Episode 1 - Introduction
As a synopsis, this is an essay by Crichton that outlines that biotechnology and genetic engineering have been rushed with furious haste, for profits.
The biotechnology revolution differs in three important
respects from past scientific transformations.
- it is broad-based: 500 corporations spend $5 billion a year on biotechnology
- much of the research is thoughtless or frivolous
- the work is uncontrolled
Most concerning, “no watchdogs are found among scientists
themselves.” Scientists are no more ethical in pursuing science than the
capitalists pursuing the science (x).
The whimsical use of biotechnology should concern us all
(ix). And everyone is a stakeholder (x).
Science is no longer pursued for the betterment of mankind
(x). Galileo proceeded with “science as a free and open inquiry into the
workings of nature.” Scientists traditionally operated above politics and war,
rebelling against secrecy in research and frowning upon patents – working for
the betterment of all mankind.
Crichton labels a clear moment when the betterment of all
switched to patents for profit: April 1976. Venture capitalist Robert Swanson
bankrolled biochemist Hebert Boyer (both real people) to launch Genetech, a
real business who’s Wikipedia page includes no mention of Jurassic Park…
They, standing on the shoulders of giants (those giants
being British researchers James Watson and Francis Crick, who deciphered the
structure of DNA), launched a trend-setting, gene-splicing new world of genetic
engineering enterprise (x). This led to a “significant shift in attitude,” says
Crichton (xi).
Episode 2 – Prologue: The Bite of the Raptor
First Iteration
Episode 3 – Almost Paradise
In July 1989, the Bowman family (Mike, Ellen and Tina) visit a remote beach during a two-week holiday. According to guidebooks, Cabo Blanco was unspoiled wilderness, almost a paradise (p. 11). The Bowmans squabble as they reach the isolated, pristine white beach. Tina runs off – to get away from her parents’ incessant bickering – and discovers a strange lizard, that bites her.Episode 4 – Puntarenas
Episode 5 – The Beach
Guitierrez is puzzled by the mystery of the strangely described, biting basilisk lizard – and is interested in observing the specimen himself, so he visits Cabo Blanco.Episode 6 – New York
Dr. Richard Stone receives the lizard specimen at the
Tropical Diseases Laboratory in New York, because the specimen’s intended
recipient, Dr. Simpson, is unavailable for the summer. The sample comes with a
picture drawn by Tina to help identify the lizard. X-rays and Polaroids of the
sample are taken.
They test for communicable diseases, and finding none,
answer Dr. Guitierrez that the lizard is safe, which Marty believes. Meanwhile,
three of these green lizards prey upon a newborn baby at the Bahia Anasco
clinic.
Episode 7 – The Shape of the Data
Alice Levin notices Tina’s drawing of the green lizard, and suggests it looks like a dinosaur, and becomes excited that it may be the “rediscovery” of a believed-to-be-extinct species of dinosaur! Dr. Stone thinks Levin has an overactive imagination and refuses to indulge in her fantasies.Second Iteration
Episode 8 – The Shore of the Inland Sea
Episode 9 – Skeleton
Alice Levin’s X-Ray of the biting lizard shocks Grant and
Ellie, who diagnose it as a procompsognathus, and consider if it’s a hoax or a
rediscovery, before Hammond calls to invite them to inspect his new island.
Episode 10 – Cowan, Swain and Ross
Gennaro is instructed by his boss to accompany the
consultants on their tour of Hammond’s resort, ensuring that the investments of
theirs (and of the investors they represent) are safe.
Episode 11 – Plans
Grant and Sattler receive a package containing the
blueprints to Hammond’s island resort, and it’s suspicious spaciousness and
fortifications suggest it looks like a zoo with military upgrades. Before
leaving on Hammond’s chopper, Grant must secure a fossil on Hill Four, and with
the use of a CAST device, gets a good look at the velociraptor skeleton, and
imagines what it must have been like in real life. Then he’s whisked away by
Ellie to get to Choteau by five p.m.
Episode 12 – Hammond
Gennaro represents the investors for Hammond’s resort, who
are worried that they will be financially and perhaps criminally liable for
problems at the resort, so Gennaro has been instructed to lead a safety
inspection by consultants to ensure the resort is safe.
