John and Dutch are being fun and awesome together with
the help of Lucy. I do love their snark and willingness to have fun. I want
more of this – I want more of them just loving doing what they do (and I love
Dutch accusing Lucy of playing favourites)
While D’avin is still being tortured by his PTSD and delaying his therapy with Pawter. Which he gets to duck because they have a mission – an abandoned ship. Apparently any RAC agent finding an abandoned ship can go on board and help themselves. After which they have to blow the ship up (hey, it’s one way to clear space debris I guess – but wasting a perfectly good ship and spreading junk instead…)
Dutch goes across to the ship first but things quickly
get freaky – opening the airlock sets off security which then… turns off for no
apparent reason. See, this is why I couldn’t do things like this – because that’d
be me running like hell in the opposite direction.
They’re not me so all three of them go onto the ship and
continue to have fun. Though John does take a moment to tell D’avin how he’s
happy D’avin is getting help from Pawter.
Then things get ominous – the communication gets crackly,
Dutch sees a figure running in the dark (despite Lucy reporting no life forms),
a barricade and a bloody “17” painted on the wall and John finds that the ship
has no recorded planet of origin. D’avin finds more blood. He follows it to an
injured man with a knife and a less than welcoming attitude.
When the figure Dutch is chasing runs to the airlock,
pausing only to write “17” on the glass in his own blood, he then blasts
himself into space.
To top it off, when the power comes back on a
contamination is detected – so Lucy quarantines them. Which means they can’t
get back to their ship. Ok everything
went from fun to creepy really fast
John gets their communication back up and cctv while
Dutch and D’avin question the injured man (Hogan, a ship-picker, kind of
salvager) who is less angry now (the other man was his partner who violently attacked
him). The same thing happened to them, 2 years ago, their ship withdrew and
left them stranded. Hogan and D’avin bond over their ex-military history which
leads to him and Hogan going to the medical bay for Hogan’s leg while Dutch
goes looking for “deep suits” so they can get back to Lucy
John’s hacking also reveals the ship is military
(Imperial Marines of the United Republic – which is “our near the ring” more
tasty world building!). And Dutch finds an infirmary – in the wrong place from
what Hogan said. There’s a wall covered in paperwork and pictured with ominous
bloody writing saying things like “lies” and “terminated”. A classic unhinged
serial killer wall. At the same time John finds a file with a woman talking
about testing something on live subjects – and sees Hogan was part of the crew,
not a ship-picker
Dutch finds bodies. Lots of bodies.
Hogan gets all creepy with D’avin even as John gets in
touch to let him know that creepy guy is creepy. Despite this warning he still
checks Hogan’s non-existent leg wound and gets punched for it. They fight and D’avin
would win – except Hogan regenerates like Wolverine.
D’avin is knocked unconscious and wakes up in a glass
cell and a computer telling him to “prepare for implantation”. Which involves
gas entering his lungs. This apparently allows for horrendous torture if D’avin
doesn’t talk. It’s nasty – stripping away flesh and rebuilding it.
John and Dutch see video footage of all he crew of the
ship enduring the same – the computer asking questions and, when they can’t
answer them, using the gas to strip away their flesh. The last question which
they can’t answer is about something called “Red 17”. Checking the bodies confirms that among the
dead are the crew not just prisoners.
D’avin figures out the obvious (black op military ship
with a specialty in torture) and asks Hogan questions and learns the ship went
through a solar flare and the computer “chose” him. He rants on about “helping
them all” which points to him not being very reality based. D’avin’s next
question is to explain his last mission – torturing him into talking about the
mission that left him traumatised and unable to remember. Under the pressure of
the torture he talks about killing his own squad – but he doesn’t know why
All of this is watched by Dutch and John who watch this through
a security feed. They gather what information they have including a recording
from the dead crew about what the gas is before she kills herself rather than
endure the interrogation procedure. The system was fried in the accident and it
keeps torturing people, the only way it can stop is if someone dies (which is
why the man Dutch saw blew himself out the airlock).
D’avin is asked the question about Red 17. Apparently
Hogan was once also asked this question over and over but the computer
eventually rejected him and, horrendously traumatised and broken, Hogan set up
the beacon to bring in more people to be questioned so they can find the answer
to Red 17.
Dutch comes to the rescue – and Hogan manages to ambush
her, hold her at knife point and put her in a cell to be nanited (really? Dutch
couldn’t fight back against that? Dutch?). This is apparently part of the plan
and pain is not even remotely capable of persuading or forcing Dutch, instead
taking the time to comfort D’avin (ashamed about John and her hearing about his
dead patrol mates) before mocking him and using a charge to blow up the cell
and kill Hogan.
I don’t get why she had to do that rather than just kill
Hogan.
Free, she hands D’avin to John and runs to the airlock –
D’avin assumes she intends suicide, especially when she blasts herself into
space. John sets mines on the ship and explains what’s happening – the Nanites
inside D’avin and Dutch will repair any damage short of brain death. Dutch is
constantly healing the damage of the vacuum as she floats to Lucy, able to
endure it because she’s just that tough
Which now explains why she didn’t just kill Hogan. Thank you show, I did wonder.
Oh and to stop the nanites permanently torturing D’avin,
John shoots him in the leg. The Nanites can’t heal and torture at the same time.
Clever, unpleasant, but clever. Of course that reconstruction also means Hogan
is still alive. He blathers in a disturbing fashion until John shoots him in
the head.
More hilariously, on Lucy the ship won’t let Dutch on
board and insists on quarantining her because of protocol. Dutch can’t convince
her otherwise until Dutch says “John’s in trouble” and Lucy opens the door. Hah,
the ship does have favourites!
Everyone is rescued and D’avin and Dutch are
decontaminated (hey hey hey let’s not be hasty! Can’t you set them to permanent
heal?) Lucy and Dutch snark. I love that the computer snarks.
John and D’avin also talk and John wants to know why –
not why he did what he did, but why he didn’t come to his family, why he ran
away rather than talk to his family.
Back to Westerley and Pawter checks up D’avin and scans
his brain – now the scarring in his head has been cured, she can see memory
blockers implanted in his brain.
That episode was immensely fun. We got a lot of their
fun, snarky, interactions which really makes this show. Then a heavy dose of
creepy and some nice snips of awesome generally made it a joy to watch. Except
for some more poking of D’avin’s past we didn’t have a lot of meta and I’m ok
with this – I want to see more of them on a baseline, how they get though their
daily lives together (more John and Dutch than D’avin but still). I think we
could do with a few RAC mission of the week episodes.
We did have another round of Dutch being The Most Awesome
which is always good even if it does approach being comically over the top. But
why not? She’s a big damn awesome hero, let’s run with this. I would be more
leery because there are elements of the Exceptional
Woman about this, the woman with two male co-stars and she has to be
super-awesome to justify her presence: but there are other women both as minor
recurring characters (Pawter and Bellus) who are pretty decent as well
as episodes that made a point of not making Dutch the Exceptional Woman.
