Here's a three and a half minute trailer. It'll give you an idea of what the tone is like.
The Trojan Horse Trailer
Canadians have voted to merge with the United States of America...
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
- Start date
The Trojan Horse Trailer
If you've seen the British series Spooks/MI-5 or a mini series called The Grid, it's a lot like those.
Anyone watch it? What happens?
The day the NFL starts playing in Toronto you can kiss Canadian autonomy good-bye!
I was glad to see in my last month-long stint in Tee Oh last month that conspiracy theorists aren't reacting with alarm to the new agreement for US and Canadian forces to cross the border. I'm of the impression that a lot of this is a result of the huge winter power outage in Quebec and how a lot of people would have suffered a lot less if the folks at Ft. Drum had been permitted to get up there to help out. It's funny seeing Canadian army trucks driving around Upstate, NY!
I was glad to see in my last month-long stint in Tee Oh last month that conspiracy theorists aren't reacting with alarm to the new agreement for US and Canadian forces to cross the border. I'm of the impression that a lot of this is a result of the huge winter power outage in Quebec and how a lot of people would have suffered a lot less if the folks at Ft. Drum had been permitted to get up there to help out. It's funny seeing Canadian army trucks driving around Upstate, NY!
The mini-series picks up two years after the events in H2O. Thomas McLaughlin has arrived at the home of Marc Lavigne (a key player in H2O and a washed-up nobody now) in Gatineau, Quebec. The two of them watch the results of the referendum unfold on television. When the results come in in favour of Canada joining the U.S., McLaughlin tells Lavigne that he’ll get his revenge.
Two years pass once again and we see a group of people gunned down at a law firm in London, England by a man coerced into doing so. This prompts an investigative reporter named Helen Madigan to investigate what happened since her adopted son was the shooter and took his own life in the incident. Also, the ones who staged the shooting know she’s snooping around and want her killed.
When we see Thomas McLaughlin, he’s putting the finishing touches on the plans he’s been putting together with a media baron named Randall Spear (another key player from H2O). Everything is set to go. In a meeting with some powerful men from a number of European countries, McLaughlin talks about throwing a wrench into the U.S.’s plans to take control of Saudi oil. In order to do this, he’ll be installed as President of the United States. When asked which party he’ll run with, Spear says that he’ll run as an independent. Both he and McLaughlin assure the group that they can guarantee his victory.
When the drama cuts to President Stanfield in the White House, we see that the U.S. does in fact have designs on Saudi Arabia and its oil and that he has willingly turned a blind eye to what is being done to accomplish this. He’s acting out of desperation because if the U.S. doesn’t get control, China will. He’s also keeping his eye on McLaughlin, wondering what he’s up to when he appears on the news as a hero who has negotiated the release of a U.S. dignitary who was taken hostage in the Middle East.
With the first part of his plan having been a success, and with a positive public image in place due to the hostage situation, McLaughlin gets himself a running mate. He then continues his plans to build an even more powerful image for himself on the campaign trail by staging an attempted assassination on himself which will be followed by his “resurrection”. Everything goes well when he is shot, hospitalized and is informed by his associates that his poll numbers have skyrocketed.
Meanwhile, back in England, Helen Madigan has discovered that someone killed in the London law firm was involved with the development of a piece of software that will be used to rig the upcoming U.S. election.
That’s where things left off. McLaughlin is using an image he’s building as well as a piece of software to get the presidency.
There are two fun moments in the series...
1) At the beginning during the referendum, a reporter says that Canadians will get a windfall because the Canadian dollar will be converted at par with the U.S. dollar as part of the merger. When the movie was written and shot, no one knew that the Canadian dollar would be at par for real by the time this mini-series aired.
2) When McLaughlin was giving a speech in Texas, I noticed that he pulled a “Barack Obama”. He basically started giving an impassioned speech and started speaking in a Texan accent.
Overall, I think the movie was a bit slow after the referendum scenes, but things picked up and got pretty good. I also think it was shot pretty well and comes off a lot better than what I described.
Part 2 will have to be pretty fast paced and crammed with a lot of stuff if we’re going to see McLaughlin’s plans come to fruition. I'm also expecting a few surprises since I think that there's more to McLaughlin's revenge than just taking the Presidency and pulling the plug on this Saudi oil bit.
As for all this talk about who could become President, there were a few lines at the beginning during the meeting that addressed this. Spear mentioned that McLaughlin was eligible because of something that was part of the terms of the union of Canada and the U.S. Anyone born in the territory that was formerly Canada could become President.
So, I don't get it... is the Paul Gross character "good" or "bad"?
And jeez, this is like tin foil hat stuff that Democrats froth over when they think about Gore and Kerry.
