It’s another field trip of school children – haven’t we
just had one of those? Do they happen daily or something? Dorian tries to show
the kids educational things while John tempts them with fun but totally
inappropriate things. Of course John shows them gruesome pictures of a criminal
who had his arm blown off which isn’t just inappropriate for kids but is
inappropriate at any time – cops really shouldn’t be gleefully boasting of
maiming people.
Away from John traumatising children, a hooded figure
shoots a young woman and steals her bag – he runs but within seconds he is
surrounded by a gazillion drones and androids. They surround him and when he
raises his gun they shoot him. Removing the mask reveals a service droid (a
robot) and apparently not the first one reprogrammed to commit crime.
The droid is moved into the evidence warehouse, but once
alone it reactivates. It gathers several pieces of evidence, including a female
android head (the same
head we saw in the pilot that Insyndicate were looking for) and some
weapons. It replaces its featureless head with the female one and arms up. She
leaves, shooting the guard as she does.
Time for the gang to review the footage – and they
recognise the head: she’s an XRN (which they thought they destroyed –
apparently only the body). Maldonado orders vast resources for a city wide
mobilisation of an awful lot of police, she goes so far as to call the XRN out
there an act of terrorism. John makes the Insyndicate connection – and worries
that they’re going to hit “the wall”. Whatever that is.
Dorian looks on,
confused – there’s no record of XRNs anywhere. You and me both Dorian – did we
skip several episodes of exposition here?
Cut to XRN killing a taxi driver – to underscore Maldonado saying how dangerous she is.
John then expositions to Dorian (in a REALLY overdramatic
voice), the file has been removed because it was embarrassing. Lunacore made
the DRNS – and when the DRNS were decommissioned for being unpredictable, the
company was in severe financial trouble so created the XRN – a soldier more
than a cop. At the demonstration something went wrong, there were so many
casualties they had to set up triage. They sent in waves of police and MXs but
the XRN is very hard to kill, 26 police died. It took them three days to corner
and destroy the XRN until they only had a head left.
News from Rudy tells them that the person who modified
the first bot was pretty damn good at his job
- but even that has limits and that the XRN will need a new body soon.
To the XRN arriving at a warehouse with several android
bodies – so much for that limit. She picks one (in fishnet tights and a basque,
of course) and rearms and armours. She spins to point the gun at an older man
who walks in but he says her name – Danica.
The gang arrives at the warehouse after she leaves;
finding the older man, Nigel Bernard apparently knocked unconscious and being
treated by the EMTs. But Dorian recognises the man – he’s not called Nigel
Bernard; he recognises Dorian at the same time and hurries over excited and
happy to see Dorian and that he’s still police. He reaches out to touch Dorian’s
face – then stops and asks Dorian’s permission first. The man is Dr. Nigel
Vaughn – who created the DRNs and changed his name after the debacle.
He tells them that Danica wanted to use his lab (he using
“she” while John uses “it”) but, of course, after the disaster he doesn’t have
a lab any more. He doesn’t know what she wants and he rants a little about how
he is completely defined by the disaster (drawing clumsy but coincidental
comparisons to how everyone links John to his little disaster). All Vaughan can
offer is that, if he has his old equipment, he may be able to track Danica – so
time to take him to the police station
They take him to Rudy who has a completely creepy geek
moment all over him before reuniting Nigel with all his lab equipment which has
been in evidence storage. Among them a big box of what he calls “synthetic
souls” and while he’ll accept blame for many things, he objects to John “blaming”
this on him – when he considers them his greatest achievement. He gets very
metaphysical and woo-woo about the whole thing; emphasising the soul “the
essence of life.”
Danica has some more fun – taking a guy down and cutting
out his eye so she can then use his retina scan to get into a secure location
where she kills a lab tech. Richard and his team process the crime and pass the
info on to John
John tells Nigel what she stole (500 ZNA processing
cores). They’re cores used in the creation of androids – super processors.
Simplest explanation for why she wants them – she intends to create 500
androids.
They take the plan of the modified robot to a robotics
expert who tells them how very very impressive it is and he theorisies it would
be a young genius – someone who is brilliant but unfettered by convention and
also that they couldn’t be local (he suggests someone in “New Tokyo”) because
he would have heard of their genius. Dorian suggests someone on the other side
of The Wall – but the expert scoffs – they don’t have the resources on that
side of the Wall and no-one that intelligent would willingly stay on that side.
Ooooh more cryptic hints of the world building.
