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Creating episode thread: Remember only
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Sarah is sent an anonymous tape of a trial of a man, Fisher Newton Junior, convicted of murdering his parents. He claims that his parents were replaced, and the people he murdered were not his parents, but bled "white soup."
While, Angela has her first new mission aboard the shuttle, Neil has his final exams, and Marc also has Physics exams in his astronaunt training programme. In flashbacks, Neil remembers that this was the day when Marc borrowed money from him to buy stolen copies of his exam, but has a change of heart and leaves home, going AWOL from the air force and never returning. He decides to help Marc with the exam questions. Marc is stunned about what he knows about the money and physics in general.
Posing as a telecast news team, Taggart, Mendel and Sarah visit a privately operated Maximum Security Prison known as 'Lock Down Unit Seven', hoping to speak to Fisher Newton. They are helped by, the only human employee, a man with Asperger Syndrome who is a computer specialist, hired to improve security within the building, but is worried about strange events.
They discover that the building itself is actually a powerful, dangerous Sentient. Guards appear and disappear, walls move, and prisoners are violently tortured and experimented upon.
The Sentient has been studying evil, or more specifically, aggression, and it has brought the most violent criminals to itself. The Odyssey 5 crew ultimately find themselves trapped within the Synthetic building while the inmates run amok.
Without Neil's expertise, Kurt must cut off the secondary power from the building and kill the sentient. They do this and escape from the building as it dissolves into the earth.
Best lines of the week:
Synthetic: "How many more of you are there?"
Chuck: "About six billion!"
Synthetic: "How many that know about us?"
Chuck: "Not nearly enough!"
Hmm, there was a lot about his episode i was not happy with.
First what did Chuck expect to achieve by talking to fisher newton, he was just a bloke who killed his "synth" parents. Him realising they were not his real parents sent him off the rails. He had no knowledge of the synths or thier intentions.
That brings us on to the prison and the request, at first I thought it has to be a trap. We were greeted by an obvious synth who passed the team onto a strange looking man, a security systems specialist with an autistic twist, what the hell was that all about???
I couldnt believe they accepted the chip implantment surely that goes against thier survival from an AI based enemy who is MIND CONTROLLING thier army!!
Anyway our security guy suddenly makes them invisible to the security system (even though the ENTIRE building was alive and could see where they were) Chuck insists on seeing fisher newton. On arrival he practically said " i believe you" and that was that, he went on a mission to find the "lower levels" talk about not knowing when to quit!! So really the fisher newton chat was pointless.
Somehow the inmates are released (i thought this was the synth building rather than Kurt in the control room)
Now all hell lets loose and its obvious they need to leave but Again Chuck goes off to find this lower level.
When he gets there it starts to get interesting we have the synth Chuck chat.
The synth said we are studying human aggression, hmmm they are AI but that doesnt mean they cannot have emotions. This aggression must be a means to an end, what relevance it has i dont know.
When Chuck asked "what the F*ck are you?"
The synth replied "we are the future"...
The future of WHAT exactly?? The earth is destroyed how can that be thier ultimate goal?
After episode 2 when the speaker spoke of 50 worlds all suffering the same fate we must take it as fact that someone or something is dropping off or sending out an aggresive AI/lifeform whith the sole intent of destroying other worlds (which in thoery has flaws straight away)
Yet I cannot help feeling that the whole AI/synth scenario is Earth created and not of alien influence at all.
Just who did create the AI (we saw links by that mad scientist in episode 3 he said he created them)
Just what is thier purpose ( the destruction of the earth must be for a SPECIFIC reason)
Until the synths can find out just how many of chucks friends are around and are working against them the group of 5 are for now safe well kinda safe hehe.
Anyway back to the episode, All hell breaks loose, and Kurt puts all the pieces together to disable the synths.
The building then turns into some sort of metallic gloop and melts with our heroes running to safety.
Of course know one else saw this and there is no evidence left...
How convenient an end to the episode.
The sub story of course was the 2 brothers. Neil remembers the previous 5 years when bog bro Mark (can never remember his name) runs away from home, not able to cope with the astronaut program.
Instead of helping Mark get money to run away he helps with his physics.
Mark puts on a brave face but the show finished with him removing a crib sheet from under his watch. Its only a matter of time before he cracks and fails.
I think we are going to see Chucks son Mark either approached by the Cadre and offered a way into the space program for influence and information on the oddessy5 or Mark is going to be replaced or taken over by the synths, become super smart and accomplish the astronaut program, ultimatly trying to stop the oddessy 5 crew. I can even see Mark replacing Angela on the final mission.
Woot that was a big post...
Best lines
the synth asking chuck and kurt thier names..
Kurt: buck
Chuck: Roger
Sythn: buck rogers?
Chuck no just roger
and kurt at the end when chuck arrives out of the dust
Great points! I agree with all your criticisms, though I still liked the episode, because of it's faster pace, and the idea of a sentient building, and the detail on the Marc-Neil relationship.
