Mammoth


Well, exciting news in the world of medicine today, as scientists have developed a gene-tailored retrovirus that conditions your body's immune system to eat prostate cells. For those of you who don't know what the prostate gland is, it's an unassuming little organ, sort of like the spleen, that seems to have been left out of the evolutionary loop, sort of like the various appendixes that our organs sprout, in that it, well, doesn't stop growing. As the rest of one's body (if one happens to be male) eventually DOES stop growing, this is, shall we say, a bad thing. Occasionally Mr. Happy Fun Gland starts growing REALLY fast, which is even worse. There's only so much space in the body, after all. And unfortunately, going in and cutting it out doesn't always work, as the little bits will cheerfully grow back into lots and lots of brand spanking new prostate tissue, often ending up in inconvenient places. So, now, however, scientists (most of whom, we'll note, are male, which is why they work on things like prostate cancer _first_) have come up with some magic potion that tells your immune system that prostate cells are _bad_, and it should kick the snot out of them when it comes across them. This can only be a good thing, in that, at last, perhaps we can get aged male comedians to stop making jokes about how their prostates are the size of zeppelins.

In other exciting medical news, other scientists, having discovered they have nothing better to do, have unearthed an entire, intact woolly mammoth from a big chunk of ice in Siberia, land of big chunks of ice. Of course, someone immediately came up with the bright idea of cloning the thing. Oh, great. that's just what we need. Big, surly, hairy things wandering around the landscape, eating our shrubberies, like some extremely odd vegetarian soccer thugs. Don't these scientists have anything better to do?

Dragonball Z: "Namek's Destruction?"

We start with, yes, of course, yet more of Goku and Frieza glaring at each other. Frieza's recovered a little from his initial shock, and mocks Goku a little about the whole Super Saiyan thing. Well, actually, he mocks Vegeta, who fought so hard trying to fulfill the legend, only to fail miserably. Goku doesn't seem overly perturbed by this, which may mean Vegeta is going to have to come back from the dead again just to gripe at him some more. I hope not, though. That's just disturbing.

Anyway, both Goku and Frieza power up, the sheer force of their powers shattering the surrounding terrain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.

Meanwhile, on one of Frieza's bases far, far away, a large number of henchmen are rather perturbed; they can't raise Frieza, their fellow minions, or even the Ginyu Force. One minion shows enough backbone to question wether Frieza is even still alive, but is turned on by his fellows and annihilated. The base commander then goes into a little shpiel (the dead minion was one of his own people, the last few survivors after Frieza detonated their world, and some of the other minions question his ruthlessness) about how there are no more races any more, only people who serve Frieza, and people who don't. Well, I guess even the forces of darkness have to keep up with affirmative action. Some other minions manage to finally get a scan of Namek, and detect Frieza's power signature, which gratifies them all, and then Goku's, which they read as slightly higher. Trying to deep scan Goku, however, causes their computers to overload from the massive power, and the entire base explodes. Apparently this advanced and technological empire, capable of conquering entire worlds and travelling the stars faster than light, has not yet discovered 'fuses'. On the other hand, if Frieza's followers keep scanning Goku and detonating themselves, this will, at least, spare us hundreds of episodes of Our Heroes having to trek around dismantling Frieza's empire.

Meanwhile, back on Namek, Gohan hauls Piccolo into the ship.

On Earth, this is instantly detected - someone's moving around inside the ship! (Apparently someone discovered faster-than-light communication while we weren't looking.) Dr. Briefs, Chi-Chi and Kamesennin promptly place a call there, and get a rather surprised Gohan. Chi-Chi burbles happily a bit, until Kamesennin shoves her aside to try and get Gohan to explain what's actually going on. Gohan tells them that Krillan's dead, and Goku is fighting Frieza, and he REALLY can't talk right now, whereupon Chi-Chi yells a bit and Gohan just leaves. Kids these days, no respect for their parents, I tell ya.

Frieza and Goku stare at each other some more, while Goku powers up a "Kameameha", only he stops at the "Kamea" to engage in some more banter with Frieza, so he's just stuck in that half-done pose for the rest of the episode. Frieza reveals that he'd rather kill them both than let Goku win, and even though Goku is more powerful, Frieza will triumph because he's smarter and more experienced. He also angsts a bit about the realization that toying with Goku all this time was a really amazingly stupid move. Frieza powers up an energy blast, meanwhile, and... blasts the planet? "Die, planet, die!" he yells. Well, that's the first time I've heard someone say THAT...

The blast tears down through the crust, as we see massive earthquakes rock the little world, tearing apart the landscape and annihilating various landmarks such as Frieza's ship, Guru's place, and the assorted corpses of the Ginyu Force, and sending shockwaves through the atmosphere that send Gohan flying and make Bulma even more surly. Back on Earth, parts of this are seen through the monitor. [Chi-Chi: "What's... that LIGHT?" Kamesennin: "Well, it looks like the planet's exploding..."] Uh, yeah. Good eye, old guy.

Meanwhile, in the Next Dimension, King Kaiou angsts about the planet being destroyed, and everyone dying, but none of us buy it for a second. He's smacked back into cluefulness by a call from Kami, who's reporting on the status of his minion finding all the Dragonballs. King Kaiou realizes instantly that this means Piccolo is still alive, and thus Namek has yet to be detonated.

Back on Namek, Goku and Frieza float over the massive hole Frieza drilled, while the core of the planet burbles menacingly below. Frieza complains that he must have held too much power back, because the planet isn't exploding. Goku smirks, remarking that he knew Frieza couldn't destroy them both. But wait, Frieza replies, revealing that he's not left-handed. HE can survive in vacuum, and Goku can't, so if the planet goes, Goku will certainly die, while Frieza will probably survive. The planet will still detonate, it'll just take it five minutes to do so. Fine, Goku says, it won't take me that long to feed you your own legs. But wait, Frieza replies, I'm still not at my full power. Oh yeah, Goku replies, I bet your body can't even handle that much power, and besides, I'm not going to give you the chance to fully power up. WHAT?! How can this be? Has one of Our Heroes finally figured out that the best thing to do when an enemy stands there powering up is not stare like Johnny Bench but, instead, blast the snot out of them?! No, no! This just cannot be!

Next time: We answer the question "So, just how many episodes CAN a five minute battle drag on for?"

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