Wayward Pines - 'Choices'

"Abby... Somebody. Abby Normal!"*

After last week's flurry of exposition, we have... more exposition. Where Ethan was essentially illustrating the truths revealed to Ben in 'The Truth', however, this week it's him getting the info dump.

Pilcher and his sister, Nurse Pam, explain how he discovered that humanity was on the brink of a catastrophic environmental and evolutionary collapse. Unable to convince the world, he devoted his genius and fortune to a project to create an Ark of sorts, developing revolutionary cryonic technology and creating the vast underground facility which stored his chosen survivors for 2,000 years and now serves as its support facility, nurturing it towards self-sufficiency.

All is not well, however. While Pilcher and his volunteers - including Mrs Fisher and Arnold Pope - were prepared for the new world, the first group to be awakened into the town freaked out, either fleeing into the abbie infested woods or simply destroying themselves and their families. Thus the adults are now kept in ignorance, merely paving the way for the First Generation, but some will never accept, and there is a resistance group planning to blow up the fence. Back in town, Theresa follows a paper trail to the mysterious Lot 33, while Ben struggles to deal with the truth and Kate and her husband build a bomb.

'Choices' once more does much to clarify the world of Wayward Pines, and brings us to the end of the material I know from the book. It works hard to ensure that Ethan's choice to throw in with the authorities seems reasonable, by giving a grim alternative - the fence is blown, the abbies storm the town - and by having him set his own conditions - no more Reckonings; no executions and a phasing out of the universal surveillance. While he accepts that people can't be told outright, he has no will to enforce a reign of terror. It also shows that what the town has been missing is a new voice in this secret cabal; someone who hasn't drunk all the kool aid and can still see beyond the party line.

There is a line of social commentary, even satire, in Pilcher's initial frustration with a society frittering its existence away with trivial entertainments, always putting off what needs to be done in favour of watching the latest TV craze or writing about it on the internet. It's always a little odd watching this sort of satire get stuck in to the hand that feeds, but it also explains why Pilcher didn't arrange for someone to lay in the next fifty years worth of DVDs after the hibernation began in order to provide some bread and circuses to distract the people.

I think the most important facet of the last couple of episodes is that they are bringing together the plot threads and tying off the material from book one, which means that we don't have the question of what the hell Pilcher thinks he's doing anymore. Now that Ethan is in on the secret, it is no longer madness to give him the badge and the guns, and he doesn't have to try to escape over and over and then have everyone act as if it's all hunky-dory. All-in-all it makes for a more convincing, and thus more compelling, story. Now, if only they can fit Theresa back in decently.

* It was this or 'Is it because I is slate grey?'

Dominion - 'Mouth of the Damned'

"I like Buster Keaton movies. Eccentric!"

Alex and Noma discover that New Delphi is inhabited by a mixture of humans and eight balls apparently living in peace. Julian, eccentric and trade-obsessed leader of the city - well, bunker; apparently the budget won't stretch to more than one actual city - is angry that Alex shot one of the possessed and demands the life of one of his party in recompense, although he is persuaded to delay when Gabriel attacks the city. During the defence it becomes apparent that New Delphi is armed with a substantial quality of the same angel-killing metal that Michael and Gabriel's swords are made from. After Gabriel retreats, Julian agrees to ally with Vega if Alex can retrieve a certain key from a nest of mad possessed.

In Vega, a V1 named Zoe attempts to assassinate Clare as the head of the oppressive, caste-driven government. Evelyn coaxes an eight ball into working for her, with the promise of returning images and artefacts of the woman whose body the angel possessed, with the implication that she had learned how to manipulate lower angels from Uriel. She sends the angel to make an incriminating sex tape with Whele - well, it never gets to actual sex, but that's the theme of the thing - which Clare uses to force him out of power, then Evelyn kills the eight ball.

Finally, Michael learns that one of the conditions under which the town is protected is that each year all of the townsfolk confess their sins to Serious Leader Lady (the series is still very bad at using people's names.) A woman who saw him washing blood off his wings stumbles back into town, having run away to avoid confession. She admits to adultery, but Michael persuades her that God wants her to keep quiet about the wings. Since secrets are sins - apparently, because obviously there had to be something messed up about this place - this leaves the town in peril, so her married lover - Manly Suspicious Pants - straight up murders her.

