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"Michael Crichton's ARC: Aberration Research & Control"

Robotpo

Commander
Red Shirt
Okay, here's just something I did for fun, and have thought about for a while: a TV Series combining all of Michael Crichton's Works into one universe. I expect this series would be very expensive, with film-quality special effects and production values, and air on HBO; the Pilots for each Season would premiere at select locations theatrically three weeks before airing on HBO, and would feature additional and extended scenes when they showed on television.

Note: In this series, all of Crichton's Novels, as well as the film "Westworld" and the Television Series "ER", are considered cannon. Everything else, including previous film or television adaptations of his work, is not included.

Michael Crichton’s ARC: Aberration Research & Control

Series Outline—
A team of Scientists and Adventurers working for a secret agency based in the United States must protect the public from an assortment of threats in the joined Universe based on the Works of Michael Crichton. Some of these threats, and the Works from which they originate, include:

Alien Microbes – The Andromeda Strain

Prehistoric Animals – Jurassic Park & The Lost World

Neanderthals/Killer Apes/Lost Civilizations – Eaters of the Dead & Congo

Alien Artifacts – Sphere

Techno-Conspiracies – Airframe/Early Works

Robots Taking Over – "Westworld"

Time Travel – Timeline

Nanoswarms – Prey

Weather Control – State of Fear

Genetic Engineering – Next

Black Ram Initiative/Alien Dragons/Frost Giants/Gnomes/Mutation Fathomforms – Original

Series Regulars—
David Cross: CIA Agent recruited into ARC Program
Dr. Tom Decker: Theoretical Biologist
Dr. Elana Peirce: Physicist
Sam Tyler: ARC Security Agent
Miranda Chang: ARC Security Agent
Dr. Jack Thorne: Material Engineer
Dr. Heinrich Kuroux: Futurologist

Main Recurring Characters—
Adrian Conway: Mysterious Billionaire with Government Ties and Head of Black Ram Initiative
Daiki Yamoto: Japanese Business Man with Ties to Robot Civilization
Karl Paddock: CEO of BioGen Corporation
Edwin Draidman: Rouge Former ARC Security Agent
Dr. Richard Levine: Paleontologist, Friend of Dr. Thorne’s
Dr. Stephen Decker: Tom Decker’s Nobel-Prize Winning and Disapproving Biologist Father

Season 1—

1x01/02 – Beneath the Serpent’s Wing Part 1 & 2: Expert CIA Agent David Cross gets involved in events well over his head, and is sucked into the world of ARC in order to stop a Global Organization with ties to Norse paganism from finding and resurrecting a species of Dragon-like aliens buried in suspended animation below the Arctic ice; if awakened, the group, carrying out the “Black Ram Initiative”, believes the “Dragons” will bring about the Norse legend of Ragnarok.

1x03 – All That We Dream Made Real: An Alien Artifact, a Sphere which allows one’s thoughts to become reality, has been discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at the site of a failed US Navy expedition from three decades before. The Artifact is brought back to a New York lab for study, but ARC moves in to secure the object when Scientists’ and Workers’ at the Lab’s worst fears begin to manifest around Manhattan, with the ARC Teams’ nightmares soon following.

1x04 – Beasts Close to Man: ARC is called in rescue a stranded expedition in Northern Africa when it’s discovered that Zinj was not the only ancient civilization to have bred a race of vicious Killer Apes, but they soon find evidence that the lethal Orangutan/Human creatures may be the result of much more modern human genetics experiments.

1x05 – Machines Closer to Man: The ARC team continues its’ investigation in Africa to find the new strain of Killer Apes were bred at a top-secret lab in the depths of the Jungle, where a Japanese company created the sentinels to guard what appears to be a fabrication plant for human-like Robots; however, the team must find a way to deal with the Killer Apes and the Robots as well as local Militia forces and the Lab’s Guards in order to escape.

1x06 – Men Better Than Man: The ARC team heads to Japan to investigate the creation of these Human-Like Robots by a Japanese company, but finds themselves caught in a web of Assassins, Mercenaries, political intrigue, and Robots which can pass for Human.

1x07 – Out of Time: An experiment with a Quantum Accelerator in London causes a breach in Time, allowing a Battalion of Medieval Knights to come through to our world, pursuing a young Girl they believe to be a Witch; unfortunately, the Knights bring Bubonic Plague with them to the Modern world, and now ARC must not only contend with the rapidly-spreading disease, but with protecting the would-be Witch who seems to have startling psychic powers, granted to her by a Sphere-like Alien Artifact back in her own time.

1x08 – Into Time: The ARC team decides to escort the young Girl home to Medieval Europe in order to study the Alien Device which gave her psychic powers, and she claims has effected many people in her village; however, sabotage sends half of the team into Ancient Egypt, where they must find a way to survive, while the team still in the present must find and halt the source of the sabotage before it strikes again.