Gennaro is instructed to pull the plug at the slightest
provocation. We learn that Gennaro was integral to Hammond’s capital campaign
entitled the Pachyderm Portfolio, raising the funds necessary to make Hammond’s
dream a reality. The dream was highly speculative, unlikely to succeed – but
Hammond in fact tells Gennaro – yes, they’ve achieved the impossible, and
they’re going to make a fortune!
Episode 13 – Choteau
Grant and Sattler board Hammond’s jet to journey to his secret island resort, and meet Gennaro.Episode 14 – Target of Opportunity
Biosyn’s board of directors wait impatiently and irritably for a final member to make their emergency meeting, the first they’ve ever called, so they can reach quorum, and therefore, they must be discussing something very important.Nefarious corporate shyster Dr. Lewis Dodgson assembles an
emergency meeting of Biosyn’s board of directors to notify them that InGen is
on the brink of opening the greatest single tourist attraction in the history
of the world.
There’s a fortune to be made, and Biosyn wants some of it
for themselves, so they discreetly, off the books, agree to perform industrial
espionage to get their hands on some of that turn-a-dinosaur-into-a-house-pet
technology.
Episode 15 – Airport
Dodgson meets his mysterious inside man, going over the details of the plan, showing that there are more nefarious deeds afoot this weekend on Hammond’s private island, during this safety inspection.Episode 16 – Malcolm
Ian Malcolm introduces himself as a braggadocios, outspoken,
and opinionated mathematician who’s openly defiant of Hammond’s island resort,
believing whole-heartedly that Hammond has “a serious problem” (p. 73).
Episode 17 – Isla Nublar
Once in Costa Rica, our heroes, and the ill-motivated
villains board a helicopter and depart the San Jose airport, rising above the
countryside, taking in all the sights.
Episode 18 – Welcome
Sattler, Gennaro, Grant and Malcolm are suddenly faced with an Apatosaurus that Hammond has cloned, and are stupefied by what this means to reality as they know it. Hammond is proud, and he outlines their itinerary to his guests – and leaves them in the care of Ed Regis.Third Iteration
The group enters the Visitor Center and Donald Gennaro presents the tasks set out for the consultants during their inspection of Hammond’s island. Malcolm’s mathematical principles reveal that they needn’t concern themselves with escaped dinosaurs.
Hammond and Malcolm have a tiff, just before Tim and Lex arrive for the tour.
Hammond selfishly, carelessly, unbelievably, invites his
young grandkids to the park during its preliminary safety inspection – to the
fury of Donald Gennaro. Tim and Lex join the tour, and offer their first
impressions of all the characters. We learn about Tim’s relationship with his
father, that his parents are divorcing, and that his little sister is “daddy’s little
girl.” They meet Dr. Henry Wu who leads them through the extractions room, the
gene sequencing room, the hatchery and the nursery, while moving past the
control room and security guards. All the answers to how Jurassic Park clones
its dinosaurs are answered here – and Ian Malcolm takes careful stock of
everything on the tour, preparing his challenging remarks that the island is
inherently unsafe.
Malcolm questions Wu on one of Gennaro’s big questions – whether the procompsognathus remains Grant and Ellie identified is an escaped animal from Jurassic Park (p. 111). Malcolm is told that the compys were released in a series of batches, and that they are dependant upon lysine which is provided to them by Jurassic Park in tablet form, without which the animals will fall into a coma and die within 12 hours.
The control room is busy helping the boat dock, so while the tour waits, they go visit the velociraptor holding pen, where the raptors attack the fence, further intriguing Malcolm’s suspicions.
Wu approaches Hammond to discuss restocking the park with Version 4.4. The dinosaurs are too fast, but he thinks he could tweak them so they meet the visitor’s expectations, but Hammond isn’t listening anymore, and dismisses him.
Arnold and Hammond quarrel over the difficulties the park must overcome to have Jurassic Park ready for its grand opening, because they have all the problems of a major theme park, all the problems of a major zoo, and the added difficulties of caring for animals nobody’s ever observed before. It’s revealed that Dennis Nedry is here to fix the bugs in the system this weekend. On the tour, the guests visit the venomous dilophosaurus
They arrive at the tyrannosaur paddock, and the “shy and sensitive” Big rex is baited with a goat.
Wu, Hammond and Arnold begin to feel some anxieties of the
consultants actually recommending that the park be closed for safety reasons,
and become leery of Malcolm and Gennaro in particular – while our consultants
tour through the sauropod paddock, enjoying the view of Triceratops,
Apatosaurus and Hadrosaurs.