Once more, Dominion's overarching theme seems to be that, actually, maybe Gabriel is right and God has gone away because people are just that shitty. I quite like the city of eight balls, however; it's very different and now we have three distinct survivor settlements, or four if Helena counts when we haven't seen it. Sadly, Gabriel has just been angry so far, and we've not seen much of the fun and snarky psychopath who enlivened Season 1 with his affable monstrosity, although chirpy wheeler-dealer Julian takes up some of the slack.

Wayward Pines - 'The Truth'

Manly.

As Ethan heads off into the woods with a shotgun and a manly action face, his son Ben, utterly frustrated with his mother's unexplained clinginess and rather less concerned about possible conspiracies than the possibility that he might score with his assigned cutey, is called into Room 101 for 'orientation'. Ethan faces the humanoid monsters in the woods - super-fast and razor-clawed, but otherwise basically naked dudes - as he makes his way to Boise. He passes ruins where there should be buildings, before finally reaching the wreck of what used to be Boise. Meanwhile, Ben is learning that the monsters are 'abbies', an aberration of human evolution that has arisen while the children and their parents slept for 2,000 years in suspended animation.

Mrs Fisher's creepy over-familiarity is reminiscent of real-life hypnotists like
Derren Brown, but even more creepy in a teacher.

The children are told that they are part of the first generation, the hope of the future, brought to Wayward before the collapse of the civilisation to be the future of humanity after. They are watched over by the founder of the town, David Pilcher - the man Kate Hewson was sent to track down - but must not tell their families, adults who learned the truth having previously turned self-destructive.

In Boise, the psychiatrist Dr Jenkins comes in a helicopter to collect Ethan, introducing himself as David Pilcher. He explains that Wayward is the last refuge of humanity and they flee from a pack - although Mrs Fisher uses the word herd - of abbies. Ben and his fellow orientees are photographed and brought into a hall for a candlelit welcome where the other children do everything short of chanting 'one of us'.

This is surely the stuff of adolescent nightmares.

And Theresa... Theresa gropes slowly towards an inkling of the truth that her family have just been handed on a plate while enduring the mild leching of her new boss. To say that she is not pulling her weight as a character might be an understatement.

For the first time in a couple of episodes, Wayward Pines makes more sense after 'The Truth'. Clearly Mayor Fisher's pronouncement was literal truth; the town is all about the children; the adult abductees are basically maintenance workers to keep things running while the more mentally flexible younger generation are prepped to take over by the few who are in the know. It's still a deeply flawed system which relies on an increasingly wobbly control mechanism, but less rockheaded if all of the grownups are deemed expendable. Well... all except Ethan, and that's odd given the level of trouble he's caused.

Coming to this after the first book I notice a lot of flaws, but it's interesting to note that reviewers not familiar with the books were heading for the same time travel explanation I leaned towards while reading. Onwards and upwards, perhaps to an episode in which Theresa does something which contributes materially to the plot.

Wayward Pines - 'One of Our Senior Realtors has Chosen to Retire'

Graffiti = Death
Murder = Sheriff
Presumably the mayor is an arsonist and all the school teachers habitual
jaywalkers

Having killed the Sheriff and inadvertently fed his body to the totally wolves, honest, Ethan is somewhat surprised when the night mailman delivers a school acceptance letter and uniform for Ben, like a very small Hagrid. He breaks into the Sheriff's office to steal some hardware, but is surprised by Arlene the receptionist, Pam the nurse and a man named Fisher, the Mayor of Pines, who have brought cake to congratulate him on replacing the retiring Pope. They even bring a copy of the newspaper announcing Pope's retirement.

As Sheriff, Ethan gets access to the files of everyone in town, listing not just their occupations and addresses, but the details of their former lives. For example, Mayor Fisher's wife is the Stepford school teacher and a former hypnotherapist, so Ben's induction interview ("Where do you come from? Where do you live? Where is home?") is almost as creepy as the fact that he seems to have been assigned a cute girl to help him feel more welcome. As the Mayor explains when the Burkes invite the Fishers for dinner, "It's all about the children; shaping their minds."

