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Queen Victoria and the Giant Mole was the second of 22 episodes of the steampunk science fiction TV series, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne.
Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.
Plot synopsis
Using plans stolen from Jules Verne, the League of Darkness has constructed a deadly tunneling machine with which they intend to plunge Europe into war.
Phileas Fogg suspects Verne may be in collusion with the League and is reluctant to trust him. Rebecca Fogg tries to protect Queen Victoria from the evil that has infiltrated the court.
Three great forces zoom towards each other and eventually collide in this episode: Queen Victoria, (representing the might of the British Empire), the Giant Mole (a terrifying underground tunneling device funded by the aristocratic conspiracy known as the League of Darkness), and the young Jules Verne (the visionary who invented the 20th century). The battleground is Paris in the 1860s. The jokers in the pack are a cynical gambler named Phileas Fogg, his language-mangling manservant Passepartout, and Fogg's leather-clad cousin, Rebecca Fogg, the world's first female secret agent.
When we first meet Verne, he's just watching someone tear down the poster for his latest (unsuccessful) play. Yes, Jules Verne the playwright. The truth is that long before Jules invented science fiction he thought his destiny was to write and produce plays. He came to Paris (from Nantes) as a law student, but instead of practicing law he holed up in the traditional artist's garret and turned out verse dramas, historical dramas and romantic dramas. All of which either never got produced or, when they were produced, flopped.
He was like one of the characters in La Boheme — the classic starving artist. The reat writer Alexander Dumas took pity on him and got one of his plays onstage, but the truth was Verne wasn't much of a playwright. He had to invent the job that was waiting for him: the world's first science-fiction writer. That didn't happen until he published a mock-documentary account of an aerial journey across Africa in the book known as 5 Weeks in a Balloon.
Our series meets up with young Verne when he was still starving and still floundering — living in his garret, partying with his Bohemian artist friends, and making notes about geography, metallurgy, topography, meteorology, mathematics (these things fascinated him). He is also making sketches of such amazing devices as the Giant Mole, which organizations like the League of Darkness could find and turn into machines of real destructive power.
This is what first brings Jules and Phileas Fogg together. Fogg is the son of the former head of the British Secret Service, and though he has turned against the Service, he still works for it now and again. On this occasion it's to save the life of Queen Victoria. She's come to Paris to conclude a peace treaty with the Emperor Napoleon III and the League of Darkness has got hold of the plans for all the security arrangements.
The League of Darkness, an aristocratic organization devoted to retaining power in the hands of the rich and nobly born, doesn't want peace in Europe because peace encourages the growth of democracy, and war promotes the rule of the strong. They plan to use the Giant Mole to kidnap Queen Victoria and sabotage the treaty.
But back to Phileas Fogg. He has a sketch of the Giant Mole and tracks it back to the man who drew it — Jules Verne. He naturally assumes that Verne his part of the conspiracy, and intends to beat the truth out of him.
Meanwhile, Fogg's cousin, Rebecca, clad in her famous leather fighting ensemble, goes down into the sewers of Paris to find the Mole and nearly gets eviscerated in the process. Unlike Phileas, Rebecca actually works for the British Secret Service. She was brought up by Fogg's father when her own parents were killed. In some ways she's stepping into the role Phileas would have played if he hadn't become disillusioned and quit. She's always trying to push him away from his cynical, detached view of the world and get him involved with adventure. Once Jules Verne comes aboard it gets easier.
And, of course, Verne does come aboard, because it's not long before Fogg concludes that not only is Verne not part of the League of Darkness but realizes that he's the only person in Paris with the scientific genius to invent a method of detecting the Mole before it strikes. And Passepartout, Fogg's valet (made famous in Verne's later book, Around the World in 80 Days), is just the man to turn Verne's ideas into reality in his lab-cum-workshop on the top deck of the airship Aurora.
Guest stars
External links
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
