Fangs For The Fantasy

Tiger now appears to be a permanent member of the crew – and not only that but has injected some sense in getting them an actual paying job rather than relying on coin falling from the sky or whatever they were doing before. They are being paid a lot of money to transport a professor and her cargo – which looks like a giant egg. Rina is suspicious, partly because the job is overpaid and partly because she and Tiger seem to have taken a dislike to each other.

The professor is more than a little smug and sets out to make poor Anwar feel inadequate in his scholarship, but he strikes back showing he can guess some things about her vessel prompting her to tell the rest – it contains paradise, eradicated diseases, no mutation – human essence stored in the shell. Anwar is doubtful – even hostile – but she is sure the vessel will fertilise the abandoned Tyre island and create a new Eden

Anwar and Rina indulge in some mutual sulking, Anwar because the professor is smarter than her and Rina because the professor demands decent service having paid over the odds for the travel. But she is smugly happy she knows something that the professor doesn’t – Tyre island isn’t abandoned, it’s inhabited (there’s a prison there). Anwar passes this on to the professor who is busy injecting her giant egg-thing and she gets rather perturbed.

From which she gets even more unreasonable, demanding her egg be washed constantly in cold water and insulting Cook’s cooking (who spends the rest of the episode complaining about fussy eaters). But she takes the time to ingratiate herself with Anwar, asking his discretion and revealing she has a deal with the island’s extremely reclusive people – and that their being reclusive is what makes it such an ideal place to test her egg. That egg also cracks and eats a fly – then reseals the crack again, which is faintly ominous.

All the ingratiation in the world doesn’t stop Anwar falling asleep when it’s his turn to wash the egg – and when they wake up the next morning, it has broken open and eaten all their supplies. When they find it – it’s a giant snake and bites Gunnar. They lock it underground and run up to have an argument with the professor – with her furious that they ruined her experiment (but happy that it is so well developed) and them less than pleased by the giant demon snake

The professor tries a new lie on Anwar – the serpent was created to destroy the infestation of plague rodents on Tyre (because a BIG snake will still hunt rats rather than, say, something bigger) and it’s unstable and dangerous because it hatched early – which she blames on Anwar. While the crew wants to kill it, she wants to protect it. She and Anwar go hunting in the dark for it – and she locks him down in the hold with the snake. Sinbad rushes to save Anwar but when he’s free the professor grabs him and holds a knife to his throat, forcing everyone back.

She has Cook open the hatch to throw Anwar in – because it needs to feed. Unfortunately, her taking the time for the sinister whispering meant she stood a little too long with her back to the hatch and the snake grabs her. See, this is the problem with dramatic villains. Anwar and Sinbad, being the Wet lettuce he is, doesn’t point and laugh, but they help her and pull her free – minus and arm

Consulting her notes, Anwar discovers she is working with a rogue professor from the Imperial college who thought compassion was a weakness and a giant snake would return to eat the “weak” of every species. For this, he was banished from the college, rather unsurprisingly. I mean, harsh tutors fair enough, but feeding the weak to an evil snake is a bit much.

Realising the snake is going to destroy the ship, Sinbad announces they have to leave – and they all pack up and start to flee the ship. Except Cook, who refuses to leave. They have a dramatic talk about destiny but Cook refuses to abandon ship. Gunnar, Anwar, Rina and Sinbad won’t abandon him.

So, new plan – batten down the hatches, survive the night on deck then, when the sun rises, go do some snake killing. Except it batters the ship all night (screeching for some reason) and the ship may be sunk by dawn. New plan #2! Put some human bait in a cage and when the snake sticks it’s head out, lop it off.

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