Episode 11: Balloonga
(featuring Balloonga)
Saturn 1 a rocket ship crewed by one man is returning to Earth, as the pilot fires retro rockets to slow down in preperation to land he is horrified to find he has suddenly lost all full and there is strange baloon attacked to the rockets view port (window). The rocket crashes into the ocean.
One week later, Jun and Yuriko are flying around in his airplane, he flies over the crash sight. They spot a red balloon near the crash site and Jun assumes some one placed it there like a flower on a grave. As he attempts to fly higher he suddenly discovers his plane is out of fuel, he is able to glide back to base. And when he questions Ippei about how much fuel he added, he assumes not enough, Ippei claims to have filled the tank completly. Checking the plane, Ippei finds a strange object inside the engine. The object floats, like a ballon full of heliium. They take it with them in the car, and the car runs out of gas. When the thing starts to move, Ippei frightined drops the box, the thing starts to crawl out. The three humans scrable out of the car. As they are holding up traffice the police arrive. The thing is growing. As it grows large enough to fill up the car, the car begins to rise into the air. Yuriiko disreguarding the police orders to stay back, leaps forward to take photoes. As the creature continues to grow the car starts to burst and Ippeil leaps forward to pull Yuriko back so she wont get hit by falling pieces of Jun's car. Ippei is himself struck in the back. Police fire on the thing but bullets just bounce off. The creature rises highter. At the Daily News, News Desk Editor, Seki refers to the alien creature as "Balloonga". Making it one of the few monster to actually have its name spoken in the episode. Ippei has made it through the first of three surgeries. Yuriko wants to visit him in the hospital but Jun talks into looking for a scientist who 20 years before claimed to have found a Balloonga in a meteor, watched it grown, they killed it because it was becoming dangerous but was unable to provide any proof so was called a fraud and a madman. She is to find learn what university he used to work at, that he quit and went to the sicence museum and got an address for him, but this was all 20 years ago and he isn't at either place.
Meanwhile, an older man who has a balloon in his room is playing over and over a recording of the last radio communication between growned control and Saturn 1. A woman brings himself a newspaper with the story of the balloon monster over Tokyo. In Tokyo as the military scrambles fighter jets, the police evacuate buildings which are under Balloonga. The jets fire on the monster but theire attacks only provide it with more energy and one the jets is destroyed. Yuriko literally runs into the man she was looking for but doesn't realize it until he's already disappeared in the crowd. Having realized they were only feeding Balloonga all attacks on the monster have been called off, furtther since its absoridng electricy from power lines Tokyo will soon undergo a complete electrical shot down. This means patients in Tokyo hospitals will have to be evacuated to other hostpitals out of Balloonga's range. Jun is asssiting with the evactuation when he learns Ippei cannot be moved. He and Yuriko stay beside him in his room. Lit only by a kerosene lamp. When a bell ringts Yuriko forgetting the phones are dead tries to answer a phone but the wrinning was from a mechanical, hand wound alarm clock. Yuriko and Jun then decided that only the old scientist can safe mankind and go looking for him, using bicylces to get around. The find him when they spot the balloon he carries with him. It was his son who was the pilot of Saturn 1 and died in the crash. He's a ludite, he's anti-technology, thinks mankind has advanced too fast. Back at the hospital, the head surgeon decides to disobey orders and turn on the hospital's own generators in order to perform surgery on patients who cannot wait, after parents say their daughter will die without surgery. However as soon the lights come on they go off again, Balloonga is so big it instantly drained the generators. A typhoon (hurricane) approaches Tokyo but Balloonga is so powerful it even absorbs the energy produced by the storm. The storm fades and Balloonga grows even larger. Jun has been sent on a mission, on bicyce. Shortly after Balloonga stucked out the Typhoon a rocket launched by the United Nations explodes in space creating an artificial sun which attracks Balloonga, the balloon monster leaves Earth. And the hospital regains power. The old scientist says Balloonga will become one with the aritifical sun and either the sun will consume it or Balloonga will consume the sun.
‹THE END›
