Joshua Blake: The Agency

Joshua Blake: The Agency is an animated television series created and produced by BKN New Media, which follows the adventures of it’s titular action-hero, Joshua Blake. It is aimed at 6-12 year old boys and girls.

The series, currently entering pre-production, is scheduled for the delivery of 40 episodes by 2011.

Plot

A synopsis covering the first two episodes:

Episode 1

Set in the near future, episode one sees the first of a new breed of tech-savvy field agents, Joshua Blake, sent on his debut mission by the mysterious covert operations group, The Agency.

The mission goes wrong, and what was intended as a simple surveillance operation, descends into a breakneck chase through the streets of Pyongyang, as the nefarious Polaris escapes with his prize: A canister of anti-matter.

Joshua tracks his enemy to the CERN facility on the Swiss/French border, where Polaris uses the anti-matter along with the equipment at the facility to open a miniature black hole in the skies above Tokyo. It is a deadly show of force, intended to shock heads of state, and convince them of his status as a world player.

Joshua, and fellow agent Monika Savage, break into the facility and confront Polaris. A struggle ensues, resulting in the near-destruction of the facility. Polaris escapes, but Tokyo is saved.

Perturbed by Polaris’ assertion that The Agency have been keeping from him the secret that he has an older brother, Joshua returns to the London headquarters and confronts Randolph Towers. Towers is the director of The Agency, and denies the existence of Blake’s brother, insisting that Polaris was merely trying to manipulate him. Joshua is unsure who to believe, and leaves the building, which promptly explodes behind him.

Joshua has no idea who set off the bomb, but the sequence of events leaves the blame squarely on his shoulders. Aware of this, Joshua flees, leaving Towers and The Agency’s technical chief, Professor Edward Lynn, with no choice but to activate ‘The Agency 2.0’, the next evolution of covert ops.

Episode 2

Back under the protective wing of the CIA, Towers and Lynn are in the process of launching The Agency 2.0, when they start getting news of mysterious disappearances. Apparently, members of the public are vanishing into thin air.

Joshua Blake is a wanted man, and Towers is charged with tracking him down. Nonetheless, Lynn persuades Towers to allow him to covertly contact Joshua for assistance, using the new Agency 2.0 setup. Towers reluctantly agrees, but threatens to deny all knowledge should they be discovered.

Once again with the help of Monika Savage, Joshua flies into New York under a false identity and makes his way to Wall Street, where there has been a mass disappearance of financial workers. Spotting subtle clues which were missed by the FBI, Joshua recognizes the work of recently deceased Nobel Prize winning scientist, Edward Nieto.

Lynn, and Joshua’s Agency 2.0 handler, Lilly Harper, are confused as nobody else should have been able to re-create Nieto’s groundbreaking work: digitizing small objects and transmitting them to a different location. In short: teleportation.

Joshua and his allies soon discover that it is none other than the real Nieto they face, seemingly back from the dead, encased in a bio-mechanical suit and having assumed the name Cypher.

Agents from the FBI get the jump on Joshua and Savage, and Joshua only narrowly escapes. He hardly has a moment to relax though, as he is soon fighting for his life against the city itself, as cars, traffic lights and even brainwashed citizens all fall under Cypher’s cyber-hypnotic control.

Lynn and Harper are abducted from the Agency 2.0 headquarters, using the teleportation technique Cypher has mastered. The psychotic former scientist convinces them that Joshua is dead, while forcing them to watch helplessly as he uses information ripped from the captured financier’s minds to plunge America's economics into turmoil.

Meanwhile, Joshua catches a lift from a helicopter group manned by Agency 2.0 marines, who rescue him from the hostile city. He then joins them as they assault Cypher’s headquarters in Montana.

Joshua manages to give Cypher the slip, and as the helicopters retreat under fire he sneaks into the base. However he is soon captured, and taken before Cypher in his command center. While distracting him with talk of his former life as Nieto, Joshua tricks Cypher into allowing him to transmit a signal which de-activates his mind control signal, freeing the minds of Cypher’s minions and disrupting his bio-mechanical suit.

Joshua completes his mission, but his status as a fugitive remains unchanged.

Characters

Joshua Blake

Joshua Blake, an orphan, is 19 years old, part ‘geek’, part athlete. A technical genius and professional level sportsman, he splits his free time between soccer, parkour free running, and combating complex computer viruses.

Recruited into the Agency by Professor Edward Lynn, Joshua has little experience, and only crash-course level training. However, his natural ingenuity coupled with his speed and reflexes are usually enough to get him out of trouble. And when all else fails, there is the mysteriously growing list of capabilities and skills of which he has no prior knowledge…

Monika Savage

Monika Savage is a young field agent in her early twenties, whose assignment is to watch over Josuha, and provide close support where necessary. A tough Eastern European, her assigned codename of ‘Savage’ suits her.

Joshua trusts her in the context of the life and death situations which come with the job, but he is unsure of her wider motivations and loyalties. To whom does she really report?

Lily Harper

Lily Harper is Joshua’s handler, coordinating his assignments from her control station back at headquarters. Like Savage, she is a few years older than Joshua, but she is less worldly, and finds it hard to conceal the crush she has on him.

Randolph Towers

At once world-weary and authoritative, Randolph Towers is the Director of The Agency. He is an old-school operator, and does not entirely trust Professor Lynn’s new breed of agents, or their methods.

A gruff exterior masks a warm heart, but regardless of his true feelings, Towers is always going to get the job done.

Professor Edward Lynn

Professor Lynn is a world leader in the field of computer science, and a respected academic. His technical prowess earned him his role at The Agency, and he is responsible for ‘The Agency 2.0’, a program designed to introduce a new, superior breed of agent.

He discovered Joshua, and is his strongest advocate. On the surface, Lynn appears entirely trustworthy…

Polaris

A rich young South African, Polaris is obsessed with war and war machines. His huge resources enable him to collect jeeps, tanks, attack helicopters and jet-fighters as if they were toys. Hugely ambitious, Polaris is fueled by the desire to make war on an international stage.

Despite his appearance, he is a match for Joshua physically, but prefers to operate in the shadows as a master tactician, and have his minions carry out his dirty work.

Cypher

Believed to have died in a horrific accident, former Nobel Prize winning scientist Edward Nieto has re-invented himself as the cyber-criminal Cypher. His bio-mechanical exo-frame serves both as a life support system, and the technical interface with which he causes computer generated havoc.

Once an intelligent man of sound judgment, Cyper’s experiences have not harmed his genius-level intellect, but they have left him slightly deranged.

The Agency

The Agency is a covert ops unit which has been long in existence, but has recently turned its attention to stemming the rising tide of “super-criminals” whose superior knowledge of technology is dedicated to causing global meltdown and disruption.

However it seems that no matter what “assets” are deployed in the field to combat these plots, The Agency’s operatives come up short. The bad guys are too smart, and the current crop of agents, while excellent physically, do not have a broad enough range of skills to cope.

Somewhat reluctantly, The Agency turns to the raw young protégé of Professor Lynn, who represents the first of a new generation of agents. Joshua Blake, his technical ingenuity in the field playing just as important a role as his physical prowess, is thrown right in against the fiercest of The Agency’s foes, and excels.

He nevertheless represents a gamble for Towers and Lynn, who must firstly manage the impetuous behavior of their newest agent, while simultaneously keeping from him the secret of his mysterious older brother.