GeminiApes

It's 1964, after the problematic Mercury launches. The new Gemini rocket sends a live
payload of two bonobos apes into space. However, a free-floating pen lodges itself in
a mechanism and directional control of the craft is lost. A form of cryogenics keeps
the apes sedated, and automated systems feed them, carry away waste, and exercise
their muscles. It is NASA's intention to work out a solution to the problem, but the
excitement of the event is forgotten and interest lost. Nearly forty years later the
capsule falls to Earth. The first heavy impact with the upper atmosphere dislodges the
pen. Old mechanisms are reactivated, correcting the trajectory and angle of descent,
waking the apes from their forced hibernation and slowing the fall of the craft with
half-rotten parachutes. It falls on a large auto-dump in America.

Ricky lives with his uncle Rusty (the owner of the scrapyard) and his Aunt Mollie (an
animal activist). Whilst training to be a vetinary surgeon, Ricky takes a summer job at
Drake Industries, who are working with apes in the fight for interspecies bio-immunity.
He is asked to care for a primate called Brewster, with whom he becomes quite
attached. However, when he next goes to work it is to discover that his entry key-card
no longer works. He is allowed in using the card of Nadia (the foremost research
scientist at the institute), only to be told that his sevices are no longer required.
Brewster has proved inaffective in their studies, so he is to be reintroduced into the
wilds of Africa. When Ricky later relays these events to his guardians, Mollie is
sceptical, hinting at diabolical experiments conducted on the animals in the
laboratories. She is stunned when she sees a photograph taken in Africa showing
Drake releasing Brewster. Later, Ricky studies the picture more closely, noticing
something in the background which leads him to suspect the snapshot was taken more
locally. He discovers he still has Nadia's entry card and uses it to see if Brewster is still
at the facility. Instead, he is confronted by two intelligent bonobos apes who speak to
him.

Drake. He placates her by announcing he wants her to head his new research facility in
New York. He tells her about Linda, a little girl of six, diagnosed with a new tubercular
strain two months before. He hopes to use Brewster to develop cross-species
antibodies. Later, Nadia is told by the fired security guard, Dufris, that her card was
used in the break-in. An old NASA patch was also discovered. Travelling to the auto-
dump, Nadia takes Ricky back to the Drake Industries lab, now almost deserted after
the move to New York. She explains that her grandfather had created the Gemini apes
in the sixties, and that Ricky had found those same apes. It was a genetic experiment
lost with his death, and the closest they have come to recreating it is with Brewster.
Nadia shows Ricky Boris, another ape which Professor Drake had ordered to be
destroyed, supposedly because it was dangerous, but she had hidden away. Boris has
painted many pictures depicting apes and humans, but the apes are prone to violent
episodes; she had been told by Drake that Boris killed her grandfather. In truth, Boris
had attacked Drake because of his treatment. Her grandfather had tried to intervene,
but slipped and hit his head. Fearing for the safety of Rusty and Mollie, Ricky returns
home. The sheriff arrives explaining that they have been placed in the protective
custody of the authorities in New York. Later, he finds Jojo who had hidden away
when they had come to take Masie and the others away.

Like Ricky, the two apes have
broken in. All three escape in a
makeshift buggy assembled
from scrap metal. Ricky wakes
up the next morning believing
the whole thing to be a dream,
but when he and Rusty discover
cleverly assembled devices
hidden deep within the
scrapyard he is forced to think
again. Finally, they come across
the two bonobos who are called
Jojo and Masie.

Nadia is angry with Drake for
the way her research is being
misused, and the fact that the
twin bonobos sent up in the
capsule were sold to NASA by

In New York, the sick girl, Linda, is brought to
the labs amidst a wave of publicity - the first
accredited victim of anti-biotic resistant
tuberculosis. Drake needs this to work because a
share issue is at stake, but Brewster's results are
below target. Ricky travels to New York with
Jojo in his rucksack and gains access to the
Drake building. Drake and Nadia decide to
abandon Brewster and use Masie in their research
instead. Ricky is captured in the building, but
Jojo escapes and finds Masie. Rusty and Mollie
are released, but use a lawyer to try to stop Drake
using primates in experiments. A corrupt judge,
however, ensures the hearing finds in favour of
Drake.

Treatment has already started on the child. A
serum taken from Masie begins to improve the
girl, but Nadia discovers that Brewster has been
sold to the US Airforce for weapons research.

Rusty and Mollie intend to infiltrate the airforce base, and are fortunate enough to find
a truck outside with Brewster caged in the back. They steal the space capsule and take
it to New York. Boris is presented at the public shareholders' meeting by Ricky. The
Ape's intelligence is proved with the paintings which record certain corrupt events.
Nadia resigns, supporting the cause of the primates. Brewster is brought in to further
disrupt Drake's moment of glory, and the professor is told that because the apes are
sentient, if he kills any one of them he could be brought up on charges of murder. The
US Airforce is put under an injunction preventing the buying or selling of primates.

Ricky and Nadia try to escape the building
with the Gemini apes, but the Drake operatives
are after them. Jojo and Masie exit a window
on to scaffolding and slide down a dust chute.
Rusty and Mollie are below with the capsule.
The apes escape in the airborne capsule.
However, Masie is seriously injured and the
capsule nose-dives. Orders are issued to shoot
it down to prevent it crashing and killing
civilians. The apes minds are receptive to
knowledge; Nadia theorises that they picked it
up from the Earth below while they were in
space. Panic is making the capsule crash, but
Ricky calms the apes via radio and they
manage to regain control, heading out into
space - you might say back home. The media
speculates on Masie dying of her injuries, and
the craft running out of fuel and food, but the
truth is the apes have been recovered. Now it
is Christmas Day and Jojo and Masie are
visiting Rusty, Mollie and Ricky in their heavily
customised space buggy.

