2x16 Roosters
Millennium (1996)
2x16 Roosters, written by Glen Morgan, James Wong and Michael R. Perry, directed by Thomas J. Wright.
We pick up where we left the previous episode. Browsing the internet, Frank finds a watercolor landscape painted by Adolph Hitler in 1940. The same painting hangs in the office of Catherine's suspicious boss, and in the plush lair of the South American nazi.
Men pull up on the street and Frank confronts them with a gun. They say "This is who we are" but we don't necessarily believe them. Big shootout, which Frank survives, performing well.
Another packed episode. We discover what the "Owls" believe:
quote
Lara: Throughout history, the Millennium Group has had access to scientific breakthroughs that were banned, or withheld, by those in power at the time. Copernicus. Galileo. The German physicists. This enabled the Group to leap generations ahead of mainstream research.
So, Johnston's claim, the Owl's claim, is that six billion years ago, before the formation of the Earth, two neutron stars collided six billion light years away. This collision released cosmic rays, particles of such extreme energy, that the collision of these particles could transform the vacuum of space and cause a tear in the fabric of our universe.
The Owls claims to have proof, that this tear, this expanding cosmic bubble, will reach our solar system within the next sixty years. And a new universe, its properties calculated anywhere between apocalyptic and inconsequential, will be created.
This is a surprising science fiction intrusion into the mythology. Lara says it is believable, but that her visions are becoming more intense and frightening and the End is coming much sooner that sixty years.
The Old Man (R.G. Armstrong) arrives at Frank's house to say that he, Frank and Lara are all that remains of the Millennium Group, the others being consumed with suspicion of the other faction. He says a third force is responsible, an old Group enemy: ODESSA, the nazi escape organization.
Peter also realizes the nazis are causing all the trouble and apologizes to Frank and Lara for treating them badly, and they are reinstated as Group candidates.
Frank hides the Old Man in the basement of the yellow house, the same place where Bletcher died. He is killed the next morning and sees Lara's angel as he dies.
The Group has a ceremonial funeral and the Elder (Philip Baker Hall) becomes the new Old Man, taking his staff and moving into that cluttered cabin.
Peter goes to Paraguay and blows up the nazi lair. All business settled with that group.
The Old Man receives the fragment of the Cross and puts it on a shelf behind some diaries, like the Ark being stowed in a warehouse.
Notes:
Historians are not sure ODESSA ever existed as an organization, but it has been irresistible in fiction. See The Odessa File (1974).
We see the chief nazi is not Hitler but "Rudolph Axmann, the oldest surviving member of Hitler's circle, the leader of Odessa". (A common name but I think a fictional character).
Catherine's job was a ploy for the nazis to get close to Frank.
Peter says a silent prayer by the taped outline where the Old Man's body lay.
I am confused as to the pieces of the Cross. The burned one from a car explosion was a fake. So must have the one been in the nazi lair. The Old Man receives the real one. It had been switched in Syria before it could be stolen.
Frank and Catherine have bitter words but seem better reconciled at the end. Catherine has never liked Frank concealing things from her, but their conversation is intercut with Peter justifying himself to the Elder: "I don't believe it's a lie to reserve information that could create catastrophic consequences, until I understand it for myself".
The theme music for the nazi lair is Wagner's "Parsifal", but the Old Man sleeps every night to the same music.
Lara, badly wanting a cigarette, has a vague apocalyptic vision and hears the roaring of some great beast.
