The opening sequence this week has Dutch appropriately enough trapped in a dark shaft, having a conversation with Khlyen, in which she accuses him of wanting to turn her into a cold and bloodless level 6. He tells her it has already been done, and then stabs her in the gut right after telling her that everything he has done has been to protect her. How did we get to this pass? To find out we must return back in time to 12 hours earlier.
This episode was the first off the books mission that the team undertakes for Turin in the pursuit of reclaiming the RAC from those shadowy figures behind the level 6’s who now run it and possibly the Quad.
Turin tells the team that another Killjoy threesome took a level 2 warrant to salvage something from the northern badlands of Westerly. They got into trouble and requested evac but for some unknown reason Khlyen buried it, and the team was hung out to dry a week ago. Our team’s mission is to recover the missing team, and whatever they were after. He shows them holos of the team, using what looks like a repurposed Zippo, tells them it contains the co-ordinates and tosses it to Dutch, and then goes fishing.
At the co-ordinates they have been given, they find the Killjoys’ ship full of moss, all the electronics shorted out due to plenty of moisture. How does a ship get so wet and grow all that moss in the middle of a desert in the space of a week? Smells fishy to me!
Night falls as Westerly is in the shadow of Q’resh, so our fearless team returns to Lucy. The topographical analysis that Lucy runs for them produces nothing in the line of topographical anomalies. Lucy has, however, also done a soil analysis that she finds fascinating, but that no one wants to hear about just then. Is it possible that analysis could prepare the Killjoys for some nasty surprise?
Johnny checks in with Pawter, who is busily rifling through Jelco’s office, trying to get a data transfer of the footage of Jelco murdering Hills. Unfortunately, she needs a data jack to do so, and his desk is DNA locked.
Alvis is having a crisis of faith, since he came within seconds of being a mass murderer for it. Dutch tells him his actions were dictated by hate, not faith. He wants to know what she believes in, and she has to admit that she doesn’t know at this point, so she is the wrong person to talk to about faith. He gives her his ceremonial knife to hold for him.
Westerly has moved out of Q’resh’s shadow, so it’s time for our team to giddyup go. They find Tanya, one of the missing Killjoys, armed and dangerous. Dutch manages to talk her down by convincing her that she and her team may have stumbled across something that they shouldn’t have seen. Tanya asks them to go down into the mine with her to try to find her sister, Dina. The mine is hidden from scans and sensors somehow, and isn’t on any map. They have Alvis come with them. It turns out that the religious order that Alvis belongs to, the Scarbacks are made up mostly of miners.
Tanya tells them that her warrant was to salvage a monk, at triple the pay scale, and the warrant came with the mine’s co-ordinates. A black rain happened while they were on reconnaissance. They hid in the mine to wait it out, but their batteries ran out. As long as they stayed by the photonic crystals in the walls, they were safe…. from Paolo, her husband, who has been trying to kill them since the lights went out.
The mine looks to be at least a century old, there is the same moss in the tunnels, and the walls are spotted with the photonic crystals that seem to suck up all the EMR. This explains why the mine doesn’t show up on scanners. Johnny, science geek and closest thing they have to a mossologist, knows that moss reproduces via spores, which makes D’Avin wonder if perhaps Paolo’s brain was infected with moss spores.
Meanwhile, Pawter has found a holophone and is trying to get her father to help her out. Daddy Dearest tells her that she is safest in Springhill for right now, and refuses to let her speak to her Mother. The holo call hangs up when Jelco walks into the office with a dinner invitation and a proposition for her. Pawter refuses, preferring to go for a walk instead. Jelco reminds her of her ankle bracelet, which contains a bomb that will activate if she gets too close to the perimeter. If she tries to leave, “the pretty princess will go boom“. Pawter consents to listen to the proposition, and discovers that Jelco wants her to look after his heart. He wants her to do it simply because her rank is so far above him that he is relishing the power he has over her. It seems that the membrane around his heart needs to be drained of fluid daily, a condition he has inherited through centuries of inbreeding.
In the mine, Tanya has spotted Paolo, and takes off after him, shooting. Dutch asks Johnny to take her back to Lucy, because she is so emotionally unstable, and Dutch would like to question a live Paolo. Tanya freaks out because she has seen Paolo again, and starts shooting again, causing a cave-in. She disappears in the resulting dust cloud, and when the cave-in stops Dutch, D’avin, Alvis and Tanya are trapped on the inside, Johnny is on the outside. Johnny needs to go back to Lucy to get some equipment to stabilize the walls so he can dig through to them, but tells Dutch to stay put till he gets back. Dutch promptly ignores him, and goes looking for Tanya. As Johnny leaves, we see a creepy crawly on the ground, with stingers protruding. D’Avin and Alvis follow Dutch to a junction – D’Avin goes north, Alvis goes south and Dutch is to stay on post.