Muldoon, on the other hand, has anxieties of the
consultants’ actual safety, and preps his Jeep with a rocket launcher just in
case – which isn’t much of a vouch of confidence for the park’s safety is it?
At the same time, a large storm coming in jeopardizes the
safety of the big supply ship, the Anne B, and since Hammond spared the
expense of installing a storm barrier at the docks, this ship must depart
early.
Oh, and unbelievably, contrary to everything they’ve been
told so far on this tour, Tim spots a rogue velociraptor running amongst the
hadrosaurs, and it’s so unbelievable everyone scrambles to find an explanation.
The tour continues to the stegosaurus paddock, where the vet is tending to a sick stego, which Grant rushes to inspect. The stegos are “always getting sick,” but Sattler cracks the case! While consuming gizzard stones, the stegos were inadvertently also consuming toxic berries – explaining why there is no trace of the west Indian lilac bushes being eaten, nor in the stego spoors. Because it’s not the plants, it’s the berries. They find this evidence in a discarded pile of gizzard stones … as well as something else even more shocking!
Meanwhile, Gennaro quizzes Malcolm on why Chaos theory
predicts that Jurassic Park is unsafe for people – or put differently, will
have “very large consequences for human life.” Animal welfare and animal
containment are predicted to fail at Jurassic Park – and no sooner has he said
that, Grant and Ellie reveal their consequential discovery – a raptor eggshell,
proving that dinosaurs are breeding in Jurassic Park.
Park officials believe the eggshells are avian, whereas
Grant and Malcolm agree, they are dinosaur eggshells. To prove his point,
Malcolm leads Wu through a series of data like procompsognathus height charts
and an overall animal count, to demonstrate conclusively that multiple species
are breeding in the park and have been for ages.
Wu can’t believe it – and is terrified: if the animals are
breeding, it calls into question every security measure they’ve put in
place! Grant concludes there are seven nesting sites on the island.
The Tour in the Land Cruisers are surprised to spot
velociraptors on the supply ship heading to the mainland, but they can’t radio
Control to warn them, because a major tropical storm is hitting, causing
interference with the radio.
Meanwhile, in Control, Nedry has enacted a scheme to turn
off the park security measures so he can steal embryos for Lewis Dodgson and BioSyn.
Fourth Iteration
Tim finds Lex
hiding in a culvert under the road, and they climb out to find Dr. Grant.
Meanwhile, Ed Regis climbs out from the bounders in which he’d been hiding,
feeling great shame for having abandoned the kids during the tyrannosaur
attack.
As Regis emerges,
he’s tackled and eaten by the juvenile tyrannosaurus, which pushes Grant and
the kids to escape further into the park, rather than following the road back
to “safety.”
Muldoon and Gennaro speed out to retrieve the tourists out
in the park, but reach the grim realization that the tyrannosaur has attacked
the Land Cruisers, dismembering Ed Regis and mortally wounding Dr. Ian Malcolm.
They must return to the visitor area immediately or else Malcolm will surely
die – but there’s hope that Grant and the kids are alive and hiding in the
park, where the motion sensors will surely spot them in no time.
Arnold returns control to the island, and Muldoon wrangles a
team to begin cleaning up after the storm. Gennaro then goes to recruit Harding
for the cleanup mission, and finds Malcolm high on morphine, relating his
memories of being attacked by the Tyrannosaur. Despite Malcolm putting on a
brave face, Sattler makes it clear – he must get to a hospital as soon as
possible if he’s to survive his injuries.
Muldoon leads the cleanup crew in the park to repair the
fences, meanwhile Harding and Hammond are out wrangling the dinosaurs which
have escaped and returning them to their paddocks. They all return to Control
where Muldoon argues with Hammond about not having any weapons strong enough to
tackle the Big Rex. As their argument spills into the hallway, John Arnold
explains to Donald Gennaro all the reasons why he believes Ian Malcolm and his
chaos theory are wrong, and therefore, Jurassic Park is perfectly safe.
Lex and Grant meet Ralph the infant triceratops after
awaking at 5 a.m. in Sauropod Maintenance Shed 04. And the phones still aren’t
working. As Grant and the kids go to trip a motion sensor and get rescued,
Arnold inconveniently taken the motion sensors offline.