Theresa confronts Kate, who basically gives her the condensed version of the 'your life as you knew it is over' spiel, and Nurse Pam makes a citizen's arrest on the realtor who introduced the Burkes to their house and pointed out the monitors. Apparently this man, Peter, is an 'insurgent', who defaces public property with demoralising graffiti. As this is his third strike, she tells Burke, he needs to be hounded through the streets by a mob before Ethan cuts his throat. Justice! (The title of the episode is taken from a letter sent to Theresa offering her his job.) Naturally, Ethan refuses, and bonds with Peter for a while before trying to smuggle him away, learning that he was brought here after an indiscrete liaison with a much younger Nurse Pam. Peter hugs him, tells him the town needs him, and then throws himself onto the deadly electric fence.

Ethan decides to leave Theresa and Ben in the town while he goes for help, scaling the cliff beside the fence while something humanoid but inhuman watches from the shadows.

Wayward Pines grows ever more mysterious, but also less credible, the powers that be apparently feeling that the way to win Ethan over is to give him access to enough information to confirm that serious hink is going on, to all the guns, and persuade him to their way of thinking by... I don't know; having Pam needle him about being shit until sheer machismo makes him determine to be the best darn sheriff this town has ever seen. And then there's Ethan, who has realised that something is up with the school, which is run by a former hypnotherapist, but leaves Ben there while he goes for help, despite the fact that there is clearly some wibbly wobbly timey wimey shit going on. Matt Dillon's naturally baffled expression is working increasingly hard here.

At this point, the series seems to me to be a lot of excellent parts - the performances are top notch - struggling to create a coherent whole. I think the main problem is that their determination to stretch out the mystery while involving Ethan's family has created a scenario that seems utterly untenable and forces unlikely turns such as Ethan's appointment as Sheriff while still utterly at odds with the town, and his knowing abandonment of his wife and son despite the possibility that any help he brings back after a week could be mysteriously a decade too late.

Dark Matter - Episode 7

"Let's switch on the sex bot; what could possibly go wrong?"

Recalling her dreams from last episode, Five retrieves the code for the vault, granting access to a treasure trove of money, guns and women. Seriously; there's a woman in stasis and a dismantled 'entertainment' android, and being smart people, our heroes immediately wake them both up. The woman is Sarah, a critically ill farmer who had a thing with Marcus/Three after she saved his life. He put her in stasis because of her illness, then of course forgot that he was trying to find her a cure. They bond for a time before he has to return her to stasis as the illness accelerates.

The android is Wendy, a perky bot with an Aussie accent who wins the crew over with her cooking and massage skills and has sex with One ("You seem anxious. If it would help, I can switch off my performance analytics before we begin,") thus pissing off both Two and the Android, who feels threatened by the newcomer. Of course, the sexbot turns out to be an assassin, or rather an actual sexbot reprogrammed to kill the crew and gloat in the voice of their vanquished foe - a man whom, of course, none of them remember at all - as they crash into the sun. Three acts as bait to lure the bot off the bridge while Five releases the others who were locked in the mess and they work together to avert disaster. Unfortunately, the bot's sabotage causes power fluctuations, including knocking out Sarah's stasis pod.

This episode gave us a chance to see another side of Three. We learn that Marcus initially tried to run out on Sarah when things got emotional, but stayed to help her when she got sick. We're never sure if he would have stayed if she hadn't, but either way it's a softer side than we've seen before. The real star, however, is Zoie Palmer's Android, managing to use extremely limited facial movement to transform her wide-eyed blandness into the most heartbreaking kicked-puppy impersonation as the crew go gaga for Wendy's thrifty yet delicious cooking. The scene where she tries to win back One's regard with a range of exciting accent options is priceless tragicomedy.

Agent Carter - 'Time and Tide'

Agent Carter: More interrogation scenes than your average police procedural.

The SSR follow up on the dropped hotel key (Man in Green's, not Carter's; my bad) and find the magic typewriter. They also learn that Leet Brannis was a Russian agent who died two years ago. Based on the license plate from Stark's car, they haul in Jarvis for questioning, leaning on him using a shady past including a charge of treason and a dishonourable discharge. While Carter is able to spring him, to do so she has to actively fluff the investigation, thus seriously damaging her hard-won credibility with her male fellow agents.

