What was this? A visit to Planet Exposition?
I think I would have been fine with a nice episode about Diyoza, Octavia and Hope practicing Earth skills and making puns about peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches, but instead I had to take notes so that I could follow everything that happened. All the while I was wondering what the heck was happening to Clarke et al. back on Sanctum.
So let's take this... um, chronologically.
Diyoza gave birth to her daughter Hope shortly after Octavia arrived on what we later discovered was planet Beta – although I preferred Hope's name for the planet, Skyring. A pretty place, I thought. Looks like British Columbia.
Diyoza and Octavia made for an interesting parenting team. They had ten years together living a quiet life, raising Hope and a variety of crops. Octavia seemed younger and happier, relaxed and reflective, even though she couldn't stop trying to get back to Bellamy by diving down to the unreachable glow at the bottom of the lake. Octavia desperately needed to reconnect with her brother, to tell him she finally understood what he went through to protect her and watch over her. In the end, she wrote a letter to him, put it in a bottle, and threw it in the lake.
A brief pause to regurgitate exposition
So. The Anomaly is a bridge between worlds, a transit system. Sanctum, if I remember correctly, was Alpha. Diyoza, Octavia and Hope were stranded on Beta a.k.a. Skyring; the planet's proximity to a black hole causes the time acceleration. The portal at the bottom of the lake leads to a planet called Bardo, home of the Disciples. The Disciples don't sound like nice people; they use Beta as a time-squeeze prison for the lazy and non-devout, because you can drop people like the Crazy Guy with the countdown on his arm off for a weekend and he spends years in solitary trying to survive on Beta. Pick him up on Monday, sentence over.
Colin Benson was the sole survivor of a crash landing on Beta. He built the cabin over the stone transport thingy with all the symbols on it. The same thingy that Gabriel had on Sanctum. The stones are a way to explore the universe without ships and cryo, which is pretty cool and also convenient.
This episode finally explained the mind drives. Everyone on the Eligius mission got a memory drive that would function as a black box so that, if the mission team died, the mother ship could reconstruct their memories and find out what went wrong. Russell and Gabriel reverse-engineered the memory drives so that they could hold an entire mind.
Hello again, Becca! Nice to see you!
Okay, back to our story
Hope is twenty years old. When she was ten, the Disciples found Octavia's message in a bottle for Bellamy and arrived, taking Diyoza and Octavia hostage. Octavia hid Hope not under the floor but in the wall, so not a perfect match to what happened to little Octavia on the Ark. After that, someone named Dev came along, and he taught Hope to fight. Dev is now a moldering body in the woods. I'm confused about the bodies in the woods. Why was Colin Benson there, too?
Anyway, Hope seems to be negotiating with Anders, the head of the Disciples (who are also descendants from Eligius) to get her mother and Octavia back, and needs Echo and Gabriel to help her. It's all somewhat confusing. Could we go back to Sanctum, please?
Bits:
— Why did the Disciples take Bellamy? Because of the letter in the bottle, I assume?
— Why is the Disciple planet called Bardo instead of Gamma or Delta? (Or maybe Home of the Disciples?)
— I loved the "Earth skills." And that Hope has been taught about pretty much everyone in the cast.
— Crazy Guy called the skull doll "Hope." There must be a story behind that one.
— I'm also a bit confused about the biometrics, the suits, and the key. Too bad that Crazy Guy smashed the memory reader, too.
Quotes:
Diyoza: "Now pull this little spud out, and the three of us can watch the sunset together."
Octavia: "Okay, you can do this. Just look at me and think of someplace else. A place where you were happy."
Diyoza: "Oh, no. Not a lot of choices there."
Hope: "My mother, my responsibility."
Diyoza: "Looks like she figured out that milk doesn't come from a pinky."
Octavia gave baby Hope her fingertip to suck, like Bellamy did for Octavia way back when.
Hope: "What is it about Bellamy that has otherwise sensible women willing to die for him?"
Gabriel: "Becca. God, I had a crush on her."
Diyoza: "Who's hungry?"
Octavia: "Let me guess. We're vegan again."
Diyoza: "Only if you're not in the mood for my jellyfish etouffée."
Hope: "Jellyfish and chips."
Diyoza: "Yes."
Octavia: "Peanut butter and jellyfish."
Diyoza: "Jellyfish pot pie it is."
I sort of enjoyed this episode, but I'm not really sure. Thoughts, anyone?
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
I also found this episode to be oddly boring. I think it was due to the nature of the anomaly and the short amount of episodes we have left. They needed to boil down a complex idea into an exposition dump that will be utilized for the rest of the season as a war with the Bardo begins (I bet). While practical it doesn't usually make for compelling television. At least there were some emotional through-lines in this episode, namely we understand the relationship between Diyoza, Octavia and Hope and now we are learning more about Hope and Gabriel. I'm not sure how they could've made this better, beyond setting up the answer to the anomaly over a few episodes. We'll see, maybe this one will be good in retrospect.
ReplyDeleteBecca making an appearance was nice, and I wonder if they are keeping in touch with Erica Cerra because she will play a role (perhaps as the lead) of The 100 spinoff prequel show.
I can't believe it took me this long to recognise Diyoza actress from Buffy.
ReplyDeleteI liked this one better than you did, Billie, although I'm lost as well. Too many questions after this episode...
ReplyDelete