I'd forgotten about the Buck Rogers thing. Actually, there is an episode approaching called 'The Trouble with Harry' which has someone called Harry Mudd in it. Harry Mudd was someone in the original series of 'Star Trek' who had made android women. We have had Kurt Mendel the genetist, and Dr. Chandra the computing professor. They certainly like to play with names in this show.
I also had a problem with them accepting the chip implant. I guess that was the whole point of it, to make us think "why on Earth would you do that", but if it was me in that situation, knowing what they know, it just wouldn't make sense to do it.
I also don't understand the destruction of the Earth and the other 50 worlds.
originally posted by RangerOne SG13 SOR Yet I cannot help feeling that the whole AI/synth scenario is Earth created and not of alien influence at all.
Do you think then that the AI/Sentients/Synthetics plot is just a 'Red Herring', that they have done nothing to help to stop the destruction of the Earth yet?
The 'Levianthan' upload to the shuttle immediately before the event means that it must have some connection. I just hope that the ultimate explanation is worth all this speculation we've been making!
I agree about Marc. I think some things are just meant to be, and he is destined to drop out of the astronaut programme sooner or later.
This is one of my favorites episodes so far. Specially because of the idea of the prison being itself a synthetic. The prison collapsing in the end was so awesome. The thing with Neil and Mark was great, also how Neil try to help him this time knowing the future. I think maybe this time Mark will failure again because he definitely is not much into the astronaut thing, I think he's doing more to don't dissapoint his parents.
Originally posted by RangerOne SG13 SOR Kurt: typical here comes John Wayne
Also love Kurt's reference to Chuck at the end and in other part of the episode.
Originally posted by RangerOne SG13 SOR We were greeted by an obvious synth who passed the team onto a strange looking man, a security systems specialist with an autistic twist, what the hell was that all about???
Originally posted by DaveQuestion of the week: How will the authorities explain the complete disapparance of a maximum security prison and all its inmates?
Good question, that surely is a headache to someone in that episode. Maybe some kind of new weapon of mass destruction or a new terrorist kind of virus. I think I seeing too much 24.
Took me almost as long to read this thread as it did to watch the ep!
I work on Wednesday nights, so I am not able to watch the show until I get some spare tim, so sorry for the lateness of my posts!
Okay then.
1) Neil and Marc. I really enjoyed how the flashbacks were handled - I know it has been done a million times, but it was still very satisfying. I am glad to see that Marc's problems were not solved too easily (or at all), tv often gives us the simple solution when real life is infinitely more complicated. I think RangerOne's idea for Marc's future is extremely likely, although another idea I had was that perhaps Marc's success in the program might somehow count against Neil (don't ask me how), and that Marc might end up as the one in the pilot's chair come 2007. Actually my idea still fits with RangerOne's, come to think of it.
2) The sentient/synthetic prison. So many problems with this section - firstly the whole implanting a chip part. I thought that was crazy too, but at this point their motivation for getting into the building was to see the murderer, and it was only later that they began to suspect that the company running the prison was somehow involved with the plot. So, perhaps it didn't seem so crazy after all. I felt so sorry for the security-designer guy, the way he was dragged off really made me sad. One question I have is: how did a riot turn into all the inmates being hooked up into the synthetic's apparatus? Why did they need to let the riot happen first? Do you think it is because they needed the inmates to actually be agressive for the 'study' to work?
Also, how did they become 'invisible' without the chips? Didn't the place have cameras that were normal as well as ones that detected the chips? And furthermore, if the whole building was a synthetic, wouldn't it just be able to sense them? Especially considering the already established fact that the sentients are 'cold-blooded' - wouldn't it seem obvious that heat tracking would be a perfect way of keeping tabs on all guests and inmates?
3) Use of bad language - sue me, I love it. I think the dialogue is what makes this show really work. Sometimes the swearing seems a bit much, but if you spent any time around my house the show would seem tame in comparison. The scripting is wonderful - and I am not sure whether it is the great writing or the fact that the actors are very very good that gets this across to us.
4) Boo, no Angela. Back in space for two months on the ISS - I wonder how many eps we will miss her for, or whether next week we have an element of the story happening in space?
Things I loved about this ep:
Chuck's jaunty cap
Kurt coming on to the security systems guy
The bright white look of the prison corridors at the beginning.
Originally posted by Tabitha And furthermore, if the whole building was a synthetic, wouldn't it just be able to sense them? Especially considering the already established fact that the sentients are 'cold-blooded' - wouldn't it seem obvious that heat tracking would be a perfect way of keeping tabs on all guests and inmates?
[RangerOne: what did Chuck expect to achieve by talking to fisher newton, he was just a bloke who killed his "synth" parents]
Well, if his parents had been replaced, wouldn't it stand to reason that there is a particular reason the synths had chosen to replace them? Having any background info Newton might be able to pass on could be vital to figuring out what the synths want.
And don't forget, Newton did tell Kurt about the experiments and gave him a clue to what had been happening in the basement. I guess in the grand scheme of things that did really help much, but you never know how information might come in useful later.
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