controls, and several fresh warning indicators flash up on the view screen.
"Have... to... activate the inertial... dampeners..." He grunts with effort as he reaches for a blinking yellow button. "Hold on, everyone!" He shouts just as he at last makes connection.
The ship lurches again as the dampeners activate and the entire bridge shakes as Tachyon is thrown forward with a crash. If only he'd had his Destructor Ray pistol in his hand! He would have at least looked good in the shot. The captain twists at an odd angle as the wires pull him and he hits a console about six inches below the screen that shatters into a shower of sparks above him. Then the camera cuts to black.
Nelle braces herself for the crash landing the only way she knows how.
By yelling.
no, not all of us,
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Nelle's screams echo as the movie cuts to black!
The echoes die away...
Still black...
SMASH CUT to the exterior of the Hectariat on the surface of Phobos! Smoke rises from the crashed spaceship. A hatch pops open, and our heroes stumble out. Captain Tachyon is injured, but everybody else seems to be okay.
But, marooned on a hostile alien planet, how long will that last?!?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Nelle worries as less than half of the rag-tag crew is properly dressed for an airless moon. Fortunately, she has a pseudoscientific explanation for why the movie can just not bother with putting everyone in space helmets.
“The Phobes are plant people, so the exhale oxygen and inhale carbon dioxide.”
A couple of confused crewmen look at each other. “So… we can breathe here?”
“Yes,” Nelle replies without bothering to address the unimportant fallacy: the Phobes somehow were surviving on the moon without oxygen-exhaling creatures. The audience doesn’t really give a s~!$. They just want to see the token female remove her helmet and do a low-gravity hair-flip. “But we can only breathe while close to the Phobes’ [unintelligible].”
The made-up name if the Phobes’ domain is something the boys at the water cooler will debate for weeks, but anyway, the camera shows s really creepy looking place that resembles moldy green cheeese.
“The [unintelligible] looks like moldy green cheese,” says one crewman.
Another says, “I ain’t going anywhere near that f+~&ing [unintelligible]!” He turns and runs.
Nelle calls out, “Get back here! No—”
But she’s too late. The crewman seems to be gagging, struggling for air, which he would not continue to do if he just retraced his steps. He screams and gags and looks back, reaching out to others who aren’t stupid enough to go after him. And he suddenly starts to float, as if not being able to breathe on the moon means you don’t get its gravity either. The crewman floats up off of the planet, screaming,
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA…!!”
And Nelle screams, “NOOOOOOO!” to help audiences give a s&@# about Unnamed Guy Who Dies.
Theodore gets up from the rubble before leaving the hatch, carrying his brother with him. The image of the shirtless man wearing the ridiculous space-underwear carrying his captain would later be used in a meme once the internet age really took off. Most people wouldn't have seen the movie of course, but some would and it would start a great series of convention appearances for the cast.
"This place. I can't believe we survived the crash." He puts Berry down, looking at the injuries (while using his body to cover the camera and avoid having to get a lot of makeup on the actor).
"You okay?" The scream of the man floating away is quickly forgotten as the stars all regroup, "Nelle. What else do you know about this place?" He looks around for his trusty pipe and slings it over his back, hoping it would inspire more confidence in the crewmates.
Nelle replies, “What I know is that we”ll need to band together if we want to stay alive…”
And since the team-rah-rah line is too boring…
…Nelle finds an awesome weapon. Or rather, three awesome weapons. But does she give one to each Starcrusher Brother and keep one for herself? Nope.
Instead, she takes all three. “These are spears brandished by Amazons of the Moon.” (Two years later, Amazon Women on the Moon is released, but the moment of conception was when a filmmaker heard this very line!) “We will fight like the ancients. My people.”
They are just women. It’s like claiming sisterhood with Cleopatra, Mona Lisa, Eve or the crazy cat lady from apartment 5B. A writer gave Brooke this line thinking it would get him laid. To keep the starlet from storming off the set, she was given a scene that actually uses her welding kit. Music from the A-Team would have played, but one of their lawyers said he pitied the fool who ripped off their Building Stuff Theme Music.
