Tenko (TV Series) - Tenko Reunion

In 1985, a two-hour special, Tenko Reunion, was produced. It picked up a story thread from the final episode of the series, in which the surviving prisoners of war, on the eve of their repatriation from Singapore, had made a promise to reunite five years later, at Raffles Hotel—a fixture in their pre-war lives, which also served as a repatriation centre during the liberation of Singapore.

Tenko Reunion featured Marion Jefferson (Ann Bell) now divorced from Clifford; Dr Beatrice Mason (Stephanie Cole) and Christina Campbell (Emily Bolton) now working in a community centre in Singapore, Sister Ulrica (Patricia Lawrence) doing missionary work in Asia, Domenica Forster-Brown (Elizabeth Chambers), the now happily re-married Mrs Van Meyer, nurse and now doctor-in-training Kate Norris (Clare Oberman), Alice Courtenay (Cindy Shelley) and working class girls Dorothy Bennett (Veronica Roberts) and Maggie Carter (Elizabeth Mickery), now a successful businesswoman and married mother of two, respectively.

Dorothy now owns her own antiques shop. Maggie is married and has had another baby. Alice is living with her overprotective father. Bea and Stephen are running the Centre. Christina is teaching Chinese children, and helping at the Centre. Dominica Van Meyer is living at her husband's estate in Malaya, not far from Singapore. Kate is in Australia, studying to become a doctor. Sister Ulrica has left the leper colony.

Marion, Maggie, Dorothy and Alice arrive in Singapore, and their seaplane is met by Kate, Bea, Stephen and Jake, while Christina and her boyfriend Lau Peng are taking care of things at the Centre. When the group arrives at Raffles, they are reconciled with Mrs Forster-Brown who is in fact Dominica Van Meyer, remarried after the death of her first husband shortly after the war.

The group visit Joss' grave, wishing everyone they knew could have had a proper burial and grave. Stopping by Tom's grave, Kate meets Dr Duncan Fraser, a friend of Tom's from the men's camp.

At Raffles, the group dress for the reunion party, where Ulrica joins them, informing them she is working at a native hospital and has survived three Communist raids to date. At the party Dominica convinces the group to come out to her plantation for the weekend. There are concerns about the Communists, but Dominica assures everyone that the plantation has more than enough weapons and ammunition in case of a raid.

Bea's eyesight is much worse, and she feels somewhat useless. Kate confesses to Duncan that she's not very satisfied with medical school as she resents the distancing of the doctor/patient relationship being promoted in the school and finds the other students young and inexperienced, and she's being taught medicine by people with half her experience.

Alice, Marion, Maggie, Christina, Bea, and Kate head out to Dominica's; Ulrica plans to follow them later in her truck and Dorothy skips the trip to spend more time in Singapore with Jake. The group arrives at Dominica's plantation, where the gates remind them of the camps. Dominica introduces them to her new husband, Teddy Forster-Brown. It is clear that the couple are devoted to each other. During a tour of the house, Christina notes rifles in the hallway; Teddy assures her that they have plenty of rifles and ammunition in case of attack, and that everyone is perfectly safe.

Teddy asks Dominica to return to England, but she refuses: she loves him too much. Marion asks Bea to return to England with her: with Bea's eyesight, she can't continue much longer, and Marion has a huge empty house to share. Bea refuses: Stephen is deteriorating, and will die within the year, his time in the men's camp having taken its toll. As he loves Singapore so much, it seems only right to let him stay, and Bea will keep looking after him.

At the plantation, life is sheer bliss for the women, the life they all dreamed of having when they lived in the camps. Teddy goes off to see to the plantation's needs. En route to the plantation, Ulrica stops for a spot check at a road block. Her truck is searched, and she is let go on her way. After she leaves, it becomes apparent that the roadblock was a fake. When she arrives at the plantation, she is let through the gates, and everyone comes to greet her, excluding Bea who has dropped her glasses.

