Killjoys - 'Dutch and the Real Girl'

"Dutch! We're in the middle of a heist!"
"You're right. Something red."

After last season's bombshell cliffhanger, we cold open with Dutch, Johnny and D'avin assaulting the Level 6 base on Arkyn, which is a bit of a jump ahead until it becomes clear that this is just a dream, part of D'avin's conditioning.

Above Arkyn, unable to approach due to an artificial defensive layer, the team are forced to retreat and go looking for a rumoured piece of tech that allowed a smuggling crew to dip in and out of Arkyn's atmosphere to escape pursuit. Their warrant broker confirms that the tech exists, and that a warrant exists for any person in possession of it, but that it was believed to have been deposited in a black market casino. Fortunately for the Killjoys, they have added bartender Pree to their roster, and he happens to have a criminal past notorious enough to get them in.

"I like that one. Can we keep her."
Alas, Lucy, it seems she will only be recurring.

So, Johnny pretends to be Pree's husband and Dutch pretends to be luggage to get into the vault, where they find the shield tech embedded in the body of a 'hack-mod' - Killjoy-speak for an extensively modified cyborg - named Clara, who was bought by the Connaver gang and turned into a living weapon to protect their shield. It's a slightly mad state of affairs, but it introduces us to Clara, a total badass in the shape of Mirrormask's Stephanie Leonidas and her 'good arm', Alice. It turns out that the tech embedded in her body redirects the radiation damage from the defence layer into Clara, and the crew are endearingly conflicted about the whole thing. Clara, however, is totally up for helping out another girl who was turned into a weapon and a family trying to get one of their own back.

Meanwhile, something about D'avin rejects the green conditioning goop. Learning this, Khlyen breaks him out and sends him back to Dutch, explaining that the only reason for taking him was to create a protector whom Dutch would let close. He also tells D'avin to lie to Dutch and say he's gone, because she won't leave until she's killed him, and staying would bring her into contact with 'the Black Root'. Fellow Killjoy Fancy Lee comes with, but when he doesn't bleed after being shot they chuck him off for a Level 6 and book, while Khlyen is knocked out and taken off by the Root to see 'the Lady', although one of his minders is then shivved by Fancy.

"Don't make me cut a bitch."
"Please, cut a bitch already."

Despite an offer to have her harmful mods removed, and the fact that Lucy the spaceship AI likes her, Clara heads off to hunt her own demons, leaving the crew to plan a rescue of the surviving refugees in the now walled-off Oldtown.

Killjoys blasts back for a second season in fine style, with its impressive cast, organically-explored world and more than usually sophisticated SF corporate conspiracy. It's a shame not to see the always-impressive Leonidas - who is north of thirty now, curse her eternal, fresh-faced youthfulness - become a fixture post-Defiance, but the existing ensemble is strong enough. Between this and Dark Matter, it seems we are living in a new golden age of space opera.