The welcome wagon
As Dylan walks into the prison
yard, his cellmates shout "Newbie!" and surround him. A sultry convict
quiets the crowd and suggests that they give Dylan the traditional inmate
greeting.
Two guys promptly try to
thump him. As Dylan defends himself, the woman – Kae-Lee – takes his food
disk. "You can try to win it back," she says.
Taking it back involves fighting
a big Magog named Xax. As Dylan gets thrown around the courtyard, a spectacled
but still cute convict named Jessa watches from the forest using a spy-eye
and a homemade lap-top.
"Pathetic," she says, ignoring
how noble Dylan looks. She quits watching just in time to miss Dylan’s
Rocky-like comeback.
The unwelcome wagon
Beka and the rest of the
crew debate whether to make an appointment with the High Council. The debate
ends when the Erasians try to blow them out of orbit.
Dylan gets thrown into a
box of high-protein kibble. Realizing that he might have to eat the stuff
if he doesn’t find another use for it, he pours it out on the ground and
encourages Xax to charge him. Xax obliges, tripping on the kibble and knocking
himself out.
Kae-Lee decides Dylan has
potential. She gives him his food disk back and welcomes him to the community.
However, Dylan says he doesn’t
intend to stay. Kae-Lee laughs at this, and turns to the afternoon entertainment:
Andromeda in a cage.
Like high school all over
again
It’s dinner time. The inmates
let the "outsiders" in and give them skimpy rations. Kae-Lee tells Dylan,
"You can be a wolf, you can be a sheep, or you can be a corpse."
Andromeda is worried. She
can’t contact herself, she has no information databases and with no maintenance
or power her android body will fail in a few days.
Trance wants to sneak down
to the planet and rescue Dylan. After a previous incident that fried the
main power grid, Harper isn’t about to let her have a weapon.
Andromeda reports that she
has intercepted a classified transmission. Two anti-government activists
have been shipped off-planet to a prison colony. The search is on.
Like Alex Trebek with
more hair
When Jessa comes to dinner,
Xax forces her to do math tricks for him. Dylan tries to intervene, but
Jessa says she can take care of herself.
It’s not a prison movie without
two women fighting, so two women fight. Dylan and Kae-Lee watch for a while.
Dylan is disgusted.
He is shocked to learn that
Kae-Lee was "born guilty" and grew up in the prison. He tries to convince
her that she’s good at heart, but robotic dragonflies attack, interrupting
the sensitive conversation.
Kae-Lee springs into action
to guard the food and repel the attack. In the confusion, Jessa frees Andromeda,
leading the android and Dylan into the woods. Kae-Lee watches, looking
hurt.
A friend in purple is
a friend indeed
Trance goes to a control
panel to talk with Andromeda – it’s "more personal this way." She’s worried,
especially because the distracted starship has been making mistakes with
breakfast and Beka’s CDs.
"Hang in there," Trance tells
the starship. "It’ll be okay."
There’s good news. Harper
has tracked down the prison ship's destination -- Hellios 9, where even
as we speak Dylan is sampling the local cuisine. The kibble porridge goes
well with a failed attempt at kibble wine.
Andromeda is running out
of power, and has mostly shut down to conserve what she has left.
Dylan tries to convince Jessa
to help him. She says, "You sure do have some warm fuzzy ideas about convicted
felons."
"It’s the system that’s wrong,"
he says. He wants to help her leave the prison.
Jessa activates a dragonfly
and sends it spiraling upwards. As soon as it gets past the treetops, an
automated defense system destroys it. "I am not going anywhere," she says,
"and neither are you."
The Warden starts a lockdown.
He demands to know where Jessa’s technology came from. Kae-Lee pretends
she doesn’t know.
~
And you thought this was
just entertainment
The Andromeda arrives at
the prison planet’s coordinates. There’s no planet there. The flight plan
of the prison ship was faked.
Beka asks the ship to retrieve
all the information on local prison planets from the Maru’s computers.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of information to sort through.
Meanwhile, Rommie’s power
continues to run down. Jessa has an idea: she’s going to combine the alkaline
soil and acidic wine into a battery to charge the android's cells.
