So the team is reunited and we’re heading to Old Town in
Westerley. Firstly we establish with a brief hallucination and flashback that
Dutch is firmly backing away from her relationship with D’avin so we can have
another season of awkward sexual tension.
We also check back to D’avin’s memory hallucinations back
on Arkhan in which he remembered lots of presumably scary Level 6 people
slaughtering Scarbacks, which, as we remember from the last season are freaky
masochistic sort-of-pacifist-but-also-armed-resistance monks.
Next step is make sure D’avin is reinstated as a RAC
agent in which they speak to Turin – the first of many characters this episode
who we were pretty certain died last season but apparently didn’t. After lots
of checking out the others are not Level 6, they both basically come to the idea
that Level 6 is terribad awful and needs to get the fuck away from the RAC
which needs to go back to its happy, reputation essential – neutrality.
Which isn’t happening yet as, at the end of the episode,
Turin, Dutch et al form a reluctant alliance to figure out exactly what Khylen
is up to and why.
But before we get to that, the gang is heading back to
Westerley to get Pree home and generally try and sort out what is left of the
mess of Oldtown after the Company bombed it then walled it off with a very very
shiny laser fence: said laser fence is a) awesome and causes lots of hilarious
geeky glee from John – and he’s so very cute with that. It also scans them all
revealing that Pree was technically a Warlord
Y’know I really appreciate these little snippets that
point to Pree having had an exciting and adventurous life before this, but
little snippets don’t replace the need for actual storyline. Just saying.
Naturally to get through this fence they need a Killjoy
warrant and they have one to help a Company man called Jelcho
He is The Worst.
Basically he’s fencing in Oldtown, not giving them any
supplies, no food, no medicine and generally ruining the whole place as an
object lesson to every other Company town about what happens if you rebel. He’s
quite happy to pretty much annihilate the town to make that point. Oh and his
resume includes “torturer”. He is officially, The Worst. I look forward to the
time when Dutch murders him most brutally, which will be great fun.
He wants them to hunt down and bring in some escaped prisoners before they do anything unfortunate.
Inside Oldtown the gang finds that the whole place is
just awful. Way way way more awful even than it was before – and it was pretty
awful back then. They find Pawter, the connected doctor with the royal mother,
desperately trying to treat the vast number of injured and sick with no
medication and generally being her utter stellar self – tough, clever,
completely unphased by the worst of injury but also pretty much drowning in an
impossible task
There’s also Hills (seriously, these were the worst bombs
ever, I don’t think they managed to kill anyone! They were really just bundles
of strongly worded notes. Canada-Level WMDs). He was the Company officer who
played by all the rules and was still screwed. He’s now hiding out so the locals
don’t kill him for being Company and the Company doesn’t kill him for sounding
the alarms and getting everyone to safety when the angry notes dropped.
After getting Pree his bar back with some sassy quips and
established violence they eventually find Tighmon, head of the escaped
prisoners. And the only one left – on account of all the others being killed by
anti-escape poison gas that the Company has rigged up in the prison. The gas
turns people into mummies, is super destructive and a spare canister of it has
Point of note – even if you do try to kill your prisoners
rather than let them escape, having large stores of WMD in the same building as
your political prisoners is a bad bad bad bad idea. Really.
While Tighmon does have this devastating weapon he’s
actually a pretty decent guy; though he’s mainly focused on trying to get the
families of the miners some help – especially now the mines re closed and they’ve
got nothing. He’s willing to turn himself in, hand over the gas, anything so
long as those families are allowed out of Oldtown
Nice – but Jelcho is the worst and uses the trackers he’s
planted on Dutch and her team to send in a drone and just kill Tighmon. Despite
it being a no kill warrant. He then tries to get the whole town to hunt down
both the gas canister and kill Dutch
We don’t like this guy. Now obviously he needs to be
brutally murdered, but isn’t there some kind of push back for this? Even as a
member of the Company? The RAC is supposed to be someone one does not fuck with
after all…
Their presence in town has also inspired Pawter and Hills
to try and make some kind of difference – basically going to Jelcho so they can
use Pawter’s influence to convince her royal mother to make Oldtown less awful,
using Hills, as a Company man, to get her access
Alas, Jelcho is The Worst and just shoots Hills in the head. Alas, RIP poor, conflicted, noble Hills who did his very best to live by a system which would never let him actually succeed.
More alas comes from Alvis who is having a major crisis
of faith and generally in a terribad place. He takes the opportunity to snatch
the canister and plans to use it to massacre Jelcho and his minions. Not a bad
thing per se – except Pawter’s there. In the end, only quickly telling him that
stops him unleashing a massacre and ending the season early – and only D’avin’s
quick actions and possible level-sixish-abilities allows them to save Alvis
from the gas
The gas, by the way, can be cured by water. Which isn’t
that much of a flaw since the amount of water required is pretty much “drowning”.
It also dissipates super super fast in air – so fast that I don’t think it
could kill anyone unless they turned it into vaping fluid.
The gang ends up taking Alvis with them when they leave
to help the unknot the whole memories D’avin has of Dutch fighting Scarbacks –
but Alvis insists that there have been no Scarbacks on Arkhen for centuries.
More indication that Dutch is a clone/immortal/reincarnated/all of the above.
Pawter remains as a “guest”/spy/agent/prisoner of Jelcho’s
with a secret communicator from Johnny for more plotting in the future. They
leave Pree in Oldtown.
And low we have met this season’s dedicated villain – let’s
hope we see more complicated politics and debate over the RAC basically serving
the company because, despite being neutral, it’s the company that has the money
to buy warrants. This really does have to be considered and included in the
whole idea of RAC neutrality – even without people like Jelcho abusing RAC
neutrality and using them
Also may Dutch murder him.
