Destiny finds planet Novus isn’t quite what they expected when they drop off their descendants. There are no people to be found anywhere and one of the elder passengers directs them to an underground bunker. After an amazing shot from Destiny to the doors of this bunker (with the crew dangerously nearby) they go in to discover it’s an archive of the civilization’s history since Destiny arrived 2000 years ago all stored on keno-cam.
At first I thought it was a nice diversion to watch the video diaries, but then I started thinking “Seriously? You’re wasting HOW much time watching this stuff?” It’s like reading a book and your name happens to be one of the characters. I could understand a mild fascination, but they seemed to be going WAY to deep in to “what the other Eli/Chloe/Matt/Young/etc did.” Why? Don’t you have supplies to gather?
While they are in this underground archive, earthquakes strike. They determine it is because a black hole is passing by the system and causing terrific tidal stresses on the planet (as they suspected) and they don’t have long. Nothing like a sense of urgency to get the plot moving.
As the earthquakes intensify, Eli has the idea to start uploading all these archives to Destiny (wow, and WE thought reality TV was pointless.) While watching some of the archives, TJ discovers that the “other her” has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). She figures it set in about five years after she arrived and she died a couple years after that. When Varro tries to reassure her that “Just because the other TJ got it…” she tells him it’s not something you contract. She’s already headed down that path. OK, now I see the value in watching these other people live their lives.
The earthquakes get worse and they realize they likely don’t have time to upload all the data before they have to leave or the entire place will come down on them. One of the local elders who came along says “We cured that disease 200 years ago.” Will they have time to download enough of the database to save TJ? I won’t spoil it. All I can say is – too bad this show isn’t going a few more seasons. They just set another hook they cannot follow up on.
Funniest scene in the show – the look on Greer’s face as they are going down the elevator to the archive with the soft music playing in the background. I thought he was going to shoot the speaker system. FINE ACTING MY MAN!
There were some saving moments IMHO, like when Volker makes takes a verbal jab at Rush near the end. “It bugs you that we got along just fine without you.” OUCH! How’s Rush going to respond to that?
Despite that, I’m rating this one a little lower. While it was great for character development (watching the alternate people get married, have babies, etc.) I thought it a bit unrealistic. They arrive on Novus with hardly anything. They have to make shelters and tools from scratch yet somehow the men stay clean shaven and always have nice haircuts. I can see after 20 years when they get themselves some tools, but a few months in? Couldn’t the costume department slap some whiskers on those guys for a few scenes? C’mon. They took the time to do lots of aging makeup on Camille, Young, and some of the others. I also thought they spent a bit too much time watching videos of the alternate people. Watching alternate Young help suffering TJ was sad, and knowing that Volker dies from apparent kidney failure – I’ll be he’s thanking Greer now – but how does that move the Destiny story along? A bit too sappy for me on this one. Granted, they don’t all have to be shoot-em up stories. Here’s an idea the writers missed – how about exploring more about the conflict between Brody’s faction and Young’s group on the fledgling planet? Why did they diverge? What happened to the other group? Could there be seeds of descent festering today? (aside from him telling kids to get the hell of his lawn – that was funny.) That makes more sense to me than “could Eli get hooked up with corporal whats-her-face like he did in the video diary.”
Rating: 6/10
of course, the real solution to T.J.’s ALS problem is using the stones. Contacting Earth she would find out that she knows nothing about ALS. ALS is a sporadic disease in about 90% of cases. ALS is assumed in those cases to have an environmental component. In 10 percent of the cases, it is genetic. There is no clinical difference between the two forms she couldn’t tell that she had the genetic version unless she knew from her family history. ALS is a STRONGLY DOMINANT gene. It wouldn’t have been a big difficult to diagnose suprise to TJ. Many family members would have had the disease including a parent.