So instead they play some s+$+ by Madonna, as Nelle welds three spears together to somehow make a trident.
“Stronger together!” She raises the trident overhead and green lightning strikes it. The special effect is meant to distract, since test audiences failed to see welding three spears into a trident as a metaphor for teamwork. They just saw Nelle take three spears and keep them all to herself, which is the opposite of teamwork.
Tachyon gratefully accepts the help of his burly companion, giving him a dramatic, manly nod of appreciation in acknowledgment of their brotherly bond as he finds his feet once more.
"Your trident, Theo's muscle, and my gun. We'll show these Phobes they don't know what they're dealing with. For... that guy." He growls and gesturing vaguely in the direction of the crewman floating away off screen. He looks to the men crew mates gathered around and motions everyone together. They only had about 8 of the crew remaining.
"Alright, the Phobes must have a base somewhere nearby. Lieutenant Silva, get us a damage report and find out what's going to get us off the ground again in case we need to make a speedy get away. Everyone, make sure you've got your com beads active."
He taps a little device in his ear. The chest mounted communicators would be too like certain other well known space adventure series', so ear beads were the way to go. Easier on the budget too.
"The Phobes have to have a base nearby. Lets secure the area and see if anyone noticed our bumpy landing. There's bound to be a base in the area. I want to know where these Greenies are coming from."
As Silva begins to examine the wrecked ship, our three HEROES cautiously set out across the barren Phoban landscape.
The scene changes with a DRAMATIC WIPE that shows that some time has passed! A few sparse alien SHRUBS dot the rocky region around the trio.
Suddenly, a WILD ALIEN MONSTER appears! The shaggy thing looks like a gorilla with green vines adorning its body instead of fur. It beats its chest and roars a challenge as it bears down on our HEROES!!!
Nelle uses her awesome trident to stab the gorilla thing!
“Youbeastyoubruteyoubeastyoubrute!”
After stabbing the creature several times, there is a generous spray of slime as seen in the popular Dissect-An-Alien toy of exactly one year in the 80s which happens to be this one.
She refrains from saying ‘he slimed me’ because Ghostbusters lawyers are already miffed. Instead she says “Bleah! Gross! Yuck! F~$&!” which is not her best work, but the yuck-f+*& rhyme is fuel for a third and fourth verse of an impromptu drunken limerick. Brooke Babylon may occasionally receive credit as the muse to those who self-reflect while tending to their own hangovers.
But the real reason for ad-libbing this line is that the actress stumbled backwards when the trident’s pommel caught the base of her own stiletto heel. “BAAAH S~!@!!” she shouts as she tumbles down a short flight of stone steps (that are fortunately made of rubber). “I CHIPPED A F!!&ING NAIL!! G+*@&!N YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL, YOU BIG GREEN F&#~!!”
She flips off the man in the gorilla suit with her chipped middle fingernail. This is not acting. It’s pure, unbridled diva rage. And the filmmakers LOVE IT, so it makes the cut.
(In a later interview, Brooke explains herself: “Well, when you get into a character’s head, you ask yourself, what is she thinking here-in-the-now? And there-in-the-then, she was thinking, ‘f#@+ you, Gorilla.’ You’ll be a dear and bleep out the f@~#, ho ho, oh what will Mum think? More soap in my diet, right?”)
Theo sees Nelle strike with the new trident, and watches her stumble backward. He instead finds a nearby branch from one of the strange, alien plants that weren't just leftovers from a previous movie and does his best gorilla impression.
Slamming his chest to accept the challenge, the buff and now sweaty man lets out a very exciting Ooo Ooo OO!
Unfortunately the gorilla is not impressed, despite how ripped Johnny Hollywood is in the real world. Sometimes the movie world is just so much more complicated than it needs to be.
