Depth Charge
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Depth Charge |
| Publisher: | Greycloud Press |
| Editor(s): | |
| Date(s): | |
| Series?: | yes |
| Medium: | |
| Size: | |
| Genre: | gen |
| Fandom: | The Tomorrow People Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Battlestar Galactica (1978) SeaQuest |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Depth Charge is a gen anthology.
One issue contains seaQuest, one Battlestar Galactica, one Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the rest, The Tomorrow People.
Issue 1
Depth Charge 1 contains 99 pages. It is an all seaQuest zine.
- Someone Else's Problem by Angela Field (seaQuest finds an alien spaceship on the sea bed. When Captain Bridger takes a boarding party across, he discovers that the ship is still inhabited by the memories of the original crew, and the Captain wants to terraform Earth, wiping out humanity in the process.) (17 pages)
- Dark Silence by Janet Ellicott (While on shore leave, Lucas and O'Neill are kidnapped. Their captor uses O'Neill to force Lucas to work for him, but O'Neill has other ideas. Before his leave, he and Bridger were experimenting with communicating via Darwin. But seaQuest is a long way off and the experiment really hadn't gone very far. Can seaQuest find her missing crewmen before Lucas cracks the UEO codes, enabling his captor to breach the seaQuest's defences too?) (30 pages)
- Seawest Epilogue by Janet Ellicott (After the events at the West Ridge Mining Community, Hitchcock wakes up to find that she is not alone, and she has no memory of going to bed.) (2 pages)
- Fantoccini by Linda Chapple (For the first time, a Chinese terrorist base is found intact.) Crocker disarms the obvious booby traps but O'Neill discovers another one in the computer. He is soon babbling in Chinese as though he has forgotten he ever knew English, and acting like one of the terrorists who programmed the computer.) (46 pages)
Issue 2
Depth Charge 2 is a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 43-page special published without artwork. It contains four stories by Angela Field. It is undated.
- Project Neptune ("Tentacles slapped against the inner hatch as the cold water poured in, buoying Crane up as he kicked slowly out into the ocean and towards the nearest dome. He didn't think he had the strength to reach the Seaview ...") (3)
- False Image ("You know it was a bomb, don't you? Not a malfunction?") (13)
- Suprise (For some reason, Nelson takes Morton ashore with him rather than Crane, and Morton doesn't like the idea very much. Quite apart from anything else, Crane appears to have forgotten his birthday.) (23)
- An Inhuman Experiment ("Crane's first warning that he wasn't alone were the silvery bubbles that rose up around him in a shimmering curtain ....") (29)
Issue 3
Depth Charge 3 contains 125 pages and is a single novel by Janet Ellicott called, "Look Wistful at the Sky".
Mandatory psi testing reveals that O'Neill has a high psi factor. He is uncomfortable with the fact and doesn't pursue it, although one of the scientists involved, Dr Oral, keeps track of him over the years.
Years later, seaQuest is lured into a trap by Dr Oral, who keeps a launch crew captive just long enough to run tests on four of them, then abandons them. During their captivity, Bridger notices that one of the guards looks like his son.
Noyce orders seaQuest to track down some rogue submarine raiders and tells Bridger, during the briefing, that one of the commanders looks very like Robert. O'Neill is put in charge of the project team and, with the help of two telepathic teenage geniuses, discovers Dr Oral's plan: she has been developing the perfect soldiers, and breeding their telepathic controllers.
Issue 4
Depth Charge 4 is undated and contains 74 pages.
- Strange Bedfellows by Janet Ellicott (Despite having got his own way in the matter of choice, Ortiz does not get on with his new roommate. To make matters worse, the man drinks heavily and no-one can work out where he hides the stuff. Until Lucas and Darwin come to the rescue, in more ways than one.) (5 pages)
- Whales Weep Not by Angela Field (Returning to seaQuest O'Neill crashes the launch and Ortiz reluctantly admits that he had been complaining of headaches for some time. Westphalen is soon fighting for his life.) (17 pages)
- The Second Horseman by Janet Ellicott (After the incident where a scientist was able to order the launch of torpedoes, Noyce decides to test the Bridge crew. With Bridger and Ford out of action, they are put in the position where they have to fire missiles, and Lucas is set to the task of ensuring that they don't guess it is only a drill. But Lucas is only seventeen and the junior officers are much more devious.) (11 pages)
- Family Affairs by Janet Ellicott (When Krieg forgets her birthday, Bridger takes Hitchcock to London for dinner and a show. Since O'Neill got hold of the tickets, he and Ortiz tag along for a most unusual shore leave.) (11 pages)
- On the Shore of a Darkened Sea by Angela Field (Investigating a volcanic island for the last time before the volcano blows, Bridger and O'Neill are trapped in a subterranean cave and the race is on to get them out in time.) (32 pages)
Issue 5
Depth Charge 5 is a 55-page Tomorrow People zine. All stories by Janet Ellicott.
- Witch (On Halloween, Megabyte finally asks Kevin why his mother thought he was a witch.)
- Turn Fences Into Bridges (Once everyone is safe from Masters and Lady Mulvaney, General Damon works hard to repair some of the broken fences between him and his son.)
- Precautions (General Damon is a man with a past and a far from safe job. Concerned about the future of the Tomorrow People if anything happens to him, he decides to tell someone else about them.)
