Cool Barbie V - Stepping towards the Sky

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Cool Barbie V
Stepping towards the Sky

The rocket prepares to take off for the Moon.
Written by HIH Crown Prince Jonathan
Original air date 30 November 2010
Runtime 09:48
Production code CB.V
Episode chronology
Previous Cool Barbie IV - The Uprising
Next Cool Barbie VI - Revenge of the Uprisor

Cool Barbie V - Stepping towards the Sky, abbreviated as CB.V, is the fifth episode of Cool Barbie produced by Austenasian Television Productions. It was released on 30 November 2010.

Plot

In the Garden, Cool Barbie is enrolled by Major Brown along with four other toys as new agents of Spectrum, having just passed a training course. She is given the rank of Corporal, and welcomed to Spectrum.

One month later, the now Corporal Barbie is driving in her car - now fitted with a gun and Spectrum logo - when she receives a radio transmission from Major Brown, instructing her to report to a Spectrum HQ which has been set up in the Land. Arriving at the HQ, she finds Major Brown and Sergeant Grey waiting for her, and is informed by the Major that they are receiving a transmission from the Supreme Allied Commander, who has asked to speak to all Spectrum agents who have encountered Bubbles the Uranian.

The Supreme Allied Commander informs the Spectrum agents that a base has been detected on the Moon, which is suspected to be of Uranian origin. He proposes that Spectrum sends some agents to the Moon to investigate, and the Major orders Corporal Barbie and Sergeant Grey to travel to the Moon to investigate.

Corporal Barbie and Sergeant Grey arrive at a launch site which has been set up in the Garden, and meet two soldiers and two astronauts who will be accompanying them on the expedition. Enquiring as to the restrictively small size of the rocket, Corporal Barbie is informed by the astronauts that they will be able to fit inside due to technology salvaged from the remains of Bubbles' spaceship.

The rocket takes off and arrives on the Moon. The team discovers that an artificial atmosphere has been created around that region of the Moon, and so the Spectrum agents and soldiers leave the rocket without their spacesuits and find their way to the Moonbase while the astronauts stay behind to guard the rocket. As they reach the Moonbase, a Uranian emerges, who Sergeant Grey shoots with his electron gun. The atmospheric shell begins to fail, and the team run inside the Moonbase with the incapacitated Uranian as the air fails outside.

Inside the Moonbase, the Uranian awakens, and is held at gunpoint and interrogated by Corporal Barbie, Sergeant Grey and the two soldiers. The Uranian reveals that the function of the Moonbase is to monitor Earth, and that he is now the sole occupant of the base; Bubbles himself previously manned it alongside him prior to the events of CB.I. The Uranian explains that he maintained the atmospheric shell telepathically, and that being shot resulted in the connection breaking.

The Uranian reveals that the Moonbase has a teleportation device, which Corporal Barbie tells him to use to transport them all back to Earth. They arrive back in the Land's Spectrum HQ, and explain the situation to Major Brown, who orders two guards to escort the Uranian to the Cryogenic Research Prison to be held until interrogation. While discussing the Moonbase, a crash is heard, and one of the guards runs back in to report that the Uranian escaped their custody and killed the other guard.

Major Brown decides that they do not need a second Uranian on Earth waiting to escape, and instructs them to find the Uranian with orders to shoot to kill. Corporal Barbie goes a separate way from the others, and finds the body of the dead guard on the patio doorstep. Before she can fetch the others, she is thrown to the ground by an energy blast from the Uranian. He tells her that after killing her and the others, he will signal the Uranian Fleet to come to Earth and wipe out humanity, but before he can finish her off he is shot dead by Sergeant Grey's electron gun. Sergeant Grey explains that he had to turn his weapon up to maximum power for it to be lethal, and asks the Corporal to wait while he fetches the others.

Continuity notes

  • In the Moonbase, the Uranian states that Bubbles' spaceship crashed "about three Earth years ago". As CB.I is set in October 2004, this would seemingly place CB.V in October 2007, a chronological absurdity given that CB.III is set in August 2008. Chronologically, it makes the most sense to have CB.V taking place in October or November 2010, around the time of its release. The easiest solution to this contradiction is therefore to assume that the Uranian meant six instead of three years, a mistake which can be put down either to Uranians having a different definition of a year, or to having woken up mere seconds ago from unconsciousness.
  • The organisation of Spectrum is an appropriation of the one of the same name from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons; the same logo as that used in the TV series can be seen on Corporal Barbie's car.
  • The Supreme Allied Commander addresses Major Brown as "Major Orange", a mistake which the Major then corrects. This is due to the shots of the Commander having been filmed some months prior to the rest of the film (see below), during which time the script was edited once it was found that no suitable orange costume could be found for the Major. In the previous episode, Sergeant Grey had sent a radio transmission to Major Orange.
  • This was the first ever episode of Cool Barbie (including the originals) in which the only speaking roles were played by the three creators of the franchise: the now Jonathan I, Crown Princess Caroline and Lord Timothy. This would not happen again until CB.IX (2015), the only other episode in which this was the case, when it was intentional and as a tribute to the ten year anniversary of the first original episode.

Production

The first shots of CB.V to be filmed were those of the Supreme Allied Commander's broadcast, which were recorded in February 2010 in the Choir Vestry of Carshalton Methodist Church. The ease with which this room was able to be used led to it being chosen as the location for the Vestry Conference some weeks later. It was initially planned for the film to be completed and published before Easter, but the subsequent abdication of Emperor Terry I and Austenasian Civil War meant that production was suspended.

The remainder of the film was recorded and edited together over November 2010. The scenes set on the Moon were filmed at night on the garden patio of the Imperial Residence, and the inside of a bathtub was used for the interior of the Moonbase.

Immediately before the expedition teleports back into the Spectrum base, Major Brown is seen to be listening to a broadcast during which the words "a report that the Dorzhabadic Union is moving toward-" can be heard. This reference to the defunct micronation Dorzhabad, included at the request of its then head of state, is the only time that micronationalism was explicitly referenced in Cool Barbie (although the flag of Wildflower Meadows can be briefly seen in CB.XIV (2017)).

Cast

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