The alien gorilla pulls "Thunder" into a crushing BEAR GORILLA HUG! Vines wrap around the musclebound hero, leaving angry bruises behind! Who will save him?!? Perhaps it's time for CAPTAIN TACHYON to SHINE?!?
For a moment it looks like Theo just might intimidate the gigantic plant-ape in it's own game. Then it grabs him tight and squeezes his brother like a melon!
"Hands off my brother, you filthy photosynthesizing simian!"
Tachyon leaps into action and fires off three quick reports in lightning succession with his Destructo Ray!
The first ray sizzles away at the creature's arm and it drops Theo with a roar. A second catches it square in the chest with a satisfying crack of ionized air, and Tachyon puts a third into its knee for good measure. The gorilla-plant crashes to the moon dirt with a thud.
"Thank goodness we don't keep you around for your diplomacy, Theo." He quips with a grin as he hauls his brother to his feet again, letting him flex for the camera with a hearty clasp of the hand.
Nelle gets up, no longer fuming about her cracked nail since this scene is being filmed a week later after Brooke took a Mental Health Day, a Spa Day, a Phone-Off-The-Hook Day, a fake sick day, and a real one because she caught a cold on her private beach.
“Nice shooting, Captain. Just like those days in the Secret Space Ops…” She makes that traumatized face like she made in all those cheeseball slasher flicks that paid her way through acting school. “Which, we, uhh… don’t talk about because they’re secret. What happens in the Space Ops stays in the Space Ops.
“It better f&!*ing stay there.”
The audience has no idea about this backstory. Neither does the actress since what happens in the Space Ops actually does stay in the Space Ops, hence the name SECRET Space Ops. A really lazy writer whose only qualification is nepotism came up with that s%@+. The other writers all applauded his cleverness because of who that guy’s dad is. Only test audiences had the audacity to ask ‘why even bring up the Secret Space Ops if it’s a secret to us too?’
"Diplomacy is certainly not my middle name." He stretches his body out after being squeezed by the gorilla, "Whatever this planet is... It is dangerous."
He glances around, "Soon, all of this green will run red."
Johnny was trying very hard to get all of his clever lines into the trailer, he knew that was where most people would see him. He figured at least 80% of the people wouldn't watch the movie but might remember the cool line.
Tachyon shares in the secret memories with a long, thousand yard stare filled with the sounds of screeching aliens, ray gun fire, and Nelle shouting in her overwhelming voice "BARRY!".
After the camera has time to close up on both of their haunted faces, Tachyon finally draws himself out of the memory looking more grim and determined than ever.
"Yeah, just like the old days, only everyone is getting out this time. We must be getting close if we're being attacked." He kicks the massive body with his boot to roll over the rubber suit monster, not burned and singed with great smoking craters from his side arm. "What do you think, Nelle? Local wildlife or perimeter guard?"
He looks at the footprint trail of the beast in the moon-dust. Their perfect path back to the lair of the Phobes.
And so, our HEROES follow the footprints across the moon. Sure enough, a WICKED WIPE reveals the imposing field of pulsing green sacs that comprise the Phobes' native habitat.
A screeching noise gets their attention, though. Looking up, our heroes see a small fleet of techno-organic ALIEN SPACESHIPS bearing down on their location! Their bottoms open up as they begin to unleash a barrage of DEADLY SPORE BOMBS, a trail of explosions heading right for Captain Tachyon and his friends!
WHAT WILL THEY DO?!?
Nelle is NOT about to relive that secret nightmare. Seeing Barry’s haunted expression, and then the ships overhead, Nelle Yelpir knows exactly what to do:
Panic.
“S@*@! S*!*!! S~$&-S~$&-S*@$-F&%+-SHIIIIIIT!!!”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
She uses her body as a battering ram to carve a path through weird alien moon plants. The thorns gratuitously tear at Nelle’s leotard and tights to expose a little leg and her perfectly toned abs. She finally crashes her body directly into a tree—
“AH F!+%!!”
—which, being just a prop not actually rooted into the fake moonrock, tips over, conveniently forming a bridge across a pit that is two feet deep. But it looks miles deep thanks to the set design artists.
