Life Force

Global warming has led to the melting of the polar ice caps. Sea levels have risen dramatically, with devastating effects. Survivors Richard and Amy Webber of environmental pressure group Greenwatch are teaching children the skills they will need to help restore the damaged planet.

Richard and Amy are arrested in a Commission raid on the school, leaving their own children, Greg and Karen, to fend for themselves. They join Ash and Mai-Li to find Goodman, an old associate of the Webbers, at his laboratory within a derelict mill. Goodman recounts the history of Greenwatch, explaining how its outlawed scientists have been blamed for causing the disaster they had tried to prevent, and the children return to the school for medicine to treat his illness.

At the Commission Headquarters, telepath agent Kurt Glemser interrogates the imprisoned Amy Webber in a malevolent attempt to locate and arrest the missing telepathic children, who he refers to as 'senders'. Amy tries to send a warning message to Mai-Li through her own telekinesis abilities, but she is too late; eventually realising that herself and Ash are in imminent danger, Mai-Li is then faced with altering Goodman's memories before Glemser forces him to betray her.

Goodman is requested to treat an aggressive Japanese leaf worm disease that has apparently broken out on a farm, affecting its crops. After the group arrive, it transpires that the unscrupulous owner of the farm, Harry Fellside, is using illegal, highly toxic nerve agent chemicals to promote the growth of his plants, and ruthlessly forcing his captured 'climeys' (climate refugees) that have migrated from a similarly-flooded France into brutal lives of slave labour exploitation.

The children respond to a distress call from Loppergarth Island. When they arrive, they find Loppergarth Island deserted, save for Gemma, a sleep-deprived young girl in shock after a week of compulsively trying to stay awake. They eventually ascertain that her parents and the rest of the populace have been consuming contaminated gull eggs, causing them to fall under a shared hallucination and gather to become comatose in the village church for an otherworldly crystal entity.

Having ran out of fuel while at sea, the children are given no choice but to moor their boat on the nearest possible island. Whilst there, they discover a museum dedicated to preserving parts of the time before the floods, looked after by a strange middle-aged woman with a literal 'eye socket' named Polly Phemus. Upon trying out her old virtual reality video games, it becomes clear she is trying to trap them, and the group strive to break out of the virtual world and get back to real life.