1x09 - Escape From Time: Half of the ARC teams struggles to survive in Ancient Egypt, getting caught up in the machinations of the Court and Amonhotep IV as he creates the Sun Cult and Monotheism; meanwhile, the remainder of the Team fights against the corrupt ITC Corporation in order to bring their friends back to the present.

1x10 – Downtime: Exhausted from their experiences dealing with Medieval Knights, a psychic Girl and Ancient Egypt, the ARC team is granted a long overdue long weekend. Cross reconnects with his ex-Wife and young Son, Decker visits his disapproving Father in the Hospital, Elana Pierce goes with Doc Thorne to a Dinosaur dig lead by Richard Levine, Sam Tyler and Miranda Chang go to perfect their aim on the shooting range, and Heinrich Kuroux attempts to finish writing his book, now 5,000 pages and counting!

1x11 – A Perfect Professor: ARC is asked to look into a number of strange occurrences in a small college town in Ohio, and find that a number of the Facility in the Sciences Department of the college have been replaced with near-perfect Robots, who have various defense mechanisms and once discovered, target the team for assassination, lead by the Commanding Robot, a “Gunslinger” Model.

1x12 – Mutation: An American company’s operation mining and refining deep-sea algae as an energy source has come under attack from a mysterious force, and ARC arrives in the Bahamas to investigate; more and more targets are wiped out, including an underwater lab, local villages, and finally the main complex, and ARC discovers that a totally unknown aquatic species appears to be responsible.

1x13 – Incursion: The survivors on the island complex find themselves under siege as this new species of bottom-dwelling predator, all albino sinew and spiky exoskeleton, emerges en masse to drive off the human transgressors; Decker dubs the species “Fathomforms” and suggests that as a type of Evolutionary Arms Race, the species evolved as a defense against Man’s continued rape of the oceans. The team manages to survive, but only because the Fathomforms swarm away from the island, migrating towards the mainland and civilization…

Season 2—

2x01/02 – Extinction: The ARC team joins a Naval Taskforce attempting to find and halt the spread of the Fathomforms, searching deep underwater canyons and the ocean floor all along the Pacific; however, they are unable to prevent the Fathomforms from reaching San Francisco, and promptly taking up residence in the sewer system and reeking havoc. Now, ARC must find a way of stopping this deadly new species before they wipe out the entire Western Sea Board.

2x03 – Storm Front: Strange weather-related events have been occurring all over the world, including a tsunami in the Sahara and bizarre earth movements in Paris; the ARC team investigates, and find that a rouge group of Scientists and Fanatics has created a machine which allows for weather control and manipulation, and is experimenting with it at the peril of all else.

2x04 – Eye of the Storm: ARC goes after the group with the weather control device before they can use it for their own purposes, and ends up struggling to survive a hurricane in the middle of the Red Sea!

2x05 – Small Stories: ARC heads to Greenland to look into stories that a diminutive race of people, the “Gnomes” live in subterranean passages in the remote forests; they find that there is indeed an offshoot of the Human race who’ve been living in secret for thousands of years, but find that their genome may be more than it appears as it seems to have traces of extra-terrestrial DNA…

2x06 – Tall Tales: ARC continues their investigations into the Gnomes and finds a second off-shoot of humanity, the “Frost Giants”, who occupy the stark mountain passes of Greenland; these, too have Alien DNA, and ARC must act fast when they find out that the Black Ram Initiative is interested in exploiting these species for their own purposes…

2x07 – Serpents at the Roof of the World: ARC trails the Black Ram Initiative to a secret base in Tibet, where the secretive organization has brought captured Gnomes and Frost Giants as they’ve mistaken these species as being from Norse mythology and want to use them in their quest to ignite Ragnarok.

2x08 – Spaceframe: NASA is preparing to undertake a mission to bring Astronauts to permanently inhabit a mechanized Moon Base; however, when the Shuttle blows up on the landing pad, ARC investigates what could have gone wrong and finds that a corrupt NASA official may be to blame.

2x09 – Station Alpha-1: ARC accompanies a second team of NASA Astronauts to the Moon Base in order to make sure that all goes according to plan, and finds that the Station Commander may be plotting to cover-up mechanical failures and inept design at the expense of Human lives.

2x10 – The Lunar Strain: The ARC team returns from their Lunar mission, only to discover they’ve brought back an Alien Microbe which was released by construction on the Moon’s surface; the Microbe quickly spreads throughout ARC Command, infecting anyone in its path and plunging them into emotional turmoil. ARC must try and find a cure while they still have their sanity.