Meanwhile, Arnold can’t get the phones back on, so Wu and
Gennaro convince him reset the system. They need these phones back on to call
for a doctor for Malcolm. During the system reset, the tyrannosaur attacks the
hadrosaurs, causing a stampede. Grant and the kids are caught in the midst of
the hadrosaurs, and escape up a tree to safety. As the systems come back on,
restoring the phone lines, the control room notices that the tyrannosaur has
made a kill.
Fifth Iteration
When Muldoon and
Gennaro reach the second Jeep, they find Nedry’s corpse and don’t bother
“collecting him,” but do prioritize the weaponry, before returning to the site
of the stampede. But there’s no sign of the Big Rex, so they have to wait for
her to reappear.
Meanwhile, Grant
and the kids flow up to the Aviary, and they climb out of the raft in search of
a telephone or motion sensors.
Arnold and Malcolm
suppose that Grant and the kids are having challenging navigating the park,
because they’ve yet to successfully trigger a motion sensor, and Malcolm shows
that the 92 per cent coverage of the motion sensors has decidedly insufficient,
to Arnold. Arnold hopes that nobody has gone into the aviary, because the
pterosaurs are too dangerous.
Then, Grant and the
kids enter the aviary and find that the pterosaurs are too dangerous, and
escape with their lives – thanks to Lex’s baseball glove.
Meanwhile, Malcolm
waxes philosophical with Sattler over the way of the world, and how misdirected
we as a civilization have become.
Finally, Grant and
the kids find themselves with nowhere to turn as two dilophosaurs are at the
riverside where they’d like to pass. The tyrannosaur distracts them, as the
raft slips by unnoticed.
Muldoon and Gennaro
locate the Big Rex and head out to tranquilizer her. Meanwhile, Lex, Tim and
Grant plummet over the waterfall where the Big Rex has been waiting to eat
them. The tyrannosaur loses them in the water, but finds the life vest.
Meanwhile, Grant
snags the kids, resuscitates Lex from drowning and leads them up a path behind
the waterfalls to hide from the Tyrannosaur. Behind the falls, Grant finds a
secured maintenance facility, golf cart, and juvenile velociraptor, but
unfortunately, he gets separated from the kids by a locked door. He
tranquilizes the raptor, discovering that it’s a male that was bred in the
wild.
The kids, on the
other hand, are locked out and the tyrannosaur bursts through the waterfalls,
uses its tongue like an elephant trunk to catch Tim, and is about to eat him,
when it falls asleep.
While considering
what to do with the tranquilized Tyrannosaur and boasting that full control has
been restored to Jurassic Park, the auxiliary power runs out. As the power goes
out, the waterfall is halted, and the electric door separating Grant from the
kids is unlocked and opened.
Arnold and Wu review the system printout and sees that they’ve been running on auxiliary power since they reset the system back at 5:14 a.m.
Sixth Iteration
In this first part:
Grant drives back to the Visitor Center via the underground tunnel (p. 317),
stashes the kids in the cafeteria at the visitor center, and then heads out to
restore power at the generator shed. Meanwhile, Muldoon and Sattler conceive a
plot to distract the raptors, ensuring Grant is free to move around.
But the raptors
prove to be far more cunning than they could have imagined…
Grant weaponizes his knowledge of dinosaurs, and the toxins in Wu’s lab, to defeat the three raptors, before racing to the Control room.
Seventh Iteration
The carnage has been measured: out of 24 people on the island, eight were dead and six were missing (p. 269). The National Guard is on its way – and the Costa Rican guard is surely speaking with Washington D.C., to discuss what these Americans are doing out on Isla Nublar. This international conversation may be slowing down the medical response, the novel suggests (p. 369).
Grant recruits Muldoon, Sattler and Gennaro to investigate the velociraptor nests, to inspect them and estimate how many animals have been born in Jurassic Park. Before they go, they discover a secret bunker at the maintenance shed equipping them with nerve gas for defense against the raptors.
They travel to the southern fields and follow a juvenile velociraptor to the nest.
Episode 60 - Almost Paradigm
Episode 61 - Descent
Episode 64 - Approaching Dark
Big helicopters burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape, their underbellies heavy with armament, causing the raptors to scatter. The Costa Ricans question the survivors, eager to find who was in charge, but nobody is in charge. The island is bombed and destroyed, as Grant takes a final look back as Isla Nublar, which is a diminishing bright spot in the darkening night.
Episode 65 - Epilogue: San Jose
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