The cliff was intended as background, but the accidental tree-bridge makes for a believable getaway for characters who mean to flee. So the botched stunt take ends (after a lunch hour followed by Brooke’s two hour therapy session) with a very calm Nelle casually crossing the fallen-tree-bridge, heels clacking. “I meant to do that,” she assures the audience.
(After the premiere, 90% of the attending movie reviewers and Brooke’s mother questioned why Nelle had a band-aid on her nose in just that one clip. Only Brooke’s mother asked the follow-up question about the actress’ well-being.)
The whine of the engines above and the approaching explosions get Tachyon's legs pumping beneath him as he rushes after Nelle. He fires off one wild shot toward the approaching aircraft just for effect, then hurls himself across the gap with a great leap!
The explosions behind him look really cool, and he flies forward with a fiery orange backdrop, blaster in hand. He manages to cross the gap under a rain of gooey egg sac debris, but only just. The far ledge catches him in the chest with an "Oof" and he tries to pull himself up!
Tachyon scrambles to pull himself up, but a piece of debris smacks him in the face, and he loses his grip on his gun! The intrepid captain watches helplessly as his trusty sidearm PLUMMETS into the pit, falling down, down, down, away from him!
He manages to get up on the far side of the pit, but he is now weaponless!
Theodore sees the bombs falling but has no choice but to perform an amazing feat of strength to survive the gap!
He charges toward, narrowly dodging the bombs that are falling and has enough time to rip a sturdy plant out of the ground and vault over! While in the air he punches one of the lower flying ships (which happen to have really bad size scaling up close) and lands into a roll on the other side.
"I'm coming!"
His arm comes down to Tachyon, the beautiful brotherly love being an aspect of the movie most people wouldn't praise, but some in the comfort of their basement VHS would look fondly back on.
"Doris! Nooooo!" The captain almost plummets into the pit after it in a desperate attempt to save his trusty firearm, but the brute strength of Theo grabs him just as he lets go and his brother pulls Tachyon to safety. He's forced to watch the ray gun fall away and disappear into the gloom below. It was Chekhov's gun now. He beats his fist against the ground as Theo tries to console him. "They took my gun, Theo! They took her! Now they have to pay!"
What is a gunslinger without his firearm? It's hard to match the raw emotion pouring from Tachyon, or his thirst for revenge. Theo has never seen his brother so distraught!
Nelle whips out her welding kit. “You don’t need that old thing. I have a welding kit, dammit!”
Close-up of manicured nails (one chipped) pressing down on the trigger of a welding gun. Close-up of fire on metal. Close-up of Theo’s muscle getting too close to the flame—
(The writers use a special effect to depict Nelle welding Theo’s wound shut, though in reality, his stunt double was hospitalized for a month.)
—close up of the punched space ship. Close up of metal pipes that will never again be seen until the Super Mario Bros. movie. Close-up of who-the-f+*$-knows, fire and metal.
“There,” Nelle says triumphantly as she hands Barry an Awesome Space Cowboian Seven-Shooter! “It’s modeled after the six-guns of the old west, but with seven chambers in the cylinder because I had the wrong sized drill. It’s powered by Deathbeamium, so you don’t actually need to reload. I just thought you’d like the revolver design.”
She twirls the gun on her finger.
She does all kinds of gun-twirling tricks, over the head, under the leg, juggling the seven-shooter, the welding gun, and the hand drill. It was ad-libbed, and the actress didn’t want to stop, and test audiences were confused but f&%+ them. They got to see a movie for free; what more did they want? Seriously. F~%*. Them.
Jump-cut to Barry finally having the gun in hand since that juggling act went on for twenty minutes and they had to cut the latter nineteen because the test audience did have a point. Who even brought a unicycle into the studio?
Tachyon hefts the new Space Cowboian Seven-Shooter, testing the weight and doing a quick draw shot to explode a nearby stone into tiny shards. It wasn't Doris, but it would do. He nods thankfully to Nelle.