Vaughan creates the tracking device for Danica. Rudy
continues to praise and worship the man for creating such perfect, human
androids while Vaughn continues the whole “soul” consideration by noting how
positive and happy he was when he built the DRNs – and how angry and resentful
he was when he built Danica; but he insists she isn’t like the MX and there’s
more to her than first appears.
Cut to Danica in her stolen taxi and a woman and a girl
get in. Danica prepares to shoot them – when the girl tells her she’s pretty.
Danica stops and lets them go.
At the police station they get the tracking device up and
running and Nigel also has a nifty Danica stunner for them – but it needs to be
inserted into the back of her skull. Good luck with that.
Danica arrives at a bar and focuses on a councilman James
Hart – and draws a big gun. At the police station they dig up info on the bar –
a re-election party for said councilman with lots of big, influential people
attending; and she starts opening fire.
Dorian, John and a whole host of MXs arrive, get to
positions and move in. Bullets bounce off her and she easily takes down several
5 MXs and 2 police. Watching from the police station. Nigel gets increasingly
more distressed at the repetition of his nightmare until Valerie suggests he
wait in a side room.
As Danica reloads, John rushes forward and stabs her with
the stunner. Which does nothing. Maldonado shouts to Rudy to get Nigel – but he’s
disappeared. John tries some hand to hand combat with Danica which goes exactly
as well as you’d expect.
Leaving John unconscious she goes to finish off the
councilman – and Dorian shoots her (doing nothing). He asks her why she’s doing
what she’s doing and she says “my sacrifice is necessary, just like yours”. Now
it’s his turn to go for hand to hand combat after declaring that they’re
nothing alike
Being an android himself he does much better than John
did – but she’s still more deadly, eventually kicking him through concrete
pillar and impaling him on a length of rebar. She moves in to finish him off –
and John hits her with a big metal post. Hand to hand combat round 2 –and he
loses again – but he does manage to pull the pin on one of her grenades. As she
looks at it, he kicks her with his cybernetic leg and sends her flying out the
room (I could be nitpicky about equal and opposite reaction and how he’s
balanced and grounded on a very real leg – but c’mon on TV this is positively
realistic).
Booom. Dorian and John are bettered but alive and Dorian makes a point of how good John’s synthetic leg is. Danica is destroyed – a disembodied head again.
That’s when it’s confirmed that Nigel Vaughan has
disappeared – and the councilman he targeted was the man who spearheaded replacing
all DRNs with MXs.
Rudy, of course, can barely believe it but they quickly
find that Vaughan has also taken his stash of synthetic souls. John and
Maldonado also recognise how awful this must be for Dorian; Dorian is having
problems considering that Danica has exactly the same synthetic soul as he does
– and that his creator could possibly create something like Danica. As John
offers words of comfort, Dorian realises Nigel isn’t going to run and hide – he
wants to work and build androids en masse. He needs a lab – a big one. With
Valerie and Maldonado they consider large, derelict parts of the city that
could serve but Dorian asks –what about over the Wall? John and Maldonado
thinks that’s too extreme even for Nigel.
To Nigel who retrieves the stashed 500 ZNA processors
Danica stole and gets in a black van driven by work android. He’s driven to… a
giant Wall with warning signs all over it. He whistles and a rope is lowered to
pull him up, over the Wall
I am bringing it up again – this show has a completely
unexamined problem with the police: they’re violent, usually as a first resort
and there’s zero come back or even guilt about torture, maiming or even killing
people. Frankly, between that, the “patrolled internet”, the hover drones
everywhere and the database that they have on apparently everyone, with extra
facial recognition software, the police deleting “embarrassing” files and I’m
getting close to labelling this dystopian.
But then, with the Wall people are talking about, maybe I’m
not far from the mark?
This episode had some excellent development on the whole
humanity of the androids as well – with both more examples of the MXs being
seen as disposable (and not just from
the core team) but also the stark difference between the respect that Nigel
shows Dorian and even John does; or even Rudy. Perhaps most of all is the way
Nigel talks – not just of creating excellent machines, but actually creating
life. Even Danica’s little flashes of humanity really brings to the fore the
question that has been occasionally raised throughout the season but only
briefly and never really examined.
Between both of these things, it feels like Almost Human
has done the introduction and is now going to hit the meat of the story.
What happens from here could make the story awesome or well and truly jump the shark. Or both.
Almost Human seems to have a lot of minority background
characters for minor roles - taxi
drivers, florists, random lab techs, but that same diversity doesn’t always
follow through with the more major roles.