- We Are Not the First (Far too many people know about the Tomorrow People and Damon is no longer sure that he can protect them. The Tomorrow People themselves have become aware for some time of the existence of others like them and are not surprised when he asks them to warn the older Tomorrow People of a plot to capture them. The two groups of Tomorrow People soon join forces to keep their existence secret, and help comes from a surprising source, the race who left the spaceship on the island.)
Issue 6
Depth Charge 6 is a 59-page Tomorrow People zine. All stories by Janet Ellicott.
- Breakout (None of the Tomorrow People were sure why Millicent Damon hadn't Broken Out. Then General Damon revealed the family secret, with surprising results.)
- The Beginning. (Adam and Megabyte meet for the first time, beginning a remarkable friendship.)
- An Experiment in Catering (General Damon returns home from a hard day at work to find his son hard at work in the kitchen. Being a Tomorrow Person, of course, Megabyte is not cooking by traditional methods.)
- Vacation Dreams (On holiday, Adam and General Damon talk about the future, discovering that they have more in common than they thought.)
- A Difficult Situation (When General Damon disappears, his superior tries to bluff that he was working on a case. Megabyte knows different. He, Adam and Frank work together to find Damon and, when they do, realise that Damon has broken under interrogation. None of them are safe and it is left to Adam to find a way to convince the Governments of the world that they will not be used.)
- Past Problems and Future Hopes (A new Tomorrow Person Breaks Out but he doesn't teleport to the spaceship. Instead, he is found wandering in London, with no recollection of how he got there, and delivered to General Damon, thanks to the intervention of a computer called TIM.)
Issue 7
Depth Charge 7 is a single Tomorrow People 81-page novel called, "But What Happens Tomorrow?" It is an alternate universe story by Janet Ellicott.
Telepaths have been on Earth long enough for them to have been absorbed into the armed forces and intelligence services. Everyone accepts that telepaths must be taken out of normal life, away from their families, for the protection of the general population, everyone except the telepaths who live a life of virtual slavery, with little or no rights. They are waiting for the next evolution of mankind, the Tomorrow People, but they are not the only ones. Director Damon suspects that his own son is a Tomorrow Person and brings him and the others into the intelligence directorate, where he can protect them, or use them for his own ends, but others in PSIPRO know what he is doing, and it is only a matter of time before the six Tomorrow People have to take on the intelligence agencies of the world.
No-one seems aware that Adam, Lisa and Megabyte were not the first Tomorrow People, that others came first and were taken away from Earth before they could be forced to join PSIPRO. They are about to return but why? What do they want?
And what do the Russian and Chinese Tomorrow People want?
Issue 8
Depth Charge 8 is a 76-page single Tomorrow People story by Janet Ellicott called "The Darkover Project."
Adam and Megabyte make contact with a group of Tomorrow People who are about to Break Out. When one of the boys says he is at Project Darkover, Megabyte asks his father if he has heard of the Project. Damon has: he used to work there but he thought the Project had been closed down. His enquiries lead to a recall, and soon he and the two American Tomorrow People are part of a Project whose sole purpose is to train and, ultimately, breed telepaths and teleporters for intelligence work. Damon and the Tomorrow People are all determined to end the Project, once and for all, but cannot find a way to do so, until they discover that one of the girls at the Project is in contact with another group of Tomorrow People, a group General Damon has heard of but never been able to make contact with.
Issue 9
Depth Charge 9 is a 55-page Tomorrow People zine by Janet Ellicott.
- Return Favour (General Damon visits an underground base to call in a favour.)
- Plague. (Even alien invaders have their predators. The plague was meant to wipe out the humans taken over by the living stones but, thanks to the Tomorrow People, there weren't any, and there were just too few Tomorrow People to heal everyone.)
- Payback (General Damon takes his kids to visit an old friend, Mike Bell, and Megabyte makes a surprising discovery.)
- Secrets (The Tomorrow People start to hear telepathic voices which don't belong to other Tomorrow People. And then Megabyte hears a telepathic cry for help in the middle of the night, from his father.)
- New Birth (There are still not enough Tomorrow People to make a difference, but the next generation are already on the way.)
- Explanation. (Megabyte asks his father how he knows Mike Bell. It all started when Damon was a young intelligence agent.)
- Reasons. (Megabyte had been behaving like a child all through the Rameses affair. Finally, Adam asked him for an explanation, and was shocked by the answer).
- A Word from an Old Friend (John goes to visit the former Prime Minister, to let him know that the Tomorrow People are growing in numbers, and receives some surprising news.)
- Secret Identity (Lisa's reporter father returns, looking for a story, and she is forced to ask the other Tomorrow People for help.)
Issue 10
Depth Charge 10 is a 52-page Tomorrow People story by Janet Ellicott called "Can it be Aliens?"
When he starts to feel broadcast pain, Megabyte jokingly says that aliens are obviously trying to make contact with the Tomorrow People. The real truth is far more sinister. British Intelligence are forcing pre-Break Out Tomorrow People to work for them and they want Adam to train them. Fortunately, Adam's group are not the only Tomorrow People on Earth and Negabyte is soon receiving a message from someone who says he is a second generation Tomorrow Person. While General Damon makes his own attempt to rescue Adam, Frank is taken to an underground base and asked to cooperate with people he didn't know existed.
Issue 11
Depth Charge 11 is a 57-page Battlestar Galactica novel by Janet Ellicot called, "Past Memories and Future Hopes."
The final series of stories to complete the Orion saga, this zine follows on from "Frak 3" and takes the Galactica, finally, to Earth, with a few surprises along the way.