Aboard Andromeda, the crew
pauses for a heavy-handed moral about how privatized prisons are bad. Social
justice time over, it’s back to the plot -- with 348 prison planets in
the region, Trance picks one out because it’s "pretty." While Tyr is still
a little skeptical about this plan, the crew decides they might as well
start searching there.
Dylan tries to inspire Jessa’s
idealism. "Don’t paint pretty pictures in my head," she says.
The argument ends when the
Warden’s androids drag her away. Dylan has a Hercules moment and tries
to stop them. Unfortunately, he’s not Hercules.
Never tell me the odds
Dylan tries to finish the
battery and recharge Rommie. Since he's not Harper either, he fails. He
decides to rescue Jessa.
Andromeda thinks risking
himself for one person is a bad idea. Dylan comments, "The greatest good
for the greatest number? It’s never that simple."
The Warden disagrees. With
Jessa strapped to a table, he is fortuitously discussing precisely that
subject with her. Since she is a criminal and obviously incapable of higher
thought, she must have had an outside agitator helping her. Having concluded
this, the Warden wants to know who the agitator is.
Jessa refuses to talk. The
Warden tortures her using the classic method of little animated electric
shocks.
Nuke them from orbit.
. . .
Andromeda arrives at the
"pretty" planet. They get a signal from the android’s locator beacon, but
there’s too much interference for communications.
Beka wants to go in guns
blazing. Tyr convinces her that a subtle approach might be smarter, so
they head for the planet in the Eureka Maru.
Since nobody's played mumblety-peg
yet in this prison episode, Kae-Lee plays it. Dylan, having deduced that
Jessa and Kae-Lee are sisters, asks her to help him.
Andromeda sends a message
to Dylan and her android ego: help is on the way. Dylan and Andromeda-the-android
frantically try to send a warning about the automated defense system.
The inevitable heart of
gold
Kae-Lee claims not to care
about her sister. Dylan doesn’t believe it. She’s not really a villain,
he explains, "it’s the system that’s broken."
"The system’s not broken,"
she says. "It’s working exactly the way they want it to."
"Well in that case," Dylan
replies, "let’s break it!"
She likes that idea, but
the Warden interrupts this dangerous conversation with gunfire.
Meanwhile, in a mad quest
for power, Rommie hauls herself to the battery and plunges her hands into
it. She gets a charge.
Xax joins Dylan’s cause,
only to nobly sacrifice himself to open the Warden’s office door. Dylan
and Kae-Lee burst in.
They find Jessa and the Warden.
Dylan tackles the Warden and gets clobbered again.
Beka and Tyr hurtle towards
the planet in the Maru. Beka assures Tyr she can handle the defense systems.
Since the retro-thrusters are broken, they really don’t have much choice
in the matter.
Upgrades by Microsoft
Kae-Lee fires an arrow into
the Warden. He is unhurt. He snaps her neck. That hurts.
Andromeda leaps on the Warden
just before he executes Dylan. His pistol goes flying and Dylan grabs it
and blasts the enemy android.. No effect. Then Andromeda gets to the computer
controls.
"Time for an upgrade," she
says. The Warden’s head blows up.
Jessa and Kae-Lee share a
warm sororal moment before Kae-Lee expires. Andromeda warns Dylan that
the defense system is still active and then promptly runs out of power.
Dylan hacks into the defense
system and shuts it down just before the Eureka Maru gets blown out of
the sky.
Later, Jessa turns down a
chance to leave on the Andromeda. She’ll remain at the prison and help
teach the other inmates. She gives Dylan a quick smooch on the cheek before
he leaves.
Who, me?
After he returns to the ship,
Dylan has a quiet meeting with Trance. He uses the food disk to introduce
her to an old human game: "heads or tails." Trance loses, calling tails
to a heads.
Dylan wants to know how she
picked out the right planet. Trance claims it was a lucky guess, pointing
out that the odds were only 347 to 1. Dylan doesn’t press the issue.
He gives her the food disk
as she leaves. Trance plays "heads or tails." Naturally, she guesses right
every time.
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