#Dream Show Challlenge

[kalinara]

Dream Show Challenge 2023

So it’s that time again, @singledarkshade issued her challenge and a whole bunch of us are taking part.  Keep your eyes peeled for the master list of entries, which I’ll definitely be reblogging soon.

My cast list is, as follows:  Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Pedro Pascal (the Mandalorian), Elden Henson (Daredevil), Rachel Luttrell (Stargate Atlantis), Adrian Paul (Highlander the Series), Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) and Reggie Lee (Grimm).

Here’s my show:

Twenty years ago, an already famous crew set out on what was supposed to be the greatest heist in galactic history.  But everything went wrong: they were betrayed, the score disappeared, and the criminals scattered.

Until now.

They were know as...

The Silver Sisters

Our characters:

Kyra Blake (Grace Park) -  A brilliant pilot, wife and mother, Kyra Blake lives a life of perfect respectability, but it hadn’t always been this way.  Twenty years ago, she had been a Silver Sister, until betrayal and disaster sent her running for her life.  Now, the past is back with a vengeance, and if she’s going to save her daughter, she’ll have to face what she’s done and finish what she’s started.

Samantha Antrim (Rachel Luttrell) - Hacker, forger, criminal, she zigged when Kyra zagged.  Both Sisters fled the consequences of their failure, but where Kyra went for respectability, Sam went the opposite direction.  She lives life large and lavishly, but always with the razor sharp awareness that things can go wrong at any time.  Still, Sisterhood is forever, and when Kyra comes to her for help, she won’t hesitate to answer.

Gabriel Ramos (Reggie Lee) - A one-time victim of the Sisters’ crime spree, Gabriel has fallen on hard times.  The only way to regain his former prominence and prosperity is to resort to the same women who robbed him of them to begin with.  He does have one edge though: little Elly Blake.

Alejandro Campos (Pedro Pascal) - A henchman who’s never quite gotten the recognition he craves.  But there’s more than one way to skin a cat.  As a surveillance expert, Campos has access to a lot of information, and he knows exactly who will pay dearly for it.

Eric Blake (Elden Henson) - Kyra’s husband.  An ordinary man with an ordinary life, Kyra has done the best she could to protect him from any knowledge of her past.  

Captain Elizabeth Westphalen (Hannah Waddingham) -  Where there are criminals, there are cops.  Westphalen has a reputation for tracking down even the most elusive of criminals.  Except, of course, the Silver Sisters.  But now is her chance and it is very personal.

Chief Adam Beckett (Adrian Paul) - Westphalen’s mentor and closest friend.  He’d saved her once, when she was at rock bottom.  Cool-headed and patient, he does his best to keep Westphalen in check, with dubious success.

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And now, our episodes:

The Sisters: Kyra Blake and Samantha Antrim, once members of the Silver Sisters, haven’t seen each other for twenty years, until Kyra appears on Samantha’s doorstep begging for help.  Someone from their past has kidnapped her daughter and she can’t save her alone.

Eric Blake has no idea what’s going on.  All he knows is that his wife and daughter are missing, leaving behind a whole mess of incriminating evidence that he doesn’t know how to process.  He has one hope for answers: Captain Elizabeth Westphalen.

The Avenger:  Kyra and Samantha use the latter’s connections to track down information on the kidnapper: one Gabriel Ramos.  Twenty years ago, they’d been hired to rob him blind and destroy his reputation in the process.   Ramos reiterates his demand: if they want little Elly back, they’re going to have to finish their last heist.

Meanwhile, Eric Blake gets a first hand look at the corruption within the police department as Captain Westphalen crosses line after line in her vicious pursuit of any and all information related to the Silver Sisters.  Worried that his daughter might be endangered in the crossfire, he goes to her superior, Chief Adam Beckett.  He lays down the law: Westphalen won’t be able to continue this crusade without some kind of actual lead or evidence.  For now, peace is restored.

The Traitor:   Alejandro Campos is a surveillance expert that’s been working for Samantha Antrim for years without any sort of recognition or advancement.  What he does have however is backup recordings of all of Samantha’s dealings, going back through the decades, including her meetings with Kyra Blake.  And he knows exactly who’ll pay the best price for them: Captain Elizabeth Westphalen.

Proof in hand, Westphalen now has free rein to go after Kyra and Samantha, in the process, revealing the truth behind her vendetta.  Originally, there hadn’t been two Silver Sisters, there were three.  