"I appreciate it, Nelle. It's... It's not the same but it's better than nothing. Doris was special. You remember the scrape on Crater #57."
Of course, there is no "Crater 57" anywhere else in the script, but the producers are hoping a minor spinoff movie would be in order for a quick summer cash grab if the box office was kind. Prequels were in these past few years.
"Now lets paint this moon red. We've got a score to settle."
Having succesfully evaded the bombardment, Captain Tachyon & Co. finally enter the lair of the Phobes! The halls of the alien base glow an eerie green, and creepy music plays over the scene.
The hall opens up into a large chamber. A dozen Phobes are waiting at the ready! They open fire with their ray guns! PEW PEW PEW!
What will our HEROES do?!?
Nelle leaps straight up and crashes through the ceiling! She’s in the ventilation duct because for some reason really gross aliens that inhale CO2 and have survived on an airless moon with no oxygen-breathers still have a ventilation duct.
But as she leaps inside, there is a scratch on Nelle’s welding gun.
Nelle’s yells echo throughout the ceiling, including over the aliens’ heads, and in the aliens’ kitchen, the master bedroom, and all three bathrooms: the men’s room, the ladies’ room, and the aliens’ room!
Nelle tosses her scratched welding deep into the vent!
There is a huge explosion. Billowing orange hell snakes multidirectionally about the vent like a biker gang of light cycles. (The pyrotechnician LOVED Tron, and always thought the red team should have had Firecycles. This was his chance to prove they would have been awesomer. Just a little. He did love Tron, after all.) The explosion only moves away from Nelle—
—and over the aliens’ heads! Fire bursts through the ceiling! Not just in here, but in the kitchen—completely ruining dinner!! And the master bedroom—who can sleep in such a mess?? And two out of three bathrooms are out of order, so if our heroes have to go, they need to use the aliens’ room, which has stalls but no urinals!!
The explosion doesn’t kill any aliens because that would actually have killed the actors. But it looked awesome, and now the audience knows Nelle won’t weld any more weapons so that guy in the test audience will finally stop asking why she doesn’t make a laser bazooka.
"Let's get revenge for Doris!" The Starcrusher probably should have mentioned the other crew as well, but he kind of already forgot about them in the fury of the battle.
He needs a weapon and fast, and looks around, his improvisation skills becoming very sharp. The set designers knew this about Johnny and decided earlier on that they would include some breakable terrain, but of course he did not listen to the briefing and grabbed something entirely fixed to the floor.
But his massive muscles were able to lift the furniture off the floor and the actual sweat coming off of the actor definitely made the scene feel more real. It wasn't until years later that the behind the scenes revealed that it was in fact a massive rock that he pulled from the ground and used against various stuntpeople; only painted to look like an alien device.
"Feel the power of the human race puny Phobes!"
The line comes out the instant the flames from Nelle's stunt and it makes the dripping Adonis look even more appealing somehow.
His compatriots leap into action at blinding speed. Tachyon could hardly expect anything less from his crew. That left him to be the one to come up with a plan on how to get out of this firefight! One of the crew members that has been following them (and surreptitiously absent from all the action scenes until drama demands) is hit by one of the Phobes' beams. He screams into the camera as he falls to the ground and disintegrates into a pile of ash. The captain dives for cover just as a scream from Nelle seems to cause a huge explosion above them that sends their attackers scrambling. It's a perfect moment for Tachyon to poke his head out and look for a way out of here! He scans the room, a plan already forming on his face that makes his mustache bristle!
Tachyon sees that the explosion Nelle set off has created a path of debris across the room. Our heroes can use the debris as stepping stones to leap their way across the room and get past the Phobes.
Based on the way the Phobes are operating, they seem to be following the orders of some unseen commander. Whoever is issuing those commands is in control of the aliens.
One of the Phobes in the back of the group looks familiar. It's the same one that teleported off of the Hectariat earlier! "Surrender, humans! Resistance is useless!" the Phobe shrieks!