Scene 3.31 - Back To Earth
EST: EXT. Nazi Camp, Rixhoft, Poland, 1939 - Day
EST: LS Fishing village, like we saw on the Guardian’s face.
(WELLS pops in with a small, spherical explosion as seen in Back To The Future, and his tug-boat leans to and fro in the water, slowing down, having been going at a rabbit’s pace. As it slows, we follow it chugging along the shore. WELLS immediately assumes the identity of his token persona and sounds just like Jimmy Stewart. Just so everyone knows who they are, it's like this: Jules T. R. Verne is Humphrey Bogart, Arthur C. Clarke is Clarke Gable, Clifford D. Simak is James Cagney, Herbert G. Wells is James Stewart, Robert A. Heinlein is Daniel Kaye and Isaac Asimov is Charles Chaplin. As for the ladies, Azalea is a young Jane Russell, Dahlia is Mae West, Rose is Judy Garland, Daisy is Jean Harlow, Lotus is Rita Hayworth, Iris is Hedy Kiesler-Lamarr, Poppy is Greta Garbo, Pixie is Bette Davis, Leah is Shirley Temple and Ronnie is a young Jane Mansfield. The characters they portray in homage is much more subtle, however. Verne is Philip Marlowe, Clarke is Sherlock Holmes, Simak is Dick Tracy, Wells is Dr. Watson, Heinlein is Charlie Chan and Asimov is Ellery Queen. Azalea is also Nancy Drew, Ronnie is also a blend of Veronica Mars from Veronica Mars and Chloe from Smallville. The remaining ladies in the cast are burlesque dancers and striptease artists.)
WELLS
(Still stoned, but more lucid now that he’s seen infinity:) Hey! There’s that dog!
TRUCK RIGHT
MUSIC UP
(We see the cameo role of a dog; a German Shephard guard dog leashed and led by a soldier outside a Nazi camp. Soldiers, barbed wire, machine-gun towers and emaciated prisoners looking out through the fence allow WELLS to realize that the little, fishing village is not so quiet and peaceful after all.)
WELLS (Cont’d)
Hey! There’s Captain Verne! Wells to Verne! Drats!
(There is no answer because there are no communicators. VERNE has his hands behind his head and is being taken into the compound at gunpoint. He appears as a Pre-World-War II fighter pilot, formerly armed with an automatic pistol. The Archimedes has been converted into an early-model American fighter plane and has hash marks on it and a little pin-up girl painted on the side. It has had a hard landing on an adjecent air-field, where German soldiers have confiscated it. RONNIE, feminine-shaped from head to toe, is covered in a tight, leather, pilot’s outfit, complete with leather, ear-flap-helmet, goggles and a long, white scarf that drapes past her knee one one end, loops around her neck and drapes over a breast on the other end. She is also being persuaded by gunpoint to enter the compound from the tarmac.)
WELLS (Cont'd)
(Looking at his clothes, as a doctor in the 1930s.) Well, this just takes the cake. We haven’t gone back to a more-simple time, we’ve gone back to the Dark Ages! Now what in the heck is that supposed to be?
(A large Zeppelin is tethered to the tarmac. The side reads in Gothic script Der Eliza. It has swatzikas and German markings. German soldiers are loading luggage from the blimp to a truck below. The truck is loaded with the crew of The Eliza, and WELLS can barely make out the crew from his vantage point. They’re in 1930s outfits. Everyone is serious.)
WELLS (Cont’d)
There’s the crew! Hmmm. More soldiers. They look friendly. (Waves at them, they wave back.) Yet, they got Verne at gunpoint, I’d better keep going and come back later. (Absently fingers handle-bar moustache that he is aware has been added to his physique.) One way or another, I’m going to find out what is happening here.
FTB
RUN END CREDITS VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THREE