The germ of the idea for The Gemini Apes dates back to 1988. Whilst Dirk Maggs
was working on the Superman serials he was reminded of a scene in which the Kents
discover the infant Kryptonian and speculate on the incredible possibility of NASA
sending a baby into space, because they have already sent animals. In 1991 he wrote a
basic treatment, which he fleshed-out and extended four years later. The idea was to
eventually sell "Gemini" as a film script. In 1996 he sent the treatment to Dean Devlin,
writer/producer of Independence Day (with whom Dirk had met prior to writing
Independence Day: UK for BBC Radio 1), but the following year disaster struck, as a
very similar idea called "The Mercury Effect" turned up. Dirk was shocked, angry and
somewhat deflated. Much later, he was assured by a reliable source that it was a
genuine coincidence. Nevertheless, Dirk pressed on, between other projects, and by
early 1998 had produced a movie script.

English actor or two. Dirk asked veteran film actor Christopher Lee (whom he had met
briefly whilst consulting with Jon Landis on An American Werewolf in London), who
came on board as Professor Drake. Contacting bonobo expect Dr.Amy Parish, Dirk
was surprised at just how relevant his story was. It turned out that not only were
bonobos the closest to man in terms of intelligence, but also more peaceful than any
of their primate counterparts. The timing was also exceptional, because a temporary
injunction had just been awarded against the US Airforce selling 115 space program
chimpanzees to a biomedical research firm with a terrible record in animal care. Later,
in post-production, an Horizon documentary was shown highlighting the number of
chimps used for research purposes (October 1st 1998, at 9:25pm on BBC 2). The film
script was re-written for radio, and recorded at the Soundhouse Studios, London.

The Gemini Apes - an Audio Movies production -
was broadcast at 2:15pm Christmas Day 1998, on
BBC Radio 4, in one continuous ninety minute
session. Audio design was by The Soundhouse
Ltd., and the gorgeous Dolby Surround mix
(somewhat lost to a normal stereo radio broadcast)
was by Paul Deeley. As always a true professional,
Christopher Lee turns in a solid performance as
Drake, but the star of the show here, in my opinion,

is Gary Martin, who handles the voices for three primate characters - Jojo, Boris and
Brewster - with surely the lowest voice in showbusiness (check out his performance as
The Thing, in The Amazing Spider-Man). The security guard called Dufris is a
complimentary reference to William Dufris, who couldn't make the recordings.
Although some serious issues are covered in the script, Dirk has plainly been careful
to keep this essentially a family-oriented action adventure. The Gemini Apes is a good,
original story, well-told. All performances are strong, and it rattles along at a cracking
pace. The audio movie has yet to be released on CD; the BBC apparently reasoned at
the time that it was not a popular enough subject. Granted, everyone's heard of
Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, but it still seems a short-sighted point of view
considering a product as professional as this, and featuring no less than Christopher
Lee! Dirk has said he would like to extend this concept, if he ever gets the chance.
Let's hope he does... a film, anybody?

The Gemini Apes is affectionately dedicated by Dirk and his team to the memory of
Bob Sessions, who played Batman in the excellent Knightfall, and The Lazurus
Syndrome.

really that was the reason it was written that way. In fact all the characters were
American in the screenplay. I changed Professor Drake to an English voice at the
request of Radio 4, who worry if they have too many American voices. The deep-
voiced Gary Martin (who played Jojo) is a brilliant voice artist and was keen to give it
a go. I was scared to phone Lorelei King (who's lovely and equally talented) and ask
her to be a chimp (Masie), but she was just as keen. They did a great job. It's not easy
being a talking animal!

"There are so many great things which haven't been released on CD and ought to be,
it's marketing departments who make these decisions, not consumers. It was a one-
off, broadcast on Christmas Day, one of the lowest listenership days in the year. To
the relevant marketing department this meant low sales because they did not have a
budget to promote it, they relied on broadcast to get stuff out there, and a one-off
always picks up less listeners than a six-week series. So it didn't get published. But I
haven't given up on it. The feedback from the listening audience and the industry was
really positive. The critics were favourable and I got lots of nice emails. But the
Commissioning Editor turned down a sequel. So that was that. For now.

"The problem is 'Play Us Something We Know'. However, it's also that what people
'Know' - in the UK anyway - is what the BBC's Spoken Word networks are putting
out there, which depends on what BBC Commissioning Editors deem worthy of
broadcast. These days that isn't the sort of stuff I make. Because I'm not alone in this,
and there is a demand out there for exciting and dynamic and popular Spoken Word
audio which the BBC isn't meeting, many of us in the audio theatre business are
making other plans. New technology like podcasting gives us an alternative means of
getting our product out there."

Review by Ty Power

"The slot for The Gemini Apes became
available because a Marx Brothers musical
they had bought from me for that slot got
pulled for various boring reasons. There was
a 90'00" going begging and I had just written
the screenplay for The Gemini Apes. It
seemed like too good an opportunity to
miss, so I put it to James Boyle, then Radio
4 Controller, and he said "Yes". Because
bioresearch institutes and big
pharmaceuticals companies are continually
trying to use Great Apes in animal testing,
despite laws forbidding them, the subject
will, unfortunately, always be topical. Dr
Amy Parish kindly advised me on the script.
She's an expert on bonobos and said those
aspects of the plot were frighteningly close
to the truth.

"The story worked in an American setting,