I can't believe that he would win as an Independent though. If someone tried to kill Nader, no one would care...
And jeez, this is like tin foil hat stuff that Democrats froth over when they think about Gore and Kerry.
I can't believe that he would win as an Independent though. If someone tried to kill Nader, no one would care...
It's a Canadian series, so I'm guessing he's meant to be the good guy.
(Any American characters will probably...not be.)
He's a politician who's willing to do some pretty questionable things to accomplish what he feels needs to be done. He's not a bad guy but he can turn into an angry egotistical person who derives a great deal of satisfation from winning.
It's a Canadian series, so I'm guessing he's meant to be the good guy.
(Any American characters will probably...not be.)
Pretty much all the politicians and power brokers of various nationalities are engaged in some questionable activities. We don't see good guys or bad guys, we see power struggles.
Which is all well and good for the purposes of the story, but it's complete legal hogwash, because nothing, not even the legal agreement by which a foreign state is annexed by the United States, trumps the US Constitution.
As for this miniseries....
The plot sounds so absurd and melodramatic that, reading the summary, I felt like I was reading Under the Gaslight.
Really?! I saw most of it on TV and thought it was the most over-dramatic, over-acted mess I'd ever seen. Maybe I just watch too much real Canadian politics to ever believe it could be that dramatic.
Well, citizens of Guam were granted US citizenship in 1950, and citizens of Puerto Rico were granted US citizenship in 1917. Setting aside the question of people who were not born American citizens but who gained citizenship when their citizenry was granted citizenship en masse (which is really the same question about whether or not US citizenship can be considered to be retroactively effective for annexed foreign states), as long as a Puerto Rican was born after 1917 and has lived in the United States for 14 years and is above the age of 35, and as long as a Guamanian was born after 1950, has lived in the United States for 14 years, and is at least 35 years old, he/she qualifies for the Presidency.
The real question would be whether or not living in Guam or Puerto Rico would fulfill the 14-year residency requirement. They are considered US territories, but they're not states, and I suppose that the residency requirement might be interpreted as demanding 14 years of residency in the several states, not the territories. I seem to recall that this issue might have come up during Eisenhower's campaign, but I'm not sure. But, assuming that the native-born Guamanian or Puerto Rican has lived in one or more of the states themselves for 14 years, or assuming that living in Guam or P.R. fullfills the residency requirement? Yes, absolutely, they'd qualify.
They're already citizens, and anyone born after citizenship was granted to them is a natural-born citizen. Like I said, the only question would be whether or not living in Guam/P.R. would fullfill the residency requirement. I think it would, myself, since the relevant text from the Constitution -- Article I, Section 1, Paragraph 5, reads as follows:
Since Guam and P.R. are US territory, I imagine that they fullfill the residency requirement, since it merely says "within the United States," not "within the several states," which is what the Constitution usually says when it wants to refer specifically to the states themselves and not the US as a whole.
Short answer: Yeah, sounds like they qualify.
You could say that maybe they made amendments to the U.S. Constitution as part of the merger. Who knows. That's something that did cross my mind.
A lot of people have said that. Even Paul Gross described the story as a really nutty spectacluar rollercoaster of a ride and I agree. I'm still surprised by this kind of reaction from people though since most movies and TV shows are like that to varying degrees anyway, like Jericho for example. Even The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard which you mentioned a few posts up has taken politics to a new level.
So, in this hypothetical case, if Canada became a US territory and Citizenship was granted at the same time... a Canadian now American who has already been living in the US for more than 14 years could legally run for the presidency?
Well, see, I think the difference is that Jericho or The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard take things that are possible but unlikely and take them to extremes -- neo-conservatism and corporatism leading to an American civil war, or a regular person being elected Prime Minister. Whereas with this -- the entire concept is just absurd on its face. It doesn't even have a hint of truth in its premise; the United States simply has no desire to take over Canada. The last time it had any such desire was when it started the War of 1812, and that was in, well, 1812. The premise of the series comes across as being an example of extreme, unreasonable Canadian paranoia over their own cultural identity, and is more than a little insulting, to boot. Considering the very real nature of corporatism and neo-conservatism and the divisive effects they've had on our society, or considering how fed up most people are with how fake politicians have become, I honestly think that the premises of Jericho and The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard are more truthful and less absurd -- however unlikely -- than this.
Again, the question is whether or not that new citizenship would be retroactive. A better comparison if you want to go for Guam or Puerto Rico as examples would be, "What if Canada became a US territory and its citizens were granted citizenship, and then it stayed a territory but never become a state or states. Would citizens of Canada born after the US annexation be eligible for the presidency?" Well, the answer would be yes, because they'd have been natural-born citizens and they'd've been living in the US for 14 years.