Another solid episode from George Geiger and James Head, the writer/director team behind last week's installment, sees someone close to Liam betray the Resistance while Sandoval battles a mysterious terminal illness.
(originally aired in syndication during the week of November 8)
Additional Credits
Page Fletcher - Max Pratt
Christina Cox - Haley Simmons
Nadia Capone - Doctor Curzon
written by George Geiger
directed by James Head
What Happened
The Hamburg interdimensional freight yard. As a shipment teleports through the ID portal, a man walks across the staging area. He bends down, removes a glowing polyhedron from his coat and places it on the ground.
He continues walking through the yard, stopping in his tracks when lights come on in front of him. A heavily modulated (Taelon?) voice greets him as "Mr. Pratt" and warns him to come no closer.
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Quotable Moments
Geisha: During the block, how do you want me to refer to you? By name, number or [with] a form of abuse?
Sandoval: Nothing.
Geisha: Very well, 894 -- you are nothing.
F.B.I. Super Computer: I have no record of a living first-degree relative for Sandoval, Ronald.
Sandoval: There are seven billion people on this planet. Someone has to have DNA like mine. Find it!
Zo'or: Internal distrust is a most caustic and effective destroyer.
Renee: Sandoval is our mortal enemy. He's got our blood on his teeth. How can you even consider saving him by giving him yours?
Liam: Betrayed by your own technology. You'd have to call that ironic. Do Taelons understand irony, Da'an? I guess not; that requires blood in your veins and a soul. I ought to kill you.
Analysis
It remains to be seen who did more long-term damage to the Resistance this week: Augur, by giving up their secrets to Max Pratt, or Liam, by donating his blood to save Sandoval's life. Augur's actions, destructive as they were, amount to little more than a temporary setback. Liam, on the other hand, had the opportunity to remove an implacable enemy from the playing field, and he refused to do so.
Both men acted out of similar motivations. Augur believed he was saving the life of a friend who'd saved him countless times before. Liam, for all his protestations of taking the moral high road, saved Sandoval at least in part out of some twisted sense of filial piety. Thus, both the key betrayal and the most obvious instance of heroism in this episode spring from the concept of misplaced loyalty..
The technobabble quotient, particularly the medical technobabble, lurched a bit to the high side for my tastes, but was in keeping with the baseline for scientific extrapolation established throughout the series.
That said, making Max Pratt an "amoralist" struck me as dramatically unnecessary. It is enough that he was a mercenary without slapping a label on him. Implying that Pratt rejects conventional morality because he follows a system of (negative) belief doesn't put him beyond good and evil, it simply means that he values "right" and "wrong" in monetary terms. He's not philosophically "amoral," he's just in a higher tax bracket.
Also on the themes of loyalty and morality, Da'an claims he betrayed the Resistance in order to regain Zo'or's trust. However, when pressed, he insists that his reasons for needing that trust must remain shrouded in mystery.
This is the Taelon catch-all and, as some might argue, one of the easy excuses for uninspired serial storytelling. Done something wrong, but don't want to own up? Simply hide behind the argument, "it's important, but I can't tell you why."
Sure, governments do that all the time, and it makes for one heck of convenient plot device. From the perspective of the viewer however, this dodge becomes a source of unending frustration. Piling mystery upon mystery, secret upon secret without the occasional gift of revelation is bad narrative, and what's more, it alienates loyal viewers while leaving casual viewers completely in the dark.
While a little mystery is a good thing, too much truth can be unsatisfying. For a show like Earth: Final Conflict that, after three years, has yet to explicitly map out any definitive direction for itself, it's time to solve some of those mysteries for the characters and viewers alike.
Dangling Plot Threads
Why didn't Jonathan Doors tell Renee Palmer about Liam's alien heritage?
Does Liam's blood make Sandoval part alien too?
How will Sandoval react when he learns the identity of his son?
How long will Zo'or's newfound trust of Da'an last?
Tune in Next Week
Violence attends the birth of the first Taelon-Human hybrid in "A Little Bit of Heaven".
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