Date of release: April 13, 2018 (Netflix)
teleplay by: Kari Drake
story by: Daniel McLellan
directed by: Tim Southam
Damn, the robot does not even know Smith’s real name and takes on her false moniker, which begs the question of how the robot even knew the names of its saviors before. It is imaginable that Will introduced himself to the robot because that is what kids do when they hope to have first contact with an alien lifeform, but why would June give her false identity to the robot, or even find the time to introduce herself to it when she was knocked out and the robot was too busy keeping the chariot from driving away? Why would she even introduce herself to the robot in the first place? “Hi, I’m Doctor Smith, stop that chariot from driving away!” And if all that did not happen, how did the robot know? The three final words of this episode, as thrilling as they were, bring me to ask these questions, which means I just wasted two minutes out of my meaningless, screwed-up, anxiety-ridden, depressed life by wondering about three spoken words in this episode, and that tells you the writers have not taken two minutes to think about it. “Danger, Dr. Smith” is only good for one thing: To show the audience that the robot is Smith’s. It also shows that the writers did not particularly care for logic here. And I know, this is only a science-fiction TV show, but I would still love some thought in the shows I am watching.
I was surprised that this episode did not even go at all into the fate of John and Don. Granted, Will got a signal from his father, and it is pretty obvious that the two men are still alive (this family-friendly show would never kill off lead characters in such a fashion) but I would love to know where the heck the two guys are – in space in a lifeboat, aimlessly floating around? Somewhere on this planet fighting against monster bats as well? The previous episode had Don argue whether he should have removed the life support system, which means this is what must have saved the guys, per the rules of Chekhov’s Gun. At least the writers did not pull their trick cards out of their butts to explain what really happened. Keeping John and Don out of this episode was in hindsight a good move to keep the story real and valid and tense and focused on the events on the planet’s surface, and not have it destroyed by a ridiculous twist somewhere else. Besides, the survivors’ effort to get the biofuel needed to conveniently save their own butts was more thrilling and interesting than wanting to see what John and Don were up to.
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| What to do with a dead robot? |
The way Will realized that his father was still alive though... Yeah, I was rolling some serious eye on that one. This was supposed to be A QUIET PLACE (yet another piece of fantastical fiction to take as inspiration, although it is pretty clear that John Krasinski’s movie and this TV show did not know about each other, since both were released at the same time) and Will knew that he went into the cave to not make a damn sound. Yet he still had his radio on him. I instantly knew what would happen when Penny mentioned the radio, and thank the heavens it did not take another half an episode for the radio to make a few beeps in the cave, but boy, was this a quickly served MacGuffin. So quick, in fact, I rolled my eyes a little too hard, because they crushed through the back of my skull and fell out of my head. Oh well, at least the whole cave thing made me want to rewatch A QUIET PLACE again. Such a fine film.
But hey, the Robinsons had a nice family moment in this episode. Their father is missing and their mother is kidnapped, so they had to make it on their own. Will got an idea to save the colonists, Judy decided to go after her mother, and Penny... Well, she just played with Vijay’s heart because that is what girls do when they are not interested in a boy any longer (or so they say). Although I was amused when she said she was good, essentially ruining all possible chances for Penny to ever be in a romance again, which I should thank the heavens for, since romance stuff still does not seem to be fitting into the narrative very well. Then again, maybe love should be part of the overall narrative. It should be one of the constants of life for the survivors – if they cannot fight to survive because they do not have the strength, maybe they could if they feel love toward another.
The ticking time bomb of these episodes is a bit weird though. It was 24 hours until the Resolute was moving on. I cannot imagine that it took the colony less than seven hours to collect all the monster bat droppings they needed and turn them into fuel, because it kind of looked like they did not have enough time to do so, since the initial trip to the cave seemed to have lasted a lot longer than the one or two hours they may have needed in this episode. In addition, it seemed like the writers did not particularly care about the plot twist that was the biofuel, because there was never really a notion of how the monster bat dung was turned into fuel or how much all the Jupiters needed to get off the planet. It seems like for the number of Jupiters that were about to get off this planet, a ton of beast bat crap was needed, but with about 30 survivors and only a couple of hours, I do not think the survivors either had the manpower or the time to get all the excrements in time to turn it to fuel and then use it to blast off this rock. Am I thinking too much about this right now?
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| Penny is not facing love, she is looking at monster bats. |
Then there was Smith and Maureen’s trip. Getting a bit of backstory was not such a shady idea, and at least you have the Resolute attack explained, but it still did not make Smith look like an intriguing villain. She started the show in a great way, but by now she has become incredibly annoying, and I cannot figure out if she is just crazy and murderous or if her brain is not properly wired to differentiate between her definitions of heroes and villains and what the rest of humanity understands with those two words. Her “I’m not the villain of the story, I’m the hero” was one of the most cringeworthy lines of the entire show, because it is supposed to make her a full-on villain, yet the writers still have not figured out if they want to stomp a redemption road in front of Smith’s feet, or leave it at that because Smith looking like a fake hero would guarantee her survival on the Resolute (which she does not need the robot for, by the way). Damn, I would love to know what her story arc is, because it seems to be fluctuating and without an end goal. It does make Parker Posey’s entire appearance in the show a little sour if the writers could not figure out her character, and it is about time that Smith gets a little more to do than being the questionable and confusing wannabe supervillain.