2x11 – And Madness Spread in Quiet Desperation: Despite their best efforts, the Lunar Strain escapes ARC Command and begins to infect the population of the surrounding town. ARC must once and for all eradicate the Lunar Strain or face massive causalities on their hands.

2x12 – Aberrant Forms: Rumors of strange lizards have been emanating from rural Costa Rica for years, and a fresh outbreak brings ARC down to South America, where they team with Richard Levine and Marty Guittierez to discover the identity of the rampaging animals; the team learns that the creatures are actually dinosaurs, the result of an experiment conducted in the 80’s by an American Genetics Company gone horribly wrong, which brings back unpleasant memories for Doc Thorne and Levine…

2x13 – At the Edge of Chaos: ARC descends deep into the Costa Rican jungle with a Taskforce working for the country’s government in order to halt the attacks of the dinosaur population. However, ARC finds themselves cut off from civilization and the ones who are in need of rescue…

Season 3—

3x01/02 – ELE: Extinction Level Event: ARC escapes from the jungles of Costa Rica, only to find that the dinosaurs are migrating right for San Jose! As the animals stampede through the capital city, the team races to stop InGen’s legacy of terror once and for all.

3x03 – Portents of the Future: In the aftermath of the San Jose Disaster, ARC finds that many species of dinosaurs on the mainland may not have been bred by InGen but where recently cloned by a another source. The team heads to Australia, where they find the corrupt BioGen Corporation has been creating numerous genetic constructs, including a number of Human/Animal hybrids, for sale on the black market.

3x04 – The Future Is Now: ARC struggles to stop BioGen’s horrific genetic experiments in creating mutant Human/Animal Hybrids created for labor, warfare and other sorts of exploitation.

3x05 – Antitheft: A highly-automated, highly-advanced bank, the largest in the world, filled with all manner of security systems and run by a computerized central “brain”, opens its doors in Sweden; however, a band of thieves decked out with tons of high-tech tools of their own sets out to rob the “unrobbable” bank, and ARC must find a way to stop them.

3x06 – Unsecure: ARC finds themselves in a high-stakes, high-tech struggle against the techno-thieves and the computerized security system which doesn’t differentiate between them and the criminals and seeks to wipe out all of the intruders.

3x07 – Predation : A new town has sprung up in the Arizona dessert, filled with strange people who’ve forsaken their previous lives to move out into the middle of nowhere and build an ideal society; when ARC investigates, they find that all in the town are hosts for nanoparticles developed by the Xymos Corporation, and the swarm is preparing to unleashing itself on an unsuspecting humanity…

3x08 – Survival of the Fittest: ARC must find a way to permanently shut down the nanoparticles and try to rescue its human hosts before the swarm and create a new, upgraded version of itself to infect the Western United States.

3x09 – The Perfect Candidate: When a Candidate for President is assassinated in Washington DC, he’s revealed to have been a Robot. ARC realizes that the capital has been infested with Robots posing as Human, for if their creators can install their puppets in positions of power, they have control over the sole remaining superpower on Earth.

3x10 – An Inhuman Politician: ARC finds itself embroiled in undercover Robots, political and corporate espionage, and signs that the Robots’ controllers are attempting to get their hands on weather-controlling technology.

3x11 – Secrets of the Dead: The remains of what may be the first Human civilization, 1,000 years older than Uruk or Ur, is discovered by Archaeologists in the Antarctic, filled with advanced alien artifacts. ARC heads out to investigate the find, only to contend with mercenaries hired by Black Ram Initiative to obtain the technology at all costs, and a race of “Beast-Men” who may be the degenerate decedents of the ancient city.

3x12 – When the Dead Were Living: ARC tracks down the remains of ITC Corporation and coerces them to send the team back in time to prevent Black Ram from obtaining the alien technology and learn how this first civilization came to be.

3x13 – The Living Join the Dead: ARC finds themselves trapped in an ancient city, ruled over by alien machines, and among a strange and unfriendly people; they must find a way back to their own time or face becoming relics themselves; in addition, they find that people from a futuristic alternate dimension, have come to the city for their own ends...

Continued Below...
 
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Season 4—

4x01/02 – Back From Life Among The Dead: ARC escapes from the First City and ends up going into a futuristic parallel reality where they ARE the relics, and from they must escape back to our own modern world.

4x03 – Myths and Legends: ARC heads to remote Romania where they find that the villagers will not go out at night, and are plagued by creatures that strangely resemble the Vampires and Werewolves of myth and legend. The team finds that an ancient society, now extinct, found a way to inject pregnant women with the blood of parasitic species of bats and wolves, leading to the monstrous life-forms which now threaten the team.

4x04 – Anti-Life: The ARC team looks into a Physicist, who claims to have isolated the substance which makes up the universe, and each individual particle must be kept separate from each other, or else he’d risk a chemical reaction ending the universe as we know it.

