I decided to do a Kaiserreich-verse version of one of my favorite TV shows of all time. I honestly think I’ll break it up into two parts, because I’ve got a bunch of ideas. Enjoy!
Strike Back is an ongoing Australasian-Canadian TV show. The show follows the exploits of Delta Branch, a top secret commando unit of the
Australasian Army fighting against threats to global stability. The show is currently in production for its eighth season; the show underwent a “soft reboot” following the fifth season, with the following seasons having mixed reviews. The show is broadcast in the United States by the
Cinemax Foundation, which was formally associated with the government of
New England’s official film bureau prior to
American reunification.
The show‘s first season,
Project Dawn, revolves around an attempt by a
ultranationalist faction within the Japanese military to stage a coup and restart the Asian Theater of the
Frozen War. Australasian Intelligence Corps Colonel Maggie Robinson recruits Canadian mercenary Nick Hanover to join the newly formed Delta Branch in order to help investigate Akira Ishikawa, a dishonorably discharged former Imperial Japanese Army officer who formed a mercenary group known as the Black Tigers. Hanover initially clashes with his squadmates, Sergeants Tommy Stevens and Anna Carter and Lieutenant Paul Davis, but over the course of the season comes to form a bond with them. The team travels from Phmon Penh to Shanghai to Ceylon and finally to Taipei in pursuit of Ishikawa and his men as well as a stockpile of chemical weapons stolen from a Indian People’s Army stockpile in Pondicherry. The team eventually discovers Ishikawa is working for General Ichiro Watanabe, a hardliner seeking to restore the “glory“ of Japan’s National Populist past. The general plans to use the chemical weapons in a false flag attack on the Diet, thereby allowing him to declare a state of emergency and seize power. The team ultimately conducts a joint operation with loyalist Imperial Japanese Army paratroopers, launching a raid on Watanabe‘s stronghold deep in the Hokkaido mountains, killing Watanabe and Ishikawa and successfully foiling the plot.
The second season, Vengeance, sees the Delta Branch team take on a plot by Revolutionary Exportation Bureau agent John Wilson, whose wife was killed in the bombing of an People’s Airline transport by members of the Freedom Army, an anti-Totalist exile movement supported by Australasia, Canada, France, and a number of other former Entente nations. Wilson, recruiting a number of other R.E.D agents, begin a campaign of terrorism; his assassination of the Canadian ambassador to Ireland in Dublin leads Ottawa to request Delta Branch‘s assistance due to their success in stopping the Japanese ultranationalist plot. They discover Wilson‘s plan to obtain a dirty bomb from a renegade Russian agent in Budapest and detonate it in Paris as an act of vengeance for the country’s support of the Freedom Army. The Delta Branch team pursues Wilson and his men across Budapest, Split, Palermo and Marseille, clashing with local syndicalist insurgents and organized crime groups. The death of Lieutenant Paul Davis in Palermo at the hands of the soldiers of Giovanni Romano, a local Cosa Nostra chieftain, leads to the introduction of Lieutenant Grace Shaw, the fire team‘s new field commander, and gives the group additional motivation to pursue Wilson for their own motivation. Ultimately Wilson, the last survivor of his network is killed in a firefight with the Delta Branch team at a farmhouse only a few miles outside of Paris. The show‘s portrayal of Wilson as a somewhat sympathetic villain drew criticism from some exile groups in Canada, but was praised by critics as adding an additional layer of moral complexity to what would otherwise be a straightforward action show.
The third season,
Shadow Warfare, sees the action shift to Eastern Europe and explores the legacy of the
Shadow War between Germany and Russia for influence in the region. Andrei Shevchenko, a former Ukrainian nationalist leader turned mercenary, leads a commando raid on a Okhrana safehouse in Crimea, stealing a device called “Shturm” said to be capable of breaking the world’s most powerful computer encryption systems. When he uses it to hack into the Joint Intelligence Command, Delta Branch is activated to hunt down and deal with the threat. Shevchen sets up an auction in Warsaw, where Delta Branch attempts to purchase the weapon “legitimately“, but the auction is crashed by a kill team. the Delta Branch operatives engage in a wild firefight and eliminate the kill team....who are revealed to be contractors working for Abteilung IIIb, the German intelligence agency. With tension between the Entente and Reichspakt rising, Delta Branch pursues Shevchenko first to a safe house in the Carpathian Mountains and then to Bucharest, where they make a temporary alliance with an Okhrana team to keep the weapon from being sold to the New Iron Guard. With most of his men dead, Shevchenko makes a deal to sell the weapon to a Georgian National Populist group, only to be betrayed and murdered by the Georgians and their leader, former Abteilung IIIb operative Heinrich Brandt. Brandt had been inserted decades earlier to help Georgian nationalists fight against the Russian occupier, and came to identify with their struggle— so much so that when his handler was order to extract him, Brandt refused, killing the handler and going rouge. Even after independence Brandt and his allies wanted revenge on the Russians, and with “Shturm” they plan to cripple the Russian economy. Delta Branch and their Russian counterparts conduct a joint raid on the Georgians‘ base of operations, successfully wiping out the Georgian unit. Brandt is captured alive, and reveals he kept Shturm at a seperate safe house on a farmhouse a few hours outside Tbilisi. The teams converge on the safe house, only to engage another team of Abteilung IIIb contractors, dispatched to kill Brandt and anyone who knows that he was working for the German government. Ultimately, Shturm is destroyed in the chaotic firefight, the German contractors are wiped out, and the threat is eliminated.