Killjoys - 'I Love Lucy'

Talk about sparks flying.

After another successful graq mission, Dutch and the Jaquobis boys are back on the trail of the green goop.

Discovering that mossipede plasma only allows D'av to relive mossipede memories, and that he can apparently manipulate the goo remotely, they set out to find the purified stuff that Khlyen uses. Pree gives them a lead from his old warlord days and they head off to meet with San Romwell, a trader of rare stuff with a gajillion warrants on his head and his own spaceship made of asteroids. They push, he pushes back and has his three gynoid bodyguards - seriously illegal tech - take them all prisoner, but agrees to trade Dutch's sitar for her freedom.

Things are not going as well for San Romwell as might appear.

For most of the rest of the episode, the team are split up. Dutch trades stories with San - she was placed in the harem when her rich family lost everything and trained by Khlyen to marry a prince; he was captured by aliens who conquered his world and flew in spaceships powered by the plasma - while the boys are taken to be rendered down to a molecular pattern, before Johnny manages to hack one of the bots, allowing a roaming 'app' version of Lucy, the ship's AI, to control her. Dutch sings her wedding song while San plays and gets poisoned by the sitar, and she strangles him, but he comes back thanks to nanites which have sustained his life for centuries. The gynoids go berserk and Lucy sacrifices her physical self to stop them (after kissing Johnny,) while Dav uses his goo manipulation powers to throw exploding crystals at shit.

Not good.

San gives them some more goo and Dutch gets him a new ID since they blew up his shit. Then she goes and gets some with Alvis the Scarback, Pawter shows up to get frisky with Johnny and D'av scores with bartender Sabine, who explodes. Opinion seems to be divided as to whether Sabine was a Level 6 until his unique ability shagged the goo out of her, or whether the downside to the cool powers he was crowing over earlier in the episode is that he kills people with his sexy. If the latter I suspect that a lot of fans may be aggrieved by the lack of future D'av sexy.

'I Love Lucy' was a cracking episode, not least for a bravura performance from Tamsen McDonough, the voice and now the face of Lucy, delivering lines like 'stop talking, be naked' with total commitment and soliciting a final kiss from Johnny because 'it could be your only chance to kiss a robot.' I also liked that Lucy was complicit in bringing Pawter to the ship in the end, rather than getting all cyber stalker. I like that even the computer is capable of loving on many levels.