Pawter is preparing to drain Jelco’s heart membrane, and sedates him so she can work while a guard stands guard. Smart girl deliberately puts a small knick in the membrane, causing the fluid to squirt. She demands that the guard put pressure on the bleeder, and while he is busy doing that, she injects him with something to take him out of the equation. Since she is a doctor, we know it’s only temporary, lol. She finishes up with Jelco, then takes her bloody gloves to his office and opens his desk using his DNA. And just like that, she has the data transfer proof that Jelco is at least a murderer. She opens the comm link to Lucy, and tells Lucy that she has also found walls, not just around Oldtown, but around every other town on Westerly. She is surprised that Johnny has passed on a tender message for her through Lucy.
Alvis realizes while they are trekking through the mine that the presence of so many photonic crystals means that the mine was not played out, it was deliberately shut down. Off in the distance, Tanya is calling for her sister, Dina, but Paolo shows up instead. She backs into a pit, but Dutch has heard her and races to the rescue. A creepy crawly stings her during the unsuccessful rescue attempt. Tanya falls all the way down to the bottom of the pit, and is immediately swarmed by the mossy creepy crawlies as she lies next to two fresh skeletons. Dina and Paolo? Dutch almost immediately begins to hallucinate that Khlyen is in the mine with them, and hares off after him. Meanwhile, while waiting for the stabilizer to work, Johnny has been examining the underbelly of one of the mossipedes and describes them to the others as looking like an “angry vagina”.
He theorizes that their venom is hallucinogenic and discovers that they can’t be killed when he cuts one into pieces. He relays that information to the others, so D’Avin stomps one. It squirts green goop, but it too doesn’t die. Dutch, in her mad dash after Khlyen, falls into a pit, one that is thankfully creepy crawly free. Meanwhile, Alvis has discovered the body of the monk that the first team was sent to recover, and realizes that the monk cut off some of his own skin and left a message on it. Johnny finally gets through the wall, and the boys go in search of Dutch.
And this is where we found Dutch at the beginning of the episode. When Khlyen stabs her, he miraculously becomes herself, and the boys find her arguing with herself, while holding the knife in her own gut. They try to reason her down, but the one that gets through to her is Alvis. He reminds her that she didn’t know what to believe in, and then tells her to believe that he will not leave her here, and the only way for her to continue to save him is to get her shit together, and get him out of there.
Problem is, the way out is now blocked by mega numbers of mossipedes, which seem to be moving in a manner indicative of a hive intelligence. These critters are probably the reason the mine was shut down, but could very well also be the source of the green goop used to make level 6 agents. D’Avin to the rescue this time, as the mossipedes for some reason, back off when he approaches them.
When they get back to Lucy, Johnny fixes her up, but now she thinks it is time to go get a proper Doctor. Lucy has not been idle either, she has discovered that there was a massive data burst sent from the Red 17 base on Arkan just before it blew up, but she cannot find the location of the receiver. In Dutch’s quarters, Alvis shows her the piece of skin, and tells her that it relates to the story inscribed on his back. The story of the twelve who went to Arkan, and supposedly none came back. But it seems that one did, after all. He has determined that he will leave the ship at Leith, in the hope that he can find some clues there as to the true story of the twelve, as that story could help the team in their quest.
Pawter is getting ready to leave Springhill, when Jelco catches up with her. He tells her she can’t possibly be thinking of killing herself as the beeps from the ankle bracelet get quicker. She tells him that it is not her beeping. She used his DNA to unlock the bracelet, then put it around his heart. If he gets too close to the door, “the little prick will go boom“. With a cat that swallowed the canary smile, she leaves. Outside Springhill, overlooking Oldtown, she tries to contact Johnny, but comms are staticky. An unknown assailant attacks her from behind.
Dutch has taken the knowledge she gained, has accepted that she is a killer, and has decided that she isn’t going to be anyone’s puppet anymore. She enters Turin’s tent, and with a quick flick of the wrist burying a knife in the wall right by his head, she convinces him of her seriousness when she tells him how things are going to work from now on. She demands that he get her the location of the receiver at the other end of the data burst from Red 17, and a warrant to go with it.
So what did you think of this episode? I think there are some interesting dynamics going on. For instance, D’Avin and Alvis have an alpha dog thing going on through the entire episode. Not an out and out challenge, more in the line of circling each other and testing defences. It also seems that there was at some point a bit of a romantic relationship between Dutch and Alvis. Johnny clearly has feelings for Pawter, and Pawter may be considering a reciprocation. And what a novel way to get herself out of that whole Jelco pickle! And I seriously think that Dutch unleashed may be a sight to behold when they finally catch up with Khlyen, now that she has accepted herself for who and what she is. But does she really know what she is? I doubt it. Agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments below. Here’s a sneak peek of next week’s episode to whet your appetite!
[…] out what Dutch and the boys are up to in Shaft. The plot is thickening, and the hunt is on! The warrant is all! Adecourv catches us up on […]
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