Academic

My pitch for season 7 of "24" (Fox, call me!)

By Tung Yin

After reading that Fox has scrapped the plotline for season 7 of "24" -- just weeks before shooting was set to start -- I've been thinking about how I'd plot the season if I were in charge . . . .

Day 7 starts at 1 am in Los Angeles, where the show has been set in the past, but today, it's 9 am in London.  Jack Bauer is set to take custody of a suspected al Qaeda member from British intelligence.  In an unrelated matter, London is also hosting an antiterrorism summit that afternoon involving world leaders from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and other countries.  Too bad for them all, because Osama bin Laden has offered a bounty of $25 million per head (hah hah, pun intended) of state, and a deadly assassin codenamed Artemis has decided to collect.  [Ideally, Artemis would be played by Peta Wilson, who previously starred as Nikita in the TV series "La Femme Nikita."]

Artemis unleashes an insidious computer virus that cripples London's computer networks, shutting down air traffic, causing traffic chaos, and cutting off all cellphones.  By the end of the first hour, she's collected her first $25 million bounty -- and Jack realizes the danger that the U.S. President faces.  For the rest of the day, Jack has to deal with the effects of the computer virus while trying to track down Artemis.

Here's the kicker -- cell phones don't work!  Jack is able to get Chloe O'Brian at CTU to help him with satellite photos, etc., but he has to do it now by using a landline!  That means no calling for help in the middle of firefights, and a lot of barging into stores, homes, etc. to borrow people's phones or looking for payphones.

JACK: Chloe, I need real time coverage of the warehouse!

COMPUTER OPERATOR: You have -1- minute of time remaining on your calling card.

JACK: Damn it!  Chloe, I need you to add 500 more minutes on my calling card!

Now I don't have time to write out a detailed synopsis, but we pretty much know what happens over the next 22 1/2 hours: more world leaders get assassinated, Jack "interrogates" more terrorists, Jack shoots more bad guys, an innocent bystander helps Jack and gets rewarded by being killed, and Jack screams at a captured terrorist "I don't have time for this!  Tell me what I want to know right now!!"  Some hour-ending cliffhangers would include:

- one world leader trying to fly out of Heathrow when the virus lets up briefly . . . only to be shot down by a handheld surface-to-air missile;

- the unmasking of the inevitable mole, this time in MI-5; and

- Artemis escaping yet another "perimeter" by killing a British police officer and donning her uniform.

Hey, it's got to be better than the disaster that season 6 turned out to be!

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on July 18, 2007 (boomark / email).