The back of the truck bursts open and insurgents emerge. Servants outside and inside the house are killed, and the women are lined up. The rebels are loud and demanding, and Marion gets Christina to interpret. The insurgents want to know where the guns and ammunition are. Dominica refuses to answer, even when she is hit. The insurgents grab and threaten Alice, who goes into hysterics. Ulrica tries to go to Alice's side, and is shot. Dominica then tells the rebels where the guns and ammunition are hidden.

The insurgents bring Dominica and Christina inside, and interrupt Bea in the hallway where she is trying to make a phone call. Bea is almost shot, but Christina intercedes, and Bea is spared. The insurgents retrieve the guns and ammunition, tell the women to leave the country to the natives, and leave.

The group runs to help Ulrica, while Alice remains in hysterics. The women load the wounded into Ulrica's truck, and Marion, Dominica, Kate, and Bea take the wounded to the hospital. The doctors say that Ulrica will be fine by Christmas.

That evening, the women try to determine how the Communists knew to get into Ulrica's truck and that the plantation had weapons. When Christina isn't around, Dorothy offers up her and Jake's suspicions of Lau Peng being a communist. Marion, Bea, and some of the women take their suspicions to the police, who ransack the Centre, smashing the picture of Joss in the process. In the wreckage, Marion finds the evidence the police are looking for.

Christina walks in to fetch some books and asks what's going on. Bea replies that Christina has been found out. Christina tries to bluff her way out, but Bea has put it all together: Christina heard about the guns before they left, told Lau Peng details of the plantation and Ulrica's travel plans over the phone - she had ordered the insurgents not to shoot Bea. Christina looks to the others for their support and belief, but their suspicions have been raised. Faced with their disbelief, Christina confesses: she is actually the leader of the Communist cell.

Bea and Stephen are devastated by Christina's revelation. Stephen tells Bea that he wants to go home to England to die. Bea wonders who will take over the Centre when they're gone, but Kate is happy to take over. Kate has to take care of some things in Australia, but Alice is happy to take over while Kate's away, even though she knows her father will disapprove.

Marion visits Christina in prison, despite her protests that she doesn't want any visitors. Christina explains that there is no equality under the British, and she doesn't believe that there will be equality after the British graciously grant independence. She feels that democracy is wooly idealism, and that it's better to earn their independence than wait for it to be handed to them. Marion has tried to intercede on Christina's behalf with the authorities, who are willing to be lenient if Christina co-operates. Christina refuses, and asks Marion why she cares. Marion replies that Christina cared enough to stop the insurgents from shooting all of them.

Later, Bea visits Ulrica. Bea is still uncertain about imposing on Marion, but Ulrica points out that Marion needs people to look after, and that this includes Bea and Stephen: that if Bea and Stephen stay with Marion, they will be doing Marion a favour. Bea tells Ulrica that, even with her eyesight so poor, she's not giving up on life or living; she'll be teaching about tropical diseases in England. They both recall how they were before their internment, and how far they've come together, and how close they are; none of them will ever be entirely independent of the others.

When it's discovered that almost everyone will be in London for Christmas, Marion insists that they all celebrate the holidays at her house. As Kate, Dominica, Alice, Jake, Stephen, and Bea wave off Marion, Maggie, and Dorothy, Bea muses, "Like we said in camp, 'We'll be home for Christmas' — and now we will." At Christmas time, in Singapore, Kate, Ulrica, and Duncan Fraser serve dinner to the poor. Alone in her cell, Christina sits silently. And in London, everyone gathers in Marion's house, where they drink a toast to absent friends.

The reunion examined how each of their lives had changed, and how life in Singapore was also changing. Featuring Dominica's new husband Teddy Forster-Brown (Robert Lang, Ann Bell's real life husband until his death), Christina Campbell's boyfriend, Lau Peng (Swee Hoe Lim) and a young doctor who catches Kate Norris's eye, Duncan Fraser (Christian Rodska).

The major twist of the Tenko Reunion was the revelation that it was one of the women who had betrayed them to the communist rebels, the spy being revealed as Christina Campbell, whose difficulty adjusting after life in the camps had been developed in detail in the third series.

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