Mark Spent A Few Minutes Of The Afternoon Typing An Entry Into His Weblog

Today's episode of Revelations: The Initial Journey (or, as the opening titles would have it, "Revelations (The Initial Journey...)") was, compared to last week's, a trifle disappointing. Jess — yes, that's the time-travelling one who can do no wrong — was shipwrecked. Indeed, he was the only surviving member of his crew. As he mentioned this is one of his voiceovers, we can only assume that he saw them all perish before he was washed away, but this traumatic experience seemed to have little effect on him.

Once Jess had washed up on some beach and been taken in by a friendly tribe, things slowed down for a while. For a year, in fact, to give his close friends on the island time to learn basic English, and for him to learn a little of their language — which strangely, we never see or hear spoken other than the odd single word directed at Jess in an attempt to teach him. In fact, in a scene where Jess is interpreting for the missionaries and the chief, the camera even cuts away to the missionaries as the chief whispers to Jess. Interestingly, he spent quite a lot of this year staring longingly towards home, despite the fact that he travels through time and so doesn't seem to have much of one. I'm sure all will become clear after further viewing of the series. Anyway, with the stage thus set, some missionaries arrived, although the ship that brought them sailed off too quickly for Jess to climb aboard. After having thrown words like "heathen" and "savage" around at the locals, they seemed very surprised to learn that there were no five-star hotels with clean linen and professionally-made mattresses. Now, I appreciate that the makers of the programme were trying to make a point, but these people were put across as reasonably intelligent. One would have thought that they would be prepared for less than stellar sleeping arrangements when they went to stay with a tribe of "savages".

Before long, a war broke out between the various tribes, due to their king having died and pretty much everyone wanting to take over. Just to add a little zest, some of them blamed the missionaries and their god for the whole affair, and set about slaughtering them and stealing their clothes. Only Big Chief Arrogant Evangelist got away, and he dropped his Bible. Forced to live in hiding with Jess and his friends, he become only more insufferable, promising revenge on whoever could be made to take it for the death of his mute missionary kin.

I'm sure you can guess where this is going.

Yes, that's right. About the time that the tribes settled their differences, and found the ones who had been doing the missionary killing, the one remaining missionary realised that he was being an utter arsehole, and that the tribespeople were actually rather nice. So, in a staggering display of kindness, he didn't have them all killed once a ship came to collect him. In fact, he stayed behind in an attempt to become yet nicer. Jess, meanwhile, happily set off "home", promising never to forget the tribespeople, who no doubt he will not mention in any future episode.

Alas, there were no classic lines in this episode, but there was thrilling commentary from Jess. As the deeply troubled missionary walked along the beach alone all morning, he handily informed us that "John Buchanan spent all morning walking alone on the beach, deeply troubled." I personally, would have been lost in the complex twist of subplots if he hadn't told us that he and his new friends still had much to teach each other just after they spent three minutes trying to discuss the concept of fishing. Once they had reached a conclusion and Jess had stuck a spear into the seabed for a while, he let us know that "any idea that Vaani had that I might be a fisherman seemed to disappear when she saw my terrible attempts at trying to catch a fish." You see, with her laughter and him stabbing randomly, we might never have worked that out. I know it would have gone straight over my head.

Overall, this was not a particularly memorable episode. I must, therefore, apologise for how poorly they above may read, as I had to watch it again for the sake of completeness and accuracy — nothing stuck in my mind quite well enough on the first viewing. I can only hope that next week will show a startling return to form.