4x05 – Journey to the Earth’s Crust: The Smithsonian has outfitted an expedition with a high-tech drill to head deep beneath the Earth’s crust to collect magma, mineral samples and other scientific materials; ARC inspects the safety of the mission and finds that there may be those trying to sabotage the vehicle and its crew…

4x06 – Beneath the Earth’s Crust: ARC joins the subterranean expedition to keep them safe, but the mission goes horribly awry and ARC finds themselves having to survive human agents and Earth-bound obstacles in the heart of a volcano!

4x07 – Bad Medicine: After a series of patients in several hospitals manifest bizarre symptoms, ARC investigates to discover that a group of doctors is creating and distributing new experimental vaccines, which seem to be backfiring even though they’re been approved by the FDA.

4x08 – Strange Bedfellows: ARC finds that the medical community is disintegrating , as corrupt doctors and officials at the FDA are releasing dangerous drugs to patients, sending more and more into the ER.

4x09 – Cryptozoology: An eccentric, somewhat unhinged globe-trotting Cryptozoologist enlists ARC’s aide as he strives to prove that such animals as the Yeti, Chupacabra and Loch Ness Monster indeed exist and are still on the Earth today.

4x10 – Camping with Cryptids: ARC and their unhinged Cryptozoologist friend do indeed find several unknown species, but may be in over their heads and unprepared for getting back to civilization with their lives.

4x11 – Cryptids From Beyond Time!: ARC and the Cryptozoologist travel back to the 1950’s to rescue a Bigfoot and other unknown species from a travelling carnival that keeps them on display as the “Spawn of the Devil”.

4x12 – The Black Ram Initiative: ARC must again stop the Black Ram Organization from achieving their primary goal of bringing about “Ragnarok”, which they learn would NOT be the Norse Armageddon of legend, but allow the group to remake the timeline in their own image.

4x13 – Only a Matter of Time – ARC races across the globe to shut down a major Black Ram operation which would leave Europe in ruins and the secret brotherhood in control of the Americas.

Season 5—

5x01/02 – Flashpoint: ARC deals with rouge elements of the American Government and European Union who are under Black Ram’s sway. Ultimately, they are able to again thwart the corrupt organization’s plans, but ARC’s existence is revealed to the world and they must deal with the social, political and security fallout.

5x03 – Aftermath – ARC deals with the fallout of their existence and mission being revealed to the public, including inquires from curious politicians and the effect on their personal lives.

5x04 – What Would Look Like Magic – The ARC team looks into a strange Scientist-turned-Stage Magician who holds that one could create what would appear to be magic by manipulating the Earth’s magnetic fields and inherent properties, but find that the seemingly harmless man may be working for Black Ram Initiative.

5x05 – Evolutionary War: Shipping lanes and coastal settlements are under attack from an oceanic source, and ARC moves to stop the Fathomforms from launching a renewed assault upon Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

5x06 – Master Race: ARC must halt Black Ram from obtaining a brood of the Dragon-Aliens found in a massive Alien Ship in Siberia, which they still wish to use to bring about their control of the past, present and future.

5x07 – Ice Age: ARC deals with a brood of Prehistoric Mammals which BioGen has bred is a secret underground facility designed to approximate the Cenozoic Age.

5x08 – Age of Man and Machine: ARC shuts down BioGen’s Ice Age Facility and moves the Prehistoric Mammals to a secure location, but finds that the genetics company’s management has been infiltrated by Robot imposters.

5x09 – Age of Machine-Made-Men: ARC traces the continued flow of Robots back to their source in Japan and goes undercover to order to shut down the manufacture of the machines once and for all.

5x10 – Age of Men and Martyrs – ARC succeeds in stopping the production of Human-Like Robots, but loses one of their member in the proves.

5x11 – Beginning The End: Black Ram makes their final move to control time, using alien technology and computers stolen from the alternative reality, and using genetic engineering to turn their followers into a master race, while ARC makes their final move to stop them.

5x12/13 – Ending The End: After Black Ram successfully awakens the Dragon-Aliens and takes control of them, ARC travels back in time to stop their enemy, and ends up using the “Anti-Life” Particles to “restart” the universe rather than letting Black Ram control it. In the end, it turns out that the Universe is on a Mobius Strip, and all this has happened before and will happen again; we keep getting to this point in time and then resetting. We see the first life emerge on Earth, and the first scene of the Pilot acts as the last scene of the Finale, as the adventure starts anew all over again.

Well, there it is...about 75% Crichton, 25% my own demented sensibility... :p
 
Some fascinating ideas here. With a good cast, the right tone and an absolutely massive budget this could be a very entertaining series.
 
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