Peggy Carter may not be a great conspirator, but she excels at the rough stuff.

There is a bit more detective work and Carter and Jarvis track the remaining stolen weapons to a boat, but the focus of the episode is on Carter and the consequences of her off-the-books investigation on behalf of Stark. Unable to take the credit for her find, she has Jarvis call in an anonymous tip, but this leads to the death of an SSR agent when someone rubs out the only witness. As the witness was also able to finger Carter for her activities, we're left to ask: Who had the man killed? Was it Leviathan? Or was it Stark or Jarvis? The killer was thin enough to be Jarvis, but had a bit more swish in his - or was it her? - step. Regardless, it is clear that this is no longer doing a small favour for a friend, as the Agency determine that the boat and the tip were a trap set up to kill one of their own.

The message of the episode is that Carter may be an excellent agent, but she's a terrible spy. It's not that she can't keep a secret; just that she is fundamentally honest. She can lie to her enemies, but struggles with lying to her allies, even the ones who don't like her much. We see also that her relationship with her non-work friend Angie is threatened by her secrecy, and that despite her determination to keep clear of attachments, this hurts Carter. Again, she lacks the detachment of a true spy, a trait which, like her honesty, speaks of her true nature as a hero. Despite her desire to gain respect as an agent, she is willing to drop the credit and even to seem incompetent to protect a friend, and we can expect the strain of her double life to tell more than ever as the series progresses.

I think this is one of the greatest successes of the series so far; that the writers have steered clear of the common failing of equating 'strong female character' with a lack of flaws and weaknesses. Carter is physically capable, intelligent and quick witted, observant and a skilled actress, but she is also loyal to a fault and incapable of entirely switching off her emotions, then again without coming off as irrational. If anything, Jarvis's cool rationality in a crisis is eerie by comparison, and like so much else hints at an even patchier past than some forged letters of transit for his future wife.

Dominion - 'Heirs of Salvation'

Where did all the cow angels go?

In a small village, a group of human survivors watch in terror as the unmistakable silhouette of the Archangel Michael (sans wings) kills lots of people with swords.

Cutting back in time a short way, we see Michael wandering the desert in the aftermath of his massacre in the Vega labs. Meanwhile, Alex is in Gabriel's eyrie, having promised the Word of God in exchange for Vega's safety, but the tattoos aren't talking. Just as Gabe is losing his rag, the humans drop a massive dirty bomb on the eyrie, which fails to really kill anyone of note. Alex escapes with higher angel bestie Noma while Gabriel plots vengeance and determines that all he needs of Alex is his skin.

In Vega, Clare - now Lady of the City - celebrates the strike, but the emergence of living angels hints that retribution is coming. David Whele and his cronies, angered that Clare has given some of their living space to the workers, has those floors fired to whip up anger against her, while Clare and Helena (who may still be fronting as Pseudosapphic Diplomat, I wasn't clear on this one) plot a counterattack. Whele is also talking to his son, despite abandoning him in the desert, and it eventually transpires that this is a figment of his imagination.

Alex and Noma head for New Delphi (the former Philadelphia?) Alexa wants to persuade them to send their army to aid him in defending Vega, but Noma - apparently unaware of Michael's heel turn - is mindful of warnings he gave her about going to New Delphi and sends him a message by wing telegraph (apparently higher angels talk long distance by flapping.) They fall foul of a mob of eight balls. Alex evicts one and his tattoos go funny; this time, the host survives, with no memories of the war. Noma remarks that this makes Alex uniquely dangerous, but as they approach New Delphi they find a crucified higher angel and they are captured with electric nets.

Out in the desert, Michael finds a small town where a bonfire is kept burning. The people there hail from many faiths, but believe that the Father speaks to them and protects the village as long as the flames burn. Although unable to hear his Father, Michael is clearly effected, and when rain puts the fir out and the surrounding eight balls attack, he steps up to help defend the village, revealing the cold open to have been him killing eight balls. Then the sun comes out and the bonfire reignites, causing all of the nearby eight balls to catch fire and flee.

Season 1 of Dominion was a silly treat. Season 2 is just as mad, but with I fancy a touch of quality that the first lacked. Whether it will lose some of its charm from a more professional approach remains to be seen, but 'Heirs of Salvation' isn't a bad start.