The target of the last heist was a data file that contained information on clandestine financial resources of entire governments.  They were betrayed, by the nameless, faceless man who’d hired them.  As law enforcement closed in, the Sisters fled, but Westphalen was left behind.  Adam Beckett was the one who saved her, by pulling her out of prison and giving her a new life and a new purpose: retribution.

The Doublecross: Besieged on all sides by cop and rival criminals, all of whom want a piece of the Silver Sisters’ action, or their hides, Kyra and Samantha return to the scene of their failed heist, where Westphalen and Blake are waiting.

Now reunited, the Sisters do their best to try to kill one another.  Until Eric Blake pulls a weapon on all of them.  As it turns out, the Sisters had not completely failed their heist.  They hadn’t been able to get away with the data file, but they’d been able to lock it, in a way that required all three Sisters to finally retrieve it.  Eric demands that they do so.

Kyra is both thrilled and ashamed to see her husband, but that turns into horror when it becomes clear that Eric has no intention of delivering the file to his daughter’s kidnapper.  He’s been working for someone else, the whole time: their original employer, the one who betrayed them: Adam Beckett.

The truth comes out:  Beckett had been playing both sides of the law for years.  He’d hired the Sisters many times, under fake names and faces, to take out rivals and get himself an advantage.  However, not long after the Ramos mission, he had started to feel like he’d taken too many risks.  It was time to take the girls out.

The trap had worked perfectly, except for the stolen data file.  So in an attempt to get it back, he befriended the abandoned Westphalen and through her, he found Kyra Antrim.  He sent Blake in, and then waited patiently for his chance at the third Sister as well.  Now he has them all.

The Triplecross: Eric Blake is victorious.  He has the data file.  He has the sisters.  And, after he completes his call to Beckett, he gets shot in the back.

Eric wakes up and drags himself back to the others.  Kyra and Samantha are free and preparing to ambush Beckett.  Elizabeth is still tied up.  He is able to surreptitiously untie her and pass her his weapon before he’s noticed.

Beckett arrives, smug and with officers.  He warns them against ambush, revealing that if he dies, his men are ordered to blow the place to smithereens.  He goes inside, smug and confident, only to find Kyra holding the disk containing the file in her hands.  In front of him, she destroys it.

A furious Beckett orders Elizabeth to shoot.  She aims her weapon at him instead.  That’s when it comes out: the Sisters had never actually split allegiences.  They’d realized they’d been set up and they made a pact to find out who had used and discarded them.  Elizabeth, the toughest of them, willingly went to prison so the others could escape.  She hadn’t expected Beckett to help her, but was happy to use her position in the police force to gather more information.  

Beckett attacks, and in his rage, ends up letting slip more about his own role in the scheme.  He’s subdued by a well-placed shot to the leg.  Gabriel Ramos is above, in a sniper position, covering the sisters.  Meanwhile, outside, Alejandro Campos is using his technical expertise to broadcast Beckett’s incriminating words, as well as the research that the Sisters have separately compiled about their treacherous benefactor: more than enough for competent investigators to connect the dots.  It might or might not be enough, but then Eric offers to turn on Beckett in exchange for a lighter sentence and the ability to have some (carefully monitored) contact with his daughter.

Beckett is taken into custody by one of his ever-present subordinates (played by Arthur Darvill in a cameo role, as this is a RipChat meme after all.)  The Sisters, Campos and Gabriel all flee in Gabriel’s hidden ship, where little Elly Blake waits cheerfully.

The real sequence of events is revealed here.  Kyra, alerted by some odd behavior by her husband, starts becoming worried about the safety of her and her daughter.  She asks Gabriel to assist her by taking Elly and keeping her safe.  Gabriel, while furious at the Sisters for his humiliation, was ultimately more concerned with getting revenge on the one who set them on him to begin with and became a willing ally.  When she went to Samantha, as they’d always planned, they discussed the kidnapping and confronted Ramos as though it was real, so that Campos could then bring the recordings to Elizabeth and alert her that they intended to move.  Campos had been a petty thief when the Sisters were active, and he liked the thought that by helping them, he was becoming an honorary “Sister” himself.

The series ends with the five “Silver Siblings”  in Samantha’s luxurious secret hideout while little Elizabeth “Elly” Blake cheerfully plays in the background.

And as a thank you to @riphuntertimemasterlegend for helping me figure out how to end this monstrosity of a show, I include an image for our cameo: